Ivan Illich on gender and how we can understand ourselves only through relating with the “other”

The thinker, traveller, and writer Ivan Illich, who was always hoping for a surprise, had a unique—some might say impenetrable—way of writing, and perhaps if he’d been clearer he’d have had more influence. Although, it’s also possible that clarity might have reduced his influence: he was always hovering on the edge of mysticism. “When I speak in metaphors,” Illich says, “I engage in a deviant discourse; I am alert to my special, odd, startling combination of words. I know that I cannot be understood unless he that listens to me is wide-awake to my intentional use of a term that carries other than literal meanings.” David Cayley, Illich’s intellectual biographer, writes this of his style: “Elements of prophecy, satire, and poetry are freely mixed with a formidable but sometimes cursory show of scholarship.” And the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, using a phrase from Walter Benjamin. says that Illich’s work is finally reaching “the hour of its legibility.” Illich became badly…

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