Luce Irigaray S Transcendence As Alterity 1

LUCE IRIGARAY’S TRANSCENDENCE AS ALTERITY1

Annemie Halsema (Assistant Professor, VU University, Amsterdam)

In Luce Irigaray’s rethinking of God and religion, the relationship to the other as other is the vital force. In an age in which many imagine the end of the religious dimension, she writes that “the first task seems to consider and cultivate the relation with the other as other – without deferring too quickly our faith in an absolute Other” (2004: 147). In the nineties of the last century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, themes such as the divine, transcendence, spirituality and religious experiences have become part of Irigaray's work more and more (see Irigaray 1996a, 2002, 2004). Irigaray has always been critical of the Christian tradition, especially of its repression of sexual difference, but, at the same time, Christian motives and themes have been present in her work from Speculum of the other woman (1985) onwards. Also, Irigaray has practised and studied yoga since the nineteen seventies (see 1996a: 215) and has gradually become more explicit about her interest in Eastern spiritual traditions (see, for instance, Irigaray 1996: 115, 137). Works such as Le souffle des femmes (Irigaray 1996a) and Between East and West (Irigaray 2002) are almost entirely dedicated to spiritual themes. Morny Joy even speaks of Irigaray’s “spiritual turn” in this respect (2006: 4). In the context of her interest in spirituality and religion, Irigaray often refers to the notion of ‘horizontal transcendence’, her alternative to the transcendence of God as an object entity. It includes a relationship to the alterity of the other. It is an ethical notion that refers to the possibilities for self and other to develop fully in themselves and to relate to each other in respect of difference. I will claim that it is a central notion in Irigaray’s humanism. As a notion of transcendence, it is close to Stoker’s “transcendence as alterity” (see his essay entitled Culture and transcendence: a typology, para. 11, elsewhere in this volume) in which transcendence and immanence are no longer considered as opposition. Indeed, Irigaray claims that we have “lost the key which enables us to understand the hiatus between immanence and transcendence” (1996a: 220, my transl.). She especially finds a connection between immanence and transcendence in the practice of yoga, between what “emanates from the here and now (immanent) and what is situated in the beyond (transcendent)” (1996a, p. 216, my transl.). In this essay, I describe Irigaray’s ‘horizontal transcendence’ and relate it to Stoker’s definition of transcendence as alterity, for which Derrida’s work on religion is exemplary. But I start with sketching Irigaray’s relationship to the phenomenon of religion in general.

1 This paper is partly based upon the chapters 5 and 6 of Luce Irigaray and horizontal transcendence (Halsema 2010).

1 Irigaray’s rewriting of religion There is not one singular way to describe Irigaray’s relationship with religion. Different approaches to it can be found in different texts. She sometimes criticizes the Christian tradition and adds new meanings to important figures within that tradition (for example, the angels or Mary), thereby renewing the tradition.2 In other texts, she explicitly values eastern tradition above western and rejects the Christian tradition (Irigaray 2002). In still others, or sometimes even within the same texts, she turns to religious motifs as utopian imaginations of a possible future in which the culture of sexual difference is realized. In Irigaray’s critique, two main theses can be distinguished. The first corresponds to her general critique of the western symbolic, namely that the Christian tradition, just like the philosophical tradition and the sciences, forgets or represses sexual difference. Irigaray criticizes the Christian tradition for leaving woman behind: woman is only mediator (mother of Christ), but does not have her own place. Christ does not relate to his mother, to his conception, birth, growth, generation – only to “la Parole du Père” (Whitford 1991a: 167). Religious ceremonies are almost universally performed by men (Irigaray 1993a: 78). Christendom does not present women with a horizon “to become” (Irigaray 1993a: 63, 64). The God who is worshipped is a masculine God, but women need a God of their own. The second central theme is the schism between man and God. Irigaray’s work on religion exemplifies a critique of the oppositions between immanence and transcendence, sensible and intelligible, human and divine. These oppositions are related to the schism between masculine and feminine, but have a more general scope. As Penelope Deutscher points out: “traditional models of divinity reflect not just an unsatisfactory role for women but also an unsatisfactory identificatory structure more generally” (2002: 94). The repression of sexual difference not only leads to negative consequences for women, but also for humans in general.

