The Interval Relation and Becoming in Irigaray, Aristotle, and Bergson [Hardcover]

The Interval offers the first sustained analysis of the concept grounding Irigarays thought: the constitutive yet incalculable interval of sexual difference. In an extension of Irigarays project, Hill takes up her formulation of the interval as a way of rereading Aristotles concept of topos and Bergsons concept of duration.

Hill diagnoses a sexed hierarchy at the heart of Aristotles and Bergsons presentations. Yet beyond that phallocentrism, she points out how Aristotles theory of topos as a sensible relation between two bodies that differ in being and Bergsons intuition of duration as an incalculable threshold of becoming are indispensable to the feminist effort to think about sexual difference.

Reading Irigaray with Aristotle and Bergson, Hill argues that the interval cannot be grasped as a space between two identities; it must be characterized as the sensible threshold of becoming, constitutive of the very identity of beings. The interval is the place of the possibility of sexed subjectivity and intersubjectivity; the interval is also a threshold of the becoming of sexed forces.

Ostensibly a book on Aristotle, Irigaray and Bergson, Hill's profound meditation on the interval offers a rich and provocative argument regarding the very relation between temporality and being. Anyone interested in contemporary philosophy, including readers who want to experience the complexity of an insightful reading that charts its way between fidelity to authorial intention and conceptual complexity, should read and appreciate this timely text. This book should appeal to readers who are unfamiliar with the philosophy of Luce Irigaray or Bergson as much as to those who would benefit from the original interpretations and connections that Hill offers.The interval is a force of dispersal or difference that is constitutive of identity: it is the necessity of relations between terms. Rebecca Hill has provided a powerful original analysis of the interval in thinlC.