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Topologies of Sexual Difference

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Brings together wide-ranging, interdisciplinary analyses of Luce Irigaray's rethinking of space with respect to sexual difference and the visual arts.A rethinking of space is central to Luce Irigar...
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  • 01 October 2025
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Brings together wide-ranging, interdisciplinary analyses of Luce Irigaray's rethinking of space with respect to sexual difference and the visual arts.

A rethinking of space is central to Luce Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference. Topologies of Sexual Difference is the first edited collection to focus on this task through a sustained consideration of both Irigaray's critique of the Western tradition's systematic conflation of femininity and space and her transvaluative topological redeployment of space in theorizing sexual difference. Across thirteen chapters, Irigarayan space is thematized as porous, fluid, continuous, and self-differentiating. Contributors engage with the origins of life, affect, the aesthetics of the maternal and placental, an Irigarayan morphology inclusive of trans embodiment, and—in a rare focus—the expression of sexuate specificity in creative practice. Topologies of Sexual Difference thus demonstrates the fundamental importance of Irigaray's rethinking of space for Western philosophy and the visual arts.

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Price: £87.50
Pages: 294
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Imprint: SUNY Press
Series: SUNY series in Gender Theory
Publication Date: 01 October 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9798855803662
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

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"Topologies of Sexual Difference is certain to make a major contribution to scholarship on Irigaray and continental feminist theory more generally. The essays helpfully elucidate Irigaray's most important spatial concepts—interval, threshold, sensible transcendental, between-us, chôra. Drawing from the full range of Irigaray's works, the volume demonstrates the immense significance of her spatial thinking not only to all branches of philosophy (ontology, epistemology, and ethics) but also to politics, the physical and life sciences, and art. After this volume, no reader could be left wondering about Irigaray's relevance as a thinker of space." — Yvette Russell, Professor of Law and Feminist Theory, University of Bristol

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations (Works by Irigaray)

Introduction
Louise Burchill and Rebecca Hill

Part One: Differential Space

1. Chora Reconsidered in View of a Topology of Sexual Difference
Kristin Sampson

2. "Putting the Accent Back on Space": Irigaray's Topology, Chora, and Feminine Jouissance
Louise Burchill

3. "The Deepest and Most Initial Vital Structure Is Topological": A Feminist Philosophy of the Origins of Cellular Life with Irigaray and Simondon
Annu Dahiya

4. Carnal Being-with: Irigaray in Dialogue with Heidegger
Jennifer Carter

Part Two: Of Sensibility and the Elemental

5. Affective Poiesis: Irigaray's Elemental Ontology
Ellen Mortensen

6. To Speak of Immemorial Waters: Irigaray with Nietzsche
Rebecca Hill

7. "A Morphe in Continual Gestation": The Sensible Transcendental, Gesture, and Morphology in Irigaray
Athena V. Colman

Part Three: Feminine Genealogies

8. Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray: A Genealogy Reconsidered
Gail Schwab

9. Luce Irigaray and the Fate of Antigone: Respect for Sexuate Identity
Marguerite La Caze

10. Intertwinements of Pictorial Research and Speculative Effort: The Noetic Dance Between Barbara and Luce
Francesca Brezzi, translated by Edoardo Bellando and Tamara Lee

Part Four: Sexuate Art in the Making

11. Painterly Poetics and Difference in the Making
Jacqueline Taylor

12. Irigaray and the Baroque: Exploring Sexual Difference Through Creative Practice
Danielle Hamilton

13. The Icon and the Absent Other
Rebekah Pryor

Contributors
Index