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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

Might an idiom of love be instituted in law? This question is posed by Luce Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference, which, in the guise of a critique of law, depicts the semantic or symbolic structure of a law that articulates an ethical relation of love-not love as caritatis, but love as eros. This implausible association of love and law seeks to institute an immediate and idiomatic relation within the axiopoietic order of law. Irigaray's J'aime d toi prescribes a set of basic rights which law-in its role as cultural tutor-might institute as the coordinates of a new model of sexuate subjectivity. The rights in question are described as civil rights-symbolic markers around which the fabric of a new, differentiated, subjective identity might be fashioned. To redefine and rewrite rights on the basis of sexual difference would be not only to invent new symbols but also a new symbolism for law. Hence, it is not surprising that Irigaray should present this ostensibly "concrete" concern for law as a continuation of the project initiated by Speculum: De l'autre femme. The demand for rights would be unintelligible or simply unremarkable were it not for the unique theoretical sensibility which it expresses, and which is concerned with mapping out the possibility of beginning with something other than the formulas which currently measure the values of equality and difference. This article develops the question of uniqueness and difference by manufacturing a conversation between Emmanuel Levinas and Irigaray. The suggestion is that a careful reading of some aspects of the philosophy of Levinas offers a particularly productive way of uncovering the unique theoretical imagination which infuses the work of Irigaray.

Keywords

Criminology, Ethics, Jurisprudence

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law | Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

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