Irreducible Other

This book suggests that Beauvoir and Irigaray can §find a meeting place. Conversation is possible. §Irigaray challenges Beauvoir's ontology and ethics. §This involves a questioning of epistemology and §metaphysics as well. Yet Beauvoir and Irigaray §sought to include women as subjects. Beauvoir was on §the verge of a new ontology, alluded to sexed §subjectivity but reproduced sexual sameness. §Irigaray posits a new ontology, considers the debt §to the mother, sexuate rights and a feminine §symbolic and divine. But their philosophies seem to §be incommensurate. The men in their lives provide a §partial connection. Sartre and Levi-Strauss invite §us to explore existentialism and structuralism. §Freud and Lacan enable us to reconsider§psychoanalysis and sexual specificity. Levinas §brings us into a stronger relationship with §phenomenology and ethics. This book seeks to find §the places and the spaces to forge authentic §relationships with the other sex valuing sexual §difference. There are possibilities for generous §listening and speaking. The ethical challenges and §existential conundrums of today force us to try §harder to create positive possibilities.