Repression of the feminine-maternal

2 See When the Gods are born in Marine Lover (Irigaray 1991a: 121-190), Belief itself (Irigaray 1993a: 23-53), Divine women (Irigaray 1993a: 55-72) and Le souffle des femmes (Irigaray 1996).

2 The origin of the repression of sexual difference in western religion, Irigaray’s first critique, is the repression of the feminine-maternal, also called maternal-feminine or matrix.3 Irigaray’s metaphysical thesis is that western thought has repressed its origin (Whitford 1991: 25). She criticizes the Christian tradition for considering God the Father as the origin, while the maternal body is forgotten. Woman/matter/nature/the body has been sacrificed for the son. The philosophical tradition is criticized on the same grounds: it is teleologically oriented towards the One, The Idea or the Absolute, considered to be highest and the origin. In that process, the original origin, the maternal-feminine, is repressed and a new origin, God, is posed, replacing the original one. In patriarchy (that is, in western culture), the father has replaced the mother as place of becoming. This diagnosis of western culture is worked out in detail in the third part of Speculum of the other woman (1985), in which Irigaray rereads Plato. Her reading of Plato’s allegory of the cave4 exemplifies Irigaray’s critique of western philosophy and, thereby, of western culture in general.5 The archetypical structure of western thinking is described as the extrapolation of the origin, a gesture in which the original origin is forgotten. This extrapolation of the origin resembles transcendence as ecstasy: in both, the relationship with the origin, the feminine-maternal, is cut through. In her reading of the allegory of the cave, Irigaray associates the cave with a womb (Irigaray 1985: 243). That explains the title of this part of her book, Plato’s hystéra (hystera is the Greek word for womb). In Plato’s allegory of the cave in The republic, the candidate in philosophy is forced to turn around and move upwards. For Plato, the force that is used to make the ‘candidate’ turn towards the sun and the truth, away from the shadows, indicates how difficult it is to get away from the sensible world and turn towards the real world of Ideas: the sticky self-evidence of the sensible world has to be left behind. In Irigaray’s interpretation, the force comes to stand for the coercion that is needed to get away from the origin. An act of violence towards the origin is needed in order to leave the origin behind and this violence has strong repercussions for its perpetrator. To start to know true reality, the philosopher has to cut himself loose from the projections of objects – the shadows on the wall of the cave. He has to turn around and leave the cave. But he cannot do so in his own way (for instance, by turning forward and backward again, and walking from one side to the other). Instead, he has to climb upwards, negotiating a long, steep, rough path. There is no other transition. Irigaray’s reading does not suggest that we should remain within the world of the sensible, in the here and now, but neither should we neglect that world. We should keep our

3 Irigaray uses all three terms interchangeably: the maternal-feminine (1993: 84, 99), the feminine-maternal (1993: 152) and matrix (1985: 294). The last term refers to both birthplace or cradle and mould or printing form (that in which something is printed).

4 In Plato’s The Republic (Book VII:514a–520a).

5 Note that in Irigaray’s interpretation of the allegory, not only her relationship with Plato is exemplified, but also her relationship with Heidegger, the intermediate in this reading of Plato. Irigaray also comments on Heidegger’s Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, which was published in 1967.

