The Interval

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.