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A Politics of Impossible Difference
ALSO BY PENELOPE DEUTSCHER

Yielding Gender: Feminism, Deconstruction, and the History of Philosophy

Enigmas: Essays on Sarah Kofman (co-edited with Kelly Oliver)
 A Politics of
Impossible
Difference
The Later Work of Luce Irigaray

PENELOPE DEUTSCHER

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2002 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage
House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2002 by Cornell University Press

First printing Cornell Paperbacks, 2002.
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deutscher, Penelope
A politics of impossible difference : the later work of Luce Irigaray
I Penelope Deutscher.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8014-3825-X (cloth: alk. paper)- ISBN o-8o14-8797-8 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Feminist theory. 2. Feminism. 3· Multiculturalism. 4· Equality.
5· Sex role. 6. lrigaray, Luce. I. Title.
HQ1190 .D4897 2002
305.42'01-dc21
2002001599

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers

and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such
materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are
recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For
further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.comell.edu.

Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1. Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality: An Introduction to
Irigarayan Politics 7
2. Irigaray on Language: From the Speech of Dementia to the
Problem of Sexual Indifference 23
3· Rethinking the Politics of Recognition: The Declaration of
Irigarayan Sexuate Rights 42
4· Irigarayan Performativity: Is This a Question of Can Saying
It Make It So? 56
5· Sexuate Genre: Ethics and Politics for Improper Selves 74
6. Anticipating Sexual Difference: Mediation, Love,
and Divinity 90
7· Interrogating an Unasked Question: Is There Sexual
Difference? 107
8. The Impossible Friend: Traversing the Heterosocial, the
Homosocial, and the Successes of Failure 123
9· Sexed Discourse and the Language of the Philosophers:
To Be Two 142
10. Effacement Redoubled? Between East and West 164
Conclusion 185
Notes 195
References 215
Index 225

v
 Acknowledgments

T hanks first to Eva Ziarek who gave me her time and ideas on early
drafts of this book, to Kelly Oliver who first suggested the idea of
writing it, and to an anonymous reader for Cornell University Press who
made excellent suggestions for revision. I am very grateful for Elizabeth
Grosz's classes on Irigaray in the 198os and for the books and essays by
Elizabeth Grosz, Margaret Whitford, Tina Chanter, and many others who
have debated Irigaray's work. I have been lucky in the intellectual com-
munity of Jennifer Biddle, Victoria Barker, Rosalyn Diprose, Robyn Fer-
rell, Isabel Karpin, Elizabeth Wilson, Vicki Kirby, Linnell Secomb, Cathy
Vasseleu, and Natalie Stoljar, in whose company at different times the
ideas in this book developed. I am also grateful to the research students
who worked with me on Irigaray-Joanne Faulkner, Evelyn Swinnerton,
Fran Gray, and Joanne Purcell-and other graduate, honors, and under-
graduate students at the Australian National University who were so
often the best part of the working week. Paul Patton, Moira Gatens,
Genevieve Lloyd, Elizabeth Grosz, Margaret Whitford, and Dorothea
Olkowski took the time to support research grants leading to the finished
book-thank you.
Thanks also to several institutions who hosted papers on Irigaray and
provided me with debate about them. I thank Kelly Oliver and the
Women Studies center at the University of Texas at Austin; Eva Ziarek and
the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame; Ann Smock
and the Department of French, University of California at Berkeley;

vii
vm Acknowledgments

Michelle Boulous Walker and the students' society at the Department of

Philosophy, University of Queensland; Hugh Silverman and the partici-
pants in the International Philosophy Seminar, Alto Adige, Italy (who
generously welcomed me to the luxury of a two-week seminar on Iri-
garay); Laurent Milesi and the center for Critical and Cultural Theory,
Cardiff University; Simon Critchley and the Department of Philosophy,
University of Essex; and panel participants and organizers at many IAPLs
and SPEPs. At Cornell University Press, my thanks to Catherine Rice and
Susan Tarcov. Valerie Hazel's index was much appreciated.
Finally, my thanks to some institutions, friends, and family in whose
company, offices, or homes parts of this were written: the Australian Na-
tional University; the American Academy in Rome Northwestern Univer-
sity; Madeleine Fava; Irene von Moos; Sandi Buckley and Brian Massumi;
Elizabeth Wilson; Pat Morton and John Dutton; Kelly Oliver; Don and Pat
Jasper; Rosanne Kennedy; Lisabeth During and Ross Poole; Victoria
Barker and Tim Burgess; my parents, Pauline Payne and Max Deutscher;
my terrific sister Pepita Payne; and my dear partner Michael Jasper.

My thanks to the editors for their comments about and improvement of

the following essays. While none have been incorporated in their original
form, I have freely drawn on them.
"'The Only Diabolical Thing about Women': Luce Irigaray on Divinity,"
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 9 (4) (1994): 88-111.
"Mourning the Other: Cultural Cannibalism and the Politics of Friend-
ship (Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray)," differences: a journal of feminist
cultural studies 10 (3) (1998): 159-84.
"French Feminist Philosophers on Law and Public Policy: Michele Le
Doeuff and Luce Irigaray," Australian Journal of French Studies 34 (1) (1997):
24-44·
"Luce Irigaray's Sexuate Rights and the Politics of Performativity," in
Transformations: Thinking through Feminism, ed. Sara Ahmed, Jane Kilby,
Celia Lury, Maureen McNeil, and Beverley Skeggs (London: Routledge,
2000), 92-108.
"Is This a Question of Can Saying Make It So? The Declaration of Iri-
garayan Sexuate Rights," in Feminist Perspectives on Law and Theory,
ed. Janice Richardson and Ralph Sandland (London: Cavendish, 2ooo),
71-87.
"Irigaray Anxiety: Luce Irigaray and Her Ethics for Improper Selves,"
Radical Philosophy 8o (1996): 6-16.
"Love Discourses, Sexed Discourses? Luce Irigaray's £tre deux," Conti-
nental Philosophy Review 33 (2) (2ooo): 113-31.
 Acknowledgments ix

I gratefully acknowledge the Australian Research Council for the

award of a large A.R.C. grant, and the Australian National University for
internal faculty grants supporting this project.
PENELOPE DEUTSCHER
A Politics of Impossible Difference
 Introduction

I n 1999, feminist political philosopher Susan Moller Okin asked a contro-

versial question, "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?" In the same
year, French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray answered "no." Her 1999
work Between East and West argues that the politics of feminism and the
politics of multiculturalism are intrinsically linked. Multicultural politics
needs feminism, and feminism is never not about cultural difference.
The following chapters reconstruct Irigaray's theoretical approach to
the question of feminism's relation to multiculturalism: a feminism em-
phasizing sexual difference. Feminisms promoting equality and those
promoting difference are often seen as opposed. Irigaray does not accept
this opposition. In chapters 1 and 7, I will make reference to a formulation
proposed by Joan Scott: perhaps equality is not the means to achieve
equality, nor difference the means to achieve difference. As I shall argue in
chapter 1, Irigaray does not think women's equality can be satisfactorily
achieved with equality politics. She argues for the affirmation of sexual
difference as an alternative basis for equality. However, she does not
argue for a politics of recognition whose role would be to affirm a sexual
difference taken to precede the time of that recognition. I shall consider
the alternative proposed by Irigaray: a politics anticipating difference.
Throughout much of Irigaray's corpus, she has seemed to neglect issues
of race and cultural difference in favor of sexual difference. Among her
later work, Between East and West offers an Irigarayan approach to multi-
culturalism. The fact that a feminist who affirms sexual difference also en-

1
2 A Politics of Impossible Difference

dorses multicultural politics might confirm the worst suspicions of some

critics about multiculturalism. In fact, Irigarayan and multicultural poli-
tics have long incurred very similar criticisms. It is said that embracing the
language of cultural or sex specificity is naive. It is a language on which
those who would justify inequitable treatment have always drawn. This
study of Irigarayan politics embarks from the controversy surrounding
Susan Okin's concerns about the double standards of multiculturalism.
Concerns about a politics respectful of difference frequently target its
inconsistent application in the hands of those who espouse it. Why did the
French public demand "flexibility and respect for diversity" for the Ma-
grebin girls who attended French schools in Muslim headscarves but re-
main indifferent to other issues such as the practice of polygamous mar-
riage and clitoridectomy in France? asks Susan Okin (1999, 9). Michele Le
Doeuff has noted France's willingness to intervene in the affairs of other
nations if there are economic or political benefits. This willingness must
discredit its consistent lack of interest in the rights of immigrant women
and foreign women in France, all the more because this lack of interest is
given the political alibi of respect for cultural difference.
In addition to the charges of inconsistency and naivete, I want now to
consider some of the other main feminist criticisms of multicultural poli-
tics, before asking how Luce Irigaray may be situated in these debates.
Okin (1999) has argued that group rights are potentially antifeminist, par-
ticularly where the male members of a group are "in a position to deter-
mine and articulate the group's beliefs, practices and interests" (12). She
claims that the politics of difference tends to pay more attention to differ-
ences between groups. The result is a homogenizing account of the iden-
tity and culture of a group to which special rights might be ascribed.
Groups contain diverse members and hierarchical power relations. Only a
disingenuous politics of difference overlooks the differences within the
group in the name of "respect for its difference." Moreover, most cultures
have so consistently been patriarchal, she argues, that respect for cultural
difference really amounts to respect for patriarchal culture. In fact, she
asks whether it is not the very patriarchy of the culture in question that is
indirectly perceived as meriting specific consideration in the name of the
politics of difference. Respecting the patriarchy of nonwestern cultures is,
she argues, no better than respecting the patriarchy of western cultures.
Okin concludes that there is no reason to think that respect for multicul-
turalism will be good for women, and perhaps every reason to think it
will be bad.
Okin uses the presence of women to remind us that a culture is not a
univocal or self-identical entity. It contains its own hierarchies and exclu-
sions, as well as being marginalized by other cultures. Emphasizing the
 Introduction 3

diverse women at the heart of a culture that might merit respect or special
legal consideration under the politics of multiculturalism is for Okin a
means of undermining its apparent univocality.
A culture is never homogeneous. Notice, however, Okin's assumption
that women are not "culture": they lie within a culture. A possibility not
raised by Okin is briefly mentioned in James Tully's book Strange Multi-
plicities. What if women constituted cultural groups to whom the politics
of multiculturalism might potentially apply (rather than just being con-
sidered parts of other cultural groups)? What should we say of cases
where it seems that women "speak and act in their own ways" (Tully
1995, 178)? Tully offers the suggestion of Carol Gilligan that western
women might tend toward a "care" rather than an abstract, principled ap-
proach to moral dilemmas. Will Kymlicka (1999, 33) asks if feminist argu-
ments for "affirmative action, women-only classrooms, gender-specific
prohibitions on pornography, gender-specific health programs and the
like" are not in fact a form of group rights.
How might Okin respond? Perhaps with the view that considering
women as a cultural group homogenizes them. The differences among
women are suppressed in the name of the politics of difference. A multi-
culturalism that treated women as a cultural group would certainly be
bad for some women, she might argue, most obviously those excluded
from the beliefs, practices, and interests considered to pertain to women
as a cultural group and revalued as such. Also, accommodating the spe-
cial needs of different cultural groups of women might lead to a problem
highlighted by Diana Fuss (1989, 104)-the fragmentation of identity into
infinitesimal plural identities. Such fragmentation displaces, splinters, but
does not correct the generalizing presuppositions of identity politics.
Bonnie Honig (1999) points out that this problem extends to group rights.
What happens when special rights are ascribed "to national minorities ...
immigrant groups and ethnic groups, but also to cultural and religious
groups until virtually all of the population is covered in one way or an-
other by some cultural exemption"? (35-36).
These are possible arguments. But Okin does not consider that the spe-
cial rights for women mentioned by Kymlicka should be considered a
form of cultural group rights. Interestingly, this is because she defines cul-
tural group rights in terms of their disavowed internal hierarchies. In
other words, she assumes that affirmative action, women-only class-
rooms, gender-specific prohibitions on pornography and gender-specific
health programs do not introduce or reflect differential power relations
among women: "The few special rights that women claim qua women do
not give more powerful women the right to control less powerful women.
In contrast, cultural group rights do often (in not-so-obvious ways) rein-
4 A Politics of Impossible Difference

force existing hierarchies" (Okin 1999, 131). One sees the argument go
awry. The special rights claimed by women do not reflect hierarchies
among women, so they represent women, but not women as a group.
Women are not a group, because groups are hierarchical. But an argument
more consistent with Okin's position might potentially question "wom-
en's rights" as vigorously as it questions "multicultural rights" the mo-
ment that it perceives the presence of differential power relations among
women. It is easy enough to argue that the priorities of affirmative action,
women-only classrooms, gender-specific prohibitions on pornography,
and gender-specific health programs, do introduce and reflect hierarchies
among women. Women of different classes, races, and cultural back-
grounds assess and are situated by these rights very differently.
Okin does endorse a politics of recognition to the extent that she argues
that women of all ages (and presumably of other kinds of diversities)
should contribute to debates about group rights. Nor does she deny that
social institutional structures crucially recognize individual subjects in
their negotiation of identity. But she argues for "a form of multicultur-
alism that gives the issues of gender and other intragroup inequalities
their due-that is to say, a multiculturalism that effectively treats all per-
sons as each other's moral equals" (131). To the extent that both assume
that cultural groups have specific customs and histories that are betrayed
by a blanket legal treatment, Okin and Tully share an understanding of
the status of recognition. In chapter 2, I ask what role French feminist Luce
Irigaray might have in these discussions of women's possible cultural
specificity. Reflection on the work of Irigaray clarifies something shared
by Okin and Tully: the supposition that the culture entitled to "special
group rights or privileges" (Okin 1999, 11) must exist before that legal or
institutional recognition in order to have any kind of legitimate claim.
Okin's argument that multiculturalism might be bad for women has
been widely criticized by respondents. Among the critics, Honig (1999, 37,
38) points out that Okin renders patriarchy a univocal force despite her
own argument against the homogenization of "culture" and also that she
seems to assume western liberal regimes are less patriarchal than other
cultures. Azizah Y. al-Hibri (1999, 41, 44), Sander Gilman (1999, 54-55),
and Homi Bhabha (1999, 80-82) have added concerns that she stereotypes
the practices of a foreign other deemed barbaric as well as condescending
to nonwestem women.
Agreeing with these criticisms, I draw attention to a noteworthy suppo-
sition of Okin's argument. She resists concepts of multiculturalism gov-
erned by the idea that conservation of tradition is an intrinsic good.
Doesn't her argument provoke this question: What would it mean to sup-
port a multicultural politics that affirmed the specific needs and rights of
 Introduction 5

cultures to whose articulation girls and women of different generations

actively contributed? Any group's beliefs, practices, and interests are, as
Okin argues, internally contested. Multiculturalist politics needs to re-
spect rights and identities that are newly constituted and recreated and
those that are to be determined in the future. It cannot affirm only tradi-
tion and history. A culture's right to transform its tradition and history
must also be affirmed without this transformation becoming a further ex-
cuse for disenfranchisement and inequality. Yael Tamir (1999, 48) draws
attention to the western romance about multiculturalism, which depicts
indigenous and immigrant cultures as authentic and natural, in need of
cultural preservation. Many declarations of indigenous group rights af-
firm the right to transformation as much as the right to conservation. To
the right to traditional "languages, histories, stories, oral traditions/' law
("the right to our own law, customs and traditions"), and culture ("the
right to our unique cultural traditions and customs"), Australian Aborig-
inal activist Patrick Dodson (2ooo) adds the right to self-determination:
"Aboriginal peoples have the right to self-determination; a right to nego-
tiate our political status and to pursue economic, social and cultural de-
velopment" (271). The right to cultural change complements the right to
cultural conservation, and many Australian indigenous activists have em-
phasized this strongly in the articulation of the right to self-determination.
In the words of Jeremy Webber (2ooo), "[I]ndigenous societies cannot be
wished back into the past" (88). It is often a western cultural romance
that-ambivalently-performs that wishing.
This raises the question of what kind of legal or public institutionaliza-
tion could be given to a culture's right to transform and contest those
identities for which legal recognition is also sought. Can the legal protec-
tion of rights be justified in terms of its recognition of possible future iden-
tities the law can only imagine? Can the law anticipate possible future
identities without attributing fixity or unity to them? This book considers
Luce Irigaray's argument for legal rights recognizing the anticipated
transformation of identity. Susan Okin asks us to imagine the renegotia-
tion of what we name a "culture" by the diverse women at its heart. This
suggestion of Okin's is more radical than her own text seems to appre-
ciate. According to what kind of philosophical basis might one under-
stand such transformation and the possible rights associated with it?
I look at Irigaray's concept of the legal recognition of possible special
rights and privileges of identities not legitimated by tradition or history.
Such identities are not affirmed arbitrarily. Instead, Irigaray's politics is
based in a notion of impossible difference. What concepts of identity and
difference have most repeatedly been excluded-rendered most impos-
sible-in a given culture, context, or history? Against what possible alter-
6 A Politics of Impossible Difference

native identities have hegemonic forces most concentrated? Proposing a

methodology for the interpretation of overdetermined, repeatedly consol-
idated exclusion of certain kinds of alternative possible identities, Irigaray
reinterprets this pattern of exclusion as a kind of anticipation. She imag-
ines the possibility of legal protection of the possible identities and tradi-
tions anticipated by diverse groups within a legal or institutional system.
Tradition is one of the few means we have of affirming difference and its
right to special legal and institutional treatment. But multiculturalism can
involve not only a respect for traditional identities but also respect for
identities newly negotiated and contested by diverse intracultural groups.
This book asks what philosophical basis might be given to the rights as-
sociated with an institutional openness to that reinvention. In relation to
the politics of recognition, this book is about another difference, anticipa-
tory difference. An indication of alternative possible identities can use-
fully be located within the exclusions and constituted impossibilities of
tradition and history. Irigaray offers this kind of methodology in her dis-
cussion of sexual difference. In chapter 10, I discuss the use of an Iri-
garayan methodology for the analysis of impossible difference in relation
to her treatment of multiculturalism. However, I shall argue that it is not
in Irigaray's own recent comments about multiculturalism that we find
the best resources for a contribution to this question. For this reason, I in-
terpret her approach to multiculturalism in the light of conceptualizations
of the impossibility of difference that she has offered throughout her ca-
reer, not only in the most recent work.
This book reads Irigaray from the optic of many of her colleagues,
French and American. I read her from the perspective of Michele Le
Doeuff, Drucilla Cornell, Judith Butler, and Gayatri Spivak. I situate Iri-
garay's work in the context of contemporary debates about the politics of
performativity, recognition, multiculturalism, pro-diversity, and identity
politics. I propose dialogues between her work and contemporary Amer-
ican feminist, political, legal, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theory. I
also read her from the perspective of Jacques Derrida's later work. More
than Lyotard, Deleuze, and most Anglo-American and French feminist
theorists, Derrida has been an important interlocutor for Irigaray. Through-
out her work, and up until her most recent publications, she has repudi-
ated what she takes to be the negativity of deconstruction. Several chap-
ters interrogate further this relationship in a debate whose possibility
Irigaray herself has raised on many occasions. I think Irigaray's work, if
not Irigaray herself, is fundamentally sympathetic to such a reflection. Iri-
garay affirms the "impossible" status of new, non-self-identical identities
to come, and of the rights associated with them.
 1

Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality

An Introduction to Irigarayan Politics

How can the double demand-for both equality and difference-

be articulated?
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One

I n 1949 when Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex was first published,
there was no radical feminist movement in France. 1 Elaine Marks and
Isabelle de Courtivron (1981, 35) have described how this changed only in
the late sixties. 2 Beauvoir depicts the 1940s as a period of great hostility to
feminist ideas, despite the fact that women had just won the vote in 1944.
Albert Camus, she recounts in an interview with Alice Schwartzer, "bel-
lowed, 'you have made a laughing stock of the French male!'" She recalls,
"[S]ome professors threw the book across their offices because they
couldn't bear to read it. ... Even the Communists tore me to shreds. They
accused me of being a 'petite bourgeoise,' and told me, 'You see, what you
are saying really doesn't mean a thing to working-class women in Billan-
court'" (Schwartzer 1984, 72).
Despite the accusations that her writing was irrelevant, Simone de
Beauvoir's feminism was directly concerned with the social, historical,
and economic circumstances of women and practical affairs affecting
French women of the period. Two decades later, Beauvoir came to be in-
volved in a feminist movement that focused on abortion rights, marriage
and divorce laws, the restriction of women to low-grade jobs, and other
persistent inequalities between men and women. 3 But as Beauvoir's femi-
nism became increasingly practical, many French feminist intellectuals in
the 1970s were turning to new modes of literary production. The "new
French feminisms" 4 have often been seen as removed from practical mat-
ters. Far more than the work of Beauvoir, the earliest work of Helene

7
8 A Politics of Impossible Difference

Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray could easily have incurred the
charge of irrelevance. As Margaret Whitford (1991a, 11) points out, Luce
Irigaray's work has been seen as inaccessible and elitist. Similar charges
have been leveled at the two other main theorists with whom Irigaray's
work has been associated, Cixous and Kristeva.
It is true that the work of each of these writers, particularly early in their
careers, is often difficult to access. It has a technical and literary style that
seems to restrict its readership. The references of all three theorists can be
specialist, ranging from the history of philosophy to Lacanian psycho-
analysis. In 1949, Beauvoir considered that the status of women would
improve with a change in their economic and social circumstances and
with their recognition as equals. The concern of some contemporary
French feminist theorists has been to modify signifying spaces and sym-
bolic structures. Voicing the concerns of certain readers, Claire Duchen
(1987, 12) notes that French feminism has often been seen as "preoccupied
with questions of psychoanalysis and language to the exclusion of practi-
cally everything else." Whereas Beauvoir fought for equality between
men and women, some contemporary French feminists have broken with
the ideal of equality in favor of affirming sexual difference. Many others
have been resistant to this development. Christine Delphy and Michele Le
Doeuff have been consistently wary of so-called feminism of difference.
For Le Doeuff (1991), it is no better than a neofemininity, "based on the
idea that women's true femininity is suppressed" (224).
Beauvoir herself was suspicious of the promotion of sexual difference
by some contemporary feminists. In her view, this was a return to the old
idealization of the eternal feminine. She protested, "[W]e shouldn't go to
the other extreme and say that a woman has a particular closeness with
the earth, that she feels the rhythm of the moon, the ebb and flow of the
tides .... Or that she has more soul or is less destructive by nature etc. No!
If there is a grain of truth in that, it is not because of our nature, but is
rather the result of our conditions of existence" (Schwartzer 1984, 78).
Beauvoir was disturbed to see some feminists apparently return to tradi-
tional reifications of difference that long provided the alibi for prohibi-
tions on women's full participation in public life. Such a feminism seemed
to undermine women's basic concerns: equal rights and pay, abortion and
reproductive rights, adequate childcare, representation at senior levels of
employment, government, and the public sphere.
Michele Le Doeuff (1991) has argued for more attention to the contexts
in which arguments for difference are strategically deployed, particularly
in public policy contexts. Sometimes legislators "forbid," sometimes they
"authorize," "without necessarily 'making the connection'" (301, transla-
tion modified). For example, very limited public funds are made available
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 9

to support the lives of immigrant women in France. State indifference is

often justified with a language of respect for difference. Le Doeuff asks
whether the governmental avoidance of the issue of clitoridectomy in
France is anything better than a concern to protect trade relations with
Central and West Africa (298). In this case, the government seems to "au-
thorize" difference. This glosses over the frequency with which it "for-
bids" difference. For example, there is little evidence of respect for cul-
tural difference when pressure is exerted on "developing" countries to
conform with the economic precepts of the World Bank.
Le Doeuff thinks that respect for cultural and sexual difference is regu-
larly selective, opportunist, and cynical. But arguments for equality, no
less than arguments for difference, can be used selectively and oppor-
tunistically. The obvious example is the use of policies of "equal treat-
ment" to maintain social inequality. Arguments against affirmative action
are often justified by reference to the politics of fair and equal treatment
for all. Neither the language of equality nor that of difference is specially
secure from rerouting to cynical purposes.
This does not answer the question of why some feminist intellectuals
have come to favor the language of difference in particular. Reflecting on
the work of Luce Irigaray is a means of understanding this tum. Why and
how did Irigaray attempt to transform a philosophy emphasizing sexual
difference into the basis for pro-feminist social and institutional reform?
Why did she and some other French feminist intellectuals tum away from
the language of equal rights self-evident to the feminisms of most earlier
historical periods? Why does Luce Irigaray speak with only muted sup-
port for the "struggle for equal wages and social rights, against discrimina-
tion in employment and education, and so forth" (lrigaray 1985c, 165-66)?
In an early text, This Sex Which Is Not One, Irigaray questions the lan-
guage of equality although she rarely questions the worth of its practical
gains. Some might consider it impossible to challenge the language
without undermining the gains. But Irigaray thinks we can endorse polit-
ical equality while maintaining concerns about its terms. When Irigaray
makes statements such as "[W]omen merely 'equal' to men would be 'like
them,' therefore not women" (Irigaray 1985c, 166), she thinks we should
be concerned about the conceptual paucity of equality. What language do
we have in which to theorize social change? she asks. Is that language op-
timally adequate to imagining new and diverse possibilities of human
and sexual existence? If we do not attend to new concepts for human exis-
tence, will our utopias be limited in their vision? Would new and more di-
verse possibilities open up from utopias theorized with a broader basis of
invention? Could such inventions play an important role in our approach
to legal and other practical reform?
10 A Politics of Impossible Difference

Since Beauvoir's feminism aimed for equality between the sexes, 5 one
can understand her wariness of alternative models of feminism. She
thought a politics of difference would be bound to reify the traditional
connotations of femininity, such as the emotional, the natural, the em-
pathic, the passive, the bodily, the irrational. But Irigaray (2002) explains
that she has no wish to reify sexual difference in traditional terms: "I am
not referring here to a bad use of sexual difference, which leaves woman
the guardian of the pole 'nature' in a unity of which man secures the pole
'culture'" (136, translation modified). Irigaray thinks a feminist politics of
difference could contribute to new understandings of both equality and
difference. For this reason she rejects, to some extent, the choice between
these apparently opposed politics. She argues for an equality based in the
affirmation of difference.
Joan Scott (1996) has described "the apparent need to choose sameness
or difference (which can never be satisfied by either alternative)" as symp-
tomatic of the problems faced by feminism in relation to its conceptual
heritage. Feminism must both draw on and challenge this heritage (173-
74). As I shall argue in chapter 7, Irigaray thinks that sameness can be sat-
isfied only by difference. Interestingly, she also argues that difference can
be satisfied only by sameness. Both difference and sameness need to be
reconceived to make sense of this proposal. Her project rejects the concep-
tual paucity arising from the stark alternative between the ideals of
equality and difference.
Irigaray' s view is that one can pursue political and social equality while
enriching the conceptual language with which such an equality is formu-
lated. Equality need not be pursued with the language of equality. To
fairly appraise her resistance to the latter, one should place it in the con-
text of her commitment to equal rights and social freedoms for women:

Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were always wary of psycho-

analysis. I am trained as a psychoanalyst and that's important ... for theo-
rizing identity as sexual. I also have a background in philosophy....
[B]eing educated in both of these fields has meant that my thought on
women's liberation has gone beyond simply a quest for equality between
the sexes. That doesn't stop me from joining and promoting public demon-
strations for women to gain this or that right: the right to contraception,
abortion, legal aid in cases of public or domestic violence, the right to
freedom of expression-etc., demonstrations generally supported by femi-
nists. (lrigaray 1993b, 11)6

Irigaray goes on to explain that these rights signify in her mind not a
right to equality but a right to sexual difference. This presupposes that po-
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 11

litical programs for social change must be concerned with ingrained signi-
fying and symbolic structures for sexed identity and the problem of their
transformation. To understand her work, it is important to understand
this presupposition.
Like Beauvoir, Irigaray asks how women and femininity have been rep-
resented throughout western history. Where Beauvoir focuses more on
economic and literary history, Irigaray focuses on the history of philos-
ophy. Both feminists argue that women have been the other throughout
western history. Women have been considered the exception or supple-
ment, not the norm, in discussions of the human. Also, women have been
associated with the privation of masculine qualities and capacities such as
reason and discipline. Women have been the other insofar as they have
been represented as "not-men." In this sense, Irigaray suggests women
have served as negative mirrors sustaining masculine identity. Cultural
and historical understandings of masculine identity have contrasted it to
traditional representations of femininity, with femininity understood as
an atrophy or lack of masculine qualities. The rationality of man has been
opposed to the emotionality of woman.
Irigaray' s conclusion is that this long history inflects the terms in which
women are able to take up positions in the public sphere. They exchange
their role as not-men for that of like-men. We need an increased sensitivity
to the conceptual terms in which women's participation in the public
sphere is implicitly understood:

In concrete terms, that means that women must of course continue to

struggle for equal wages and social rights, against discrimination in em-
ployment and education, and so forth. But that is not enough: women
merely "equal" to men would be "like them," therefore not women. Once
more, the difference between the sexes would be in that way cancelled out,
ignored, papered over. So it is essential for women amongst themselves to
invent new modes of organization, new forms of struggle, new challenges.
(Irigaray 1985c, 165-66)

Are women's politics satisfactory when the language and ideals of tra-
ditionally male spheres are adopted? "When [women's] movements aim
simply for a change in the distribution of power, leaving intact the power
structure itself, then they are resubjecting themselves, deliberately or not,
to a phallocratic order. This latter gesture must of course be denounced,
and with determination, since it may constitute a more subtly concealed
exploitation of women" (Irigaray 1985c, 81). Irigaray concludes that this
"explains certain difficulties encountered by the liberation movements. If
women allow themselves to be caught in the trap of power, in the game of
12 A Politics of Impossible Difference

authority, if they allow themselves to be contaminated by the 'paranoid'

operations of masculine politics, they have nothing more to say or do as
women" (166).
Such passages are widely interpreted as indicating Irigaray's view that
games of power, authority, and rationality are inherently masculine and
should be spumed by women. I do not consider this to be her position. It
is uncontroversial that power, authority, and rationality have historically
been associated with masculinity. Eschewing a pursuit of anything that
has historically been associated with male authority would be untenable
for women, and hardly a coherent political position. But it would also be
na'ive to think that women's exercising of varying degrees of power, au-
thority, and rationality is immune from their historical associations with
masculinity. In this sense, women are taking up a position of symbolic
"equivalence" to masculinity.
The second concept that calls for preliminary comment is Irigaray's ref-
erence to women's having nothing to say or do "as women." This conveys
the same idea again: women may be engaging as political agents, but
they are doing so as male equivalents. Much of her philosophical work
has relied on a complex understanding of the expression "as women."
Does it indicate Irigaray's view that there is an essential or appropriate
way that we could easily identify or retrieve for women to act or speak as
women? No. Irigaray argues that we can give no content to the idea of
women acting as women. She does not credit historical views of femi-
ninity as opposite or complement (emotional, empathizing, compas-
sionate, maternal or indeed unstable, excitable, unreliable ... ). What
then does Irigaray mean by the assertion that women cannot speak or act
as women? Not that this idea has content but that it does not. There is no
"as women" (except in the traditional sense to which Irigaray gives no
credence) in terms of which women can speak or act. Once one accepts
that there is no "as women" embodied in women's historical options of
male equivalent, opposite, or complement, it is clear that acting or
speaking as a woman is an impossible gesture. 7 Irigaray's reference to
our inability to speak or act "as women" does not reflect any lack of sym-
pathy for suspicions voiced (for example) by Hazel Barnes (2ooo) about
beliefs in "innate differences between male and female; this, after all, was
the assumption supporting women's oppression" (35). Irigaray (2002) ex-
plains, "I am thinking of a relation between the sexes in which woman
and man each have a different subjectivity, based notably on both a rela-
tional identity of their own and a relation to language of their own"
(136-37). This does not mean that she thinks women and men have dif-
ferent subjectivities. Rather, her concern is that we have made it impos-
sible that they could.
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 13

Are feminist aspirations legible only in terms of equality with men? She
explains, "[T]o demand equality as women is, it seems to me, a mistaken
expression of a real objective. The demand to be equal presupposes a
point of comparison. To whom or to what do women want to be equal-
ized? To men? To a salary? To a public office? To what standard? Why not
to themselves?" (lrigaray 1993b, 12). It is clear in such passages that she
interrogates the conceptual terms according to which women enter the
public sphere and men remain in it. If the rights many women won in the
twentieth century allowed them to take on men's skins (1994, 79), the for-
mulation of those rights has not sufficiently fostered new identity forma-
tions for women and men.
There are also practical concerns arising from the fact that women had
not contributed to the formation and development of the public institu-
tions they entered in the twentieth century (Irigaray 1993b, 54). Irigaray
comments about "having equal numbers of men and women in all sectors
of social activity in order to get them to progress. Of course on one level
this is a totally desirable solution. But it's not enough ... because the cur-
rent social order, and that includes the order defining occupations, is not
neutral when viewed in terms of the difference of the sexes. Working con-
ditions and production techniques are not equally designed nor equally
applied with respect to sexual difference. The targets and modes of work
are not equally defined by, nor for, women and men. At best, therefore,
equality is achieved on pay" (84, translation modified).
The apparent achievement of equality can sometimes disguise an actual
undermining of women. Irigaray gives several examples. The entry of
women into a sphere from which they have been excluded can occur at
the expense of other, less privileged women. The successes of some
women in certain fields should not blind one to concern for the status of
women more widely. Even the success of women in certain spheres is
often double-edged. If it is as the symbolic equivalent of men that women
enter the spheres from which they were once excluded, this may not un-
dercut simultaneous connotations of women as the other. A talented
woman might be hired with alacrity, only to find her subsequent preg-
nancy the source of her colleagues' irritation. She feels she should take
care to avoid seeming impassioned in meetings, or finds herself readily
perceived as manipulative. This phenomenon allows for a clarification of
Irigaray's point that women can enter the public sphere only as male
equivalents. One can criticize this argument for its overly static and pas-
sive notion of our relation to cultural norms. It is not possible to adopt
those norms without also perverting and transforming them. Surely lri-
garay is wrong to deemphasize such inevitable transformation. A woman
acting as male equivalent in the public sphere is not the same as a man
14 A Politics of Impossible Difference

acting as a man in the public sphere. In adopting the position, surely the
woman also transforms and destabilizes suppositions surrounding it? I
think Irigaray's point is that the woman nonetheless pays the price for
ambivalent and contradictory interpretations of her presence. Her trans-
formation of the role she adopts may be destabilizing, and perhaps use-
fully so. But the highly ambivalent interpretations of her presence do
speak to the fact that she is uncomfortably perceived as both a woman
and the equivalent of a man. Loudly supportive of equal treatment, the
workplace is nonetheless quick to assume in the most stereotyped terms
that women are different. Meanwhile it incorporates women only insofar
as they fit traditionally male work arrangements and workplace practices.
The public sector assumes, uneasily, that women are both equal and dif-
ferent. Public policy has, in many countries, achieved equal pay for some
and equality of some work conditions. But it has engaged only inade-
quately with the cultural change associated with women's entry into tra-
ditionally male spheres.
The frequent associations of French feminism with feminism of differ-
ence may give an impression that France has progressed beyond equality
politics. But issues of equality have taken on increasing urgency in French
feminist debate and in Luce Irigaray's own work. If she laments the im-
possibility of affirming sexual difference, that lament is inflected with her
concern about the apparent failures to achieve equality. While the propor-
tion of women in the French workforce is high, the proportion of women
at the most influential and symbolic levels in France (law, politics, public
advisory committees, senior positions in business and government) is
low. A common misconception is that French women have achieved their
rights. The perception that feminism is outdated is stronger in France than
in many other western countries. 8 There has been little support for such
policies as affirmative action that (for all their problems) have enjoyed a
reasonable period of political currency elsewhere. Support has been spo-
radic and often directed by international and European pressure. 9 Sus-
taining the debate around equality is a real imperative in the recent
French context, Irigaray agrees.
Far from there having been sufficient progress on women's rights in
France, Le Doeuff (1991) has speculated that perhaps "the second sex ...
never makes any certain gains" (243). Apparent achievements of the late
twentieth century have often been weakened by other factors. Women
have independent salaries but may retain a highly vulnerable relationship
to family, employer, or institutional pressures. Each gain seems under-
mined in some way. French abortion laws remain much more restrictive
than those of countries such as England and the Netherlands. 10 When
women gain economic independence or access to legal abortion, working-
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 15

