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Wittgenstein
and
Irigaray:
Gender and
Philosophy
in a
Language
(Game)
of
Difference
JOYCE
DAVIDSON AND MICK SMITH
Drawing Wittgenstein's
and
Irigaray's philosophies
into conversation
might help
resolve certain
misunderstandings
that have so
far
hampered
both the
reception
of
Irigaray's
work and the
development of feminist praxis
in
general.
A
Wittgensteinian
reading of Irigaray
can
furnish
an anti-essentialist
conception of
"woman" that re-
tains the theoretical and
political specificity feminism requires
while
dispelling charges
that
Irigaray's attempt
to delineate a
"feminine" language
is either
groundlessly
uto-
pian
or entails a
biological
essentialism.
At first
sight
it
may
seem
retrogressive
to read Luce
Irigaray's project through
the work of a
philosopher
like
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
who never addressed
any
of the substantive issues of fundamental
import
to feminism.
However,
de-
spite
the
philosophical
and
political
distance between
them,
this
conjunction
may prove
fruitful both for
understanding Irigaray's
work and for feminist
praxis
in
general.
Rather than
providing
a
point-by-point analysis
of
Irigaray's
work,
or
reading
her
entirely
within her own
terms,
we
hope
to
give
a "feel" for her
project
in
Wittgensteinian
terms, i.e.,
to
provide
a
Wittgensteinian analogy,
or
perhaps metonymy,
for her
project.
We have no illusions about
providing
a
more exact or
explicit reading
of
Irigaray.
This is not a work of
philosophical
exegesis
but a
(largely) sympathetic reading
that tries to communicate some-
thing
of her work and to clear
away
certain common
misunderstandings.
We
are
by
no means
claiming
that
Irigaray
is in
any
sense a
Wittgensteinian,
or
that what follows uncovers "the truth" behind her
project.
Rather our intent
is to
encourage imaginative leaps
between
philosophies
that
might
assist in
widening Irigaray's potential
audience and to further
appropriate Wittgenstein
Hypatia
vol.
14,
no. 2
(Spring 1999)

by Joyce
Davidson and Mick Smith
Joyce
for feminist
purposes
(see
Davidson
1994;
Green and
Curry
1995;
Nicholson
1994;
Scheman
1996; Stoljar 1995).
There remains a real
danger
that
any proposed re-ciphering
of
Irigaray's
work
in terms of a
philosophy
of
language might
flatten her multidimensional cri-
tique
into a two-dimensional
geometry,
one that deals
only
with words and
their
meanings.
This can
only
be avoided to the extent that
Wittgenstein's
later
philosophy
is
genuinely
holistic
and,
via his notions of
language-games
and forms of
life,
provides
for links to be made in all manner of
ways among
language
and the natural and cultural environments. For this
reason,
we be-
gin
with a detailed
exposition
of these
aspects
of
Wittgenstein's approach
and
their
potential
relevance to feminism.1
WITTGENSTEIN AND THE
QUESTION
OF "WOMAN"
In the
Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
asks us to consider the no-
tion of
games: "Consider,
for
example,
the
proceedings
that we call
'games.'
I
mean
board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games,
and so on. What
is common to them all?-Don't
say:
'There must be
something common,
or
they
would not be called
'games'-but
look and see whether there is
anything
common to all.-For if
you
look at them
you
will not see
something
common
to
all,
but
similarities,
relationships,
and a whole series of them at that"
(Witt-
genstein
1988, 66).
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations attempts
to disabuse us of a com-
mon
(mis)understanding
about the
relationship
between
language
and the
world,
namely
that the
meaning
of a word "is the
object
for which the word
stands"
(1988, 1).
We are inclined to think that a substantive
concept
(such
as
"game")
should serve as a
banner;
it indicates and marks those collected
under it with a
stamp
of
identity-as inextricably
linked
together by
an essen-
tial
property
or
properties
in common. At the same
time,
the
concept
acts as
a
rallying point
around which such commonalities can be
recognized.
The
concept
collates and classifies the
objects
it
represents-each according
to their
kind. Such has often been the
spoken
and
unspoken
role of "woman" in femi-
nist
politics-as
an
(en)sign delineating
the
specific
commonalities between
individual
women,
a
symbol
of an essential
unity that,
despite
its
strategic
necessity
for
feminism,
has come to be
regarded
as
problematic and/or pre-
sumptuous
in its
apparent
erasure of the
myriad
differences that constitute
women's lived
experience.
It is
precisely
this
tendency
to essentialize via the
tyranny
of the
concept
that the later
Wittgenstein
seeks to overcome. He
argues
that instead of as-
suming
a
speculative
and essential
commonality
between those
things
denoted
by
a
concept
we need to look to the
complexity
of the real world-to see
just
how
things
relate to one another. "To
repeat,
don't think but look!-look for
73
Hypatia
example
at
board-games,
with their multifarious
relationships.
Now
pass
to
card-games;
here
you may
find
correspondences
with the first
group,
but
many
common features
drop
out,
and others
appear....
Are
they
all 'amus-
ing'? Compare
chess with
noughts
and crosses. Or is there
always winning
and
losing,
or
competition
between
players?
Think of
patience" (Wittgenstein
1988, 66).
Rather than
positing any
essential features that all
games
have in
common,
Wittgenstein suggests
that we find a
"complicated
network of similarities over-
lapping
and
criss-crossing" (1988, 66).
Wittgenstein
refers to this
complex
and
extraordinarily
variable
relationship
as a
"family
resemblance." In
Ray
Monk's
words,
Wittgenstein
"seeks to
replace
the notion of essence with the
more flexible idea of
family
resemblance"
(Monk 1990, 338).
Just
as we can
often
identify
the members of a
family by
the
overlapping
of certain resem-
blances, eye color,
patterns
of
speech,
build and so
on,
so it is with all substan-
tive
concepts.
There is no one essential feature that all members of a
family
must have in common with all others to
recognize
their relatedness.
Precisely
which resemblances are deemed relevant
depends upon
the manner and con-
text in
which,
and the
purposes
for
which,
we
employ
the
concept.
The
precise
role of
"family
resemblance" can be
fully appreciated by
under-
standing
its links to two other
key
terms that are introduced in
Wittgenstein's
later
works,
those of
"language-games"
and "form
(or forms)
of life." These
concepts
serve to
problematize
certain
commonly
held views about the
way
language operates. Wittgenstein's
later
philosophy
seeks to avoid
oversimplified
and reductionist accounts of
language by drawing
out the ineludible
complex-
ity
of the
relationship
between the
concept
and the world. He
recognizes
the
import
of social
practices
in
language production
and the multifarious
ways
in
which
language
can and must be connected to these
practices
to
convey
mean-
ing, thereby illustrating
the co-constitution of a
concept's meaning
and refer-
ence
with/in
actual
patterns
of social circumstance.
The
concept
of a
"language-game"
links a
particular employment
of lan-
guage
with the "actions into which it is woven"
(Wittgenstein 1988, 7). Just
as there are innumerable activities in which we
employ language,
so there are
countless kinds of uses of
language,
and these do not
stay
the same.
They
are
not
"fixed,
given
once and for
all;
but new
types
of
language,
new
language-
games,
as we
may say,
come into existence and others become obsolete and
forgotten"
(1988, 23). Wittgenstein
lists a few of the
many possible language-
games, including "making up
a
story
. . .
play acting-
...
making
a
joke;
telling
it- . . .
translating
. . .
asking, thinking, cursing, greeting, praying"
(1988, 23).
What is
more,
the
meaning
of the words we
employ
will often
change
as we
put
them to different uses in different
language-games.
Witt-
genstein suggests
that to know the
meaning
of a word is not a matter of
being
able to
define it,
to fix its
meaning,
but of
knowing
how to use
it,
that
is,
to
have made the
appropriate
connections between
concept
and
language-game.
74
Joyce
It is
only possible
to demonstrate that we have understood a word's
meaning
by being
able to
apply
it. For
example,
consider what there
might
be in com-
mon between
"deep sorrow,
a
deep sound,
a
deep
well"
(Wittgenstein
1964,
137),
when to answer
"depth"
is
obviously tautological.
This connection between use and
meaning
is further elucidated in the Brown
Book,
where
Wittgenstein
asks
"[w]hat
is it that
bodily
strain and mental strain
have in common?"
(1964, 132).
He
suggests
two
possible
answers. The holder
of that essentialist notion of
linguistic meaning
that
Wittgenstein
criticizes
might say,
"I used the word 'strain' in both cases because there is a strain
present
in both"
(1964, 132).
