‘Sexual difference’, Luce Irigaray announced almost thirty years ago, ‘is one of the major philosophical issues, if not the issue, of our age’ and ‘is probably the issue in our time which could be our “salvation” if we thought it through’ (Irigaray 1993a: 5). Irigaray insists that the philosophical significance of sexual or, better, sexuate difference has been silenced in western culture. She says,

whether I turn to philosophy, to science, or to religion, I find this underlying issue still cries out in vain for our attention … Both in theory and in practice everything resists the discovery and affi rmation of such an advent or event. In theory, philosophy wants to be literature or rhetoric, wishing either to break with ontology or to regress to the ontological. Using the same ground and the same framework as ‘first philosophy,’ working toward its disintegration but without proposing any other goals that might assure new foundations and new works. (Irigaray 1993a: 6)