Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Possibility of Feminist Phenomenology

Author(s): Anne van Leeuwen

Source: The Journal of Speculative Philosophy , Vol. 26, No. 2, SPECIAL ISSUE WITH THE
SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY (2012), pp. 474-484
Published by: Penn State University Press
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 jsp
Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the Possibility of
­Feminist Phenomenology

Anne van Leeuwen

The majority of philosophies have taken sexual difference for

granted without attempting to explain it.
—Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Sexual difference is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the

issue, of our age.
—Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference

It is quite easy to quickly pass over these two remarks without granting
them any particular significance or weight. And yet, if we linger upon these
statements for a moment, an altogether obvious but nevertheless impor-
tant affinity between Beauvoir and Irigaray comes into view. Indeed, we see
that what Beauvoir identifies as a failure of philosophical inquiry, Irigaray
formulates as its positive task. At stake for each of these thinkers is the pos-
sibility of raising the question of sexual difference as a philosophical question.
Of course, it is hardly remarkable to suggest that what these two canonical
feminist philosophers share is a desire to pose the question of sexual dif-
ference in these terms. This moment of congruence, then, is not signifi-
cant in and of itself but, rather, in virtue of the horizon of questioning that
is opened up by it. The issue it raises is this: What does it mean to pose

journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 26, no. 2, 2012

Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

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 the possibility of feminist phenomenology 475

the question of sexual difference as a philosophical question? Minimally,

for both Beauvoir and Irigaray, to take up this question in these terms is
to investigate the constitution of sexual difference rather than proceeding
from the givenness of this difference. Feminist philosophy begins, in other
words, by questioning the status of the object and the givenness of the
very thing that is at the center of its inquiry. In this sense, the possibility of
broaching sexual difference as a philosophical question is, for Beauvoir and
Irigaray, identical with the possibility of feminist phenomenology.
If the task of this essay is to elucidate this possibility, this task takes on a
new sense of urgency in light of the increasing prominence of new materi-
alist approaches in contemporary feminist theory. While these approaches
cannot be reduced to a single thesis or circumscribed in terms of a single
gesture, the articulation that is most relevant here concerns what has been
formulated in various guises as the challenge of immanence in relation to a
thinking of difference.1 The force of this challenge can be articulated in the
following terms:2 Phenomenology is ostensibly committed to the imma-
nence of philosophical inquiry; yet, insofar as it is also committed to a tran-
scendental method, broadly understood as an inquiry into the conditions of
that which shows itself within the domain of immanence, phenomenology
is ostensibly recalcitrant to a thinking of difference (i.e., the other, the con-
tingent, the new).3 That is, according to its materialist critics, phenomeno-
logical inquiry inevitably domesticates difference insofar as it asserts the
existence of a relation of heterogeneity and identity between phenomena
and the conditions of their appearance. As a result of this gesture, phenom-
enological inquiry appears to ineluctably co-opt and contain the emergence
of difference within the purview of sameness or identity. Thus, in its most
incisive articulation, the materialist turn calls into question the very pos-
sibility of a feminist philosophy that remains within the parameters of this
phenomenological project.4
By turning to the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray, however, I will attempt
to defend the possibility of feminist phenomenology in the wake of the new
materialist challenge. That is, accepting that a thinking difference is indeed
essential for feminist philosophy, I will attempt to show that, in differ-
ent ways, the phenomenological projects of Beauvoir and Irigaray take up
precisely this task. Having largely overlooked this moment of congruence
between these two thinkers, contemporary feminist thought finds itself in
the paradoxical position of having moved beyond a tradition that has not
yet taken place to the extent that the possibility of feminist ­phenomenology

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 476 anne van leeuwen

that is given expression in the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray has not yet
been fully elaborated.5 Consequently, not only do these new materialist
approaches impel renewed consideration of the possibility of feminist
­phenomenology, but elucidating this possibility in turn puts pressure on
the force of the new materialist challenge.

