The Risky Business Of French Feminism

The Risky Business of French Feminism: Publishing, Politics, and Artistry examines the institutional history of the publishing house Editions des Femmes as well as its relationship to the French Women’s Liberation Movement (MLF) from 1972 to the present. The founding and subsequent success of Editions des Femmes in the publishing milieu intensified the ideological divisions within the MLF and highlighted the extent to which that movement failed to adequately reflect on the power inherent in its recourse to print culture as an agent of change. In particular, Editions des Femmes produced several periodical publications and pioneered a woman-centered subculture that attached militant political meanings to the practice of buying and publishing books. While the MLF succeeded in changing legislation detrimental to women, it was not able to create unified cultural politics or construct a long-term media strategy that could preserve the movement’s original ideals and unity. Jennifer L. Sweatman explores the long-term dissipation of the MLF as a unified force not only as an outcome of ideological disagreement, but also due to conflicting views on culture, women’s creativity as a strategy for empowerment, and the utility of media for creating change. As the MLF fragmented, unable to fully come to terms with its various consumer identities, its need for capital to support creative projects, and its difficult experience with collective decision-making, the Editions des Femmes’ project was seen as incredibly controversial. However, Editions des Femmes embodied a broader strategy for cultural transformation that privileged women’s creative works rather than feminism, situating it as a successful forerunner of the revitalization of the publishing industry from below as small, independent houses challenged the large, media conglomerate control of the industry.

1975 was a key year for the women’s movement in France. Through a critical exploration of the politics, activism and cultural creativity of that moment, this book evaluates the achievements and legacies of second wave French feminism for subsequent ‘waves’, including the movement’s contemporary resurgence.

This edited book addresses the diversity across time and space of the sites, actors and practices of feminist translation from 1945-2000. The contributors examine what happens when a politically motivated text is translated linguistically and culturally, the translators and their aims, and the strategies employed when adapting texts to locally resonating discourses. The collection aims to answer these questions through case studies and a conceptual rethinking of the process of politically engaged translation, considering not only trained translators and publishers, but also feminist activists and groups, NGOs and writers. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of translation studies, gender/women's studies, literature and feminist history.

Daughters of 1968 is the story of French feminism between 1944 and 1981, when feminism played a central political role in the history of France. The key women during this epoch were often leftists committed to a materialist critique of society and were part of a postwar tradition that produced widespread social change, revamping the workplace and laws governing everything from abortion to marriage. The May 1968 events—with their embrace of radical individualism and antiauthoritarianism—triggered a break from the past, and the women’s movement split into two strands. One became universalist and intensely activist, the other particularist and less activist, distancing itself from contemporary feminism. This theoretical debate manifested itself in battles between women and organizations on the streets and in the courts. The history of French feminism is the history of women’s claims to individualism and citizenship that had been granted their male counterparts, at least in principle, in 1789. Yet French women have more often donned the mantle of particularism, advancing their contributions as mothers to prove their worth as citizens, than they have thrown it off, claiming absolute equality. The few exceptions, such as Simone de Beauvoir or the 1970s activists, illustrate the diversity and tensions within French feminism, as France moved from a corporatist and tradition-minded country to one marked by individualism and modernity.

This multidisciplinary volume investigates different abortion and reproductive practices across time, space, geography, national boundaries, and cultures. The authors specialize in the reproductive politics of Australia, Bolivia, Cameroon, France, ‘German East Africa,’ Ireland, Japan, Sweden, South Africa, the United States, and Zanzibar, with historical focuses on the pre-modern era, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the present day. This timely work complicates the many histories and ongoing politics of abortion by exploring the conditions in which women have been forced to make these life-altering decisions.

Yale French Studies 142 explores the contemporary relevance of an alternative strand of feminism as theorized by Monique Wittig This volume of Yale French Studies foregrounds Monique Wittig (1935-2003), a writer who left France to live and teach in the United States, in a diverse range of multidisciplinary conversations--in literary studies, history, and gender and sexuality studies--to demonstrate how Wittig's theoretical and literary work remains an indispensable resource for thinking and creating in the twenty-first century. Editors Morgane Cadieu and Annabel L. Kim flip the "materialist lesbianism" that Wittig's collection of essays, The Straight Mind, centers and describes as being the core of Wittig's work to deal instead with "lesbian materialism," thereby making "lesbian" the method and "materialism" the object and allowing Wittig's work to realize its full range. The volume reinterrogates the official historiography of French materialist feminism; expands the intellectual framework within which Wittig's work is usually considered; insists on the language-centric materialism that emerges from Wittig's writing as a way of joining the political with the literary; and attends to the way this literary material inspires material responses and creations within the plastic arts. Underlying the entire volume is a keen sense of the materiality of Wittig's archives, housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, as a site of lesbian thought in Wittig's radical sense of the term: a fugitive positionality.