But as
Wittgenstein
points
out,
the more we
pursue
this
linguistic
Platonism the less
convincing
this answer seems.
Just
what kind of
thing
is this strain?
Alternatively,
we
might say
that we use the
same word "because
they
have a certain
similarity" (1964, 134),
and this is
quite different,
for this
similarity
is
quite hard,
indeed often
impossible,
to fix
upon.
It
merely
indicates that we have followed a
particular path through
language's criss-crossing
network,
that
is,
that we are
making
our
analogy
for a
specific purpose.
To elaborate
upon Wittgenstein's examples, imagine
that our
comparison
of
bodily
and mental strain
emerged
out of a
dispute
about whether or not
academics could be said to be members of the
working
class. Here we
might
explicate
"strain" in terms that seek to make connections between
thinking
and
productive
activities,
the nature of
work, labor, effort,
etc.
Alternatively,
if the
comparison belonged
to a conversation that
sought
to illustrate a
psy-
chiatric model of mental
disorder,
"strain"
might
be
explicated
in terms of an
analogy
with mechanical loads and
stresses,
health and
injury-for example,
a strained
ligament.
In each
case,
the kinds of connections we should make
would
depend upon
the
language-game
we find ourselves in-its context and
purpose.
For these
reasons,
that the
proper
answer to
questions concerning
the nature of the
commonality
between
bodily
and men-
tal strain
ought
to be "'I don't know what
game you
are
playing'...
And it
depends upon
this
game
whether I should
say they
had
anything
in
common,
and what I should
say they
had in common"
(Wittgenstein 1964, 134).
Of course we
might
be
tempted
to ask: And how do we
recognize
which
language-game
we are
playing?
But it should come as no
surprise
that, given
its
philosophical purpose,
there can be no essential
definition
of the
language-
game
itself. One needs to understand the
concept "language-game" by seeing
its use in
Wittgenstein's
works as exhibited in the numerous
examples
to be
found in the
Philosophical Investigations (1988),
the Brown Book
(1964),
etc.
These
Wittgensteinian
notions do not
simply
undermine our misconceived
understanding
of the
relationship
between
language
and the world in terms of
essentialism,
they
also
specifically repudiate
the kind of
representational
con-
ception
of
language epitomized
in his own
early
work the Tractatus
Logico-
Philosophicus ([1922] 1990).
Therein he
argues
for an essential
isomorphism
75
Hypatia
between
analytic concepts
and the atomic facts
(combinations
of
objects)
which
compose
the world such that the
"proposition
is a
picture
of
reality"
and a
"description
of a fact"
(Wittgenstein 1990, 4.01).
While
everyday
lan-
guage presents
us with a blurred and
imprecise picture
of the world because it
clothes and
disguises
the
grammar
and
syntax
of
thought,
the form of a
philo-
sophically perfect(ed) language
would be the form of the
world-concepts
and facts would mirror the
logical
structure of each other. For
example,
the
early Wittgenstein might
have
suggested
that our confusion over the
multiple
meanings
of the word
"deep"
could have been clarified
by
"not
applying signs
in the same
way
which
signify
in different
ways"
and
by developing "[a] sym-
bolism ... which
obeys
the rules of
logical grammar-of logical syntax" ([1922]
1990, 3.325).
That is to
say,
a
perfect philosophical language
would use differ-
ent words in each case to
represent
different atomic facts.
However,
from
Wittgenstein's
later
point
of
view,
a
concept
cannot mirror
or
re-present
a fixed and
unchanging constituency.
The
relationship
between
language
and the world is not
isomorphic
such that the
concept always
refers
to a
specific
and
precisely
definable
category
of
things. Rather,
the
meaning
of
the
concept
and the manner in which this
meaning
could/should
be
expli-
cated
depends upon
the
linguistic
and
extra-linguistic
context of its
use,
that
is,
upon
the kind of
language-game
with/in
which we
engage.
That this
Wittgensteinian critique
of
representationalism
and essentialism
might
have a direct
bearing upon
the dilemma faced
by
feminist theorists who
are
required
to
acknowledge
both the
universality
of women's
experience
and
their
particularity
in terms of
race, class,
etc.
(Alcoff 1988;
Spelman
1988)
seems
obvious, though
it is discussed
surprisingly
little
(but
see Tibbetts
1988;
Haslanger
1993; Stoljar
1995).2 Linda Nicholson is almost alone in
explicitly
suggesting
a
Wittgensteinian strategy
that would utilize the notion of
"family
relationships [sic]
to counter this idea that feminist
politics requires
that woman
possess
some determinate
meaning" (Nicholson 1994, 100).3
The
apparent
requirement
that "woman" must
operate
to define a
specific constituency, plac-
ing
bounds
upon membership
of this
constituency by
dint of women's
posses-
sion of some essential feature or
features, originates
in the notion that for a
concept
to be useful it must refer to a
precise
and
formally
unified
category
of
things
in the world.
But,
as
Wittgenstein
is at
pains
to
point
out,
the lack of
any
essential feature does not
impede
our use of
any concept
like
"games"
or,
we
might
add, "woman,"
once we
recognize
its context.
Clearly
a
genuine
feminism needs also to
recognize
women's
diversity.
A feminist
philosophy
need not
(indeed
should
not) aspire
to
define
"woman" in exact
terms,
to
pin
down her differences to factor
X, Y,
or Z in order to use the
concept meaning-
fully.
It need not draw an exact
boundary
around
her; indeed,
this
strategy
might
be
counterproductive, channeling
feminist
energies
into
philosophical
blind
alleys.
76
Joyce
While
language-games
like those associated with the
quasi-scientific
ob-
jectivism
of
socio-biology
use "woman" as a
category
that
genetic predisposi-
tions
define,
feminist discourses cannot
present
a
priori
definitions
precisely
because feminism is an
unfolding praxis
that must allow women to elaborate
and constitute their own relevant identities. As
Wittgenstein
makes
explicit,
it is not
"always
an
advantage
to
replace
an indistinct
picture
with a
sharp
one.... Isn't the indistinct one often
exactly
what we need?"
(1988, 71).
Often we
might
need to draw an
imprecise conceptual boundary
"for a
special
purpose" (Wittgenstein
1988, 69).
The
project
of feminism
might
constitute
just
such a
special purpose.
If
so,
within feminist
language-games,
"woman" is
not a
symbol dependent upon
the
discovery
and excavation of an
underlying
identity,
but an indication of a variable and
emergent
collection of relations
among
women.
And,
as
Wittgenstein notes,
we extend the use of such a con-
cept
"as in
spinning
a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the
strength
of the
thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs
through
its whole
length,
but in the
overlapping
of
many
fibres"
(1988, 67).
It
is,
of
course,
as
Wittgenstein notes, always possible
to read
any
theoreti-
cal
position
in an essentialist manner
if you
insist on so
doing.
But as he
says,
"if
someone wished to
say:
'There is
something
common to all these construc-
tions'.... I should
reply:
'Now
you
are
only playing
with
words,
One
might
as
well
say: "Something
runs
through
the whole
thread-namely
the continuous
overlapping
of those fibres""'
(1988, 67).
WITTGENSTEIN AND THE STATUS OF PHILOSOPHY
If essentialism and
representationalism
constitute two of
Wittgenstein's
later
targets,
a third but more often overlooked
target
now
emerges-that
of
philo-
sophical analysis.
The
early Wittgenstein champions
a
conception
of
philoso-
phy
as "the
logical
clarification of
thoughts" ([1922] 1990, 4.112).
Without
this
conception, philosophy analyzes
the turmoil of
everyday language
and
seeks to
pare away
that which can be
regarded
as extraneous and
confusing,
to
retain the bare and fundamental essentials in order to
replace apparent
chaos
with its own
sparse purity,
its
crystalline logic.
But for the later
Wittgenstein,
this
conception
of
philosophy
entails two serious errors.
First,
it is a mistake to
believe that
analysis
lets us reach a more
fundamental meaning
and form of
language. Rather,
in
polishing
the
rough edges of(f)
everyday language
and in
replacing
it with the
icy clarity
of
logic,
we remove the source of the friction
that serves to articulate a
concept with/in
the world. "We have
got
onto
slip-
pery
ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense conditions are
ideal,
but
also, just
because of that we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so
we need friction. Back to the
rough ground!" (Wittgenstein 1988, 107).4
The
analyzed
sentence has lost
something
in its translation into a
language
77
Hypatia
of
logical purity.
"To
say, however,
that a sentence ...
(b)
is an
analysed
form
of...