3 source, the soil from which we come, in mind: the sensible and material. Her philosophy aims at continuously re-evaluating the continuity between the sensible and the intelligible. Therefore, she criticizes Plato’s point of view, in which ideas can be known by a simple reversal, by turning around once, a single symmetrical rotation around a vertical axis. She strongly disapproves of the teleological direction that is characteristic of Plato’s thought and of religious tradition – namely, the orientation towards the One presented as the sun, Ideas or God. The multiplicity of the sensible world would be reduced to Ideas that from now on would be presumed to be the origin rather than the sensible world. This repression explains the situation of women within Christianity, as well as the deprivation that a masculine tradition implies for men. Men are cut off from the sensible and bodily. Women in a masculine tradition are deprived of opportunities to develop identities as women, because the dominant representations of the feminine are masculine and women have not developed representations of the feminine themselves. Yet, even though God in our tradition replaces the feminine-maternal, with all the consequences for identity development just mentioned, both also resemble each other. The feminine-maternal “never offers itself as a ‘presence’” (Irigaray 1985: 294); it forms an original topos that in itself cannot be presented. It is neither visible, nor representable. Like the mother, God is a “place of the invisible”, a “hidden presence” (Irigaray 1993a: 32). The first dwelling place in which man lives, in which he is wrapped, which he drinks, consumes, consummates “is a gift that permits no mastery during its term, an indefinite debt” (Irigaray 1993a: 32). And everything comes and goes “between these two places of the invisible, those two hidden presences, between which everything is played out, in which everything meets” (Irigaray 1993a: 32). What remains are intermediaries, such as angels or the sensible transcendental, to mediate between these two places.6 In short, within western metaphysics, neither the mother nor God can be related to. They are truly transcendent, but in a negative sense: we are severed from both. Throughout her works, Irigaray critically questions a notion of God as completely transcendent to humanity, a God as “the foundation hidden from sight but offering himself to intuition, placed infinitely far away, above and in front, in his teleological Beauty and Goodness” (Irigaray 1985: 330). This God, who has created everything in his image, only knows himself. The God of the tradition is too much an “object-entity”; he is “radically estranged” from us; he is “an absolutely unknowable entity of the beyond” (Irigaray 2004: 171-172). Yet, in other texts (for example, in her lecture entitled Divine women [1993a: 55- 72] which she offered at a Women’s Centre in Venice in 1984), Irigaray describes an alternative and affirmative notion of God and the divine. Thus, Irigaray’s ambivalent attitude towards the Christian tradition – in some texts, driving at a break with the tradition; in others, seeking for alternatives from within the tradition – also shows itself in her perspective on God.

6 A part of Belief itself is a reinterpretation of angels (Irigaray 1993a: 35-45). Angels are presented as intermediaries between God and man, connecting each to the other.

4 God as mirror for becoming The text Divine women is a mimetic reading of Feuerbach’s The essence of Christianity (1989) and is often criticized as an essentialist plea for a God in the feminine.7 Yet, in my reading, it is not essentialist and is perfectly in line with Irigaray’s notion of a God who is significant for humans in general. Irigaray takes over Feuerbach’s thesis that God is the essence of humankind, seen and honoured as an external object, one outside us. She emphasizes a specific aspect of his thesis: man needs a relationship with his infinite. She alludes to Feuerbach’s thoughts that God forms man’s alter ego, is a complement of man, is a perfect man. God is necessary for mankind: “In order to become, we need some shadowy perception of achievement; not a fixed objective, not a One postulated to be immutable but rather a cohesion and a horizon that assures us the passage between past and future …” (Irigaray 1993a: 67). In our tradition, God guarantees the infinite. Elizabeth Grosz (1989) explains that Irigaray’s God is not a totality, unity or origin: “If anything […] it refers to the principle or ideal, a projection or perfection of the (sexed) subject […]” (pp. 159). God functions as an ideal for the self, a horizon. A horizon is necessary for both men and women to direct their becoming. Yet, as already illustrated, within the masculine Christian tradition, women especially need to develop a divine. In Divine women, Irigaray criticizes the Christian tradition because God forms a horizon for men only. In relating to this transcendent, every woman as a finite being relates to the infinite. That means that being a woman and cultivating this state of being implies a relationship between one’s intimate self and the infinity of the feminine genre. 8 Thus, Irigaray sexualizes Feuerbach’s claim that man, by relating to God, relates to his species. As a result, there are two absolutes, instead of two modes of access to one and the same absolute. Irigaray believes that we need a horizon, consisting of ideal images, in order to fulfil ourselves as human beings. That the Christian tradition offers men such a horizon, but not women, implies that the schism between man and God (which Irigaray considers typical of Christianity) applies more to women than to men, because men can relate to a masculine God. Earlier, Irigaray’s two main critiques of Western religion were outlined. In fact, both are closely related: a masculine God implies a God who is radically transcendent, for this notion of God is cut off from the sensible, from the material, from embodiment. The masculinity of the God-figure (God as father) is also related to his transcendence by Ricoeur in the last chapter of his essay on Freud, De l’interprétation (1965). Ricoeur reflects upon why, when imagining God, the figure of the father is more privileged than that of the mother. Without doubt, he writes, it has to do with the richer, symbolic virtuality of the father-figure. The father does not appear as generator, as does the mother, but as giver of the name, of the law. As such, he himself escapes from name giving. As institution of the

