Inter subjectivity and ren: A Cross-Cultural Encounter

Abstract

Luce Irigaray suggests that Eastern traditions — such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Yoga — may perhaps offer an alternative to the dilemma facing the Western tradition, and she intends to find in these traditions ‘guides and basic principles of method’ (Between East and West, p. 6) to reach a harmonious reunion of the spirit with the body, and to discover a culture that renders respect for sexuate difference possible. However, she is then accused not only of appropriating Eastern traditions without investigating the cultural differences between East and West, but also of falling into what is called a ‘Romantic Orientalism’ for her failure to consider the conditions of women and the issues of their oppression in the Eastern world. Penelope Deutscher, for example, argues that when Irigaray begins her theorization of cultural differences in Between East and West she has shifted her position from the politics of impossible sexuate difference — something non-existing, yet to be created in the future — to that of recognition of cultural differences pre-existing between Eastern and Western traditions. With this comparison, Deutscher concludes that Irigaray’s ‘idealization’ of the Eastern cultures ‘serves as ground to depict the limitations of the West’ (Deutscher, A Politics of Impossible Difference, p. 171), and her valuation of Eastern cultures can be regarded as ‘an appropriation that bolsters her own depreciation of the West’ (Cimitile and Miller, Returning to Irigaray, p. 142).