(a) readily
seduces us into
thinking
that the former is the more funda-
mental
form;
that it alone shows what is meant
by
the other.... But can I not
say
that an
aspect
of the matter is lost on
you
in the latter case as well as the
former?"
(Wittgenstein
1988, 63).
In other
words,
the
analyzed
sentence is
not
just
a
simplified
version of its former
self;
it is
different,
and it has lost
something
in its translation into a
philosophical
context. If this
analyzed
form
is in a certain sense
ideal,
it is ideal
only
for the
language-game
it is found in-
that of
philosophical analysis.
And this
misunderstanding
about
analysis
re-
lates to a second error of
Wittgenstein's early conception
of
philosophy
as a
logical
clarification of
thoughts;
for,
if the
analyzed
sentence is not more fun-
damental,
but
merely different,
then
philosophy
cannot claim to be a master
discourse,
a second-order discourse that
analyzes
the use and misuse of con-
cepts
in other discourses.
Philosophical analysis
becomes one more discourse
amongst many,
and its results are therefore never neutral.
Rather,
the results
are
directly
related
to,
and
only acceptable
if one is
engaged
in,
a
particular
philosophical language-game.
So for the later
Wittgenstein, "philosophy may
in no
way
interfere with the actual use of
language;
it can in the end
only
describe it. For it cannot
give any
foundation either. It leaves
everything
as it
is"
(1988, 124).
The idea of
philosophy
as
therapy replaces
that of
philosophy
as a search for foundational
truths,
as a master
discipline. (Though
the
ques-
tion of whether
philosophy really
can leave
things
as
they
are is
problematic
because
therapy
also
changes things.)
FORM(S)
OF LIFE
We shall turn
shortly
to the relevance of
Wittgenstein's arguments
for un-
derstanding Irigaray's
feminist
project,
a
project
that both refuses to
define
"woman" and seeks to subvert
philosophy
as a master discourse. But to avoid
certain
misunderstandings,
we examine
Wittgenstein's
idea of a form
(or forms)
of life.5 The
phrase
"form
(or forms)
of life"
appears only
five times in the
Philosophical Investigations
and
only
two times in the rest of
Wittgenstein's pub-
lished
works,
but the
phrase
is far more
important
than the
frequency
of its
occurrence
might suggest.
To concentrate attention on the role of
language-games
in
determining
meaning
and reference can
appear
to be
idealist,
to overstate
language's
au-
tonomy
and influence.
Yet, Wittgenstein
is
always
concerned to
emphasize
the relevance of wider material and
non-linguistically
mediated contexts in
determining meaning.
The term
"form(s)
of life" is a
way
of
designating
the
embeddedness of
language-games
in their wider cultural and natural environ-
ment such that
"[t]o imagine
a
language
is to
imagine
a form of life"
(Witt-
genstein 1988, 23).6
78
Joyce
As we have
seen,
for the later
Wittgenstein, meaning
does not inhere within
a closed and autonomous
system
of
language
set
apart
from the world.
Rather,
language participates
in the
world,
it is a
part
and
parcel
of
specific practices
affecting
and affected
by
its wider material contexts. One must not mistake
Wittgenstein's
references to
form(s)
of life as an
attempt
to
ground
or anchor
language
in the sense of
setting up
a
permanent
and
unchanging
referent
against
which it can
operate.
Rather, Wittgenstein points
out that one can
only gauge
the
meaning
of a word when it is embedded within a
particular "given"
envi-
ronment.
Language only
works when it is in
place-a place
that
might
include
all kinds of cultural and natural
components.
For
example,
when someone
speaks
at a funeral oration of their
deep
sorrow,
we
only
understand this because we
can
place
it in relation to our own
experiences
and
expectations;
we connect it
to
gut
and
heartfelt feelings,
to the
pain
of
separation,
to the ache of
loneliness,
and to the tears that well
up
from within us.
Meaning
is not
conveyed by
mere
mental acrobatics with
language but,
in this
case,
is
placed
in a visceral con-
text and felt
bodily.
In this
sense,
Wittgenstein
does not
separate
"culture"
from "nature" and
give priority
to one over the
other;
both are inextricable
components
of the
"given"
environment within which we come to
compre-
hend each other.
Some of
Wittgenstein's commentators,
who
desperately keep digging, hop-
ing
to find a solid foundation to
underpin
a
philosophy
that is
explicitly
anti-
foundational,
have not
always
understood these
points.
A number of different
interpretations try
to
specify
and define an exact referent for "forms of
life,"
that
is,
to fix the
concept's meaning. J.EM.
Hunter
(1968),
for
example,
in-
terprets
the term as
designating
a shared
biological
basis for
language acquisi-
tion and use
amongst
humans. Hunter claims that
as
much when he remarks that a form of life
might
be conceived of as "some-
thing beyond being justified
or
unjustified;
as it were
something
animal"
(Witt-
genstein 1980b, 358-59).
But Hunter's
analysis goes against
the anti-founda-
tional thrust of
Wittgenstein's philosophy,
and
Wittgenstein's
comment has
to be understood in its context. He is
suggesting
that when someone claims to
be certain about
something,
this
certainty depends
not on
having
some access
to the truth of the matter but on
having
no
way
of
seriously questioning
or
coming
to doubt its
accuracy, given
one's circumstances. Belief in its
accuracy
is instinctual not because one's
biology
determines it-but because it comes
automatically-it
is second
nature-given
the
particular background
beliefs
and
practices
one is a
part
of.7
Lynne
Rudder Baker
provides
a much more
convincing
account that fits
well with
Wittgenstein's
aversion to foundationalist
explanations.
She claims
that
"meaning requires
a
community.
'Forms of life' is
Wittgenstein's way
of
designating
what it is about a
community
that makes
possible meaning" (Baker
1984, 288).
Baker
emphasizes Wittgenstein's
concern with human
practices,
79
Hypatia
"patterns
of
activity
and
response"
(1984, 277)
that
may
well be so obvious as
to
escape
notice,
but that are constitutive of human life. The
concept
of "form
of life" denotes the
unspecified
(and
frequently unspecifiable) background
that
operates
to make
language meaningful.
Baker writes that
"[i]t
is no more
prom-
ising
to
attempt
to describe what would constitute a form of life
per
se than to
attempt
to describe what would constitute a
background per
se"
(Baker 1984,
277).
It is not
possible
to
give identity
conditions for what constitutes a "form
of
life"-for
to do so would be counter to the whole
point of introducing
the
concept
in the
first
place.
To do so would be to essentialize that
concept
that seeks to
denote the inessentializable
backgrounds against
which
language-games
are
played
out.
"[F]orms
of life rest
finally
on no more than the fact that we
agree,
find ourselves
agreeing,
in the
ways
that we size
up
and
respond
to what we
encounter"
(Baker 1984, 278).
Our lives must be lived
against
a certain
background,
which will
shape
much of the
way
we
experience
the world.
(This
is
not, however,
to
say
that
this
background
and our
relationship
to it is in
any way fixed
or
unchanging.)
We can never
entirely
dissociate ourselves from this
"given" aspect
of our
lives,
never
step entirely
outside the
given
in order to criticize or
attempt
to
alter certain
aspects
of it. For
Wittgenstein, "[w]hat
has to be
accepted,
the
given,
is-so one could
say-forms
of life"
(Wittgenstein
1988, 226).
In this
way, Wittgenstein
links
language
and the
world,
and demonstrates that the
concept "language-game"
is "meant to
bring
into
prominence
the fact that
the
speaking
of
language
is
part
of an
activity,
or a form of life"
(1988, 23).
RE(AS)SEMBLING
"WOMAN"?
The basic
components
for a
Wittgensteinian reading
of
Irigaray
are in
place,
a
reading
which will
argue
that,
like
Wittgenstein,
she seeks
nothing
less than
to subvert the
predominant patterns
of
thinking,
to undermine
assumptions
about
ontology (essences), epistemology (representation),
and
philosophy
(as
a master
discourse).
A
Wittgensteinian reading might interpret Irigaray
as
arguing
for the existence of feminine "forms of
life,"
that there are and should
be
enough overlaps among
women to make a
difference-to
allow women to
produce
their own
spaces
and discourses
(language-games). Irigaray's writing
can be understood as an
attempt
to
develop
a
language-game
suitable for the
realization of this
project.
Feminist theorists
unhappy
with
Irigaray's
constant references to the fe-
male
body
often
say
that
Irigaray's
entire
project
is
deeply
flawed,
constructed
on a theoretical foundation informed
by
a
biologically
essentialist view of
women. While all feminisms
inevitably incorporate
their own
conception
of "woman"
(explicitly
or
implicitly),
most are
wary
of definitions that have
recourse to a
language
of
anatomy,
the
very language
used so
frequently
to
80
Joyce
ensure women's subordination.
