Speculum of the Other Woman

Introduction

Speculum de l’autre femme was Irigaray’s second doctoral thesis, published in Paris in 1974; after its appearance the Lacanian department of psychoanalysis at the University of Vincennes dismissed her from her teaching post. The book moves backwards through history: it begins with Freud’s lecture on femininity, passes through texts by philosophers and mystics from Plotinus to Hegel, and ends with a rereading of Plato’s cave as a womb (hystera). Irigaray argues that Western thought has defined woman only in relation to man – as his lack, his opposite or his mirror – so that a feminine subject has not yet been represented. The speculum of the title is both a concave mirror and a gynaecological instrument.

Connections

Criticizes

• Republicc. 375 BCE · Plato
• The Interpretation of Dreams1900 · Sigmund Freud

Taken up in

• The Symbolic Order of the Mother1991 · Luisa Muraro

More works by Luce Irigaray

• 1977This Sex Which Is Not One