À travers l’analyse d’une œuvre de Frida Kahlo, Autorretrato con Pelo Cortado (« Autoportrait aux Cheveux Coupés »), datée de 1940, nous nous proposons d’extraire la réflexion féministe de l’artiste sur le genre et l’ambiguïté sexuelle. Avec ses nombreux autoportraits, l’artiste nous a livré une fine analyse du statut et de la condition des femmes de son époque. En tant que femme artiste et femme d’artiste, Kahlo a toute sa vie cherché sa place socialement et professionnellement. Elle a mené une (...) œuvre dichotomique et pertinente quant aux relations hommes-femmes. Son visage et son corps sont progressivement devenus les instruments de sa critique. Autorretrato con Pelo Cortado atteint un haut degré critique, l’œuvre joue sur les complexités de la personnalité de Kahlo. En cela, elle nous apparaît être une œuvre manifeste reflétant la résistance de l’artiste face aux lois patriarcales du Mexique des années 1930-1950. (shrink)

La condition diasporique implique une confrontation culturelle qui oblige les populations exogènes à redéfinir les composantes symboliques de leur identité. Le cas des Syro-Américaines au xixe siècle montre en particulier que cette transplantation peut être l’occasion de réélaborer les frontières de l’identité et de négocier une restructuration des rapports de genres. Encouragées et inspirées par leurs homologues proche-orientales, les féministes syro-américaines ont ainsi enrichi leurs aspirations nationalistes d’une nouvelle réflexion sur le statut et le rôle des femmes en territoire d’accueil.

Alexandre Baril | : Cet article traite de la sous-représentation des personnes trans spécialistes des enjeux trans, professeur.e.s dans les universités canadiennes, et s’attarde au cas des départements d’études féministes et de genre. La question de recherche est : quelles sont les barrières systémiques empêchant le décentrement du sujet cis-centré du féminisme universitaire francophone canadien et contribuant à l’exclusion des personnes trans? Cet essai analyse ces obstacles. La première partie démontre la présence d’un cisgenrisme dans l’enseignement et la recherche, créant (...) un plafond de verre pour les personnes trans dans le milieu universitaire. La deuxième étudie l’absence du traitement des enjeux trans dans l’enseignement et la recherche féministe francophone, malgré l’intérêt des étudiant.e.s pour ces enjeux. La troisième partie utilise l’approche transféministe pour troubler la cisgenrenormativité des études féministes et de genre, et les divisions disciplinaires qui marginalisent les personnes trans dans le milieu universitaire. | : This article considers the under-representation of trans persons who specialize in trans issues employed as professors in Canadian universities, with particular attention paid to the case of departments of gender and feminist studies. The research question is : what are the systemic barriers preventing the displacement of the cis-centric subject from the center of francophone Canadian academic feminism, and contributing to the exclusion of trans persons? This article analyzes these obstacles. The first part demonstrates the presence of cisgenderism in teaching and research, creating a glass ceiling for trans persons in academia. The second studies the absence of trans issues in feminist francophone teaching and research, despite the interest of students in these issues. The third part employs a transfeminist approach to trouble the cisgender normativity of gender and feminist studies and the disciplinary divisions that marginalize trans persons in academia. (shrink)

This article indicates a reflective paradigm generally ignored in feminist research regarding the sex/gender debate, as presented in the work of Judith Butler ( Gender Trouble ). First, I address the fact that Butler’s philosophy is inscribed in the hermeneutical tradition of suspicion. Second, I put into relief the implicitly Platonic concept of mimesis , which is central to the anticipated subversion of gender, but uncriticized by Butler and others who follow her line of thought. Third, since Butler’s feminism can’t (...) ward off dualism, nor consider idem and ipse identity , I emphasize Paul Ricoeur ’s concept of triple mimesis and narrative identity, which allows us to depart from dichotomies and hierarchies. Following the path of Ricoeur and Françoise Heritier, I finally defend a feminist hermeneutical point of view, which is differentialist and universal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:510 Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Shelley Streeby Speculative Writing, Art, and World-Making in the Wake of Octavia E. Butler as Feminist Theory The late great speculative fiction writer Octavia E. Butler often referred to herself as a feminist. In an autobiographical note she revised frequently over the course of her lifetime, now held in the massive archive of more than 8,000 individually (...) cataloged items that comprise The Octavia E. Butler Papers (OEB) at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, Butler called herself a “hermit in the middle of Los Angeles,” a pessimist when she wasn’t “careful,” and “a feminist” as well as “a Black” and “a former Baptist.”1 Throughout her published work, Butler explores intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class in ways shaped by her life growing up “black, female, and working class” across town in Pasadena, California.2 The keywords “feminism” and “feminist” pop up often in her archive. In 1988, in one of dozens of notebooks Butler filled with writing, she proudly claimed to be writing “true cross-over science fiction ” that reached both science fiction and general audiences, “encompassing feminists and blacks as well,” a claim she often repeated.3 The thousands of clippings Butler kept and annotated on subjects of interest to her included many on feminism, which she organized to emphasize 1. OEB, Folder 95. The OEB collection organized by Curator Natalie Russell, who authored the finding aid. 2. OEB, Folder 3093. 3. OEB, Folder 3239, November 9, 1988. 511 Shelley Streeby Books Discussed in This Essay Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times. Aimee Bahng. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader. Edited by Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, and Angela Willey. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Shaping Worlds. adrienne maree brown. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2017. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2015. Radio Imagination: Artists and Writers in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler. Edited by Janet Duckworth and Savanah Wood. Los Angeles: Clockshop, 2018. M Archive: After the End of the World. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption. Walidah Imarisha. Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2016. Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility. Alexis Lothian. New York: New York University Press, 2018. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Sami Schalk. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. intersections among feminist and other struggles. A 1991 piece by Black syndicated columnist Clarence Page, for instance, called “The F. Word to Watch For: Feminists,” which was written in the wake of the HillThomas hearings and speculated that the Bush administration would demonize “feminists” as a “smoke screen” for “real economic problems,” 512 Shelley Streeby was filed under “Economy.”4 Much of the archival material and fiction that Butler produced relevant to the keyword “feminism” addresses intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class in right-wing projects of the neoliberal era, from the 1970s through the early 2000s. As both a pejorative epithet used by the right to demonize women who deviated from patriarchally defined gender and sex roles as well as a term she counter-valued by claiming it for herself, intersectional “feminism” was central to Butler’s speculative collecting, research, and fiction-writing. Since her untimely death in 2006, Butler’s fame continues to grow as new generations embrace her work, since it speaks to our present in powerful ways. Butler rejected narrow genre categories and was ambivalent about the term “science fiction” as a descriptor for her writing, often expressing frustration with marketing categories and wondering if they stood in the way of reaching a wider audience. The umbrella term “speculative ” is useful both for recognizing the boundary-crossing dimensions of Butler’s writing, in its defiance of narrow definitions of genre, and for describing Butler’s contributions to feminist theories of knowledge production, political leadership, and imagining the future. Since Butler’s archive at the Huntington opened to researchers in 2013... (shrink)

