Speculum of the Other Woman, and: This Sex which is Not One, and: Reading Lacan (review)

122 the minnesota review and War argues for an enlightened speech which is open to ambiguity, which accepts foreignness and difference, and which questions rather than embraces brittle certitudes. The book makes a case for recognizing identity as something not nationalistic or gender-based. Elshtain 's is a feminist position, arguing for the "chastened patriot," a citizen who enters political discourse with a sense of play, a lack of fear for the Other, and a sense of the vitality of individual responsibility. Hers is a plea, both humble and idealistic, that is worth considering . Her book disconcerts; it enters a growing discourse of women, educated in feminist thinking, who refuse to remain in the small area earned for feminist topics and step instead into a larger territory in an attempt to make a difference. ADRIENNE AUSLÄNDER MUNICH Speculum of the Other Woman by Luce Irigaray. Trans, by Gillian Gill. Ithaca and London : Cornell Univ. Press, 1985. pp. 416. $44.50 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). This Sex which is Not One by Luce Irigaray. Trans, by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985. pp. 208. $29.95 (cloth), $12.95 (paper). Reading Lacan by Jane Gallop. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1985. pp. 208. $19.95 (cloth), $8.95 (paper). According to the dust jacket, Reading Lacan is a "thought-provoking sequel to The Daughter's Seduction." In that earlier text—inscribed "For Peggy Kamuf' and published in 1982 by Cornell University Press—Gallop staged a scene of seduction between feminism and psychoanalysis, a scene that included some provocative dialogues between a certain Luce Irigaray and a certain Jacques Lacan. But now, with this sequel inscribed "For Dick," it seems that Gallop has moved beyond provoking seductions. The idea of a move beyond is repeated in the "PrefaStory" and "PrefatHEory" to Reading Lacan. In her "prefaStory," Gallop looks forward to a "feminist practice of study ... beyond the recognizable themes: women and sexual difference"—a practice "that could revolutionize the very structures of knowledge" by "altering not the object but the subject " (18). Moving on to the "PrefatHEory," we discover that the structures of knowledge Gallop would revolutionize are those that distinguish the humanities from the sciences. More specifically, she anticipates a different articulation of literary analysis and psychoanalysis, one that would effect a revolutionary configuration of knowledge. Although in theory this configuration has been called a "Science of the Letter," Gallop insists that revolution is a matter of practice as well as theory. Hence, she calls for a practice of reading and writing that not only interprets the letter but also analyzes the transference structuring interpretation . According to Gallop, such a signifying practice will radicalize knowledge and in so doing will have moved us beyond those recognizable thematic challenges to the human sciences: women and sexual difference. It seems ironic that in the same year that Cornell published Reading Lacan, it also published English translations of Luce Irigaray's Speculum de l'autre femme (1974) and Ce Sexe qui ? 'en estpas un (1977). As both the French and English titles indicate, Irigaray's themes are women and sexual difference—the very themes Gallop would move beyond. But why would a feminist critic want to move beyond the study of women and sexual difference in her attempts to revolutionize the human sciences? And what does she risk losing in choosing to do so? Reading Irigaray in conjunction with Gallop tends to provoke such questions. According to Luce Irigaray, woman cannot be understood apart from the "historic causes" which have (reproduced her: "Property systems, philosophical, mythological, or religious systems, [and] the theory and practice of psychoanalysis" (129). Although at one point or another Speculum ofthe Other Woman touches on all of these systems, it emphasizes the connections between and internal workings of two discursive practices: Freudian psychoanalysis and metaphysics. The book opens with a reading of Freud on femininity ("The Blind Reviews 123 Spot of an Old Dream of Symmetry"), moves through a middle section that includes chapters devoted to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel ("Speculum"), and closes with a stunning analysis of Plato's parable of the cave ("Plato's Hystera"). There, in...