Luce Irigaray’s aqueous ontology. Contributions for a hydrofeminist new materialism

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35305/zf.vi29.193

Keywords:

new materialisms, water, body, feminism, phalogocentrism

Abstract

Luce Irigaray’s feminist ideas critically signal the existence of a phallogocentric symbolic order. The emphasis has been on her contribution’s explanations concerning women’s inability to emerge under their own terms, and only in the shackles of representational mediation that traps them as a degraded otherness of the Same. Far less attention has been granted to her ontological reflections that postulate the dangerousness of the gestational and generative potential of matter regarding an order that abstracts the origin and sustains the disembodied pretense of the Logos. Under the prism of North American feminist post-structuralism —from the last decades of the 20th century— the continuity between femininity and matter has been poorly interpreted and, consequently, her proposal on the subject of difference was reviled under the notion of essentialism. The current contribution intends to put in action Astrida Neimanis’ new feminist materialism. Her ontologic concern about Water’s materiality provides us with tools that allow, on the one hand, to bring justice to the complexity of Irigaray’s liquid and aqueous proposal and, on the other hand, to consolidate a post-human and transcorporeal look for a hydrofeminism that cultivates a resposability towards the world and acknowledges our debt and material continuity with it.

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Author Biography

Ariel Martínez, Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (UNLP/CONICET)

Doctor en Psicología por la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Profesor en la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de las Educación de la UNLP. Investigador del Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigaciones en Género (CInIG), perteneciente al Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (IdIHCS, UNLP/CONICET).

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Published

2021-11-12

How to Cite

Martínez, A. (2021). Luce Irigaray’s aqueous ontology. Contributions for a hydrofeminist new materialism. Zona Franca, (29), 16–45. https://doi.org/10.35305/zf.vi29.193