Dissertation

With place love begins: the philosophy of luce irigaray, the issue of dwelling, feminism and architecure

Wheeler, Andrea Susan

2005

Overview

The question of dwelling, how, where, in what way and in what manner describes a crisis in many professional women's lives especially when living in pursuit of equality becomes dissatisfying and the demands of traditional stereotypes unappealing. Books such as Desiring Practices (1995) demonstrate the need for some sort of shared expression and community to resolve the career frustrations of working academics in traditionally male dominated environments. Documents such as Why Women Leave Practice? (2003) record what is seen as a very real difficulty for the Institution. The important aspect of Irigaray's work for these debates, however, is how she has already begun to unravel the problems women face in contemporary societies. For architects concerned with diversity, her work is an incitement to reformulate this question by thinking how we can positively approach sexual difference as the basis for approaching all other differences. For feminists, Irigaray's philosophy also presents the possibility of a practice (albeit a practice profoundly reconsidered) beyond a simple desire for equality with men but nevertheless, without denying the problem of a culture of discrimination within the profession. Furthermore, for theorists concerned with how we approach the other, the hidden, or the devalued within our discourses her work is motive to take further these theories towards a more radical poetic or artistic practice. The question of dwelling as a reconsideration of coexistence, co-habitation and co-belonging, as relation rethought, extends the problem of the intimate to address issues of the architectural.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Philosophy