Tracing the ‘Sensible Transcendental’: Forough Farrokhzad and the Question of Female Subjectivity

Dr. Mahrokhsadat Hosseini is a research associate at the University of Sussex. Iranian women’s poetry, gender studies and feminist literary theories, in particular French feminism are her main fields of research. She has benefited from Luce Irigaray’s extraordinary expertise and subsequent feedback in her seminars where selected postgraduate researchers work in collaboration with her each year at the University of Bristol.

“Tracing the “Sensible Transcendental” traces Forough Farrokhead’s call for a ‘sensible transcendental’ along the lines of her poetry to develop the culture of two according to what Luce Irigaray’s philosophy of sexuate difference elaborated upon. Forough’s recognition of sexuate difference allows for the becoming of two subjectivities, a masculine and a feminine, as well as a culture of ‘between two’ as opposed to the culture of the One. Using Irigaravian modes of resistance it will be demonstrated how it is essential for Iranian women poets to create a “house of language” or, to use Irigaray’s term, the project of “parler femme,” a place in which they can practice living and articulating so that the can practice ‘sensible transcendental.’