Le théâtre offre un terrain d’analyse privilégié de la construction sociale et politique des identités de genre. Lieu d’expérimentation des possibles identitaires, il constitue aussi une chambre d’écho puissante des interrogations politiques de son temps. Nombreux sont désormais les travaux consacrés, en particulier par la critique anglo-américaine, à l’articulation entre le langage théâtral et le genre, l’importation par Judith Butler du concept de « performance » dans la sphère des études d...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the SelfBrian KarafinMeeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. By Anne Carolyn Klein. Boston: Beacon, 1995. 307 pp.“When the iron bird flies and carriages run on wheels, the dharma will come to the land of the red man”: this saying attributed to the semilegendary founder of Buddhism in Tibet, Padmasambhava, stands as (...) an oft-cited marker for the sense that the meeting between Tibetan Buddhism and North American culture was somehow a [End Page 227] fated one, a confluence emergent from some karmic relationship or mythical dependent-arising. Karmic connection or historical product of the near-simultaneous exile of Tibetans from their homeland in 1959 and the burgeoning of Western interest in Eastern religions and philosophies, the encounter of these two mutually and exotically other traditions is, nearing the second Christian millennium, proceeding apace. Especially since the 1989 awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetans—and now international pop icon—the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, the Western fascination for things Tibetan has exponentially increased, transforming what had been the preserve of scholars and eccentric spiritual seekers into a media sensation.The reception of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has proceeded in stages and phases that overlap and mutually affect each other, from pop phantasms of Tibet as a mythical Shangri-La (as in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon) and theosophical hopes in Tibet as the domain of the Wise Mahatmas overseeing the spiritual evolution of humanity to the relatively recent development of Tibetan studies as an academic discipline centered on the translation of texts, as well as the growing population of westerners practicing Tibetan Buddhist religion under the guidance of exiled lamas. With these latter two groups—scholars and practitioners who often overlap memberships—the phenomenon of Tibetan Buddhism in the West has reached a point where critical self-reflection is now possible. Donald Lopez’ recent Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West is the first full-length critical examination of the cultural confluence I’ve been noticing thus far. Lopez represents a movement in the field of Tibetan studies from philological scholarship of texts, in which the scholarly effort consists largely of translation along with commentary that closely follows the commentarial literature of the Tibetan tradition being translated, to cultural criticism of the underlying dynamics in the encounter itself.This critical self-consciousness in the field of Tibetan studies is likewise the motivating impetus behind Anne Klein’s recent work as represented by the book under review here. Klein, like Lopez, was a student of the dean of American Tibetan studies, Jeffrey Hopkins, at the University of Virginia. As such, her early work followed Hopkins in pursuing an essentially philological approach to Tibetan tradition with a focus on the philosophical scholasticism of the Gelukpa lineage. Klein’s three philological-philosophical books—Knowledge and Liberation; Knowing, Naming, and Negation; and Path to the Middle—are excellent examples of the genre of translation/commentary above mentioned, treating the Sautrantika and Madhyamika tenet systems in which the Gelukpa tradition systematized Indian Buddhist philosophy for the purposes of monastic study and debate. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen is something else entirely; in this work Klein blazes a trail out from recondite translation work toward cultural critique and psychosocial self-reflection in which the previously submerged subtext of the encounter between the Tibetan tradition and the Western psyche and society is allowed to surface and its issues probed and reflected upon.Klein frames her work in terms of a dialogue between Buddhism (by which she mainly means meditation practices and some associated philosophy) and feminism (by which she means both academic feminist theory and her own autobiographical [End Page 228] experience as a Western woman personally experiencing the confluence of Western and Tibetan exigencies). Klein is a salient example of a scholar-practitioner, someone who occupies positions both in the academic field of Tibetan studies and in the population of students of Tibetan lamas in exile. As such, she is exactly situated to embark on such a project of cultural and psychological reflection. She knows... (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: J’étudie la conception selon laquelle l’identité d’une œuvre d’art est déterminée par ses propriétés esthétiques; et je la compare avec la conception selon laquelle l’identité de l’œuvre d’art est déterminée par les origines de sa composition. Je soutiens que les deux théories présentent des qualités et des défauts, et que les qualités de l’une sont les défauts de l’autre. Cela nous révèle le genre de théorie dont nous avons besoin.

Marcel Duchamp, plus qu’aucun autre artiste du XX e siècle, a marqué de façon irréversible l’histoire de l’art contemporain, provoquant avec Fontaine (1917) un point de non-retour ouvrant la voie à des pratiques artistiques libérées du joug académique. Alors que la question de l’érotisme est souvent convoquée par l’artiste d’une façon explicite ou allégorique, la réception de cet érotisme par les artistes femmes, engagées dans une représentation critique du sexe féminin et du genre au début des années 1970, produit une (...) interprétation inédite et féministe de l’œuvre de Duchamp. (shrink)

This essay exposes several problems with reductionist approaches to art, placing some specific focus on ‘The Science of Art’ by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein . Their article seems to be representative of this genre in general, though particularly egregious in certain dimensions. My approach will differ greatly from that of a neuroscientist, philosopher, or psychologist, since I primarily take a critical feminist, social-literary perspective. I will argue that reductionist approaches to art are an intoxicating composite of arrogance, insight, (...) confusion and precision, an amalgam that challenges the commentator to distinguish what is worth praising, what is worth attacking, and what is best left alone. In particular, I will demonstrate that Ramachandran and Hirstein confuse arousal with beauty, with the disastrous result of excluding most of what is usually taken to distinguish ‘high’ art from its ‘lower’ forms, such as advertising, industrial design, and pornography. (shrink)

