Sumários
1 Março 2023, 14:00
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Chiara Nifosi
Today we concluded our discussion on the "Parité" movement by analyzing the philosophical argumentation used by militants to express the urgency of granting women equal access to political power. We read a short quote from E. Sledziewski and an excerpt from J. Scott, who elaborate on the idea of separating gender constructs from the bare anatomic difference between men and women, in order to reintroduce this difference in the characterization of the abstract individual protected by the Constitution of 1958. This necessity is based on the assumption that the lack of gender specification turns out to favor the male subject at the expenses of the female one, excluded from the basic rights.
After that, we introduced the figure of Virginie Despentes and the third feminist wave, with which she has in common the interest in intersectionality and the reconceptualization of femininity as plural and hybrid. Finally, we discussed some excerpts from "King Kong Théorie" (2006) and we introduced the #metoo movement (to be continued next week).
27 Fevereiro 2023, 14:00
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Chiara Nifosi
Before introducing a new topic, we summarized the content of the previous class on "Les Années" (metaliterariness of Ernaux' writing, self-perception and writing, relativity of the notion of time / shifting perceptions of time).
This week we have been discussing the evolution of feminism in the late 20th century. We considered in particular the relationship between feminism and the institutions, which we divided in three phases:
- 1970s: creation of an alternative political sphere situated outside the institutional sites.
- late 70s and early 80s: transitional period where reformists (e.g. Choisir, G. Halimi) undertake the attempt to establish a productive dialogue with the institutions.
- 1980s: the creation of the "Ministère des droits de la femme" under Mitterrand inaugurated a new "féminisme d'état", which marks the active participation of feminist militants in the institutions.
After that, we discussed the main objectives of the feminist movement "Parité", whose pressure will lead to the constitutional law of 1999 and the electoral law of 2000, granting women the 50% of the spots available in the electoral lists. Finally, we discussed the pros and cons of quotas as a means to achieve gender equality.
22 Fevereiro 2023, 14:00
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Chiara Nifosi
This was our last class on Les Années, by Annie Ernaux.
After summarizing the main topics treated last week, we watched the trailer of the movie "Les Années Super-8", by Annie Ernaux herself and David Ernaux-Briot, which came out last fall (here's the link to the trailer with subtitles in Portuguese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2st5QPWR7o).
After that, we commented a few more passages from the novel. We focused on two main topics, the first one is "la femme-fantôme" and the second one is the meta-literary dimension that Ernaux introduces in her writing, especially in the second part of the book. As for the first topic, we reflected on self-perception and self-representation in time, especially in relation to the female subject at the center of this narrative. While a sense of alienation towards past selves is more immediate to grasp, we tried to articulate the subject's inability to project into the future, and we extended this impossibility to a collective subject that goes beyond the narrator and includes women in general.
Finally, through more and more frequent meta-literary comments, the narrative voice describes her attempts to put some order in this fragmented self-perception through spatial images (horizontality vs. verticality), which stand for the linear course of History that needs to be integrated with personal experience (i.e., the meaningful presence of the subject in specific moments in time).
15 Fevereiro 2023, 14:00
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Chiara Nifosi
Today, we continued our discussion on Annie Ernaux’ Les Années. We started our conversation reflecting once again on the topics of pregnancy and abortion (different conditions depending on economic resources, the double time of women’s life – the common time of existence and the time ruled by the menstrual cycle).
After that, we analyzed a few passages drawn from the section on the May 68 protests. I showed some posters taken from the website BNF – Esprit(s) de 68 (http://expositions.bnf.fr/mai68/index.htm). We saw that women’s demands were part of a variety of demands whose nature is sometimes very different from one another (anticapitalism, anti-imperialism, proletarian cause, students’ protests, freedom of speech, biased press and media, psychiatric facilities, etc.).
Finally, we reflected on the interplay between individual and collective memory. With time, individual memory tends to transform from romantic/nostalgic into a critical memory that scrutinizes the past. Similarly, the collective memory shared by women enacts a critical reassessment of feminism in light of rights sanctioned by the law. Nevertheless, while feminism tends to be perceived as useless, if not detrimental to the women’s cause, the narrative voice highlights the lack of cultural change that should have accompanied reforms: women are freer, but do not know how to use their freedom without serving someone else’s purpose.
13 Fevereiro 2023, 14:00
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Chiara Nifosi
During this class, we continued our discussion on Annie Ernaux’ book Les Années. In the first part, we summarized the main topics of conversation dealt with in the last class (referential shift in the use of pronouns, the use of photographs, written description vs. including actual photographs, the incorporation of multiple voices in the narrative).
After that, we focused on some specific passages that deal with the women’s condition, namely passages about ideas of insecurity and dependence associated with self-perception and body image, feelings of shame, frustration, fear associated with sexuality. The novel highlights how social pressure and control over the body and sexuality end up nurturing fear of the female body as the possible source of an “accident” (an unwanted pregnancy). Finally, we mentioned education as one of the possible ways to cope with the condition of being a woman.
During our discussion, we also read some excerpts drawn from Bourdieu’s book La Domination masculine (the PDF is available in the Google Drive).