Divine Women? Irigaray,God,and the Subject

Feminists have had an uneasy relationship with theology. Many feminists have simply written it off as inherently patriarchal and thus not worthy of feminist concern. Although there is a robust tradition of feminist theology, few feminist theorists recognize this literature. It is significant, then, when a well-recognized feminist philosopher turns her attention to theology and develops a complex thesis regarding theological questions. It suggests the possibility of a bridge between these two traditions that could benefit both.

Luce Irigaray is one of the pillars of contemporary feminist philosophy. Her innovative work on sexual difference and the feminine subject has inspired generations of feminist theorists. At the centre of Irigaray’s analysis since her earliest work has been the impossibility of the feminine subject. Her detailed analysis of Western thought going back to Plato establishes without question that woman as subject is missing from the tradition. Like many other feminists of her generation she looks for ways to address this lack. Underlying all her work is her assertion that only a radical strategy will accomplish our goal: ‘To secure a new social order women need a religion, a language, and a currency of exchange, or else a non-market economy’ (1993:79). The focus of this revolution, furthermore, must be sexual difference which is, she claims, the ‘burning issue of our age’ (1987:118). Her thesis is that we must secure a place for the feminine in sexual difference (1985:159).

For Irigaray, the exploration of sexual difference will provide an alternative to the dominance of the masculine subject. We must define the subject, she asserts, as two, not one (2001:6–29). As Irigaray develops this thesis she turns from the strictly theoretical/philosophical realm to the political. We need to redefine what it means to be a citizen, specifically to obtain positive rights of citizenship in a female mode (2001: 38). This will necessitate legal changes: specifically, a constitution that recognizes two kinds of citizenship – male and female. In Democracy Begins Between Two (2001), Irigaray outlines a new way of being together for a community. This took concrete form when she participated in an attempt to change the constitution of the European Union to recognize dual citizenship.

Another political strategy Irigaray proposes to subvert patriarchal culture is the promotion of the mother/daughter relationship. She advocates putting up images – photographs, paintings, sculpture – of mother/daughter couples in public places. Her conviction is that to re-establish elementary social justice, to save the earth from the subjugation to males, we must restore the missing pillar of our culture: the mother-daughter connection (1994:112).

At this point the literature on Irigaray and the subject is extensive. I will not try to summarize or comment on that literature here. Instead I will examine a particular aspect of Irigaray’s discussion of the subject: divine women. In the essay of this name (1993b) Irigaray develops a distinctive strategy for the restoration of the feminine subject, advancing a bold thesis that takes her speculation in a direction radically different from her other work. Why, she asks, have women been held back from becoming divine women? Man is able to exist because God helps him to define his gender, helps him to orient his finiteness by reference to infinity: ‘To posit a gender, a God is necessary: guaranteeing the infinite’ (1993b: 61). In order to become, it is necessary to have an essence – specifically a sexual essence. Is it possible, she asks, that woman has no gender through which she can become? Man has been able to complete his essence by claiming his separateness as a gender. If he has no existence in his gender he lacks his relationship to the infinite and the finite. To avoid that finiteness man has sought out a unique male God (1993b: 60–61).

Underlying Irigaray’s argument here is the definition of God advanced by Feuerbach. For Feuerbach, God is the mirror of man; God is nothing else than the nature of man. Irigaray accepts Feuerbach’s theory of the identity of God, man, and the divine and wants to give women an equal chance at divinity. If God and man are identical, then women need a God that can provide them with the divinity that men already possess.

The conclusion that Irigaray draws from her analysis is simple: ‘Divinity is what we need to become free, autonomous, sovereign. No human subjectivity, no human society, has ever been established without the help of the divine’ (1993b: 62). If women have no God, they are unable either to communicate or commune with one another. ‘As long as woman lacks a divine made in her image, she cannot establish her subjectivity or achieve a goal of her own. She lacks an ideal that would be her goal (or path) in becoming’ (1993b: 63–64).

The most human and the most divine goal woman can conceive is to become man. If she is to become woman, if she is to accomplish her female subjectivity, woman needs a god who is feminine for the perfection of her subjectivity (1993b: 64).

