Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty (review)

In her book Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty (1998), Cathryn Vasseleu takes issue with Martin Jay’s thesis in his expansive volume Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought (1994). Vasseleu persuasively argues that rather than denigrate vision, French theorists—Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and Irigaray— are trying to reconceive of vision in more productive terms. Vasseleu argues that Irigaray goes further than either Merleau-Ponty or Levinas towards developing an alternative theory of vision by developing an alternative vision of light. Primarily working with Irigaray’s engagement with Merleau-Ponty and with Levinas in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993), Vasseleu shows how Irigaray develops a theory of what she calls the texture of light. Rather than reduce vision to touch, which is one of her (debatable) criticisms of MerleauPonty, on Vasseleu’s reading, Irigaray emphasizes the touch of light on the eye. It is not, then, that vision and touch are not separate senses; but rather that vision is dependent upon the sense of touch. Vasseleu describes a texture as