ABSTRACT
As we saw in Chapter 3, Irigaray works within and against the sexual (in)difference of poststructuralist models of language and subjectivity in order to make a space for the specifically female. She wants to work towards a future where sexual difference is recognised on a different basis. In contrast, Judith Butler works within a poststructuralist framework in order to destabilise the logic of sexual difference. Butler’s strategy brings elements from the work of Lacan and Derrida together with insights drawn from Foucault, in order to complicate feminism’s understanding of identity by undermining the apparent coherence of such categories as sex, gender and race. While Butler’s complex and demanding engagement with these three theorists produces some important insights, it also produces an unresolved tension in her work between incompatible models of power and language.