L’article examine le sens de la systématisation de la philosophie transcendantale que Schelling présente en 1800 comme accomplie par l’art, « organon et document » de la philosophie. A partir d’une reconstitution du problème et de la dynamique propres au Système de l’idéalisme transcendantal, puis de la fonction systématique de la philosophie de l’art, on soutient que l’achèvement que l’art est censé accomplir prend en fait plutôt – en lien direct avec l’ambiguïté du principe du Système – la figure d’une (...) mise en suspens, d’une indécision fondamentale entre deux voies, ultérieurement empruntées l’une par la philosophie de l’identité, l’autre par la dernière philosophie.This article examines the significance of the systematization of transcendental philosophy which Schelling claims in 1800 to be fulfilled by art, « the organon and document » of philosophy. After reconstructing the problem and the process peculiar to the System of transcendental Idealism, as well as the systematic function of the philosophy of art, we maintain that the supposed completion of philosophy by art is in fact fundamentally unresolved, suspended between two distinct approaches which will later be taken up in the philosophy of identity and in the late philosophy. (shrink)

À partir des publications officielles du Club Alpin Français, d’archives publiques et privées et de la presse sportive et féministe, ce travail analyse l’influence du genre sur la pratique de l’alpinisme et, à l’inverse, les conséquences de son évolution sur les mutations du genre. Présentes dans l’activité en même temps que les hommes, les femmes alpinistes parviennent progressivement à sortir du modèle conformiste de l’excursionnisme féminin pour découvrir des nouveaux espaces et de nouvelles difficultés. Avec modération et sens du compromis, (...) elles revendiquent et conquièrent de nouveaux droits mais sans remettre en cause les hiérarchies entre les sexes et la spécificité de l’identité féminine. Grâce à cette soumission, elles sont tolérées et initiées par les hommes et l’institution alpine. Sous leur contrôle, elles sont officiellement invitées à devenir de bonnes mères et de parfaites épouses. Mais à long terme, grâce aux vertus de l’entraînement, elles découvrent de nouvelles possibilités corporelles, de nouveaux plaisirs et pour certaines une nouvelle destinée. (shrink)

Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor’s Postmodern Utopias and Feminist Fictions represents not only a significant contribution in utopian studies; it is also a major intervention in contemporary literary studies and global cultural studies more generally. Each of the book’s chapters is structured around a specific set of formal and generic questions, exploring in great detail and with a tremendous amount of insight recent feminist revisionings of older genres, including the bildungsroman, the novel of art, nonlinear histories, American historical novels, and finally, in an (...) extraordinary turn, the works of contemporary Arab feminist writers, which, Wagner-Lawlor shows, “directly address the nature of the work left to do, as.. (shrink)

En Argentine, pays où le féminisme connaît depuis la moitié des années 2010 un essor historique, et où le football constitue un socle essentiel de l’identité nationale, le football féminin devient professionnel en mars 2019. Les revendications d’ordre sportif, portées par la joueuse Macarena Sánchez, se voient inscrites dans un discours féministe – une convergence inédite dans ce pays latino-américains – et les inégalités de genre dans le monde du football peuvent alors être appréhendées de façon structurelle. Le féminisme s’empare, (...) sur un plan pratique et théorique, d’une sphère traditionnellement réservée aux hommes : sous quel prisme peut-il l’interroger? Comment peut-il contribuer à la déconstruire? Qu’est-ce que, finalement, la pratique sportive de haut niveau peut donner à penser, à son tour, au féminisme? (shrink)

L’intérêt de ma thèse est d’étudier les relations entre le féminisme et le pacifisme en France au XXe siècle, sous l’angle de la biographie de Jeanne Mélin (1877-1964), pacifiste, féministe, écrivaine. Le sens de cette recherche est de souligner l’ambiguïté de la mise en perspective par Jeanne Mélin du féminisme et du pacifisme, d’étudier son appropriation des concepts d’identité féminine, de masculinité et de différence des sexes. Selon elle, le droit de vote féminin est avant tout le sésame de la (...) paix. Contrairement à d’autres féministes, son engagement pacifiste n’est pas une stratégie de reconnaissance politique. D’un pacifisme modéré, avant 1914, elle évolue vers le pacifisme intégral la sclérosant en 1940. C’est aussi une autodidacte auteure de romans, voyageant en Europe pour la paix et le suffrage féminin, soutenant le vote intégral en 1915, favorable au contrôle des naissances, candidate au nom de la parité à la Présidence de la République en 1947, militante de l’abolition du salariat et du partage des richesses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 575 Geneviève Pagé Gender at the Crossing: Ideological Travelings of US and French Thought in Montreal Feminism This article recounts a story about Montreal feminism using the narrative thread of its conceptual language. It is a story of language as a political choice that guides our actions, but also language as a political issue, a barrier, a tool (...) that structures our thinking and that reflects and reproduces relations of power in knowledge production and dissemination. Gender is the central character in this story—its role representing the way US, French, and Quebec theoretical traditions are deeply in dialogue with each other; yet this dialogue is arbitrary and filled with long silences. In reviewing the dialogue, this article identifies a few elements that play a significant role in favoring or impeding the traveling of ideas and concepts, focusing, in the case of Quebec, on how part of the feminist movement, comprised of radical or “revolutionary” feminists, engages with and constructs theory. The article begins by briefly tracing the evolving meanings of gender in the United States from the 1920s to the twenty-first century. Then, turning to France, a second section identifies elements limiting the traveling of US understandings of gender in French feminist theory, especially the predominance of specific traditions of thought, namely existentialism and Marxism, leading to different ways of thinking about oppression, patriarchy, sexism, and the idea of womanhood. In a third section, I shift the focus to Quebec, particularly Francophone Montreal, to survey its feminist thought, political traditions, and 576 Geneviève Pagé translation. Its history, its people, and its geographic location put it at the convergence of US and French influences, but with a distinct added local imperative: the struggle for national liberation. The specific ways in which Quebec nationalism has foregrounded power and politics around language has had a major impact on how Quebec feminists have negotiated relations with their southern feminist neighbors. In this sense, Quebec feminism presents an excellent case study of language operating as an axis of power. Furthermore, in the context of globalization and resistances to globalizing processes, Montreal provides a perfect example by which to highlight both transnational influences and local specificities. Montreal, as a classic example of Mary Louise Pratt’s cultural and linguistic “contact zone”—the space where communities of practices interact—is a city in which one can clearly identify “the intellectual and linguistic points of contact between cultures, and make visible the political pressure that activates them.”1 I treat translations that occur in this context as the process of connecting and communicating between communities. As queer theorist Juana María Rodríguez has noted in another context, “the process of translation involves more than merely translating languages; it involves translating cultures, values, and institutions of power.”2 Similarly, translation here involves an exchange between symbolic and semiotic structures of both the original and the new communities. Zooming out of Montreal, I then address the politics of translation on a more global scale, pointing out the particular ways the production and dissemination of knowledge is especially beholden to market relations. All these reflections help us understand the traveling of ideas, concepts, and ideologies across linguistic barriers. I conclude that it is in the interest of feminists to pay particular attention to what knowledge is produced from different standpoints and in different languages and what it can teach us. 1. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Profession (1991): 34; Sherry Simon, Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (New York: Routledge, 1996), 36. 2. Juana María Rodríguez, Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (New York: NYU Press, 2003), 19. Geneviève Pagé  577 Gender in the United States It is among US feminists that the conceptualization of the gender/sex dichotomy first developed. However, gender—the word—ironically comes to English from the French genre and shares with that word its derivation from the Latin genus, meaning “kind,” “sort,” or “type.” The derivation is most visible in the borrowing in English of the French genre, for example, in literary forms such as fiction or poetry. Similarly, both the English... (shrink)

