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breaks with the past and so on. According to Irigaray, the modem scientific
subject is principally interested in disintegration and Catastrophies and that
which surpasses human capacities and natural rhythms.12 She cites as
examples relativity theory, big-bang theory, quantum mechanics, and the
general trend towards paring down matter to ever-smaller particles that require
ever more technical methods to convince us of their existence. Not to mention,
in the human sciences, Freud’s death drive, the prevalence of everything anti-
or post- or deconstructive in philosophy, the packaging of the individual into
various identities in sociology and into semes in semiology. In short, they are
all, to varying degrees, negative, foregrounding explosion, discharge and
entropy.
So it is with the language of the elements that Irigaray attempts to reinstate
and develop a passional materialism that is nevertheless concerned with and
able to articulate a sense of rhythm, balance and equilibrium.13 It is envisaged
on a scale that is simultaneously universal and human, from a source that is
within and beyond the human, yet conceivably manageable by the human, or
rather, by men and women. In envisaging such a vital source Irigaray is able
to view creation less as the product of destruction and more a circulation of
energy, a harnessing and rehamessing of energies for which the subject is a
mediation and a bridge, not a bridge to the unknown and forgetful loss, but to
the creation of what she calls the sensible transcendental.14
The sensible transcendental is both universal and particular since it
emanates from a passional corporeal energy that accords with particular sexual
economies or rhythms, either the female or the male. Thus it is universal for
each sex as the transfiguration of their flesh, but particular to that sex. As a
transfiguration of flesh it facilitates a consciousness but one which is always
material. Hence, the locus of differentiation is not between the social and
12 See ‘Le sujetde la science, est-il sexue?’ in Parler n 'estjamais neutre, Paris, 1985,307-21.
13 Irigaray ,s more recent work reveals a strong interest in Buddhism and in yoga, and in the
possibilities they present for cultivating body and flesh spiritually; she sets out the benefits
of practising yoga in a pamphlet, Une attention au souffle dans la vie, la pensee, Γamour,
published by Irigaray, 1992. Nevertheless, she remains critical of the Buddhist hierarchical
model of sexual difference and of what she sees as the lack of reciprocity in its model of love.
14 See L 'Ethique de la difference sexuelle, Paris, 1984, 124.