In this seminar, we will approach “French theory” and “French feminism” at an oblique angle by studying their appropriations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Since those labels emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, controversies have dogged the writers and texts associated with them: critics have questioned the coherence of the terms, the intellectual rigour of authors so designated, and their very Frenchness. Yet many “French theorists/feminist” raised the latter issue themselves by interrogating the notion of national belonging in their lives and work. Scholars have also highlighted the ways in which their turn to Germanophone maîtres à penser (Freud, Heidegger, Marx, Nietzsche) effectively distanced them from French intellectual traditions. And of course, their greatest success came in the United States rather than France. On the other hand, Rousseau—despite his self-identification as a citizen of Geneva and his unrelenting criticism of France—has been given a central place in French intellectual history: indeed, has been literally Pantheonized. Reading the French theory/feminism corpora from the marginal place that Rousseau occupies in them, then, will afford us the opportunity to rethink how these writers position themselves within and against francophone philosophical and literary traditions. The class will end with a consideration of the conflicts caused by the reimportation of “French theory/feminism” from the United States into the French academic system.

Our work on these texts will be historicising. As such, our readings will be divided into three groups, broadly: (1) material by Rousseau; (2) French theory/feminist texts about or influenced by Rousseau; (3) historiographic treatments of French theory/feminism. This three-pronged method will allow us to reconstruct in part the intertextual and historical horizons in which these corpora emerged. Texts may be read in French or English (where translations or English versions exist); discussions in English.  Readings might include texts by Althusser, Césaire, Cixous, Derrida, Fanon, Foucault, Kofman, Lévi-Strauss, and Wittig, as well as Rousseau’s second Discours, the Essai sur l’origine des langues, and excerpts from other works (notably Du contrat social, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire and Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques).

Tentative list of required books

Most texts will be supplied through pdfs made available on bCourses and/or in a course reader.

Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme

Hélène Cixous, Les Rêveries de la femme sauvage

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes

—, Essai sur l’origine des langues

Monique Wittig et Sande Zeig, Brouillon pour un dictionnaire des amantes