Irigaray's frequent
references to the
body,
in
particular
the
labia,
the "two
lips"
that mark women's
difference,
are all too
easily interpreted
within the terms of a
pervasive,
restrictive debate on the
respective
influences of "nature" and "culture." For
example, Mary Poovey
states that
Irigaray
"authorises the return to
biology
and essentialism in her
creation of a
myth
of female desire and in
basing
the feminine
language
on
the
physical properties
of female
genitalia" (Poovey 1988, 55).
In a similar
vein,
Barbara Christian
argues
that
"[b]y
positing
the
body
as the source of
everything,
French feminists return to the old
myth
that
biology
determines
everything
and
ignore
the fact that
gender
is a social rather than a
biological
construct"
(Christian 1989,
233. Also in Chanter
1995, 11).
According
to Diana
Fuss, "[e]ssentialism
is
classically
defined as a belief
in true essence-that which is most
irreducible, unchanging
and therefore
constitutive of a
given person
or
thing....
In feminist
theory
essentialism
... can be located in
appeals
to a
pure
or
originary femininity,
a female es-
sence,
outside the boundaries of the social and
thereby
untainted
(though
perhaps repressed) by
a
patriarchal
order"
(Fuss 1990, 2).
Given Fuss's de-
scription
of
essentialism,
it is clear
why Irigaray might
be
thought deserving
of the label. For
example, Irigaray
states that women need to
develop
their
own
language
from their
experience
as embodied female
subjects.
"If we don't
invent
language,
if we don't find our
body's language,
it will have too few
gestures
to
accompany
our
story" (Irigaray 1985b, 214). Or,
as
Irigaray states,
"[y]our/my body
doesn't
acquire
its sex
through
an
operation. Through
the
action of some
power,
function or
organ.
Without
any
intervention or
special
manipulation, you
are a woman
already" (1985b, 211)
and
"by
our
lips
we are
women"
(1985b, 209-10).
Plenty
of textual evidence
supports
the
suggestion
that
Irigaray
does not
hold a
biologically
essentialist view of
femininity; indeed,
she criticizes
Freud,
amongst others,
for this
very
fault: "Another
'symptom'
of the fact that Freud's
discourse
belongs
to an
unanalyzed
tradition lies in his
tendency
to fall back
upon anatomy
as an irrefutable criterion of truth"
(Irigaray 1985b, 71). Iriga-
ray
writes that in Freud's
discourse,
women "are
deprived
of the worth of
their sex. The
important thing,
of
course,
is that no-one should know who
has
deprived them,
or
why,
and that 'nature' be held accountable"
(1985b,
71). However,
passages
that seem
explicitly
essentialist
compound
this evi-
dence.
Thus,
for
example, Irigaray
states that
"[w]ithout doubt,
the most
ap-
propriate
content for the universal is sexual difference. Indeed this content is
both real and universal. Sexual difference is an immediate natural
given
and it is
a real and irreducible
component
of the universal. The whole of humankind
is
composed
of women and men and
nothing
else. The
problem
of race
is,
in
fact,
a
secondary problem
... the same
goes
for other cultural diversities-
religious,
economic and
political
ones"
(Irigaray 1996, 47;
italics
added).
81
Hypatia
The
problem
for feminists
sympathetic
to
Irigaray
has been how to recon-
cile this
apparently
blatant essentialism with the
philosophical sophistication
of her
project
as a whole. Fuss tries to solve this dilemma
by regarding Irigaray
as
using
an essentialist
language
of
anatomy
to "make
strategic forays
into the
territory
of essentialism"
(Fuss 1990, 58),
forays
that are intended not to "im-
prison
women within their
bodies,"
but to "save women from
enculturating
definitions
by
men"
(1990, 61).
Fuss
argues
that the benefit
of"[a]n
essential-
ist definition of 'woman' is that it
implies
that there will
always
be some
part
of'woman' which resists masculine
imprinting
and socialisation"
(1990, 61),
that
is,
an
originary
source for feminist
politics.
Fuss also
argues that,
while
Irigaray
is not committed to
any particular
essentialist
definition,
she is
trying
to "secure a woman's access to an essence of her
own,
without
actually pre-
scribing
what that essence
might
be"
(1990,72).
This
interpretation
makes
sense,
insofar as it is true that for
Irigaray,
"wom-
an" does not
yet exist; language currently only
allows for women to be lesser
men,
and "woman" has not
yet
come into
being.
But to
argue
that
Irigaray
aims to "secure a woman's access to an essence of her own"
implies
that
Iriga-
ray
could somehow
potentially
hold a foundationalist view of
femininity.
This
clearly
associates Fuss with Toril Moi's views-that "to define woman is nec-
essarily
to essentialize her"
(Moi 1985, 139)-and
with the idea that
any
dis-
cussion of the
body
is essentialist.
An alternative
interpretation
denies that
Irigaray
is essentialist and
sug-
gests
that her references are not to real women's bodies but are
metaphorical.
In
agreement
with
Jane Gallop, Margaret
Whitford
suggests
as much when she
states that
"[i]t
must not be assumed here that the
body
here is the
empirical
body; symbolism (or representation)
is
selective;
and it is clear from
Speculum
that
Irigaray
is
talking
about an 'ideal
morphology,'
in which the
relationship
to
anatomy
is
metaphorical,
somewhat
schematic,
a
[in Jane
Gallop's words] 'sym-
bolic
interpretation
of...
anatomy"'
(Whitford 1991, 58;
italics
added).
Gallop argues
that
Irigaray
is not
representing
women's real
anatomy
but
engaging
in a creative
process,
a
poiesis
that nonetheless has what she calls
"reality
effects." "And if we would create a new
body
... but a different
body,
our best
hope,
our most effective
politics
would be a
practice
. .. which we
might
call a
poetics
of the
body" (Gallop 1988, 99).
Gallop argues
that
"per-
haps
the most
far-reaching
effect of her unrealistic stand on the labia is to
force
the reader to reconsider the status of anatomical
referentiality" (Gallop
1988,
98;
italics
added).
In other
words, Irigaray employs
anatomical
language spe-
cifically
to
bring
into
question representational
and essentialist
philosophies.
While this
interpretation
is
perhaps
closer to the
spirit
of
Irigaray's
enter-
prise,
it contrasts
sharply
with her
explicit
claims to be
speaking
of real ana-
tomical differences. The essentialist
interpretation
sees
Irigaray
as
writing
an
account
(probably
false)
of the
factual
nature of women's
bodies;
Whitford
and
Gallop suggest
with their references to
metaphor
and
symbolism
that Iri-
82
Joyce
garay
is
simply writing
a
fictional
ideal-a
story
to unite women. Like Whitford
and
Gallop,
we
reject
the idea that we can have access to a
pre-discursive
or
non-discursive
"empirical" body. However,
in
rejecting
a
perceived empiricist
bias,
both authors seem at times almost to reduce
Irigaray's
work to the status
of a
parable
rather than an
expression
of real embodied
experiences.
Perhaps
a
of
Irigaray's
works
might help
solve this
apparent interpretative
conflict. Does
Irigaray
write to
represent
women's real
anatomy
and hence fall into a
biological essentialism,
or is she
engaged
in
a
symbolic
and
poetic enterprise,
a
fantasy powerful enough
to have real ef-
fects? A
Wittgensteinian reading might provide
a third
alterative,
one that
retains the
reality
of
Irigaray's
anatomical references without
falling
into es-
sentialism.
From the
Wittgensteinian perspective,
how
Irigaray employs language
must
be
examined,
that
is,
we must ask what
language-game(s)
she is
engaged with/
in.
Irigaray
is interested in
uncovering
the causes of women's
oppression
and
in
trying
to
change
the
way
that women are
conceptualized
so that
they
can
be valued as sexed
subjects
in their own
right
and not as man's
counterpart,
or
as lesser men. She writes that "the
recognition
of a
'specific'
female
sexuality
would
challenge
the
monopoly
on value held
by
the masculine sex alone"
(Irigaray 1985b, 73).
For
Irigaray,
the current
symbolic order,
including
lan-
guage itself,
is the
prime
site of this
omission/oppression.
She
highlights
the
embeddedness of male definitions of female
sexuality
in
language. Language
encodes the male
supremacy
that male and female
subjects internalize,
and
thus
perpetuate.
