Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract The chapter revisits the significance of the mirror as the quintessential tool of mimēsis and explains that it serves as the perfect symbol for what is achieved in the dialogues: they offer up images of transcendent force and the divine. It summarizes the author’s reading and approach: in the use of these conceptual apparatuses, this reading elevates the mirror, specularity, and visual appearances, as described by Irigaray in “Plato’s Hystera”: “Occasionally the son/sun gives a new silver-backing to the mother-mirror … Enumeration of mornings and evenings, sunrises and sunsets, seasons, years. Over and over again. Like and unlike. Harmoniously ordering the process of living beings, but under the constant threat of materialist anarchy. Teaching them to count—moving image of a time without memory—but also to measure and survey the earth” (Irigaray 1985, 302–303). Irigaray’s method of deconstruction resonates with the Deleuzian aim of overthrowing Platonism by inverting the hierarchy between essence and Appearance, Model and Copy, Same and the Like, and thereby invests what has been repressed—simulation, the phantasm, the copy of a copy—with positive power. Both Irigaray and Deleuze challenge binary oppositions and their hierarchal values. They strive to escape Platonic dualism by eradicating the subject/object distinction, introducing new frameworks, and expanding the philosophical vocabulary.