French Feminism

Sarah Kofman's Art of Affirmation, or the Non-illusory Life of an Illusion”

by Pleshette DeArmitt

On the Border between Abjection and the Third: The (Re) Birth of Narcissus in the Works of Julia Kristeva

by Pleshette DeArmitt

“‘The Return of Crazy Mother’: The Cultural Politics of Carnival in 1930s Dijon,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, 16.4 (2010): 471-496.

by Philip Whalen

The political elite in inter-war France sought innovative ways to reconcile modernization agendas with existing... more The political elite in inter-war France sought innovative ways to reconcile modernization agendas with existing regional cultural traditions. Regional folkloric traditions and ludic festivals provided refuge from maligned national narratives. Burgundians, notably, drew upon carnival practices and motifs to solicit broad participation in a state-sanctioned project of regional modernization. Although organized by ostensibly opposed political, social, commercial, and cultural interests, Dijon’s Mère-Folle carnival and subsequent carnaval parades accomplished the same goals. These included creating a new spirit of civic pride and unity along, providing a time and space for overlapping and converging transformations to coexist and stabilize traditional cultural practices while limiting possibilities for women’s émancipation.

The Sexuate and the Relational: Luce Irigaray and Stephen A. Mitchell on Language

by Annie Ross

This paper will appear in the next issue of the Journal of Religion and Culture: http://artsciweb.concordia.ca/ojs/index.php/jrc/index

Dragana Stojanovic - Relacija zenskosti i zazornosti u polju vansimbolickog

by Dragana Stojanovic

ProFemina br. 53, Fond B92, Beograd, 2011, 225-248.

French Parti Socialiste’s Narratives on Sexual Violence: The Untouched Sexuality of the White, Middle-Class Socialist Male

by Laure Bereni

CONFERENCE TALK. Given at "The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Scandal. Transatlantic Reflections on Sex, Law and Politics", Cardozo Law School/New York University Maison française, December 1-2, 2011.

Subversion dans l'institution? La parité a dix ans (2000-2010)

by Laure Bereni

JOURNAL ARTICLE
Published in Contretemps (2010)

Pour les militantes féministes, l’année 2010 est avant tout marquée, en France, par la célébration du quarantenaire de... more Pour les militantes féministes, l’année 2010 est avant tout marquée, en France, par la célébration du quarantenaire de la naissance du Mouvement de libération des femmes (MLF), qui a profondément renouvelé les formes du féminisme français, en particulier dans ses fractions radicales.

Mais 2010 est aussi le dixième anniversaire de la loi dite « sur la parité », une réforme importante dans l’histoire des politiques d’égalité, qui a été l’aboutissement de luttes du mouvement des femmes dans les années 1990. Cette loi oblige ou incite les partis politiques à présenter autant d’hommes que de femmes à la plupart des élections (cf. encadré). En adoptant un tel dispositif, la France ne constitue pas une exception : aujourd’hui, une centaine de pays sont concernés par l’application de quotas sexués pour remédier à la sous-représentation persistante des femmes en politique.

Quel bilan dresser de cette réforme, au terme d’une décennie? Je propose ici d’aborder cette question de deux manières. La première, la plus directe et la plus évidente, consiste à évaluer son impact quantitatif : cette loi imposant des quotas par sexe dans la constitution des candidatures aux élections s’est-elle traduite par un accroissement du nombre de femmes dans les assemblées politiques? Dans un deuxième temps, je voudrais revenir sur le sens même de cette réforme : pourquoi la mise en œuvre de quotas sexués dans la représentation peut-elle être considérée comme un levier d’égalité, dans une perspective féministe ?

(...)

La Parité, Nouveau Paradoxe Des Luttes Féministes?

by Laure Bereni

Note critique parue dans L’Homme et la société, n°158, octobre-décembre 2005 (numéro spécial « Féminismes. Théories, mouvements, conflits », coordonné par Marc Bessin et Elsa Dorlin), p. 219-226

La Parité, Nouveau Paradoxe Des Luttes Féministes?

by Laure Bereni

Note critique parue dans L’Homme et la société, n°158, octobre-décembre 2005 (numéro spécial « Féminismes. Théories, mouvements, conflits », coordonné par Marc Bessin et Elsa Dorlin), p. 219-226

Lutter dans ou en dehors du parti ? L’évolution des stratégies des féministes du Parti socialiste (1971-1997)

by Laure Bereni

JOURNAL ARTICLE
In French
Published in Politix, n°73, 2006

Cet article examine les dilemmes stratégiques auxquels ont été confrontées les militantes de la cause des femmes au... more Cet article examine les dilemmes stratégiques auxquels ont été confrontées les militantes de la cause des femmes au Parti socialiste entre 1971 et 1997, en fonction de l’évolution des conditions de réception de leurs revendications par l’organisation. À cet égard, deux périodes peuvent être distinguées : jusqu’au milieu des années 1980, l’attitude relativement « ouverte » du PS à l’égard des revendications féministes – dans un contexte où celles-ci constituaient un enjeu majeur dans la stratégie d’ascension électorale du parti – a globalement incité les militantes socialistes de la cause des femmes à lutter à l’intérieur du cadre organisationnel et cognitif du parti. À partir du milieu des années 1980, les résistances croissantes manifestées par l’organisation les ont de plus en plus poussées à extérioriser leurs stratégies de protestation, à penser et à agir en dehors de leur parti, comme l’illustrent les trajectoires de certaines d’entre elles, engagées pour la « parité » dans le mouvement associatif féminin « apolitique » au cours des années 1990.

