Toward a Divine in the Feminine

Luce Irigaray

Chapter Chapter 1 in Women and the Divine, 2009, pp 13-25 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract How can we find, define, and practice a spiritual doctrine appropriate to women? How can we return to ourselves in a way that allows us autonomy and freedom enough to discover what sort of divine is suitable for us? A divine, that is to say, that can assist our becoming as women, including the becoming divine of the women that we are by birth. From birth I am a woman, not only through my body. I am not only a female but a woman because I belong to a subjective world, a subjective identity, different from those of a man. Such a subjectivity can be analyzed as a specific way of relating with myself, with the other or others, with the world. For various reasons, this manner of relating is different in the case of a girl and a boy. As I have already said many times, to affirm that man and woman are really two different subjects does not amount to sending them back to a biological destiny, to a simple natural belonging. Man and woman are culturally different: This corresponds to a different construction of their subjectivity. The subjectivity of man and that of woman are structured, starting from a relational identity specific to each one, a relational identity that is held between nature and culture, and which assures a bridge from which it is possible to pass from one to the other while respecting them both.

Keywords: Relational Identity; Western Tradition; Simple Natural; Dependent Exis; Privileged Place (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-12074-8_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-12074-8_2

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