Part I: Beauvoir and the Ambiguous Disclosure of Sense

Over the past decade, the phenomenological significance of The Ethics

of Ambiguity has received increased attention in Beauvoir scholarship.6
­Beauvoir’s discussion of what she describes as a fundamental desire to dis-
close being (vouloir dèvoiler l’être) is often cited to corroborate and elucidate
this phenomenological interpretation. In continuity with this work, I offer
an account of the relationship between her discussion of disclosure and her
account of ambiguity in an effort to bring the parameters and stakes of her
commitment to phenomenology into view and thereby to suggest the sense
in which this commitment is compatible with a thinking of difference.
Before turning to The Ethics of Ambiguity, however, it is helpful to
­articulate the basic commitment to phenomenology that animates Beau-
voir’s project. Although at times her discussion appears to be allied more
closely with a particular interlocutor within the phenomenological tra-
dition, this commitment can nevertheless be delimited in sufficiently
broad terms to traverse the distance between her multiple interlocutors.
Minimally, then, her commitment to phenomenology is this: for Beauvoir,
philosophical inquiry is an inquiry into the constitution of sense, one that
proceeds as a transcendental investigation of phenomena.7 This commitment
involves a set of interrelated claims about the object and method of philo-
sophical inquiry. First, by taking phenomena as its object, this inquiry is
committed to the radical immanence of sense or the claim that being is
nothing outside of its appearance within a field of intentional acts of sense
constitution.8 Second, in its methodological commitment to transcendental
philosophy, phenomenology understands itself as an inquiry into the condi-
tions thanks to which sense is given.9 The crucial point, of course, is that the
first claim is merely the Janus face of the second and vice versa: that is, if
the commitment to the phenomenality of sense implies a reference to an
intentional field as the condition of its disclosure, then the investigation of
phenomena is ineluctably transcendental.

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 the possibility of feminist phenomenology 477

This provisional definition brings the stakes of Beauvoir’s project

into focus without allying it exclusively with any one of her interlocutors
within the phenomenological tradition.10 Indeed, throughout the text, she
repeatedly insists that the fundamental relation to being is a relationship of
disclosure (“vouloir dévoiler l’être”).11 For Beauvoir, the point of this insis-
tence is to show that there is an essential relationship between sense and
human existence, namely, that sense is revealed thanks to the existence
of the human being.12 In other words, human existence, understood as
constituting a horizon of disclosure, is the very condition for the appear-
ance of sense. But this is just to say that Beauvoir’s discussion of disclosure
evinces exactly this minimal commitment to transcendental phenome-
nology: according to her, there is sense only in its appearance within the
­phenomenal field of human existence or the arc of intentional acts of sense
bestowal, which means that the existence of this intentional field thus
­conditions the disclosure of sense.
Once Beauvoir’s discussion of disclosure is interpreted within the
auspices of transcendental phenomenology, her sustained critique of
those comportments that fall within the horizon of naturalism becomes
legible.13 After all, what she demonstrates is that the fundamental gesture
of naturalistic philosophy is the appeal to a notion of epistemic norma-
tivity ostensibly found in a transcendent horizon of sense. Naturalistic
philosophies, in other words, locate epistemological compulsion in a
world whose sense is ready-made. Inscribed in the very transcendence
of the object, this normativity of sense thereby assumes the form of an
externally binding and thus absolute imperative. Consequently, if, on the
contrary, Beauvoir insists that the sense of the world is an accomplish-
ment, she can only be critical of a philosophy that would proceed by
appealing to the ineluctable givenness of sense as foundational.14 The
suspension of a naturalized notion of epistemic normativity thus inevita-
bly follows from the transcendental investigation of sense constitution,
which is to say, from the investigation of sense as constituted rather than
ready-made.15
Yet, if Beauvoir’s account of disclosure expresses her basic commit-
ment to transcendental phenomenology and the critique of naturalism that
is the correlate of this commitment, her discussion of ambiguity (ambiguë)
introduces an important qualification of or supplement to this discussion.16
As she puts it, “To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can
ever be given a meaning [sens]; to say that it is ambiguous [ambiguë] is to

