Monographs by laura roberts
Edinburgh University Press, 2019
Positions Luce Irigaray as one of the most important and radical political thinkers alive today.
... more Positions Luce Irigaray as one of the most important and radical political thinkers alive today.
- Provides an overview of Irigaray’s broader psychoanalytic and philosophical contexts that have not as yet been acknowledged, giving important context for engaging with her more recent writings.
- Situates Luce Irigaray as a political philosopher, helping us to fully appreciate her political project and her challenge to western modernity and rationality.
- Connects the political, ethical and ontological aspects of Irigaray’s, bringing the concrete political features of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference to the fore
Engages with the intersections of race, class and coloniality in Irigaray’s work and connects it to decolonial thinkers more broadly.
Bringing together Luce Irigaray’s early psychoanalytically orientated writings with her more recent and more explicitly political writings, Irigaray and Politics weaves together the ontological, political and ethical dimensions of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference in imaginative ways.
Laura Roberts argues that Irigaray’s philosophical–political project must be read as a critique of constructions of western modernity and rationality. When appreciated in this way, it becomes clear how Irigaray’s thought makes profound interventions into contemporary political movements and decolonial thought – themes that have never been covered before in Irigaray scholarship. This enables readers to recognise that the question of sexual difference in Irigaray’s philosophy is concerned not only with refiguring politics and political action, but with the foundational structures that govern existence itself.
Journal by laura roberts
Sophia, Vol. 61, issue 1 , 2022
This special issue is dedicated to Luce Irigaray's political philosophy and brings two papers wri... more This special issue is dedicated to Luce Irigaray's political philosophy and brings two papers written by Irigaray itself, as well as papers by the contributors in this special issue who have written on Irigaray’s political thought ranging from the notion of air democracy and an elemental politics to bringing Irigaray’s work in conversation with Indigenous scholars to figuring a philosophy of the child.
Publications by laura roberts
Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, Special Issue "Irigaray and Politics" edited by Lenart Skof and Laura Roberts, 2022
Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions, Special Issue "Irigaray and Politics" edited by Lenart Skof and Laura Roberts, 2022
Introduction to the special issue "Irigaray and Politics" in Sophia 2022.
Feminist Review, 2021
This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the colo... more This article documents our collaborative ongoing struggle to disrupt the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge in the teaching of Gender Studies. We document how our decolonial feminist activism is actualised in our pedagogy, which is guided by feminist interpretations of ‘wonder’ (Irigaray, 1999; Ahmed, 2004; hooks, 2010) read alongside decolonial theory, including that of Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter D. Mignolo and María Lugones. Using notions of wonder as pedagogy, we attempt to create spaces in our classrooms where critical self-reflection and critical intellectual and embodied engagement can emerge. Our attempts to create these spaces include multiple aspects or threads that, when woven together, might enable other ways of knowing-being-doing that works towards disrupting feminist complicity with coloniality in the Australian context.
Resistir Reexistir Reinventar: pedagogias decoloniais em diálogo com o Sul Global, 2022
Translation of “Wonder as Feminist Pedagogy: Disrupting Feminist Complicity with Coloniality”, Fe... more Translation of “Wonder as Feminist Pedagogy: Disrupting Feminist Complicity with Coloniality”, Feminist Review, Special Issue on Coloniality, Vol. 128, 2021
Australian Feminist Studies, Special Issue on The Somatechnics of Life and Death (Eds) Karin Sellberg and Elizabeth Stephens, 2019
In thinking through the philosophical provocations that somatechnics brings, I suggest that we ca... more In thinking through the philosophical provocations that somatechnics brings, I suggest that we can better appreciate the urgency of feminist challenges to binary hierarchical logics undergirding Western metaphysics, and the opportunities this offers us to reimagine politics and reframe ethics that takes seriously ‘the interrelationship between other, self, and world’ (Pugliese, Joseph, and Susan Stryker. 2009. “The Somatechnics of Race and Whiteness.” Social Semiotics 19 (1): 1–8, 2). This article suggests that aspects of Luce Irigaray’s philosophy can be productively read alongside the concept of somatechnics as described by Pugliese, Joseph, and Susan Stryker. (2009. “The Somatechnics of Race and Whiteness.” Social Semiotics 19 (1): 1–8). I turn to Luce Irigaray’s philosophy of sexual difference and unpack her challenges to Western metaphysics as well as her proposals for a new relational nonhierarchical ontology, a new metaphysics that enables a reframing and revaluing of ethics. Reading Irigaray’s work alongside this concept of somatechnics offers the opportunities to recognise and delve deeper into the philosophical and ontological challenges that Irigaray’s work presents.
