democracy begins between two

by Luce Irigaray

In Democracy Begins with Two Luce Irigaray calls for a radical reconsideration of the so-called democratic bases of Western culture. In a series of essays covering the earlier 1990s she argues the urgent need for our society to grant full recognition to both the genders which contribute to its functioning. If we are to look on ourselves as fully democratic this recognition must take the form of specific civil rights guaranteeing women a separate civil identity of their own, equivalent to, though not simply the same as, that enjoyed by men. Ranging across topics as diverse as happiness, the family, the construction of the European Union, the transition from natural to civil existence and love, Irigaray exploits her resources as a writer - philosophical, linguistic, psychoanalytical, poetical -to their rhetorical limits. She interweaves her personal experience of an emotional and politico-professional partnership with her re-reading of History, past and present.

Genres: Feminism

Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Luce Irigaray is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One. Presently, she is active in the Women's Movements in both France and Italy.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Luce Irigaray is considered, alongside Cixous and Kristeva, a leader in the feminist literary intellectual approach to philosophy and theory that emerged in the later 1960s. Moreso than Cixous and Kristeva, Irigaray has kept her own critical focus pretty much on women's issues over time. In this short book, which I re-read today, she makes the case for her thesis that true democracy cannot exist as a political construct without actual equality between the genderes also exisiting. However, by "equality" Irigaray doesn't just mean that men and women have equal rights but that their specific talents and unique traits are recognized and valued: simply treating a woman as equal to a woman under the view of law and social mores is not enough, but true parity can only be realized when the woman is seen and valued for her own contributions and not in relation to male standards.

Overall, this is a compelling essay and a lucent argument, but Irigaray, like Catharine MacKinnon in her own writing on feminisim and law, skips over pragmatic concerns that are brought about by her way of thinking and doesn't address enough specifics. Moreover, this is an English translation of a book written in Italian by a Frenchwoman: I am not sure if Irigaray speaks fluent Italian but presume she does, but why she wrote it in Italian confounds me. I think the lectures Irigaray produced this text from she may have given in Italian but once again, it's a fairly weak translation or else the original prose was exceptionally dense—even for a poststructuralist. The translation feels wooden in places and I wonder if that's not due to the original. I have yet to locate the same title, in any format, in French.

A book worth reading, and it's short too, but could have been better and the train of thought Irigaray introduces here is worth a very nuanced explication.