Irigaray elaborates on this thesis in the remainder of her essay. God is the mirror of man, but woman has no mirror that will enable her to become woman. Having a god and becoming one’s gender go hand in hand: ‘A female god is still to come’; ‘God alone can save us, make us safe’ (1993b: 67); ‘Only the divine offers us freedom’ (1993a: 68). Finally: ‘The divinity of woman is still hidden, veiled’ (1993b: 71). In conclusion, Irigaray returns to her previous emphasis on the political. Those of us who are about social justice, she states, should put up posters of mothers and daughters. This will heal many of woman’s ills. In a later work Irigaray puts this point in a slightly different context: ‘How could we imagine, moreover, a divinity hostile to our humanity and not a model for its flourishing?’ (2003: 8).

The implications of Irigaray’s argument here are profound. First, if we take her literally (as I think we must), her position represents a reversal, or, at the very least, a change in direction from that of her other analyses of female subjectivity. Along with most feminists, Irigaray had attributed female inferiority to the long tradition of male dominance of philosophical thought. What emerges here is a departure from this position. God, most particularly the Christian God, is identified as the root of the problem of the inferior female subject. To be full subjects, Irigaray now declares, we need to throw off the male God and to embrace a female deity. She does not go so far as to say that this supersedes her other arguments that identify the Western philosophical tradition as the root cause of female inferiority, but this conclusion is strongly implied.

The condemnation of the masculine philosophical tradition among feminist theorists, including Irigaray, is close to universal. This tradition is identified as the essential cause of woman’s inferiority in our culture. References to religion in this literature are rare. What Irigaray is doing here reverses this. Women’s lack of a female divine is now identified as the cause of female inferiority. If she is right, then feminism should turn its attention to religion rather than exclusively the philosophical. She is, in effect, calling for a sea change in feminist theory.

A second aspect of Irigaray’s thesis is also of immense importance: her failure to clearly define the female divine. What she gives us is at best vague. She insists that the female divine is not to be identified exclusively with the mother. She talks about the mother in every woman and the woman in every mother. We must, she asserts, discover and declare that we are always mothers just by being women (1993b: 16–17). But as she develops her argument it becomes harder to accept this qualification. Her emphasis on mothers and daughters as the key to social justice places mothers at the centre of her strategy. Her insistence that we need separate laws for men and women and, specifically, the legal right to motherhood also places mothers at the forefront of constructing female identity (1993a: 87–88).

There appears to be a link here between Irigaray’s argument and the contemporary feminist advocacy of the Goddess tradition. Some feminists have argued that, given the inherent patriarchy of the Judeo-Christian tradition, we should revive the Goddess tradition that preceded it. Although Irigaray agrees that the Judeo-Christian tradition’s androcentrism must be rejected, she is not ready to embrace the Goddess tradition without reservation. It is not, she claims, simply a matter of returning to the goddesses of the earth, but to keep hold of them and reestablish a social system that reflects their values: ‘It is idle to revive old myths if we are unable to challenge them and use them to construct a social system, a temporal system’ (1993b: 81).

Another possibility is linking the female deity that Irigaray is seeking with the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity. Some Christians characterize the Holy Spirit as feminine, an embodiment of the female Wisdom tradition. Although it is tempting to suggest that the Holy Spirit might be the female deity that Irigaray is seeking, the two concepts are incompatible. Irigaray appears to want a feminine deity that can perform the same function as the masculine deity – thus providing an image that will make women divine. The Holy Spirit does not meet these requirements. She is not the feminine counterpart of the masculinity of God the Father and God the Son. She cannot be separated from the Trinity as a distinct deity because Christians believe that the mystery of the Trinity is that it is One in Three and Three in One.

Commentary on Irigaray’s female divine attempts to answer some of the questions raised by her radical thesis. In Becoming Divine (1999) Grace Jantzen builds on the ideas expressed in ‘Divine Women’. Like other feminist theorists she identifies the genderless, rational, empirical subject as exclusively masculine. She challenges this subject by positing an embodied subject, arguing that becoming divine must be possible for such a subject. This becomes the basis of the book’s thesis: by developing a feminist imaginary of natality women can achieve their own subjectivities, becoming divine (1999: 57).

