Cont Philos Rev (2010) 43:111126

DOI 10.1007/s11007-010-9136-7

Sexuate difference, ontological difference:

Between Irigaray and Heidegger

Anne van Leeuwen

Published online: 10 April 2010

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Animating Luce Irigarays oeuvre are two indissociable projects: the
disruption of Western metaphysics and the thinking of sexual difference. The
intersection of these two projects implies that any attempt to think through the
meaning and significance of Irigarays notoriously fraught invocation of sexual
difference must take seriously the way in which this invocation is itself always
already inflected by her disruptive gesture. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate
one moment of this intersection by focusing on her critical engagement with He-
idegger. In Loubli de lair, Irigaray criticizes Heideggers interpretation of the
principle of identity as instantiating the same neglect of sexual difference that has
been inscribed throughout the history of Western metaphysics. Moreover, Irigaray
identifies the vestigial traces of this metaphysical legacy in Heideggers commit-
ments to phenomenology. My claim, however, is that if we turn to Derridas second
Geschlecht essay in order to mediate between Irigaray and Heidegger, the coim-
plicative nature of their projects comes into focus: on one hand, Derrida identifies
within Heideggers work an incipient articulation of the very notion of sexuate
difference that, on Irigarays reading, Heideggers work requires but nonetheless
elides; on the other hand, Derridas rereading of Heideggers phenomenological
commitments corroborates the philosophical significance of Irigarays intervention
by recontextualizing the parameters that delimit her invocation of sexuate
difference.

Keywords Irigaray
Heidegger
Derrida
Sexual difference
Phenomenology

The article title is borrowed from Derrida, alludes to the important role that his work plays in creating a
pathway between Irigaray and Heidegger. While I discuss explicitly only Derridas second Geschlecht
essay, his first essay is of central significance to this project.

A. van Leeuwen (&)

The New School, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: vanla091@newschool.edu

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112 A. van Leeuwen

Luce Irigarays work contains two indissociable projects: the disruption of Western
metaphysics and the thinking of sexuate difference. If we are to take seriously the
philosophical richness of her work, then we must attempt to make sense of these two
projects as co-implicative. Near the beginning of Speculum, Irigaray gestures in
precisely this direction:
[o]ne can only agree in passing that it is impossible exhaustively to represent
what woman might be, given that a certain economy of representation
inadequately perceived by psychoanalysis, at least in the scientific discourse
that it speaksfunctions through a tribute to woman that is never paid or even
assessed. The whole problematic of Being has been elaborated thanks to that
loan.1
We might do well to dwell on this last remark, Irigarays claim that through the
grace of a loan that is never acknowledged or assessed the whole problematic of
Being has been elaborated. Here Irigaray indicts the constitutive exclusion upon
which the formulation of the problematic of Being has emerged. While much
attention has been devoted to Irigarays incisive critique of the constitutive
exclusion of woman, too little attention has been paid to her concomitant insistence
that it is the domain of ontology that is constituted through this exclusion and, thus,
that it is nothing less than the question of Being that is implicated by her critique.2
We must ask, then, precisely how Irigaray understands the formulation of the
problematic of Being. In other words, given that the constitutive exclusion of
woman has furnished the ground, what, according to Irigaray, is the ontological
edifice emergent from this unacknowledged loan?
To begin, we will see that Irigaray is deeply critical of the way in which
Parmenides principle of identity has been taken up in and as the history of
metaphysics at the cost of forgetting sexuate difference.3 Engaging with Heideg-
gers work as the culminating moment of this metaphysical legacy, Irigaray
identifies Heideggers interpretation of the principle of identity, an interpretation
that expresses the implicit commitments of his phenomenological ontology,4 as
instantiating the forgetting of sexuate difference that is at the heart of metaphysics.
Next, in the second section, we will see that Irigaray identifies this metaphysical
legacy, one that remains vestigially present in Heideggers work, alternately as the
univocity of thinking and Being or as the elision of carnality from the domain of
ontology. Yet despite her devastating critique, by turning to Derridas second
Geschlecht essay in the third section of this paper I attempt to motivate a rereading
of Heideggers project. Derridas essay allows us to retrojectively locate in
Heideggers work the latent possibility of articulating a phenomenological ontology

1
Irigaray (1985, p. 21, my italics). While elsewhere I attempt to trace this intersection throughout
Irigarays work, in this paper I focus on her later work.
2
That, until relatively recently, Irigarays interventions in ontology have gone largely unnoticed
indicates, more broadly, as she herself insists, that the philosophical dimension of [her] writing is not
sufficiently taken into account (Irigaray 2000, p. 10).
3
At the origin of metaphysics: to beto thinkthe same (Irigaray 1999, p. 17).
4
Heidegger (1962, p. 60).

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 113

that takes sexuate difference rather than the univocity of Dasein as its point of
departure. Finally, returning to Irigarays work in the fourth section, we will be in a
position to understand the philosophical salience of sexuate difference as at once the
expression of her deep commitment to and critique of Heideggarian phenomeno-
logical ontology: By reformulating the principle of identity, by rethinking the
implicit commitments of phenomenological ontology, Irigaray is able to reformulate
the problematic of Being in accordance with sexuate difference.