7 For instance, in Armour 2002 and Poxon 2003. See Halsema 2008 for a discussion of these critiques.

8 The French genre refers to grammatical gender, a style of discourse or genre humain (humankind), and is broader than the sexual dichotomy. In her early works, Irigaray often uses the word sexe (sex) instead of genre in order to avoid the traditional connotations associated with the latter (Irigaray 1993b: 31, footnote 3). In later works (for instance, Sexes and genealogies), she uses genre more often than sexe.

5 name, he cannot be named, he is irreal: as the Hebrews have already understood, because he gives the name, he is the problem of the name (Ricoeur 1965). Ricoeur’s analysis in which Freud’s notion of identification plays an important role – he starts from Freud’s statement that there is an intimate connection between the father complex and believing in God – also explains Irigaray’s endeavour. Ricoeur shows that the unnameable God who is the giver of the name is a radically transcendent God (1965). Irigaray’s aim is to secure a religion that is continuous with the body, the mother, nature, and that functions as an ideal for the spiritual becoming of women. Such a God is radically immanent or intermingles transcendence and immanence. Irigaray’s conception of religion coincides with it: “The religious,” she claims, “must correspond to a way of accomplishment of the human both as a gathering of the self in oneself and as a bond with the universe and the other” (2004: 192).

Rewriting the religious While acknowledging the function God can have for humans in Divine women (1993a), in her later work, Irigaray asks more radically: why not seek objectivity within oneself? Why do we need a God? Shouldn’t the universe be enough? Why not just respect what exists? These questions correspond with her aim in Divine women (1993a) to develop a God as mirror for women, but are more radically critical of the Christian God. As she writes: “It is essential that we be God for ourselves so that we can be divine for the other, not idols, fetishes, symbols that have already been outlined or determined” (1993a: 71). Again, Irigaray’s aim is to enhance possibilities for human becoming. Rewriting the tradition, renewing the prevalent symbolic is one of the ways of realizing it. Irigaray’s reinterpretation of God and the divine (1993a: 61-72) and of the Annunciation to Mary (1996: 140-141) can be seen in this light. Her strategy is not simply to reject the patriarchal Christian tradition, but rather to create utopian alternative horizons and to rewrite the tradition. In the case of religion, rewriting has a specific purpose: the phenomenon of religion and Christian interpretation in our culture are not so easy to eliminate or suppress: It re-emerges in different forms, some of them perverse: sectarianism, theoretical or religious dogmatism, religiosity…Therefore it is crucial that we rethink religion, and especially religious structures, categories, initiations, rules and utopias, all of which have been masculine for centuries” (Irigaray 1993a: 75). In different works, Irigaray interprets religion as “the spiritual” (1996: 137-141, 1996a, 2002) and considers it a necessary dimension of human life that helps people to develop. For example, she describes the religious dimension as “passing from simple natural survival to a spiritual level” (Irigaray 2003: 1). The spiritual task most adapted to our age seems to be “to pursue human becoming to its divine fulfilment” (Irigaray 2003: 1). That implies not submitting oneself to already established truths, dogmas and rites, but searching for a new spirituality. Spirituality may be found in cultivating our perceptions: listening to music, contemplating a work of art, tasting food, breathing perfumes can all be spiritual gestures

6 that make life pass from sheer satisfaction of needs to cultivation of a desire. Celebrating through songs, through words, is also spiritual. Therefore, it is important to be active and receptive at the same time or, rather, to be active while at the same time being thankful for what has been given. That is not to say that one surrenders or submits oneself to what is given (Irigaray 2003: 3). We can transform our physical bodies into spiritual bodies by training our perceptions, by listening to beautiful sounds, by contemplating beautiful colours. The point is not to leave the physical body behind – that would mean repeating the philosophical and religious tradition – but to cultivate it, to transform it into a spiritual body. Another means of doing this is through practising yoga, which cultivates controlled breathing. Thus, spirituality is to be found in everyday things and experiences, which are refined and enjoyed. It leads to happiness and to human fulfilment.

