ABSTRACT
Ever since Marx declared that 'the point' was to change the world rather than merely to interpret it, philosophers have been whipped with the popular understanding of this thesis: namely, that thinking is a deficient mode of being political compared to action; thinking is less real and less effective with respect to the transformation of society. I open this chapter on the politics of sexual difference on this note because I wish to make it clear at the outset that, whatever the 'political implications' of lrigaray's feminism may be, we must resist the supposition that what it is to be political has already been decided in principle, in advance, and is the same in the cases of both sexes. We are invited by Irigaray to consider whether the political has been determined, as such, according to a masculine schema, and, if so, what this implies for a politics of sexual difference and for feminism.
