Many scholars have struggled with Irigarays focus on sexuate difference, in particular with her claim that it is ontological, wondering if this implies a problematically naive or essentialist account of sexuate difference. As a result, the ethical vision which Irigaray elaborates has not been taken up in a robust way in the fields of philosophy, feminism, or psychoanalysis.
By tracing the notion of relation throughout Irigarays work, this bookidentifies a rigorous philosophical continuity between the three self-identified phases in Irigarays thought (despite some critics concerns that there is a discontinuity between these phases) and clarifies the relational ontology that underlies Irigarays conceptualization of sexuate difference one thatalways already implies an ethical project.
The text demonstrates that an understanding of Irigarays Heideggerian inheritance especially prominent in her later texts is essential to grasping the sense of the idea that sexuate difference is ontological it concerns Being, rather than beings.This book further develops potential applications of this ontological notion of a relational limit for the fields of philosophy, feminism, and psychotherapy.