As Cora
Kaplan writes,
"our individual
speech
does
not,
there-
fore,
free us in
any simple way
from the
ideological
constraints of our culture
since it is
through
the forms that articulate these constraints that we
speak
in
the first
place" (Kaplan 1990, 59). Irigaray
tries to
escape
from this 'Catch-
22.' To remain silent is to
perpetuate
the existence of the masculine
symbolic
order
by default;
to
speak
is
simply
to
speak
within that
symbolic
order. Even
women's
identity
is
subject
to the
very language system
that denies their
subjecthood.
The current
symbolic
order does not allow for
difference,
and we
must,
argues Irigaray,
work to create the
space
for a different
language
to
emerge.
We must use
language
to "cast
phallocentrism, phallocratism,
loose from its
moorings
in order to return the masculine to its own
language, leaving open
the
possibility
of a different
language.
Which means that the masculine would
no
longer
be
'everything.'
That it could no
longer,
all
by itself, define,
cir-
cumvent, circumscribe,
the
properties
of
any thing
and
everything" (Irigaray
1985b, 80).
Central to
Irigaray's
thesis is her belief that women do
not,
indeed could
not,
have
equal
access to
language
in its
present
form. She
writes,
"I am a
woman. I am a
being
sexualised as feminine. I am sexualised female. The mo-
tivation of
my
work lies in the
impossibility
of
articulating
such a
statement;
in the fact that its utterance is in some
way senseless,
inappropriate,
indecent.
83
Hypatia
Either because woman is never the attribute of the verb to be nor sexualised
female
a
quality
of
being,
or because am a woman is not
predicated
of
I,
or
because I am sexualised excludes the feminine
gender" (Irigaray
1985b, 148).
Women's voices are not
heard; they
cannot
speak
as sexed
subjects
or be
represented
as such in the
predominant symbolic
order. Within the masculine
syntax,
within our current order of
discourse,
woman is "most often hidden as
woman and absent in the
capacity
of
subject" (Irigaray 1985b, 132).
Mascu-
line discourse is
gender
blind and
incapable
of
recognizing
women as different
self-determining subjects.
For this
reason,
women should not enter into a "dis-
course whose
systematicity
is based on her reduction into sameness"
(Irigaray
1985b, 132). Irigaray emphasizes
the need for a different
syntax
of discourse
and,
importantly,
of
politics
that
expresses
feminine
sexuality
and allows those
previously
"muted" to
speak.
One can
interpret Irigaray's project
as an
attempt
to
develop
a
specifically
feminine
language-game-a
discourse that
might give
voice to women's
expe-
riences outside of the current masculine
symbolic
order.
Irigaray argues
that
the main
problem
for women has been the lack
of
a
language of
their own or at
least the
impossibility
of
speaking
of women's
experience
within the
hege-
mony
of masculine
linguistic
structures. For
her,
at
present,
women both exist
in and
yet
are excluded
from
a male dominated
society
and
language.
Rather
than
attempting
to build
upon already existing language-games,
she seeks
through
her
writings
to create a new and
specifically
feminine
linguistic space.
Women "need
language,
some
language....
The
language system...
takes
from women and excludes them from the threshold of
living
in the world.
Bars women from the to-and-fro of
words,
from the traversal of words that
would allow them both to
get
out of and return to their own homes"
(Irigaray
1993a, 107).
In this
specific
sense,
women
might
need
"[t]o
'take off' from
their
bodies,
give
themselves a
territory,
an environment .. "
(1993a, 107).
In other
words,
women's
anatomy might
be understood as a real
compo-
nent of the
patterns,
context,
and environment that
might give
rise to a femi-
nine
language-game.
So,
while
anatomy
is not an essential referent to which
language
must be
fixed,
it is a valid and
pertinent
feature of a feminine form of
life.
Obviously
it would not be useful to talk about a feminine "form of life"
if such talk entailed the
imposition
of false unities. As far as
possible,
a femi-
nist
approach
must allow for
recognition
of the
diversity
and
complexity
of
individual women's lives and not result in the
homogenization
of women as
a
group by implying
that all women the world over can be said to have some
specifiable property
in common. This is
precisely why Wittgenstein's
later
phil-
osophy
is useful
here, despite
the
apparent irony
of
understanding
the femi-
nine in terms of a
family
resemblance, given Irigaray's
identification of the
family
as the
primary
source of
oppression
(see
Frederick Tibbetts
1988).
Witt-
genstein
shows us that we do not need to
employ
either an essentialist ontol-
84
Joyce
ogy
or a
representational conception
of
language
to use the
language
of ana-
tomy
for a
special purpose, namely
to subvert or
escape,
insofar as is
possible,
from the masculine
symbolic
order. The "labia"
gain
their
specific meaning
through
their role in
Irigaray's language-game.
This does not mean that their
meaning
has no reference to the real
body-quite
the
contrary.
The real
body
is
part
of the
context,
part
of the form of
life,
which is the
given
for this
feminist
language-game.
However,
we cannot
simply
reduce the
meaning
of
the
body
in
Irigaray's
texts to the
meaning
ascribed in medical or
biological
texts. This kind of naturalistic reduction is akin to the
analytic
reductionism
that
Wittgenstein repudiates.
For,
these medical or
biological
discourses are
not more fundamental or neutral discourses that can
represent
the
body
in its
naked
purity,
but different
language-games
that
incorporate
the
body
into their
own
speculative
masculine
grammar
and
syntax.
The
originality
of
Irigaray's response
to this
perennial
issue risks
being
lost
in discourses that see
any
allusion to women's bodies as
necessarily
determinis-
tic and
reactionary.
Whitford and
Gallop
are
right
to
object
to those who in-
sist on
regarding Irigaray's
work as
essentialist,
as
attempting
to
define
women
through
their
anatomy. But,
for
Wittgenstein,
definition is
only
one kind of
language-game,
and
Irigaray explicitly
denies that this is the kind of
"game"
she is
playing.
She has no intention of
creating
what she calls "a
theory
of
woman"
(Irigaray
1985b, 159).
Her aim is "to secure a
place
for the feminine
within sexual difference"
(1985b,
159).8 She resists
making any
moves in the
direction of
defining "woman," providing any
kind of
theory
that would es-
sentialize her. She refers to the
theory
of woman as a "market
place"
in which
she has
nothing
to
say (Irigaray 1985b, 158).
In Whitford's words
"Irigaray
does not intend to tell us what 'woman' is: this is
something
which women
still have to create and invent
collectively" (Whitford 1991, 9-10).
This cre-
ative
process
does not entail the
production
of a feminine
essence,
that
is,
a
definition to
fix
women in some
quasi-permanent
state.
Rather,
Irigaray
ar-
gues
that women need a
space,
a
territory
from which this
identity might
take
off
away
from the
hegemony
of masculine discourses.
Such a
of
Irigaray
entails a
departure
from Whit-
ford and
Gallop
insofar as
they suggest
that
Irigaray's
use of
language
is meta-
phorical. Irigaray attempts
to create a discursive
space
where women's bodies
are
recognized
as a constitutive
part
of their social
experience,
that
is,
as a
part
of
a
form of life.
This is not to
emphasize
the
symbolic
realm at the
expense of
the material realm but rather to use novel discursive
strategies
that both arise
from and inform the
position
of women as sexed
subjects.
She wants to re-
inscribe the
body with/in
a feminist
philosophical discourse,
not as a deter-
minate constraint on women's voices but as a site of
alterity
and
transgression.
Perhaps
this allows us to make sense of
Irigaray's explicit
claim that the
body
is both "real and universal"-it is an "immediate and natural
given"
in
85
Hypatia
just
the sense that for
Wittgenstein
"what has to be
accepted,
the
given
is-so
one could
say-forms
of life"
(Wittgenstein 1988, 226).
For
Irigaray,
the rela-
tionship
between the
body
and
language
is not
fixed
or
precise,
nor is it meant
to be. The
philosophical
and rhetorical
strength
of her discourse lies in articu-
lating
the
imprecision
and
mutability of
this
relationship.
This
"vagueness"
allows
for a
variety
of connections to be made at different levels and for a
special
purpose. Irigaray
utilizes
anatomy
with what one
might
call
strategic impreci-
sion,
without the intent of
defining
women-because for a feminist
project
this "indistinct
[picture]
is
exactly
what we need"
(Wittgenstein
1988, 71).
In this
matter, Irigaray's
own
intentions,
her own wider
philosophical
out-
look,
cannot be
thought
irrelevant. She
clearly
does not see the world in terms
of its
being composed
of
objects,
or of
beings
with
rigid
boundaries or fixed
and
impermeable
natures. For
example,
she
states, "[for me, nothing
is ever
finite. What does not
pass through skin,
between our
skins, mingles
in our
bodies' fluids. Ours. Or at least mine. And as mine are continuous with
yours,
there is no fixed
boundary
to
impose
a definite
separation. Except
from
you.
