Description
Book SynopsisThis text proposes a different understanding of how gender relations were reformulated by both male and female writers in 19th-century France. It analyzes the different versions of gendered citizenship revealing a shift from single definition of citizenship to a double dialectical one.
Trade ReviewA fascinating and enlightening read. * Modern Language Review *
This book compellingly advances our understanding of the relation between gender and citizenship in French nineteenth-century contexts. As such, it represents a valuable contribution to any discourse seeking to de-naturalize sexual difference within modern cultures. * French Forum *
Gender and Citizenship brings together a number of important debates in feminist scholarship in interesting ways. . . . Moscovici helps us get beyond two poles which have too frequently sundered feminist theory: the pole represented by difference feminism that has worked to preserve what has been unique to women's situations and the pole represented by more integrationist models that has worked to overcome women's differences from men. -- Linda Nicholson, Susan E. and William P. Stiritiz Distinguished Professor of Women's Studies, Washington University, St. Louis
Although Claudia Moscovici does not discuss the parity movement in her insightful, new book, the 'paritaires' might be said to acknowledge what she calls 'the fundamental androgyny of the citizen-subject' and which is already in evidence in the nineteenth century. . . . Recognizing the self-contradictory nature of gender identity also allows us better to understand what feminist historian Joan Scott has labeled the 'paradoxical' positioning of women in relation to the public sphere—the very paradox that the paritaries in France are facing today. Their efforts to sex the universal and so double the individual represented by it would find theoretical support in Moscovici's examination of the emergence of a double dialectic. * Novel: A Forum On Fiction *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Acknowledgments Chapter 2 Introduction: The Dialectics of Subject-Citizenship Chapter 3 Theoretical Foundations: Doubling the Foundations Chapter 4 The Social Model of Citizenship: Comte'sA General View of Positivism Chapter 5 Gendered Spheres in Balzac'sLa Cousine Bette Chapter 6 Exemplary Androgyny in Sand'sIndiana Chapter 7 Gender Trouble in the Diary of Herculine Barbin: Unreading Foucault Chapter 8 Conclusion: Androgyny and the Chiasmic Economy of Sexual Difference Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 Index Chapter 11 About the Author
