Lucen Irigaray, an international feminist philosopher, is alive today and still researching and publishing as well as actively participating in the women's movement in both France and Italy.

She was born in Belgium in 1932.  She holds two doctoral degrees:  one in Philosophy and the other in Linguistics.  She is also a trained and practicing psychoanalyst.  She has held a research post at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique de Paris since 1964.  She is currently the Director of Research in Philosophy at the Centre, and also continues her private practice.  Perhaps the most well known fact about her life -- which she herself refers to in the opening of je, tu, nous -- is her education in, and later expulsion from, the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (Freudian School of Paris).  The Ecole Freudienne was founded by the famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.  Lucen trained at the school in the 1960s.  In 1974 she published the thesis she wrote while studying at the school, Speculum, de l'Autre Femme, translated into English as Speculum of the Other Woman.  This thesis criticized, among philosophical topics, the phallocentrism of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis.  The publication of this thesis gained her recognition -- but also negatively affected her career.  She was relieved of her teaching post at the University of Vincennes and was ostracized by the Lacanian community.  In spite of these early hardships, Lucen went on to become an influential and prolific author in contemporary feminist theory and continental philosophy.