L'ouvrage regroupe plusieurs chapitres et les notices et photographies de 170 statues et objets présentés lors de trois expositions dans des musées américains, à Yale en 1996, San Antonio et Raleigh en 1997. Après un premier chapitre sur le « genre » (Gender theory in roman art, N.B. Kampen), concept moderne, fruit de plusieurs décades de travail sur la théorie féministe, qui est un chapitre de réflexions sur l'organisation sociale hiérarchisée, fondée sur les différences sexuelles, ..

Feministische Bewegungen und ihre diversen widerständigen Praktiken haben in den vergangenen Jahren wieder an Sichtbarkeit gewonnen. Neben Protest- und Aktionsformen lassen sich auch zahlreiche Praktiken finden, die das Alltagsleben feministischer Akteur*innen prägen. Charakteristisch vereinen die heterogenen feministischen Widerstände Kritik-, Interventions- und Transformationspraktiken, die das hegemoniale Geschlechterdispositiv sowie realwirksame Hervorbringungen hinterfragen, angreifen und verändern. Die Autorin untersucht in ihrer explorativen Studie verschiedene Widerstandspraktiken und analysiert deren Bedeutung für gesellschaftliche Wandlungsprozesse. Bildet Geschlecht weiterhin die zentrale Bezugsdimension innerhalb feministischer Bewegungen? Wie definieren Feminist*innen (...) die Kategorie Geschlecht und in welchem Verhältnis stehen ein theoretisches Geschlechterwissen, die feministische Praxis und das feministische Subjekt zueinander? -- (from back cover). (shrink)

Il faut bien commencer par ne rien comprendre, par comprendre qu'on ne comprend rien, il faut accepter qu'on ne sait rien, il faut savoir qu'on ne sait rien, pour tenter quelque mouvement hors de cette gangue de silence qui nous entoure à l'évidence, et obsède certains d'entre nous. Il faut bien commencer par se sentir écrasé de silence pour avoir envie de parler, de commencer une phrase, pour se pencher aux bords du silence et basculer dans le langage. Se défaire (...) d'un texte que l'on a écrit, d'une oeuvre d'art illustre, de son site web avant (ou après) sa mort, voire de son identité numérique tout entière, qu'est-ce que ça remue en soi? L'acte d'effacer s'apparente-t-il à une forme de destruction ou est-il au contraire le prolongement même d'un élan créateur? Prenant appui sur le geste de De Kooning effaçant un dessin de Rauschenberg, Isabelle Pariente-Butterlin mène une méditation qui interroge nos usages et nos disparitions (sur les réseaux et en dehors, dans l'Art et dans la vie). Entre les genres, prenant le pouls des phrases [qui] sont les sismographes de l'effacement qui parcourt le monde, un ouvrage fondamental sur l'écriture de l'absence et l'absence dans l'écriture est en train de se jouer. Sa composition même procédant à des effacements (des pans entiers de pages, gelés dans l'instant précédant leur disparition, sont amenés à la limite de la lisibilité), Erased est une clé pour qui cherche à comprendre les processus à l'oeuvre dans la fabrique de la déconstruction. (shrink)

L'intersecnonnalité est devenue en quelques années un concept central aussi bien en sciences sociales qu'au sein des luttes sociales en particulier féministes. Forgée pour penser l'imbrication des rapports de domination l'intersectionnalité constitue aujourd'hui un champ d'études et d'expérimenta rions théoriques foisonnant. Pour la première fois en France des universitaires abordent ses multiples dimensions épistémologigues. théoriques. poli tiques et les recherches récentes qu'elle a permis d'ouvrir dans des espaces aussi différents que la France, l'Amérique latine ou l'Europe de l'Est. Que peut (...) nous offrir cette notion pour penser le genre la théorie féministe et les mobilisations sociales? Comment contribuer à pro mouvoir un usage de l'intersectionnalité qui renforce son potentiel critique et insurgé", plutôt que figé sur des identités? Cet ouvrage témoigne à partir d'exemples de la force d'un tel outil lorsqu'il s'agit d'éclairer des processus sociaux et politiques complexes. En offrant un regard à la fois rétrospectif et contemporain sur les enjeux politiques de la production d'un savoir intersectionnel, il veut aussi montrer que l'intersection naine n'est pas seulement un agencement de critique théorique indispensable mais aussi une plate forme à partir de laquelle construire des sujets poli tiques collectifs nécessaires au projet d'émancipation féministe et de la société."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Feminist analyses of the roles gender has played in art lead to an alternative theory that emphasizes art's complex interactions with culture(s) rather than the autonomy within culture claimed for it by formalism. Focusing on the visual arts, I extrapolate the new theory from feminist research and compare it with formalist precepts. Sharing Arthur Danto's concern that art has been disenfranchised in the twentieth century by its preoccupation with theory, I claim that feminist thought re-enfranchises art by revisioning its relationship (...) to its contexts. (shrink)

Generations and Geographies brings together a collection of artists, critics and researchers to consider the question of sexual difference and its significance in the production and reception of visual representation by women artists.

