Disrupting Symmetry: Jean-Luc Nancy and Luce Irigaray on Myth and the Violence of Representation

• Main Author: Sasha L. Biro
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Warsaw 2019-07-01
• Series: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Subjects: symmetry; jean-luc nancy; luce irigaray; myth; disruption; violence
• Online Access: http://eidos.uw.edu.pl/disrupting-symmetry-jean-luc-nancy-and-luce-irigaray-on-myth-and-the-violence-of-representation/

Through myths that pattern and repeat we figure the world to ourselves. The desire to be done with myth, to surpass mythic thinking in favor of a “more” rational way of thinking, is but one way of perpetrating violence in the guise of similitude. The rejection of muthos by logos is itself a form of violence, with significant ramifications. The following analysis will explore the work of Luce Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Inoperative Community, focusing on the ways in which myth becomes mythology, and the inescapable question of violence that attends this operation. This paper, although touching upon the matter, is not an attempt to answer the larger question of what myth is. The scope of this analysis is constrained to a discussion of both Nancy and Irigaray’s understanding of myth as foundational, as well as interrogating the nature of the violence of representation. I will briefly touch upon the long and elaborate conversation surrounding the muthos–logos divide.