*Click Paper Title and then click the URL link for free access to this paper*
Luce Irigaray argues that the way to overcome the culture of narcissism in the Western tra-dition... more Luce Irigaray argues that the way to overcome the culture of narcissism in the Western tra-dition is to recognize sexuate difference and to refigure subjectivity as sexuate. This article isan attempt to unpack how Irigaray’s philosophical refiguring of love as an intermediaryworks in this process of reimagining subjectivity as sexuate. If we trace the moments in Iri-garay’s philosophy where she engages with Hegel’s dialectic, and rethinks this dialectical pro-cess via the question of sexual difference and a refiguring of love, a clearer reading of herwork as groundbreaking and ultimately refiguring our (Western) ontological structuresbecomes possible. Consequently, if we do not understand Irigaray’s radical reformulation oflove, we will miss her larger ontological project and fail to properly appreciate her commentson other types of difference—for example, differences of race, tradition, religion. This articleargues that as we begin to appreciate the ways in which Irigaray refigures both love andthought as the intermediary, an intermediary that fundamentally disrupts phallocentric binarylogic, we can begin to imagine how refiguring the most intimate human experience of lovecan lead us toward the realization of an ethical political community in which difference in allforms is nourished.
Book Reviews by laura roberts
Other Outputs by laura roberts
CALL FOR PAPERS - IRIGARAY CIRCLE, 2020
The 11th meeting of the Luce Irigaray Circle is a three-day interdisciplinary conference devoted ... more The 11th meeting of the Luce Irigaray Circle is a three-day interdisciplinary conference devoted to the scholarship and creative work on, or inspired by, the thought of Luce Irigaray.
This blog includes thoughts from those involved in teaching and developing Gender Studies at The ... more This blog includes thoughts from those involved in teaching and developing Gender Studies at The University of Queensland as well as some of the students. It was produced in celebration of International Women's Day, 2018.
MAY '68 was a watershed moment in political philosophy, and its ripple effect continues. We follo... more MAY '68 was a watershed moment in political philosophy, and its ripple effect continues. We follow the long trajectory of May '68—from the universities and streets of Paris fifty years ago, via the work of pioneering feminist Luce Irigaray, all the way to the 'New Municipalism' that's transforming the political and social landscapes of cities around the world today.
Teaching Documents by laura roberts
GEND2001 begins w ith an exploration of how feminist genealogies are intertw ined w ith colonial ... more GEND2001 begins w ith an exploration of how feminist genealogies are intertw ined w ith colonial legacies before considering the entanglem ent of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality in their various interpretations and associated practices, in Australia and a num ber of cultures around the w orld. This course aim s to give insights into how constructions of gender are alw ays already entangled w ith constructions of race, ethnicity and class. W e discuss the historical development of these notions, and their various and interdisciplinary reinventions by feminist thinkers and queer theoreticians.
In PHIL2310 we explore the notion of the " political " within the context of recent French philos... more In PHIL2310 we explore the notion of the " political " within the context of recent French philosophical debates. The course will begin with the historical and political context of French philosophy in the twentieth century. The influence of certain Marxist and Hegelian readings set the scene for a decidedly political orientation of philosophical themes and encounters. The course charts a movement away from orthodox Marxist economic and political interpretations toward an expanded cultural and aesthetic appreciation of what constitutes political struggle. In the process we explore the significance of the student and worker struggles in Paris in May '68 and the events of the Algerian War in order to place philosophy within the context of world, history and event. To this end, we also examine certain cinematic contributions associated with the new wave (la nouvelle vague) which contribute to intellectual debates in France during this time, in complex and important ways. The philosophical work of writers such as Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, Julia Kristeva, Jean-François Lyotard, and Luce Irigaray draw these themes together, providing us with opportunities to rethink what constitutes the political in new and challenging ways.
