  Although Irigaray often invokes the maternal as the source of life and subjectivity, she does not equate maternity with femininity or the mother with the woman. Among many others, Jessica Benjamin (whose work will be discussed below) seems to share the mistaken view that Irigaray's theoretical project is premised upon valorizing “female genitals as a starting point for a different desire” (Benjamin 1988, 276). No doubt this (mis)interpretation stems from Irigaray's difficult text “When Our Lips Speak Together.” But what Irigaray means by ‘speaking from the body’ is moving away from a singular conception of origin and desire, and most especially the origin of desire. Her writing of women's bodies, like her retrieval of mother/daughter genealogies is a strategy of language and imagination, situating the body as fluid border, the site of the overflow of culture into nature and vice versa, rather than a self-enclosed egoic center. She is not an essentialist who views women's biology as their destiny. Instead she challenges the nature/culture divide, and the either/or of biology or civilization.