ABSTRACT
Luce Irigaray (b. 1930) was born in Belgium. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Louvain in 1955 and taught high school in Brussels until 1959. She then moved to Paris to continue her studies, receiving a psychology diploma in 1962 from the University of Paris. She attended Jacques Lacan’s seminars, became a member of his École Freudienne, and trained to become an analyst. In 1968 she earned her doctorate in linguistics with a work entitled “Le langage de déments.” This led to a teaching post at the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes (1970-4). Upon publishing Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), which argued that psychoanalysis was a phallocentric discourse, she was expelled from the École Freudienne by Lacan and lost her faculty position as a result of his actions. Throughout her career, Irigaray has been an active leftist political thinker as well being involved in many women’s groups and struggles. Her work has established her as one of the most prominent feminist philosophers in the postwar period. She has received several honorary degrees and visiting appointments and serves as director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.