In this section, I elaborate Irigarays engagement with and critique of Heideggers

onto-phenomenological project through her critique of his interpretation of the
principle of identity.5 For Heidegger, philosophy, properly understood, is phenom-
enological ontology: Being is the phenomenal object of our philosophical inquiries.6
As a consequence of this designation, philosophy, as phenomenological ontology,
begins with an interpretation of that entity which is ontologico-ontically
distinctive, Dasein.7 Heideggers interpretation of the principle of identity,
however, reveals the implicit commitments at stake within his phenomenological
ontology that proceeds as a hermeneutic of Dasein. According to Heidegger, the
principle of identity, [f]or the same perceiving (thinking) as well as being,8
identifies Dasein as the very instantiation of this principle, the univocal, mediating
locus of thinking and Being. Heideggers interpretation of the principle of identity,
then, expresses his commitment to a phenomenological ontology that takes the
univocity of Dasein as its point of departure. My claim in this section is that
Irigarays critique of Heideggers interpretation of the principle of identity is a
critique of the univocity of Dasein that is the all too often unthematized assumption
of his phenomenological ontology.
If we are to understand Irigarays engagement with Heidegger, we must briefly
situate the notion of phenomenological ontology in his work. In Being and Time
Heidegger tells us that only as phenomenology, is ontology possible.9 A few
pages later, Heidegger clarifies this remark, insisting that ontology must proceed
methodologically as phenomenology because it is Being itself that constitutes the
properly phenomenological sense of a phenomenon. As Heidegger tells us,
ontology and phenomenology are not two distinct philosophical disciplines
among others. These terms characterize philosophy itself with regard to its

5
In this section, through my discussion of the phenomenological dimensions of Heideggers work, my
intention is not to suggest that we must understand Heideggers project as phenomenological in a
traditional, Husserlian sense. Instead, my claim is that Heidegger understands his work as phenome-
nological, and that Irigarays project is located in the interstices of Heideggers phenomenological
ontology.
6
Heidegger (1962, p. 62).
7
Ibid., p. 61.
8
Heidegger (2002, p. 27).
9
Heidegger (1962, p. 600).

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114 A. van Leeuwen

object and its way of treating that object. Philosophy is universal phenom-
enological ontology, and takes its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein,
which, as an analytic of existence, has made fast the guiding-line for all
philosophical inquiry at the point where it arises and to which returns.10
While there is much at stake in these remarks, we can direct our attention toward
two claims. First, Heideggers claim that the Being of entities is the proper meaning
of phenomena, a claim which, if we accept it, also entails that the proper method of
inquiry into the meaning of Being is phenomenological. Second, Heideggers claim
that this phenomenological ontology proceeds as a hermeneutic of Dasein.
Beginning with the first claim, we see that Heidegger has redefined, contra the
phenomenological tradition, what he takes to be the properly phenomenological
meaning of a phenomenon. While Heidegger accepts that a phenomenon is that
which shows itself in itself,11 he rejects the claim that we should primarily conflate
that which shows itself in itself with those entities which are accessible through
empirical intuition in, let us say, Kants sense.12 While the empirical intuition of
entities provides us with an ordinary understanding of phenomena, this definition is
not yet adequate for phenomenology.13
Instead, Heidegger tells us that [i]n the phenomenological conception of
phenomenon what one has in mind as that which shows itself is the Being of
entities, its meaning, its modifications and derivatives.14 The properly phenom-
enological conception of phenomena is not the self-showing of entities themselves,
but rather the Being of these entities. This is because, according to Heidegger, a
phenomenon is that which by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever
we exhibit something explicitly,15 belonging to that which shows itself,
constituting its meaning and its ground.16 Insofar as Being, according to
Heidegger, does indeed constitute the meaning and ground of entities, it is Being
itself that is a phenomenal object.
Having very schematically sketched the basic onto-phenomenological horizon of
Heideggers work, we are now in a position to take up the second of Heideggers
claims, a claim that will be decisive for understanding Irigarays commitments to
Heideggers work: his claim that phenomenological ontology takes its departure
from the hermeneutic of Dasein.17 Once again, however, we see that everything
hinges on Heideggers description of Being as a phenomenon and his claim that it is
Dasein that is the being through which the meaning and structures of Being are
manifest. Heidegger tells us that

10
Ibid., p. 62.
11
Ibid., p. 54.
12
Ibid., p. 54.
13
Ibid., p. 54.
14
Ibid., p. 60.
15
Ibid., p. 59.
16
Ibid., p. 59.
17
Ibid., p. 62.

