Inventing "French Feminism:" A Critical History

French Feminism has little to do with feminism in France. While in the U.S. this now canonical body of work designates almost exclusively the work of three theorists—Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva—in France, these same thinkers are actually associated with the rejection of feminism. If some scholars have on this basis passionately denounced French Feminism as an American invention, there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of that invention or of its effects. Why did theorists who were at best marginal to feminist thought and political practice in France galvanize feminist scholars working in the United States? Why does French Feminism provoke such an intense affective response in France to this date? Drawing on the fields of feminist and queer studies, literary studies, and history, “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” offers a transnational account of the emergence and impact of one of U.S. academic feminism’s most influential bodies of work. The first half of the dissertation argues that, although French Feminism has now been dismissed for being biologically essentialist and falsely universal, feminists working in the U.S. academy of the 1980s, particularly feminist literary critics and postcolonial feminist critics, deployed the work of Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva to displace what they perceived as U.S. feminist literary criticism’s essentialist reliance on the biological sex of the author and to challenge U.S. academic feminism’s inattention to racial differences between women. French Feminism thus found traction among feminist scholars to the extent that it was perceived as addressing some of U.S. feminism’s most pressing political issues. The second half of the dissertation traces French feminist scholars’ vehement rejection of French Feminism to an affectively charged split in the French women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and shows that this split has resulted in an entrenched opposition between sexual difference and materialist feminism, an opposition that continues to structure French feminist debates to this day. “Inventing ‘French Feminism:’ A Critical History” ends by arguing that in so far as the U.S. invention of French Feminism has contributed to the emergence of U.S. queer theory, it has also impeded its uptake in France. Taken as a whole, this dissertation thus implicitly argues that the transnational circulation of ideas is simultaneously generative and disabling.

Un legado beauvoiriano : El trabajo doméstico en la perspectiva del feminismo materialista de Christine Delphy

En la década del 70, Christine Delphy presenta la perspectiva del feminismo materialista focalizándose en el trabajo doméstico no remunerado. El análisis de Delphy pone de manifiesto el legado del pensamiento de Beauvoir, puesto que retoma las críticas al marxismo clásico, en tanto que dicha teoría no explicita las condiciones de opresión y de explotación de las mujeres. Estos temas y su tratamiento desde el feminismo materialista los situamos en algunos estudios latinoamericanos. Nos referimos a la ocupación en el "servicio" y las tareas domésticas, y a la segregación que se produce entre las mujeres. Por último, ampliamos el marco de la recepción del pensamiento de Beauvoir, en particular la cuestión de las mujeres trabajadoras, a partir del análisis de Marcela Nari

Un legado beauvoiriano : El trabajo doméstico en la perspectiva del feminismo materialista de Christine Delphy

En la década del 70, Christine Delphy presenta la perspectiva del feminismo materialista focalizándose en el trabajo doméstico no remunerado. El análisis de Delphy pone de manifiesto el legado del pensamiento de Beauvoir, puesto que retoma las críticas al marxismo clásico, en tanto que dicha teoría no explicita las condiciones de opresión y de explotación de las mujeres. Estos temas y su tratamiento desde el feminismo materialista los situamos en algunos estudios latinoamericanos. Nos referimos a la ocupación en el "servicio" y las tareas domésticas, y a la segregación que se produce entre las mujeres. Por último, ampliamos el marco de la recepción del pensamiento de Beauvoir, en particular la cuestión de las mujeres trabajadoras, a partir del análisis de Marcela Nari

Un legado beauvoiriano : El trabajo doméstico en la perspectiva del feminismo materialista de Christine Delphy

En la década del 70, Christine Delphy presenta la perspectiva del feminismo materialista focalizándose en el trabajo doméstico no remunerado. El análisis de Delphy pone de manifiesto el legado del pensamiento de Beauvoir, puesto que retoma las críticas al marxismo clásico, en tanto que dicha teoría no explicita las condiciones de opresión y de explotación de las mujeres. Estos temas y su tratamiento desde el feminismo materialista los situamos en algunos estudios latinoamericanos. Nos referimos a la ocupación en el "servicio" y las tareas domésticas, y a la segregación que se produce entre las mujeres. Por último, ampliamos el marco de la recepción del pensamiento de Beauvoir, en particular la cuestión de las mujeres trabajadoras, a partir del análisis de Marcela Nari