In the course of her argument Jantzen details how a symbolic of natality can transform our subjectivity. Natality, she asserts, is ‘the unacknowledged and untheorized other of death’ (1999: 141). It focuses on flourishing, not salvation. She is careful to insist that the focus on natality need not be on women as mothers, but, rather, on the fact that we are all born of women (1999: 203). It is urgently necessary, she asserts, for feminists to work towards a new religious symbolic focused on natality and flourishing rather than on death, a symbolic that will enable natals, women and men, to become subjects of the earth and bloom (1999: 254).

Jantzen’s thesis fills in some of the gaps of Irigaray’s theory. Most importantly, we have a better sense of the nature of the symbolic that Irigaray posits. But Jantzen’s analysis also reveals, in a sense, the fault lines in Irigaray’s theory. First, it is impossible to completely separate natality from women, and specifically from mothers. Although Jantzen attempts to do this by asserting that we are all born of women, this argument is ineffective. Natality is inseparably tied to the feminine, particularly mothers, and necessarily excludes other subjectivities.

The second problem that Jantzen inherits from Irigaray is the duality of gender. Her last chapter is titled ‘A God According to Our Gender’. This raises the same set of problems that Irigaray encountered in positing a feminine deity. Are we positing a second God? Are we defining a religion that will have two Gods – one male, one female? On the face of it, this seems an impossible conclusion. If, indeed, this is what Jantzen/Irigaray are arguing, then we need much more detail on what such a religion might look like. We also need an argument that explains how this theory avoids the dichotomy of male/female that feminists are seeking to overcome.

Other criticisms of Irigaray’s divine women also focus on the male/female dualism that Irigaray appears to espouse. Judith Poxon (2003) asserts that Irigaray is effectively positing a Platonic external realm in which women are idealized. Morny Joy (2006) extends this argument by claiming that Irigaray’s depiction of the divine feminine promotes a form of romantic idealization of women as being more inherently spiritual (2006: 137). By restoring women to their rightful place in the cosmic order Irigaray endows them with a dubious mythical legacy. She thus risks being just as categorical as the traditional religion she contests, in effect mimicking the masculine tradition (2006: 141–51). One exception to this argument is Marie-Andrea Roy. Roy argues that Irigaray is right in arguing that women need a God, a mirror to posit our gender. She even extends Irigaray’s thesis to argue that only the religious is fundamental enough to allow us to discover and affirm certain ends (Roy, 2003: 14).

Pamela Anderson’s criticism of Irigaray moves in a different direction (1998). While sympathetic to Irigaray’s comments on divine women, she argues that it does not provide an adequate basis for a feminist theology. Unlike Poxon, however, she sees myths as a positive possibility for a feminist theology. She argues that myth and mimesis can be used as philosophical tools for feminists who endeavour to rethink the patriarchal structure of philosophy and religion (1998: 154). Central to this structure is the Enlightenment conception of rationality. Rather than reject this outright as do most feminists, she wants to develop a revised feminist conception of rationality that can encompass myth and embodied subjects (1998: 114).

Perhaps the most challenging analysis of Irigaray’s divine women is that of Penelope Ingram (2000). Ingram’s thesis is that Irigaray’s divine details a significant political, feminist project. In a complex, multilayered argument, Ingram advances several theses simultaneously. One is to link Irigaray’s position with that of the Goddess tradition. The literature advocating the Goddess tradition has been characterized as ‘low-brow’ as opposed to the position of Irigaray and her commentators as ‘high-brow’, the product of intellectual analysis. What Ingram wants to argue is that both Irigaray and the advocates of the Goddess tradition have much in common; both challenge the androcentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition. She acknowledges that the goddess spiritualists look to the Goddess tradition as the counter to this androcentrism, while Irigaray wants to embrace the values of the Goddess tradition without adopting it unreservedly. But Ingram asserts that the commonality between the two approaches outweigh the differences (2000: 48–49).

Like the other commentators on Irigaray’s divine women, Ingram is concerned with the question of binaries. Her position on this issue is complex. On the one hand, she defends Irigaray’s advocacy of a female deity, arguing that it is necessary for the achievement of feminine subjectivity. She denies, however, that Irigaray’s position necessarily entails binaries. She rests her argument on an appeal to Irigaray’s concept of the sensible transcendental. For Irigaray, the sensible transcendental breaks down the division between spirit and flesh, immanent and transcendent. Why, she asks, must God always remain an inaccessible transcendent, rather than a realization in and through the body? (1993a: 129) Ingram’s thesis is that the concept of the sensible transcendental dismantles dualisms, completely displacing binary logic. To conceive of God as male and female, as simultaneously immanent and transcendent, is to visualize a way out of the phallocratic model (2000: 68).