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 115

[b]ecause phenomena, as understood phenomenologically, are never anything

but what goes to make up Being, while Being is in every case the Being of
some entity, we must first bring forward the entities themselves if it is our aim
that Being should be laid bare; and we must do this in the right way [] And
in this way the ordinary conception of phenomenon becomes philosophically
relevant. If our analysis is to be authentic, its aim is such that the prior task of
assuring ourselves phenomenologically of that entity which is to serve as our
example, has already been prescribed as our point of departure.18
Heidegger has already told us that Dasein, that entity which is ontologico-ontically
distinctive,19 is the being through which the meaning and structures of Being are
manifest, structures that are made known to Daseins understanding of Being.20
Indeed for Heidegger, an [u]nderstanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic
of Daseins Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.21 We can
see, then, why is it that phenomenological ontology proceeds as a hermeneutic of
Dasein: A phenomenological interpretation of the existence of Dasein is an
articulation of the structures and meaning of Being.
Turning to Irigarays critique of Heideggers interpretation of the principle of
identity, we begin to reveal the implicit assumptions that are at stake in Heideggers
description of Dasein as the point of departure for phenomenological ontology. In
its seemingly most innocuous formulation, we might contend that what is at stake in
Parmenides formulation of identity, to be and to think the same,22 is the claim
that one cannot think that which is not. The boundaries of thinking and being,
simply put, are coincident. Yet, as Irigaray would have us see, the history of
metaphysics has rendered this claim far from innocuously. Irigaray, closely reading
Heideggers discussion of this principle in Identity and Difference, states that
identity signifies, according to Heidegger, a being the same with itself.23 Identity,
Heidegger tells us, according to the history of metaphysics, is primarily understood
as the self-sameness or unity of a thing: A is A. And yet Heidegger insists that the
principle of identity, even in this preponderant interpretation, speaks not merely of
the self-sameness of a thing but of the sameness of a thing with itself.24 The
principle of identity, according to Heidegger, is a principle of relationality, where
this relation cannot be thought apart from the mediation of that which gathers
together the parts of the identity relation into a unity. As he insists,
[t]he more fitting formulation of the principle of identity A=A would
accordingly mean not only that every A is itself the same; but rather that every

18
Ibid., p. 61.
19
Ibid., p. 61.
20
Ibid., p. 62.
21
Ibid., p. 32.
22
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
23
Ibid., p. 69.
24
As Irigaray suggests, for Heidegger [t]his unity of self with self does not persist in an amorphous
uniformity; it needs mediations in order to be constituted. It is constructed and not simply received as a
whole (ibid., p. 69).

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116 A. van Leeuwen

A is itself the same with itself. Sameness implies the relation of with, that is,
a mediation, a connection, a synthesis: the unification into a unity.25
Consequently, according to Heidegger, we fundamentally misunderstand the nature
of identity if we interpret this self-sameness or unity as the stale emptiness of that
which, in itself without relation, persists in monotony.26
Having established the necessarily relational dimension of identity, Heidegger
claims that he has located in Parmenides formulation a more originary, founding
sense of identity. This relational dimension of identity should not primarily be
understood at the ontical level as the being-side-by-side of two present-at-hand
things. Instead, our metaphysical or ontical conception of identity as a property of
beings is founded upon this more originary sense of identity as an ontological
principle. Returning to Parmenides formulation, for the same perceiving
(thinking) as well as Being,27 Heidegger claims that Parmenides principle,
understood ontologically, speaks of the mediation, the belonging together of
thinking and Being.
According to Heidegger, the principle of identity, now properly understood as an
ontological principle, expresses the basic thought of his phenomenological ontology.
This ontology, with Being as its phenomenal object, begins with an interpretation of
that being which is ontologically distinct: Dasein is the locus of the co-belonging of
thinking and the question of Being. In other words, for Heidegger, Parmenides
principle expresses the thought that man is essentially this relationship of responding
to Being, and he is only this;28 correlatively, it is man, open toward Being, who
alone lets Being arrive as presence.29 For Heidegger, this is because Dasein is
fundamentally the relation of openness to Being and because Being can become
present only in the horizon of Daseins openness to the question of Being.
At this juncture, we can begin to trace Irigarays critique of Heideggers
interpretation of the principle of identity as the locus of her critique of the implicit
assumptions at stake in his phenomenological ontology. As Irigaray incisively
observes, in the polysemy of interpretations that Parmenides principle supports,
Heideggers interpretation privileges sameness at the expense of difference. Indeed,
the relational or mediative character of identity of which Heidegger speaks lends
itself, as Irigaray insists, to at least two diametrically opposed interpretations: on
one hand, we might interpret the mediation of identity as a co-belonging in a whole
where each takes place;30 on the other hand, identity might be understood as the
belonging of parts to the same.31 By choosing the latter interpretation, Heidegger
conflates the unity of identity with the subsumption of parts within sameness.32

25
Heidegger (2002, pp. 2425).
26
Ibid., p. 25.
27
Ibid., p. 27.
28
Ibid., p. 31.
29
Ibid., p. 31.
30
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
31
Ibid., p. 69.
32
Ibid., p. 69.

