Toward a Divine in the Feminine

Abstract

How can we find, define, and practice a spiritual doctrine appropriate to women? How can we return to ourselves in a way that allows us autonomy and freedom enough to discover what sort of divine is suitable for us? A divine, that is to say, that can assist our becoming as women, including the becoming divine of the women that we are by birth. From birth I am a woman, not only through my body. I am not only a female but a woman because I belong to a subjective world, a subjective identity, different from those of a man. Such a subjectivity can be analyzed as a specific way of relating with myself, with the other or others, with the world. For various reasons, this manner of relating is different in the case of a girl and a boy. As I have already said many times, to affirm that man and woman are really two different subjects does not amount to sending them back to a biological destiny, to a simple natural belonging. Man and woman are culturally different: This corresponds to a different construction of their subjectivity. The subjectivity of man and that of woman are structured, starting from a relational identity specific to each one, a relational identity that is held between nature and culture, and which assures a bridge from which it is possible to pass from one to the other while respecting them both.

The English version is by Luce Irigaray, with a rereading by Mary Green.