Except by you.
When
you say:
I
am,
or I exist. Or:
you
are this.
Fencing
in our
natures, turning
our bodies into
private properties
or
ready-made
homes. With
doors or
windows,
open
or closed"
(Irigaray
1992, 16). Irigaray
does not in-
tend to
impose
"fixed" identities on women. She
spins
a thread of
overlapping
similarities-anatomical,
psychoanalytic,
social,
etc.-to extend the
concept
of the "feminine" on women's terms.
Look at the context of
Irigaray's apparently
essentialist claims to see how
this
interpretation
holds. She
speaks
of the need to
"interpret
and constitute
...
[women's] history spiritually
in order to
open up
another era in our cul-
ture"
(1996, 47)
an era that
"respects
differences and
particularly
the differ-
ences inscribed in nature and
subjectivity
themselves-sexual difference"
(1996,
47).
"Women and men will have to be
granted
real
identity,
a natural
and
spiritual
one,
and not hobble
along,
one foot in
pure
nature
(reproduc-
tion),
the other in an abstract culture"
(1996, 48).
In other
words, Irigaray
specifically rejects
the
nature/culture
and
sex/gender dichotomy.
The terms
"sex" and
"gender"
have a
place
and a
meaning
in discourses that
argue
over
defining
women,
but have no
place
in a
language-game
that seeks to
re(as)-
semble women of and for themselves.9
Thus,
from this
Wittgensteinian perspective, Irigaray's
claims about the
reality
of feminine
anatomy
do not seek to reduce
gender
to sex or to essentialize
the feminine-rather her claims seek to reclaim the female
body
as a vital
living aspect
of
creating
a feminine
language. Irigaray
is not
trying
to
ground
the
concept
"woman"
using biology
as a universal or essential referent outside
of or
apart
from
language.
She is
trying
to re-articulate
(in
both the senses of
re-connecting
and
speaking)
some of the
many possibilities opened up by
in-
corporating
discourses on the female
body
into an "ethics of sexual difference."
For this
purpose,
she utilizes an anatomical
language.
86
Joyce
IRIGARAY AND FEMINIST LANGUAGE-GAMES
Two interlinked
questions
surface when one
speaks
of
Irigaray
as
seeking
to
develop
a feminist
language-game
associated with a feminine form of life. Both
questions
to some extent
hinge
on whether
Irigaray
is
trying
to invent a lan-
guage-game. First,
do women
employ
different
language-games
than men?
And,
if
not,
does it still make sense to
speak
of women as
comprising
a feminine
form of life?
Second,
if women don't
already
have
language-games
of their
own,
can
Irigaray
invent one
through
her
writings?
It
may prove
easier to tackle the latter
question
first.
Wittgenstein argues
that
language
must have a social context to
operate
as a vehicle for
carrying
meaning.
For
him,
both
knowledge
and
meaning
are
socially
constituted,
and
a radical
linguistic solipsism
is
impossible.10
That
meaning
is tied to social
context
suggests
that an individual's
scope
for
inventing language,
or for as-
cribing
novel
"meanings"
to
already existing words,
seems
severely
limited.
Yet,
some critics have
regarded Irigaray
as
rendering
herself immune to cri-
ticism
by claiming
that her references to
anatomy
should be understood as
having
a different
meaning
from the anatomical references of
biology
or med-
icine. It is
just
this kind of
thought
that leads Deborah Cameron to
place
Irigaray
in a
category
of "feminist
Humpty Dumpties"
who
hold,
as Lewis Car-
roll's
Humpty Dumpty
did,
that "when I use a word it means what I choose it
to
mean,
neither more nor less"
(Cameron 1990, 12).
Cameron's main criticism is that
Irigaray's project
is
"entirely utopian:
it
stirs the
imagination
but has little concrete
payoff,
because it tends to mis-
conceive the nature of
language" (Cameron 1990,
1
1).
She
writes, "[o]f
course
conventions of
style
and
usage change" (1990, 11),
but there exists "the
po-
tential for
'reinventing language'
in the literal sense some writers seem to
intend this is
negligible" (1990, 11).
She
goes
on to
say
that
"Irigaray's
vision
of a
totally
different
language
outside the
grammatical
structures we
know,
cannot be a
description
of an actual
possibility
...
language
is
irreducibly
a
social
practice, grounded
in
history.
Mere individual acts of will do not
change
it,
nor can it be 'reinvented' from scratch"
(Cameron 1990, 11).
However,
Cameron misunderstands the nature of
Irigaray's project.
Of course
the
linguistic sphere
has a
history
and forms an
integral part
of our
present
patterns
of
thought. Irigaray,
as a
linguist,
is
certainly
aware of the difficulties
involved with intervention in
linguistic practice
and never claims
that,
as
Cameron
puts
it,
"mere individual acts of will" could
change language,
or that
language
could be "reinvented from scratch." What
Irigaray
describes is a
large-
scale communal
project;
she talks about
altering
the
grammar
of
culture;
she
thinks women should come
together,
unite
among
themselves in such a
way
that would facilitate the
development
of a new culture and therefore a new
language.
She does not see the
development
of the two as
being separate
or
separable."
"Differences between men's and women's discourses are thus the
87
Hypatia
effects of
language
and
society, society
and
language.
You can't
change
one
without
changing
the other. Yet while it's
impossible
to
radically separate
one
from the other... we must not
wait,
passively,
for
language
to
progress" (Irigaray
1993b, 32).
The
development
of this "other"
syntax
is not
something
that
Irigaray
thinks
could
happen
in a
single
stroke;
it is a matter of
language
and culture
evolving
to a state where the difference between the sexes can be
recognized.
At the
moment,
Irigaray
claims,
in texts written
by women,
"another
writing
is be-
ginning
to assert
itself,
even if it is still often
repressed by
the dominant dis-
course"
(1985b, 134).
She writes that she
attempts
to
put
this
syntax
into
play
in her
writing,
but admits that "I could
not,
I cannot install
myself just
like
that, serenely
and
directly,
in that other
syntactic functioning-and
I do not
see how
any
woman could"
(1985b, 135).
Languages
evolve
constantly,
and different
language-games
can and do de-
velop
in
conjunction
with different forms of life. We
can,
despite
Cameron's
objections,
also
envisage attempts
to create wholesale new
languages-for
ex-
ample, Esperanto-though
the failure of these to
gain widespread acceptance
may
well be because of their lack of intimate associations with
particular
forms
of life.
(In Culture and Value
[1980, 84], Wittgenstein
berates
Esperanto
for its
coldness.)
We can
alter,
or even invent
language,
and this is
especially appar-
ent where
language
is used
poetically
(as
Irigaray
can be seen to
do).
Despite
his
objections
to
Esperanto, Wittgenstein recognizes
that
linguistic
invention
can be
liberating. Thus,
in
speaking
of
Shakespeare, Wittgenstein states,
"I do
not believe that
Shakespeare
can be set
alongside any
other
poet.
Was he
perhaps
a creator
of language
rather than a
poet?" (1980a, 49).
And
perhaps
without
diminishing Shakespeare's
stature or
overemphasizing Irigaray's
ori-
ginality,
one
might transpose Wittgenstein's
comments on
Shakespeare:
"It
may
be that the essential
thing
with
Shakespeare
is his ease and his
authority
and that
you just
have to
accept
him as he is if
you
are
going
to be able to ad-
mire him
properly,
in the
way you accept
nature,
a
piece
of
scenery
for ex-
ample, just
as it is. If I am
right
about
this,
that would mean that the
style
of
his whole
work,
I mean all of his works taken
together,
is the essential
thing
and what
provides
his
justification. My
failure to understand him could then
be
explained by my inability
to read him
easily?" (Wittgenstein 1980a, 49).
One could also
say
that the
style
of
Irigaray's
works taken
together might pro-
vide a
justification
for
reading
her,
so
far
as is
possible,
within her own terms.
We have
already acknowledged Irigaray's
awareness that she cannot work
entirely
outside the boundaries of the
phallocratic
structures of
language.
She
writes,
"I am
obliged, compelled,
to
go
back to the most
commonly spoken
form of discourse. I am
trying
to circumvent this
discourse, trying
to show that
it
may
have an irreducible exterior. But in order to do
so,
it is true that I have
to
begin by using
standard
language,
the dominant
language" (Irigaray
1985b,
88
Joyce
144).