Recent debates in the field of contemporary art have underlined the political importance of creative reworkings of the past, especially for those subjects that have been traditionally marginalised. A feminist perspective has been nevertheless quite absent from such debates. This article addresses feminist uses of archival documents in the visual arts through the analysis of three works produced in the past two decades: The Fae Richard's Photo Archive (1997) by Zoe Leonard and Cheryl Dunye, Some Chance Operations (1998) by Renée (...) Green and Queen of the Artists’ Studios (2004–2007) by Andrea Geyer. These works share an interest for women's histories and representations by composing a series of documents (both factual and fictive) into complex narratives where history and subjectivity intersect. (shrink)

Suzanne Lacy introduced the term ‘New Genre Public Art’ (NGPA) to refer to art practices that depart from those traditional of public art (such as installing works in parks and plazas) and focus instead on the direct engagement of artists with audiences to deal with pressing socio-political issues. In this paper, I argue that some works of NGPA should be valued for the intellectual value grounded in their artistic features, not dissimilarly to works of conceptual art. In developing my argument, (...) I take distance from Vid Simoniti’s recent account of ‘Socially Engaged Art’, offer a thorough analysis of Thomas Hirschhorn’s Bataille Monument (2002) and Kathrin Bohm’s and Stefan Saffer’s Mobile Porch (1999), and submit that both such works qualify as good works of NGPA. (shrink)

Art reconfigures experience. Art is a mentalized physical object. Danto remarks that art is embodied meaning. Hein says that feminist art chats on the edge. Our mental life is filled with meaning, but art opens the question of the meaning of experience. . . . Art, chatting on the edge of experience, nevertheless invites us to choose our stance in that world. I suggest that that is the beauty, or, at least the value, of art. The art experience presents us (...) with a sensory exemplar that can convey, and exhibits, content. The exhibited content of the mode of presentation of the exemplar suggests a reconfiguration of the content of experience outside of art as well as within. Art, then, is that part of experience that changes us to changing the content of our experience. My claim here is that feminist art provides us with a paradigm of what art does, and the tis why I admire it. (shrink)

Bien que la Tunisie lutte pour les droits humains, la diversité sexuelle et de l’identité de genre reste frappée par l’exclusion et les discours stigmatisants. Les personnes appartenant à la communauté lgbt continuent à subir un traitement dégradant. Elles sont exposées à un système rejetant qui les place dans les marges et justifie leur maintien dans l’invisibilité et l’illégitimité sociales. Sur la base d’une analyse qualitative de discours de personnes concernées par la diversité de genre, bénéficiant d’une prise en charge (...) thérapeutique et fréquentant le réseau associatif tunisien, les auteurs traiteront de la loi du silence liée à ces systèmes sociaux maltraitants. Les stratégies élaborées par les homosexuels face à la violence subie viennent interrompre ce non-dit et se laissent voir à travers l’accablement et l’introversion et/ou la révolte, la revendication et le militantisme. (shrink)

Née en Algérie coloniale en 1924 et décédée à Paris en 2011, Simone Ben Amara semble avoir vécu plusieurs existences, au cours desquelles furent bousculées ses assignations et ses appartenances de classe, de genre et de « race ». Fille de colons, elle devint anticolonialiste et marxiste. Juive d’Algérie et citoyenne française, elle fit le choix de se considérer comme une Algérienne et lutta pour l’indépendance nationale. Élevée dans une féminité normative, elle devint une avocate féministe, spécialisée dans le droit (...) musulman en Algérie indépendante. À travers ses archives privées, on verra que sa trajectoire questionne la possibilité d’identités dissonantes en Algérie coloniale et ouvre des perspectives originales sur l’histoire des femmes en Algérie indépendante. (shrink)

Michael Kelly is the author of 68 entries altogether. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French is far more than a simple revision of the original Oxford Companion to French Literature, published in 1959, and described by The Listener as the `standard work of reference for English-speaking enquirers into French literature'. As the change in title implies, this completely new work presents an authoritative guide not only to ten centuries of literature produced in the territory now called France, but (...) also to the rich literary output of other French-speaking countries around the world. The scope of the Companion is deliberately open and inclusive, challenging and extending the traditional canon. Literature is understood in a broad sense, ranging from strip cartoon and pamphlet to tragedy and epic, and particular attention is devoted to francophone writing from outside France. Written by an international team of specialists, entries cover individual authors and works - over 3,000 of them - from the troubadours to Césaire, and from La Princesse de Clèves to La Vie mode d'emploi. Each is discussed in detail within their historical, cultural, and intellectual context. Among the new features of the Companion are the substantial essay-entries, reflecting up-to-date scholarship and theoretical debates on topics such as: - literary movements and genres - historical subjects such as chivalry, or Occupation and Resistance in wartime France - movements of thought from Scholasticism to feminism - linguistic topics - the sciences - the arts and media, including opera, cinema, and press. (shrink)

Feminism has been a major force in the reshaping of recent art. The women's movement has given new confidence to women who work in the visual arts; it has opened up new areas for art to deal with and challenged existing systems of values and imagery in the arts. In their comprehensive introduction, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock provide a richly illustrated history of the British women's art movement, covering the major events and debates in feminist art practice which have (...) taken place over the last fifteen years. They also examine the trends, the conflicts and the new directions of the 1980s in which issues of race, as well as gender, have necessarily become prominent. Griselda Pollock goes on to explore the place of feminist art in the context of post-modern culture, arguing that feminism is one of the most important and radical interventions in both modernism and post-modernism. --back cover. (shrink)

In her excellent "Feminist Art History and De Facto Significance," for example, aesthetician Susan L. Feagin explains how her initial skepticism about Continental approaches-especially those drawing on Foucault, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, and "even Derrida and poststructuralist literary theory" - gave way to an appreciation of how these approaches encourage, in a way analytic aesthetics does not, "the trenchant analyses and acute observations that have emerged from feminist art historians" (305). And, indeed, although she goes on to suggest how traditional aesthetics (...) might accommodate feminist and other politically informed analyses, she cautions that "it is too easy to miss the most innovative aspects of another's view if one tries to understand it only in terms of one's own theoretical perspective" (305). (from review by Sally Markowitz, Hypatia Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer, 1996), pp. 169-172). (shrink)

We refine a line of feminist criticism of pornography that focuses on pornographic works' pernicious effects. A.W. Eaton argues that inegalitarian pornography should be criticized because it is responsible for its consumers’ adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in the same way that other fictions are responsible for changes in their consumers’ attitudes. We argue that her argument can be improved with the recognition that different fictions can have different modes of persuasion. This is true of film and television: a (...) satirical movie such as Dr. Strangelove does not morally educate in the same way as a realistic series such as The Wire. We argue that this is also true of pornography: inegalitarian depictions of sex are not invariably responsible for consumers' adoption of inegalitarian attitudes toward sex in reality. Given that pornographic works of different genres may harm in different ways, different feminist criticisms are appropriate for different genres of pornography. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article retrace les changements multiples et rapides apparus au cours des quinze dernières années dans la théorisation des rapports entre sexe et genre. Il porte, en deuxième lieu, sur la réception, l’application et par-dessus tout la modification de ces théories par certains spécialistes de la production culturelle dans l’Europe médiévale, où la différence s’exprime sous des formes variées qui n’existent pas nécessairement dans les sociétés modernes. La déconstruction du système binaire masculin/féminin (qu’il soit considéré comme une différence sexuelle (...) ou de genre) fit son apparition parmi les penseuses féministes dans les années quatre-vingt dix et aboutit à la « queerisation » des discours universitaires en déstabilisant les étiquettes qui avaient été naturalisées, notamment l’identité genrée systématiquement attribuée à l’individu dans la société médiévale ou moderne. Nous montrerons que les théories queer et post-coloniale, loin d’être aux antipodes de la théorie féministe, en émanent et existent parallèlement à elle. Les partisans de chacune de ces théories s’intéressent aux forces sociétales, y compris notre propre discours, qui maintiennent la différence et créent des communautés d’oppression. Cependant, il est également nécessaire de soulever une question, à savoir quand se produira la prochaine rupture radicale et comment elle engendrera de nouvelles théories. (shrink)