Preface and Acknowledgments. SECTION I: ENGENDERING LANGUAGE, SILENCE, AND VOICE. Introduction. Annotated Bibliography. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). A Room of One's Own. bell hooks (1955-). Talking Back. Leoba of England and Germany (700?-780). Letter to Lord Boniface. Matilda, Queen of England (1080-1118). Letter to Archbishop Anselm. Letter to Pope Pascal. Anne Lock (fl.1556-1590). from A Meditation of a penitent sinner, upon the 51 psalm. Isabella Whitney (fl. 1567-1573?). The Author. . .Maketh Her Will and Testament. from The Manner of Her Will. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673). The Poetess's Hasty Resolution. The Poetess's Petition. An Excuse for So Much Writ upon My Verses. Nature's Cook. from To All Writing Ladies. Anne Killigrew (1660-1685). Upon the Saying that My Verses Were Made by Another. On a Picture Painted by Herself. Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720). The Introduction. A Nocturnal Reverie. Ardelia to Melancholy. Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia. The Answer. Frances Burney (1752-1840). from The Diary of Frances Burney. Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849). from Letters for Literary Ladies. Jane Austen (1775-1817). Northanger Abbey. Mary Shelley (1797-1851). Introduction to Frankenstein. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855). Letter from Robert Southey. Letter to Robert Southey . Letter to George Henry Lewes. Emily Brontë (1818-1848). [Alone I sat; the summer day]. To Imagination. The Night Wind. R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida. [No coward soul is mine]. Stanzas. George Eliot (1819-1880). Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). The Yellow Wallpaper. Edith Wharton (1862-1937). A Journey. Gertrude Stein (1874-1946). from Patriarchal Poetry. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960). from Dust Tracks on a Road. Stevie Smith (1902-1971). My Muse Sits Forlorn. A Dream of Comparison. Thoughts about the Person from Porlock. May Sarton (1912-95). Journey Toward Poetry. The Muse as Medusa. Of the Muse. Hisaye Yamamoto (1921-). Seventeen Syllables. Maxine Hong Kingston (1940-). No Name Woman. Gloria Anzaldúa (1942-). Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers. Alice Walker (1944-). In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Medbh McGuckian (1950-). To My Grandmother. From the Dressing Room. Turning the Moon into a Verb. Carol Ann Duffy (1955-). Standing Female Nude. Litany. Mrs. Aesop. Gcina Mhlophe (1959-). The Toilet. Sometimes When It Rains. The Dancer. Say No. Intertextualities. Topics for Discussion, Journals, and Essays. Group Writing and Performance Exercise. Barbara Christian (1943-). The Highs and Lows of Black Feminist Criticism. Elaine Showalter (1941-). Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness. SECTION II: WRITING BODIES/BODIES WRITING. Introduction. Annotated Bibliography. Hélène Cixous (1937-). The Laugh of the Medusa. Nancy Mairs (1943-). Reading Houses, Writing Lives: The French Connection. Anonymous. The Wife's Lament (8th century?). Anonymous. Wulf and Eadwacer (8th century?). Margery Kempe (1373?-1438). from The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery Brews Paston (1457?-1495). Letters to her Valentine/fiance. Letter to her husband, John Paston. Elizabeth I (1533-1603). On Monsieur's Departure. When I Was Fair and Young. Mary Wroth (1587?-1653?). from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus. Aphra Behn (1640-1689). The Lucky Chance. Jane Barker (1652-1727). A Virgin Life. Delarivier Manley (1663-1724). from The New Atalantis. Eliza Haywood (1693?-1756). from The Female Spectator. Harriet Jacobs (1813?-1897). from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Monna Innominata. Djuna Barnes (1892-1982). from Ladies Almanack. To the Dogs. Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950),. from Fatal Interview. Anne Sexton (1928-1974). The Abortion. In Celebration of My Uterus. For My Lover, Returning to His Wife. Audre Lorde (1934-1992). Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Love Poem. Chain. Restoration-A Memorial. Bharati Mukherjee (1938-). A Wife's Story. Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1996). My Man Bovanne. Sharon Olds (1942-). That Year. The Language of the Brag. The Girl. Sex Without Love. Slavenka Drakulic (1949-). Makeup and Other Crucial Questions. Joy Harjo (1951-). Fire. Deer Ghost. City of Fire. Heartshed. Dionne Brand (1953-). Madame Alaird's Breasts. Sandra Cisneros (1955-). I the Woman. Love Poem #1. Jackie Kay (1961-). Close Shave. Other Lovers. Intertextualities. Topics for Discussion, Journals, and Essays. Group Writing and Performance Exercise. Catherine Gallagher (1945-). Who Was That Masked Woman? The Prostitute and the Playwright in the Comedies of Aphra Behn. Shari Benstock (1944-). The Lesbian Other.

This innovative, illustrated edited edition brings together a collection of authors to chart the rise, fall and possible futures of the word primitive.