And
again,
"one cannot
simply leap
outside that
[phallocratic]
discourse"
(1985b, 122).
By way
of
responding
to this
difficulty,
she writes that she will
attempt
to situate herself "at its borders and to move
continuously
from the
inside to the outside"
(1985b, 122).
The
point
is
emphasized again
when she
states that
"[t]here
is no
simple manageable way
to
leap
to the outside of
phallogocentrism,
nor
any possible way
to situate
oneself there,
that would result
from
the
simple fact of being
a woman"
(1985b, 162).
We
cannot,
in her
view,
simply
abandon the
present structures;
what we must do is work to
disrupt
the
dominant
system.12
Irigaray attempts
to describe the social circumstances and conditions in
which women could
speak,
in which there could be a feminine
politics, "[t]he
first
being
an end to silence
concerning
the
exploitation experienced by
wom-
en-the
systematic
refusal to
'keep quiet' practiced by
the liberation move-
ments"
(1985b, 128).
She
emphasizes
the need for women to be
among
them-
selves,
to re-examine the
ways
in which
relationships among
women have
been
conceptualized,
in
particular,
the
mother/daughter relationship,
which
is
especially
difficult to articulate. This is one
area, Irigaray writes,
"where the
need for another
'syntax',
another
'grammar'
of culture is crucial"
(1985b,
143).
She writes about the need for "a maternal
genealogy,"
a
way
of
concep-
tualizing
the
relationships among
women as
subjects,
not as
objects, which,
as
we have
seen,
is
currently
the
only possible conceptualization, owing
to the
structure of the
symbolic
order.
Understood in this
way, Irigaray's
thesis does not contradict the later Witt-
genstein's theory
of
language. Language
is conceived as
developing along
with
the
form(s)
of life with which it is
intimately
associated.
Irigaray
is far from
proposing
(as
Cameron
suggests)
the invention of a
language entirely
divorced
from its social context.
Irigaray highlights
the need for a feminist
praxis,
for
women to
join together among themselves,
to
begin
to
escape
from "the
spaces,
roles,
and
gestures
that
they
have been
assigned
and
taught by
the
society
of
men.... In order to discover a form of 'social existence' other than the one
that has
always
been
imposed upon
them"
(Irigaray 1985b, 164).
What
Irigaray
advocates is a move toward "social
existence,"
a move
away
from
private
ex-
istence, away
from the
private sphere,
so that a feminist
language-game
can
have the chance to
develop.
If
Irigaray
is not
attempting
to invent a
language "by herself,"
we can ad-
dress the
question
of whether or not feminine
language-games already
exist.
Irigaray
is
ambiguous
about this
question.
Sometimes she
suggests
that all lan-
guage
is
masculine,
sometimes that women have a
special way
of communi-
cating.
Some
researchers,
for
example, Jennifer Coates,
have claimed that it is
possible
to defend "a
socio-linguistic
account of the co-variation of
language
and
gender" (Coates 1993, 3)
and
suggest
that the
language
of women and
men does differ.
Quoting
evidence from
quantitative
and
qualitative
studies
89
Hypatia
in
developmental psychology, anthropology,
etc.,
Coates
suggests
that "women's
conversational
style
is based on
solidarity,
whilst men's is based on
power,
a
difference
arising directly
from women's and men's
membership
of a
patriar-
chal
society" (Coates 1993, 203).
Whether or not Coates is
right,
women's lack of a
fully
articulated lan-
guage
would not
necessarily
be evidence
against
their
sharing
a form of life
that
might
harbor the
possibility
of such a
language coming
into existence.
Language
is
only
one
element, although perhaps
(as
Irigaray
would be the first
to
admit)
the most
important aspect
of a form of life.
Agreeing
with
Wittgen-
stein that "to
imagine
a
language
means to
imagine
a form of life"
(Wittgen-
stein
1988, 19)
does not mean that to
imagine
a form of life we have to
imag-
ine a
language. Although
a form of life is the
background
that makes
language
meaningful,
not all forms of life will find
expression
in
language.
For
example,
some forms of life are not
capable
of
linguistic expression,
and even if
they
were,
their forms of life would be so different from ours that we
might
find no
continuities to allow us to
give meaning
to
any
words
they might
utter. Witt-
genstein says
"if a lion could
talk,
we would not understand him"
(1988, 233).
Other forms of life
might
find their
attempts
to
express
themselves
through
language suppressed.
On the
interpretation
offered
here,
Irigaray's
whole
project
is
precisely
to furnish a
language
for a form of life that has been denied one-
a
group
that has
always struggled
in the
impossible
task of
articulating
its ex-
perience
in someone else's words.
Shirley
Ardener's
conception
of women as
constituting
a "muted
group"
within
society might
assist our
Wittgensteinian interpretation.
Ardener ar-
gues
that,
insofar as women constitute a dominated
group, they
are
likely
to
be in
possession
of a different world view
regardless
of whether differences
between the sexes are "innate" or
"socially perceived"
(see
Ardener
1975).
Additionally,
a "muted
group"
like women finds that it must "transform its
own unconscious
perceptions
into such conscious ideas as will accord with
those
generated by
the dominant
group"
(Ardener 1975, xiv).'3
In this
way,
the dominated
group
is constrained
necessarily by
the
language
and
concepts
the dominant
group
furnishes,
and
any expression
of difference is
suppressed.
Irigaray,
too, argues
that
society
is structured to
privilege
the masculine and
that we must
challenge existing linguistic
structures
by developing
an alterna-
tive idiom
capable
of
expressing
the
thoughts
of those who have been "muted."
When
Irigaray says
it is not
possible
to
speak
(as)
woman she
suggests
that
"woman"
has,
until
now, simply
been defined
negatively
in relation to the
masculine
paradigm.
Women have not had the
opportunity
to determine their
femininity among
themselves.
While Ardener's idea is
useful,
it is
wrong
to
regard Irigaray
as
arguing
that
the feminine is
entirely submerged
in the masculine
symbolic
order and rec-
ognizable
in terms of a "lack" of
language.
We can
identify
sexual differences
90
Joyce
that find
expression,
sometimes in
non-linguistic ways. Irigaray provides
evi-
dence to
support
these claims of
linguistic
differences
resulting
from the ex-
periences
of women's
lives,
for
example,
in her
early
(and
as
yet
untranslated)
work on senile dementia. Here she claims
that, (in
Whitford's
words),
"there
were
significant
differences between the
impairments
of women's
speech
and
those in men's
speech"
(Whitford 1991, 39).
Her work on
schizophrenia
also
suggests
that women tend to
express
their
symptoms bodily
rather than lin-
guistically.14
"Thus,
female
schizophrenics
do not work out their own
idiosyn-
cratic codes in the same
way
as male
schizophrenics.
Women are concerned
with a
corporeal geography
whereas men establish new
linguistic
territories"
(Irigaray
1993c,
174).
(See
also
Irigaray's
comments on the
linguistic expres-
sion of feminine
subjectivity
in
Gary
Olson and Elizabeth Hirsh
[1995,
152-
55]).
That the
body
is the site of
expression
for this difference is
precisely why
Irigaray
sees it as a suitable
place
from which to take
off
into the flow of lan-
guage.
Irigaray
claims that "a
long history
has
put
all women in the same
sexual,
social and cultural condition. Whatever
inequalities may
exist
among women,
they
all
undergo,
even without
clearly realizing it,
the same
oppression,
the
same
exploitation
of their
body,
the same denial of their desire. That is
why
it
is
very important
for women to be able to
join together,
and to
join together
among
themselves"
(Irigaray
1985b, 164).
This "cultural
condition,"
which as
Irigaray
insists is
always already intimately
and
inextricably
intertwined with
women's embodied
experiences,
"the
exploitation
of the
body,"
the "denial of
desire," etc.,
is the location of those differences that
might
constitute a femi-
nine form of life. As
such,
it is the basis for a feminist
praxis
with its own
language-game,
a
praxis
aimed at
transforming
the
"given" phallocratic
world.
Irigaray
offers her
analysis
and
writings
as an
example
of one such
liberatory
language-game,
one such
way
of
re-constituting
a feminine form of life that
encompasses
both culture and the
body.
But this does not foreclose the
possi-
bility
of other discourses and social
practices seeking
similar ends. She does
not seek to
impose
an answer to the
question
of
"woman,"
but calls for social-
ity among
women in order to
collectively develop
alternative
practices
and
language-games
which can
give
a true
expression
to this
question.
