Sexes and Genealogies, Luce Irigaray. Reading

Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, 1987 Columbia University Press, translated by Gillian C Gill 1993,  New York

Men's speech, men's values, dreams and desires are law.  Men define the function and the social role of women, even the sexual identity that women are allowed.  Woman's desire is what the law of the father prohibits.  The father, in whatever role, intervenes to censure and repress the mother's desire, on the grounds of reasonableness and virtue! p11

Women lack the definition of values belonging to them.  When these values are defined, they are often condemned by other women, who condone the male paradigm.  Female identity is reduced to the empirical parameters of questions like "Have you a relationship?", "Are you married?" "Who is your husband?", "Do you have any children?"  This means woman is defined by a social function, not a female identity and autonomy.   p72

Men do not expect to work for nothing.  Yet women are.  When women work for nothing they acquiesce to censorship of trade.  This means women sacrifice their financial well-being, and by being repressed, they perpetuate it.  It is deemed normal and moral for a woman to receive no/minimal payment.  Societies assume the mother should feed the child for free,before and after birth, and become the nurse of man and of society.  This traditional role of woman paralyses male society and condones the wanton destruction of the natural reserves of life.  It creates the illusion that food should come to us free, and is inexhaustible.  Women can never fail us, especially mothers.  Women who are stay-at-home mothers use their children to create a market status for themselves as objects of value. This fits with Freud's theory that women only become socially valuable when they attain motherhood (which is seen as an achievement).  Procreation becomes a fixed standard - and the realisation of this gives understanding to the fuss about contraception and abortion.  The value underpinning human society for millennia has been procreation. So being able to control procreation to the benefit of the woman challenges the male value system.  When women are not restricted by children, they are not restricted to the polemics and rules of the private sphere.  Woman can enter the public sphere, with its consequent expectation of being paid for her work.  But the value system has not been readjusted to take account of intellectual labour and of women as social resources.  Thinkers and women do not receive any reward for social functioning.  p81-85

This has personal resonance for me.  It articulates why I am seen as having less value than other female family members.  I do not have market value as I do not have children.  My abilities outside the home are ignored because that is outside the value system of the private sphere.

Art is essential for a culture of affective relationships as this is where individual, bodily matter can be transferred, explored and publicised.  Without art, gender is reduced to sexuality.  There is an historic gap between culture for female genealogies and culture of patriarchal hegemony.  The patriarchal hegemony of art needs to be recognised and changed.  p165