delimitation, knowledge and navigation, and that which is associated
with limitlessness, alterity and disorientation. Irigaray genders these
two philosophies suggesting that the former can be associated with the
male figure addressed in her text and the latter is evocative of the
female speaker who narrates. What is important is the way in which
the former mode of understanding (or auffassen) is shown not to hold
or grasp in the way in which it aims to do. As in ëFacts About Waterí,
attempts at control or sovereignty on dry land are threatened by
leakiness.
Irigarayís argument is centred by the need to allow love for the
ëotherí or an ethical relation to alterity to grow. She begins ëBaptism
of the Shadowí with the ëmarine loverí addressing Nietzsche. The
speaker approaches his philosophy not in a wholly oppositional way
but as one might a negligent lover:
And, certainly, the most arduous thing has been to seal my lips, out of love. To
close off this mouth that always sought to flow free.
But, had I never held back, never would you have remembered that something
exists which has a language other than your own. That, from her prison,
someone was calling out to return to the air. That your words reasoned all the
better because within them a voice was captive. Amplifying your speech with
an endless resonance.^42The womanís voice is evocative of the positioning of Shakespeareís
Ariel, held captive by Prospero, and she is associated with ëothernessí,
fluidity and flight. She addresses Nietzsche, outlining the short-
comings of Western philosophy: ëyour horizon has limits. Holes even
[Ö] Your world will unravel. It will flood out to other places. To that
outside you have not wanted.í The male figure is represented as
autistic and in need of an enclosed, delimited and inner space:
Your calculations and half-measures and half-shades make everything into little
enclosures [Ö] My whole body is divided up into neatly ruled sections (p.4)
[Ö] I do not wish to be measured out drop by drop. Drop by drop (I) do not
care to live my time. For whole and entire (I) want myself at every instant.
(p.21)42 Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991), p.3. All further references are to this edition and are
cited in parentheses in the text.