Thesis Abstract by laura roberts
Supervisor:
Dr Michelle Boulous Walker, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
Associate Sup... more Supervisor:
Dr Michelle Boulous Walker, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
Associate Supervisor:
A/Professor Marguerite La Caze, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
External Examiners:
Prof Gail Schwab, Professor of French, Hoftstra University, New York, USA,
Prof Rachel Jones, Philosophy, George Mason University, Virginia, USA
Conference Presentations by laura roberts
Using Céline Sciamma’s 2014 film Girlhood this paper explores Luce Irigaray’s call for positive r... more Using Céline Sciamma’s 2014 film Girlhood this paper explores Luce Irigaray’s call for positive representations of feminine subjectivity in the Western symbolic. First I provide a brief overview of Irigaray’s demand for the recognition of a non-hierarchical sexuate difference in order to contextualise her call for the creation of positive representations of autonomous feminine subjectivity. I use Lucy Bolton’s work to illustrate the connections between Irigaray’s writings on feminine subjectivity and film. Following Bolton, I suggest that Irigaray’s work on autonomous feminine subjectivity provides a useful lens through which to consider the representation of women in film. Using this framework I argue that Girlhood provides an excellent example of what positive representations of feminine subjectivity, with all its contradictions, might look like. This paper investigates the way in which Girlhood represents the tensions (internal and socio-political) of an autonomous feminine subjectivity and, in doing so, highlights many Irigarayan themes regarding relations between women and relations between men and women. I argue that this film disturbs many stereotypical tropes of gender and when viewed via the lens of Irigaray’s double-pronged approach, her critical and creative aspects, we can read this as a coming of age film as well as a critical political moment in the journey toward undoing troubling patriarchal stereotypes of women. Furthermore, the ways in which gender, class, race and themes of postcoloniality intersect in this film demonstrate the ways in which we can take Irigaray’s comments on the relations between gender, race and ethnicity seriously. This film provides an opportunity for thinking about the relations between the philosophy of sexuate difference and the way in which this philosophy contributes to a radical intersectional feminine subjectivity in ways that are yet to be appreciated by Irigarayan scholars, as well as within the broader contexts of feminist philosophy, and the contemporary philosophical tradition at large.
In a special issue on African Philosophy in the South African Journal of Philosophy feminist phil... more In a special issue on African Philosophy in the South African Journal of Philosophy feminist philosopher Prof. Louise du Toit suggests “that it is at least plausible to assume that African women are not simply passively excluded from the echelons of philosophy, but that they seem to have actively chosen other avenues for intellectual expression, notably literature or fiction writing” (du Toit, 2008, 414). Du Toit ultimately argues that we must pay attention to the philosophical significance of African women’s literature and, in doing so, recognise the challenge this tradition poses to the tradition of Philosophy. She writes:
Resisting western philosophy’s tendency to subsume African women under the notion of ‘Man’, African women tell stories about their situatedness in the world. The narratives within this tradition do not only simply or merely ‘reflect’ an African women’s world, but it is to a large extent the founding political gesture with which African women deconstruct masculine and imperialist points of view on the world which claim to be neutral, but which in reality conform largely to masculine and colonial or neo-colonial desires and needs….These stories challenge and undermine the impulse of the masculine ‘colonisation’ of the feminine, whereby masculinity (like the west, and sometimes in collaboration with it) tries to break free from its need to hear its story told by the women (du Toit, 2008, 423).
In this paper I will explore the consequences of du Toit’s arguments with reference to women’s auto/biography, and in particular to Deborah Levy’s 2014 work Things I Don’t Want To Know and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions. Using work by Gayatri Spivak and Luce Irigaray to provide a framework in which to read both Levy and Mhlopo, I explore the ways in which (African) women’s writing challenges the traditional definition of Philosophy. In doing so, I also problematise the term “African” in relation to my claims regarding (African) women’s auto/biography. Additionally, I explore how these two women writers challenge mainstream feminist discourses. I examine how these voices speak across the (traditionally defined) borders of space and time to disrupt the neo-colonial, patriarchal and racist phallocentric logic in which we are all, albeit differently, situated. Ultimately, I aim to explore the philosophical significance of the narratives that these women offer us.
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Monographs by laura roberts
- Provides an overview of Irigaray’s broader psychoanalytic and philosophical contexts that have not as yet been acknowledged, giving important context for engaging with her more recent writings.
- Situates Luce Irigaray as a political philosopher, helping us to fully appreciate her political project and her challenge to western modernity and rationality.
