Abstract

The dissertation as a whole addresses the cultural and philosophical possibility and significance of a "feminine" ethics or polis--what Julia Kristeva terms a "Herethics" or what Luce Irigaray, whose thought constitutes a central focus in my writing, frames as an ethics of "sexual difference." What I contend variously and repeatedly is that in order to enable heterogeneity , be that social or philosophical, individual or collective, it is necessary to incorporate a sense of ecstasy into relationship. Another way of phrasing this contingency, is that in order for a copula of any kind to evolve, the recognition of an intermediary or "third" term which opens the relation to both exchange as well as to the possibility of becoming is essential. Additionally, I bring Irigaray to bear on various traditional "figures" in the history philosophy while at the same time holding her own writing and thought open to being read by various less traditional tropes and figures, in order to engender what I believe to be an unprecedented exchange and clearing for future cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue. ;Chapter 1. I begin with an implicit critique of Lacan's reading of both femininity and the soul. I present a limited archaeology, tracing the history of soul, or the idea of an animating soul--human or animal--through a trajectory of seminal writings on the subject, which culminate in an analysis of Irigaray's "La Mysterique." ;Chapter 2. I take up Plato in conversation with Irigaray in order to represent the interrelation between eros and the soul, the mythological affair between "Eros and Psyche," as an envelope for the more pointedly divine and auto-erotic encounter evoked by "La Mysterique." "Mania" or madness embodies a crossing between Irigaray and Plato, the holding together and amplification of eros and soul, and the seeds of Irigaray's later formulation of an ethics of sexual difference. ;Chapter 3. In this chapter I actually start to use the language of a "third" or "intermediary" term--implicit in the ekstasis or difference between the figures of eros and the soul. I do this via a "full blown" discussion of the feminine itself, which is, in a sense, the intermediary of intermediaries. ;Chapter 4. Here I revisit and extend familiar terrain, in order to perform a final crossing and, ultimately, to achieve some modest measure of temporary closure. That is, I highlight, once again, the necessity of a kind of collective incorporation of ekstasis as figured via the feminine. In this chapter, however, I begin, at least, by elaborating something of Lacan's reading of the figure in its negative aspect--through the experience and figure of loss. ;In the second part of the chapter I enact a bridge between western culture and its Other by rereading the figure of loss through the specter of possession in Haitian vodou