Women intellectuals

pp. 10-29

in: Imogen Long, Women intellectuals in post-68 France, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

As some critics would have it, post-war women intellectuals remain rarities, existing in small numbers and whose work, by and large, is incompatible with canonical studies of the intellectual. In the light of such affirmations, this chapter therefore asks what it means to be an intellectual au féminin, in the process revealing the gendered nature of the phenomenon and goes on to elucidate the experiences of the women in this book, contextualising their work in relation to developments in feminism and wider political events before situating their work in relation to that of the more high-profile figures of Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. Sartrean and Foucauldian visions of the intellectual and their relationship to power, together with Bourdieusian analyses of cultural capital, will be considered in order to throw light on the evolution of the post-war intellectual in France and the implications of this for women. Gisèle Halimi, Françoise Giroud and Benoîte Groult and the other women to feature in this work are often thought of separately as writers, campaigners or activists but here it will be argued that they are more than this. The purpose here then is not merely to recount their interventions or simply to map their contributions in specific cases. Nor is the sole task to analyse their particular views on feminism, although this is of course inextricably linked to their actions; of greater concern is to analyse the phenomenon of the intellectual in relation to this particular group of women.