class or immigrant women do not (Le Doeuff 1979, 56). Le Doeuff and
other French feminists have noted the widespread belief that abortion has
been legalized in France. In fact, French women gained a unilateral "ex-
emption" from the illegality of abortion. That exemption technically re-
confirms the illegality of abortion under French law (Le Doeuf£ 1991,
247). 11 Equality is consistently inconsistent. Inevitably, the vaunted com-
mitment by the French state to achieving an equal number of women
politicians was accompanied by its indifference to the conditions of
women within its borders in many critical ways.
Equal pay for equal work is far from being achieved, writes Irigaray.
Unemployment percentages and full-time as opposed to part-time em-
ployment percentages differ between the sexes, as do redundancy levels
and union protection. Women are concentrated in underpaid, devalued
sectors of the workforce that require less qualification. Sectors of the
workplace retain a masculine-centered cultural ambiance and codes of
conduct (Irigaray 1993b, 143-53). She writes, "[T]heoretically, women
enjoy certain rights that they did not previously have regarding the acqui-
sition or ownership of property. But ... to assert that men and women are
now equal or well on the way to becoming so has served almost as the
opiate of the people for some time now. Men and women are not
equal. ... Take the work context, for example, where an employer might
hasten to claim that he doesn't want to employ women because they make
for a less stable workforce. Then he will agree to take them on provided he
can underpay them" (Irigaray 1993b, 77, translation modified).
"Of course," says Le Doeuff (1991) dryly, "we rejoice when careers in
the judiciary, or administration, places at the grandes ecoles or work as a
sculptor open up to women" (243). Nevertheless, one needs to be circum-
spect about such successes. They cannot be incorporated into a simple
narrative of continuous progress: "[W]e no longer see these advances as
irreversible steps foreshadowing other, vaster mutations" (243). For any
success that might encourage, it seems that there are innumerable small
truths that simultaneously discourage: "[L]ike harbor pools governed by
a complex systems of locks and sluices, particular social spaces open to us
and then close off again" (243). Irigaray agrees. Women working in public
institutions "are often restricted in how far they can go in their career.
Very few women reach the highest posts and they pay dearly for it, in one
way or another" (Irigaray 1993b, 53). Thus Le Doeuff's pessimistic diag-
nosis (1991) that "it is as though defense mechanisms quieter and more
complex than brutal exclusion ... gradually gained in effect" (243).
Le Doeuff has often compared attitudes toward equal opportunity in
France unfavorably with attitudes in England and America. Until recently,
France was particularly hostile to the affirmative action and quota sys-
16 A Politics of Impossible Difference

terns for equal representation of women and men in public life. More than
90 percent of the Assemblee generale has been male (Le Doeuff 1993a,
178). Sexual harassment is not a topic of concern in French universities as
it is elsewhere. Le Doeuff (1992) notes that "in Great Britain, the Royal So-
ciety itself campaigns against sexism in textbooks .... [A]nglophones and
the Quebecois are surprised at how behind the times we [French] are"
(34n). France has resisted the adoption of nonsexist language modification
longer than England, America, and Australia. This resistance prompted
an acid essay by Le Doeuff (1992) on the persistence of male-biased
rhetoric at the Centre nationale de la rercherche scientifique (the national
research body), e.g., "les hommes au C.N.R.S.," "la fraternite des equipes,"
"l'exigence de ces hommes," "l'egalite des hommes," "les sciences de l'homme"
(21). In response, she protests against "the denial of mixity: the adoption
of a language that symbolically ignores the existence of women where
they work and exist" (Le Doeuff 1993b, 127). Similarly, Irigaray notes the
frequent public and media erasure of women in professional spheres.
They are described as "ancien secretaire general ... depute europeen"
rather than as "ancienne secretaire generale," "deputee europeenne," or
"depute europeenne" (lrigaray 1994, 50, 52). As Le Doeuff (1992) com-
ments, "[C]ertainly, a lexical modification is not enough to guarantee the
inclusion of women within humanity. But the resistance to every attempt
at language modification is an extremely bad sign" (6). This resistance has
occurred in a country priding itself on its egalitarian traditions and its full
integration of women into the public sphere.
In analyzing the logic of public institutions, Le Doeuff argues that the
contradiction between the rhetoric of good intentions toward women and
the real undermining of women's social conditions is often no accident.
Our attention is deflected from the frequently regressive nature of public
policy by the seemingly worthy intentions of the state (or the media, or
the education board, and so on). Consider the surprising turnaround of
the French government on parity (the enforcement of equal numbers of
women and men politicians in municipal and state government), given its
long-standing hostility to affirmative action policies. 12 Le Doeuff' s criti-
cism of the parity policy surprised many. But she pointed out that the
policy was serving as a blind for the real issues-such as government ne-
glect of immigrant women in France. In any case, women were particu-
larly encouraged into the least popular area, municipal politics. And de-
spite the governmental support for parity, explanations were soon to be
heard from ministers that they supported "flexibility" in the application
of the policy. 13
Le Doeuff and Irigaray are two French feminists who have offered acute
analyses of the limitations of women's equality in France, despite the so-
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 17

cial progress of the twentieth century. Most would assume that an ever
more rigorous equality politics is the obvious solution to the defects.
However, Irigaray's concerns led her to a different conclusion. She came
to ask whether the language of equality really was the optimal strategy.
What if the very philosophy of equality implicitly presupposes women's
inequality and the inequality of other groups? Is a more extensive recon-
sideration of the basis for legal and social reform unthinkable?
Two hundred years of the postrevolutionary egalitarian political tradi-
tion in France grounds its historical resistance to politics affirming sexual
or cultural difference.l 4 Rather than simply affirming difference, Irigaray
proposes that the long-standing oppositions between the discourses of
equality and difference be challenged. She favors attempts to theorize dif-
ferences anew as alternative conceptual frameworks for equality. Many
critics consider that Irigaray's tum to the language of difference is not jus-
tified by the failures of equality politics. But it is useful to reflect on Iri-
garay's broader claim. One must interrogate the conceptual basis on
which women and other historically marginalized groups enter spheres
previously closed to them. As Moira Gatens (1996) has argued, the philo-
sophical reshaping of the social imaginaries in terms of which women and
men operate as citizens is crucial to a qualitative change in the "relations
between the sexes that are governed by institutions, such as law" (xiii).
The transformation of social and sexual imaginaries is a crucial aspect of
public policy. Why, asks Irigaray, should admittance to historically ex-
cluded spheres occur only on the basis of likeness? How to undermine the
dominance of the logic of the like, without essentializing women and
other groups as inevitably different? This is the dilemma with which Iri-
garay's project engages. It has implications beyond a philosophy of sexual
difference. What occurs when other groups who have been excluded from
the public sphere eventually enter it? One sees a similar discomfited
readiness to perceive unlikeness and a concurrent inability to accommo-
date unlikeness well.
Concerned that women's advances seemed to be double-edged, Iri-
garay came to believe that equality should be grounded in a different
philosophical framework: respect for the possibility of difference. Respect
for the possibility of differences is not reducible to respect for differences.
How to agitate for equality in the name of possible difference is the over-
arching practical problem of her work. She offers little account of the day-
to-day political interventions and initiatives to be endorsed in a philos-
ophy of sexual difference. For example, she comments that feminist
activity clusters around certain themes: "rape, abortion, the challenge to
the prerogative of the father's name in the case of judicial decisions that
determine 'to whom children belong,' the full-fledged participation of
18 A Politics of Impossible Difference

women in legislative decisions and actions ... must never disguise the
fact that it is in order to make their difference come to pass [jaire advenir1
that women are demanding their rights" (lrigaray 1985c, 166). But how
are women to insist on equality as a means of bringing sexual difference to
light? While she has not engaged in depth with the practicalities, she has
offered a developed theoretical account of the conceptual basis and justifi-
cation for such a project.
Irigaray's early work in Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which
Is Not One largely consisted in analyzing how various theoretical and his-
torical texts-particularly those of philosophy and psychoanalysis-have
generated sedimented conceptions of women, materiality, and femininity.
If women's politics cannot be adequately formulated within inherited dis-
courses, the latter must be substantially subverted as the forerunner to the
articulation of a more appropriate politics. Irigaray's work in this regard
was aimed not at concrete political actions but at an overall historical tra-
dition of male-biased philosophical discourse whose blind spots, mo-
ments of fragility, and incoherence she hoped to dislodge. Her rereadings
of the history of ideas were intended to give a new conceptual base to
(and thus support) practical concerns. When Irigaray (1985c) decided that
the best option was, in her oft-cited declaration, "to have a fling with the
philosophers" (150) she hoped to develop a context through which equality
could be pursued without undermining women's symbolic, conceptual,
transformational, and day-to-day interests.
Irigaray (1985c) affirmed that women were "obviously not to be ex-
pected to renounce equality in the sphere of civil rights" (81). Clearly, she
envisaged the combination or coordination of ideals of sexual equality
and difference. But an ambiguity remained about the possible form of
such a coordination. As she asked, "[H]ow can the double demand-for
both equality and difference-be articulated?" (81). On the one hand, Iri-
garay argued that the language of equality was an immediate political ne-
cessity in women's struggles. On the other hand, she argued that women
risked alienation in their engagement in political struggles organized in
the name of equality. Yet she did not want to place the short-term prag-
matic aims of equality and the long-term ideological aims of difference-
or the claims of practical and theoretical feminisms-in opposition to
each other.
Accordingly, her work began to change, originally as a result of an in-
volvement with Italian feminist groups and at one point the Italian Com-
munist Party. In this context she first produced a series of writings written
in an everyday, rather flat style, translated in the collections je, tu, nous
(1993b) and Thinking the Difference (1994). These writings attempt not just
a greater accessibility to a general readership 15 but also a more direct en-
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 19

gagement with practical political concerns. For example, Irigaray formu-

lates a series of "equivalent rights" for which women should strive. These
rights spell out Irigaray's approach to such issues as family allowances,
media and advertising representation of women, and taxation laws.
Groups affiliated with the Italian Communist Party (PCI), having in-
vited Irigaray to various symposia through the 1980s, are said to have in-
corporated proposals that reflect her concerns as part of its contemporary
political agenda. In Thinking the Difference Irigaray explains that "[t]hrough
its elected representatives, notably at its XVIII Congress, the PCI an-
nounced that it intends to change its platform, particularly on the issue of
women's liberation and the culture of sexual difference" (Irigaray 1994,
xiv). She claims that these modifications are grounded in a feminist theory
of sexual difference with which she is sympathetic. Certainly there has
been close involvement between the Italian Communist Party and Italian
feminist groups, who in turn have had a close involvement with lrigaray
and also, in some cases, with the French feminist group "psychanalyse et
politique." 16 This nexus has led to a formulation of Irigarayan concepts in
a political party of considerable influence, which must be extremely
rare-it has certainly not occurred in the French Communist or other po-
litical parties.
Irigaray does not renounce her "preoccupation with psychoanalysis
and language" in favor of a practical politics. Rather, she tries to integrate
these domains. She imagines hypothetical transformations of the sym-
bolic order. She states: "I am trained as a psychoanalyst and that's impor-
tant ... for theorizing identity as sexual" (lrigaray 1993b, 11). She imag-
ines a reinvention of the status of sexual identity that draws on the
potential power of language to differently "create" and shape reality
(Bono and Kemp 1991, 14). 17 She associates this reinvention with possible
reforms of cultural, social, and political institutions. Such reforms could
affect the way in which the sexes are understood and understand them-
selves and the terms in which they are socially represented and recog-
nized. The "symbolic," in Margaret Whitford's presentation (1991b), is
"the order of discourse and meaning, the order into which all humans
have to insert themselves and which therefore precedes and exceeds indi-
vidual subjectivity." Insofar as women enter into a historically patriarchal
culture, they enter into a social order in which, as Whitford continues,
they are left without adequate representations, images, and institutions to
serve as identificatory supports (90-91). 18 In this context, sexual differ-
ence is an ideal seeking symbolic support. This ideal guides Irigaray's un-
derstanding of political activity: transformation of identity at the level of
social and legal institutions, the media, the economy, and political, reli-
gious, linguistic, and cultural representation (see Bono and Kemp 1991,
20 A Politics of Impossible Difference

12-13, 340-68, and see Milan Women's Bookstore Collective 1990). Con-
cern about the legal and political mechanisms contributing to social forms
of identity is seen in the following passage:

As a woman, I would like to suggest some changes that you-you polit-

ically aware women working alongside men-should demand of law-
makers in order to establish a civil identity for women. (Irigaray 1994, 6o)
To give women-and men as men, too, incidentally-a subjective chance
again, we must re-examine the issue of the rights attributed to each sex,
rights understood in the strict juridical sense. This does not exclude
changes to symbolic systems but must necessarily accompany them. (Iri-
garay 1994, 58)

As Whitford (1991b, 92) points out, according to this account no substan-

tial change could be effected in women's position without a change in the
symbolic, such as the formation of a powerful female symbolic.
Many contemporary Italian feminist groups also take sexual difference
to be the emblem of important social change. They similarly take the sym-
bolic order to be the appropriate level at which to strive for such change
For example, we see this in Maria Luisa Boccia's understanding of the
conceptual framework for feminist activism. Like Irigaray, Boccia writes
that the presence of equal numbers of women in civic life is insufficient.
Identifying with the paradigm of the free, independent, sovereign (male)
individual is a form of alienation for women. A woman becomes alienated
in "that strange indefinite identity which is given her when she takes on
masculine behavior in a woman's body" (Bono and Kemp 1991, 364). In-
stead, we need to make the possibility of sexual difference socially cred-
ible and legitimate. "The principle of difference ... responds to social
alienation by trying to offer female existence a way of remaining close to
itself, bringing together processes of social and political identification
which affect it with processes of subjective identification. It is not by
chance that feminism combines political with psychoanalytic thought"
(Bono and Kemp 1991, 365). According to a psychoanalytic account, struc-
tural recognition and social identification are critical to the formation of
subjectivity. The social and political reforms favored by Irigaray aim for
alternative modes of identity structures for the sexes.
In je, tu, nous, Irigaray presses for practical legal reform in these terms,
asking how such reform might "define women's lives as citizens" (Iri-
garay 1993b, 79):

All the following issues of women's lives ought to be made the concern
of and written into civil law: temporary concessions on contraception and
 Sexual Difference as a Basis of Equality 21

abortion; partial and provisional protection from and penalties against

public and domestic violence against women; the abuse of female bodies
for the purpose of pornography or advertising; discrimination in the sexist
definition and use of the body, of images, of language; rape, kidnapping,
murder.... These are only a few examples of what has to be legally speci-
fied in order to define women's lives as citizens. (Irigaray 1993b, 78-79)

Law concerning many of these issues has often been formulated in neg-
ative terms. For example, a ~~hands-off" reform is envisaged when de-
meaning representations of women appear in advertising, media, and
pornography; violence against women and prevention of women's access
to contraception and abortion are opposed with demands to keep your11

hands off our bodies." 19 Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon's

proposed legal amendment on pornography listed contexts and instances
of pornography against which there should be injunctions (see Dworkin
and MacKinnon 1988).20 As an alternative, some other feminist legal theo-
rists including Drucilla Cornell have argued that the law's role is also to
ensure access to symbolic forms sufficient to achieve linguistic skills per-
II

mitting the differentiation of oneself from others" and the protection of

11

the imaginary domain itself" (Cornell1995, 4). Thus Cornell writes, [I]t is11

not enough for the state to refrain from actively blocking women's
'choice' to have abortions" (33). Along with ensuring the establishment of
safe access to and conditions for abortion, the state must also concern it-
self with the nature of the Social and symbolic recognition" of women as-
11

sociated with such provisions (33).