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 117

Indeed as Heidegger admits, [f]or something to be the same, one is always enough.
Two are not needed.33 On Heideggers interpretation, identity remains the
relational mediation of parts which are subsumed within sameness, rather than a co-
belonging together of two that are irreducibly different. By conflating identity with
belonging together within sameness, Irigaray tells us that Heidegger reduces the
to be and to thinkthe same, attributed to Parmenides to a belonging of Being
and of thinking to the same.34
What is fundamentally at stake in Irigarays critique is her insistence that
Heideggers interpretation of identity, and thus Heideggers project of phenome-
nological ontology, always already departs from a partial or fragmented interpre-
tation of human identity. Indeed as we have seen, Heidegger interprets the principle
of identity ontologically: This logical principle is most properly understood
ontologically as the articulation of the being of Dasein. Yet if the principle of
identity is ineliminably a principle of human identity, then, for Irigaray, Heideggers
interpretation of this principle is the articulation of a truncated and impoverished
conception of human identity. Moreover, insofar as Heideggers interpretation of
identity expresses the implicit commitment of his phenomenological ontology, then
the elaboration of the structures of Being articulated from this starting point will
similarly express the paucity and partiality of this point of departure.
For Irigaray, the partiality of Heideggers fragmented articulation of identity can
be located in its purported neutrality. According to Irigaray, Heidegger has conflated
human identity with the identity of a single, neutral and thus univocal being.35 We
see this move most clearly, perhaps, in The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.
Here Heidegger insists that he invoked the term Dasein to emphasize its
metaphysical neutrality. Dasein, the mediating locus of thinking and Being, is
neutralized of all founded ontical, metaphysical designations. In other words, the
neutrality of this designation has the effect of reducing or subtracting every
anthropological, ethical or metaphysical predetermination by means of that
neutralization, so as to keep nothing but a relation to itself, bare relation, to the
Being of its being.36 As neutral, Heidegger will of course insist that Dasein is
neither of the two sexes.37
The purported neutrality of Dasein at stake in Heideggers interpretation of
identity betrays the implicit assumption of his phenomenological ontology that
human identity, human being, is One. For Irigaray, this assumption masks its
partiality in the constitution of a phenomenological ontology that has interpreted the
meaning of Being through a single, neutral being. Heideggers interpretation of the
principle of identity merely makes this illicit assumption perspicuous. For Irigaray,

33
Heidegger (2002, pp. 2324).
34
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
35
Irigaray tells us that [m]an has not thought Being starting radically enough from what he is (ibid.,
p. 91).
36
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
37
Heidegger (1984, p. 136). This is a claim, of course, that is highly suggestive for Derrida in his first
Geschlecht essay.

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in his articulation of phenomenological ontology, then, Heidegger refuses to

consider that there does not exist a world proper to all subjects,38 he refuses to
consider that the meaning of Being cannot be elaborated beginning from the elision
of difference.

Having discussed Irigarays critique of Heideggers interpretation of Parmenidean

identity as the expression of his commitment to a phenomenological ontology that
takes the univocity of Dasein as its point of departure, in this section I will trace the
implications of this assumption. On one hand, beginning from the assumed
univocity of Dasein, thinking, always already understood as discursivity, is
conflated with a mono-logical or homo-logous understanding of language: a
potentially dia-logical exchange is reduced to a tautology, a monologue in two
voices.39 On the other hand, Being remains caught up in its Eleatic determinations:
The Being which is an issue is always already understood as the Being of a univocal
being. The question of Being thus remains unmarked by difference, and at the same
time, the ontological edifice coincident with this interpretation of identity
constitutively elides carnality from the domain of ontology. That Heideggers
phenomenological ontology takes the univocity of Dasein as its point of departure
constitutes the decisive moment, then, in the reification of these vestigial
metaphysical commitments in his work.
For Irigaray, by positing Dasein as a neutral, univocal being, Heidegger remains
mired in a metaphysics committed to intangible essences and more or less magical
ontologies,40 whose fantastical qualities are an expression of its imaginary,
univocal being and this beings spectral relationship to its Being. As Irigaray tells
us,
the two beings and Beings of the human species have become the two poles of
a single human being who, in fact, does not exist. Invented by a masculine
thinking and according to its necessities, this more or less ghostly being
presents rather the characteristics of a masculine subject.41
According to Irigaray, the univocal being and the ontological edifice coincident with
the articulation of the Being of this being is a constitutive fiction, a ghost or specter
of what we might describe as the vestiges of the sustained fantastical, fragmented or
partial interpretation of Dasein that dominates Heideggers work.
Within this ontology, Being and thinking, understood as belonging to a neutral,
universal and thus univocal being, remain similarly untouched by difference. On
one hand, the question of Being is subsumed within the totalizing arc, the closed

38
Irigaray (2002, p. 8).
39
Ibid., p. 47. As Irigaray tells us, in this way, of course, speech speaks with itself alone. No one and
nothing outside of it dialogues with its meaning: the monologue closes up in a circle (ibid., p. 32).
40
Ibid., p. 10.
41
Ibid., p. 107.

