Luce Irigaray

Luce Irigaray does not like to answer questions about her personal life. However, it is known that she was born in French-speaking Belgium, and graduated from the University of Louvain (Catholic University of Leuven) in 1955. She taught at a high school in Brussels from 1956 to 1959. In 1960, she moved to Paris to obtain another master's degree in psychology from the University of Paris-Vincennes. There she also earned a Diploma in Psychopathology in 1962 and a Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1968. In the 1960s, she attended the École Freudienne de Paris, directed by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. She has held a research post at the Centre national de recherche scientifiques since 1964; she is now a director of research in Philosophy. She published her second doctoral thesis, Speculum, de l’autre femme (Speculum of the Other Woman) in 1974; it caused an uproar within the Lacanian school in France and led to her losing her position at the University of Vincennes as well as being expelled from the École Freudienne. She went on to become a prolific and influential writer and philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, and cultural theorist. Her work often examines the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. In 1977, she published another well-known book, Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (This Sex Which Is Not One).