From The Same To The Differences

First,undoubtly,in Irigaray's eyes,the sex discrepancy is worth studying and plays an exceedingly significant role as well.Decades later after Speculum of the Other Woman,Irigaray withdraws little interest in what she has originally focused on.This paper will start with the analysis of her criticism of Freud,Lacan and the identity logic in the traditional western philisophy,nanmely the "phallogocentrism" she calls,and campare to Beauvoir's relevant statements at the same time.In this way,this paper explains a new conception of female identity Irigaray attempts to make on the basis of her analysis above.In the second chapter,making the male's sextual features the standard,Freud defines female as "lack","atrophy" or even "hole".Accordingly, he divides female's sextual desires into two patterns:"masculine" clitoral activity and "feminine" vaginal passivity.However,Irigaray treats his idea as "the hypothesis of phallic imparialism".Although Freud, compared to the philisophers before him,has recognized the features of both sexes from a fresh prespective,he is still immersered in the "phallogocentrism".Irigaray also starts with the female's body,but she neither agrees to Beauvoir's depreciated and repressed attitude to the body nor agrees with Freud's view.Female's body,for Irigaray, is not the negative burden, nor the comeplement of male, but "this sex which is not one".In the third chapter, Lacan,after Freud, holds that,babies could distinguish between subject and self in the mirror stage. When the symbolic,a society where there is language dimension,begins,whoever has the phalus can be the subject to speak.Irigaray believes that, though Lacan has got out of the circle of Freud's anatomical determinism,in his symbolic, the society where male is in dominant position,female is still just the male's "the other",a mirror reflecting the male.Before Irigaray,researchers like Beauvoir and Lacan have discussed "the other ".However,Irigaray's view is obviously different from those philosophers'. Lacan's mirror,"the other",is a plain one by which the subject realizes the identity of self.That is,the male subject needs the female as "the other",the mirror to reflect his existence and prove his subjectivity.Irigaray maintains that the female herself can be a concave speculum that has the ability to reflect herself and"the other of the other",namely,female can prove her subjectivity by herself.However it is not easy to make such a proof for female in the society, the symbolic where the identity logic,the phallogocentrism,is in the dominant position.Thus Irigaray proposes that female can set up a new speech mode and describe the female features by words and imitating tactics,then set up a new conception of female identity.That is,female exsists as a difference from male.In the fourth chapter,Irigaray traces such phallogocentrism philosophical thinking back to Plato's famous "Cave-metaphor" which shows that,female has since begun the destiny of being ignored and considered as the antithesis What's more, Irigaray poins out after retrospecting some original narrations on Greek and Roman mythology,the aim to creat the female words and prove female's subject by herself can be fulfilled by building a new female genealogy.The key is to renew the linkage of the subjectivity between mother and daughter and on this basis bring out the subject-communication,"To Be Two",between male and female.In the last chapter, be Freud,Lacan or Beauvoir,they could not basically free themselves from the phallogocentrism which makes their relevant statements on both sexes bear its remark.On the basis of the the criticism of the traditional philosophical thoughts and psychoanalysis,Irigaray presents such an idea that,female should have her own words and then estabilsh a new conception of female identity.Despite the fact that Irigaray receives many queries,her conception to build up a new subject identity of female based on the sex discrepancy undoubtly makes a new prospect to woman study and widens its visual field.