Tag Archives: Luce Irigaray

Louise Labe–16th Century French Feminist

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Subversive thought has captivated me for most of my adult life.  I am drawn to those who “think outside of the box” and, I like to add, “those who think outside of the box that the box is in.”  Some of the most skilled thinkers of this persuasion are feminist poets, novelists, and intellectuals.  Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray are a few of my favorites.  But earlier in the week I stumbled across a 16th century French woman, Louise Labe, who was an early “feminist” even when women didn’t have the comfort of the label.  And if you “Wiki-pedia” the name, she was quite a rebel and must have wreaked a lot of havoc in her day in the fiercely patriarchal world she lived in.  Here I share her 18th sonnet which reveals the passion which drove her, passion which was forbidden women in the day.  The final stanza beautifully captures her desire to find full expression for her soul, no longer “living in reserve” but instead seeking satisfaction of “my ache” in the depths of her being.

Kiss me again, kiss me, kiss me more:
Give me one of your most mouth-watering ones
Give me one of your most smouldering ones
I’ll repay it with four, hotter than any embers.

Weary, you say? Here, let me find a cure:
I’ll give you ten, all different, of rare softness.
Then as we mix up happiness and kisses
We two will please each other at our pleasure.

Now you and I will live our lives twice over
Once inside our self; once in our lover, and
Love, if I dare think this thought aloud,

Living in reserve makes me impatient:
How will I ever satisfy my ache,
Unless I rouse myself to seek, astride.

The “Gaze” Captures and Can Kill.

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The eye is powerful for it captures reality for us and the image it creates then becomes our “reality.” But the “reality” thus captured is only a snapshot and is not actually “reality.” Here is a short video clip which vividly illustrates the illusory nature of what our eyes capture. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr6VawX2nr4)

Now the impact of this approach is not that the “snap shots” that we live by, which compose our reality, are unimportant. We can’t live and function without this composite snapshot we carry with us each day, a template through which we see the world. But this insight does help us to see that from time to time we can back off a bit with what we “think” we see and be less certain about making pronouncements about it. In other words, we can be a little more humble.

Technically, a further qualification is in order. The “eye” actually does nothing other than take the snap shot. It is the “heart” which takes this snap shot and interprets it and it is the heart which then concretizes that image and takes it for granted…or if I might lapse poetic a moment…”for granite.” Our interpretation of reality becomes ironclad and we stop seeing…and feeling…the nuances of life. This is tantamount to saying that we become “dead.”

And here are a couple of thoughtful observations about the power of vision:

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—         55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?         60
  And how should I presume? (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofrock” by T. S. Eliot)

 

And then Luce Irigaray noted:

.more than other senses, the eye objectifies and masters. it sets at a distance, maintains the distance. in our culture, the predominance of the look over smell, taste, touch, hearing, has brought about an improverishment of bodily relations…the moment domin ates the look dominates, the body loses its materiality. (Marine Lover: Of Friedrich Nietzsche)