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 "Democracy Begins Between Two, " Luce Irigaray calls for a radical reconsideration of the relation between sex and democracy. In order to look on ourselves as fully democratic, she argues, we must first grant full recognition to both genders, male and female, that contribute to the functioning of society. 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.

In Democracy Begins Between Two, Luce Irigaray calls for a radical reconsideration of the relation between sex and democracy. In order to look on ourselves as fully democratic, she argues, we must first grant full recognition to both genders, male and female, that contribute to the functioning of society. 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.

The concept of voice was of central importance to Valery. It was representative of the most intimate aspects of the self, the means by which we achieve consciousness and affirm meaning - the knowledge of a lost unity and the desire to recapture it. Interweaving analysis of Valery's poetry and prose with wider critical concerns, Kirsteen Anderson shows that voice is central not only to the study of Valery's writing but also to a range of issues in contemporary critical enquiry, notably autobiography, psychoanalysis and feminism.