Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1: Introduction: Expelled From The Nest -- Part I: Merged With The World -- Chapter 2: Born Of Soma And Germ Cells -- Chapter 3: Space-Time Of The Living -- Chapter 4: The World Of Human Beings -- Part II: Domination Of Spirit Over Soul -- Chapter 5: The Burial Of Touch -- Chapter 6: Anesthesia Of Soul By Spirit -- Chapter 7: A History Cut Off From Germ Cells -- Part III: The Question Of Being -- Chapter 8: Confusion Of The Living With The Made -- Chapter 9: To Be As A Conjunctive Verb -- Chapter 10: An Ontology Of The Living -- Part IV: Feeling Nostalgic For The Dynamism Of Germ Cells -- Chapter 11: What Desire Grants Us Life? -- Chapter 12: 'My Dear Little Soul' -- Chapter 13: Dynamism Necessary For Our Becoming -- Part V: Emergence Of Germ Cells At Individual And Collective Levels -- Chapter 14: The Touch Of Grace -- Chapter 15: From Individual To Couple And To Community -- Chapter 16: Importance Of Touch For Democracy -- Part VI : Approach To Touch As Such -- Chapter 17: An Immediate Access To Transcendental -- Chapter 18: The Communion Between Beings -- Chapter 19: Elements Of A Culture Of Touch -- Chapter 20: By Way Of Epilogue: The World Born Of Our Embraces.

Why broach and challenge the question of neutrality? For some urgent reasons. The neuter is generally considered to be the condition of objectivity. However, historically, this is asserted by a subject which is masculine and not neuter. Claiming that truth and the way of reaching it are and must be in the neuter amounts to a misuse of power and a falsification of the real. Living beings are not naturally neuter; they are sexuate somehow or other. Subjecting them to the neuter as a condition of their objective status transforms living beings into cultural products deprived of their own origin and dynamism, and builds a world in which the development and the sharing of life are impossible. In this book, four contributors explore this basic mistake of our culture starting from the work of Heidegger and his insistence on maintaining that our being in the world - our Dasein - must be in the neuter. They question the nature of the truth which is then at stake and the political mistakes that it can cause. It is not here a question of sexuality strictly speaking nor of sexual choice. The concern of the two men and the two women who participate in this volume is with the sexuate determination of all living beings. Is not Heideggers Dasein, as neutered and supposedly neutral, a kind of technical device which prevents living beings from entering into presence? If so, where might that ultimately lead? Luce Irigaray is a retired director of research in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), Paris. She has doctorates in philosophy (1974), in linguistics (1968) and in philosophy and literature (1955). She is also trained in psychoanalysis and in yoga. She is a regular reader of the work of Heidegger, to whom she has devoted a book L oubli de lair (1983, translated as The Forgetting of Air, 1999) and to whom she refers in many of her publications.

In this book, Luce Irigaray - philosopher, linguist, psychologist and psychoanalyst - proposes nothing less than a new conception of being as well as a means to ensure its individual and relational development from birth. Unveiling the mystery of our origin is probably what most motivates our quests and plans. Now such a disclosure proves to be impossible. Indeed we were born of a union between two, and we are forever deprived of an origin of our own. Hence our ceaseless search for roots: in our genealogy, in the place where we were born, in our culture, religion or language. But a human being cannot develop starting from roots as a tree does, it must take on responsibility for its own being and existence without continuity with its origin and background. How can we succeed in doing that? First by cultivating our breathing, which is not only the means thanks to which we come into the world, but which also allows us to transcend mere survival towards a spiritual becoming. Taking on our sexuate belonging is the second element which makes us able to assume our natural existence. Indeed this determination at once brings us energy and provides us with a structure which contributes to our individuation and our relations with other living beings and the world. Our sexuation can also compensate for our absence of roots by compelling us to unite with the other sex so that we freely approach the copulative conjunction from which we were born; that is, the mystery of our origin. This does not occur through a mere sexual instinct or drive, but requires us to cultivate desire and love with respect for our mutual difference(s). In this way we become able to give rise to a new human being, not only at a natural but also at an ontological level

Chapter 1 Prologue -- chapter 2 The Wedding Between the Body and Language -- chapter 3 Daughter and Woman -- chapter 4 To Perceive the Invisible in You -- chapter 5 To Love to the Point of Safeguarding You -- chapter 6 I Announce to You that We are Different -- chapter 7 To Conceive Silence -- chapter 8 Between Us, A Fabricated World -- chapter 9 She Before the King -- chapter 10 Each Transcendent to the Other -- chapter 11 How Can I Touch You if You are Not There? -- chapter 12 A Mystery Which Illuminates -- chapter 13 Epilogue.