An Ethics of the In-Between: A Condition of Possibility of Being and Living Together

Abstract

In this text, I argue that the recognition of the space between the one and the other is a necessary condition of being and living together in peace. Departing from Luce Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference, I will address the issue of the recognition of irreducible difference in the relations between women. I will show that Irigaray’s ethics of sexual difference goes hand in hand with an aesthetics of recognizing the irreducible difference of the other. This recognition and respect creates an in-between space/time in the intersubjective relation that will enable the subjects to flourish together and individually. Pivotal to these ideas is Irigaray’s argument that the subject is disappropriated by the fact that it belongs to a “gender”: a horizon of meaning or universal that is marked by (linguistic) gender; thus that “belonging to a gender” constitutes the limit to the I or her/his irreducible difference.