Accounting for French Feminism's Blindness to Difference: The Inescapable Legacy of Universalism

by Laure Bereni

CONFERENCE PAPER
Presented at the NYU Symposium "Feminism/s Without Borders: Perspectives from France and the United States", October 19th 2009.

One of the ways to account for the inability of the French feminist movement to think differences among women (as... more One of the ways to account for the inability of the French feminist movement to think differences among women (as illustrated by the recent controversies around the wearing of the Islamic veils) is to examine its firm allegiance to the dominant universalism that strongly pervades the French contemporary left, all the way from its more moderate, republican, tendencies, to its more radical, Marxist, tendencies.

The two major strands of French feminism, that I will identify here as radical and liberal, share a complex, ambivalent relationship with political universalism. On the one hand, the history of both radical and liberal feminism for the past 30 years, in line with a long history of feminist protest, has consisted in unmasking the false universalism that hides the male political subject. However, on the other hand, these two tendencies have in the same move reaffirmed their loyalty to the universalist framework, by universalizing the category of women.

I argue that this dominant feminist commitment to universalism should be understood as the sign that universalism still plays out as a dominant constraint on any attempt to redefine equality in the French universe of political discourse (Jenson 1998; Scott 2004). In other words, this commitment to a universal vision of gender has been a discursively constrained response to the gender blindness of the French political left, whether Marxist or Republican.

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Becoming-woman: Difference Feminism and the Race for the Other

by Penelope Ingram

This is my doctoral dissertation from the University of New South Wales. It can be ordered through DAI.

Paradoks/zagonetka ženskosti kroz film Zamke popodneva (Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren i Alexander Hamid, 1943)

by Dragana Stojanovic

Published in


Nova misao - časopis za savremenu kulturu Vojvodine br. 11, april 2011, IU Misao, Novi Sad, 2011, 44-47.

Pojam zazornog u funkciji konstituisuceg faktora za subjekt

by Dragana Stojanovic

Published in: Stvar - časopis za teorijske prakse br.2, Klub studenata/studentkinja filozofije Gerusija Novi Sad, Kvark, Kraljevo, 2011, 16-33.

Relacija zenskosti i zazornosti u polju vansimbolickog - od nemoguceg/nemocnog do transgresivnog

by Dragana Stojanovic

The Remarkable Role of Women in 16th Century French Basque Law Codes

by Roslyn Frank

This file consists of three lightly revised versions of papers published originally in 1977, along with responses to them by Rachel Bard, Tacoma Community College, Jon Bilbao, University of Nevada, Reno, and Eugene Goyheneche, Université de Pau (France), respectively. The text includes an Appendix with a transcription of the “Doléances du sexes de st. Jean de luz et cibour au roi”, dating from 1789 and which originally appeared in print in 1922.

Paper # 1. The role of the Basque woman and Etxeko-andrea: “The mistress of the house”. Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. IV, 14-21. Santa Barbara, California, 1977.

Paper # 2. Inheritance, marriage and dowry rights in the Navarrese and French Basque law codes, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. IV, 22-31. Santa Barbara, California;

Paper #3. Women's rights and the 'Doléances du Sexe de St. Jean de Luz et Cibour au Roi', Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. IV, 32-39. Santa Barbara, California.

Ruskin and the Female Body: The Feminine as the Theoretical Precondition for Architecture

by Anuradha Chatterjee

Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand
Volume 19 Issue 1 (June 2009)
Ruskin and the Female Body: 'The Feminine as the Theoretical Precondition for Architecture'
Chatterjee, Anuradha

Abstract: Gender in architectural theory has been underpinned by the binary of masculine and feminine architectural... more Abstract: Gender in architectural theory has been underpinned by the binary of masculine and feminine architectural elements, types, and styles, either disassociated or combined. While discussion of these matters occurred largely within architectural discourse, Ruskin's aim was to use gender to discern architecture from that which it was not. He achieved this by changing the relation between the gender binary and architectural theory, and by privileging the female body. By doing this, Ruskin separated architecture (object, form, and materiality) from its attributes (of quality of production or conception, execution, and finish); distinguished architecture from building; and deemed sculptural decoration as unarchitectural. This undermined the idiosyncratic characterizations of architecture as masculine, feminine, or androgynous, as all architecture was female. It also allowed for the conception of a new kind of ornament which was applied during construction: the ornamental cladding. These were subtle but substantial epistemological shifts which were produced through the recasting of the relation between gender and architecture.

Athira: Self, Sexual Difference, Intraception

by Anup Dhar

Published in From the Margins: a journal of critical theory, 1999. 

Voices From the Depths: Reading" Love" In Luce Irigaray's" Marine Lover"

by Joanne Faulkner

Amnesia at the Beginning of Time: Irigaray's Reading of Heidegger In The Forgetting of Air

by Joanne Faulkner