Shifting Scenes - (Gender and Culture) by Alice Jardine & Anne Menke (Paperback)

About the Book

This now classic work is the only definitive collection available of interviews with leading French women intellectuals.

Book Synopsis

Fifteen of the most important and influential women fiction writers, critics, and theorists writing in France today are interviewed in Shifting Scenes. Although their writing and attitudes differ in many ways, their work is perceived in the U.S. to constitute "French Feminism," and has a marked impact on American feminist theory.

Alice Jardine and Anne Menke interviewed Chantal Chawaf, Helene Cixous, Catherine Clement, Francoise Collin, Marguerite Duras, Claudine Herrmann, Jeanne Hyvrard, Luce Irigaray, Sarah Kofman, Julia Kristeva, Eugenie Lemoine-Luccioni, Marcelle Marini, Michele Montrelay, Christiane Rochefort, and Monique Wittig. The women were asked what it means to be a woman writer in France today and how each views her relations to her country's institutions, and the place of women writers in the canon. the answers are lively, unexpectedly argumentative, and diverse. What these highly accomplished women have to say about contemporary society, politics, literature, feminism, and their own work, will surprise, inform, and challenge.

From the Back Cover

'Two American feminist asked several French women intellectuals some American Questions; their answers provide a sparking and often startling account of the difference between the two cultures with regard to feminism, the university, and the canon.'

Review Quotes

"A lively informative picture of the diversity of opinion held by French "feminists" today.... a stimulating exchange of ideas between cultures as well as across discipline." -- "Review of Contemporary Fiction"

"A lively informative picture of the diversity of opinion held by French "feminists" today.... a stimulating exchange of ideas between cultures as well as across discipline." -- Review of Contemporary Fiction

"A lively informative picture of the diversity of opinion held by French "feminists" today.... a stimulating exchange of ideas between cultures as well as across discipline." -- "Review of Contemporary Fiction"

About the Author

Alice Jardine is the author of Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity. Anne Menke is the translator of Julia Kristeva's Language: The Unknown.