Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics and Culture in France, 1981-2001 ed. by Roger Célestin, Eliane Dalmolin, and Isabelle de Courtivron (review)

130Women in French Studies Reviews History, Culture, Language Roger Célestin, Eliane Dalmolin, and Isabelle de Colrtivron, Eds. Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics and Culture in France, 1981-2001. New York-Houndmills, England: palgrave MacMillan, 2003. Pp. 342. ISBN: 0-312-24019-8. (Cloth) $79.95; ISBN: 0-312-24040-6. (Paper) $26.95. There is good news for those eager for an overview of current debates about women and gender in France. The fine essays in Beyond French Feminisms provide several interlocking frameworks in which to situate these issues: the differences between contemporary women's concerns and those ofthe 1970s "new French feminisms;" the varied social, political, and creative arenas in which French women are now active but whose discourses overlap ; and, the vexed relationship between the French and American women's movements, past and present. As the "Introduction" argues eloquently, from the Mitterrand years through the 2002 elections, a crisis in French identity (sparked by events surrounding immigration, racism, anti-Semitism, and economic decline) redefined cultural tensions: universalisme versus différentialisme or communautarisme became the discursive poles that organized discussions of "women's roles and representations" (12). Claiming these philosophical clashes crystallized around the parité debate of the 1990s, the editors look to contemporary women's literary and artistic production as well for evidence of fresh perspectives on sex, sexuality, and gender. The collection is structured around three themes: "Politics and Society"; "Arts and Literature"; and, "France-USA." The essays on parité (Agacinski, Sineau, Fauré, Fraisse) address the positive political and intellectual consequences of reconciling the Republican ideal ofthe abstract "human" with a recognition ofgender differences, and Fraisse in particular pushes for women's economic and domestic parité as well. Another piece looks at how the ethnic and national variables that now constitute France's "gendered mosaic" are destabilizing the concept ofa unified "Frenchness" (Rosello). Several articles examine sexuality from the angles of the symbolic violence "ingrained in women's bodies" (Bourdieu); the PaCS same-sex domestic partnership, which was opposed on "family" grounds but which can, paradoxically, use "universalist " arguments to reframe the notion oífiliation (Fassin); reproductive gains in abortion rights and the "morning-after" pill (Mossuz-Lavau); and, the sexual politics ofGay Pride parades, which erase "ordinary" women's bodies (Nahoum-Grappe). Finally, two essays explore the power of language as expressed through masculinized professional titles (Groult) and the verbal violence aimed at women politicians (Chiennes de Garde manifesto). Book Reviews1 3 1 Part Two is equally rich. If the 1990s fiction of Francophone women writers living in France is involved with transnational and bicultural issues (Cazenave); twenty-first century French women's novels focus on "raw" explorations ofthe body (Cusset); women's poetry is more than ever "out in the world" (Etienne); women's visual and performance art centers on "renegotiat[ing] the materiality and the boundaries of the body" (Chadwick, 112); and, theater engages with diverse forms of boundary transgression (Cixous), it is in film that French women have effected the most visible changes. By "hybridizing" genres, contesting artistic hierarchies, and opening up female roles (Sellier), and by portraying women who violently exercise their sexuality and subjectivity, as epitomized in the works ofCatherine Breillat (Gillain), women are defying cinematic conventions and "reappropriat[ing] a feminine realm in which soul and body are no longer split from one another" (Gillain, 240). All the essays in this section also provide excellent bibliographies and filmographies. Lastly, favorable (Badinter) and scathing (Scott) critiques of Mona Ozouf's controversial Les Mots des femmes, along with Ozouf's response, together with an analysis ofthe totalizing strategies that demonizeAmerican-style feminism as "Other" to "the construct of French internal coherence" underlying nationalist discourse (Mathy), point up trans-Atlantic ideological conflicts regarding the nature of feminist historical inquiry and relations between the sexes. The concluding (and longest) essay (Moses) probes the discrepancy between the narrow theoretical "French feminism" American academics— mostly literary critics drawn to philosophical and psychoanalytic inquiry—"constructed " in the 1970s and the full range of material and empirical problems French women were (and are) in reality struggling with. I have one quibble: the essays within each section are arranged alphabetically by author, with the result that...