From goddess spirituality to Irigaray's angel: The politics of the divine

This article argues that the act of conceptualizing a female divine, whethe r by so-called low-brow Goddess Spiritualists or high-brow French philosoph ers, rather than being a mere spiritual exercise, has enormous political si gnificance for feminisms. In particular, I demonstrate that Irigaray's conc ept of the sensible transcendental, by refiguring a god which is both male and female, transcendent and immanent, theorizes a potential dissolution of the binary logic which forms the basis of western philosophy. The second h alf of the article looks at the complex role of the angel in Irigaray's the ory of the divine in order to demonstrate that, as a result of having misin terpreted the angel's position, critics have failed to recognize the signif icance and relevance of Irigaray's sensible transcendental for feminist pol itics.