Patriarchy appears to be far reaching and totalising and feminists have struggled, and continue to struggle, with questions concerning its genesis, its seemingly trans-cultural status, and the idea that might have been unavoidable. Why have we almost universally divided the population into two halves on the basis of some morphological differences and reproductive capacities and decided that one of those halves is worth less than the other? Is this binary division—and the oppression it has historically engendered—necessary, and should we seek to escape only its effects or, more generally, this form of differentiation?

Drawing on this quotidian, but not trivial, line of inquiry, this thesis focuses on the status of sexual difference and philosophical intervention. Specifically, I reformulate the worry concerning the pervasiveness of patriarchy into a philosophical problematic by qualifying the patriarchal acceptation of sexual difference (which belittles the feminine as one of its terms) as a central organising principle of western thought. Accordingly, I interrogate the possibility of transcending sexual difference when its pervasiveness and centrality in thought, subjectivity, and philosophical methodology are taken into account. Insofar as this remains a philosophical investigation, its resolution also warrants articulating how philosophy itself can become non-patriarchal: how philosophy, in other words, can separate itself from the moves and structures that are here argued to revolve around sexual difference. Finally, a question concerning difference itself complements this investigation: if difference is always sexual, and as such grounded on oppositional duality and dissymmetry, can we find a language to transform difference itself and render it less pejorative?

In addressing these research questions, I develop the concept of the feminine as philosophical technology by drawing, primarily, on the work of feminist philsopher Luce Irigaray.