Abstract
Picture a drawing: a large greenhouse, light and airy, housing an innumerable number of tulips, all of them red. In the foreground there is a woman crouching down, breathing in the perfume of the flowers as she tends to them meticulously and lovingly. She is completely absorbed in her gardening. In the background at the entrance to the greenhouse, a man is standing holding a large bouquet of tulips all of which are blue, and that he is about to give her. Blue against red. Red against blue. The danger that they might not understand each other is patently obvious. His is a risky endeavor. And yet, red and blue are about to meet and may even embrace. Perhaps disagreement will not prevent agreement. One is red, the other is blue, but they are red and blue together.
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Notes
Sempé, Sentiments distingués (Paris: Denoël, 2007).
Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Lntimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 185.
Francois de Singly, Libres ensembles (Paris: Nathan, 2000).
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 28).
Annick Le Floc’hmoan, Ces extravagantes sœurs Mitford (Paris: Fayard, 2002).
Jessica Mitford, Daughters and Rebels (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), p. 72.
Interview carried out by Christophe Barbier, L’Express, February 14, 2008.
Mary Matalin and James Carville, All’s Fair: Love, War and Running for President (New York: Random House, 1994 and Touchstone, 1995).
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Muxel, A. (2014). Democratic Intimacy. In: Politics in Private. Europe in Transition: The Nyu European Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395597_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137395597_12
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