Disrupting Time: Somatechnics and the Opening of the Interval

In thinking through the philosophical provocations that somatechnics brings, I suggest that we can better appreciate the urgency of feminist challenges to binary hierarchical logics undergirding Western metaphysics, and the opportunities this offers us to reimagine politics and reframe ethics that takes seriously ‘the interrelationship between other, self, and world’ (Pugliese, Joseph, and Susan Stryker. 2009. “The Somatechnics of Race and Whiteness.” Social Semiotics 19 (1): 1–8, 2). This article suggests that aspects of Luce Irigaray’s philosophy can be productively read alongside the concept of somatechnics as described by Pugliese, Joseph, and Susan Stryker. (2009. “The Somatechnics of Race and Whiteness.” Social Semiotics 19 (1): 1–8). I turn to Luce Irigaray’s philosophy of sexual difference and unpack her challenges to Western metaphysics as well as her proposals for a new relational nonhierarchical ontology, a new metaphysics that enables a reframing and revaluing of ethics. Reading Irigaray’s work alongside this concept of somatechnics offers the opportunities to recognise and delve deeper into the philosophical and ontological challenges that Irigaray’s work presents.