Many agree with Irigaray's supposition that symbolic, legal, and sub-
jective issues of recognition are interconnected. Irigaray is among those
feminist theorists who think that the law should operate in positive, and
not only in negative or prohibitive, capacities. 21 A debate taken up in
chapter 4 is whether Irigaray places too much confidence in the socially
transformative potential of legal reform. But certainly, in her view, the role
of the law amounts to more than enjoining, restricting, prohibiting, or
even redistributing. 22 The law can offer innovative representations of sub-
jects of different sexes and cultures. It can contribute to the optimal condi-
tions for the formation of new identities for women and men.
Legal reform supported by Irigaray would prohibit demeaning images
of women in advertisements. But such reform is not to be understood only
in prohibitive terms. Irigaray thinks it has the potential to contribute to a
refigured social imaginary in which women may locate themselves more
positively. This point has been strongly emphasized by Cornell also, par-
ticularly in The Imaginary Domain (1995), despite considerable disagree-
ments Cornell has had with Irigaray's work. Cornell supports a legal reg-
22 A Politics of Impossible Difference

ulation of pornography in addition to a "degradation prohibition" (see

Cornell1995, g8ff.). But given her view "that law can protect the imagi-
nary domain" (Cornell1995, 105), Cornell also favors legal reform that
would protect women's attempts to make alternative forms of pornog-
raphy under different economic and structural conditions, and to open it
up to new, more innovative meanings. The proliferation of such meanings
can contribute to richer discursive contexts out of which transformed sex-
uate identities will develop.
In this chapter, I have considered Irigaray's concern that the very phi-
losophy of equality might be historically hard-wired with an implicit sup-
position of women's inequality. 23 The most obvious response would be to
ask whether the language of sexual difference is not also hardwired with
the historical supposition of women's inequality. Shouldn't Irigaray be
equally wary of the language of difference? One can respond in turn that
Irigaray does not really endorse the tradition of sexual difference. She
supports a politics of transformation and (re)invention of sexual differ-
ence and has nothing but the usual skepticism about historical depictions
of sexual difference. But the reader is likely to wonder why she has not fa-
vored a politics of transformation of equality instead. I think the point is
that, at least in Irigaray's own work, these politics are not so very distinct,
and this point will be taken up again in chapter 7· A transformed politics
of difference is one that reconfigures equality, equivalence, and sameness.
lrigaray means her feminism of difference to act as a useful transforma-
tion, not an abandonment, of equality politics. In chapter 7, we will see
her argument for a concept of sameness that presupposes internal differ-
ence, and a concept of difference that presupposes a refiguring of under-
standings of sameness.
The chapters that follow ask how Irigaray has engaged with issues of
public policy and legal and institutional reform. She is, along with Mi-
chele Le Doeuff, one of France's few contemporary women philosophers
to have engaged with these issues. In order to trace this development in
her work, I turn next to Irigaray's earliest writing, Le langage des dements,
so as to discuss the emergence of a philosophy of sexual difference after
that early work.
 2

Irigaray on Language
From the Speech of Dementia to the Problem of Sexual Indifference

For some time now, sexual difference has not played a part in the
creation of culture, except in a division of roles and functions that
does not allow both sexes to be subjects. Thus we are confronted
with a certain subjective pathology from both sides of sexual
difference.
Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies

I n 1973, Irigaray published her first book, Le langage des dements. She
holds doctorates in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics, and the
first of her studies belongs to the latter discipline. It presents findings
from studies of the speech patterns of sufferers of dementia. While thor-
ough and scientific, the work contains an important oversight. It is the
kind of oversight, she would later argue, that impairs the rigor of re-
searchers (Irigaray 1985a, 11).
The overall rationale for the design of the tests is carefully explained in
Le langage des dements. They were intended to evaluate views held in ex-
isting literature: for example, that dementia is accompanied by lexical im-
poverishment, particularly of names and dates, and that there is a greater
use of generic terms such as "thing" to the detriment of naming specific ob-
jects and concepts. Dementia is associated with incoherent, disordered
statements, inertia of ideas, digressions, lack of control in expression, diffi-
culties in reception and interpretation, and impoverishment of categorical
thought (Irigaray 1973, 7-10). Among her concerns, Irigaray wanted to dis-
tinguish the linguistic specificity of subjects suffering from dementia from
that of sufferers of disorders such as aphasia and Alzheimer's disease.
She explains that her tests investigated the linguistic structure at work
in the verbal statements of dementia sufferers, so as to understand how
syntactic and grammatical rules are manipulated by them. Where there is

23
24 A Politics of Impossible Difference

linguistic disorganization, she tries to analyze the level at which it occurs:

syntax or semantics, for example. Are subjects' linguistic schemas dis-
rupted only at the level of the linguistic pool at their disposal? Is there also
disruption of the structure of communication, in the relations between
subject, object, and interlocutor? According to what formations of lan-
guage should we understand subjects suffering from dementia as "speak-
ing subjects"? Irigaray (1973) defines a speaking subject as "a network of
operations that must be conceptualized through the complexity of their
interrelations" (12). She analyzes the relation of subjects suffering de-
mentia to their own enunciations, to their interlocutors, and to the world.
She interrogates the conditions and possibilities of their linguistic com-
munication. Every response of each subject in each test is scrupulously re-
produced in the work, which contains a large component of tables of test
results.
In 1985, Irigaray would come to mock the scientism to which such work
aspired (lrigaray 1985a, 7). But the conclusions of her 1973 work seem
carefully considered and attentive to her data. She concludes that subjects
suffering from dementia retain their phonological code while undergoing
a relaxation of syntactic constraints. Some grammatical classes are impov-
erished more than others, and overall lexical stock does reduce. Words are
attributed variable and inconstant meanings. Subjects are confused by se-
mantic ambiguity or polysemia. They find it hard to generate and take re-
sponsibility for new messages. There is a loss of memory and attention, an
inability to use language as a tool. The subject, Irigaray concludes, ap-
pears to be incapable of new relationships to the world, or at least of new
verbalized relationships to the world (350). For example, a subject suf-
fering from dementia can certainly react with opposition or resistance to
new stimulations and unknown situations. But while one can react to a
situation, "one cannot adapt to it, or name/ articulate [dire] it" (350).
In this regard, Irigaray (1973) comes to a conclusion on which she
would draw in later work. "The subject suffering from dementia," she ar-
gues, "is incapable of functioning as an enunciating subject. This subject is
no more than an object of enunciations" (349). 1 No political or social sig-
nificance is attributed to this situation. Irigaray draws no further conclu-
sions from her findings, or any parallels with other subjects who might be
considered objects rather than subjects of enunciation. However, this
structure would later prove to be a recurrent interest in her work. At this
early point, the same conclusion is also drawn in relation to schizophrenic
subjects on whom she also conducted linguistic studies during the 196os. 2
Later in her career, Irigaray would eventually come to ask whether women
share some specificity in their relation to linguistic use. Do women tend
toward a status as subjects or objects of enunciation?
 Irigaray on Language 25

Finally, Irigaray (1973) notes that those suffering dementia have diffi-
culty in receiving, interpreting, and satisfying the questions of an in-
terlocutor. They often manifest "attitudes of opposition and refusal ad-
dressed both to the object in question-a verbal test-and also to the
observer" (349). "Frequently," she points out, "the interventions [of the ob-
server] are tolerated very badly, particularly when they interrupt the auto-
matic, uncontrollable 'monologue' of the subject" (349). This resistance
does not indicate true dialogue or exchange between interlocutor and in-
terlocutor. The subject interviewed is not necessarily responding to the in-
terviewer as another subject. In this sense, communication is dysfunc-
tional: "[O]ne could conclude that the addressee pole in dementia speech is
dysfunctional. To do so might incur the objection that this discourse often
appears to be an echoing repetition of the observer's enunciation, or the al-
most automatic follow-on, determined by the syntagmatic constraints of
the discourse the observer has initiated. But in truth, we are not dealing
with the addressee-as-a-you [tu], but with the addressee's recall of the
enunciation's context, which supported the already produced discourse"
(349-50).
Notice Irigaray's concern with the subjective and interlocutive status of
two speaking subjects. We seem to have before us an addressor and an ad-
dressee. But we must ask in what mode of subjectivity and recognition
each speaks. Adequate communication requires at least two subjects, "I"
and "you." A subject may seem to be speaking in dialogue but might not,
in some respects, establish the "you" if speaking to the other only in the
mode of recall, recollection, adherence to or rejection of a preestablished
pattem. At this point, neurological and psychological disorder (dementia
and, in other studies of the same period, schizophrenia) are the only in-
stances considered of this phenomenon: "[I]t seems that, in the case of de-
mentia, we are in the presence of a form of indifferentiation of the poles of
enunciation. There is no longer an 'I' [je] and a you [tu]; an emitter and a
recipient of messages. There is one unique pole of enunciation: language
itself. This manifests itself as the very impossibility of any kind of 'com-
munication"' (350).
Le langage des dements is particularly interesting to scholars of Irigaray's
later work because she would later return to the discipline of linguistic
analysis in addressing the problem of sexual difference. Such analysis has
formed a substantial component of her most recent work. Le langage des de-
ments is also of note because its methodological values would be repudi-
ated by the author later in her career.
I have mentioned that the study scrupulously reproduces the responses
of tested subjects. This allows the reader to compare differentiation and
ambiguity in individual responses against the statistical data and conclu-
26 A Politics of Impossible Difference

sions drawn by Irigaray about them. In addition, we have seen that Iri-
garay is attentive to aspects of a candidate's response that resist the
process of examination. For example, Irigaray takes pains to document re-
sponses such as hostility to questions, metacommentary on them, interro-
gation of their context, questions addressed in tum to the interviewer, si-
lence, and failure or refusal to complete questions. Similarly, in her studies
on schizophrenia, Irigaray again pays attention not just to the content and
pattern of responses but also to the modes of response. These include such
factors as whether the subject contests the question, whether the subject
attempts to place it in a context, and the affective manner in which she or
he responds (1973, 42). Although Irigaray does group, classify, and quan-
tify the responses of the subjects in her study, differentiation among sub-
jects is not entirely homogenized into commonalities and percentages of
like responses. Small variations do not disappear from the presentation of
the data in the interest of supporting statistical data and research conclu-
sions. The listing of all speakers' responses allows the reader to consider
instances of responses that might resist Irigaray's own conclusions. 3
Since Irigaray devotes so much careful attention to the singularity of the
subjects she examines in this 1973 study, it is striking that there is one po-
tentially key aspect of the interviewees' specificity she does not discuss.
This is their sex. Throughout, the tested individuals are referred to sex-
neutrally as subjects. Because their attributed given names are abbrevi-
ated throughout the study (as "Steph," "Mar") and so on, the sex of indi-
viduals cannot be determined as we read their responses. The only
indications that women have been included in the samples are the occa-
sionally gendered nature of some of the responses and a table provided on
one page of the work that includes the sex of the participants. In her other
studies on schizophrenia, the question of differences between male and
female respondents is not directly discussed. While individual test results
are tabled, there is no identification of the sex of the participants (see
1985a, 35-53,81-116, 189-221). This omission deemphasizes the possible
importance of determining types of language use among sufferers of de-
mentia and schizophrenia that might be more specific to women or men.
This is a phenomenon Irigaray would later term sexual indifference: a
lack of interest in potential differentiation among men and women. Sexual
indifference supposes from the outset the sexual neutrality of subjects
with regard to language, habits, needs, responsibilities, embodiment, or
experiences. Such working suppositions are not uncommon in scientific
research, but Irigaray would eventually come to denounce them. No more
of the neutral subject, she later declares in Parler n'est jamais neutre (1985a,
g). She criticizes the scientific values with which she aligned herself in her
linguistic research up until1973.
 Irigaray on Language 27

Published one year later in 1974, Speculum of the Other Woman might
have been written by a different author. Speculum is concerned with the
sexual indifference of the history of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus,
Descartes, Kant, and Hegel) and-more surprisingly-of psychoanalysis
(Lacan and Freud). Subsequent works would add Marx and the anthro-
pologist Levi-Strauss, in addition to further figures from the history of
philosophy such as Spinoza, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre,
and Levinas. Sexual indifference may be seen when philosophy, law, eco-
nomics, or science supposes a sex-neutral subject. It may be seen in ex-
plicit indifference to questions of sex or gender difference or in failure to
discriminate between men and women. But sexual indifference may also
be at work in overt discussions of women and femininity. To take one ex-
ample, in Freud's work girls are represented as "little men" (the equiva-
lent of little boys), and women are represented as "desiring babies" (the
complement to the male) or "desiring the phallus" (aspiring to be like
men). Femininity is represented only in terms of a masculine reference
point: as the same as, the opposite of, or the complement to the masculine.
Although Freud takes himself to be interested in the problem of femi-
ninity and sexual difference, Irigaray (1985c) concludes that "Freud does
not see two sexes whose differences are articulated in the act of intercourse
and, more generally speaking, in the imaginary and symbolic processes
that regulate the workings of a society and a culture. The 'feminine' is al-
ways described in terms of deficiency or atrophy, as the other side of the
sex that alone holds a monopoly on value: the male sex" (69). Thus, sexual
indifference may be present in the work of a philosopher who seems
keenly interested in sexual difference.
Irigaray first became well-known as a philosopher for her dose textual
analyses of the phallocentrism of the history of philosophy and psychoan-
alytic theory. 4 Speculum analyzes a sequence of thinkers from Plato, Aris-
totle, and Plotinus through Descartes, Kant, and Hegel to Freud. The tenor
of their references (or sometimes the lack thereof) to women, materiality,
or femininity indicates that the feminine has been colonized as the other
of masculinity. As Irigaray (1985b) declares, "[Y]ou men [are] speaking
among yourselves about woman, who cannot be involved in hearing or
producing a discourse that concerns the riddle, the logogriph she repre-
sents for you" (13). Woman is the other either where she constitutes "the
target, the object, the stake, of a masculine discourse, of a debate among
men" (13) or else where a sex-neutral subject is supposed in discussions of
the human.
The mode of impartial neutrality adopted in Irigaray's earlier writing
she now analyzes as inconsistent and self-contradictory. 5 Discourses, she
now writes, are hardly ever truly sex-neutral (1985a, 11). Furthermore,
28 A Politics of Impossible Difference

texts that do pretend to represent femininity or women invariably depict

variations on a male reference point. She locates many moments of self-
contradiction or unstable logic in Freud's description of women: "The fact
that Freud himself is enmeshed in a power structure and an ideology of
the patriarchal type leads, moreover, to some internal contradictions in his
theory" (1985c, 70). Speculum offers a long analysis of the fact that Freud
both rejects and reinstates the representation of the opposition mascu-
line/feminine by the opposition activity /passivity, for example. 6
In focusing on the treatment of femininity by philosophers and psycho-
analysts, Irigaray analyzes theoretical weaknesses in their work in an ad-
ditional sense. She argues that there is a traditional reliance on the trope of
woman as other in order to sustain an ideal representation of the mascu-
line subject. Woman, says Irigaray, has represented an inverted or nega-
tive alter ego of the masculine. When contrasted with femininity as a neg-
ative other, masculine identity is all the more associated with positive
qualities. Where women represent idle chatter, men represent serious ra-
tionality; where woman represents the minus, man represents the plus
(1985b, 22). The othering of woman to represent the emotional and irra-
tional, the weak and the irresponsible suggests the unacknowledged
fragility of associations of the male with reason, strength, discipline, and
civic responsibility. A degree of dependence on the othering of the femi-
nine is the disavowed underbelly of philosophy.
Having analyzed how femininity and women have been represented,
Irigaray attempts to go further. Can we define the ways in which they
have not been represented? Women have not been represented in terms
transcending relationality to a masculine reference point. Irigaray is not
making a claim about what women are really like or how they have been
misrepresented? Instead she analyses how a given body of texts (such as
those of Freud) do not represent women. Because similar patterns are seen
in a series of thinkers throughout history, Irigaray thinks we can consti-
tute an overall analysis of the sorts of representations of women that have
been excluded throughout history. The philosophic logos has "reduce[ d)
all others in the economy of the Same" (translation modified). It has "erad-
icate[d) {I' effacement de] the difference between the sexes" (1985c, 74). Irigaray
then argues that these exclusions have been unstable or self-undermining.
To reduce feminine others to the economy of the Same implicitly recog-
nizes the possibility that they could exceed the economy of the Same, she
argues. To efface the possibility of sexual difference implicitly indicates
the possibility of sexual difference. Irigaray plays with logic. If there is an
exclusion, there must be something (even if it is no more than a mere pos-
sibility) to exclude. Irigaray does think that sexual difference (by which
she means sexual difference not reducible to opposition, complementarity,
 Irigaray on Language 29

or sameness) is culturally incoherent. She also thinks that throughout the

history of ideas of western culture, male writers repeatedly deny that
women are anything other than opposite, same, or complement. Some of
her interpretations are extremely convincing on this point. Freud, as de-
picted in Speculum, is committed to this pattern. To describe him as ac-
tively excluding other possibilities for representing sexual difference
seems only fair. This is the point from which Irigaray would profit. One
need not be sure that "there is" sexual difference in order to be sure that
Freud excludes it as a possibility.
When Irigaray concludes that the history of western culture has ex-
cluded sexual difference, notice how the ontological status of sexual dif-
ference is left entirely open. A writer could establish this diagnosis be-
lieving that there is no such thing as sexual difference. Another could
draw the same diagnosis convinced that there is. Irigaray hoped to move
the basis for critique away from claims about what there is or is not. She
rejected the idea of asking "What is a woman?" (1985c, 122). She did not
want her analyses of Freud and others reduced to such speculative and
generalizing questions. One could achieve a good deal just by analyzing
repetition in the patterns of representation of women in the history of
western culture. One began to generate a sense of what that history has
not wanted woman to be. It has not wanted women and femininity to be
more than opposite, complement, or same as the male. The term "sexual
difference" in her work is an open term, a pair of empty brackets. But the
construction of these brackets nonetheless emphasizes that an active ex-
clusion has taken place. As an Irigarayan concept, "sexual difference" rep-
resents something the history of western ideas has not wanted women and
femininity to be: something more than opposite, complement, or same.
"Sexual difference" in Irigaray's work refers to an excluded possibility,
some kind of femininity (open in content) that has never become cultur-
ally coherent or possible. Irigaray has continued to rely on this concept
throughout her career. When she refers to the feminine, she does not refer
to a buried or repressed truth. Nor does she envisage (by giving content
to) a utopian new possibility of femininity. Sexual difference is not empir-
ically known, except by its exclusion. Nor is it some unknowable outside
of language and culture to which we could attribute identity or entity. It is
"neither on the near side, the empirical realm that is opaque to all lan-
guage, nor on the far side, the self-sufficient infinite" (1985c, 77).
Instead, it is a hypothetical possibility on the border of histories of rep-
resentation of femininity. Not within them, because it has been excluded.
Not entirely exterior to them, because insofar as it has been excluded it
has been indicated as a possibility. For this reason the concepts of femi-
ninity and sexual difference generated by Irigaray have a paradoxical in-
30 A Politics of Impossible Difference