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 478 anne van leeuwen

assert that its meaning is never fixed [le sens n’en jamais fixé].”17 According to
Beauvoir, sense is inscribed with a twofold ambiguity: ambiguity belongs to
the structure of sense constitution but also to the constituted-sense of the
world. Ambiguity, in other words, designates an existential structure that
institutes a horizon of sense that is itself equivocal or open.18
What is crucial, then, is that while Beauvoir remains committed to
investigating the conditions for the emergence of sense within the imma-
nent field of accomplishments, the twofold ambiguity of sense implies a
radicalization of this transcendental project. We can elucidate this revision
in accordance with the two registers of ambiguity. First, as a consequence
of the structural ambiguity of sense bestowal, the transcendental investiga-
tion of these constitutive structures cannot be easily reduced to merely an
a priori analysis of a static and immutable totality. Thus, for Beauvoir, tran-
scendental inquiry does not reveal a foundation (e.g., a transcendental ego
or even the materiality of the body) but, rather, an open structure. Second,
the investigation of this structural ambiguity discloses a horizon of sense
that is itself fundamentally ambiguous. That is, this accomplished-sense
is itself radically equivocal or open despite its tendency toward ossification
through the obfuscation of its accomplishment or in the tendency to under-
stand this sense as ready-made. In Beauvoir’s discussion of disclosure,
then, we see a profound commitment to transcendental ­phenomenology
and a radicalization of its central gestures.
In light of this interpretation, it is apparent that the significance of
Beauvoir’s much-discussed ethical project only comes into focus through
an elucidation of her revision of transcendental phenomenology. On one
hand, the primacy that she grants to disclosure, as we have seen, implies
that the sense of the world is an accomplishment, which belies any uncriti-
cal appeal to a horizon of ready-made sense. Moreover, by forestalling this
appeal, Beauvoir calls into question the normative force of the ready-made
sense since this force is itself parasitic upon its purportedly transcendent
availability or givenness. As a result, however, it is clear that her commit-
ment to transcendental phenomenology is always at the same time a cri-
tique of what she takes to be the impoverished and paradoxical ethics that is
tacitly at stake in a naturalistic epistemology, namely, one that is character-
ized by appeal to the normative force of a world whose sense is ready-made
and thus unequivocal. On the other hand, her claim is that ethics exists
only in the precarious space delimited by a suspension of all appeals to
normative force of a world whose sense is already given. It is precisely for

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 the possibility of feminist phenomenology 479

this reason that she insists that “morality resides in the painfulness of an
indefinite questioning [la moralité réside dans la douleur d’une interrogation
indéfinie].”19 Ethics (la moralité), for Beauvoir, is nothing other than this
infinite questioning, and ethical life is instantiated in taking up this infinite
task. Beauvoir’s revision of transcendental phenomenology thus simulta-
neously delimits the precarious space of ethics. With this account of The
Ethics of Ambiguity in view, we can now turn to Sharing the World in order to
draw out a surprising but profound affinity between these two texts.

