988 Reviews density of the footnotes, the absence of an index is also regrettable. Despite these minor reservations, I found National Stereotypes in Perspective to be an accessible, engaging, and stimulating collection, which highlights the manifold misconceptions, inconsistencies, and paradoxes inherent in the 'imaging' process and which demonstrates the ways in which the observer, whether France or America, explores her own identity through commentary on the other/Other. The volume will be of interest to academics and students in several disciplines, notably French and American Studies, History, Art History, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies. University of Edinburgh Jean Duffy Luce Irigaray and the Question of theDivine. By Alison Martin. (Texts and Dissertations , 53) London: Maney for the Modern Humanities Research Association. 2000. 233 pp. ?30; ?72. Luce Irigaray is a notoriously difficultand sometimes misunderstood thinker. Like Margaret Whitford (see e.g. her Luce Irigaray: Philosophy in the Feminine (London: Routledge, 1991)), Alison Martin takes Irigaray seriously as a philosopher of change, and her substantial study does justice to the complexity of Irigaray's thought. Martin focuses on what she sees as the centrality ofthe divine in Irigaray's work, rather than just a single aspect of it?this is a concept of the divine which transcends individual religions and specific theological issues. The question of a female divine?or rather ofthe importance ofthe divine forwomen's subjectivity?is crucial to Irigaray's phi? losophy of sexual difference. And it is as philosophical enquiry that Martin's detailed and densely argued approach is most valuable. Her careful reading places Irigaray's thinking in the philosophical context within and against which she is working. This volume is for the specialist reader rather than functioning as an introduction to Iri? garay's work, and sometimes the detail makes for heavy going, but Martin none the less offers important new insights into Irigaray's complex concepts and illuminates both her influences and her thinking processes. In addition to the author's Introduction and Conclusion, the book is divided into four lengthy chapters. 'Irigaray and Context' teases Irigaray out of her insertion in the mistakenly homogenized category 'French feminism' and addresses her early reception in Anglo-American academia as an essentialist thinker. Arguing throughout that Irigaray's stance is both philosophical and political, Martin emphasizes the 'becoming ' that is fundamental to Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference: Irigaray's attempt 'to define woman [. . .] is more a question [. . .] of attempting to cultivate-her' (p. 26). 'The Religion of Patriarchy' (Chapter 2) is concerned with sexual difference as the primary term of analysis (in the way that, for instance, social class is for Marxism ), Irigaray's critique of patriarchy being a critique of a system founded on a single (male) universal. 'The Need for a Female Divine' explores Irigaray's argument for two?sexed?universals, to replace the existing 'sexually different' one: according to Martin, 'the trulyradical gesture of her philosophy of sexual difference' in its attempt to transform Western thinking is that 'she starts counting at two' (p. 123). The final chapter, 'The Adoption of Christianity contra Nietzsche', draws out the full subtlety of Irigaray's discussions of the figures of Christ and Mary as well as pointing to her interest in Eastern thought. Martin's study of Irigaray's concept of the divine is timely. There is currently a burgeoning interest in the place of Eastern religions and thinking in Irigaray'a work. Her Entre Orient et Occident: De la singularited la communaute (Paris: Grasset, 1999; published in Italian in 1997) was published too late to be included in Martin's analysis, although mention of it is made in a footnote (p. 215). None the less, Alison Martin's MLR, 97.4, 2002 989 philosophical approach to Irigaray's divine will undoubtedly be an invaluable refer? ence point here. It will also, more generally, interest those who appreciate Irigaray's wide-ranging and challenging vision of a radically differentcivilization based on the two of sexual difference rather than on the patriarchal system of the one and the other(s). Institute of Romance Studies, University of London Gill Rye Postcolonial Paradoxes in French Caribbean Writing: Cesaire, Glissant, Conde. By Jeannie Suk. Oxford and New York: Clarendon...