side I outside, possible I impossible status. Hypothetically, the "recogni-

tion of a 'specific' female sexuality would challenge the monopoly on
value held by the masculine sex alone" (1985c, 73). One can establish this
point without asserting that there is a specific female sexuality or femi-
ninity. Irrespective of one's position on the latter, one can analyze and crit-
icize theoretical contexts for their inability to tolerate such a possibility.
Irigaray thought a good deal was revealed by Freud's repeated exclusion
of such a possibility, for example. This exclusion must be considered the
very emblem of phallocentrism.
In chapter 1 we saw the view of some feminists that affirming sexual
difference is a mistake. The language of difference is too tainted to be any
good to feminism. It can only consolidate conservative values. The objec-
tions of other feminists are less pragmatic. Some just dismiss the idea that
women either are or might be importantly "different." This is an impor-
tant debate, but it does distract from the question Irigaray wants to ask.
Isn't something wrong when the very possibility of sexual difference is
systematically disallowed by male thinkers? Shouldn't a culture that is
deeply disturbed by the very possibility of such difference be questioned
by feminists, whatever their own views about its ontological status or
pragmatic politics? Commentary on Irigaray's work has been exercised by
the question of whether or not there is sexual difference. But Irigaray
reroutes this question. Her point is that western culture has rendered
sexual difference impossible and that this should concern us, regardless.
I mentioned earlier that Irigaray's approach to difference need not be
limited to issues of sex and gender, and with this in mind I will propose
an analogy pertinent to Irigaray's 1999 work Between East and West. A colo-
nized people is likely to have very different views about cultural difference.
Burdened with representations of the savage, the tribal, and the irrational,
some will counter by claiming equal or potentially equal rationality. Oth-
ers might affirm alternative understandings and modes of rationality.
Others might reject the values of western rationality altogether. Some
might affirm a return to original cultural values. Others might affirm a
reinvention or transformation of those cultural values. We should be wary
of a colonizing culture's investment in excluding any of these possibilities.
Its particular insistence that a colonized people should be same, different,
opposite, or complement must be critically examined. The need for such
critical examination holds, irrespective of whether difference, equiva-
lence, reshaped difference, or reshaped equivalence is preferred by colo-
nized peoples. Such choices should make us no less suspicious of a colo-
nizing culture's apparent desire that a colonized people be the same, for
example, or indeed that they be different. To return to the feminist debate
about Irigaray's work, she is suspicious of a desire repeatedly manifest in
 Irigaray on Language 31

western philosophy and psychoanalysis that women not be sexually dif-

ferent. We should be resistant to this desire, irrespective of our individual
positions on the pragmatic and ontological status of sexual difference.
Some critics, of course, would question Irigaray's diagnosis that western
philosophers have excluded the possibility of sexual difference. But this
is because western philosophy's love of models of complementarity and
opposed otherness (representations of woman as nature and man as
reason, of woman as empathy and man as dispassion, of woman as pri-
vate and man as public, and so on) appears to express its love of sexual
difference. Irigaray does not agree. We should not confuse difference
with impoverished models governed by sameness, insofar as they subor-
dinate women to a masculine reference point (complement or opposite to
the male).
The recognition that the possibility of sexual difference has been ex-
cluded is disruptive, in Irigaray's view. Once we begin to muse on ex-
cluded conceptual possibilities, new ideas for how the feminine might be
understood open up. Without making claims about the truth or reality of
feminine sexuality, femininity, or women, Irigaray proposes to destabilize
traditional representations of masculinity and femininity:

[W]hat is important is to disconcert the staging of representation according

to exclusively "masculine" parameters, that is, according to a phallocratic
order ... [to disrupt and modify] it, starting from an "outside" that is ex-
empt [soustrait], in part, from phallocratic law. (1985c, 68)

Notice here that Irigaray describes the excluded feminine, using scare
quotes, as "outside." It occupies the paradoxical border position that the
excluded always holds. She says not that it is exempt from the phallocratic
order but that it is exempt in part. In her later work, when Irigaray refers
to women's identity, women's bodies, women's nature, or a feminine di-
vine, sexual difference always retains this paradoxical status.
Speaking in the name of a feminine identity with this paradoxical in-
side/ outside status, Irigaray was accused by critics of pretending to de-
scribe the truth of women. However, she had begun her career with state-
ments deflecting that interpretation (Irigaray 1985c, 78). Instead, she
proposed "repeating/interpreting the way in which, within discourse, the
feminine finds itself defined as lack, deficiency, or as imitation and nega-
tive image of the subject, [so that women] should signify that with respect
to this logic a disruptive excess is possible on the feminine side" (1985c, 78).
In one of the most widely debated aspects of her work, she frequently
mimics traditional representations of femininity so as to amplify them to a
disruptive implosion.
32 A Politics of Impossible Difference

Concepts of femininity exceeding the terms of man's other have tradi-

tionally been excluded from western discourse. As a disruptive strategy,
Irigaray wants to insert into philosophical texts, language, and culture a
concept of femininity she takes to be excluded. Because its possibility has
been excluded, there is no sexual difference. What resources remain for a
disruptive project? Irigaray sometimes reappropriates particularly tradi-
tional ideas about femininity, such as notions of the feminine as fluid, elu-
sive, or virginal, exaggerating them and reinserting them into the texts in
question. One example is Irigaray's depiction of women's "two lips" sex-
uality, another her suggestion that female virginity might form the basis
for legal reform.
Once she has exaggerated them, Irigaray sometimes theorizes such con-
cepts of femininity as an "A I B" difference (which does not exclude other
possibilities: C, D, and E, for example), rather than as a relativity to the
masculine pole of the form "A/Not-A." This reworking is applied in a
number of domains: linguistic and legal reform, in addition to philosoph-
ical representation. It is first seen in This Sex Which Is Not One, published
in French in 1977. In the most well-known of the essays in this collection,
"This Sex Which Is Not One," Irigaray attempts a poetic evocation of the
ways in which women's sexuality is not represented. It is typically seen as
vaginal and/ or clitoral. It is held to be the same or else the complement of
masculine sexuality, and subordinate to the requirements of reproduction.
Irigaray reappropriates and amplifies the association of women with sex.
However, she refigures that association in terms she thinks would be dis-
ruptive to the phallocentric representation of femininity as equivalent or
complement. Irigaray (1985c) asks why female sexuality should not be
seen in terms of self-caressing, a self-touching of two lips in continuous
contact, that which "is neither one nor two" (26), a plural sexuality, in which
one has "sex organs [des sexes] more or less everywhere" (28), an incomplete-
ness of form, pleasures taken as much from touching as looking, and de-
sire that might potentially "speak" a different "language" from that of a
man (25). As one of Irigaray's best commentators analyzes the project,
"the 'two lips' is not a truthful image of female anatomy but a new em-
blem" by which female sexuality can be positively, excessively, and sub-
versively represented (Grosz 1989, 116).
This Sex Which Is Not One was then followed by book-length studies of
Nietzsche (1991a), Heidegger (2ooo), and another broad-ranging study
that moved from Plato to Levinas: An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1993a). 8
Concurrently, Irigaray started to think increasingly about social reform
and structures of legal reform. We saw in chapter 1 that Irigaray is com-
mitted to ideals of equality but critical of the conceptual terms of equality.
Her concern is not just to generate poetically evocative concepts of
 Irigaray on Language 33

women's "two lips" sexuality. She is also concerned about women's legal
and civic status, equal pay, and equal representation across all sectors of
society. She has, particularly in her later work, engaged with issues of
public policy, media and advertising representations, legal reform, and ac-
cess to public institutions. The complexity of her philosophical analyses of
the absence of sexual difference informs her approach to practical con-
cerns and institutional reform.
Consider the application of an Irigarayan notion of sexual difference to
institutional reform. Because of the historical evolution of a male work-
force, public sphere, and electorate, women did not contribute to the
shaping of their form, traditions, or discourse. Making this point, Irigaray
claims not that women have a specific culture and identity to which the
workplace or the public sphere is inappropriate. She does question the im-
plicit supposition that women do not have a specific culture and identity
to which the public sphere needs to make itself appropriate. As with her
interpretations of Freud and the philosophers, Irigaray's p0int is not
about the truth of women's identity or culture. She diagnoses implicit ex-
clusion of a possibility from a given domain. This means we should exer-
cise caution in the interpretation of passages such as: "There is still hardly
any sort of work that enables a woman to earn her living as a male citizen
does [comme tout citoyen] without alienating her identity in working con-
ditions and contexts developed to suit men alone" (1993b, 85). If women
pass from traditional exclusion from the workplace to simple inclusion,
they are included as honorary men. And this, says Irigaray, should be seen
as an alienation of them as women. However, it is not that women have an
identity that is alienated. Rather, the very possibility that they could have
such an identity is alienated from them. Irigaray (1994) asks: "For what do
women's work and political affiliation mean if women have not got their
own civil identity [sans identite civile qui leur soit appropriee]? Will they not
be supporting and promoting a male tradition and society to which they
remain alien, and which, to some extent, annihilates them as persons?"
(41).
As suggested in chapter 1, Irigaray's concern is about the conceptual
basis on which women are present in the public sphere. If women ex-
change a role as other for a role as equivalent to the masculine in order to
be included in the public sphere, they remain symbolically "annihilated."
Instead, Irigaray hypothesizes about a civil identity specific to women.
Just as in her approach to the history of philosophy, she introduces a con-
cept she takes to be absent from contemporary culture. Women's civil
identity refers to an identity that does not exist. She tries to speak in the
name of this impossible identity within the domain of institutional re-
form and reform of the civil code. Because she deems it impossible, refer-
34 A Politics of Impossible Difference

ence to it is a deliberately paradoxical gesture on her part. The identity

lacks specific content. For rhetorical purposes it must be either left empty,
invented, or provisionally based on a disruptive exaggeration of tradi-
tional notions of femininity. "I shall then suggest some concrete legal
changes that would give women a civil identity" (1994, 41). The content
of that potential identity would be a matter of social and subjective trans-
formation:

Women's entry into the public world, the social relations they have
among themselves and with men, have made cultural transformations ... a
necessity. (1993b, 67)
It's important to understand and modify the instruments of society and
culture that regulate subjective and objective rights. Social justice, and es-
pecially sexual justice, cannot be achieved without changing the laws of
language and the conceptions of truths and values structuring the social
order. (1993b, 22)

Irigaray (1993b, 85) argues that women are alienated by living as male
citizens. Despite interpretation by critics to the contrary, she is not arguing
that women have a specific identity that has been alienated by their role as
a male citizen equivalent. Instead, Irigaray speaks in the name of a female
civic identity that is impossible, since women have occupied cultural roles
only as man's equal, complement, or other. She introduces into her
analyses of the workplace, the law, and the public sphere the concept of
impossibility developed in her readings of Plato, Hegel, Freud, and so on.
"How can we govern [gerer] the world as women if we have not defined
our identity, the rules concerning our genealogical relationships, our so-
cial, linguistic, and cultural order?" she asks (1993b, 56). The formulation
does not suggest that women need to rediscover their identity. Rather,
there needs to be a cultural reinvention or reconception of sexual differ-
ence through the reshaping of French public institutions. Thus we see her
declare, "This political management requires the institution of a new civil
code" (1994, 84). Calling, literally, for legal modifications to the civil code,
she formulates a series of institutional proposals for a culture of sexual
difference (1994, 6o).
Her specific list of sexuate rights to be formalized at the level of the
French civil code are printed in je, tu, nous (1993b, 86-89) and Thinking the
Difference (1994, 6o-62). Their broad headings include the right to human
dignity, the right to human identity, the articulation of the mutual respon-
sibilities between mothers and their children, women's right to defend
their own lives and those of their children, certain financial rearrange-
 Irigaray on Language 35

ments, equivalent systems of exchange for both women and men (in-
cluding linguistic exchange), and equal representation in civil and reli-
gious contexts.
The rights seem to assert women's essential difference from men, a con-
cept that most readers reject. It is here that we see the initial work Irigaray
completed in relation to the history of philosophy informing the work on
public policy. In her readings of the history of philosophy, Irigaray intro-
duced a concept of woman not as she is, but as she cannot be. She thinks
we can formulate women's rights similarly, in terms of excluded concepts
rather than of given or existing identities. The French civil code should
not just be reformed to better reflect the reality and needs of women's
lives. It should also incorporate new concepts of sexed identity that might
interrupt women's traditional role as other. The code requires a culturally
inconceivable concept of women as different (not the opposite of, the
same as, or the complement to a masculine reference point). In this sense,
"we need laws that valorize differences" (1993b, 22, translation modified).
Her critics respond that a concept of sexual difference is far from incon-
ceivable. It has a long tradition in writers such as Aquinas, Rousseau,
Comte, Ruskin, and all those who have revered or deplored women as dif-
ferent: as nature, mother, muse, idol, or a certain absence of qualities. But
Irigaray asks us whether what has been passed off under the banner of
difference merits the name.
Irigaray (1993b, 11) argues for "equivalent sexed rights being written
into the law" for women. She retains her commitment to equal rights,
while trying to rethink their conceptual basis. Social institutions recog-
nizing sexual difference would allow men and women to arrive at a more
satisfactory state of equality. As she asserts, "[W]hat we do need ... and
it's essential, is for men and women to have equal subjective rights-
equal obviously meaning different but of equal value, subjective implying
equivalent rights in exchange systems" (1993b, 68). Although commenta-
tors have noted that "her own program for new values seems impover-
ished" and that "it is not clear ... how one is supposed to implement the
kinds of genealogies among women she advocates" (Lorraine 1999, 92),
Irigaray (1993b) does spell out a political agenda. She calls for sexuate
rights, and these are listed under seven categories:

1. The right to human dignity .. .

2. The right to human identity .. .
3· The mutual obligations of mothers-children shall be defined by civil
law.... The respective obligations of the mother and the father will be de-
fined separately.
36 A Politics of Impossible Difference

4· Women shall have a right to defend their own and their children's
lives ... against all unilateral decisions emanating from male law (includ-
ing in this respect armaments and pollution).
5· On a strictly financial level: ... Celibacy shall not be penalized by the
tax system .... Media broadcasts ... shall be half of the time targeted to-
wards women.
6. Systems of exchange, such as linguistic exchange, for example, shall
be revised in order to guarantee a right to equivalent exchange for men and
women.
7· Women shall be represented in equal numbers in all civil and religious
decision-making bodies. (86-89)

Notwithstanding her view that the language of equality can subtly un-
dermine women's interests, Irigaray's commitment to feminism of
equality should not be underestimated. This commitment is seen in such
items on the bill as number 7: the declaration that women must be repre-
sented in equal numbers in all decision-making bodies. 9 Focusing increas-
ingly on public policy, institutional protection of equality between the
sexes, law reform, and quotidian politics, Irigaray has carried over the
methodology for a reconceptualization of difference developed in her
analyses of the history of philosophy. Through her concern for issues of
identity, she wishes to redress the predicament of equality politics: "[A]s
for women themselves, they are caught in a dilemma: stuck between the
minimum social rights they can obtain by going out to work, gaining eco-
nomic independence, having a little social visibility, etc., and the psycho-
logical or physical price they pay, and make other women pay, for this
minimum" (lrigaray 1993b, 85, translation modified). Reflecting on civic
identity is, in her view, a means of addressing this psychological and
physiological price.
However, throughout her work on the history of philosophy and subse-
quently legal and institutional reform, the author has not turned her back
on linguistic analysis. Eventually, the analysis of sexual indifference
would manifest itself in her approach to linguistics.
It is in Parler n'est jamais neutre (1985a) that Irigaray heaps scorn on the
spirit of scientific earnestness and neutrality apparent in her earliest work.
Considering her early project, she feels "first of all, an irritation and a
laugh, faced with the postulates of scientific language. Scientific require-
ments, these norms and criteria of a procedure understood as rigorous,
represent a reality for and against which I have measured myself for many
years" (7). But Irigaray is too severe on her earliest writing. It is careful
work, attentive to ambiguity and specificity in the responses of her inter-
viewees. Barring its own "sexual indifference," many of the values guid-
 Irigaray on Language 37