I could not agree with Ingram more that we should dismantle the binary logic that has informed religious thought. I further agree with her that the sensible transcendental is a means to accomplish this goal. It has much in common with the theological position that I will advocate below. But it cannot be maintained without contradiction that Irigaray dismantles binary logic while at the same time arguing for male and female deities. It is indisputable that we must challenge the androcentrism of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that we must seek a definition of God that transcends patriarchy, that is compatible with women’s values. But the way to do so is not to embrace the feminine side of the male/female binary. What we need instead is to dismantle that binary, to define a God who is neither male nor female, but who eschews the masculinist characteristics that have hitherto defined ‘God’. I do not think that either Irigaray or Ingram accomplish this goal.

Irigaray’s thesis on divine women is part of a widespread effort on the part of feminist theologians to restructure patriarchal religion. That this restructuring is necessary is clear to every feminist writing in the field. But there is little agreement on how we should accomplish this goal. Irigaray’s thesis is a bold attempt to fashion a religion more open to women. I have outlined my objections to Irigaray’s approach above. Despite these problematic aspects, however, she gets several things right. First, she wants to define a god who is not the omniscient, omnipresent god of the patriarchal tradition. She wants a god who is connected to the material world, to nature, and is sympathetic of the activities of embodied human subjects. These are goals that must be at the centre of any feminist theology. Second, she wants to turn feminist attention to religion. Her claim that women need a God to achieve subjectivity serves to re-orient feminist theory of the subject.In her discussion of Irigaray’s work Jantzen notes that a contemporary theological approach, process theology, can be helpful in developing a feminist theology, but she does not pursue this suggestion. It is unfortunate that Jantzen did not follow up on this idea. Process theology outlines a means of restructuring patriarchal religion without falling into the pitfalls of Irigaray’s feminine deity. Process theologians offer an understanding of God and the relationship between God, humans, and nature that solves many of the problems that Irigaray explores.

Process theology has its roots in the work of Alfred North Whitehead, particularly his path-breaking Process and Reality (1978). For Whitehead, becoming is more elemental than being because reality is fundamentally temporal and creative. For Whitehead, everything is always in flux, nothing is fixed, everything is fluid. Thus he rejects all the rigid dichotomies that have structured patriarchal religious thought. His thought outlines a new world that has no relationship to the structured world of classical theology or philosophy.

What emerges from process theology is an approach to religion that has much in common with the goals of feminist theory. It is a religion in which God is in the world. He has feelings, emotions, He is not a ‘cosmic despot.’ The world is relational and interdependent. Charles Hartshorne, in a brief summary of process theology, lists the major elements of the approach (1984). He arranges these points in terms of the mistakes theologians have made about God. He challenges the belief that God is absolutely perfect and therefore unchangeable, that he is omnipotent and omniscient. He also challenges the belief that God’s goodness is unsympathetic (1984: 2–4).

Most significant in the present context is Hartshorne’s discussions of the subject. One of the sections of his book is titled ‘Male Bias in Theology’ (1984: 56). Although he does not advance an explicitly feminist argument, Hartshorne asserts that a more appropriate idea of God is a mother who influences her child and delights in its growth, creativity and freedom (1984: 58). Divine love calls into being creatures able to respond to this law (1984: 82). Thus the subject of process theology is relational, in flux. It has virtually nothing in common with the androcentric, masculinist subject of the Cartesian tradition, the subject that informs the rigid, patriarchal religion that Hartshorne challenges.

Finally, process theology emphasizes humans’ connection to the natural world, rejecting the human/nature dichotomy altogether. Love relates God not only to human beings but to all creatures. Hartshorne concludes:

A religion of love can encourage us to look upon nature as a realm of love and freedom, whose members, in an extended sense fellow creatures, are in this humble way also “images of God” (1984: 111).

