Luce Irigaray's rereading of Aristotle is a significant aspect of her broader philosophical project, which aims to critique the pervasive phallocentrism within Western thought. Drawing on deconstructive strategies and employing her concept of mimesis, Irigaray engages with Aristotle's key philosophical concepts to expose their underlying masculine biases and to open up possibilities for conceiving sexual difference beyond hierarchical frameworks. Her engagement is not simply a rejection but a critical and subversive appropriation, aiming to reveal the "unthought excesses" and contradictions within Aristotle's texts. Irigaray's critique often centers on how Aristotle's fundamental categories are sexed, with concepts associated with the masculine being privileged and those linked to the feminine being devalued. She argues that this sexing is not neutral but underpins the very structure of his metaphysics, contributing to a philosophical tradition that has historically marginalized the feminine. One of the central areas of Irigaray's rereading concerns Aristotle's theory of **hylomorphism**, the relationship between form (morphē, eidos) and matter (hylē). Irigaray argues that in Aristotle's framework, form is explicitly related to the male, while matter is associated with the female. This relationship is not presented as equal; Aristotle consistently privileges form over matter, a hierarchy that Irigaray identifies as a "misogynist figuration". In her early work, particularly in her essay "How to Conceive (of) a Girl?" Irigaray contends that for Aristotle, woman and matter become indistinguishable, both lacking clear definition within his conceptual framework. She points out how woman's sex is seen as the "impotence (adynamin) of the male" and her menstrual fluids are begrudgingly acknowledged as "first matter (prōte hylē)". The womb is merely a "topos" for the growing embryo, not a cause itself, while "female" is even metaphorically linked to "base" or "ugly (kakopoiein)" and seen as a "privation (stēresis) of substance". Irigaray uses the term "woman-matter" to highlight this conflation in Aristotle, suggesting that both are presented as lacking substantial value or definition compared to the privileged masculine concepts of form, moving cause, final cause, and substance. She detects an "isomorphic congruence" between the elevation of these masculine concepts and the phallocentric representation of the male sex. According to Irigaray, Aristotle figures woman-matter as "other of the same," defined by the absence of masculine attributes rather than possessing genuine, irreducible difference. However, Irigaray's reading also reveals moments where "woman" in Aristotle's texts exceeds these confines, oscillating between privation and potentiality, thus violating his own principle of noncontradiction. She argues that this "excessiveness" is a trace of what she calls the **maternal-feminine**, the obscured ground of metaphysics that Aristotle's philosophy depends upon but disavows. For Irigaray, the maternal-feminine is not merely the denigrated other but something "irreducibly other to metaphysics," something unthinkable within his masculine-feminine hierarchy. Despite its exclusion, its traces are discernible in the contradictory figurations of woman-matter. Irigaray even suggests that "first matter" might be the foundation upon which the "supreme elevation (of) god is erected," challenging the hierarchical distribution of Aristotle's system. Another crucial aspect of Irigaray's rereading concerns Aristotle's concept of **place (topos)**, particularly as explored in his _Physics_. In her essay "Place, Interval," Irigaray engages deeply with Aristotle's attempt to define place, focusing on what she calls the "aporia between envelope and things". Aristotle defines topos as the "first immobile limit of that which surrounds" a body. Irigaray argues that this definition elides the very threshold or relationship between the containing body and the contained thing, which she terms the **interval (diastēma)**. Aristotle considers and rejects the interval as a candidate for topos, primarily because it would lead to an infinite number of places and would be mobile, contradicting his commitment to the immobility of place. However, Irigaray finds the very reasons for Aristotle's rejection compelling for her affirmation of the interval as central. For Irigaray, place must be mobile and embrace multiple possibilities. The interval, for her, is not an empty void but the generative threshold of space and time, the "motor of difference preceding any designation of identity," and the very "place of the possibility of sexual difference". She suggests that her concept of the "interval" is a citation of Aristotle's rejected "diastēma" but reconceived. Irigaray argues that in Aristotle's account of topos, woman is often implicitly figured as place, specifically as the womb containing the male embryo. However, this construal denies woman a place of her own. The vagina, in this framework, functions less as a place and more as a "perforation toward the first place, the womb". Irigaray seeks to rethink place beyond this phallocentric framing, suggesting that both woman and man must become places for themselves and for each other. The "aporia between envelope and things" becomes central to Irigaray's critique of Aristotelianism. She argues that the relationship between a body (thing) and its place (envelope) reveals a paradoxical entanglement of concepts that overflows attempts at resolution. For Irigaray, this aporia is not a failure but an "opening to thinking the interval of sexual difference". She contends that man's body is entangled with Aristotle's conception of a thing, while the ambiguous sexuation of woman's body is bound up with his concept of topos. By diagnosing the sexed hierarchy within this aporia, Irigaray aims to articulate a way beyond Aristotle's phallocentrism. Through her rereading, Irigaray transvalues key concepts. Privation (sterēsis), often associated negatively with woman and matter in Aristotle, is celebrated by Irigaray as a "generative interval". She proposes that each sex is constituted by matter, form, and an interval specific to it, leading to "two irreducible natures: woman and man". Importantly, she argues that woman and man are not cognizable prior to the articulation of this interval, which is the very condition for their emergence as sexed beings. Ultimately, Irigaray's rereading of Aristotle is a strategic intervention aimed at denaturalizing phallocentric assumptions within Western philosophy. By exposing the sexed underpinnings of his seemingly neutral concepts and by highlighting the exclusions and contradictions within his system, she seeks to clear a space for thinking sexual difference in a way that affirms feminine specificity and moves beyond hierarchical oppositions. Her focus on the "interval" as a dynamic, open threshold offers a radical alternative to Aristotle's static and sexed understanding of place and being, paving the way for an ethics of sexual difference rooted in relationality and becoming. Her engagement, therefore, is not just an interpretation of Aristotle but a crucial step in her ongoing project of articulating a specifically feminine subjectivity and fostering new models for relations between the sexes based on difference rather than domination.