Transcendence as ecstasy and horizontal transcendence In her works, Irigaray distinguishes different notions of transcendence: “transcendence as ecstasy”, something to which she is strongly opposed, “horizontal transcendence” and “transcendence between us”.9 In the introduction to On old and new tablets, she clarifies the difference between the first two concepts. She makes clear that in relating to a wholly Other, “our tradition has underestimated the importance of the alterity of the other with whom I enter into relation every day” (Irigaray 2003: 4). In this text, she contrasts the relationship with this Other to the relationship with the human other. In other texts (for example, 1993a:55-72, 2004: 171-185), she reformulates the notion of God into a human ideal. Both lines of thought are connected in that they both aim at human development and fulfilment. Her main reason for criticizing the dominant conception of the religious is that it no longer “corresponds to a way of accomplishment of the human both as a gathering of self in oneself and as a bond with the universe and the other” (Irigaray 2003: 7). In our culture, claims Irigaray, the relationship of oneself to oneself is replaced by an exclusive dependence upon God, a Wholly Other – God no longer gives us confidence in our divine possibilities, but makes us “unknown to ourselves” (2004: 172). God is no longer guarantee for the infinite, but we have become dependent upon One who is foreign to our nature. The relationship with the other is understood as a gathering in a group that is dedicated to one God and not as a relationship with the other as such. Belonging to a (religious) community hinders the process of differentiation of the individual. Also, we are no longer able to experience the

9 Irigaray also speaks of “vertical transcendence” (2002a: 130), sometimes in a negative sense, where it stands for a hierarchical relationship in which the one is subsumed to the other. Examples of this may be found in the feminine to the masculine or as the masculine way of securing becoming, by relating to a God, for instance. Horizontal transcendence is the feminine way: a woman has to secure becoming through breathing (2004: 147). But mostly, Irigaray considers vertical transcendence in a positive sense. It represents a genealogical relationship (Irigaray 2003: 5), for instance, the relationship between mothers and daughters. It is to be distinguished from the horizontal relationship between women – for example, sisters (Irigaray 1993: 108). She also speaks of vertical transcendence as relating to "our natural sexual belonging" (2004: xii, xiii). Here, it seems to signify surpassing nature, creating a bond between nature and the culture that has yet to come. The transcendence between men and women is vertical (Irigaray 1993: 17). Sexual encounter thus enables both man and woman to grow, to become, and does not reduce either to the other. In this respect, the vertical dimension seems to aim at a divine relationship between man and woman.

7 rapport of the transcendence of the other and the transcendence of God. In other words, the human is deprived of divine becoming because of the dominant conception of the religious. For Irigaray, the God of the Christian tradition requires “that we rise up to him through our faith, and through renunciations that make us unknown to ourselves” (2004: 172). It is this notion of God and transcendence that she rejects and names “transcendence as ecstasy” (extase) [Irigaray 1996: 104],10 which implies “leaving the self behind toward an inaccessible total-other, beyond sensibility, beyond the earth” (1996: 104). Irigaray, in other words, rejects a notion of God who, in terms of Stoker’s differentiation, is radically transcendent (para. 6). Her divine, rather, aims at bridging the transcendent and immanent.

Horizontal transcendence is embodied and intersubjective For Irigaray, the relationship with the everyday other, the other here and now, can bring us what the relationship with God promises, but, because of his radical transcendence, cannot offer. She writes “By measuring every subjectivity in relation to a Wholly Other, our tradition has underestimated the importance of the alterity of the other with whom I enter into relation every day” (2004: 189) and “Our relations between two have been limited to the man-God relationship; we have not sufficiently cultivated them between us” (2004: 181). To Irigaray, cultivating relationships between two beings implies accepting one’s own boundaries, particularly the limits of one’s knowledge and feeling with regard to the other (2004). What Irigaray appeals to is an ethical attitude of limitation of the self, of ‘not being all’, of finiteness, which opens the individual to the otherness of the other. This relationship to the everyday other supports one’s spiritual becoming.11 Horizontal transcendence refers to this relationship with the other. In her early work (for example, An ethics of sexual difference, published in 1993), Irigaray considers the relationship with oneself, love of self (amour de soi), as a precondition for the love for an other.12 Also, in her works of the nineties (for example, I love to you, published in 1996), self-consciousness precedes openness for the other: recognizing one’s own limitations goes before recognizing the otherness of the other. The notion of the negative

