Divine Flesh, Embodied Word

Anne-Claire Mulder (theologian) defended this thesis in 2000 at the University of Amsterdam. She has published texts in Paragraph (2002/3) and in Welt gestalten im ausgehenden Patriarchat edited by Maria Moser and Ina Praetorius (2003). She is co-editor – with Kune Biezeveld – of Towards a Different Transcendence. Feminist Findings on Subjectivity, Religion and Values, (Oxford/Bern, 2001). She is currently university teacher for Women’s studies theology at the Theological University of Kampen.

• Table of Contents - 7 Acknowledgements - 12 Acknowledgements 2005 - 14 Introduction - 16 I. Incarnation: the Word becomes flesh - 29 1. The order of discourse is built upon matricide - 32 A specific order of the city is established through matricide - 33 The constitution of the masculine subject is founded upon matricide - 42 2. 'And the Word became flesh': salvation or matricide? - 54 The Prologue to the Gospel of John - 56 The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed - 67 The Eucharist: this is my body, this is my blood - 71 3. Becoming woman, becoming 'hysteric': the genesis of female embodied subjectivity - 83 The order of discourse eradicates difference - 84 Becoming woman, becoming hysteric - 93 II. Incarnation: the flesh becomes Word - 109 4. The flesh: maternal, sensible, tangible and libidinal matter - 117 The flesh: blood, flesh, material elements - 119 Being is rooted in the flesh - 134 5. Morphology: corporeal, imaginary, linguistic differences between the sexes - 137 Morphology: the form of the flesh - 139 Morphology: the parameter to the formation of identity - 143 Discovering the morphology of the female sex. - 152 The morphology of language - 164 6. God-She: the horizon or 'objective' of a gender and the object of communication - 171 'God': the emblem of a 'house-of-language' - 173 7. God: mirror of woman - 190 Women need a Speculum Mundi to become - 193 Inventing an identity: giving oneself images - 203 Identity and becoming - 208 III. Incarnation: fruit of the encounter with the other - 218 8. The dialectical structure of the relation to the other - 224 The recognition of the alterity of the other - 225 From God as the transcendent Other to the transcendence of the other: Luce Irigaray's critique of God - 227 The recognition of the other is the labour of the negative - 242 The dialectical movement between self and other, between inner and outer - 251 Incarnation: the fruit of the encounter with the other - 255 9. Incarnation: the fruit of the encounter of female subject with the horizon of her gender - 258 The transcendence of the horizon of the female gender - 259 Luce Irigaray looks at art. - 270 The construction of a horizon: aesthetic practice and theory ánd the recources of this construction - 280 10. Incarnation: the fruit of the encounter of female subject with the other: man or woman - 293 The love of and for the other of different sex - 294 Love of the other, woman - 321 The fecundity of the love of the other - 333 Epilogue - 344 Speaking and thinking 'God': the dialectics between flesh and Word. - 344 The Flesh: living and productive matter - 346 The flesh as living matter - 346 The flesh is productive matter: the significance of a philosophy of sexual difference - 349 A post-theistic understanding of 'God - 358 The function of 'God' in a post-theistic discourse - 361 'God': the symbol of the transcendence of the horizon of a gender - 366 The dialectical relation of flesh and Word - 369 The dialectics between 'God' and the divine and the tension between eros and thanatos - 370 The divine: creative ánd disruptive force - 374 Bibliography - 380 Book and articles by Luce Irigaray, used in this book - 380 Books and articles by other authors - 382 Index - 396