Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers S. – serie

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.

In this major new work, French philosopher Luce Irigaray continues to explore the issue central to her thought: the feminist redefinition of Being and Identity. For Irigaray, the notion of the individual is twinned with a reconceived notion of difference, or alterity. What does it mean to be someone? How can identity be created, or discovered, in relation to others? In To Be Two Irigaray gives new clarity to her project, grounding it in relation to such major figures as Sartre, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty. Yet at the same time, she enriches her discussion with an attempt to bring out the elements - earth, fire, water - into philosophical discourse. Even the polarities of heaven and earth come to play in this ambitious and provocative text. At once political, philosophical and poetic, To Be Two will become one of Irigaray's central works. Luce Irigaray is Director of Research in Philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. Translators: Monique Rhodes and marco Cocito-Monoc

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.

To Speak is Never Neutral presents a vital selection of the range of Luce Irigaray's writings, revealing the origin and development of many ideas central to her thought. The earliest essays included here reveal Irigaray's debt to structural linguistics and deconstruction drawn from her initial studies in the language of schizophrenia. The later essays present Irigaray's highly original explorations of psychoanalysis and language.