10 Note that in Speculum (1985), Irigaray refers to ecstasy in a more positive sense: namely, in relation to mystic language or discourse. “Ex-stasies” are escapes from the masculine symbolic (1985: 192). But Irigaray is not positive about female mystics, for they break with the masculine symbolic without offering a proper alternative: “the ‘I’ is still empty” (1985: 195). Amy Hollywood (1994), in a subtle defense of the female mystics, shows that Irigaray’s interpretation does not do justice to the conscious efforts of mystics to undermine the traditional dichotomies, in particular with regard to sex and gender.

11 Also see Halsema 2008 (pp. 822-823) for horizontal transcendence as self-limitation. The argument of this article is partly repeated here.

12 Interestingly enough, this love of self is worked out as love for one’s genre: for the maternal and for other women. Love of same is similar to love of self. As such, it forms the foundation for developing a generic identity. Apart from love of the maternal, love of same is love of the same other. This means the other is the same as me, but is placed and maintained outside myself in its difference (1993: 99). This love of the same is also described as divine; it is the relationship of a woman to the female genre, the collectivity of women.

8 that she develops in I love to you (1996) illustrates this. Irigaray writes “the negative can mean access to the other of sexual difference”, which means “an acceptance of the limits of my gender and recognition of the irreducibility of the other” (1996: 13). The negative in sexual difference makes us aware of the limit imposed on us by our genre. For Irigaray, this limitation is not a restriction, but is constitutive or affirmative. It is finitude to which we relate in a passive manner, and that is vital for our identity. The negative implies finiteness and is embodied in one’s belonging to a gender. Sexual difference represents a negative within each individual. It enables one to have an ethical relationship with the other of the other genre.13 Besides the fact that “you are not the whole, and I am not the whole” (Irigaray 1996: 103), the negative also implies that we are not reducible to each other. We may not be substituted for one another. The other is transcendent to me as a being who differs radically from me. It is precisely this mystery of the other that permits women and men “to go along their own spiritual path” (2004: 182). ‘Mystery’ here refers to “maintaining free energy, resistant to encoding or any appropriation” (2004: 182). It means leaving part of lived experience open, incomprehensible, strange, foreign, inaccessible to thought or affect. It is close to what Irigaray describes as ‘wonder’ when discussing Descartes’ The passions of the soul: a distance between self and other that does not appropriate the other and leads to asking the other “Who are you?” instead of presuming in advance who or what the other is (1993: 72-82). Apart from being a concrete other whom I meet every day and who, in that sense, helps to experience otherness sooner than an abstract God does, the everyday other also “returns me to my sensibility and to a necessary cultivation of it, while still respecting its tie with corporeality” (Irigaray 2000: 93). Irigaray claims that it is especially the ‘other’ of sexual difference that, because of his or her embodied difference, leads to transformation of one’s inclinations and to opening up one’s desire for a transcendent dimension. As such, this transcendent is “an inscription in the flesh” (1993: 147). It is no longer a transcendent that has been cut off from the body and the sensible, but another whose difference remains because the other’s embodiment is precisely one of the factors that make him or her different from me. As well as a notion of horizontal transcendence, the relationship with the other in which the other is respected as different, also gives rise to another notion of transcendence. The transcendence of the other no longer makes that transcendence ecstasy, but interpersonal. It is ‘between us’, as an irreducible space between self and other. Transcendence between us implies that there is an intermediate space between us. The negative has an important function as the limit imposed on us by our gender and this should be recognized. Only by recognizing my own limits can I meet the other, respecting his or her otherness and recognizing him or her as other. Recognizing this limit creates a space

13 The French genre refers to grammatical gender, a style of discourse or genre humain (humankind), and is broader than the sexual dichotomy. In her early works, Irigaray often uses the word sexe (sex) instead of genre in order to avoid the traditional connotations associated with the latter (Irigaray 1993b: 31, footnote 3). In later works (for instance, Sexes and genealogies), she uses genre more often than sexe.