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 119

circle, that constitutes the boundaries of this univocal being. As Irigaray contends,
from Heideggers univocal interpretation of Dasein that becomes perspicuous in his
interpretation of identity,
[t]he Being to which man opens himself, pays attention, corresponds, always
belongs to his world. That does not amount to saying that everything in this
world is the work of man but that he has appropriated transpropriated the
whole to himself.42
So long as Dasein is understood univocally, then the Being to which Dasein
constitutively corresponds will remain unmarked by difference.43 The Eleatic
metaphysical legacy, consequently, remains uninterrupted: Being remains One.
On the other hand, from Heideggers univocal interpretation of identity, thinking
is similarly inscribed within sameness. Insofar as Dasein is unscathed by difference,
the thinking of Being that belongs essentially to the being of Dasein is similarly
unmarked by difference. The thinking of Being, thus, can be articulated in neutral,
universal terms since Heidegger has relegated all difference to the ontic realm as
that which is expunged from the domain of thinking within fundamental ontology,
as inessential to the thinking of Being.
On this model, thinking is reduced to the status of monologue: the thinking or
speaking the same way, in the same language to other of the same.44 As Irigaray
expresses, this conception of language, of logos, indeed of wisdom constrains [the
philosopher] to remain among those like himself without confronting the delicate
relational, but also logical, problems that a dialogue with one or several different
subjects poses, or would pose.45 To understand language dia-logically would
require the existence of two beings, two kinds of logic, two ways of thinking, two
ways of speaking and listening that could not be subsumed within one unifying,
synoptic whole.46 Yet it is precisely these conditions of genuine dialogue that this
univocal interpretation of identity cannot support.47
This mono-logical model of thinking and Being, this mono-logical phenomeno-
logical ontology is decisive, according to Irigaray, for the elision of carnality from the

42
Ibid., pp. 6970.
43
The predominant mediation in the perspective of Western identity emerges from the relation of the
same with itself. Being is then understood as Being of the being of only one subject, historically
masculine, still forgetful of the fact that the human as such is characterized by a specific way of entering
into relation with a human different from oneself, a specific way of transforming instinctive attraction into
a desire attentive to the Being of the other (ibid., p. 89).
44
For Irigaray, insofar as speaking is always already submitted to a logic of the same, the speech
between two is already bound in a same that nullifies their differences and reduces their exchange to a
tautology, an already programmed scenography, a monologue in two voices (ibid., p. 47).
45
Ibid., p. 5.
46
What the scientist cannot tolerate, without changing logic, is that a living subject near to him, on the
same earth, sometimes in the same house, claims to enter into a rational debate starting from a logic that is
not his own (ibid., p. 104).
47
Dialogue is then limited to a complicity in the same saying, the same world, and not considered a
novel production of speech determined by the context of an exchange of difference (ibid., p. 35).

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history of Western metaphysics.48 Indeed we could suggest that this univocal ontology
always already requires its elision. Within this phenomenological ontology in which
the principle of identity is the articulation of a fictive univocal being and the thinking of
Being is reduced to a quasi-magical activity, carnality is necessarily relegated to the
status of that which is always already informed by thought, that which, as inarticulate,
a-morphous materiality, is inessential to the thinking of Being.
Once again, Irigaray identifies precisely this moment in Heideggers work. By
locating the thinking of Being as the central task of philosophy and by positing the
ontological difference as essential to the thinking of Being, Heidegger seems to
extrapolate the to be from quotidian living or speaking.49 Having elided
carnality from the thinking of Being, carnality or materiality is then relegated to the
status of concretized facticity, as that which does not rise to the height of
ontological difference.50 With the institution of the ontological difference, the
realm of ontology, the thinking of Being, is cleanly divorced from the ontic realm,
the realm of beings. The carnal, the material, the living can then be relegated to the
purview of metaphysical discourses as outside the domain of fundamental ontology,
outside the scope of phenomenology. As Irigaray expresses, [o]f what is a being
can be posed as a question. Of what [is] Being is not posed. It is, always, pre-
supposed. At least since Parmenides: to be and to think being the Same. And the
question of what is thought made, being left unthought.51 If the boundaries of
Being and thinking are delimited by a univocal being, if Being is always already
stripped of its carnal vestiges, then the possibility of interrogating the meaning of
Being in terms of carnality or materiality has been disallowed from the outset.
What Irigaray shows us, then, is the sense in which Heideggers interpretation of
identity, his articulation of our logical commitments as the expression of the
univocity of Dasein, is the foundation of our metaphysical edifice. On the basis of
this starting point we have remained committed at once to an ontology of sameness,
an ontology committed to the univocity of thinking and Being, and, simultaneously,
to the elision of carnality from the domain of ontology. For Irigaray, if we are to
disrupt this edifice, we must attempt to reformulate the principle of identity itself as
the starting point of a phenomenological ontology that takes sexuate difference
rather than neutrality as its point of departure.