ing Le langage des dements are consistent with those manifest in the early
works on the history of philosophy. Irigaray brings to the analysis of the
history of philosophy, anthropology, and psychoanalysis the same atten-
tion to detail, singularity, silence, hostility, and resistance she demon-
strated in her earliest linguistic work.
We have seen how an interest in the representation and possibilities for
representation of women, femininity, and sexual difference took over as
the overriding theme in Irigaray's work. Her poetic writing would at-
tempt to evoke alternative, imagined possibilities for the identity of
women and men. She would analyze representations of women and femi-
ninity in the history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and anthropology.
Her subsequent, more programmatic work would lay down proposals for
social reform, including reform of law, language, the media, economics,
and religion, which might open new possibilities for the identities of
women and men. Yet throughout the twenty-five years of publication that
were to follow, Irigaray's interest in linguistics would continue, while un-
dergoing a transformation corresponding to the overall changes in her
work. After her own initial indifference to the question, Irigaray would
eventually subject difference between men and women to linguistic
analysis. Having first constituted a grammar of dementia, Irigaray would
later constitute a grammar of sexual difference. Its claims are strikingly
consistent with the concerns of the earliest work, where Irigaray asked
what the conditions of a sufficient situation of communication are. Is the
addressee before us a "you"? Does the subject exist in an adequate I-you
relationship with an interlocutor and in relation to others? Is the subject
capable of functioning as a subject of enunciation? Or is she or he consti-
tuted as the object of enunciations? If, Irigaray (1973) argued, there are not
two adequate "poles of enunciation," "I" and "you," the result will be
"the very impossibility of any kind of 'communication"' (350).
Irigaray's work on the possible differences in language spoken by men
and women first appeared in the 1986 paper "The Three Genders" (in Iri-
garay 1993c), in a collective anthology called The Linguistic Sex (Irigaray et
al. 1987), and in a second anthology (Irigaray 1990). She concludes that
women do not exist in an adequate I-you relation. "Gender," writes Iri-
garay (1993c), "stands for the unsubstitutable position of the I and the you
(le tu) and of their modes of expression. Once the difference between I and
you is gone, then asking, thanking, appealing, questioning ... also disap-
pear" (170). In other words, in gendered relations it is crucial that there be
an adequate I and you. If not, relations between the sexes will be inade-
quate and monodiscursive. Irigaray' s diatribe against the scientism of her
early work includes a condemnation of scientific discourse in which the
neutral language of the impersonal investigator excludes the possibility of
Other documents randomly have
different content
[68] 'Their dance is of the rudest kind, and consists
merely in violent motion of the arms and legs.'
Seemann's Voy. Herald, vol. ii., p. 63. They make 'the
most comical motions with the whole body, without
stirring from their place.' Kotzebue's Voy., vol. i., p.
192. Their song consisted of the words: 'Hi, Yangah
yangah; ha ha, yangah—with variety only in the
inflection of voice.' Hooper's Tuski, p. 225. When
heated by the dance, even the women were stripped
to their breeches. Simpson's Nar., p. 158. 'An old man,
all but naked, jumped into the ring, and was beginning
some indecent gesticulations, when his appearance
not meeting with our approbation he withdrew.'
Beechey's Voy., vol. i., p. 396.
[69] 'C'était la plus grande marque d'amitié qu'ils
pouvaient nous donner.' Choris, Voy. Pitt., pt. ii., p. 5.
'They came up to me one after the other—each of
them embraced me, rubbed his nose hard against
mine, and ended his caresses by spitting in his hands
and wiping them several times over my face.'
Kotzebue's Voy., vol. i., pp. 192, 195.
[70] 'Their personal bravery is conspicuous, and they
are the only nation on the North American Continent
who oppose their enemies face to face in open fight.'
Richardson's Jour., vol. i., p. 244. 'Simple, kind people;
very poor, very filthy, and to us looking exceedingly
wretched.' McClure's Dis. N. W. Passage, in Lond.
Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. xxiv., p. 242. 'More bold and
crafty than the Indians; but they use their women
much better.' Bell's Geog., vol. v., p. 294.
[71] 'Their diseases are few.' Seemann's Voy. Herald,
vol. ii., p. 67. 'Diseases are quite as prevalent among
them as among civilized people.' Dall's Alaska, p. 195.
'Ophthalmia was very general with them.' Beechey's
Voy., vol. i., p. 345. 'There is seldom any mortality
except amongst the old people and very young
children.' Armstrong's Nar., p. 197.
[72] At Point Barrow, bodies were found in great
numbers scattered over the ground in their ordinary
seal-skin dress; a few covered with pieces of wood,
the heads all turned north-east towards the extremity
of the point. Simpson's Nar., p. 155. 'They lay their
dead on the ground, with their heads all turned to the
north.' 'The bodies lay exposed in the most horrible
and disgusting manner.' Dease and Simpson, in Lond.
Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. viii., p. 221, 222. 'Their position
with regard to the points of the compass is not taken
into consideration.' Seemann's Voy. Herald, vol. ii., p.
67. 'There are many more graves than present
inhabitants of the village, and the story is that the
whole coast was once much more densely populated.'
Dall's Alaska, p. 19. Hooper, on coming to a burial
place not far from Point Barrow, 'conjectured that the
corpses had been buried in an upright position, with
their heads at or above the surface.' Tuski, p. 221.
[73] Kadiak 'is a derivative, according to some authors,
from the Russian Kadia, a large tub; more probably,
however, it is a corruption of Kaniag, the ancient Innuit
name.' Dall's Alaska, p. 532. Holmberg thinks that the
word Kadiak arose from Kikchtak, which in the
language of the Koniagas means a large island. 'Der
Name Kadjak ist offenbar eine Verdrehung von
Kikchtak, welches Wort in der Sprache der Konjagen
"grosse Insel" bedeutet und daher auch als
Benennung der grössten Insel dieser Gruppe diente.'
Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des
Russischen Amerika, p. 75. 'A la division Koniagi
appartient la partie la plus septentrionale de l'Alaska,
et l'île de Kodiak, que les Russes appellent
vulgairement Kichtak, quoique, dans la langue des
naturels, le mot Kightak ne désigne en général qu'une
île.' Humboldt, Essai Pol., tom. i., p. 347. Coxe affirms
that the natives 'call themselves Kanagist.' Russian
Dis., p. 135. And Sauer says, 'the natives call
themselves Soo-oo-it.' Billings' Ex., p. 175. 'Man
verstand von ihnen, dass sie sich selbst Kanagist
nennen.' Neue Nachr., p. 114.
[74] Tschugatsches, Tschugatsi or Tschgatzi. Latham,
Native Races, p. 290, says the name is Athabascan,
and signifies 'men of the sea.'
[75] Kuskoquigmutes, Kuskokwimen,
Kuskokwigmjuten, Kusckockwagemuten,
Kuschkukchwakmüten, or Kaskutchewak.
[76] The termination mute, mut, meut, muten, or
mjuten, signifies people or village. It is added to the
tribal name sometimes as a substantive as well as in
an adjective sense.
[77] 'Herr Wassiljew schätzt ihre Zahl auf mindestens
7000 Seelen beiderlei Geschlechts und jeglichen
Alters.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 127.
[78] 'Es waren wohl einst alle diese Inseln bewohnt.'
Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 76.
[79] The Malemutes are 'a race of tall and stout
people.' Whymper's Alaska, p. 159. 'Die Kuskokwimer
sind, mittlerer Statur, schlank, rüstig und oft mit
grosser Stärke begabt.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 135.
Dixon's Voy., p. 186. 'Bisweilen fallen sogar riesige
Gestalten auf, wie ich z. B. einen Häuptling in der
igatschen Bucht zu sehen Gelegenheit hatte, dessen
Länge 6¾ Fuss betrug.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 80.
The chief at Prince William Sound was a man of low
stature, 'with a long beard, and seemed about sixty
years of age.' Portlock's Voy., p. 237. A strong, raw-
boned race. Meares' Voy., p. 32. At Cook's Inlet they
seemed to be of the same nation as those of Pr. Wm.
Sd., but entirely different from those at Nootka, in
persons and language. Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p.
400. They are of 'middle size and well proportioned.'
Dixon's Voy., p. 68. 'They emigrated in recent times
from the Island of Kadyak, and they claim, as their
hereditary possessions, the coast lying between Bristol
Bay and Beering's Straits.' Richardson's Nar., vol. i., p.
364. 'Die Tschugatschen sind Ankömmlinge von der
Insel Kadjack, die während innerer Zwistigkeiten von
dort vertrieben.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 116.
[80] Achkugmjuten, 'Bewohner der warmen Gegend.'
Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 5. 'Copper complexion.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 194.
[81] 'They bore their under lip, where they hang fine
bones of beasts and birds.' Staehlin's North. Arch., p.
33. 'Setzen sich auch—Zähne von Vögeln oder
Thierknochen in künstliche Oeffnungen der Unterlippe
und unter der Nase ein.' Neue Nachr., p. 113.
[82] The people of Kadiak, according to Langsdorff,
are similar to those of Unalaska, the men being a little
taller. They differ from the Fox Islanders. Voy., pt. ii.,
p. 62. 'Die Insulaner waren hier von den Einwohnern,
der vorhin entdeckten übrigen Fuchsinsuln, in Kleidung
und Sprache ziemlich verschieden.' Neue Nachr., p.
113. 'Ils ressemblent beaucoup aux indigènes des îles
Curiles, dépendantes du Japon.' Laplace, Circumnav.,
vol. vi., p. 45.
[83] 'They wore strings of beads suspended from
apertures in the lower lip.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 195.
'Their ears are full of holes, from which hang pendants
of bone or shell.' Meares' Voy., p. xxxii. 'Elles portent
des perles ordinairement en verre bleu, suspendues
au-dessous du nez à un fil passé dans la cloison
nasale.' D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 573. 'Upon the whole, I
have nowhere seen savages who take more pains than
these people do to ornament, or rather to disfigure
their persons.' At Prince William Sound they are so
fond of ornament 'that they stick any thing in their
perforated lip; one man appearing with two of our iron
nails projecting from it like prongs; and another
endeavouring to put a large brass button into it.'
Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 370. They slit the under
lip, and have ornaments of glass beads and muscle-
shells in nostrils and ears; tattoo chin and neck.
Langsdorff's Voy., vol. ii., p. 63. 'Die Frauen machen
Einschnitte in die Lippen. Der Nasenknorpel ist
ebenfalls durchstochen.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 135.
[84] The Kadiaks dress like the Aleuts, but their
principal garment they call Konägen; Langsdorff's Voy.,
pt. ii., p. 63. Like the Unalaskas, the neck being more
exposed, fewer ornamentations. Sauer, Billings' Voy.,
p. 177. 'Consists wholly of the skins of animals and
birds.' Portlock's Voy., p. 249. A coat peculiar to Norton
Sound appeared 'to be made of reeds sewed very
closely together.' Dixon's Voy., p. 191. 'Nähen ihre
Parken (Winter-Kleider) aus Vögelhäuten und ihre
Kamleien (Sommer-Kleider) aus den Gedärmen von
Wallfischen und Robben.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 117.
At Norton Sound 'principally of deer-skins.' Cook's
Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 484. 'Ihre Kleider sind aus
schwarzen und andern Fuchsbälgen, Biber,
Vogelhäuten, auch jungen Rennthier and
Jewraschkenfellen, alles mit Sehnen genäht.' Neue
Nachr., p. 113. 'The dress of both sexes consists of
parkas and camleykas, both of which nearly resemble
in form a carter's frock.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 194.
[85] 'Una tunica entera de pieles que les abriga
bastantemente.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 66. 'By
the use of such a girdle, it should seem that they
sometimes go naked.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 437.
[86] 'Plastered over with mud, which gives it an
appearance not very unlike a dung hill.' Lisiansky's
Voy., p. 214. Sea-dog skin closes the opening.
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 62. The Kuskoquims have
'huttes qu'ils appellent barabores pour l'été.'
D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 574. 'Mit Erde und Gras bedeckt, so
dass man mit Recht die Wohnungen der Konjagen
Erdhütten nennen kann.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 97.
'A door fronting the east.' Sauer, Billings' Voy., p. 175.
At Norton Sound 'they consist simply of a sloping roof,
without any side-walls.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p.
484. Build temporary huts of sticks and bark. Portlock's
Voy., p. 253.
[87] 'In dem Kashim versammelt sich die männliche
Bevölkerung des ganzen Dorfes zur Berathschlagung
über wichtige Angelegenheiten, über Krieg und
Frieden, etc.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 129.
[88] 'Le poisson est la principale nourriture.'
D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 574. 'Berries mixed with rancid
whale oil.' 'The fat of the whale is the prime delicacy.'
Lisiansky's Voy., pp. 178, 195. 'Meistentheils nähren sie
sich mit rohen und trocknen Fischen, die sie theils in
der See mit knöchernen Angelhaken, theils in den
Bächen mit Sacknetzen, die sie aus Sehnen flechten,
einfangen.' Neue Nachr., p. 114. They generally eat
their food raw, but sometimes they boil it in water
heated with hot stones. Meares' Voy., p. xxxv. The
method of catching wild geese, is to chase and knock
them down immediately after they have shed their
large wing-feathers; at which time they are not able to
fly. Portlock's Voy., p. 265.
[89] 'Ich hatte auf der Insel Afognak Gelegenheit dem
Zerschneiden eines Wallfisches zuzusehen und
versichere, dass nach Verlauf von kaum 2 Stunden nur
die blanken Knochen auf dem Ufer lagen.' Holmberg,
Ethn. Skiz., p. 91.
[90] The Kadiaks 'pass their time in hunting, festivals,
and abstinence. The first takes place in the summer;
the second begins in the month of December, and
continues as long as any provisions remain; and then
follows the period of famine, which lasts till the re-
appearance of fish in the rivers. During the period last
mentioned, many have nothing but shell-fish to subsist
on, and some die for want.' Lisiansky's Voy., pp. 209,
210.
[91] 'Wild animals which they hunt, and especially wild
sheep, the flesh of which is excellent.' Lisiansky's Voy.,
p. 188. They eat the larger sort of fern-root baked,
and a substance which seemed the inner bark of the
pine. Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 374. 'Die
Eingebornen essen diese Wurzeln (Lagat) roh und
gekocht; aus der Wurzel, nachdem sie in Mehl
verwandelt ist, bäckt man, mit einer geringen
Beimischung von Weizenmehl, süssliche, dünne
Kuchen.' Sagoskin, Tagebuch, in Denkschr. d. russ.
Geog. Gesell., p. 343.
[92] 'Ihre hölzernen Schilde nennen sie Kujaki.' Neue
Nachr., p. 114.
[93] 'Selecting the roots of such plants as grow alone,
these roots are dried and pounded, or grated.' Sauer,
Billings' Ex., p. 178.
[94] 'Die Pfeilspitzen sind aus Eisen oder Kupfer,
ersteres erhalten sie von den Kenayern, letzteres von
den Tutnen.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 118. 'De pedernal
en forma de arpon, cortado con tanta delicadeza como
pudiera hacerlo el mas hábil lapidario.' Bodega y
Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 66.
[95] At Prince William Sound Cook found the canoes
not of wood, as at Nootka. At Bristol Bay they were of
skin, but broader. Third Voy., vol. ii., pp. 371, 437. 'Die
kadjakschen Baidarken unterscheiden sich in der Form
ein wenig von denen der andern Bewohner der
amerikanischen Küste, von denen der Aleuten aber
namentlich darin, dass sie kürzer und breiter sind.'
Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 99. At Prince William Sound,
'formada la canoa en esqueleto la forran por fuera con
pieles de animales.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 65.
'Qu'on se figure une nacelle de quatre mètres de long
et de soixante centimètres de large tout au plus.'
Laplace, Circumnav., vol. vi., p. 48. 'These canoes
were covered with skins, the same as we had seen last
season in Cook's River. Dixon's Voy., p. 147. 'Safer at
sea in bad weather than European boats.' Lisiansky's
Voy., p. 211.
[96] Their whale-sinew thread was as fine as silk.
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 207.
[97] The only tool seen was a stone adze. Cook's Third
Voy., vol. ii., p. 373.
[98] 'Their sewing, plaiting of sinews, and small work
on their little bags may be put in competition with the
most delicate manufactures found in any part of the
known world.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., pp. 373, 374.
'If we may judge by these figures, the inhabitants of
Cadiack must have lost much of their skill in carving,
their old productions of this kind being greatly
superior.' Lisiansky, p. 178. The Ingalik's household
furniture is made 'von gebogenem Holz sehr zierlich
gearbeitet und mittelst Erdfarben roth, grün und blau
angestrichen. Zum Kochen der Speisen bedienen sie
sich irdener, ausgebrannter Geschirre.' Baer, Stat. u.
Ethn., p. 121.
[99] 'Tis most probable they are divided into clans or
tribes.' Dixon's Voy., p. 67. 'They have a King, whose
name was Sheenoway.' Meares' Voy., p. xxvii. 'They
always keep together in families, and are under the
direction of toyons or chiefs.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 151.
[100] Female slaves are sold from one tribe to another.
Sauer, Billings' Voy., p. 175.
[101] 'Zugleich verschwand auch ihre Benennung;
man nannte sie ferner Kajuren, ein Wort aus
Kamtschatka hieher übergesiedelt, welches Tagelöhner
oder Arbeiter bedeutet.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 79.
[102] 'They will not go a step out of the way for the
most necessary purposes of nature; and vessels are
placed at their very doors for the reception of the
urinous fluid, which are resorted to alike by both
sexes.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 214.
[103] 'Not only do brothers and sisters cohabit with
each other, but even parents and children.'
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 64.
[104] 'Images dressed in different forms.' Lisiansky's
Voy., p. 178. 'The most favoured of women is she who
has the greatest number of children.' Sauer, Billings'
Voy., p. 176.
[105] 'Der Vater oder die Mutter bestimmen den Sohn
schon in seiner frühsten Kindheit zum Achnutschik,
wenn er ihnen mädchenhaft erscheint.' Holmberg,
Ethn. Skiz., p. 121. 'Male concubines are much more
frequent here than at Oonalashka.' Langsdorff's Voy.,
pt. ii., p. 64. They 'are happy to see them taken by the
chiefs, to gratify their unnatural desires. Such youths
are dressed like women, and taught all their domestic
duties.' Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 176. 'Ces peuples sont
très adonnés aux plaisirs des sens et même à un vice
infame.' Choris, Voy. Pitt., pt. vii., p. 8. 'Of all the
customs of these islanders, the most disgusting is that
of men, called schoopans, living with men, and
supplying the place of women.' Lisiansky's Voy., p.