Part II: Irigaray and This World That Is Not One

A great deal of the well-known criticisms surrounding Irigaray’s project

and particularly her so-called later work (i.e., those texts beginning with
L’oubli de l’air in 1983) takes issue with her notoriously fraught invocation
of sexual and, later, sexuate difference.20 That is, while it is widely agreed
that in her early work she invokes sexual difference in the context of an
engagement with the philosophical tradition as a polyvalent site of contes-
tation and destabilization, in her later work, she often appears to appeal
to sexuate difference as a foundation that provides the normative ground
for privileging the irreducibility of this difference.21 In the following dis-
cussion, I turn to Irigaray’s most recent monograph, Sharing the World,
in an attempt to show that, like The Ethics of Ambiguity, Irigaray’s latest
text evinces a profound commit to and revision of transcendental phenom-
enology. This interpretation brings into relief an important moment of
convergence between Beauvoir and Irigaray in light of the new materialist
feminist challenge.
In the introduction to this text, Irigaray offers a formulation of the lead-
ing claim in Sharing the World: As she puts it, “As soon as I recognize the
otherness of the other as irreducible . . . the world itself becomes irreducible to
a single world: there are always at least two worlds.”22 The pivotal but nonethe-
less ambiguous claim that resounds throughout this text and that calls for
further scrutiny is her account of the relationship between the recognition of
irreducible alterity and the existence of at least two worlds.
At first glance, Irigaray’s leading claim appears to corroborate stan-
dard interpretations of the trajectory of her later thought. Indeed, the
twoness of worlds seems to designate two positively incommensurable
and thus irreducibly different horizons of sense, the masculine and the

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 480 anne van leeuwen

f­ eminine. According to this interpretation, her claim is that recognition of

the ­sexuate other as radically other compels sexuate subjects to acknowl-
edge the existence of two incommensurable worlds. This ­interpretation,
however, immures Irigaray’s text in a series of difficulties revolving
around the much-discussed problem of essentialism. These problems can
perhaps be encapsulated in the following question to which this inter-
pretation gives rise: In what sense does sexuate difference function as
the basis for the radical incommensurability of two worlds? If sexuate
difference, legible in terms of the figure of binary sexual difference, func-
tions as the ontological foundation for the existence of two irreducibly
different worlds, this text appears to fall prey to the prevailing critiques of
­essentialism in her later work.
Rather than attempting to rejoin this critique, I want to suggest an
altogether different interpretation of Sharing the World. That is, rather than
a foundationalist appeal to sexuate difference, I will suggest that what is at
stake in this text is the attempt to think the appearance of sexuate differ-
ence as coextensive with the disclosure of a world that is not one. Indeed,
examining her introductory remarks more closely, it is clear that Irigaray
describes the appearance of irreducible alterity and the existence of at least
two worlds as contemporaneous (i.e., “as soon as . . .”). This simultaneity
suggests that she does not appeal to the recognition of alterity as a foun-
dation for a difference of worlds; instead, her claim seems to be that the
appearance of alterity belongs to the very disclosure of a world, under-
stood as a horizon of sense. Indeed, it is in virtue of the compossibility of
the appearance of irreducible alterity and the disclosure of sense that the
world “is irreducible to a single world.” That is, if the appearance of alter-
ity is contemporaneous with the very disclosure of sense, then alterity is
always already inscribed in the sense of the world without thereby annul-
ling it as radically other to this horizon of sense. Her claim, then, is that
the appearance of alterity is coextensive with the disclosure of a horizon of
sense that, in virtue of the persistence of alterity, remains fundamentally
open or equivocal (i.e., “irreducible to a single world”). It is in this sense,
then, that the appearance of the other discloses a world that is not one: the
essential equivocality of the world implies the impossibility of speaking of
a world as such (i.e., a world is always “at least two”).
According to the latter interpretation, Sharing the World does not
invoke a foundationalist appeal to sexual difference but, rather, develops
a critical revision of transcendental phenomenology. In other words, it is

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 the possibility of feminist phenomenology 481

possible to understand Irigaray’s invocation of sexuate difference not as

the foundation for a difference of worlds but, rather, as its expression and
instantiation. Consequently, according to this interpretation of the text,
in its polyphonous permutations and manifestations, sexuate difference
­designates the openness to difference (i.e., the alterity of the other, the
new, the contingent) that is inscribed in the sense of the world as such.23
Irigaray’s invocation of sexuate difference thus suggests a crucial modifi-
cation of the transcendental investigation of sense constitution: Sexuate
difference appears as a transcendental condition for the very disclosure of
a world that is not one; yet, as irrecoverably other to and coextensive with
the disclosure of a world, the alterity that conditions this horizon of sense is
thus inscribed within the parameters of this transcendental project.

