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French Feminism Reader is a collection of essays representing the authors and issues from French theory most influential in the American context. The book is designed for use in courses, and it includes illuminating introductions to the work of each author. These introductions include biographical information, influences and intellectual context, major themes in the author's work as a whole, and specific introductions to the selections in this volume. The contributors represent the two trends in French theory that have proven most useful to American feminists: social theory and psychoanalytic theory. Both of these trends move away from any traditional discussions of nature toward discussions of socially constructed notions of sex, sexuality and gender roles. While feminists interested in social theory focus on the ways in which social institutions shape these notions, feminists interested in psychoanalytic theory focus on cultural representations of sex, sexuality and gender roles, and the ways that they affect the psyche. This collection includes selections by Simone de Beauvoir, Christine Delphy, Colette Guilluamin, Monique Wittig, Michele Le Doeuff, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helene Cixous.
Histories of France have erased the feminist presence from nineteenth-century political life and the feminist impact from the changes that affected the lives of the French. Now, French Feminism in the Nineteenth Century completes the history books by restoring this missing--and vital--chapter of French history. The book recounts the turbulent story of nineteenth-century French feminism, placing it in the context of the general political events that influenced its development. It also examines feminist thought and activities, using the very words of the women themselves--in books, newspapers, pamphlets, memoirs, diaries, speeches, and letters. Featured is a wealth of previously unpublished personal letters written by Saint-Simonian women. These engrossing documents reveal the nuances of changing consciousness and show how it led to an autonomous women's movement. Also explored are the relationships between feminist ideology and women's actual status--legal, social, and economic--during the century. Both bourgeois and working-class women are surveyed. Beginning with a general survey of feminism in France, the book provides historical context and clarifies the later vicissitudes of the "condition feminine."
Feminism has dramatically influenced the way literary texts are read, taught and evaluated. Feminist literary theory has deliberately transgressed traditional boundaries between literature, philosophy and the social sciences in order to understand how gender has been constructed and represented through language. This lively and thought-provoking Companion presents a range of approaches to the field. Some of the essays demonstrate feminist critical principles at work in analysing texts, while others take a step back to trace the development of a particular feminist literary method. The essays draw on a range of primary material from the medieval period to postmodernism and from several countries, disciplines and genres. Each essay suggests further reading to explore this field further. This is the most accessible guide available both for students of literature new to this developing field, and for students of gender studies and readers interested in the interactions of feminism, literary criticism and literature.
Feminism's Empire investigates the complex relationships between imperialisms and feminisms in the late nineteenth century and demonstrates the challenge of conceptualizing "pro-imperialist" and "anti-imperialist" as binary positions. By intellectually and spatially tracing the era's first French feminists' engagement with empire, Carolyn J. Eichner explores how feminists opposed—yet employed—approaches to empire in writing, speaking, and publishing. In differing ways, they ultimately tied forms of imperialism to gender liberation. Among the era's first anti-imperialists, French feminists were enmeshed in the hierarchies and epistemologies of empire. They likened their gender-based marginalization to imperialist oppressions. Imperialism and colonialism's gendered and sexualized racial hierarchies established categories of inclusion and exclusion that rested in both universalism and ideas of "nature" that presented colonized people with theoretical, yet impossible, paths to integration. Feminists faced similar barriers to full incorporation due to the gendered contradictions inherent in universalism. The system presumed citizenship to be male and thus positioned women as outsiders. Feminism's Empire connects this critical struggle to hierarchical power shifts in racial and national status that created uneasy linkages between French feminists and imperial authorities.
This anthology introduces the English-speaking reader to some of the major elements of recent French feminist thought. While including contributions from well-known theorists such as Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, the book aims particularly to demonstrate the variety of views held by French women on the central issues of feminist politics, creativity, writing and sexual difference by providing a cross-section of texts from the women's movement, recent feminist research and intellectual debate in France. The book includes selections from the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Annie de Pisan, Anne Tristan, Christine Delphy, Arlette Farge, Elisabeth Badinter, Michele Le Doeuff, Sarah Kofman and Michele Montrelay. French Feminist Thought also presents the English-speaking reader with the new feminist approaches to male-dominated disciplines such as history, philosophy and psychoanalysis.
"... Fraser and Bartky have brought the encounter between U.S. and French feminism to a new level of seriousness." --Ethics In the last decade, elements of French feminist discourse have permeated and transformed the larger feminist culture in the United States. This volume is the first sustained attempt to revalue French feminism and answer the question: What has been gained and what has been lost as a result of this intercultural encounter? Interviews with Simone de Beauvoir open the book; essays by French feminists Sarah Kofman and Luce Irigaray follow; the North American contributors are Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, Diana J. Fuss, Nancy J. Holland, Eleanor H. Kuykendall, Dorothy Leland, Diana T. Meyers, Andrea Nye, and Margaret A. Simons.
In the 1960s thousands of poor women of color on the (post)colonial French island of Reunion had their pregnancies forcefully terminated by white doctors; the doctors operated under the pretext of performing benign surgeries, for which they sought government compensation. When the scandal broke in 1970, the doctors claimed to have been encouraged to perform these abortions by French politicians who sought to curtail reproduction on the island, even though abortion was illegal in France. In The Wombs of Women—first published in French and appearing here in English for the first time—Françoise Vergès traces the long history of colonial state intervention in black women’s wombs during the slave trade and postslavery imperialism as well as in current birth control politics. She examines the women’s liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s, showing that by choosing to ignore the history of the racialization of women’s wombs, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color. Ultimately, Vergès demonstrates how the forced abortions on Reunion were manifestations of the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.
French Feminist Theory offers an introduction to the key concepts and themes in French feminist thought, both the materialist and the linguistic/psychoanalytic traditions. These are explored through the work of a wide range of theorists: Simone de Beauvoir, Chantal Chawaf, Helene Cixous, Catherine Clement, Christine Delphy, Marguerite Duras, Colette Guillaumin, Madeleine Gagnon, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Michele Montreley, Monique Plaza, Paola Tabet and Monique Wittig. The book outlines the philosophical and political diversity of French feminism, setting developments in the field in the particular cultural and social contexts in which they have emerged and unfolded.
In this text, Gill Allwood explores theories of masculinity emerging from French feminist theories of gender and from French feminist practice concerning violence towards women, highlighting both the commonalities and the specificities of the French case. She discusses the particular concern of French theorists with seduction, their rejection of the term "gender" and the centrality of the difference debate.; In the first part of the book, Allwood separately examines feminist theories of gender and sexual difference and the problem of male violence. She goes on to consider the developments which are taking place on the borderline between the two, examining the way in which these developments have contributed to an understanding of masculinity. Readdressing problems and debates that will be familiar to English-speaking readers, the text exposes cultural differences and similarities in the ways in which these problems are approached and it provides a detailed account of the changes in both feminist action and theory in France in recent years.; This analysis of feminism in France should be of interest to student and scholars in French studies, European studies, gender studies and cultural studies.