An original point of view on a double controversy which arose during the French Revolution: resistance to the citizenship of women, and a refusal to recognize women as artists. Read More
All women are citizens; some are also artists. Are female citizens and artists the equal of their male counterparts? Of course. Are they equally concerned by politics and art? Naturally.
But when the French Revolution ushered in the democratic era these statements were the source of debate and controversy: many men – who were in no way reactionary – argued at the time that women belonged at home with their families, not out in the city; that they were muses rather than creative geniuses. Two hundred years later, the same discussions continue. This book looks at the consequences of this key moment. It provides an account of the ongoing work which demonstrates this equality, in an 'exclusive democracy' in which everyone – and thus every woman – may theoretically be seen as an individual, a subject, a citizen, a creator.
From Poulain de la Barre, a seventeenth-century philosopher, to the contemporary thinker Jacques Rancière, and including Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, the texts collected here demonstrate the extent to which these questions are crucial for modernity: questions of the right to artistic enjoyment, of subversive strategies, of how far women have been emancipated, and of feminism as disruption to Western tradition.
Introduction / TOUTES ET CHACUNE
PARTIE I - POUR TOUTES
Chapitre 1 / POULAIN DE LA BARRE, UN LOGICIEN DE L'ÉGALITÉ
TEMPS DU PRÉJUGÉ ET SEXE DE L'ESPRIT
Chapitre 2 / ROUSSEAU, ET LES « MOITIÉS » DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE
Chapitre 3 / VOIR ET SAVOIR LA CONTRADICTION DES ÉGALITÉS
Chapitre 4 / ÉMANCIPATION VERSUS DOMINATION
LECTURE DE JACQUES RANCIÈRE
Chapitre 5 / LA COMMUNE MESURE : LE MLF A 40ANS
PARTIE II - POUR CHACUNE
Chapitre 6 / LE DÉRÈGLEMENT DES REPRÉSENTATIONS
Chapitre 7 / LA SCULPTRICE À L'OEUVRE AU XIXe SIÈCLE (EXTRAIT)
Chapitre 8 / CAUSER OU BAVARDER, À DEUX ET À PLUSIEURS, À PROPOS D'UN TABLEAU DE VUILLARD
Chapitre 9 / SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR : ÉTUDE, SOUFFRANCE, JOUISSANCE
Chapitre 10 / SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, SIMONE WEIL, SIMONE FRAISSE
LE TEMPS HISTORIQUE DE LA PENSÉE DES FEMMES
Chapitre 11 / CONVERSATION ENTRE MARWA ARSANIOS ET GENEVIÈVE FRAISSE