Henrik Ibsen, the 'Father of Modern Drama', came from a seemingly inauspicious background. What are the key contexts for understanding his appearance on the world stage? This collection provides thirty contributions from leading scholars in theatre studies, literary studies, book history, philosophy, music, and history, offering a rich interdisciplinary understanding of Ibsen's work, with chapters ranging across cultural and aesthetic contexts including feminism, scientific discovery, genre, publishing, music, and the visual arts. The book ends by charting Ibsen's ongoing globalization and (...) gives valuable overviews of major trends within Ibsen studies. Accessibly written, while drawing on the most recent scholarship, Ibsen in Context provides unique access to Ibsen the man, his works, and their afterlives across the world. (shrink)

This article examines an experimental genre of philosophical writing known as the Denkbild (‘thought-image’) practiced by members of the Frankfurt School to show how it is resurrected in the Augmented Reality installation of the artist-scholar Caitlin Fisher. It argues that Circle (2012) renews the Frankfurt School’s project of reaching to art to find a way for critical theory to bring about ‘a transformation of consciousness that could become a transformation of reality’. However, as a material and virtual artifact that produces (...) a unique circuit of exchange, the digital artwork is able to provide a sharper picture of that reality, positing community as the context and goal of philosophical thinking. Through a complex sculpting of its form, content, and image of its own thoughts, Fisher’s Denkbild strives to create a fluid, ‘disconnected and non-binding’ form capable of building what Adorno described as a ‘shared philosophy from the standpoint of subjective experience’. (shrink)

La question identitaire est un enjeu discret, mais persistant des littératures africaines coloniales et postcoloniales. C’est elle que Lumières de Pointe-Noire d’Alain Mabanckou voudrait interroger à travers les nombreuses stratégies scripturales qu’elle met en jeu. Cette œuvre littéraire caractérisée par l’intergénéricité et l’interartialité apparaît comme un roman n’zassa, ce type d’écrit qui rassemble harmonieusement des genres littéraires et des arts aux formes, poétiques et fonctions différentes. Par cette pratique littéraire de la polyphonie générique et artiale, ce roman traduit, en réalité, (...) le cosmopolitisme de son auteur et, par extension, celui des Africains du continent et de la diaspora, une identité qui fluctue entre afropolitanisme et afropéanisme. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l’évolution des relations entre civils et militaires dans l’Allemagne contemporaine, en centrant l’attention sur le service militaire. Introduit en 1814 et maintenu depuis (après de courtes périodes d’interruption en 1919-1935 et en 1945-1956), il est considéré comme l’un des principaux éléments qui structure l’organisation du pouvoir militaire et la société civile. Tout en orientant la représentation de la citoyenneté qu’il légitime, il a un impact sur les relations de genre. Jouant un rôle d’intégration au même titre que (...) d’exclusion, son sens a évolué selon les valeurs que la société a accordé à la force militaire. (shrink)

Griselda Pollock provides concrete historical analyses of key moments in the formation of modern culture to reveal the sexual politics at the heart of modernist art, exploring the writings of Elizabeth Siddall, Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot.

Dans ce texte, je suggère que les personnes souffrant d’anorexie mentale s’infligent une forme particulière de violence épistémique lorsqu’elles ignorent volontairement les symptômes de leur maladie. Pour ce faire, dans une démarche inspirée par celle de Havi Carel, je présente d’abord le rapport particulier qu’entretiennent les personnes souffrant d’anorexie avec leur corps, et ce, à l’aide de trois axes d’analyse empruntés à Susan Bordo, soit le dualisme Corps/Esprit, les idéaux de contrôle et d’autonomie, et les rapports de genre. Je propose (...) ensuite le concept de violence épistémique auto-infligée en montrant que l’ignorance volontaire de la faim a pour objectif de préserver l’identité des personnes vivant avec cette maladie comme autonomes et en contrôle, autrement dit comme n’étant pas « malades ». (shrink)