The Transformative Potential of Feminist Critique in Consumer Research

Given the importance of gender in consumer research, one might expect feminist perspectives to be at the forefront of critical engagement with consumer behaviour theory. However, in recent years, feminist voices have been barely audible. This paper explores the value of, and insights offered by, feminist theories and feminist activism, and how feminist theory and practice has altered our understanding of gendered consumption. It then argues that postmodern and postfeminist perspectives have diluted feminism's transformative potential, leading to a critical impasse in marketing and consumer research. In conclusion, we suggest that feminist perspectives, notably materialist feminism, might open up fresh new possibilities for critique, and interesting and worthwhile areas for transformative research in consumer behaviour.

Postmodern Paralysis: The Critical Impasse in Feminist Perspectives on Consumers

Critical perspectives on theory play an important and valued role in disciplines across the academy. Feminist perspectives might be expected to be at or near the forefront of critical engagement with consumer behaviour theory, especially given the importance of gender in consumer research. Following a brief upsurge during the 1990s, critical feminist voices have been muted of late. This paper explores some reasons for this. It begins with a brief overview of research on gender and consumer behaviour and how insights from feminist theories and feminist activism began to alter our understanding of gendered consumption. It then discusses how postmodern and postfeminist perspectives have diluted feminism as a critique of gendered consumption. Finally, it argues that a return to materialist feminism would open up possibilities for new and more critical analyses of gendered consumption.

Rethinking Care Through Social Reproduction: Articulating Circuits of Migration

Care has come to dominate much feminist research on globalized migrations and the transfer of labor from the South to the North, while the older concept of reproduction had been pushed into the background but is now becoming the subject of debates on the commodification of care in the household and changes in welfare state policies. This article argues that we could achieve a better understanding of the different modalities and trajectories of care in the reproduction of individuals, families, and communities, both of migrant and nonmigrant populations by articulating the diverse circuits of migration, in particular that of labor and the family. In doing this, I go back to the earlier North American writing on racialized minorities and migrants and stratified social reproduction. I also explore insights from current Asian studies of gendered circuits of migration connecting labor and marriage migrations as well as the notion of global householding that highlights the gender politics of social reproduction operating within and beyond households in institutional and welfare architectures. In contrast to Asia, there has relatively been little exploration in European studies of the articulation of labor and family migrations through the lens of social reproduction. However, connecting the different types of migration enables us to achieve a more complex understanding of care trajectories and their contribution to social reproduction.

Rethinking Prostitution : feminism, sex and the self

Prostitution is a difficult issue, particularly for feminists. Are prostitutes victims of exploitation or the most honest of women? Are clients perverts or just acting instinctively? Should prostitution be eliminated or supported? This book examines these contemporary questions and offers a way of thinking about the issues, which does not rely on these inappropriate and often ineffectual options. Repositioning the institution and its main players outside the confines of the prostitution debate offers new and exciting ways of thinking and acting for all those interested in moving this discussion into the twenty-first century.

Does feminism spoil girls? Explanations for official rises in female delinquency

Official rates of female delinquency have been rising steadily in countries such as Australia, England, Canada and the United States since the 1960s. They have also generally been rising at a rate faster than that for boys. As yet there is little consensus about the reasons for these rises or even whether such rate rises reflect any real increase in female delinquency at all. Against this backdrop of rising official crimes rates for young women, this article revisits the various criminological explanations for these trends.

Book review: Leaky Bodies and Boundaries. Feminism, Post-modernism and (Bio)ethics. Shildrick, M. (1997)

This thoughtful book is a much needed contribution to feminist ethics that is brimming with detailed and insightful analyses of the positioning of women in contemporary health care and particularly in relation to new reproductive technologies (NRTs). The clearly written and structured chapters provide accessible points to modern ethics, post-modernism, and feminist ethics. Margrit Shildrick takes on these areas with authority and vigour, building an argument for women to enter the relations of reproduction on terms more expressive of feminine desire...