Divine love : Luce Irigaray, women, gender and religion / Morny Joy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Joy, Morny.

Series:

Manchester studies in religion, culture, and gender

Manchester studies in religion, culture and gender

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Irigaray, Luce.

Feminist theory.

Sex role.

Sex differences--Religious aspects.

Sex differences.

Physical Description:

viii, 207 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed in the US by Palgrave, 2006.

Summary:

Divine love explores the work of Luce Irigaray, one of the most influential and controversial figures in feminist thought. Although Irigaray herself disclaims the term 'feminism', her work stands at the intersection of contemporary debates concerned with culture, gender and religion. However, her ideas have not yet been presented in a comprehensive way from the perspective of Religious Studies. This book is the first to examine the development of religious themes from Irigaray's initial work, Speculum of the Other Woman, to her more recent explorations of eastern religions. Chapters survey Irigaray's interactions with the work of Descartes, Hegel and Levinas, and her ideas on love, the divine, an ethics of sexual difference, and normative heterosexuality are analysed. These analyses are placed in the context of the reception of Irigaray's work by secular feminists such as Judith Butler, Drucilla Cornell and Elizabeth Grosz, as well as by feminists in Religious Studies such as Pamela Sue Anderson, Ellen Armour, Amy Hollywood and Grace Jantzen, who for the most part disagree with Irigaray's proposals for women's adoption of a distinct mode of sexual difference.

Much of Irigaray's own work rejects traditional forms of western religions, and her own spiritual path which has been influenced by eastern religions - specifically the disciplines of yoga and tantra in Hinduism and Buddhism - is evaluated in the light of recent theoretical developments in Orientalism and post-colonialism. Divine love will engage specialists from a variety of disciplines in the arts and humanities as well as students in the fields of Gender and Cultural Studies, Religious Studies and Continental Philosophy.

Contents:

Introduction: encountering Irigaray 1

1 What's God got to do with it? 7

2 Cartesian mediations 36

3 Effacements: Emmanuel Levinas and Irigaray 56

4 Love and the labour of the negative: Irigaray and Hegel 83

5 Homo- and heterogeneous zones: Irigaray and Mary Daly 102

6 Irigaray's eastern excursion 124

7 Conclusion: a world of difference 142.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 186-197) and index.

ISBN:

0719055237

OCLC:

67871414