Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1989. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 259-265).

Engaging the question of postmodern ethical intersubjectivity in the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Luce Irigaray I attempt to move beyond Levinas sacrificial view of intersubjectivity with Irigaray's critique of sexual difference. I argue that Levinas view of ethical 'subjectivity' is violently conditioned by a necessary narcissim located in Levinas's description of the feminine dwelling. Instead of narcissim I argue with Irigaray for a way of love that offers an ethical relationship bonded in mutuality. This way of love is rooted in an understanding of the primordial matter of life as good for intersubjective-relationships that do not depend upon narcissim for connection. Concluding this study I suggest that his kind of intersubjectivity can be rooted in a primordial way of life found in the rhythm of breath.

This thesis offers an exploration of the writing of an irreducible feminine difference in four novels by women. Drawing from the work of the Continental feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, I read her conceptual undertaking of sexual difference as precipitating an alternative narrative for feminist thought. The crux of this project involves an inscription of the indeterminable, and thus far elided, category of the feminine, back into the uncontested frameworks of patriarchal knowledge. In so doing, the feminine illuminates what Irigaray calls the “otherwise, elsewhere” that troubles the universality of all masculine discourse. Sexual difference can then be extrapolated from these terms, to anticipate a compelling horizon of possibilities for feminism that lies beyond the deterministic confines of the singular present. Its advent marks the creation of radical feminist lines of inquiry that have yet to be imagined. My study builds on Irigaray’s approach to sexual difference to suggest that the transformative space of literature provides a promising blueprint for its otherwise inchoate articulation. The texts I analyse invoke an anticipatory impulse to think the impossible, and offer an imaginative frame of reference for envisioning these processes of sexual difference. By considering four novels by Marilynne Robinson, Jeanette Winterson, Elena Ferrante, and Rachel Cusk, I illustrate that their engagement with sexual difference is a strategic and combative negotiation of our dominant modes of understanding. More crucially, I examine the dialogue that is inspired by these texts when the intimations of sexual difference are brought together with the evocative possibilities of literature, which might accordingly be extended to affirm a new and reflective cartography for the futures of the feminist imaginary. A further narrative can be located in the sequence of the chapters in my thesis, insofar as each of its novels was published around successive decades apart from 1980- 2014. By alluding to the respective contextual backdrops of these texts, I consider the more overarching trajectory of feminist theory and criticism, in which sexual difference has materialised in its contingent narratives as an enduring, and indeed unsettling, question. It circulates as a speculative theoretical paradigm in the multiple intersections of feminist theory, philosophy, and literary studies. My thesis will argue not only for the altogether difficult and necessary unknowability of feminist thought as it looks ahead to the future, but also for the critical relevance of literary perspectives in explicating these processes of feminist world-making.

Hysteri tillhör en av de mest omdebatterade diagnoserna i psykologins historia. Under några decennier kring förra sekelskiftet sysselsatte sjukdomen dåtidens främsta läkare. I Freuds välkända fallbeskrivningar framträder den hysteriska kvinnan som traumatiserad, både av sina minnen och av sina symtom. Den här uppsatsen syftar till att ifrågasätta en etablerad tolkning av hysteri som individuell patologi. Luce Irigarays konceptualisering av det imaginära och kvinnans symboliska hemlöshet används som utgångspunkt för en kritisk läsning av  Studier i Hysteri. Ansatsen är kvalitativ och teoridriven, metoden mimetisk, analysen är tematiskt strukturerad. Av resultaten framkommer att Irigarays tänkande kan bidra med en fördjupad förståelse av hysterin som någonting som överskrider individuell patologi, som någonting som blottlägger detta psykiska tillstånds relation till imaginära föreställningar om rationalitet och femininitet. De presenterade perspektiven belyser hur hysteri såväl som samtida kvinnosjuklighet formas av ett kulturellt omedvetet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät I--Zürich--Universität, 1990.

x, 244 p. / This dissertation presents a reading of the work of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray, with a particular focus on her most recent texts, which explicitly concern the question of ethics. Responding to concerns that Irigaray's work displays a discontinuity, and that this "later" work is perhaps no longer useful for feminists, I argue that there is in fact a rigorous philosophical continuity to Irigaray's work. In particular, I claim that Irigaray's central philosophical contribution is a transformation of the concept of human subjectivity by way of the thinking of sexuate difference as what I call a "relational limitation." This concept is at once ontological and ethical, and it describes the way in which Irigaray's oeuvre, taken as a continuous whole, transforms philosophical understandings of language, being, and ethics by way of thinking them relationally, combining all of these terms together into a new understanding of human subjectivity that involves a new way of thinking about language and meaning as constitutively shared. I discuss the way in which Irigaray elaborates this new understanding in dialogue with male thinkers, in particular with Lacan and Heidegger. I identify an interest in the issue of relation in Irigaray's earlier work, notably through her engagement with Lacan, in whom she identifies what I call a "non-relational" limit, or a conception of human subjectivity and language that refuses the priority of relation. Through her dialogue with Heidegger, I argue, Irigaray comes closer to articulating her own vision of subjectivity as inherently structured by "relational limitation," but she must surpass both Lacanian and Heideggerian paradigms in order to articulate her own unique vision of sexuate difference as two different, yet interrelated, manners of the unfolding of language and of human subjectivity itself. Thus, my tracing of this continuity of Irigaray's project shows how her most recent work is extremely important for feminist theory, insofar as it elaborates a philosophical and ethical vision of how to improve the (often impoverished and/or violent) relations between men and women. In particular, the concept of a "non-relational" limitation versus a "relational limitation" provides a helpful way of understanding the underlying causes and dynamics of the distorted relationship between the sexes under patriarchy--a point that I illustrate with the example of domestic violence. / Committee in charge: Beata Stawarska, Co-Chair; Alejandro A. Vallega, Co-Chair; Theodore A. Toadvine, Member; Karen C. McPherson, Outside Member

This thesis examines the role of woman within Nietzsche’s late-middle period, through The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as well as interrogating the more social or political elements of nihilism, in order to conceptualize a novel reading of Nietzsche’s figure of the Overman. The motivation for this project is to create an understanding of the Overman that stands in stark contrast to those interpretations of Nietzsche advanced and deployed by those on the far-right of the political spectrum, who historically have used Nietzsche’s ideas to justify acts of cruelty and violence through an appeal to preservation of the self and of the same. I begin with the idea that woman is representative of truth for Nietzsche through her embodiment of difference, both internal to herself and within her relationship to man. This view of woman within the thesis is led by the work of Luce Irigaray in her work Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, and a reading of her work alongside Nietzsche’s Gay Science comprise the first chapter. In the second chapter, I chart different typologies of nihilism as advanced by Gilles Deleuze and Alenka Zupančič in order to probe their status as “universal”. I also delve into the eternal return as the process through which nihilism is overcome and the Overman emerges, as perhaps an eternal return of the different rather than the same. In the final chapter, the lessons from the beginning of the thesis are applied to a reading of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in order to read difference into that text toward the overcoming of nihilism and the birth of the Overman.

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