ABSTRACT
This chapter insists on maintaining the differences between Jean-Francois Lyotard's and Luce Irigaray's figurings of birth and infancy. Nonetheless, if, from an Irigarayan perspective, Lyotard's appropriation of the feminine as ally is often problematic, his underlying project of unsettling the subject is not. Thus, if Lyotard exposes Plato's attempt to emasculate Eros while scapegoating woman, Irigaray turns Plato's logic around to insist that this means one only becomes a philosopher thanks to one's mother. Thus, if Lyotard supplements Irigaray's critique of the western philosophical tradition by reading Plato's account of the birth of Eros as an instance where philosophical mastery is secured by scapegoating woman. Irigaray returns the favour with a re-appropriation of Eros that delivers an image of the philosopher returned to the side of the minority, a philosopher who speaks, barefoot and questioning, with the strength of the weak. For Lyotard, it is impossible to do philosophy without being oneself undone.