9 for the other, because he or she is no longer understood as the same or destroyed. The negative creates an interval between the other and me. Yet, apart from isolating the other and me, it is also the condition creating the possibility of having a relationship with the other. Precisely the transcendence of the other makes him or her a mystery to me and enables an unending attraction between us. ‘Transcendence between us’ is perhaps best described in relation to love as that which is in between the one and the other, ensuring that both do not fuse. Yet, also Irigaray’s political proposals in Democracy begins between two (2000a) could be seen as an example of transcendence between us: for democracy should start from the ‘two- relationship’ and can only be established when self and other consider each other as transcendent.14 For now, I will offer an example of transcendence between us, in which embodiment plays a major role: namely, the “transcendence of the flesh of one to that of the other become ourself in us” (Irigaray 1991a: 180). Transcendence here is described as “our work” (oeuvre) and “ecstasy of ourself in us” (de nous en nous). It is “communion in pleasure”. Transcendence of the other becomes “extase instante in me and with him – or her” (Irigaray 1991a: 180).15 In other words, ecstasy for Irigaray is something that takes place in a relationship with the other, between self and other. It does not lead away from the self, as is the case with the patriarchal God, but helps the self to return to itself. Transcendence between us is to be understood or, better, felt as: shared outpouring … loss of boundaries which takes place for both lovers when they cross the boundary of the skin into the mucous membranes of the body, leaving the circle which encloses my solitude to meet in a shared place, a shared breath, abandoning the relatively dry and precise outlines of each body's solid exterior to enter a fluid universe where the perception of being two persons becomes indistinct, and above all, acceding to another energy, neither that of the one nor that of the other, but an energy produced together and as a result of the irreducible difference of sex.” (Irigaray 1991a: 180). It is a crossing of the boundaries of one's body, in which one meets and enjoys the other. Irigaray does not interpret this transcendence as a union, but rather as an experience of ‘us’ that does not leave the participants unchanged. Afterwards, I do return to myself. Transcendence does not mean that one leaves one's self behind when opening oneself toward the other. Rather, it turns back upon the self: it changes the self. The aim of transcendence is not to go beyond oneself. It aims at growth, the becoming of self and other. Irigaray calls this enstasy instead of ecstasy or extase instante. Enstasy literally means

14 Democracy starting from the relationship between two beings forms a concrete starting-point instead of the abstract- representation principle. We learn how to respect others through a relationship with the other genre. Irigaray argues that if I succeed in respecting the one with whom I live, particularly respecting him/ her in his/her difference, I can respect others who live at a greater distance from me as well. Hereby, she closely relates the private and public spheres.

15 Irigaray does not seem to differentiate between the sexes in this formulation. Therefore, it seems that the extase instante can take place not only between lovers of different sexes, but also between those of the same sex. However, on the same page, she explicitly says that “pleasure between the same sex does not result in that immediate ecstasy between the other and myself. It may be more or less intense, quantitatively or qualitatively different, it does not produce in us that ecstasy which is our child, prior to any child.” (Irigaray 1991a: 180). In this text, Irigaray is explicitly heterosexual.

10 “standing-in (oneself)”.16 Whitford (Irigaray 1991a: 180) translates it as immediate ecstasy, referring to an ecstasy that starts from what is near and present (here and now), then bridges the here-and-now and what is beyond. In the encounter with the other, my interiority should be able to develop, as well as that of the others.

Irigaray’s humanism In the philosophical and religious tradition, transcendence generally signifies a reality that is beyond, ‘on the other side’ of humanity. Irigaray, however, rejects a notion of transcendence that is not embodied and does not support human becoming. For her, transcendence names the ethical relationship with the other that is different from the self and it is the interval between self and other that makes it possible for both to develop and to relate to each other in a respectful manner. Transcendence in Irigaray’s interpretation is interhuman, interpersonal, intersubjective and embodied (Deutscher 1994: 100). The centrality in her work of the notion of ‘becoming’ indicates that, for Irigaray, religion is crucial in relation to the forming of human identity (Jantzen 1998, Deutscher 2002: 90 ff, Joy 2003: 52). For that reason, I interpret Irigaray’s rewriting of religion as humanistic. From her perspective, spirituality takes place between humans and is embodied. Her notion of horizontal transcendence is an ethical one that aims at respect for the other, without moving away from or leaving the self behind. Humanism does not exclude religion and is not opposed to it, but rather is in continuity with it. Irigaray’s rewriting of religion shows that the transcendence of the other is radical and only possible on the basis of self-limitation. And would this sense of being limited not be fundamental to any notion of transcendence?

