Women and Power in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures and Societies
9781837723669
Distributed for University of Wales Press
Women and Power in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures and Societies
Revisits issues of gender equality and feminism fifty years after revolutionary protests changed French society.
The women represented in this volume as both authors and protagonists exert power by resisting the social paradigms that govern how they “should” behave—by thwarting expectations of typical “feminine” conduct (whether in relation to female corporeality and sexuality) or by their (non)adherence to the institutions of marriage and motherhood. However, they also claim power by espousing more conventionally “feminine” roles, recuperating and revaluing those that entail caring and nurturing. They emphasize, in ways consistent with the growing body of feminist work on care relations, the positive, life-affirming potential that such roles embody. This volume focuses on women who, through smaller and larger acts of empowerment, seek to exert influence over their life choices. Its diverse contributions acknowledge the contextual, historical, and intersectional specificities governing every woman’s power to choose her own present and future, and the important role played by even incremental changes in contributing to a greater sense of personal independence and self-knowledge, without which there can be no meaningful political change.
The women represented in this volume as both authors and protagonists exert power by resisting the social paradigms that govern how they “should” behave—by thwarting expectations of typical “feminine” conduct (whether in relation to female corporeality and sexuality) or by their (non)adherence to the institutions of marriage and motherhood. However, they also claim power by espousing more conventionally “feminine” roles, recuperating and revaluing those that entail caring and nurturing. They emphasize, in ways consistent with the growing body of feminist work on care relations, the positive, life-affirming potential that such roles embody. This volume focuses on women who, through smaller and larger acts of empowerment, seek to exert influence over their life choices. Its diverse contributions acknowledge the contextual, historical, and intersectional specificities governing every woman’s power to choose her own present and future, and the important role played by even incremental changes in contributing to a greater sense of personal independence and self-knowledge, without which there can be no meaningful political change.
320 pages | 4 color plates, 7 halftones | 5.43 x 8.5 | © 2026
French and Francophone Studies
Political Science: Political Behavior and Public Opinion
Sociology: Social Change, Social Movements, Political Sociology
Women's Studies:
Table of Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Shirley Jordan and Siobhán McIlvanney
Part I. Contestatory Performances of Women’s Power
Chapter 1: Non-Motherhood: Power, Marginality and Un/Fulfilment in Inassouvies, nos vies (2008) by Fatou Diome.
Jasmine Cooper
Chapter 2: Female Bodily (Dis)Empowerment: Nelly Arcan’s Corps and Corpus
Polly Galis
Chapter 3: The Power of Queering a Relationship: Liane de Pougy and Natalie Clifford Barney
Rachael Stockdale
Part II. Francophone Empowerment Beyond the Hexagone
Chapter 4: Sex, Power and Violence in Théo Ananissoh’s Delikatessen (2017)
Antonia Wimbush
Chapter 5: Sexual Exploitation and Gendered Power Dynamics: Female Genital Mutilation in Adelle Barry’s ‘En attendant minuit’ (2015)
Maria Tomlinson
Chapter 6: Re-membering Narrative Power: The Myth of Marie Bashkirtsheff
Noëlle Brown Lively
Part III. The Transmediatic Power of Women
Chapter 7: Renegade Mothers in the Mamasphere: Exercising Maternal Power in Caroline Allard’s Les Chroniques d’une mère indigne
Julie Rodgers
Chapter 8: Feminist Fertilisation and the Power of the Menstrual Stain in Contemporary Bandes dessinées
Andrea Jonsson
Chapter 9: ‘My Hands are Made for Gold!’: Female Power, Spatial Dynamics and Genre in Houda Benyamina’s Divines (2016)
Ros Murray
Chapter 10: Women, Power and the Pandemic in France: Covid-19 from a Feminist Perspective
Shirley Jordan
Part IV: The Empowering Role of Narrative
Chapter 11: Framing Authorial Power: Claire Legendre and the Limits of (Auto)Fiction
Dawn Cornelio
Chapter 12: The Complexity of (Patriarchal) Power in Two Plays by Claire Legendre
Michèle A. Schaal
Chapter 13: Marie Ndiaye’s En famille: A Feminist Consciousness of Intersectional Power Relations in France
Alison Marmont
Chapter 14: The Architecture of Power in Recent French Care Home Narratives
Siobhán McIlvanney
Index
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Shirley Jordan and Siobhán McIlvanney
Part I. Contestatory Performances of Women’s Power
Chapter 1: Non-Motherhood: Power, Marginality and Un/Fulfilment in Inassouvies, nos vies (2008) by Fatou Diome.
Jasmine Cooper
Chapter 2: Female Bodily (Dis)Empowerment: Nelly Arcan’s Corps and Corpus
Polly Galis
Chapter 3: The Power of Queering a Relationship: Liane de Pougy and Natalie Clifford Barney
Rachael Stockdale
Part II. Francophone Empowerment Beyond the Hexagone
Chapter 4: Sex, Power and Violence in Théo Ananissoh’s Delikatessen (2017)
Antonia Wimbush
Chapter 5: Sexual Exploitation and Gendered Power Dynamics: Female Genital Mutilation in Adelle Barry’s ‘En attendant minuit’ (2015)
Maria Tomlinson
Chapter 6: Re-membering Narrative Power: The Myth of Marie Bashkirtsheff
Noëlle Brown Lively
Part III. The Transmediatic Power of Women
Chapter 7: Renegade Mothers in the Mamasphere: Exercising Maternal Power in Caroline Allard’s Les Chroniques d’une mère indigne
Julie Rodgers
Chapter 8: Feminist Fertilisation and the Power of the Menstrual Stain in Contemporary Bandes dessinées
Andrea Jonsson
Chapter 9: ‘My Hands are Made for Gold!’: Female Power, Spatial Dynamics and Genre in Houda Benyamina’s Divines (2016)
Ros Murray
Chapter 10: Women, Power and the Pandemic in France: Covid-19 from a Feminist Perspective
Shirley Jordan
Part IV: The Empowering Role of Narrative
Chapter 11: Framing Authorial Power: Claire Legendre and the Limits of (Auto)Fiction
Dawn Cornelio
Chapter 12: The Complexity of (Patriarchal) Power in Two Plays by Claire Legendre
Michèle A. Schaal
Chapter 13: Marie Ndiaye’s En famille: A Feminist Consciousness of Intersectional Power Relations in France
Alison Marmont
Chapter 14: The Architecture of Power in Recent French Care Home Narratives
Siobhán McIlvanney
Index