World View: Feminine genius, according to the philosopher Julia Kristeva, consists of three inter-related characteristics: a self which cannot be separated from its various attachments to others; a unity of living and thinking; and an emphasis on the temporality of birth and rebirth.
In Dublin this week she described how she has traced these out in her study of three female geniuses: the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, and the novelist and writer Colette. Her three-volume work on them has now been translated into English.
In her lecture she explained why she has been inspired to write it by her Bulgarian, French and American experience as an intellectual, writer and teacher. Theological and philosophical traditions influencing her range from Byzantine Orthodox writers such as: Anne Comnena, "the first female intellectual" whose 15-volume history of the Western crusades was completed in 1148, and about whom she has just written a novel; Duns Scotus, the medieval theologian who emphasised the fundamental uniqueness of each individual; and Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex published in 1949.
It was a dazzling performance, enthusiastically received by an audience of some 450 people in Trinity. It was good to hear her praise the French habit of taking such ideas seriously; as she told Lara Marlowe in an interview with this newspaper, that remains a vibrant tradition there. In contrast, she finds intellectuals and the academy closed off from the public sphere in the US, to the impoverishment of all concerned. (And Ireland?).
The lecture was entitled "Kristeva on Europe: Female Genius, Freedom and Culture". She opened reminding us enlargement of the EU is "allowing the old continent to gradually reunite at last with the geographical limits which coincide with its cultural and historical memory", making it all the more important to discover ways in which its diversities of living and thinking can be recognised in its new political structures.
Kristeva offers her account of the discovery and the respect of feminine genius as a contribution to this. She insists that the lessons are not of relevance only to women. "By paying attention to sexual difference, my investigation of female genius has led me, in short, to go beyond the dichotomy of the sexes, to distance myself from the initial presupposition of a binary sexual system".
She instanced Colette's frequent references to "mental hermaphroditism" or psychical bisexuality. And she defined genius in terms of unique creativity, which nevertheless can be shared in a public way - "you are a genius to the extent that you are able to challenge the socio-historical conditions of your identity". This insight about the woman in all of us is central to Joyce, too, who devoted so much attention in Ulysses to the manly woman and the womanly man.
There were tantalising references to political values and structures, including to the multiplicity and individuality of each of us in this new Europe; how it should distinguish nations from a nationalism which rejects the Other (one of Kristeva's abiding themes); and to European civilisation which must temper utilitarian values with felicity - a combination of happiness and freedom that is a distinctively feminine contribution to human liberation.
If liberty, equality and fraternity describe the male republican virtues, it could be that Kristeva would add felicity to them in recognition of the female genius for combining thought and life.
Applying her three insights about feminine genius to the emerging pattern of European civilisation and its new political structures is a difficult but rewarding task. It allows for a critical purchase on issues that receive quite insufficient attention in official discourse - not to mention the minimalist level of political debate in the European Parliament elections during the final stages of negotiating a constitutional treaty.
Thus a self which cannot be separated from its various attachments to others suggests a notion of national self-determination best affirmed by sharing sovereignty and political identities with the other Europeans with which each of our nation-states has been entwined from the time they originally emerged.
A greater unity of living and thinking, far from being a utopian aspiration, would be a signal contribution to human freedom from totalitarian politics, economics and culture. Kristeva reminded us that Arendt mocked Eichmann for preferring to obey than to think.
Women experience these dichotomies much more than men and have a greater interest in breaking them down.
A different approach to temporality, through birth, rebirth and narrative, is life-enhancing and affirming. Kristeva denounced the "decadence" of civilisational conflict and was applauded for her attack on "terrorist ways to combat terrorism". Soft power is preferable to hard power. Europe, on this account, has indeed more to do with Venus than with Mars.
All of which makes one think about the candidates standing in Ireland's European campaign. Interestingly, the women MEPs of whatever hue in the outgoing parliament have a higher profile than those in the Oireachtas. Mary Banotti, Nuala Ahern, Avril Doyle, Dana Rosemary Scallon and Patricia McKenna have all made their mark in the parliament and its committees, which suit the networking skills they bring to them. Maybe that's why Fiona O'Malley is supporting Ivana Bacik - and is Eoin Ryan a more womanly man than Royston Brady?