from Elemental Passions by Luce Irigaray

... And I was speaking, but you did not hear. I was speaking from further than your furthest bounds ... From deeper than the rent you made to reveal the darkest part -- the black, the white, or the red ...

And it was not that I was withholding myself from you, but that you did not know where to find me. You searched and searched for me, in you ... But how could it ever be reached if, in that quest, once again you wanted yourself as you already are?

But is the body always the same? Can we fix it in one self-same form? Does it not wither when it has to keep to one appearance? Is not mobility its life?

I love you for being that diamond, which I am too. But how can we continue to live if we cling to that hardness? Unless we resort to expedients? If we are living, how can we be pure crystal? And if your thinking aspires to the realm of crystal, how can we survive in it? How can I abandon my love of the vegetal? Would you become a plant? Or are you too attached to yourself to become anything at all?

And what does it signify, this attraction of yours for the mineral? A triumph over expansion through the cosmos? A means of avoiding change? Your need for mastery?

And why should night and day be so radically divided? Is there anyone for whom loving and thinking are lived as different beginnings? ... Would I have to spend my days with the one and my nights with the other ...?


Return to words, words and more words.


Read between the lines


another dimension of silence