ABSTRACT
At the core of Irigaray’s philosophy of alterity is the figure of sexual difference. For Irigaray, sexual difference refers to a paradoxical two: a two that is uncountable, a two that is irreducible to one. Drawing from Irigaray’s engagement with both phenomenology and psychoanalysis, we see that sexual difference lacks an eidos or essence; instead, it marks a point of antagonism, an ontological inconsistency of being. This chapter will argue that sexual difference is not an ontological difference but what we might call an anontological difference: it is not a difference of being but a difference within being itself. This understanding of sexual difference as anontological is the key to Irigaray’s view of the political: namely, that sexual difference points to the ontological impasse that is inscribed in all concrete political struggles.
