Bio: (1930-) Belgian-French psychoanalyst and feminist theorist. Luce Irigaray completed her undergraduate and master's studies in Belgium and her doctorate in linguistics and philosophy in France at Paris X Nanterre. Since 1964, she has been employed at the Center national de la recherché scientifique located in Paris, where she is now a Director of Research in Philosophy.

She deals with the relationship between language and the female and male body, as well as masculinity and femininity in language. Irigaray believes that throughout the history of Western thought, female and femininity have been excluded from language, representation, and culture. Language is organized around the male subject and defined by its criteria. The exclusion of the female aspect from language is the basis for the creation of patriarchy and "phallocentric" social relations.

Although she accepts the psychoanalytic perspective of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Luce Irigaray criticizes their approach as phallocentric. Phallocentric thought defines male sexuality as primary, because the penis is visible, while female sexuality is defined as lack or deficit (of the penis). She wants to build psychoanalysis and philosophy that will make women and femininity visible. Irigaray bases femininity, in philosophy and psychoanalysis, on the female experience of sexuality and the female body, and especially focuses on the "two lips" experience, which is multiple. She sees writing and speaking from a woman's perspective and women's experience as a subversive activity, which has the potential to transform the dominant "male" culture.

Main works

Speculum: De l’autre femme (1974);

Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un (1977);

Amante marine de Friedrich Nietzsche (1980); 

Passions élémentaires (1982);

L’Oubli de l’air – chez Martin Heidegger (1983);

Éthique de la différence sexuelle (1984a);

La democrazia comincia a due (1984b); 

Parler n’est jamais neutre (1985); 

Sexes et parentés (1987);

Le Temps de la différence: Pour une révolution pacifique (1989);

Je, tu, nous: Pour une culture de la différence (1990);

Être deux (1997);

Entre Orient et Occident (1999);

Why Different? (2000);

The Way of Love (2002);

Key Writings (2004);

Everyday Prayers (2004);

Sharing the World (2008);

In the Beginning, She Was (2012);

Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016);

To Be Born: Genesis of a New Human Being (2017);

Sharing the Fire: Outline of a Dialectics of Sensitivity (2019).

Works translated into English:

Speculum of the Other Woman (1985, in French 1974);

This Sex Which Is Not One (1985, in French 1977);

Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, 1991, in French 1980);

Elemental Passions (1992, in French 1982);

The Forgetting of Air: In Martin Heidegger (1999, in French 1983);

An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993, in French 1984);

To Speak is Never Neutral (2002, in French 1985);

Sexes and Genealogies (1993, in French 1987);

Thinking the Difference: For a Peaceful Revolution (1993, in French 1989);

Je, Tu, Nous: Towards a Culture of Difference (2007, in French 1990);

Democracy Begins Between Two (2000, in Italian 1984b);

To Be Two (2001, in French 1997);

Between East and West: From Singularity to Community (2001, in French 1999).