Conclusion

In these concluding remarks, I can only gesture toward the way in which
this interpretation of The Ethics of Ambiguity and Sharing the World creates
the space for redressing the new materialist critique of the project of femi-
nist phenomenology. To begin, it is crucial to see that while the condensed
analyses of these texts demand further elucidation, already they identify
a remarkable moment of convergence between Beauvoir and Irigaray,
namely, a shared commitment to a radicalized articulation of transcenden-
tal phenomenology. For Beauvoir, the ambiguity that is inscribed in the
very structure of sense-bestowal reveals that this accomplished sense is
itself essentially ambiguous beneath its ossification as a locus of epistemic/
ethical normativity. For Irigaray, the twoness of worlds reveals a horizon
of sense that is ineluctably inscribed by the opening of irrecuperable alter-
ity. In both cases, then, they demonstrate that the investigation of sense
constitution, and thus the project of transcendental phenomenology, does
not result in a domestication of difference but, rather, reveals the insistent
ambiguity and alterity that belong to the constitution of sense.
Consequently, in elucidating this almost entirely overlooked conver-
gence between Beauvoir and Irigaray, the force of the materialist challenge
is recast. Indeed, as we saw in the introductory section, the feminist turn to
materialist philosophies ostensibly puts into crisis the possibility of feminist
phenomenology insofar as this project remains legible within the auspices
of a transcendental project.24 Yet, while it is indeed a certain ­recalcitrance to

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 482 anne van leeuwen

a thinking of difference that is targeted in the new ­materialist challenge, it

is exactly this charge that the work of Beauvoir and Irigaray most poignantly
undermines. Consequently, if new materialisms are to effectively problem-
atize the project of feminist phenomenology vis-à-vis the task of thinking
difference (i.e., the new, the contingent, the other), they must demonstrate
that the feminist articulations of phenomenological inquiry are unequal to
this task. The defense of the possibility of the feminist phenomenology that
I have articulated in this essay, then, is also a call for further consideration
of the new materialist challenge within these terms.

notes
1. See Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Toward a Materialist Theory of Becoming
(Cambridge: Polity, 2002); Dorothea Olkowski, “The End of Phenomenology:
Bergson’s Interval in Irigaray,” Hypatia 15, no. 3 (2000): 73–91; Elizabeth Grosz,
“Thinking the New,” in Becomings: Explorations in Time, Memory, and Futures,
ed. Elizabeth Grosz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 15–28.
2. Leonard Lawlor, “The End of Phenomenology: Expressionism in Deleuze
and Merleau-Ponty,” Continental Philosophy Review 31 (1998): 15–34. While
Lawlor does not mention new materialist feminisms, he nonetheless sets up
in very precise terms the two foci of the critique, namely, immanence and
difference, and shows how both of these issues operate together in a critique of
phenomenology’s commitment to transcendental philosophy. Colebrook’s more
recent work is also crucial, since, like Lawlor, she shows that what is at stake in the
materialist turn in feminism is most fundamentally a rejection of transcendental
philosophy. See Claire Colebrook, “Is Sexual Difference a Problem?” Deleuze and
Feminist Theory, ed. Ian Buchanan and Claire Colebrook (Edinburgh: University
of ­Edinburgh Press, 2000), 112–13. Moreover, while Grosz does not explicitly
broach the question of transcendental philosophy, it is clear that her Deleuzean
reading of B ­ ergson is motivated by the desire to think difference in a way that
does not contain this difference by instituting an identity between the new and its
condition or ground of emergence. In this sense, Grosz’s critique indirectly issues
a challenge to the possibility of feminist phenomenology. See Grosz, “Thinking
the New,” 16.
3. Lawlor, “End of Phenomenology,” 15.
4. Ibid.
5. Oksala’s very important article “What Is Feminist Phenomenology?”
brings this curious nascence into view. See Johanna Oksala, “What Is Feminist
­Phenomenology?” Radical Philosophy 126 (2004): 17.
6. See Debra Bergoffen, “From Husserl to Beauvoir: Gendering the Perceiving
Subject,” in Feminist Phenomenology, ed. Linda Fisher and Lester Embree

