Poetyka rozkwitania

Overview & Synopsis

The Poetics of Blossoming. Sexuate Difference in the Philosophy of Luce Irigaray is Poland’s first academic monograph dedicated to the thought of Luce Irigaray, one of the most prominent twentieth-century philosophers and representatives of the post-structuralist French intellectual formation. Introducing sexuate difference as a philosophical notion, Irigaray not only revolutionised the approach to economy of representation, dominant in philosophical discourse, but most importantly she delineated new avenues of research. These are still being investigated in contemporary emancipation discourses, as Irigaray revealed the mechanisms of erasing and neutralising of sexuality in culture, academic discourse and language. Sexuate difference, which still functions as a key notion of Irigaray’s reflection, is a challenge not only for psychoanalysis and philosophy, but also for the contemporary feminist theories, as well as post-humanist and ecocriticism discourses. Irigaray proves that whenever there is discussion on the discourses of the ‘other’, in which the question of sexuate difference becomes marginalised, we are dealing with a mechanism of neutralisation, dominating in the logic of ‘the self’. This mechanism brings with it the erasure of the question of material agency of the embodied and, therefore, engendered subjects, beings and minorities, thus obstructing their self-representation and removing their political ability to unite.