Rendering Visible: Painting and sexuate subjectivity

Abstract

In this essay, I examine Luce Irigaray’s aesthetic of sexual difference, which she develops by extrapolating from Paul Klee’s idea that the role of painting is to render the non-visible rather than represent the visible. This idea is the premise of her analyses of phenomenology and psychoanalysis and their respective contributions to understanding art and sexual identity. I claim that Irigaray assembles an aesthetic of sexual difference that exceeds these familiar intellectual traditions, one that articulates the encounter of non-visible, material (human and non-human) forces that engender modes of sexuate being and becoming. I further claim that this encounter is the very matter of artistry and art-making.