Singularity and the Female Self: Encountering the Other

Abstract

This article investigates the question of the ‘forgetting’ of questions to do with embodied human differences—especially sexual difference—in the metaphysical systems and debates of western modernity. Taking its cue from Michel Foucault, it focuses on the question: How can we think the singular that falls outside the ‘universals’ of philosophy? The Nietzschean undertones of this question are explored, along with the major differences between Nietzsche and Foucault with respect to genealogy and the power of the singular to subvert knowledge systems. A historically changing notion of essence is defended, and the case of Thomas Beatie (‘the pregnant man’) is discussed. The piece moves between philosophical and historical questions as it addresses the nature of the ‘forgetting’—and hence also the possibility of ‘remembrance’—of the female subject. Arguing (against Irigaray) that radical subversion can come from the past and also from the margins of western philosophy, it stresses the need to register the importance of recent ‘birth philosophers’, as well as feminist philosophy's potential to change what and who gets included in the philosophical canon.

Keywords:

• feminist metaphysics
• birth
• Foucault
• Nietzsche
• Irigaray
• women philosophers
• pregnant man