Despite the thoroughgoing critique of Heidegger in the two previous sections, in this
section I gesture toward the possibility of locating a moment of deep congruence

48
Philosophy, reduced to the love of wisdom, is conflated with a traffic in fabricated essences, an
exchange of man-made objects among those who are the same (ibid., p. 4). Thinking, with metaphysics
as its paradigmatic instantiation, is [c]onfused with a conceptual translation of the real, a formal
knowledge, sophia is often reduced to a mental exercise (ibid., pp. 23).
49
Ibid., p. xiii.
50
Ibid., p. 66.
51
Irigaray (1999, p. 3).

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 121

between Irigaray and Heidegger, one which lends cogency to both of their
projects.52 Turning to Derridas second Geschlecht essay, I argue that through a
retrojective reading of Heidegger, one that is deeply informed by Irigarays project,
we can suggest, on one hand, that Heideggers work already gestures toward the
possibility of articulating a phenomenological ontology that begins from sexuate
difference. On the other hand, through this Derridean re-reading of Heidegger, we
can also begin to articulate more clearly the sense of sexuate difference at stake in
Irigarays phenomenological ontology.
On the face of it, however, it is not immediately transparent that Derridas essay
provides a useful lens to rectify the impoverished status of sexual difference in
Heideggers work. Indeed, in this second essay, Derrida seems to have largely
abandoned the question of sexual difference that he raises in the first Geschlecht
essay in favor of other resonances of this polysemic concept that nonetheless
remains as its title. And yet, we might suggest that in this second essay, Derrida is
primarily attempting to answer a question that he himself raised in the first essay:
[h]as a discourse on sexuality ever been presented not belonging to any of these
registers,53 a discourse that does not reduce the carnality of sexual difference to an
ontical difference, a discourse in which sexuality is not understood metaphysically?
If it is the case that this question is the central question of Derridas second
Geschlecht essay, then rather than abandoning the issue of sexual difference, in fact
sexual difference remains of central significance. Derrida, we might suggest, is
attempting to reveal the way in which Heideggers work gestures toward precisely
the possibility of articulating a discourse on sexuality that, far from shoring up the
boundaries of metaphysics through its elision, dissolves its very ground.
In order to think through this possibility, Derrida asks us to linger over the
polysemic richness of the word Geschlecht. In its polysemy Geschlecht designates a
gamut of concepts, including sex, race, species, genus, gender, stock, family,
generation or genealogy.54 Narrowing down these significations, Derrida begins by
inquiring into the use of Geschlecht to designate a notion of we human beings or the
human species. According to Derrida, it is this sense of Geschlecht that Heidegger
explicitly takes up in What is called Thinking? The concept Geschlecht is invoked
by Heidegger in this essay in order to broach the question of humanity: By what
marker, by what sign, according to Heidegger, is humanity constituted? According
to what organizing principle is humanity gathered together into a unified we? With
this question, Derrida is interrogating the starting point of phenomenological
ontology: How does that being who is to be our point of entry into the meaning of
Being show itself?
Recalling a line from Holderlins poem Mnemosyne, Derrida tells us that
Heidegger elaborates the human species of Geschlecht as Ein Zeichen sind,
52
Indeed we must be able to locate such a moment of congruence if we are to explain why it is the case
that Irigaray remains committed, as we will see, to a way of thinking that is deeply indebted to the project
of phenomenological ontology. As Irigaray tells us, [Heideggers] thought enlightened me at a certain
level more than any other and it has done so in a way that awakened my vigilance, political as well as
philosophical, rather than constraining me to submit to any program (Irigaray 2001, p. 315).
53
Derrida (1983, p. 73).
54
Derrida (1988, p. 162).

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deutungslos, which Derrida renders as [w]e are a monster void of sense.55

