Review: Penelope Deutscher. A Politics of Impossible Difference: The Later Work of Luce Irigaray.

Abstract

Penelope Deutscher's study on Luce Irigaray revolves around a series of questions which have long troubled critics: "Why and how did Irigaray attempt to transform a philosophy emphasizing sexual difference into the basis for pro-feminist social and institutional reform? Why did she and other French feminist intellectuals turn away from the language of equal rights self-evident to the feminisms of most earlier historical periods?" (9). Deutscher provides us with a sophisticated but very readable analysis of Irigaray's works, which is not only focused on the later works (as the subtitle of the book announces), but which incorporates Irigaray's whole œuvre from Le langage des déments (1973) to Between East and West (2002).