Irigaray: Towards a Sexuate Philosophy (review)

Rachel Jones' recent work is an important addition to current Irigarayan scholarship and contemporary philosophy. Jones uses Luce Irigaray's groundbreaking text Speculum as a guide to trace Irigaray's critical and creative engagement with the "Fathers" of Western philosophical discourse. Seeking to introduce readers to the "specifically philosophical dimensions" of Irigaray's work, Jones carefully foregrounds the particular philosophical position of each "Father" whom Irigaray critically encounters, and only once his philosophical views are made clear does Jones begin to unravel Irigaray's specific relationship with each. It is Jones' attentive and jargon-free descriptions of Irigaray's interlocutors in Speculum that help to make this book accessible to students and professional philosophers alike.

It is not, however, only her careful presentation of the views of the philosophical Fathers—and Irigaray's relationship with them—that makes this book invaluable, but also the way Jones highlights the dual dialectic that runs throughout Irigaray's oeuvre. Paying close attention to how Irigaray continually works to escape and refigure the hylomorphic model "in which symbolic forms are imposed on inert and essentially form-less matter" (160), Jones details how Irigaray's project is not only critical, not only seeking to destabilize traditional categories, but also has always been devoted to (re)figuring and (re)cognizing life and philosophy as sexuate.

Jones' reading of Irigaray's oeuvre as a continuous, critical, and creative project also defends Irigaray from recent criticisms aimed toward her later work, in particular the charge of heterosexism. Ultimately, Jones defends Irigaray's views by pointing toward the ontological status of sexuate difference. In explaining how sexuate difference must be understood as ontological, Jones distinguishes between the Heideggerian notion of ontological difference and what we mean when we say sexuate difference has an ontological status. This discussion also brings to light how Irigaray has always engaged with the very foundations of our reality, the foundations and terms on which our ontological and metaphysical reality is structured. Irigaray is questioning and at the same time rewriting Western metaphysics.

Jones discusses the creative importance for Irigaray of revaluing and refiguring the female body, in particular the figures of the two lips and the pregnant body. Jones tackles the supposed problem of essentialism by reframing it as a problem of representation. Essentialism, for Jones, rests on the representation of the body as "fixed and determined matter" (176). Thus, it is not the problem of essentialism we need to confront; rather, it is rethinking and refiguring the relationship between matter and form, or nature and culture, that is our crucial task.

Irigaray's later work Between East and West is discussed in the final chapter. Although it is wonderful to see this book included and taken seriously as a philosophical work, it would have been helpful to hear a little more of Jones' thought on this text. Perhaps this is a project for another time?

Nevertheless, this book is an excellent contribution to Irigarayan scholarship. Whether the reader is encountering Irigaray for the first time or rereading any part of Irigaray's philosophy, this important and timely work from Rachel Jones will open up Irigaray's thought in new and unforeseen ways.