SOURCE: Burke, Carolyn. “Irigaray through the Looking Glass.” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (summer 1981): 288-306.

In the following essay, Burke discusses Irigaray's early works in the context of Lacanian and Derridean thought, examining how Irigaray's writing functions and whether it meets its own criteria.

It is no longer possible to go looking for woman, or for woman's feminity or for female sexuality. At least, they can not be found by means of any familiar mode of thought or knowledge—even if it is impossible to stop looking for them.

Jacques Derrida, Spurs/Eperons

Luce Irigaray is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and essayist whose work explores the possibility and impossibility of understanding “woman.” She has been active in the MLF (Mouvement de libération des femmes) in Paris since its early stages.¹ With the publication of Speculum de l'autre femme in 1974, her critiques of psychoanalytic and philosophical discourses began to be known...