A
Wittgensteinian re-ciphering
of
Irigaray hopefully
serves to illuminate
her
strategies
and to remove certain
persistent misunderstandings. Irigaray
is
neither a
biological
essentialist nor a feminist
"Humpty Dumpty,"
neither a
naive materialist nor an idealist. She
presents
a
complex
and coherent strat-
egy
for
re-conceptualizing
women's current relation to
language,
and a strat-
egy
for
escaping
some of the
language
constraints that
currently impose
on
women's
autopoietic activities,
that
is,
their collective
ability
to create a
sym-
bolic order
(and
consequently
feminine
identities)
not
phallocentrically
de-
termined. This feminist
strategy
is encoded in a
poetics
that must oscillate
91
Hypatia
constantly
between its
utopian
aims and the
practical requirements
of com-
munication.
This
incipient utopianism
is characteristic of
Irigaray's
ethical
project
in
the sense that it seeks to set a
wrong
to
rights-not
via an
argument
for
equal-
ity
within a
system
that
operates
in masculine terms but
by engendering
a re-
spect
for
difference.
In this
sense,
her
quarrel
with
philosophy
as a master dis-
course is
entirely comprehensible-for
in
seeking
to subvert its
phallocratic
pretensions
to
provide
an
objective analysis
of the
question
of
"woman,"
she
denies its
ability
and its
right
to translate women's
experiences
into its own
inadequate compass.
Rather than
defining
and
setting
boundaries
upon
"wom-
an,"
Irigaray
wants to
encourage
women to create a
space
for themselves-a
project
that
may eventually
lead to a renewal of discourse between the
sexes,
to "the
production
of a new
age
of
thought, art,
poetry
and
language,
the cre-
ation of a new
poetics" (Irigaray 1993a, 5),
in
short,
to a
genuine
ethics
of
sex-
ual
difference.
NOTES
The authors would like to thank Liz Bondi and Gillian Rose for their
helpful sug-
gestions
on an earlier draft and
Margaret
Whitford for
recommending
and
providing
a
copy
of Tibbetts's
paper.
We would also like to thank
Hypatia's anonymous
referees
for their
many
constructive comments.
1. We are also aware of our own
ambiguous position
as
differently
sexed
subjects
writing
on
Irigaray's explicitly
"feminine"
philosophy. Again
our aim is not to
reject
Irigaray's
idea of women
writing "amongst
themselves" but to
provide
some kind of
understanding
as to
why
this secession
might
be
thought
to be
necessary
and
justifiable
and not indicative of a
ghettoization
of feminist
philosophy.
See
Irigaray
in Whitford
(1991, 190-97).
2. Both
Sally Haslanger
(1993)
and Frederick Tibbetts
(1988)
make some
pre-
liminary
moves in this direction. Natalie
Stoljar
makes the connection more
explic-
itly
when she states that
"[t]he concept
'woman' is like the
concept 'game'.
There are
a number of different features in our idea of womanness. As with the
concept game
it
is sufficient that an individual woman have a
proportion
of these features in order to
satisfy
the
concept
'woman"'
(Stoljar
1995, 283).
3. In this
sense,
Nicholson's
approach
and our own are motivated
by
similar con-
cerns and are
broadly congruent
with each other.
However,
Nicholson's
suggestion
remains
under-developed
both in terms of her use of
Wittgenstein's theory
of lan-
guage-she
does not elucidate the connection
among representationalism, language-
games,
and forms of life-and in her
exposition
of
language's
relation to
"body"
mat-
ters.
4. See Naomi Scheman
(1996)
for an excellent
summary
of this
problem.
5.
Wittgenstein
refers to both "form"
(singular)
and "forms of life"
(plural).
This
92
Joyce
is because the
relationship
between a form of life and a
language-game
is co-constitu-
tive. Each
language-game
is an
integral part
of a social
practice,
and each social
prac-
tice is an instance of a
particular form
of
relationship
to the social and natural world.
A
language-game picks
out and connects
appropriate
elements of the world in such a
way
as both to facilitate a
particular
social
practice
and to ensure
linguistic meaning
within that
practice.
But social relations are not fixed or
predetermined,
and the world
contains
many possible
kinds of social
practices
and therefore
many possible
forms of
life.
Wittgenstein
uses the
singular
when he wants to refer to the
particular
back-
ground
of a
specific language-game
and the
plural
when he wants to refer to the rela-
tionships
between
language
and the world in
general.
We follow this convention with
the added
complication
that we must allow for both the continuities and differences
among
women's lives. This means that we tend to use the
singular
"form of life" when
emphasizing
the continuities
among
the social
practices
women
engage
in and find
themselves
subject
to and the
plural
"forms of life" when
emphasizing
both the differ-
ences between women's lives and the
indeterminacy
of the form or forms that
any
future feminist social
practice(s)
and
language-games
will take.
6. Almost all of
Wittgenstein's commentators, including
Norman
Malcolm,
Stanley Cavell,
Cora
Diamond,
and Peter Strawson
recognize
this role. See Nicholas
Geir
(1980),
and Guido
Frongia
and Brian McGuinness
(1990).
7. Those circumstances will
usually
make some reference to the kind of animals
we
perceive
ourselves to be. Derek
Phillips
makes a similar
point
when he states
that,
"[f]or Wittgenstein,
various
language-games
are
partly dependent
on certain contin-
gent
facts of nature: that human
beings think,
use
language, agree
in
judgments
and
reactions and share certain common interests. In this sense
language
is a
product
of
human
activity
in the
world,
it is a
product
of the facts of human and
physical
nature.
But,
at the same
time,
language
is also a
producer
of
meaning
and new forms of human
activity. Wittgenstein
then doesn't want to endorse a
position
which holds that facts
of nature
completely
determine
language; nor,
on the other
hand,
does he want to
say
that the facts of nature are
totally
creations of
language" (Phillips 1977, 83).
8.
Irigaray questions
the whole notion of
"theory," arguing
that it is
phallocratic.
She
writes, "[f]or
the elaboration of a
theory
of
woman, men,
I
think,
suffice. In a
woman('s)
language,
the
concept
as such would have no
place" (Irigaray 1985b, 123).
9. Some commentators' concerns that certain
philosophical misunderstandings
arise out of the
process
of translation are
misplaced.
For
example,
Toril Moi comments
on the
problem
of whether to translate
femme
as
"female,"
which in
English implies
a
biological sex,
or as
"feminine,"
which
implies
a
socially
constructed
gender.
"Does
ecriture feminine,
for
instance,
mean 'female' or 'feminine'
writing?
How can we know
whether this or
any
other
expression
refers to sex or to
gender?" (Moi 1985, 97).
However,
while Moi sees this as a
problem
in
interpreting Irigaray's
intention
(is
she
actually talking
about "female" or "feminine"
writing?),
Moira Gatens
points
out that
the distinction between sex and
gender commonly
made in
post-1970s Anglo-Ameri-
can feminism is a recent theoretical construction. Sex and
gender
are not transcendent
categories
as Moi
supposes. Rather,
"the distinction is not so much lost in the French
as
simply
never made"
(Gatens 1991, 114).
Such words do not exist in
French,
and
they
have no
place
in
Irigaray's language-game.
10. In the
Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
makes this
point by using
the
93
Hypatia
example
of
knowing
that one has a
pain.
See
Anthony Kenny (1988)
for a detailed
discussion.
Wittgenstein's emphasis
on the social context of
language
is made
explic-
itly
in his
argument against
the
possibility
of a
"private language" (See
Robert
Fogelin
1976, Chap. XIII).
11. The
development
of a
separate
"culture" does not have to entail
geographical
separatism;
it
could,
for
example,
entail
separatism
in a number of
spheres,
such as
feminist
literature,
so
long
as there is an
opportunity
for women to find
ways
to talk to
each other outside masculine
parameters.
This communication is
possible
because
women's shared form of life
provides
them with alternative contexts of
meaning.
12. To
communicate,
we must use the same
language
as
men,
a
language
in which
we can
merely
mimic the
subjectivity
that
belongs
to men alone. This mimesis
is,
for
Irigaray,
a
strategic
resource
of
subversion. Women must use this
strategy
as a means
towards the
reclaiming
of their own
identity,
the
"femininity"
that has been excluded
from the
linguistic
order and as a result from our culture.
13.
This,
of
course,
is also the basis for feminist
standpoint epistemologies.
For a
thorough
account,
see Sandra
Harding (1991).
14. See also Whitford's discussion of the
"language
of
hysteria" (1991, 40-41).
Carol
Gilligan's
work in
developmental psychology
(1982)
might
also
support
our
interpretation.
See also Susan Hekman
(1995).
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