Luce Irigaray, You’ve Changed Our

Luce Irigaray, You’ve Changed Our Lives

Anyway, apparently the old U of N is offering a special seminar, to which the Official Gender Studies Department here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” has been cordially invited. As any postmodern devotee must know, academic feminist-cum-abstruse theorist Luce Irigary will soon wax hegemonic at a special seminar devoted to her genius.

About the pretentious, jargon-laden palaver Ms. Irigaray produces, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont have written: “With friends like these, the feminist cause hardly needs enemies,” and “Simone de Beauvoir must be turning in her grave.”

She sounds pretty good, doesn’t she? We thought so too. As a result, dear reader, the Official We Got Invited and You Didn’t Department at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” has decided to offer a copy of our invitation below (in italics), to which we have affixed our own humble commentary.

Invitation to the Seminar of Luce Irigaray

Luce Irigaray is Special Professor at the School of Modern Languages of the University of Nottingham for three years.

Hmmm. Is she a “Special Professor” in the way that the mildly retarded are deemed “Special Students”?

During the week of 16-21 May, she will hold a seminar, in English, with people who are doing PhD research on her work. Such an event took place in May 2004. It was really appreciated by the participants, and was highly successful both for their work and in their life.

Ah, yes, Ms. Irigaray: You’ve changed our lives. Before we attended your seminar, we enjoyed surfing, long walks on the beach, and convertibles. Since we’ve basked in your luminous genius, however, we can only think about Judith Butler, “cosmic rhythms,” and “the universal quantifier.”

The students came from various Universities: Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester, University of British Columbia in Canada, Macqarie University of Sydney in Australia. They belonged to different Schools and Departments: Cultural Studies, Art History, Philosophy, French, Spanish and Portuguese, Asian Studies, and Built Environment.

We know what you are thinking, dear reader: Built Environment? What the heck is that? To be honest, we don’t know. In all our days, we’ve only met three Built Environment majors, and they’ve all been trees. And we couldn’t get a word out of them.

The programme of the week was established according to the wishes of the students themselves. Generally, in the morning, Luce Irigaray explained some key words or key thoughts of her thinking, form a list drawn up by students: sexual difference; becoming, and especially feminine becoming; femininity – feminine – woman – female; sensible transcendental; feminine imaginary in relation to the symbolic order; maternal order; invisibility; desire; placental economy; exchange; the breath; energy; elements; angel; the East, etc.

We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” were delighted to find out that Ms. Irigaray aimed to discuss some of the “key thoughts of her thinking.” If you ask her to enlighten you on the “key thoughts of her drinking,” you don’t get as much out of it.

But we can’t believe we missed her glorious lucubrations on the “placental economy.” That’s a real hot topic these days. In fact, if we recall correctly, Honduras now operates entirely on a placental economy. And it’s been great for its GDP.