The Feminine and the Sacred Book

In November 1996, Catherine Clement and Julia Kristeva began a correspondence exploring the subject of the sacred. In this collection of those letters Catherine Clement, writing from Dakar, Senegal, approaches the topic from an anthropologist's point of view and Julia Kristeva responds from a psychoanalytic perspective. Their correspondence leads them to a controversial and fundamental question: Is there anything sacred that can at the same time be considered strictly feminine? The two voices of the book work in tandem, fleshing out ideas, blending together into a melody of experience. Two women, writing to each other about two themes, have produced a dialogue that delves into the mysteries of a woman's experience of belief, the relationship between faith and sexuality, the body and the senses - an experience, they argue, women feel with special intensity. Although their discourse is not necessarily about theology, Clement and Kristeva consider the role of women and femininity in the religions of the world, from Christianity and Judaism to Confucianism and African animism. The authors are the first to admit that what they have undertaken is "as impossible to accomplish as it is fascinating." Nevertheless, their lively, free-minded exchange succeeds in raising questions that are perhaps more important to ask than to answer.