- Connects the political, ethical and ontological aspects of Irigaray’s, bringing the concrete political features of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference to the fore
Engages with the intersections of race, class and coloniality in Irigaray’s work and connects it to decolonial thinkers more broadly.
Bringing together Luce Irigaray’s early psychoanalytically orientated writings with her more recent and more explicitly political writings, Irigaray and Politics weaves together the ontological, political and ethical dimensions of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference in imaginative ways.
Laura Roberts argues that Irigaray’s philosophical–political project must be read as a critique of constructions of western modernity and rationality. When appreciated in this way, it becomes clear how Irigaray’s thought makes profound interventions into contemporary political movements and decolonial thought – themes that have never been covered before in Irigaray scholarship. This enables readers to recognise that the question of sexual difference in Irigaray’s philosophy is concerned not only with refiguring politics and political action, but with the foundational structures that govern existence itself.
Journal by laura roberts
Publications by laura roberts
Book Reviews by laura roberts
Other Outputs by laura roberts
Teaching Documents by laura roberts
Thesis Abstract by laura roberts
Dr Michelle Boulous Walker, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
Associate Supervisor:
A/Professor Marguerite La Caze, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
External Examiners:
Prof Gail Schwab, Professor of French, Hoftstra University, New York, USA,
Prof Rachel Jones, Philosophy, George Mason University, Virginia, USA
Conference Presentations by laura roberts
Resisting western philosophy’s tendency to subsume African women under the notion of ‘Man’, African women tell stories about their situatedness in the world. The narratives within this tradition do not only simply or merely ‘reflect’ an African women’s world, but it is to a large extent the founding political gesture with which African women deconstruct masculine and imperialist points of view on the world which claim to be neutral, but which in reality conform largely to masculine and colonial or neo-colonial desires and needs….These stories challenge and undermine the impulse of the masculine ‘colonisation’ of the feminine, whereby masculinity (like the west, and sometimes in collaboration with it) tries to break free from its need to hear its story told by the women (du Toit, 2008, 423).
In this paper I will explore the consequences of du Toit’s arguments with reference to women’s auto/biography, and in particular to Deborah Levy’s 2014 work Things I Don’t Want To Know and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions. Using work by Gayatri Spivak and Luce Irigaray to provide a framework in which to read both Levy and Mhlopo, I explore the ways in which (African) women’s writing challenges the traditional definition of Philosophy. In doing so, I also problematise the term “African” in relation to my claims regarding (African) women’s auto/biography. Additionally, I explore how these two women writers challenge mainstream feminist discourses. I examine how these voices speak across the (traditionally defined) borders of space and time to disrupt the neo-colonial, patriarchal and racist phallocentric logic in which we are all, albeit differently, situated. Ultimately, I aim to explore the philosophical significance of the narratives that these women offer us.
- Provides an overview of Irigaray’s broader psychoanalytic and philosophical contexts that have not as yet been acknowledged, giving important context for engaging with her more recent writings.
- Situates Luce Irigaray as a political philosopher, helping us to fully appreciate her political project and her challenge to western modernity and rationality.
- Connects the political, ethical and ontological aspects of Irigaray’s, bringing the concrete political features of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference to the fore
Engages with the intersections of race, class and coloniality in Irigaray’s work and connects it to decolonial thinkers more broadly.
Bringing together Luce Irigaray’s early psychoanalytically orientated writings with her more recent and more explicitly political writings, Irigaray and Politics weaves together the ontological, political and ethical dimensions of Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference in imaginative ways.
Laura Roberts argues that Irigaray’s philosophical–political project must be read as a critique of constructions of western modernity and rationality. When appreciated in this way, it becomes clear how Irigaray’s thought makes profound interventions into contemporary political movements and decolonial thought – themes that have never been covered before in Irigaray scholarship. This enables readers to recognise that the question of sexual difference in Irigaray’s philosophy is concerned not only with refiguring politics and political action, but with the foundational structures that govern existence itself.
Dr Michelle Boulous Walker, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
Associate Supervisor:
A/Professor Marguerite La Caze, Philosophy, The University of Queensland.