199. This shameful custom applies to the Thlinkeets as
well. 'Quelques personnes de l'Equipage du Solide ont
rapporté qu'il ne leur est pas possible de douter que
les Tchinkîtânéens ne soient souillés de ce vice
honteux que la Théogonie immorale des Grecs avoit
divinisé.' Marchand, Voy. aut. du Monde, tom. ii., p. 97.
[106] 'Der Schamane hat seiner Obliegenheit gemäss
oder aus besonderem Wohlwollen sie der
Jungferschaft beraubt und sie wäre unwürdig vor der
Versammlung zu erscheinen, wenn sie ihre erste Liebe
irgend einem Anderen und nicht dem Schamanen
gezollt hätte.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn., p. 133.
[107] 'Their dances are proper tournaments.' Sauer,
Billings' Ex., p. 176. They are much addicted to public
dances, especially during winter. Whymper's Alaska, p.
165. 'Masks of the most hideous figures are worn.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 210. 'Use a sort of rattle composed
of a number of the beaks of the sea-parrot, strung
upon a wooden cross,'—sounds like castanets.
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 64. 'Die Tänzer erscheinen,
eben so, mit Wurfspiessen oder Messern in den
Händen, welche sie über dem Kopfe schwingen.' Baer,
Stat. u. Ethn., p. 118.
[108] 'Les sorciers et chamans jouissent d'une grande
faveur dans cette région glacée de l'Amérique.'
D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 574. 'Schamane und alte Weiber
kennen verschiedene Heilmittel.' Baer, Stat. u. Ethn.,
p. 135. 'Next in rank to the shamans are the kaseks, or
sages, whose office is to teach children the different
dances, and superintend the public amusements and
shows, of which they have the supreme control.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 208.
[109] 'The dead body of a chief is embalmed with
moss, and buried.' Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 177.
[110] 'In one of the small buildings, or kennels, as
they may very properly be called, was a woman who
had retired into it in consequence of the death of her
son.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 184.
[111] 'The word Aleutian seems to be derived from the
interrogative particle allix, which struck strangers in
the language of that people.' Kotzebue's Voy., vol. iii.,
p. 312. The Unalaskas and 'the people of Oomnak, call
themselves Cowghalingen.' 'The natives of Alaska and
all the adjacent islands they call Kagataiakung'n.'
Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 154. 'The inhabitants of
Unalashka are called Kogholaghi; those of Akutan, and
further east to Unimak, Kighigusi; and those of Unimak
and Alaxa, Kataghayekiki. They cannot tell whence
these appellations are derived; and now begin to call
themselves by the general name of Aleyut, given to
them by the Russians, and borrowed from some of the
Kurile Islands.' Coxe's Russ. Dis., p. 219.
[112] Yet, says D'Orbigny, Voyage, p. 577: 'Si on
interroge les Aléoutiens sur leur origine, ils disent que
leurs ancêtres ont habité un grand pays vers l'ouest, et
que de là ils sont avancés de proche en proche sur les
îles désertes jusq'au continent américain.'
[113] Trapesnikoff took from an unknown island in
1753, 1920 sea-otter skins. Durneff returned to
Kamchatka in 1754, with 3,000 skins. In 1752 one
crew touched at Bering Island and took 1,222 Arctic
foxes, and 2,500 sea-bears. Cholodiloff, in 1753, took
from one island 1,600 otter-skins. Tolstych in one
voyage took 1,780 sea-otter, 720 blue foxes, and 840
sea-bears. Coxe's Russ. Dis., pp. 43, 44, 49, 51, 53.
[114] Sparks, Life of Ledyard, p. 79.
[115] A great deal of character. Langsdorff's Voy., pt.
ii., p. 32.
[116] 'Rather low of stature, but plump and well
shaped; with rather short necks; swarthy chubby
faces; black eyes; small beards, and long, straight,
black hair; which the men wear loose behind, and cut
before, but the women tie up in a bunch.' Cook's Third
Voy., vol. ii., p. 510. 'Von Gesicht sind sie platt und
weiss, von guter Statur, durchgängig mit schwarzen
Haaren.' Neue Nachr., p. 150. 'Low in stature, broad in
the visage.' Campbell's Voy., p. 112. Hair 'strong and
wiry;' scanty beard, but thick on the upper lip. Sauer,
Billings' Ex., p. 154.
[117] 'Les femmes aléoutes portaient aux mains et aux
pieds des chapelets de pierres de couleur et
préférablement d'ambre.' D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 579.
'None are so highly esteemed as a sort of long muscle,
commonly called sea-teeth, the dentalium entalis of
Linnæus.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 40. 'Women have
the chin punctured in fine lines rayed from the centre
of the lip and covering the whole chin.' They wear
bracelets of black seal-skin around the wrists and
ankles, and go barefoot. Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 155.
'Im Nasen-Knorpel und der Unterlippe machen beide
Geschlechter Löcher und setzen Knochen ein, welches
ihr liebster Schmuck ist. Sie stechen sich auch bunte
Figuren im Gesicht aus.' Neue Nachr., p. 169. 'They
bore the upper lip of the young children of both sexes,
under the nostrils, where they hang several sorts of
stones, and whitened fish-bones, or the bones of other
animals.' Staehlin's North Arch., p. 37.
[118] 'Leur conformation est robuste et leur permet de
supporter des travaux et des fatigues de toute sorte.'
D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 577.
[119] At Shumagin Island, their caps were of sea-lion
skins. Müller's Voy., p. 46. On the front are one or two
small images of bone. Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p.
510. A wooden hat, 'which in front comes out before
the eyes like a sort of umbrella, and is rounded off
behind.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 38. 'Einige haben
gemeine Mützen von einem bunten Vogelfell, woran
sie etwas von den Flügeln und dem Schwanz sitzen
lassen;—sind vorn mit einem Brettchen wie ein Schirm
versehn und mit Bärten von Seebären—geschmücket.'
Neue Nachr., pp. 151, 152.
[120] On a feather garment, 'a person is sometimes
employed a whole year.' 'The women for the most part
go bare-footed.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., pp. 36, 39.
'Seams covered with thin slips of skin, very elegantly
embroidered with white deer's hair, goat's hair, and the
sinews of sea animals, dyed of different colours.'
Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 156. 'Ihr Pelzkleid wird über den
Kopf angezogen, und ist hinten und vorn ganz zu. Die
Männer tragen es aus Vogelhäuten; die Weiber
hingegen von Bibern und jungen Seebären.' Neue
Nachr., p. 152. 'Boots and breeches in one piece.'
Campbell's Voy., p. 113.
[121] 'Round the sides and ends of the huts, the
families (for several are lodged together) have their
separate apartments, where they sleep, and sit at
work; not upon benches, but in a kind of concave
trench, which is dug all around the inside of the house,
and covered with mats.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p.
512. 'When they have stood for sometime, they
become overgrown with grass, so that a village has
the appearance of an European churchyard full of
graves.' Langsdorff's Voy., p. 32. 'In den Jurten wird
niemals Feuer angelegt und doch ist es gemeiniglich
sehr warm darinnen, so dass beide Geschlechter ganz
nakkend sitzen.' Neue Nachr., p. 150.
[122] 'A bidarka or boat is turned up sideways, and at
the distance of four or five feet, two sticks, one
opposite to the head and the other to the stern, are
driven into the ground, on the tops of which a cross
stick is fastened. The oars are then laid along from the
boat to the cross stick, and covered with seal skins,
which are always at hand for the purpose.' Lisiansky's
Voy., p. 152.
[123] 'Among the greatest delicacies of Oonalashka
are the webbed feet of a seal, which are tied in a
bladder, buried in the ground, and remain there till
they are changed into a stinking jelly.' Kotzebue's Voy.,
vol. ii., p. 165. Almost everything is eaten raw. Cook's
Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 520. The sea-dog is caught with
nets, killed when asleep, or enticed on shore by a false
cap made to resemble a seal's head. Lisiansky's Voy.,
p. 205.
[124] 'L'Aléoute peut tuer les phoques et les oiseaux,
sans être obligé d'en rendre compte à la compagnie.'
Choris, Voy. Pitt., pt. vii., p. 4.
[125] 'Die Spitze selbst wird theils aus Obsidian oder
Lavaglas, theils auch aus Trachyt verfertigt.' Kittlitz,
Reise, vol. i., p. 268. Spear-handles are feathered, the
points of sharpened flint. Neue Nachr., p. 102, 'Arrows
are thrown from a narrow and pointed board, twenty
inches long, which is held by the thumb and three
fingers. They are thrown straight from the shoulder
with astonishing velocity.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 205. 'Les
armes défensives consistaient en une cotte de joncs
tressés qui leur couvrait tout le corps.' D'Orbigny, Voy.,
p. 579. 'No such thing as an offensive, or even
defensive weapon was seen amongst the natives of
Oonalashka.' Probably they had been disarmed by the
Russians. Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 515. 'Wherever
any one has fixed his habitation, nobody else dares to
hunt or fish.' Staehlin's Nor. Arch., p. 37. For birds they
point their darts with three light bones, spread and
barbed. Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 157. 'Indeed, there is a
neatness and perfection in most of their work, that
shews they neither want ingenuity nor perseverance.'
Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 514.
[126] They make 'baskets called ishcats, in which the
Aleutians keep all their valuables.' Lisiansky's Voy., p.
181. 'Thread they make of the sinews of the seal, and
of all sizes, from the fineness of a hair to the strength
of a moderate cord, both twisted and plaited.' Sauer,
Billings' Ex., p. 157. Of the teeth of sea-dogs they
carve little figures of men, fish, sea-otters, sea-dogs,
sea-cows, birds, and other objects. Langsdorff's Voy.,
pt. ii., p. 46.
[127] 'Wollen sie etwas an ihren Pfeilen oder sonst
eine Kleinigkeit leimen, so schlagen sie sich an die
Nase und bestreichen es mit ihrem Blute.' Neue
Nachr., p. 173.
[128] Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 159; Campbell's Voy., p.
59.
[129] 'Comme les femmes coûtaient cher en présents
de fiançailles, la plupart des Aléoutes n'en avaient
qu'une ou deux.' D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 579. Purchase as
many girls for wives as they can support. Sauer,
Billings' Ex., p. 160. 'Objects of unnatural affection.'
Id., p. 160. 'Their beards are carefully plucked out as
soon as they begin to appear, and their chins tattooed
like those of the women.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p.
48. 'The Russians told us, that they never had any
connections with their women, because they were not
Christians. Our people were not so scrupulous; and
some of them had reason to repent that the females of
Oonalashka encouraged their addresses without any
reserve; for their health suffered by a distemper that is
not unknown here.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 521.
[130] 'It often happens that a mother plunges her
noisy child into water, even in winter, and keeps it
there till it leaves off crying.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 202.
'Schreyt das Kind, so trägt es die Mutter, es sey Winter
oder Sommer nakkend nach der See, und hält es so
lange im Wasser bis es still wird.' Neue Nachr., p. 168.
[131] 'Have their own chiefs in each island.' Cook's
Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 510. 'Generally is conferred on
him who is the most remarkable for his personal
qualities.' Coxe's Russ. Dis., p. 219.
[132] Those of the inhabitants who have two wives
give their guests one, or a slave. Neue Nachr., p. 171.
'In the spring holidays, they wear masks, neatly carved
and fancifully ornamented.' Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 160.
[133] 'On avait soin de le disposer de manière à ce
qu'il ne touchât pas la terre.' D'Orbigny, Voy., p. 579.
'Embalm the bodies of the men with dried moss and
grass.' Sauer, Billings' Ex., p. 161. Slaves sometimes
slaughtered. Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 48. 'Bury their
dead on the summits of hills.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii.,
p. 521. 'When a man dies in the hut belonging to his
wife, she retires into a dark hole, where she remains
forty days. The husband pays the same compliment to
his favorite wife upon her death.' Coxe's Russ. Dis., p.
218. 'Die Todten werden begraben, und man giebt
dem Mann seinen Kahn, Pfeile und Kleider mit ins
Grab.' 'Die Todten umwinden sie mit Riemen und
hängen sie in einer Art hölzerner Wiege an einen auf
zwey Gabelen ruhenden Querstock in der Luft auf.'
Neue Nachr., pp. 101, 154.
[134] 'Naturellement silencieux.' D'Orbigny, Voy., p.
578. 'Sie verrichten auch die Nothdurft und das
Ehegeschäft ohne alle Scheu.' Neue. Nachr., p. 150. 'A
stupid silence reigns among them.' 'I am persuaded
that the simplicity of their character exceeds that of
any other people.' Lisiansky's Voy., pp. 182, 183. 'Kind-
hearted and obliging, submissive and careful; but if
roused to anger, they become rash and unthinking,
even malevolent, and indifferent to all danger.'
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 32. 'To all appearance, they
are the most peaceable, inoffensive people, I ever met
with. And, as to honesty, they might serve as a pattern
to the most civilized nation upon earth.' Cook, vol. ii.,
p. 509.
[135] 'To hunt was their task; to be drowned, or
starved, or exhausted, was their reward.' Simpson's
Jour., vol. ii., p. 229. 'They are harmless, wretched
slaves,' whose race will soon be extinct. Kotzebue's
Voy., vol. iii., p. 315. The Russian hunters 'used not
unfrequently to place the men close together, and try
through how many the ball of their rifle-barrelled
musket would pass.' Sauer, Billings' Ex. App., p. 56.
'Of a thousand men, who formerly lived in this spot,
scarcely more than forty remained.' Langsdorff's Voy.,
pt. ii., p. 235. 'La variole, la syphilis, voire même le
choléra depuis quelques années, en emportent une
effrayante quantité.' Laplace, Circumnav., vol. ii., p. 51.
[136] Kaluga, Kaljush, Koljush, Kalusch, Kolush,
Kolosch, Kolosh, Kolosches. Marchand calls them
Tchinkîtâné. Voyage aut. du Monde, tom. ii., p. 3.
[137] See Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., pp. 15, 16.
[138] Ugalachmiuti, Ugaljachmjuten, Ugalyachmutzi,
Ugalukmutes, Ugalenzi, Ugalenzen, Ugalenzes.
[139] They 'call themselves G-tinkit, or S-chinkit, or
also S-chitcha-chon, that is, inhabitants of Sitki or
Sitcha.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., 128.
[140] The orthographic varieties of this word are
endless. Stickeen, Stekin, Stakhin, Stachin, Stikin,
Stachine, Stikeen, Stikine, Stychine, are among those
before me at the moment.
[141] At the end of this chapter, under Tribal
Boundaries, the location of these tribes is given
definitely.
[142] A Thlinkeet boy, 'when under the whip,
continued his derision, without once exhibiting the
slightest appearance of suffering.' Lisiansky's Voy., p.
242.
[143] 'Leur corps est ramassé, mais assez bien
proportionné.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 46. 'Very
fierce.' Portlock's Voy., p. 291. 'Limbs straight and well
shaped.' Dixon's Voy., p. 171. 'Stolze gerade Haltung.'
Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 16. 'Active and clever.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 237. 'Bigote á manera de los
Chinos.' Perez, Nav., MS. p. 14. 'Limbs ill-
proportioned.' Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii., p. 49. 'Très
supérieurs en courage et en intelligence.' La Pérouse,
Voy., tom. iv., p. 54.
[144] The women 'are pleasing and their carriage
modest.' Portlock's Voy., p. 291. When washed, white
and fresh. Dixon's Voy., p. 171. 'Dunkle Hautfarbe.'
Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 16. 'Eran de color blanco y
habia muchos con ojos azules.' Perez, Nav., MS. p. 14.
As fair as many Europeans. Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p.
112. 'Muchos de ellos de un blanco regular.' Bodega y
Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 43.
[145] 'Leur chevelure, dure, épaisse, mêlée, couverte
d'ocre, de duvet d'oiseaux et de toutes les ordures que
la négligence et le temps y ont accumulées, contribue
encore à rendre leur aspect hideux.' Marchand, Voy.,
tom. ii., p. 46. 'A more hideous set of beings, in the
form of men and women, I had never before seen.'
Cleveland's Voy., p. 91. The men painted 'a black circle
extending from the forehead to the mouth, and a red
chin, which gave the face altogether the appearance of
a mask.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 146. Pourraient même
passer pour jolies, sans l'horrible habitude qu'elles ont
adoptée.' Laplace, Circumnav., tom. vi., p. 87. 'That
person seems to be reckoned the greatest beau
amongst them, whose face is one entire piece of smut
and grease.' Dixon's Voy., p. 68. 'Ils se font des
cicatrices sur les bras et sur la poitrine.' La Pérouse,
Voy., tom. ii., p. 223. 'Um aus dem Gesichte diese fette
Farbenmasse abzuwaschen, gebrauchen sie ihren
eignen Urin, und dieser verursacht bei ihnen den
widerlichen Geruch, der den sich ihm nahenden
Fremdling fast zum Erbrechen bringt.' Holmberg, Ethn.
Skiz., p. 20.
[146] Meares, Voyages, p. xxxi., states that at Prince
William Sound, 'the men have universally a slit in their
under lip, between the projecting part of the lip and
the chin, which is cut parallel with their mouths, and
has the appearance of another mouth.' Worn only by
women. Dixon's Voy., p. 172.
[147] 'About three tenths of an inch below the upper
part of the under lip.' Vancouver's Voy., vol. ii., p. 280.
'In the centre of the under-lip.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt.
ii., p. 115. 'Fendue au ras des gencives.' La Pérouse,
Voy., tom. ii., p. 224. 'In the thick part near the
mouth.' Dixon's Voy., p. 187. 'When the first person
having this incision was seen by one of the seamen,
who called out, that the man had two mouths.' Cook's
Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 369. 'In their early infancy, a
small incision is made in the center of the under lip,
and a piece of brass or copper wire is placed in, and
left in the wound. This corrodes the lacerated parts,
and by consuming the flesh gradually increases the
orifice, until it is sufficiently large to admit the wooden
appendage.' Vancouver's Voy., vol. ii., p. 408. 'Les
femmes de Tchinkîtâné ont cru devoir ajouter à leur
beauté naturelle, par l'emploi d'un ornement labial,
aussi bizarre qu'incommode.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii.,
p. 48.
[148] 'Simply perforated, and a piece of copper wire
introduced.' Dixon's Voy., p. 187. 'Les jeunes filles
n'ont qu'une aiguille dans la lèvre inférieure.' La
Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p. 226. 'On y prépare les
petites filles aussitôt qu'elles sont nées.' Id., tom. iv.,
p. 54. 'At first a thick wire.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p.
115. When almost marriageable. Kotzebue's New Voy.,
vol. ii., p. 51. 'The children have them bored at about
two years of age, when a piece of copper-wire is put
through the hole; this they wear till the age of about
thirteen or fourteen years, when it is taken out, and
the wooden ornament introduced.' Portlock's Voy., p.
289. 'Said to denote maturity.' Whymper's Alaska, p.
100. 'Se percer la lèvre inférieure des l'enfance.'
'D'agrandir peu à peu cette ouverture au point de
