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.

Translated by: Kirsteen Anderson