In the Beginning, She Was

In this important new book, Luce Irigaray engages with some of the themes that have been central to her thought: the limits of language, the importance of art and perception, the relation between two, the fecundity of life and the myth of Antigone, a figure who has always been important to her. Starting with the Pre-Socratics, she takes us on a journey that reveals the significance of the role of 'sameness' in contemporary culture. She considers how Western thinking became closed off to sexuate difference, and how such foreclosure means that we no longer perceive the real. Irigaray makes the bold claim that art is more important than morality in transforming us, allowing us to become the humans we are by nature. Through an attentiveness to culture and to cultivating the ways we perceive we encounter the real. In the Beginning, She Wasis a poetic piece of writing that demonstrates a new level of maturity and purpose in Irigaray's work and reconfirms her place as one of the world's most important contemporary thinkers.

Acknowledgements \ 1. Introduction: The Ecstasy of the Between-Us \ 2. When Life Still Was \ 3. A Being Created Without Regard for His Being Born \ 4. The Wandering of Man \ 5. Between Myth and History: The Tragedy of Antigone \ 6. The Return