In the feminine: women and words/les femmes et les mots. Conference proceedings 1983 ed. by Ann Dybikowski et al. (review)

HUMANITIES 20 I forme du signifiant desobeissant aux lois. Cependant Ie travail d'application de la semanalyse annoncee au depart se retrouve ponctualisme de notions telles que semiatique, chara, thttique parsemees au long de sa lecture (e.g. 'Les hommes du Sens apparent, les absents, ne sont pas habites par la chora: p 100) dans une metaphorisation des terms d'un meta-discours qui devient par lit-meme metonymie, prolongement des textes Ius. Comprehensible passion de la feministe lisant une feministe dans cette appartenance retrouvee dans Ie naus de la solidarite complice, mais inutile legitimation de son dire par ce nom de Kristeva, comme mere patriarcale reificatrice (role qui est pourtant denonce). Un jeu d'amorces (refus de la specularite dominante du lieu de la critique) signifiees dans une metaphoricite souvent douloureuse (on dechire, on creve, on defigure) d'une violence de l'ecriture decele la violence mirnee des thematiques brossardienne et surtout theoretienne. L'ecriture de Renee-Berthe Drapeau pose certaines difficultes it la lectrice qui est presupposee feministe et theoricienne (de nombreuses notions sont tenues pour acquises, des mentions sont faites, sans definition, du schema actantiel greimassien , du thetique kristevien .. . ). Quelque part la lecture de Feminins singuliers est frustrante. Peut-etre ne s'agit-il que de cette agressiviM du dire it chaque ligne qui parfois provoque des raccourcis temeraires dans ses articulations argumentatives. Faut-illire Ftminins singuliers comme une repanse it ce qui serait des lettres d'insubordinatian envoyees par Nicole Brossard et France Theoretet reconnues comme telles par un engagement dans la passion langagiere de la critique qui ne critique plus mais qui tombe en amour? Apres tout, dit France Theoret (citee P 52), 'll faut avoir confiance en I'imagination theorique.' (ANNE-MARIE PICARD) in the feminine: women and wordslles femmes et les mots. Conference proceedings 1983. Edited by Ann Dybikowski et al Longspoon Press 1985. 235. $9.50 paper In her essay 'Memories of a Working Woman's Guild: Virginia Woolf admits to only a 'thin-spread and moon-coloured' interest in the socioeconomic and political issues raised by the women's movement. Her active sympathy for or identification with women who share neither her class nor tastes is at best 'altruistic' - even, she concludes, hypocritical. 'One could not be Mrs. Giles because one's body had not stood at the wash-tub; one's hands had never wrung and scrubbed and chopped up whatever the meat may be that makes a miner's dinner. One sat in an armchair or read a book.' The conflict of interests so honestly recorded by Woolf is still a problematic element in feminism, as this collection of proceedings from the 202 LEITERS IN CANADA 1986 1983 Conference on Women and Words makes clear. Indeed, the great strength of in the feminine lies in its accommodation of radically divergent points of view, its willingness to draw attention to such issues as the exclusion or marginalization of particular voices within the feminist movement. The range of discourse recorded here comprehends the justifiably acerbic comments of native and black women on immediate political and social problems as well as the theoretical deliberations of literary critics and translators. Topics range from the pragmatic experience of women who have successfully combined the raising of children with the writing of books (confounding Nietzsche's dictum, aut liberi, aut libri) to the musing of poets on how to remake the world through the feminizing of language itself. Given that one of the central projects of feminism is to reject traditional polarities in order to articulate, even celebrate, 'difference' or 'otherness: in the feminine succeeds remarkably well. Yet, as the editors of this volume are quick to point out, 'special emphasis' is given to papers dealing with feminist theories of language; with those speakers who, as the editors put it, 'bring the news from Quebec' (p 10). In fact, the welcome inclusion offrancophone participants in the Women and Words Conference points to another area of 'difference ,' if not discord, among Canadian feminists. Thus the reader encounters papers structured on what we might call 'anglophone' principles of ratiocination - Andrea Lebowitz's 'The Danger of Creating another Literati ' is a case in point - but she is also...