Beyond French Feminisms Beyond French Feminisms Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1981–2001 Edited by Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron BEYONDFRENCHFEMINISMS Copyright © Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, Isabelle de Courtivron, 2003. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-312-24019-6 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-0-312-24040-0 ISBN 978-1-137-09514-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-09514-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond French feminisms : debates on women, politics, and culture in France, 1980–2001 / edited by Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Feminism—France. 2. Women—France—Social conditions—20th century. 3. I. Célestin, Roger. II. DalMolin, Eliane Françoise. III. De Courtivron, Isabelle. HQ1613.B44 2003 305.42’0944—dc21 2002072829 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Letra Libre, Inc. First edition: January 2003 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Transferred to Digital Printing in 2010. We dedicate this book to the memory of Elaine Marks and Françoise Pasquier, and to the future of Cassandra, Lara, and Sophie. Contents Permissions ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron I. POLITICS AND SOCIETY 1. Sylviane Agacinski The Turning Point of Feminism: Against the Effacement of Women 17 2. Pierre Bourdieu Symbolic Violence 23 3. Eric Fassin The Politics of PaCS in a Transatlantic Mirror: Same-Sex Unions and Sexual Difference in France Today 27 4. Christine Fauré Women’s History after the Law on Parity 39 5. Geneviève Fraisse Exclusive Democracy: A French Paradigm 51 6. Françoise Gaspard and Farhad Khosrokhavar The Headscarf and the Republic 61 7. Benoîte Groult The Feminization of Professional Names: An Outrage against Masculinity 69 8. Jeanine Mossuz-Lavau The Politics of Reproduction 77 9. Véronique Nahoum-Grappe Sexualities on Parade 87 10. Chiennes de garde of the World, Unite! The Bitch Manifesto, March 8, 1999 93 11. Mireille Rosello New Gendered Mosaics: Their Mothers, the Gauls 97 12. Mariette Sineau Paritéin Politics: From a Radical Idea to Consensual Reform 113 II. ARTS AND LITERATURE 13. Odile Cazenave Francophone Women Writers in France in the Nineties 129 14. Whitney Chadwick Body as Subject: Four Contemporary Women Artists 143 15. Hélène Cixous Unmasked! 155 16. Catherine Cusset The Nieces of Marguerite: Novels by Women at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century 161 17. Marie Etienne The Doorway of the World: Women in Contemporary French-Language Poetry 177 18. Anne Gillain Profile of a Filmmaker: Catherine Breillat 201 19. Geneviève Sellier French Women Making Films in the 1990s 213 III. FRANCE—USA 20. Debate. Women: A French Singularity? 225 I. Elisabeth Badinter. “The French Exception” II. Joan Wallach Scott. “Vive la difference!” III. Mona Ozouf. “Counting the Days” 21. Judith Feher-Gurewich Lacan and American Feminism: Who Is the Analyst? 239 22. Jean-Philippe Mathy The Symptom of “American-Style Feminism” 247 23. Claire Goldberg Moses Made in America: “French Feminism” in Academia 261 About the Contributors 285 Bibliography 289 Permissions We gratefully acknowledge the following organizations and publishers for the per- mission to reprint the articles listed, which in some cases were modified, updated, and translated for this volume: Taylor & Francis/Routledge (U.K.), Sites: The Journal of 20th-century/contemporary French studies, revue d’études françaises(4.1, Spring 2000, Women/Femmes) ———.“The Turning Point of Feminism: Against the Effacement of Women,” Syl- viane Agacinski ———.“The Feminization of Professional Names: An Outrage against Masculin- ity,” Benoîte Groult ———.“Body as Subject: Four Contemporary Women Artists,” Whitney Chadwick Mariette Sineau ———.“Paritéin Politics: From a Radical Idea to Consensual Reform” Taylor & Francis/Routledge (New York) 1998, Stigmata ———.“Unmasked!” Hélène Cixous Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique, 1995, De l’égalité des sexes,ed. Michel de Manassein ———.“Symbolic Violence,” Pierre Bourdieu Seuil (Paris), Pouvoir. Femmes en politique82, 1998 ———.“Exclusive Democracy: A French Paradigm,” Geneviève Fraisse Découverte (Paris), 1995, Le foulard et la république ———.“The Headscarf and the Republic,” Françoise Gaspard and Farhad Khos- rokhavar Esprit(Paris), March-April 2001 ———.“Sexualities on Parade,” Véronique Nahoum-Grappe Gallimard (Paris) Le Débat87 (November/December 1995) ———.“The French Exception,” Elisabeth Badinter ———.“Counting the Days,” Mona Ozouf ———.“Vive la différence,” Joan Scott. (The version contained in this volume is the original English version; the essay previously appeared in French in the same issue of Le Débat.) Feminist Studies24.2 (summer 1998), University of Maryland ———. “Made in America: ‘French Feminism’ in Academia,” Claire Goldberg Moses The Manifesto of the Chiennes de Garde is available as public domain on the Worldwide Web (http://www.chiennesdegarde.org). Acknowledgments We are extremely grateful to Margaret Colvin and Audrey Sartiaux for their effi- cient and always good-humored assistance. At the University of Connecticut, we also thank David Herzberger, Head of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, for his support of our work in general and for his commitment to this volume in particular. At MIT our thanks go to Philip Khoury, Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, for his generous support of this project. At Palgrave/St. Martin’s, we were fortunate to work with Karen Wolny, who initially took on the project, and with Kristi Long, who took over as our editor; Meg Weaver and Erin Chan were superlative production editors, and Annjeanette Kern a no less superlative copyeditor; Roee Raz was, throughout, a patient, efficient, and under- standing editorial assistant. We thank them all. This work, published as part of the program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. Introduction Roger Célestin, Eliane DalMolin, Isabelle de Courtivron From the 1970s to the 1990s The “beyond” in the title of this book is not meant to indicate that women’s issues have been resolved in France, or elsewhere for that matter, and that the concept of feminism is no longer needed and can begin to wither away like the proverbial state. Rather, it aims to stress a number of new phenomena that illustrate the differences between recent debates about women and gender in France and those that took place in the 1970s, which became known in the United States as “French feminisms.” What the essays in this collection also reveal, however, are the culturally specific continuities between these recent developments and the French feminisms of three decades ago. Today, many would agree with the analyses made by Claire Goldberg Moses and by Christine Delphy, among others, that “Made-in-America French Feminism” was in large part a construct of Anglo-American academics during the late 1970s and early 1980s.1 Indeed, the abstract work of theorists influenced by psychoanalytic theory and literary deconstruction such as Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray did not represent the much broader activities occurring in the French women’s movement at the time. This body of work did, however, reflect an original and culturally specific approach to theorizing the effacement of women. The con- troversial nature of concepts such as l’écriture féminine accounted for a great deal of in- tellectual excitement on some U.S. campuses, in part because academics already steeped in “French theory” were drawn to the philosophical, literary, and psychoan- alytical approach of a small but provocative group of writers and intellectuals. These “French imports” also caught the imagination in ways that battles for abortion rights and rape laws did not, insofar as these were more familiar to American feminist con- cerns and practices. The concrete efforts that were being made to change real—legal, medical, and social—conditions for French women were thus somewhat neglected in academic circles. By the mid-eighties, however, most of the writings about sexual dif- férence had fallen out of fashion in France, much sooner, in fact, than they did in the United States. Nevertheless, their impact should not be discounted for they point to a cultural constant that has marked French debates about women historically and that is still very much present in today’s discussions among French feminists. In this respect, the arguments around l’écriture féminineof the 1970s are not as unconnected