Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man

by Joan Wallach Scott

When feminists argued for political rights in the context of liberal democracy they faced an impossible choice. On the one hand, they insisted that the differences between men and women were irrelevant for citizenship. On the other hand, by the fact that they acted on behalf of women, they introduced the very idea of difference they sought to eliminate. This paradox--the need both to accept and to refuse sexual difference in politics--was the constitutive condition of the long struggle by women to gain the right of citizenship. In this new book, remarkable in both its findings and its methodology, award-winning historian Joan Wallach Scott reads feminist history in terms of this paradox of sexual difference.

Genres: History, Feminism, France, Politics, Nonfiction, Gender, Philosophy

229 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Joan Scott is known internationally for writings that theorize gender as an analytic category. She is a leading figure in the emerging field of critical history. Her ground-breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history, and has contributed to a transformation of the field of intellectual history. Scott's recent books focus on gender and democratic politics. Her works include The Politics of the Veil (2007), Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005). Scott graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Before joining the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in the history departments of Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Rutgers University.

Reviews

[Keelin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to see how to do deconstruction in history well, read this.

[Irina · Rating 3 out of 5]

*(5) The Radical Individualism of Madeleine Pelletier

[Endine · Rating 3 out of 5]

For university.

[Fleur · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stink pws boek

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have trouble enjoying Joan Scott's writing. Not to say that I think anything negative about her as a historian, she is clearly brilliant, but I never really have a ball reading her work. This one uses the lives of four French feminists, from the late 18th century to the mid-20th, to argue that feminism and republicanism were created together, they evolved simultaneously, and so they are and have always been inseparable. Scott argues that thinking of feminism as a reaction to republicanism - as a response to rhetoric about the natural rights of man - is a mistake. Feminism is an effect, not a response. Thus, every time republicanism changes and evolves, so does feminism. Because of this, Scott writes, feminists have always been arguing within the discourse. They can't win, basically. Because they want to be identified as a group that has rights, all the same rights as men, but they also want that group to be irrelevant, because everyone has the same rights. Right. Get me?
I have trouble getting it all. And I wanted more than just the life stories of four women. I wanted more evidence, I wanted more glimpses into French society. Anyway. Every time I read Scott and then try to explain it, I find myself writing words that I think make sense, but maybe they don't.