In this major book, Griselda Pollock engages boldly in the culture wars over `what is the canon?` and `what difference can feminism make?` Do we simply reject the all-male line-up and satisfy our need for ideal egos with an all women litany of artistic heroines? Or is the question a chance to resist the phallocentric binary and allow the ambiguities and complexities of desire - subjectivity and sexuality - to shape the readings of art that constantly displace the present gender (...) demarcations? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 147 Eric Andrew James The Representational Necropolitics of Black Women in Zombie Dystopia Video Games Though Stuart Hall defends popular representation as an important terrain of political struggle, he also argues that images of difference are dominated by “racialized regimes of representation” manifest in stereotypes and invisibilities.1 These ensure that marginal identities are reduced, essentialized, and rendered other. (...) One of the most powerful tools for this form of silencing in the popular representation repertoire is the notion of an established genre. In US popular culture, creators and critics alike often position people who experience multiple layers of oppression as constitutively outside the expectations of existing genres. Their absence is attributable not simply to creator racism but also to that genre’s relationships to intersecting categories of difference and domination, such as race and gender. Beginning with the preponderance of representational violence in popular media, this article draws from existing work by feminists of color in order to model a critique of US representational precarity. To illustrate the political tensions in popular US culture, I stage my intervention into a medium whose industry has had particularly fraught struggles with representation: video gaming. There, I focus specifically on 1. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the Other,” in Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader, ed. Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor, and Simeon J. Yates. (London: Sage, 2001), 325–44. 148 Eric Andrew James recent attempts to represent Black women, whom the gaming industry has held up as emblematic of difference and diversity. 2 These attempts are marred by predictable disasters and pitfalls. In particular, I discuss how the representational politics of Black women in popular zombie dystopia games repeats a similar violence as the previous silencing of Black women in these spaces. The gaming industry’s struggles with representation in the wake of Gamergate are demonstrative of broader tensions in Black women’s representation in popular media. Thus, while I am focused on video games, I also intend this analysis to reflect on feminist studies of the relationship between genre and representation. I advance existing scholarship on video game representations of Blackness by theorizing violence enacted at the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in game genres. Specifically, I position this intervention as a point of departure from TreaAndrea M. Russworm’s chapter in Gaming Representation: “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us.”3 This chapter provides a compelling critique of the relationship between the dystopian game genre and Black representation, highlighting the lack of self-reflexivity in mass-market representations of Blackness. Expanding this project by taking another look at her objects of study—The Last of Us (2013– 2014) and Telltale’s The Walking Dead (2012)—I argue that taking Black women’s multiple jeopardy as foundational to the zombie dystopia genre offers a deeper look at the grammars of representational violence. My use of multiple jeopardy refers to Deborah K. King’s theorization of how multiple layers of oppression exponentially multiply individual disadvantages. As King describes, “The modifier ‘multiple’ refers not only to several, simultaneous oppressions but to the multiplicative 2. AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, “Representation Matters: Positive Portrayals of Black Women in Video Games,” Medium, February 28, 2017, https:// medium.com/legendary-women/representation-matters-positive-portrayals -of-black-women-in-video-games-c96cf9f66fdf; Jef Rouner, “Would You Believe There Have Been Only 14 Playable Black Women in Gaming?” Houston Press, June 5, 2015, https://www.houstonpress.com/arts/would-you-believethere -have-been-only-14-playable-black-women-in-gaming-7484017. 3. TreaAndrea M. Russworm, “Dystopian Blackness and the Limits of Racial Empathy in The Walking Dead and The Last of Us,” Gaming Representation: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Video Games, ed. Jennifer Malkowski and TreaAndrea M. Russworm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), 109–28. Eric Andrew James 149 relationships among them as well.”4 These layers of oppression are often contradictory and may leave no avenues for action; the expectations placed on one for their race become impossible to fulfill because of the contradictory expectations placed on them for their gender or sexuality. This multiple jeopardy thus introduces... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:From Children's Perspectives:A Model of Aesthetic Processing in TheatreJeanne Klein (bio)Since the children's theatre movement began, producers have sought to create artistic theatre experiences that best correspond to the adult-constructed aesthetic "needs" of young audiences by categorizing common differences according to age groups. For decades, directors simply chose plays on the basis of dramatic genres (e.g., fairy tales), as defined by children's presupposed interests or "tastes," by subscribing to (...) Winifred Ward's broad descriptions of the "imaginative period" (ages six to nine), the "heroic period" (ages nine to twelve), and the "romantic period" (over age thirteen).1 Years later, Moses Goldberg elaborated upon these generalized divisions while cautioning that "no individual fits exactly into any set of categories."2 In his position paper on aesthetic development, he argued for individual access to aesthetic techniques, processes, and products for all ages, paralleled by four stages of cognitive capabilities, based on exposure to (1) arena-style participation theatre (for ages five to eight), which emphasizes story enactments; (2) a wide range of proscenium-style theatrical conventions; (3) relevant play content that directly relates characters' problems to spectators' lives and growing self-awareness; and (4) social issue plays that pose ethical dilemmas as cultural reflections.3 Meanwhile, Jed Davis compiled Age Group Profiles, organized by cognitive, spatial, emotional, and moral/ethical development, from his review of Piagetian literature; and Johnny Saldaña summarized stages of young interpretations of theatre from his seven-year longitudinal study.4Suffice it to say, the field of developmental psychology has come a long way since Piaget formulated his four constructivist stages. Since the mid-1950s, the cognitive revolution has spurred more integrated theories of information processing and depth-of-processing models that explain and predict how people construct schematic frameworks of knowledge and [End Page 40] assimilate and accommodate new information as a function of perception, attention, emotion, comprehension, memory, and social and moral behaviors. Although masculinist metaphors of hierarchical "staircases" and linear networks of associative learning still dominate computational models, feminist perspectives, which engender social cognitive, co-relational negotiations of narratives in situated contexts, have gained more widespread acceptance—by including theatre as an apt metaphor for development.5 Over the past twenty years or more, cognitive psychologists have finally discovered what dramatic theorists have known about narrative structures since Aristotle's Poetics: Powerful stories contain universal themes about the human condition through characters' conflicting actions. The most successful dramas are those that allow spectators to enter into a protagonist's psychological consciousness or "inner" vision in order to empathize with her "outer" reality.6While several developmental models of aesthetic understanding, experience, and appreciation exist in the realms of visual art and music education, few examples have been proposed in regard to theatre, particularly for child audiences.7 Instead, producers of Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) tend to romanticize its social and moral "effects" upon youth by believing passionately that viewing one remarkable performance has the potential (the operative word) to "cause" positive, social changes in children's minds, hearts, and behaviors, given the presumed "power of human imagination."8 This obsession with progressive change foregrounds adults' desires to control human destiny by predicting "causes and effects" located in children's responses to live performances. However, this "folk theory" fails to explain how young imaginations actually function aesthetically from the contextual evidence of reception studies with child audiences. Just as feminists have argued for a distinctive "feminist aesthetics," based on women's alternative ways of knowing,9 I argue that children gaze upon theatre in differential ways by including age as a variable factor. "Children's aesthetics," their perceived interpretations of theatre, differ from that of adults' theorized postulations, based in part on their shorter life experiences with this medium. To this end, over the course of my career, I have sought to understand theatre from children's perspectives by focusing my research in the social cognitive theories and social science methods of child development, primarily through the vast literature of television and mass media studies conducted with young people over the past forty years. In particular, medium-specific studies that parse theatrical forms from dramatic content... (shrink)

