From: CPeebles-AT-aol.com
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 1996 11:16:24 -0400
Subject: Re: policing/Delphy & the invention of ff


Rebecca wrote:

"Once again I find I have to quibble with list-policing. I don't think 
it's up to any one member of the list to determine what is relevant to 
French feminism and what is not"

I don't think that my request was an attempt to unilaterally determine what
is relevent for the list. It was a request.
Further, she writes:

"My suggestion is that we be self-policing."

Was my request anything but an attempt at such self-policing? I agree with
Rebecca's suggestion that items be "flagged" so that those uninterested in
the zodiac, etc. can chose to ignore rather than open certain messages.
Rebecca concludes:

"Further, if we are finding that not enough postings are addressing 
issues that seem central to the list, we might start by contributing 
some."

As someone who has been contributing to the list for about a year, and who
has been disappointed with the level of discourse this summer, I agree.
Perhaps things always slow down over the summer months, when people are
either away, or busy working on texts and projects postponed during the
busier academic year. However, I think it only fair (on my part) to voice the
concern that new contributions might be less likely from people who come onto
the list thinking they may engage in some discussions relating to their
various interests around French feminisms and then observe that a discussion
of, for example, the zodiac is underway. At any rate, flagging our labels
seems a perfectly good solution. 

On another note, I wonder if anyone has read, in French or English, Christine
Delphy's essay "L'invention du 'French Feminism':  une demarche essentielle"
(*Nouvelles questions feministes* 1995, vol. 17, no. 1) ["The Invention of
French Feminism:  An Essential Move" *Yale French Studies*, 1995, no. 87,
special issue: "Another Look, Another Woman:  Retranslations of French
Feminism]. In it, Delphy argues that the discourse on FF in the U.S. and
Britain has served to "produce a particular kind of essentialism and to make
a theory pass for 'feminist' which in reality makes the necessity of feminism
and feminists disappear." Her argument bases itself in a theory/practice
split which is  very problematic for contemporary feminist thought and which
assumes (in Delphy's argument) that the American academics involved in
inventing FF do so because of their need for an "excuse" not to deal with the
concerns of real women and real politics. I would be interested in anyone's
response to her article, and would also be grateful if anyone who knows of an
already published response would post the reference to the list.

Sincerely,
Catherine M. Peebles