Separate

Both authors, Irigaray and Cixous seem to be interested in the fact that the male and the female are completely separate entities and they can never be one in the same. The very essence of being a female and what it means to be a male are completely separate and everything down to the psyche making up each particular gender dwell on such opposite ends that they may never mix without some extreme revolution.

Both authors look to philosophy and great thinkers who recognized this difference in male and female since the beginning of time. There seems to be an agreement on the fact that this "order" is a natural idea and this is just the way things are supposed to be. The idea of subject as its universal use referring to the male sex is common between Cixous and Irigaray. The ideas seem to mirror one another when Cixous will say, "The hierarchization subjects the entire conceptual organization to man." (230), Irigaray will agree and say "It is man who has been the subject of discourse..." (236).

Philosophy plays a great role in the seeming death of women and what it means to be a woman. Cixous particularly uses even theories unique to ancient philosophers such as Pythagoras and his table of opposites to show the unfortunate state of being a woman. Passive, delicate creatures that we are, "cooking, knitting, sewing and embroidering" (236), it seems that the male centered consent is that there is no need for a woman because they exist fine themselves. Cixous attacks Freud and Jones and the importance they place on female desire and their own form of the Oedipus complex. There is a desire for a female to be with her father sexually and destroy her mother just as Freud suggests of males.

There needs to be a major change in the way of thinking. Although, being so different, and taking on more philosophical concepts, "the one is irreducible to the other", there still can be a change in the relationships. there needs to be a move away from this "natural order that has sort of intruded way of thinking. "the general logic of difference would no longer fit into the opposition that still dominates. I do see that these two writers in particular overlap in ideas and are different from anything we have read thus far. Rather than focusing on ways of thinking and not being able to be understood by men, they seem to bring more interesting, philosophical issues that challenge common thought. It seems to focus more on the difference of actually being and existing and two separate worlds. However, reading these chapters, it does seem a little depressing because the gap between mere humans seems to grow further apart.