What Is Sexual Difference?

Mary C. Rawlinson is professor emerita of philosophy at Stony Brook University and senior research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University College London. Her books include, most recently, The Betrayal of Substance: Death, Literature, and Sexual Difference in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (Columbia, 2021), and she is the cofounder of the Luce Irigaray Circle.James Sares is affiliated faculty in philosophy at Emerson College and holds a PhD in philosophy from Stony Brook University. He is the recipient of the 2018 Karen Burke Memorial Prize, awarded by the Irigaray Circle.

• Foreword, by Elizabeth GroszList of Abbreviations (Works by Irigaray)Introduction: Irigaray and the Question of Sexual Difference, by James Sares and Mary C. RawlinsonPart I: The Ontology of Sexual Difference1. The Ontological Negativity of Sexual Difference, by James Sares2. Opening Hegel’s Autological Circle: Irigaray and the Metaphysics of Sexual Difference, by Mary C. Rawlinson3. One, Two, Many? Sexual Difference and the Problem of Universals, by Stephen D. Seely4. Returning to Irigaray’s Radical Materialism: Sexuate Difference, Ontology, and Bodies of Water, by Laura RobertsPart II: Sexual Difference Beyond Sex/Gender5. Life Itself and Sexual Difference: Nature and Culture, by Ruthanne Crapo Kim6. Sexuation as a Frame for Human Becoming: Reading a “Plastic” Essence in Irigaray’s Philosophy, by Belinda Eslick7. Looking Back at “This Sex Which Is Not One”: Post-deconstructive New Materialisms and Their (Sexual) Difference, by Penelope DeutscherPart III: Sexuate Nature and Subjectivity8. An Uncontainable Subject: Thinking Feminine Sexuate Subjectivity with Irigaray, by Jennifer Carter9. Male Re-imaginings: From the Ontology of the Anal Toward a Phenomenology of Fluidity, by Ovidiu Anemțoaicei10. Sexual Difference as Qualitative Becoming: Irigaray Beyond Cissexism?, by Oli Stephano11. An Onto-ethics of Transsexual Difference, by Mitchell Damian MurtaghPart IV: Placing Sexual Difference12. Sexuate Difference in the Black Atlantic: Reading Irigaray with Hartman, by Rachel Jones13. Bloodshed: Kinship as a Site of Violence in Irigaray and Spillers, by Sabrina L. Hom14. Toward a Sexuate Jurisprudence and on the “Second Rape” of Law, by Yvette Russell15. Place Thinking with Irigaray and Neidjie, by Rebecca HillPart V: Back to the Future of Sexual Difference16. Reading Speculum Again: Narrative, Optics, Time, by Emanuela Bianchi17. Indebtedness: A Sexuate Malaise, by Iván Hofman18. Mysterics: Extinction and Emptiness, by Lynne HufferList of ContributorsIndex

What is Sexual Difference? thinks with and against Luce Irigaray in a new and invigorating way. Posing the fundamental question as to what sexual difference is opens up a range of possibilities for reading Irigaray beyond the oppositional attitudes of the essentialism question. Essays from a diversity of perspectives consider Irigaray in relation to colonialism, race, ecological questions, and gender identity. The inclusion of essays that read Irigaray in the context of trans philosophy and the critique of cissexism are an especially welcome contribution.