Institutionalizing Gender Studies in France : A Multi-Faceted Process

Processes of institutionalization and crossing are inseparable from ideological, political and societal issues: models and methods circulate, as texts travel without their contexts. Can this account for the differentiated reception of Gender and Queer Studies in France, particularly in comparison with other European countries? What specific impulses are thus realised in scientific areas and fields of research (literature, cultural history, arts…)? To what extent do the political and the institutional intertwine, in the academic as well as the educational context?

Key words: Gender Studies, circulation, transfer, institutionalization.

« Théorie du genre » and Controversies about Equal Rights in France

Focusing on debates held in France and concerning gay marriage, and on the use of the expression “théorie du genre,” this article examines anti-gender discourse outside academic spheres and its use serving to dismiss women’s claims for equal rights. “Théorie du genre” is shown to constitute a mistranslation of “gender theory,” with conceptual but also political consequences, as the rejection of the concept of gender is presented as an act of national resistance to the importation of a foreign and dangerous concept. Anti-gender discourse is described as an “ideological formation” (rennes 93), and the prominence of the expression “théorie du genre” in recent public debates is analyzed in order to bring to light its Catholic grounding, its main semantic and lexical features, and its polemical purpose.

Key words: polemics, gender, enunciation, translation, equal rights, ideology.

Like in other French scientific disciplines, gender has a hard time establishing itself as a legitimate approach in French legal studies. Nevertheless, whereas one can observe some changes occurring in social sciences and the humanities, French legal academy has been particularly impenetrable to feminist legal theory and gendered approaches to legal analysis. This article will first explain why this is the case and then describe how a new project, entitled REGINE, intends to address and overcome some of the obstacles.

Key words: feminist legal theory, France, legal analysis, REGINE.

The article aims to sketch the reception and the representations of French feminist discourses in the Anglo-American critical theory starting from the early 1970s. It situates French Feminism within the field of French Theory, a notion created in the Anglophone critical discourses, and analyses the meanings ascribed to both terms. Through a historicised discussion of the appropriation of the French theories — for a long time limited to the propositions of Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray — the text also attempts to present the popular critical moves (selectiveness and standardisation) in this process. What follows constitutes a brief analysis of the reasons and responses to the propagation of French feminism as a reductive construct. The article concludes registering a change in more contemporary approaches which attempt to move beyond the initial label.

Key words: French Theory, French feminism, theoretical discourse, poststructuralism.

Constructing Subjectivity in Women’s Erotic Writing

The distinction between eroticism and pornography implies judgments significant for the author’s position in the literary field. Contemporary women writers, aware of the mechanisms that manage this field, enter into a complex game with the public and, above all, against sexual stereotypes. Authors like Catherine Millet, Virginie Despentes, Catherine Breillat and Nelly Arcan opt for sexual liberty and concentrate their writing on the body that becomes the main expression of woman’s subjectivity. Nevertheless, they rest imprisoned by the stereotypes they fight against, and often favour the rhetoric of opposition, well out-of-date in comparison with queer theories.

Key words: pornography, eroticism, women’s writing, stereotypes, sexual liberation.

Modesty and Immodesty as a Modality of Construction of a Political’s Body in Hervé Guibert’s Work

Modesty and immodesty are two movements used by Hervé Guibert to build a unique picture of his body that I propose to examine in this article in order to highlight a politics of the Guibertian’s body. The multiple body escapes any form of confinement, restriction and constructs itself without any sign of sexual normativity. Guibert refuses both heterosexual and homosexual models and anchors himself in another space, uncertain and undefined.

Key words: Hervé Guibert, political’s body, modesty and immodesty.

Virginie Despentes’ Homonormative Lens. Bye Bye Blondie, from Text to Screen

When she adapted her novel Bye Bye Blondie for the cinema, Virginie Despentes decided to switch the central heterosexual love story between Gloria and Eric to a homosexual love story between Gloria and Frances. However, she refused to offer another heteronormative lesbian scene. Instead, she tends to bring a homonormative representation of female love to the French mainstream cinema, and develops the systems of a new esthetic. No erotic scene, no representation of the couple according to a feminine/masculine logic, Despentes puts on screen a love story into which no spectator is allowed a voyeuristic glance.

Key words: Despentes, Bye Bye Blondie, homonormative, lesbian cinema.

Michel Foucault described 19th-century France as a period of intense sexual scrutiny as well as a watershed moment that gave birth to the formal recognition, evolution, and study of “deviant” sexual identities. While this may be true, modern French studies still idle in examining the epistemological effect of this operative change in French ideology, society, and more specifically literature. If studies into 19th- and 20th-century French gay and lesbian literatures and ideologies have begun to flourish in some academic francophone circles, trans-literature has been overlooked. Moreover, this critical oversight inadvertently highlights the all too often modern omission of the “T” in the LGBT community. This article will place the works of five French authors spanning the 19th and 20th centuries in communication with contemporary queer theory in an attempt to examine the nascent evolution of what today might be considered transgender identity, as well as analyse the meaning attached to queer identities during this period in French and francophone literatures.

