Luce Irigaray and divine matter
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nature, but between the male and female economies, two kinds of nature
providing the resources for both subjects respectively, as they in turn do for
one another. Infinity is accordingly bound for Irigaray, it both enables a sense
of accomplishment (or realisation) and sets out a form, a limit, without which
affectivity would be amorphous. This is not a teleology, since the transcen-
dental, or projected divine, is un devenir; indeed, for Irigaray becoming is
divinity. Thus it is historical, man is not the end of man, nor woman the end
of woman. By paying heed to their corporeal materiality they will always be,
but in the process of becoming.
So, what does such an exaltation of divinity offer women? Given that
Irigaray is not speaking of some weekend cult, it is clear that for her this has
to be a central issue if women are to come to be as women. They can will their
own becoming, and feel this as the creation and perfection of their subjectivity;
they can have a goal and value for themselves, beyond that stipulated by the
other sex, for whom their only value is as mothers or virgins, or better still,
virgin-mothers; for whom they are attributed most value to the extent that they
reproduce the masculine form, or have a son, the mother’s access and path to
infinity, as in Mary’s Assumption.15 Having an infinite would enable women
to know finitude on their own terms, to die their own death (rather than always
being present at the others’ deaths), and that means, to change. The divine is
not, therefore, some unifying homogenising force imposing its will upon all
women across space and time. Indeed, it ostensibly facilitates the measure of
individuality, and provides an objective through which women can at last begin
to communicate and relate without the distancing mediation of men and
without the terrifying proximity of immediacy in which they rub together as
open wounds. Most importantly, as the divine is what exists for its own sake,
passional divine love is a love of the self, a mirror to reflect women’s own
beauty back to themselves as an identity value rather than to reflect their means
status, their suffering and chastity, and their masquerade.
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15 Irigaray gives a dazzling reinterpretation of Christ and of certain New Testament episodes in
‘Ie crucifιe,, the final section of Amante marine. .