The affinity between process theology and feminist theology, then, is significant. John Cobb, an early proponent of process theology states in 1982: ‘Process theology and feminist theology today overlap in a healthy way and there is every indication that feminists will play leading roles in the further development of process theology’ (1982: x). Cobb’s prediction was accurate. A tradition of feminist process theology has developed in recent decades. This work has focused on the rejection of dualisms and the philosophy of substance, positions that are central to feminist thought. It has also focused on the identity of God that process theologians such as Hartshorne have explored. A God that is in the world, that has sympathy for human actions is much more compatible with feminism than the ‘cosmic despot’ of traditional theology. Contemporary feminism, furthermore, has been concerned to emphasize the link between humans and nature, to reject the human/non-human dualism. Once again, process theology is compatible with this position. The concern with the environment that characterizes contemporary feminism is echoed in the work of process theology.

Most significantly, however, is feminist process theology’s emphasis on the subject. Catherine Keller in From a Broken Web (1986) describes a self that provides a clear contrast to the separate, autonomous ego of the Western tradition and, particularly, classical theology. For Keller, the self is a complex mix of feeling that rises up in response to feelings in the plural world – a self of radical relatedness (1986: 184). Displacing the androcentric subject that informs classical theology goes a long way towards displacing the androcentrism of that tradition.

Process theology, and particularly feminist process theology, is a rich and evolving tradition (see Hekman, 2017 for a discussion of process theology. For a discussion of feminist new materialism, process ontology, and theology see Haynes, 2014. I have only outlined it here. My point in doing so is to emphasize that Irigaray’s exploration of a feminine divinity is wrong-headed and unnecessary. Process theology demonstrates another avenue of displacement and transformation that is clearer and more persuasive than Irigaray’s. Against Irigaray I am arguing that what makes God masculine are the characteristics that we assign to him – characteristics such as omnipotence and omniscience. If we remove and replace these characteristics as process theology does, we remove his masculine gender. What we are left with is a God who is human in the world, and sympathetic to human action. The approach of process theology offers a more positive approach than the vague and ill-formed concept of a feminine deity.

What is ironic about Irigaray’s thesis is that she, more than the process theologians, follows in the footsteps of the tradition she claims to be rejecting. Despite her protestations she perpetuates the dualism of male/female by positing a female subject/divinity. This dualism is at the centre of the traditions of both philosophy and theology. What process theology reveals is that we can imagine a God not restricted by the characteristics assigned to either gender, a God who is loving, kind, and involved in the human world. Although the Christian tradition in particular has not defined God in this way, process theology illustrates a way in which that tradition can be transformed. The result is a very different deity, a deity that allows women and men full subjectivity.

Process theology has not been widely discussed by contemporary feminists. It is significant to note, however, that process theology has much in common with a perspective that many contemporary feminists embrace: the new materialism. Both define a world in flux, in process. They reject fixedness and the philosophy of substance. Both focus on the material world and nature and humans’ interrelatedness to that world. For both truth is open-ended rather than fixed, a becoming not a being.

Irigaray’s position is more complex than the many feminist philosophers that write off feminist theology. Like most feminists she rejects the religious tradition as the pillar of patriarchy. She even goes beyond this to insist that it is the central pillar of that tradition. This in itself is significant. Her argument in effect defines the religious tradition as the primary cause of patriarchal thought. This sets her apart from most contemporary feminist theorists.

Irigaray’s solution to this problem, however, is both too radical and too conformist. She wants to reject the definition of God in that tradition, but her replacement, a female deity, perpetuates the male/female dualism at the centre of that tradition. This feminine deity, furthermore, is closely associated with the maternal, an association that narrows the definition of woman and denies the diversity of women that is central to contemporary feminist theory.

My argument here is that there is another alternative, an alternative that is much more compatible with feminist beliefs. Process theology offers a perspective that accords with many of the principal elements of contemporary feminism. The fact that this theology overlaps with one of contemporary feminisms’ most prominent positions, the new materialism, is also significant. What I am suggesting is that feminists begin a dialogue between process theology and the new materialism, a dialogue that will enrich both approaches. The one significant advantage of Irigaray’s approach is that she turned feminist attention to religion. Feminists can build on this insight as we continue to challenge the patriarchal tradition. Ignoring the role of religion in that tradition can only harm the feminist cause.