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 the possibility of feminist phenomenology 483

(­ Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2000), 57–70; Debra Bergoffen, “Simone de

Beauvoir: (Re)Counting the Sexual Difference,” in Cambridge Companion to
Simone de Beauvoir, ed. Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 248–65; Penelope Deutscher, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir:
­Ambiguity, ­Conversion, Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
Eva ­Gothlin, “Reading Simone de Beauvoir with Martin Heidegger,” in Card,
­Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, 45–65; Monika Langer, “Beauvoir
and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity,” in Card, Cambridge Companion to Simone de
Beauvoir, 87–106; Gail Weiss, “Introduction to an Ethics of Ambiguity,” in Simone
de Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2004), 279–98.
7. Steinbock argues that transcendental phenomenology is characterized by
two essential traits: “It must be an inquiry into the constitution of sense and it
must identify a priori structures” (Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After
­Husserl [Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995], 12; my emphasis). While
I agree with Steinbock, I have avoided invoking a notion of the a priori in this
provisional definition that I am offering as a hermeneutic for Beauvoir’s text, since
it is precisely the apriority of phenomenology that is at stake in Beauvoir’s revision.
8. Lawlor, “End of Phenomenology,” 15; see also Françoise Dastur, “Phenom-
enology of the Event: Waiting and Surprise,” Hypatia 15, no. 4 (2000): 180.
9. Steinbock, Home and Beyond, 12–13.
10. Deutscher, Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir, 28.
11. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman
(New York: Carol, 1994), 12; Simone de Beauvoir, Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté
(Paris: Gallimard, 1947), 18. Henceforth, I cite the English edition first and then
the page number from the original French.
12. “It is not in vain that man nullifies being. Thanks to him, being is disclosed and
he desires this disclosure” (Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 12/18; my italics).
13. In this essay, I will use the term naturalism in a specifically Husserlian sense,
though I also take it to be uncontroversial that this phenomenological critique
of naturalism is shared by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. See Edmund
­Husserl, “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of
Philosophy, ed. and trans. Quetin Lauer (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 85.
14. Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 51/72.
15. Sara Heinämaa, Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (Oxford:
­Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 75.
16. Langer, “Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty on Ambiguity,” 90. Following Langer,
I understand ambiguity as the institution of sense (sens), which is not one but
which nonetheless is not absurd or meaningless.
17. Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 129/180; my italics.
18. “The human being opens up, discloses a specific there. This further means
that its disclosure never can be complete or final” (Gothlin, “Reading Simone de
Beauvoir with Martin Heidegger,” 50–51).

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 484 anne van leeuwen

19. Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity, 133/186.

20. In Key Writings (New York: Continuum, 2004) and Sharing the World
(New York: Continuum, 2008), Luce Irigaray explicitly invokes sexuate difference
in place of sexual difference. As she puts it, “One difference at once appears as
­universal: sexual, or better, sexuate difference” (Sharing the World, 2; my i­ talics).
Given that I only explicitly consider Sharing the World in this essay, I do not
want to make a broader claim about the significance of this terminological shift
­überhaupt. Yet, to the extent that she explicitly invokes sexuate difference in this
text, I will attempt to develop an account of its significance in this context.
21. See Alison Stone, Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 13; Ann Murphy, “The Enigma
of the Natural in Luce Irigaray,” Philosophy Today 45 (2001): 75.
22. Irigaray, Sharing the World, x.
23. Elizabeth Grosz also makes this point, though in the context of her
engagement with Bergson. See Grosz, “Thinking the New,” 19.
24. Colebrook, “Is Sexual Difference a Problem?” 112–13.

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