External Examiners:
Prof Gail Schwab, Professor of French, Hoftstra University, New York, USA,
Prof Rachel Jones, Philosophy, George Mason University, Virginia, USA
Resisting western philosophy’s tendency to subsume African women under the notion of ‘Man’, African women tell stories about their situatedness in the world. The narratives within this tradition do not only simply or merely ‘reflect’ an African women’s world, but it is to a large extent the founding political gesture with which African women deconstruct masculine and imperialist points of view on the world which claim to be neutral, but which in reality conform largely to masculine and colonial or neo-colonial desires and needs….These stories challenge and undermine the impulse of the masculine ‘colonisation’ of the feminine, whereby masculinity (like the west, and sometimes in collaboration with it) tries to break free from its need to hear its story told by the women (du Toit, 2008, 423).
In this paper I will explore the consequences of du Toit’s arguments with reference to women’s auto/biography, and in particular to Deborah Levy’s 2014 work Things I Don’t Want To Know and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions. Using work by Gayatri Spivak and Luce Irigaray to provide a framework in which to read both Levy and Mhlopo, I explore the ways in which (African) women’s writing challenges the traditional definition of Philosophy. In doing so, I also problematise the term “African” in relation to my claims regarding (African) women’s auto/biography. Additionally, I explore how these two women writers challenge mainstream feminist discourses. I examine how these voices speak across the (traditionally defined) borders of space and time to disrupt the neo-colonial, patriarchal and racist phallocentric logic in which we are all, albeit differently, situated. Ultimately, I aim to explore the philosophical significance of the narratives that these women offer us.
Beauvoir uses Heidegger’s term Mitsein (being-with) to highlight how she views the relationship between male and female as a fundamental and (in Heideggerian terms) an ontological being-with relationship, in order to back up her claim that the oppressive relationship between man and woman “is not comparable to any other” (ibid). Beauvoir deliberately uses Heidegger’s term in order to highlight as well as to disrupt the ontological assumptions inherent in western culture that define woman as the inessential Other of Man.
If we read Beauvoir with Irigaray’s call for the recognition and creation of a positive feminine subjectivity in mind and if we understand this difference between the sexes as ontological though not in a traditional sense, I think we can see important links between Beauvoir’s and Irigaray’s work.
For Irigaray, the recognition of sexual difference is the burning issue of our age. Irigaray says, “wherever I turn, whether to philosophy, science or religion, I find this underlying and increasingly insistent question remains silenced” (Irigaray 1991:165). I think Irigaray accepts Beauvoir’s invitation in The Second Sex to break down the ontological assumptions and structures in Western culture that define woman as man’s inessential other. This link between Irigaray and Beauvoir is helpful for my reading of Irigaray as a philosopher of ontology and to understand properly her philosophy as a psychoanalytically inspired phenomenological sexuate ontology. If we think of Irigaray’s project as inspired by Beauvoir’s identification of this problematic (narcissistic? traditional?) ontological relation between men and woman, perhaps we can better understand Irigaray’s call for the recognition of a non-traditional ontological status of sexuate difference and, in turn, better understand the way in which Irigaray views other differences of race or religion, for example.
One of Luce Irigaray’s concerns is that when we speak of differences in terms of ‘race’ we are returning to a past logic that Luce Irigaray is, and always has been, working constantly to overcome. According to her we must understand diversity in women’s daily lives as specific. However, to be able to do this, we have to renegotiate the relationship between the material daily realities of women’s lives and cultural categories of, for example, ‘race’. In Between East and West: From Singularity to Community Luce Irigaray attempts to provide an example of how to express or experience this relationship by writing about her own personal experiences of yoga and Eastern philosophy as a woman situated within Western culture/s.
While I do not deny that an analysis of racial or cultural difference is important I think this recent criticism forgets that when Luce Irigaray speaks of sexual, and more recently of sexuate difference, it does not equate it to an ideal or impossible couple, or to a biological difference, or to the problem of sexual oppression. Sexuate difference, for Luce Irigaray, is a mode of being in the world – an ontological reality – that is outside of our current understanding, beyond any way of being or thinking that dominates life in contemporary Western societies. And, yet, even though sexuate difference stays beyond our current understanding, it is always intimately tied to our embodied daily realities. Importantly, sexuate difference calls for the recognition of a passage between nature and culture, biology and spirit, an articulation between the sensible and transcendental, that permits two to enter into relation with one another without either being sacrificed or submitted to the other differently sexuate subjects.