You have commented that the "gender theorists" of the Anglo-American tradition and the "sexual difference theorists" of the French and European traditions are involved in a potentially false polemic. In what way?

There are really interesting, crucial differences which have to do with the way in which sexuality is positioned in the different cultures, the construction of sexuality, in the way in which identity is then conceptualized in relation to sexuality. Of course, language has a lot to do with it. The same with the famous sex and gender distinction. You may say that it is like the ideals of the French revolution. It has conquered the world, but its universal applicability is questionable: it is a distinction that makes very little sense in non-English, non-Anglo-Saxon languages and translates very badly in a great deal of romance languages. So people in other feminist, political cultures have a lot of difficulties making do with that.

The way in which sexual difference in French theory was then marketed back into English, especially in the U.S., led to a tremendous amount of incompetency: Is this nature? Is this culture? Does Irigaray by sexual difference mean something innate and given? Is it essentialistic? Is it not? I mean the whole essentialism thing was really due to harried, hasty mistranslation, and we should have instead looked very carefully at the real conceptual differences that there are at stake in people working out of the French tradition and the people working out of the more Anglo-Saxon tradition. It has been hastily put.

There are some interesting questions there. For instance, how do you conceptualize sexed identity in a French context or in an Italian context as opposed to an Anglo-American context let alone in a post-colonial or "black" perspective? But it has not been dealt with. Now, after fifteen years of useless debate on essentialism we are finally coming to some interesting discussion on where to position the self vis a vis the political. Where is the edge of the political? How does fantasy life intersect with the political? But these are questions for the nineties, and for years we wasted time in false polemic. I am sick of that polemic and I would like some real confrontations with the real differences, and there are many.

You are currently teaching for the Women's Program in the Humanities at the University of Utrecht. Is this a popular program? Well funded? Accepted by the University at large? Generally successful?

I chair the program. The Netherlands University system has very ample support from above, from the government. To develop women's studies was a state policy that was started back in the 70s and they created a total of thirteen chairs-Professorships-in the country. Utrecht got two, one in the humanities, one in the social sciences. Amsterdam got three or four and other cities got one each. So they really had a policy of implementing women and gender studies from above. This was the effect of the Dutch sixties, if you wish. It had a really enormous impact upon people's way of thinking. I should also add that they implemented chairs in gay and lesbian studies, in ethnic studies, and in environmental studies at exactly the same time. They really redesigned the face of the curriculum in the university.