The influential philosopher and theorist Luce Irigaray has been faulted for giving more importance to sexual difference than to race and multiculturalism. Penelope Deutscher's eagerly awaited book, the first to focus on the scholar's controversial later works, addresses this charge. Through a learned critique of these lesser-known writings, the book examines Irigaray's claim that the politics of feminism and multiculturalism are intrinsically linked. The volume also serves as a clear and comprehensive introduction to her entire corpus.

In her recent works, Irigaray promotes sexual difference as the philosophical basis for legal, political, and linguistic reform. Deutscher explores this approach and in particular Irigaray's view that the very notion of difference is culturally "impossible."

Taking this concept of impossibility into consideration, Deutscher evaluates Irigaray's contributions to contemporary debates about the politics of identity, recognition, diversity, and multiculturalism. In a balanced discussion, she considers the philosopher's work from the perspective of fellow critics including Michéle Le Doeuff, Drucilla Cornell, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Charles Taylor.

Deutscher's book is a thorough and comprehensive study of Irigaray's works, one which is unique in its theoretical groundings with respect to many debates (post-colonial, feminist, linguistic, philosophical). Readers will find analyses of both Irigaray's well-known and lesser-known writings, while being safely accompanied through the arbitrary leap of faith (101) which must be made in order to access Irigaray's texts.

Deutscher... can initiate serious readers to the feminist philosophy of Irigaray, and refresh the knowledge of committed feminists. A Politics of Impossible Difference could form the basis for a course on feminist theory.

Penelope Deutscher is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Northwestern University. She is author of Yielding Gender: Deconstruction, Feminism, and the History of Philosophy and coeditor of Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman, also from Cornell.