According to Derrida, what is at stake, for Heidegger, is the claim that we are a
monstrous signa sign that shows or signifies nothing, the pas de sens, no-sense,
and announces the loss of the tongue.56 Humanity is gathered together as the we
that (de)monstrates: monstration is the organizing principle of the human species.
And yet, in our monstrations, in our showing, we are monstrous: we are a monster
that shows [montre] nothing.57 In this sense, Derrida tell us, humanity, gathered
together as we, means to be gathered as a monstrosity of monstrasity [monstrosit],
a monstrosity of monstration.58
What Derrida wants us to see in this twofold sense of humanity as monstrous and
monstraous is the salience, for Heidegger, of the hand. According to Heidegger, it is
the hand that shows the we of humanity to be the we of monstration: the hand is a
monstrasity, the proper of man as the being of monstration. This distinguishes him
from every other Geschlecht, above all from the ape.59 It is the hand, then, that
shows the human species to be distinct from all other species of animals; the hand
makes manifest human beings in their distinctness. And yet Derrida insists that for
Heidegger the hand is not an organ: it cannot be reduced to the status of an object, a
being, a thing.60 As Derrida tells us, [i]f the hand is also, no one can deny this, an
organ for gripping (Greiforgan), that is not its essence, is not the hands essence in
the human being.61
According to Derrida, part of what is at stake in thinking the we of Geschlecht as
handedness is to think thought itself as handiwork, a work of the hand.62 To
describe thinking as handiwork is to implicate thinking in carnality. And yet, if the
hand is not reducible to an organ for grasping, then the designation of the human
species as handed, as the species of monstration, is not to submit this we to a
biological determination. It is to think the imbrications of corporeality and thought,
while simultaneously refusing to reduce handedness to its biological or organic
determinations, and as such, constitutes the refusal to reduce carnality to that which
lies outside the scope of the formulation of the problematic of Being.
Here we can begin to see the way in which Derridas intervention allows us to
locate a moment of affinity between Heideggers and Irigarays work. Indeed
Derridas essay provides us with the possibility of locating the resources within
Heideggers own text that would challenge the univocity of Dasein that, elsewhere,
as we have seen, he seems to take as the uncontroversial starting point of
55
Ibid., p. 167.
56
Ibid., p. 167.
57
Ibid., p. 167.
58
Ibid., p. 167.
59
Ibid., p. 169. As Heidegger tells us, Perhaps thinking, too, is just something like building a cabinet.
At any rate, it is a craft, a handicraft. Craft literally means the strength and skill in our hands. The hand
is a peculiar thing. In the common view, the hand is part of our bodily organism. But the hands essence
can never be determined, or explained, by its being an organ which can grasp. Apes, too, have organs that
can grasp, but they do not have hands (Heidegger 1968, p. 16).
60
Derrida (1988, p. 171).
61
Ibid., p. 173.
62
Ibid., p. 171.

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 123

phenomenological ontology. According to Derridas reading of Heidegger, what

distinguishes the human being from other entities, what marks Dasein as the being
through which the meaning of Being is to be interpreted, is a conception of thinking
that is bound to the situation of the body, while the body is understood otherwise
than as reducible to a thing, to a conglomeration of organs. Concomitantly, it is
through a notion of thinking as handed, Derrida suggests, that
will permit us to glimpse a dimension of Geschlecht as sex or sexual
difference apropos what is said or not said about the hand. Thinking is not
cerebral or disincarnate; the relation to the essence of being is a certain
manner of Dasein as Leib.63
If thinking is always already a kind of handiwork, then the thinking of Being is
inextricably tied to the situation of the body. And yet, the insinuation of carnality at
the heart of thinking opens up the possibility, indeed we could say, the necessity,
that thought, understood as handiwork, is sexuate. Simultaneously, however, we see
that the sexuate nature of thought cannot be reduced to or conflated with a notion of
organic sexual difference. We see, then, that if it is the hand, the handedness of
thinking that is the constitutive mark of Dasein, then we on our way towards a
phenomenological ontology that begins its elaboration of the meaning of Being
through its interpretation of human being as irreducibly marked by sexuate
difference.

As we have seen, for Irigaray, the fact that identity is conflated with the belonging
of parts to the same,64 that Heideggers phenomenological ontology takes the
univocity of Dasein as uncontroversial, implies that the most properly human
dimension of identity, being-in-relation in difference, is neglected.65 Having
gestured, in the previous section, toward the possibility of locating the resources for
a phenomenological ontology of sexuate difference in Heideggers work, we will
now return to Irigarays work to trace the way in which, through her commitments
to Heidegger, this phenomenological ontology reaches fruition. As we will see, if
we are to elaborate a phenomenological ontology that is not constitutively fictive,
then we must begin by reformulating the principle of identity as an expression of the
properly human dimension of identity; we must take sexuate difference as the
point of departure. In this section, then, I will elaborate Irigarays reformulation of
the principle of identity vis-a-vis sexuate difference and the new phenomenological
ontology that this rethinking occasions.
Given the salience of the notion of sexuate difference for Irigarays articulation
of this phenomenological ontology, we must begin with an explication of this idea.
She invokes the neologism sexuate difference in order reinterpret sexual difference
63
Ibid., p. 171.
64
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
65
Ibid., p. 90.

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as an irreducible dimension of human identity. While sexual difference, in our