pouvoir jeune fille y introduire une coquille, et femme
mariée une énorme tasse de bois.' Laplace,
Circumnav., tom. vi., p. 87. 'Never takes place during
their infancy.' Dixon's Voy., p. 187. 'When the event
takes place that implies womanhood.' Lisiansky's Voy.,
p. 243. 'Wenn zum ersten Mal beim Mädchen sich
Spuren der Mannbarkeit zeigen, wird ihre Unterlippe
durchstochen und in diese Oeffnung eine
Knochenspitze, gegenwärtig doch häufiger ein
Silberstift gelegt.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 21. 'Pues
les pareció que solo lo tenian los casados.' Perez, Nav.,
MS. p. 15.
[149] 'Concave on both sides.' Vancouver's Voy., vol.
ii., p. 280. 'So lange sie unverheirathet ist, trägt sie
diesen; erhält sie aber einen Mann, so presst man
einen grösseren Schmuck von Holz oder Knochen in
die Oeffnung, welcher nach innen, d. h. zur Zahnseite
etwas trogförmig ausgehöhlt ist.' Holmberg, Ethn.
Skiz., p. 21. 'Une espèce d'écuelle de bois sans anses
qui appuie contre les gencives.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom.
ii., p. 224. Pieces of shell resembling teeth. Meares'
Voy., p. xxxi.
[150] 'As large as a large saucer.' Portlock's Voy., p.
289. 'From one corner of the mouth to the other.'
Vancouver's Voy., vol. ii., p. 280. 'Frequently increased
to three, or even four inches in length, and nearly as
wide.' Dixon's Voy., p. 187. 'A communément un demi-
pouce d'épaisseur, deux de diamètre, et trois pouces
de long.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. iv., p. 54. 'At least
seven inches in circumference.' Meares' Voy., p. xxxviii.
'Mit den Jahren wird der Schmuck vergrössert, so dass
er bei einem alten Weibe über 2 Zoll breit angetroffen
wird.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 21. From two to five
inches long, and from one and a half to three inches
broad. Ladies of distinction increase the size. 'I have
even seen ladies of very high rank with this ornament,
full five inches long and three broad.' Mr Dwolf affirms
that he saw 'an old woman, the wife of a chief, whose
lip ornament was so large, that by a peculiar motion of
her under-lip she could almost conceal her whole face
with it.' 'Horrible in its appearance to us Europeans.'
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 115. 'Es una abertura como
de media pulgada debaxo del labio inferior, que
representa segunda boca, donde colocan una especie
de roldana elíptica de pino, cuyo diámetro mayor es de
dos pulgadas, quatro lineas, y el menor de una
pulgada.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. 126.
[151] 'Une énorme tasse de bois, destinée à recevoir
la salive qui s'en échappe constamment.' Laplace,
Circumnav., tom. vi., p. 87. 'L'effet de cet ornement est
de rabattre, par le poids de sa partie saillante la lèvre
inférieure sur le menton, de développer les charmes
d'une grande bouche béante, qui prend la forme de
celle d'un four, et de mettre à découvert une rangée
de dents jaunes et sales.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p.
49. 'She is obliged to be constantly on the watch, lest
it should fall out, which would cover her with
confusion.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 244. 'The weight of this
trencher or ornament weighs the lip down so as to
cover the whole of the chin, leaving all the lower teeth
and gum quite naked.' Portlock's Voy., p. 289. 'L'usage
le plus révoltant qui existe peut-être sur la terre.' La
Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p. 226. 'Always in proportion to
a person's wealth.' 'Distorts every feature in the lower
part of the face.' Dixon's Voy., p. 68, 172. 'In running
the lip flaps up and down so as to knock sometimes
against the chin and sometimes against the nose.
Upon the continent the kaluga is worn still larger; and
the female who can cover her whole face with her
under-lip passes for the most perfect beauty,' 'The lips
of the women held out like a trough, and always filled
with saliva stained with tobacco-juice, of which they
are immoderately fond, is the most abominably
revolting part of the spectacle.' Kotzebue's New Voy.,
vol. ii., p. 52. 'Dadurch entsteht eine im selbigen
Maasse ausgedehnte Lippe, die höchst widerlich
aussieht, um so mehr, da sich nun mehr der Mund
nicht schliessen kann, sondern unaufhörlich einen
braunen Tabaksspeichel von sich gibt.' Holmberg,
Ethn. Skiz., p. 21. 'So distorts the face as to take from
it almost the resemblance to the human; yet the
privilege of wearing this ornament is not extended to
the female slaves, who are prisoners taken in war.'
Cleveland's Voy., p. 91. 'Look as if they had large flat
wooden spoons growing in the flesh.' Langsdorff's
Voy., pt. ii., p. 115. 'The sight is hideous. Our men
used jocosely to say, this lower lip would make a good
slab to lay their trousers on to be scrubbed.' Dunn's
Oregon, p. 277. 'On ne connaît point d'explication
plausible de cette mutilation, qui, chez les Indiens,
passe pour un signe de noblesse.' Mofras, Explor., tom.
ii., p. 336.
[152] 'Die Männertracht unterscheidet sich in Nichts
von der Weiber; sie besteht nämlich aus einem bis zu
den Knieen gehenden Hemde.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz.,
p. 18. Some of their blankets 'are so curiously worked
on one side with the fur of the sea-otter, that they
appear as if lined with it.' 'Some dress themselves in
short pantaloons.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 238. 'Las
mugeres visten honestamente una especie de túnica
interior de piel sobada.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p.
cxvii. 'Se vestian las mugeres tunicas de pieles
ajustadas al cuerpo con brazaletes de cobre o hierro.'
Perez, Nav., MS. p. 15. 'Usual clothing consists of a
little apron.' Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii., p. 49. 'Their
feet are always bare.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 114.
[153] 'Usan sombreros de la corteza interior del pino
en forma de cono truncado.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage,
p. cxvii. Their wooden masks 'are so thick, that a
musket-ball, fired at a moderate distance, can hardly
penetrate them.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 150.
[154] Pluck out their beard. Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p.
112. 'Ils ont de la barbe, moins à la vérité que les
Européens, mais assez cependant pour qu'il soit
impossible d'en douter.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p.
229. 'The women in general are hair-dressers for their
husbands.' Portlock's Voy., p. 290.
[155] 'Der Eingang, ziemlich hoch von der Erde,
besteht aus einem kleinen runden Loche.' Holmberg,
Ethn. Skiz., p. 25. 'Ils se construisent des maisons de
bois ou de terre pour l'hiver.' Laplace, Circumnav., vol.
vi., p. 87. 'The barabaras of the Sitcan people are of a
square form, and spacious. The sides are of planks;
and the roof resembles that of a Russian house.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 239. 'Habitan estos Indios en
chozas ó rancherías de tablas muy desabrigadas.' Sutil
y Mexicana, Viage, p. cxvi. At Sitka the roof 'rests
upon ten or twelve thick posts driven into the ground,
and the sides of the house are composed of broad
thick planks fastened to the same posts.' Langsdorff's
Voy., pt. ii., p. 129. 'Dans l'intérieur des terres, des
habitations bien construites, spacieuses et commodes.'
Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 74. 'Shanties on a large
scale.' Whymper's Alaska, p. 100. 'Their huts are made
of a few boards, which they take away with them
when they go to their winter quarters. It is very
surprising to see how well they will shape their boards
with the shocking tools they employ; some of them
being full 10 feet long, 2½ feet broad, and not more
than an inch thick.' Portlock's Voy., p. 292. 'High, large,
and roomy, built of wood, with the hearth in the
middle, and the sides divided into as many
compartments as there are families living under the
roof.' Richardson's Jour., vol. i., p. 410. 'Lebt in
Schoppen aus Balken gebaut, wo an den Seiten für
jede Familie besondere Plätze abgetheilt sind, in der
Mitte aber Feuer für alle zusammen angemacht wird.
So pflegen gemeiniglich 2 bis 6 Familien eine einzige
Scheune einzunehmen.' Baer's Ethn. u. Stat., p. 97.
[156] 'Vingt-cinq pieds de long sur quinze à vingt pieds
de large.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p. 220. 'Roof in
the whole with the bark of trees.' Kotzebue's New Voy.,
vol. ii., p. 53. 'Las casas en que estos habitan en las
playas son de poca consideracion y ninguna
subsistencia.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 49. 'A few
poles stuck in the ground, without order or regularity.'
Dixon's Voy., p. 172. 'Gebäude besteht aus langen,
sorgfältig behauenen Brettern, die kartenhausartig
über einander gestellt, an zahlreichen in die Erde
gesteckten Stangen befestigt, recht eigentlich ein
hölzernes Zelt bilden. Es hat die Form einer länglichen
Barake mit zwei Giebeln.' Kittlitz, Reise, vol. i., pp. 220,
221.
[157] All kinds of fish; 'such as salmon, mussels, and
various other shell-fish, sea-otters, seals and
porpoises; the blubber of the porpoise, they are
remarkably fond of, and indeed the flesh of any animal
that comes in their way.' Portlock's Voy., p. 290. 'Vom
Meere, an dessen Ufern sie sich stets ansiedeln,
erhalten sie ihre hauptsächlichste Nahrung; einige
Wurzeln, Gräser u. Beeren gehören nur zu den
Leckerbissen des Sommers.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p.
22. Cakes made of bark of spruce-fir, mixed with roots,
berries, and train-oil. For salt they use sea-water.
Never eat whale-fat. Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 131.
At Sitka, summer food consists of berries, fresh fish,
and flesh of amphibious animals. Winter food, of dried
salmon, train-oil, and the spawn of fish, especially
herrings. Lisiansky's Voy., p. 239. 'Sus alimentos se
reducen á pescado cocido ó asado ya fresco ó ya seco,
varias hierbas y raizes.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav., MS. p.
50. They chew 'a plant which appears to be a species
of tobacco.' Dixon's Voy., p. 175. 'Sont couverts de
vermine; ils font une chasse assidue à ces animaux
dévorans, mais pour les dévorer eux-mêmes.'
Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 52. 'Tägliche Nahrung der
Einwohner—sind hauptsächtlich Fische, doch häufig
auch Mollusken und Echinodermen.' Kittlitz, Reise, vol.
i., p. 222.
[158] 'Le poisson frais ou fumé, les œufs séchés de
poisson.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 62. 'Is sometimes
cooked upon red-hot stones, but more commonly
eaten raw.' Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii., p. 53. 'Not so
expert in hunting as the Aleutians. Their principal
mode is that of shooting the sea animals as they lie
asleep.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 242. They boil their victuals
in wooden vessels, by constantly putting red-hot
stones into the water. Portlock's Voy., p. 291. 'Das
Kochen geschieht jetzt in eisernen Kesseln, vor der
Bekanntschaft mit den Russen aber wurden dazu aus
Wurzeln geflochtene Körbe angewandt.' Holmberg,
Ethn. Skiz., p. 23.
[159] To their fishing lines, bladders are fastened,
'which float upon the surface of the water, so that one
person can attend to fourteen or fifteen lines.'
Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 134. 'Ils pêchent, comme
nous, en barrant les rivières, ou à la ligne.' La Pérouse,
Voy., tom. ii., p. 232. 'For taking the spawn, they use
the branches of the pine-tree, to which it easily
adheres, and on which it is afterwards dried. It is then
put into baskets, or holes purposely dug in the ground,
till wanted.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 239. 'Su comun
alimento es el salmon, y es ingenioso el método que
tienen de pescarle.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p. cxvii.
'Their lines are very strong, being made of the sinews
or intestines of animals.' Dixon's Voy., p. 174. 'Die
Riesenbutte, die in Sitcha bisweilen ein Gewicht von 10
bis 12 Pud erreicht, wird aus der Tiefe mit grossen
hölzernen Angeln, die mit Widerhaken aus Eisen oder
Knochen versehen sind, herausgezogen. Die
Angelschnur besteht aus an einander geknüpften
Fucusstängeln.' Holmberg, Ethn. Skiz., p. 32.
[160] 'Bows and arrows were formerly their only
weapons; now, besides their muskets, they have
daggers, and knives half a yard long.' Kotzebue's New
Voy., vol. ii., p. 55. Their weapons were bows, arrows,
and spears. Dixon's Voy., p. 67. 'Leur lances dont
l'ancienne forme n'est pas connue, est à présent
composée de deux pièces: de la hampe, longue de
quinze ou dix-huit pieds, et du fer qui ne le cède en
rien à celui de la hallebarde de parade dont étoit armé
un Suisse de paroisse.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 68.
Knives, some two feet long, shaped almost like a
dagger, with a ridge in the middle. Worn in skin
sheaths hung by a thong to the neck under their robe,
probably used only as weapons. Cook's Third Voy., vol.
ii., p. 373. 'Las armas ofensivas que generalmente
usan son las flechas, lanzas de seis y ocho varas de
largo con lenguetas de fierro.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav.,
MS. p. 46. 'The daggers used in battle are made to
stab with either end, having three, four or five inches
above the hand tapered to a sharp point; but the
upper part of those used in the Sound and River is
excurvated.' Portlock's Voy., p. 261. 'Principally bows
and arrows.' Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p. 131. 'Sus
armas se reducen al arco, la flecha y el puñal que
traen siempre consigo.' Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, p.
cxvii. 'Comme nous examinions très attentivement tous
ces poignards, ils nous firent signe qu'ils n'en faisaient
usage que contre les ours et les autres bêtes des
forêts.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p. 172. 'Der Dolch ist
sehr breit und hat zwei geschliffene Blätter auf jeder
Seite des Griffes, das obere jedoch nur ein Viertel von
der Länge des unteren.' 'Beide Blätter oder Klingen
sind mit ledernen Scheiden versehen.' Holmberg, Ethn.
Skiz., p. 28.
[161] 'A kind of jacket, or coat of mail, made of thin
laths, bound together with sinews, which makes it
quite flexible, though so close as not to admit an
arrow or dart.' Cook's Third Voy., vol. ii., p. 372. 'Für
den Krieg besitzen die Kaloschen auch von Holz
gearbeitete Schutzwaffen: Brustharnische,
Sturmhauben und seltsam geschnitzte Visire, mit
grellen Farben bemalte Fratzengesichter darstellen.'
Kittlitz, Reise, vol. i., p. 216.
[162] 'They never attack their enemies openly.'
Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii., p. 55. 'Les guerriers tués
ou faits prisonniers à la guerre, passent également
sous la dent de leurs vainqueurs qui, en dévorant une
proie aussi distinguée, croient y puiser de nouvelles
forces, une nouvelle énergie.' Laplace, Circumnav.,
tom. vi., p. 155.
[163] 'Bien hechas de una pieza con su falca sobre las
bordas.' Perez, Nav., MS., p. 17. 'On n'est pas moins
étonné de leur stabilité: malgré la légèreté et le peu
de largeur de la coque, elles n'ont pas besoin d'être
soutenues par des balanciers, et jamais on ne les
accouple.' Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 72. 'Las
regulares canoas de que se sirven son de pino, y no
tienen mas capacidad que la que basta para contener
una familia, sin embargo que las hay sumamente
grandes.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav., MS. p. 48. 'Rudely
excavated and reduced to no particular shape, but
each end has the resemblance of a butcher's tray.'
Dixon's Voy., p. 173. 'Their canoes are much inferior to
those of the lower coast, while their skin "baidarkes"
(kyacks) are not equal to those of Norton Sound and
the northern coast.' Whymper's Alaska, p. 101. At
Cook's Inlet, 'their canoes are sheathed with the bark
of trees.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 188. These canoes 'were
made from a solid tree, and many of them appeared to
be from 50 to 70 feet in length, but very narrow, being
no broader than the tree itself.' Meares' Voy., p. xxxviii.
'Their boat was the body of a large pine tree, neatly
excavated, and tapered away towards the ends, until
they came to a point, and the fore-part somewhat
higher than the after-part; indeed, the whole was
finished in a neat and very exact manner.' Portlock's
Voy., p. 259.
[164] 'Ont fait beaucoup plus de progrès dans les arts
que dans la morale.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. ii., p. 233.
Thlinkeet women make baskets of bark of trees, and
grass, that will hold water. Langsdorff's Voy., pt. ii., p.
132. They have tolerable ideas of carving, most
utensils having sculptures, representing some animal.
Portlock's Voy., p. 294. 'Ces peintures, ces sculptures,
telles qu'elles sont, on en voit sur tous leurs meubles.'
Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 71. 'De la vivacidad de su
genio y del afecto al cambio se debe inferir son
bastantemente laboriosos.' Bodega y Quadra, Nav.,
MS. p. 48. 'Tienen lana blanca cuya especie ignoraron.'
Perez, Nav., MS. p. 16. 'Masks very ingeniously cut in
wood, and painted with different colors.' A rattle, 'very
well finished, both as to sculpture and painting.' 'One
might suppose these productions the work of a people
greatly advanced in civilization.' Lisiansky's Voy., pp.
150, 241. 'Found some square patches of ground in a
state of cultivation, producing a plant that appeared to
be a species of tobacco.' Vancouver's Voy., vol. iii., p.
256.
[165] 'The skins of the sea-otters form their principal
wealth, and are a substitute for money.' Kotzebue's
New Voy., vol. ii., p. 54. 'In one place they discovered
a considerable hoard of woolen cloth, and as much
dried fish as would have loaded 150 bidarkas.'
Lisiansky's Voy., p. 160.
[166] 'Le Gouvernement des Tchinkitânéens paroîtroit
donc se rapprocher du Gouvernement patriarchal.'
Marchand, Voy., tom. ii., p. 83. 'De su gobierno
pensamos cuando mas, oiendo el modo de someterse
á algunos viejos, seria oligárhico.' Bodega y Quadra,
Nav., MS. p. 50. 'Though the toyons have power over
their subjects, it is a very limited power, unless when
an individual of extraordinary abilities starts up, who is
sure to rule despotically.' Lisiansky's Voy., p. 243.
'Chaque famille semble vivre d'une manière isolée et
avoir un régime particulier.' La Pérouse, Voy., tom. iv.,
p. 61. 'Ces Conseils composés des vieillards.' Laplace,
Circumnav., tom. vi., p. 155.
[167] Tribes are distinguished by the color and
character of their paint. Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii.,
p. 51. They 'are divided into tribes; the principal of
which assume to themselves titles of distinction, from
the names of the animals they prefer; as the tribe of
the bear, of the eagle, etc. The tribe of the wolf are
called Coquontans, and have many privileges over the
other tribes.' Lisiansky's Voy., pp. 238, 242.
[168] 'The women possess a predominant influence,
and acknowledged superiority over the other sex.'
Meares' Voy., p. 323. 'Parmi eux les femmes jouissent
d'une certaine considération.' Laplace, Circumnav.,
tom. vi., p. 87. They treat their wives and children with
much affection and tenderness, and the women keep
the treasures. Portlock's Voy., p. 290. The Kalush 'finds
his filthy countrywomen, with their lip-troughs, so
charming, that they often awaken in him the most
vehement passion.' Kotzebue's New Voy., vol. ii., p. 56.
'It is certain that industry, reserve, modesty, and
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