Long recognized as one of the main branches of political science, political theory has in recent years burgeoned in many different directions. Close textual analysis of historical texts sits alongside more analytical work on the nature and normative grounds of political values. Continental and post-modern influences jostle with ones from economics, history, sociology, and the law. Feminist concerns with embodiment make us look at old problems in new ways, and challenges of new technologies open whole new vistas for political theory. (...) This Handbook provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the lively and contested field of political theory, and will help set the agenda for the field for years to come. Forty-five chapters by distinguished political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. They examine political theory's edges as well as its core, the globalizing context of the field, and the challenges presented by social, economic, and technological changes."This is a unique and impressive set of analyses about scholarship in political theory. It is comprehensive, as we would expect. Beyond that, it is remarkably creative in the way that Dryzek, Honig and Phillips have organized categories, and it includes much overdue reference to scholarship on non-Western and postcolonial thought."-Iris Marion Young, Late Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago"This extraordinary series offers 'state of the art' assessments that instruct, engage, and provoke. Both synoptic and directive, the fine essays across these superbly edited volumes reflect the ambitions and diversity of political science. No one who is immersed in the discipline's controversies and possibilities should miss the intellectual stimulation and critical appraisal these works so powerfully provide."-Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia UniversityJohn S. Dryzek is Professor of Social and Political Theory at Australian National University.Bonnie Honig is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.Anne Phillips is Professor of Gender Theory at the London School of Economics.Introduction, John S Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne PhilipsI. CONTEMPORARY CURRENTS1. Justice After Rawls, Richard Arneson2. Power After Foucault, Wendy Brown3. Critical Theory Beyond Habermas, William E Scheuerman4. Feminist Theory and the Canon of Political Thought, Linda Zerilli5. After the Linguistic Turn: Poststructuralist and Liberal Pragmatist Political Theory, Paul Patton6. The Pluralist Imagination, David SchlosbergII. THE LEGACY OF THE PAST7. Theory in History: Problems of Context and Narrative, J G A Pocock8. The Political Theory of Classical Greece, Jill Frank9. Republican Visions, Eric Nelson10. Modernity and its Critics, Jane Bennett11. The History of Political Thought, as Disciplinary Genre, James FarrIII. POLITICAL THEORY IN THE WORLD12. The Challenge of European Union, Richarad Bellamy13. East Asia and the West: The Impact of Confucianism on Anglo-American Political Thought, Daniel A Bell14. In the Beginning all the World was America: American Exceptionalism in New Contexts, Ronald J Schmidt Jr15. Changing Interpretations of Modern and Contemporary Islamic Political Theory, Roxanne L EubenIV. STATE AND PEOPLE16. Constitutionalism and the Rule of Law, Shannon Stimson17. Emergency Powers, John Ferejohn and Pasquale Pasquino18. The People, Margaret Canovan19. Civil Society and State, Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein20. Democracy and the State, Mark E Warren21. Democracy and Citize. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 243-258 [Access article in PDF] Poaching on Men's Philosophies of Rhetoric: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Theory by Women Jane Donawerth Although their discussions have often been ignored in histories of rhetoric, women did participate in the development of philosophies of rhetoric in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century. 1 Most, like Hannah More, left to men preaching, politics, and law (the traditional genres of (...) European rhetoric) and took as their territory conversation and letter writing (more domestic rhetorical forms). 2 But some "poached" on men's territory. In this essay, I examine the tactics that Maria Edgeworth, Eliza Farrar, and Frances Willard used to appropriate and respond to a tradition of rhetoric that by fiat excluded women from rhetorical education, public speaking, and persuasive writing. In order to analyze their poaching on men's territory, I borrow from Michel de Certeau's theory of everyday practices of consumption.In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), de Certeau suggests that we should study the ways that culture is constituted not only by dominant ideology, but also by "the dominated element in society (a status that does not mean that they are either passive or docile)" (xi-xii). Culture, for de Certeau, is not simply consumed; rather, in everyday life, it is invented "by poaching in countless ways on the property of others" (xii). One must study not just consumers, but also how they consume, what they do and make with the cultural artifacts and constructs offered to them, how they manipulate ideology. For the weak, those lacking political power, de Certeau, like recent feminists, 3 claims sophistic rhetoric, since the Sophists privileged the art of making "the weak position seem the stronger" (xx). How do "users reappropriate the space organized by techniques of sociocultural production?" asks de Certeau (xvii). For the weak, as for the Sophist, "[a] tactic insinuates itself into the other's place, fragmentarily, without taking it over in its entirety, without being able to keep it at a distance" (xix). With these issues in play, de Certeau studies everyday practices--shopping, cooking, moving about, and, most important for our purposes, reading. [End Page 243]Although seemingly passive, reading, de Certeau points out, is an "activity" of "silent production" (xxi). The reader does not absorb what he or she reads, but, instead, reinvents it--misunderstands it, adapts it to his or her own interests and concerns, remembers pieces of it, but pieces mutated. "This mutation makes the text habitable" (xxi), argues de Certeau. Thus, the dominant in culture may offer a set of rules, but it is only a basis for improvisation for the multitude of others in society. Consumption is not the imposition of an ideology on a society; a group does not absorb what it consumes. Instead, the group makes what it consumes its own. "'Assimilating' does not mean 'becoming similar to,'" according to de Certeau; rather, it means "'making something similar'" (166). A reader is not, then, a passive consumer. A reader "wander[s] through an imposed system," modifying and inventing a meaning (169). De Certeau thus focuses on the reading practices of the many "others" of society, "the silent, transgressive, ironic or poetic activity of readers... in private" (172). Readers do not absorb what they read. They are "travelers" who move across and "poach" from the "fields" of others' writings (174).With this essay, I examine the ways in which three women poach on men's rhetorical theory. Maria Edgeworth uses parody, comically enlarging key words in Enlightenment rhetoric to make a place for women in it. She reinvents the demonic shrew as a clever sophistic rhetorician. Eliza Farrar uses performance: she places women in the role of disciple, admiring the great men who thought up rhetoric, but then taking over the role of rhetorician with the pretense of laudatory imitation. Frances Willard uses collage: she cuts and pastes her own and other women's ideas about women preaching in with those of the famous men of her society. She creates a republican, presbyterian... (shrink)

This article analyzes selected short stories in Cecelia Ahern’s thirty-narrative collection Roar to see how the perspectives of posthuman and postfeminist critique can be incorporated via the common dystopic umbrella into the mainstream female readership of romance literature. The dystopic worlds created by Ahern in Roar portray inequality and power imbalances with regard to gender and sex. The protagonists are mostly middle-aged women whose family and personal lives are either regulated by dystopic realities or acquire a “dystopic” dimension, the solutions (...) to which are provided by, among other tropes, “posthuman” transformations. Roar introduces other-than-human elements, mostly corporeal alterations, in which the female bodies of Ahern’s characters become de-formed and re-formed beyond androcentric systems of value. The article raises the question of whether feminist and, to some extent, “posthuman” approaches, need to be popularized in such an abridged way as Ahern does in her volume. The answer depends upon the identification of the target audience and their expectations. Ahern’s Roar represents popular literature intended to be sold to as many readers as possible, regardless of their education, state of knowledge, etc. Viewed from that perspective, what some critics could perceive as the collection’s structural weaknesses constitutes its utmost marketing asset. The essay argues that despite not being a structurally innovative work of art, Ahern’s book fulfils the basic requirements of the popular fiction genre, intermittently providing some extra, literary gratification and popularizing rudimentary elements of the posthuman and postfeminist thought. (shrink)