References Armour, E., 2002. Beyond belief? Sexual difference and religion after ontotheology. In: J.D. Caputo. The Religious. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, pp. 212-226. Deutscher, P., 1994. The only diabolical thing about women: Luce Irigaray on divinity. Hypatia, 9(4), pp. 88-111. Deutscher, P., 2002. A politics of impossible difference: the later work of Luce Irigaray. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Eliade, M. ed., 1987. The encyclopedia of religion. Vols. 4 and 5. London, UK: Macmillan. Feuerbach, L., 1989. The essence of Christianity. Translated from German by G. Eliot. New York, NY: Prometheus Books.

16 Mircea Eliade claims that ‘ecstacy' is to be understood as the “introverted mystical experience in which there is experience of nothing except an unchanging, purely static oneness. It is the exact reverse of ecstasy which means to get outside oneself and which is often characterized by a breaking down of the barriers between the individual subject and the universe around him” (Eliade 1987, entry: ecstasy). See the entries for definitions of ‘enstasy’ and ‘samādh’i’ in the same source. ‘Enstasy’, in Irigaray’s interpretation, becomes an intersubjective experience, instead of something that is experienced by a single individual, as in the Eastern tradition.

11 Grosz, E., 1989. Sexual subversions: three French feminists. St Leonards, NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Halsema, A., 2008. Horizontal transcendence: Irigaray’s religion after ontotheology. In: H. de Vries ed., Religion: beyond a concept. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, pp. 813-825. Halsema, A., 2010. Luce Irigaray and horizontal transcendence. [E-book] Amsterdam, Netherlands: SWP. Hollywood, A.M., 1994. Beauvoir, Irigaray, and the mystical. Hypatia, 9(4), pp. 158-185. Irigaray, L., 1985. Speculum of the other woman. Translated from French by G. C. Gill. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, L., 1991. Marine lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Translated from French by G. C. Gill. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Irigaray, L. , 1991a. The Irigaray reader. Edited by M. Whitford. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Irigaray, L., 1993. An ethics of sexual difference. Translated from French by C. Burke and G.C.Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, L., 1993a. Sexes and genealogies. Translated from French by G.C.Gill. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Irigaray, L. , 1993b. Je, tu, nous : toward a culture of sexual difference. Translated from French by A. Martin. New York, NY: Routledge. Irigaray, L., 1996. I love to you: sketch of a possible felicity in history. Translated from French by A. Martin. New York, NY: Routledge. Irigaray, L., 1996a. Le souffle des femmes: Luce Irigaray présente des crédos au feminine. Spiritualité au féminin. Paris, France: L'Action Catholique Générale Féminine (ACGF) [Women’s Catholic Action]. Irigaray, L., 2000. To be two. Translated from French by M.M. Rhodes and M.F. Cocito- Monoc. London, UK: Continuum. Irigaray, L., 2000a. Democracy begins between two. Translated from French by K. Anderson. New York, NY: Routledge. Irigaray, L., 2002. Between east and west: from singularity to community. Translated from French by S. Pluhácek. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Irigaray, L., 2003. Introduction : on old and new tablets. Translated from French by H. Bostic. In: M. Joy, K. O’Grady and J.L. Poxon eds., Religion in French feminist thought: critical perspectives. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 1-9. Irigaray, L., 2004. Key writings. London, UK: Continuum. Joy, M., 2006. Divine love: Luce Irigaray, women, gender and religion. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Joy, M., O’Grady, K. and Poxon, J.L., 2003. Religion in French feminist thought. London, UK: Routledge. Plato, 2006. The republic. Translated from Greek by R.E. Allen. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

12 Poxon, J., 2003. Corporeality and divinity: Irigaray and the problem of the ideal. In: M. Joy, K. O’Grady and J.L. Poxon, Religion in French feminist thought. London, UK: Routledge, pp. 41-50. Ricoeur, P., 1965. De l’interprétation : essai sur Freud. Paris, France: Seuil.