Textures of light : vision and embodiment in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty

Abstract

Among recent commentaries on Western twentieth century theorists of vision, those which include Luce Irigaray refer to her as an anti-visual theorist. Such commentaries concentrate on Irigaray's analysis of metaphysical vision as a form of phallocentrism. By way of contrast, this thesis draws a line between the critical project of Speculum, in which Irigaray addresses the photology which is philosophy's concern, and a more provocative alliance which Irigaray makes with certain philosophers, including Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. These philosophers consider vision and embodiment as a nexus of signification, rather than in relation to abstract illumination, metaphysical light, or a disembodied eye. However, despite Merleau-Ponty's break with the concept of perception as a natural coincidence of consciousness and things, and Levinas's break with the self as a thematizable totality, both philosophers adhere to preconceived notions about the invisibility of the feminine.

Rather than devalorizing vision, Irigaray's challenge to Merleau-Ponty and Levinas is directed to their myopic sense of vision, which perpetuates feminine invisibility. In particular she identifies their lapses into familiar ways in their accounts of tactility, which for Merleau-Ponty is implicated in visibility and for Levinas is radically separate from visibility. Despite their differences, Irigaray argues that in both accounts, tactility is ultimately subordinated within an ocularcentric visual regime. What is most significant about Irigaray's engagement with Merleau-Ponty and Levinas is the determination with which she extends and develops their idiosyncratic and unique concepts of vision and embodiment, relating their work to an ethics of sexual difference in a way which gestures towards a new genealogy of light.