ordinary understanding, is often treated as a biological or morphological category,
sexuate difference, while maintaining the carnal connotations of sexual difference,
insinuates this incarnate difference within the structure of subjectivity. As Irigaray
tells us, sexuate difference means that man and woman do not belong to one and
the same subjectivity, that subjectivity itself is neither neutral nor universal.66
Through, the notion of sexuate difference, Irigaray wants us to see that humanity,
human subjectivity is not One but two.
The philosophical implications of insisting on the irreducibility of sexuate
difference are enormous. If, as we have suggested, the interpretation of Parmenides
principle that we see culminating in Heideggers work, an interpretation that makes
explicit the underlying commitment of his phenomenological ontology, is the
expression a fictive understanding of Dasein, a model of human being as One, then
Irigarays invocation of sexuate difference undoes precisely this foundation,
destabilizing the ontological edifice emergent on this ground. In other words, if, as
we have shown, Heideggers interpretation of the principle of identity is the very
articulation of a phenomenological ontology that begins from the interpretation of
what goes to make up Being67 through a univocal being, then sexuate difference,
understood as an expression of the constitutive duality of human identity, already
implies a reformulation of this principle. That is, if human identity is sexuate, and if
phenomenological ontology proceeds as a hermeneutic of human existence, then the
twoness of sexuate human identity implies a reformulation of the very starting point
of phenomenological ontology, and thus a reformulation of the principle of identity
in accordance with this duality.
For Irigaray, it is precisely such a reformulation that is at stake when she speaks
of identity as a co-belonging in a whole where each takes place,68 or as a
difference between two terms autonomous to each other which, at the first and last
level, constitute a unity.69 Through the notion of sexuate difference we can begin
to gain access to the polysemic richness of Parmenides principle, a richness that
Heideggers interpretation of identity elides. Rather than a submission to the same,
the belonging of thinking and Being to a single being, the principle of identity, for
Irigaray, speaks of the co-belonging of man and woman to a whole that is elaborated
between them, where neither constitute a whole or totality in and of themselves
apart from their relation in difference, nor can they be thought of as parts that can be
subsumed within sameness.
Through this reformulated conception of identity, Irigaray has transformed the
Heideggarian project of phenomenological ontology. Sexuate difference, as
constitutive of human identity, implies that we cannot gain access to the meaning
and structures of Being through the univocity of Dasein, through a fractured and
partial description of this identity without covering over difference and thereby
eliding what we fundamentally are as human beings. In other words, while not
66
Irigaray (2004, p. xii).
67
Heidegger (1962, p. 61).
68
Irigaray (2002, p. 69).
69
Ibid., p. 108.

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Sexuate difference, ontological difference 125

rejecting the method of phenomenological ontology, Irigaray reveals the necessity

of beginning the phenomenological investigation into the meaning of Being through
an interpretation of that being which, in showing itself to be distinct, is ineliminably
marked by sexuate difference.
Having reformulated this starting point, Irigaray gestures towards the implica-
tions of this new phenomenological ontology. Irigaray tells us that: [i]f the human
is divided into two, always open and in interaction in its unity, if the principle of
identity is understood in a way that is consonant with our properly human identity,
then the Being of each of its parts and of their common world no longer belong to a
traditional ontology.70 To reformulate identity as constituted by difference, to
reformulate the point of departure of phenomenological ontology, simultaneously
demands that we understand what goes to make up Being otherwise than through
a disincarnate, univocal model of thinking and Being. As Irigaray tells us,
I discovered that we cannot be tre (Being) without such an tre (Being)
becoming an essence, or falling back into a simple substance, outside of a
being in relation with an other who is different, and first of all with the other of
sexual difference. In such a relation, which undoes any fixed essence, or
substance, we can have access to our own human Being.71
For Irigaray, we can only have access to the meaning of Being if we begin from a
dia-logical interpretation of human identity. If human identity is irreducibly sexuate,
if the principle of identity articulates as the fundamental logical principle of
humanity Being-in-relation in difference, if phenomenological ontology begins
from an interpretation of sexuate difference, then we can no longer conceive of
Being univocally, nor in a way that always already elides the carnal dimension of
thinking and Being. To think human identity as irreducibly sexuate, to reformulate
the principle of identity in accordance with sexuate difference as A ? B = One,
is, on one hand, to insist upon the carnal dimension of the thinking of Being.
Sexuate difference, while not reducible to objectival facticity, is both inextricably
embroiled in our material or carnal being and simultaneously an irreducible
dimension of our subjectivity. Consequently, sexuate difference implies that
thinking is indissociable from carnality. On the other hand, sexuate difference also
implies that the thinking of Being is always already marked by sexuate difference:
Thinking belongs to a sexuate subject, a subject whose sexuate nature implies the
partiality of its thinking, while the Being to which this being corresponds is not the
whole of Being but the Being of a sexuate being.

What we have seen, then, is that the Irigarayan project, the reformulation of the
problematic of Being vis-a-vis sexuate difference, takes place through a departure
from and a return to Heideggers work. On one hand, Heideggers work represents

70
Ibid., p. 11.
71
Ibid., p. xiii.

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for Irigaray the most profound and systematic articulation of the metaphysical
edifice inaugurated through Parmenides principle of identity, an edifice sustained
by the forgetting of sexuate difference. On the other hand, through a return to
Heidegger, one that is in part made possible by Derridas work, and one that, as
Irigarays engagement reveals, challenges some of his implicit commitments while
simultaneously remaining faithful to the spirit of his thinking, we can begin to think
through the project of a phenomenological ontology that takes seriously the
philosophical significance of sexuate difference. And yet, we must bear in mind that
this is a return that is retrojectively constitutive of that to which it returns. Only
through a re-reading of Heidegger that is deeply informed by Irigarays project can
we locate this radical moment in Heideggers text, one which would begin to
absolve his project of its metaphysical vestiges.

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