Key words: transgender, queer theory, 19th century, 20th century, France, narrative.

Insights and Limitations of a Feminist Reading of La Princesse de Clèves According to Queer Theory

Often interpreted from the feminist perspective, La Princesse de Clèves has come to represent a tale of feminine oppression and feminine heroism. As enlightening as such a reading may be, this paper seeks to further explore the gendered identities at stake in the novel, with the help of a Nietzschean queer theory. Underlining the role of Madame de Clèves in the economy of desire that constructs space and power in the world of the text is an important step toward a more subtle understanding of the narrative.

Key words: Clèves, Lafayette, queer, feminism, 17th century.

Adolphe Belot’s bestseller Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme (1870) is a striking example of narratological tension between implied readers and the narrator. Adrien’s narrative, recounting the story of his unhappy marriage to a lesbian Paule Giraud, is significantly influenced by homosocial bonds with the male reading public — the implied readers of the text. Conscious of clear expectations towards a heterosexual man and a husband, the narrator reverts to hyperheterosexual narration in order to give legitimacy to his story and his desires. However, his narrative strategies backfire on him and, in consequence, undermine his credibility. The paper shows how tension in the choice of narrative tools subverts the blatantly anti-lesbian message of the text. By using René Girard’s theory of triangular desire and mimesis, the article also proves that the narrator is a male lesbian who had to subscribe to 19th-century convention of a husband.

Key words: 19th-century literature, French literature, queer studies, male lesbianism, lesbian, narratology, René Girard, mimesis, triangular desire, Adolphe Belot, implied reader, homosocial bonds, manipulation.

Constructing Gender in Fred Vargas’s Anti-Normative Crime Fiction

Fred Vargas’s crime novels do not fit into any established type of the crime genre. Defying the existence of an ordinary person, the author creates singular characters with odd behaviours and extraordinary capacities, partly in order to challenge gender norms. These characters question existing notions of femininity and masculinity, while at the same time revealing what the author believes to be traditional images of male and female attributes and behaviours, and thereby they implicitly reproduce. Physical appearance, weight in particular, is a central aspect of all female characters intended to challenge gender norms, whereas the male characters display a more diverse approach. The characterisation of such female protagonists seems to be directed primarily against a social norm defining femininity as “tallness, slimness and beauty,” whereas the extraordinary features of the male characters relate more clearly to previous models of investigators found in the crime genre.

Key words: Fred Vargas, crime fiction, gender, literary genre. Le roman policier est marqué

In the present work, I wish to concentrate on two examples of detective fiction in Spain, that is on Arturo Pérez Reverte’s The Flanders Panel and Alicia Giménez Bartlett’s Serpientes en el paraíso. Both novels are centred on a character of a female detective. After a closer look, we can see that both detectives have found themselves in a similar situation. Julia, the amateur, and Petra, the professional, exist and work in a typically masculine world of detectives and police officers, struggling with the gender issues and roles. By analysing their situations, I wish to present a case study of two female detectives and their reactions, responses and attitudes towards the masculine world of sleuths, thus providing a complete picture of both protagonists.

Key words: female detective fiction, machismo, Arturo Pérez Reverte, Alicia Giménez Bartlett, Petra Delicado.

Literary Discourse and Feminist Thought. From Simone de Beauvoir to Simone Schwarz-Bart

This article aims to rethink the social and literary trajectory of Simone Schwarz-Bart in the 1960s and 1970s in the francophone intellectual field. The paper discusses her views on gender relations, her relationship to the feminist movement and some of its prominent figures (e.g. Simone de Beauvoir and Monique Wittig). Finally, the impact of feminism on her literary production is analyzed.

Key words: francophone literature, black feminism, french literature, feminism, gender studies.

Women and French-speaking Writers. Move Beyond Marginalities in Gendered Constructions

Writing, for female authors, and above all for French-speaking writers, is a transgressive act. The double marginalization provided by these peripheral statuses, when compared to the emblematic figure of the “French writer”, leads to the question of the construction of “decentered” identities. By focusing exclusively on works from (the) Francophone literature (those by Assia Djebar, Anne Hébert and Alice Rivaz), this study of feminine identities and women’s literary constructions analyzes parallel themes inherent to literary female characters: they are simultaneously the reflection of social realities and an ideological deconstruction. The paper also examines linguistic and stylistic features involved in the delineation of feminine writing. French-speaking works generally propose the destruction of frozen identities, reflecting the phenomena more or less marked by transculturation, (such as the deconstruction of literary genres, and the subversion of the cultural heritage of the “dominant”). There are numerous similarities between the situation of the colonized and of women, namely, the stereotypes that transform them into a subculture in which they are seen as objects rather than subjects.

