ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty and the passing of time. It points out that the notion of "feminine enigma" is a displacement of the enigmas inherent in the origins, in the finite time of life (the inevitability of death) and in sexual difference. The basic misunderstanding stemming from this enigmatic condition is the equation of the feminine to otherness. The book analyses the concepts of gender diversity and primary femininity and their relation to sexual difference. It emphasizes aspects linked to beauty and forms, relating them to certain crises of life and to the concept of abjection in Kristeva. The book discusses the paths of love in relation to the categories of repetition and difference. It also analyses the categories of universal and singular in relation to female subjectivity.
