La concepción del conocimiento en dos pensadoras feministas: Ivone Gebara y Luce Irigaray

Abstract

This paper exposes and synthetically compares the epistemological proposals of feminist thinkers Ivone Gebara and Luce Irigaray, who claim that for most of Western history, women have been subjected to patriarchy. This dominance over women is also exercised at the level of knowledge, since men have established as canonical a dualistic, scientific and religious epistemology, based on intelligible and abstract axioms, which enjoyed indisputable and universal value. To overcome this condition, the two philosophers maintain that knowledge must start from corporeality, from sensitivity, until it reaches language and thought, in a non-temporal or successive way. This attitude favors the implementation of “sexual or gender difference” to secure women’s identity. From the place of this recovered identity, they propose that a more adequate alliance with nature and with the cosmos is possible, including males. The latter means not hiding differences, but rather maintaining them in order to achieve a balanced and renewed relationship.