How “Speculum of the other woman” reveals the bias of Western thought

Irigaray started “Speculum of the other woman” with a simple idea – to explore the presence of women in Freud's psychoanalytical oeuvre. Realising ‘absence’ is a better word for it, she expanded her research to many figures within the history of philosophy, such as Plato and Descartes. While analysing the work of these different philosophers, she finds one commonality: the ultimate lack of the feminine. With this discovery, she begins deconstructing Western philosophy.

Typical within Western philosophy, science, or thinking in general, is the belief that if an idea or theory is to be of any value at all, it is because it holds a universal truth, posited by a neutral and objective observer (=subject). If we believe this, then – says Irigaray – the entire history of Western philosophy is worthless. The absence of the feminine in Western thinking points to a huge fallacy. The theories put forward by the philosophers are not universal, neutral or objective, but are instead of a particular male perspective that erases women as existing subjects.

Let’s examine this last statement via an example. In “Speculum of the other woman” Irigaray recalls how Freud defines women, not by creating a definition for women, but by compositing women as the negative image of men. Simply put, “what it means to be a man is to have a penis” and “what it means to be a woman is to not have a penis”. Women are thus not seen as their own sex, as a subject in and of itself, but are seen as the absence of ‘male’. Comparing this definition of women, with the – fortunately – more accurate definitions we have today, immediately exposes Freud’s thinking to not be objective or neutral, but specifically phallocentric. Freud, or any philosopher, is not a neutral observer discovering a universal truth, but a particular person, with a particular perspective on how the world is or should be, rendering Western philosophy’s claim on universality, neutrality, and objectivity false.      

Irigaray continues analysing other philosophers in this way, ultimately demonstrating how the masculine is the norm throughout Western philosophy, and how the feminine is eradicated from this mode of thinking. In “The sex that is not one”, she then sets out to envisage women into philosophy, literature, and Western culture in general, by devising an ‘ecriture feminine’, a form of expression in which women can exist, speak, create their own ideals and be particularly woman.

So, what makes this posthumanist?

Humanism is the belief in the potential of rational, objective humans. Irigaray’s deconstruction of Western philosophy, in which she demonstrated how ‘rational, objective humans’ really only included ‘(white) males’ and how this undermines any claim to objectivity or universality, also lends itself to humanism. If humanism is to realize what it set out to be, it must broaden its definition of ‘humans’ to include, you know, at least a majority of humans.

… Or even more than that…Our girl Braidotti is about to knock it out of the park. Keep reading ;) 

Posthuman: in every sense of the word

What is a subject? We have seen that in most places in the West, it is what man (emphasis on man) has defined it to be through hundreds of years of cultural, political, scientific discourse - and it looks like him.

As we read in Braidotti’s essay Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism, “subjectivity as a discursive and material practice is equated with rational […] behavior, whereas Otherness is defined as its negative opposite […] inscribed on a hierarchical scale that spells inferiority and means ‘to be worth less than’” (23). 

As Braidotti notes here, the subject, a notion which ideally denotes the singularity of a being, has come to become a uniform standard by which anything different is ostracized. In other words, subjectivity has been modelled after man, so anything that deviates from this is automatically cast aside - whether that is overtly or not.

These notions of otherness are not strange to the queer community, which is why posthumanist philosophy often finds common ground with queer discourse. 

While the subject we have invented in western culture inherently dominates all other forms of being, Posthumanism looks to undo and rethink it altogether, and this does not stop at human relations. It cannot go unnoticed that the same objectifying and alienating mechanisms of humanism are waged against our environment as well: 

“the worldview which equated mastery with rational scientific control over ‘others’ also militated against the respect for the diversity of living matters and of human cultures''. (Mies and Shiva, 1993). 

This is exactly what makes Braidotti’s philosophy trailblazing:  beyond inter-human relationships (‘human cultures’), it accounts for our relationship with the environment (‘living matters’) as well, “to assert the need for loving respect for diversity in both its human and non-human forms.” (Posthuman, 48).

Here is Braidotti elaborating on her idea of a nature-culture continuum:

“I define the critical posthuman subject within an eco-philosophy of multiple belongings, as a relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable. Posthuman subjectivity expresses [...] relationality and hence community building.” (Posthuman, 49)

The posthuman subjectivity Braidotti describes here is rid of the obstacle of self-centered individualism - the subject is now defined by its relation to others - human or non-human. Her philosophy affords us a way of being where the self is not defined negatively by its opposition to others but positively through its connection to them. 

It’s important to note that connection to human and non-human others is not to be confused with the annihilation of our differences. It would be pretty damn hard to not account for the fact that we are not fish. This is not an “I don’t see species” moment as much as it’s not an “I don’t see color” moment so...let us not. What is it then?

Braidotti’s philosophy is one of radical community building, in a way - radical in its inclusionary scope and bold demolition of the boundaries between humans, between non-humans. It’s ambitious and perhaps even utopian and way too untimely in relation to our societies - it’s posthumanist, after all.  However, the conversation on what it means to be a posthumanist individual addresses very real concerns about the constructs of our subjectivity, and, by extension, it problematizes what/who has historically been seen as an object, who has been excluded from community, and what effects this has had.  

Perhaps Braidotti’s posthumanism is a nod to what would happen when class-, race-, queer- and environmentalist struggles have amalgamated in our collective consciousness. But in any case, it is a demanding and thought-provoking philosophy that we could benefit from advising on our way to a revolutionarily inclusive way of being. 

See also:

Rosi Braidotti interview on sexual difference and embodiment: “Geometries of Passion”

Rosi Braidotti's Summer School 2021: “The Posthuman & New Materialism”

Receipts:

• Braidotti, Rosi. “Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism.” Anthropocene Feminism, by Richard A. Grusin, University of Minnesota Press, 2017, pp. 21–48.

• ---. The Posthuman. Polity Press, 2013.

• Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. London: Zed

  Books, 1993.