Key words: Gender Studies, francophone literatures, woman’s writing, 20th century literature, norm, transgression.

Folle by Nelly Arcan : Biological Determinants in the Construction of the Masculine Identity

The reading of Folle, a novel written by Nelly Arcan, might well be an experience of disillusionment. The current analysis suggests that its principal masculine character insists on the primacy of biological factors. Through this line of thought, the reader and the contemporary thinker may want to question their perception of the construction of masculine identity as the principal masculine character is oblivious to theories of gender. He forgets that the modern human brain is not immutable and that femininity and masculinity are social constructions. For him, there is a huge gap between man and woman and this space seems to be the result of testosterone.

Key words: construction of masculine identity, biological determinants, gender differences, Québécois literature, Nelly Arcan, Judith Butler, Nancy Huston.

Women’s Intelligence Ages in Scientific and Literary Texts of the French 18th Century : Elements of an Androcentric Theory

Women’s access to knowledge encountered the problem of legitimacy during the Enlightenment. According to 18th century doctors, invoking the so called natural features of women, this access was dependent on their ontogenesis. These scientific theories had a great impact on philosophical and literary works of the period. The examination of both discourses shows how they helped in creating the androcentric vision of women’s intellect, which is a world apart and subject to instabilities.

Key words: theories about feminity, intellect, womb, interferences between scientific and literary texts, androcentrism.

What Woman for the Republic? Revolutionary Theatre and Representations of Femininity

The aim of this article is to show the way women were represented in the revolutionary theatre of the times of Great Terror (1793—1794). After three years of social and political changes brought by the Revolution women are no longer shown as possessions of their families or husbands. Although marriage remains the focus of their existence, they all fight to have a good life and a good marriage with a respectful partner, rather than with an all-mighty master who despises them. Many of female characters we meet are very independent and self-conscious — especially the younger generation who are well aware of the possibility of divorce. Men change too; fathers no longer decide for their daughters, while unfaithful husbands improve their behaviour, as they all know that the basis of general and personal happiness is a happy marriage.

Key words: family, French Revolution, theatre, women.

Femininity in Canadian Children’s Literature. An Analysis of the Incomparable Mademoiselle Charlotte

The influence of children’s literature on the development of gender identity has been well established. However, it seems that many children’s books are conveying stereotypical representations of genders as well as notable iniquities among males and females characters. Therefore, to counterbalance the detrimental effects that this could have on gender role socialisation, books that are presenting positive, non-traditional representations of masculinities and femininities should be put forward. In this regards, the incomparable Mademoiselle Charlotte, the beloved main character of a young Canadian readers series, is certainly bringing her share to the diversity of female models. In this article, this unconventional, eccentric lady is the subject of our interest.
A content analysis was performed on the seven novels of the series in order to highlight many facets of her persona that could influence the developing minds of young readers by broadening their perceptions regarding variable femininities.

Key words: children’s literature, social construction of gender, femininity, stereotypes.

Syngué sabour and Maudit soit Dostoïevski by Atiq Rahimi : the Feminine and the Masculine in the Fundamentalist World

The article aims at the analysis of Syngué sabour and Maudit soit Dostoïevski by Atiq Rahimi. The study is concentrated on the ideological construction of femininity and masculinity in the world dominated by fundamentalism and war (Afghanistan civil war in the 90s). The article researches some intertextual relations (between Rahimi and Dostoïevski) and the narrative strategies which represent the relationship between the individual and the political power.

Key words: civil war in Afghanistan, fundamentalism, femininity and masculinity, narrative strategies, intertextual relations.

Kamouraska by Anne Hébert and Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ. A Shared Feminist “Discourse”?

Exploring a research angle never yet investigated by literary critics, this text proposes a comparative analysis of novels by writers Anne Hébert, of Québec, and Mariama Bâ, of Senegal. The study joins a new research domain by integrating literatures of the “North” and those of the “South”. Relations between men and women constitute a major focus in the novels, suggesting a social interrogation shared by both authors, as well as a common preoccupation for the feminine condition. Novels such as Kamouraska and Une si longue lettre seem to rewrite Augustinian libidos only through a systematic denunciation of religious and patriarchal discourse that declasses feminine subjects in the two societies. Their narrative and enunciative dispositions therefore organise literary subjects who, although particular in the works of each author, express, in a solidary manner, another way of being, as well as a “gendered” point of view.

Key words: Anne Hébert, Mariama Bâ, novel, discourse, feminism, enunciation, Québec, Sénégal.