Returning to the Point of Entanglement: Sexual Difference and Creolization

Authors

  • Ruthanne C. Kim Minneapolis College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2022.1024

Keywords:

Glissant, Irigaray, sexual difference, creolization

Abstract

In this essay, I suggest an entangled analysis of sexual difference theory via Luce Irigaray and creolization via Édouard Glissant. I argue that these two distinct discourses share a critical stance against Western sameness and assimilation into a closed metaphysical system. However, each is born of particular historical socio-political struggles that should not be collapsed. I bring them together to demonstrate that their claims are productively entangled and that a critical re-reading of melancholia can unite readers to locate sources of sexual-racial-colonial violence in disparate locations and epochs, holding collective memory and acting beyond critique. Relying on Francoise Vergès’s account of métissage and anamnesis, I will suggest that Antillean geographical vantages reveal complexities of racial and colonial relation to one’s mother, the state, and the sea. By interrogating psychoanalytic and linguistic claims, I forward a South-South circulation of coordinated but distinctive political reimaginations that challenge static notions of race, gender, and sexual difference. 

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Published

2023-01-13

Issue

Section

Articles