Women intellectuals in post-68 France: petitions and polemics

Cultural and historical accounts of the public intellectual and French feminism have been remiss in their failure to recognise an important group of major women intellectuals in France. In particular, studies of French feminism and public intellectuals have overlooked the contribution of notable figures such as Françoise Parturier, Gisèle Halimi and Elisabeth Badinter amongst many others which has necessarily had a detrimental effect on discourses about the gendered phenomenon of the public intellectual in France. By studying the work of these neglected intellectuals alongside those of more recognised women thinkers such as Assia Djebar, Marguerite Duras and Annie Ernaux, this book aims to provide a much broader picture of the activities, both political and literary, of female key public in the aftermath of May 1968. By exploring the relationship between their interventions in the public sphere and their creative work it throws new light on the reasons for their omission in standard theoretical and empirical work on the French intellectual. In so doing, this book offers a cultural and theoretical re-evaluation of the gendered phenomenon of the public intellectual in France, as such it is important reading to students and scholars of French Feminism and French public intellectuals more generally