Introduction: The Task of Analysis

In the previous chapter, I emphasized that while Irigaray is highly critical of psychoanalytic theory, her own process of interpretive readings of philosophical, psychoanalytic, and mythological discourses must be understood as, at least in part, “a psychoanalytic undertaking as well” (Irigaray, 1985b: 75). Although Irigaray is adamant that psychoanalytic theories of social and individual origins provide us with a masculine relation to origins, she also insists that psychoanalysis, as a specific form and practice of critical analysis, does offer strong possibilities for feminist analyses. In light of this complex relationship between Irigaray and psychoanalytic theory, I now turn to Irigaray's own psychoanalytic reading and interpretive practice, which can be characterized as twofold.