| Abstract | In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Karen Offen Karen Offen is an affiliated scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. She is currently working on a study of the woman question in Third Republic France. Her most recent publication is "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14 (Autumn 1988). * This is an expanded version of a paper presented at the International Colloquium "Les Femmes et la Révolution Française," April 12-13, 1989, in Toulouse, France, and at the May 1989 International Congress on the History of the French Revolution in Washington, D.C. I am particularly indebted to the provocative reflections on memory and feminist history by Laurence Klejman & Florence Rochefort, "Féminisme-Histoire-Mémoire," Pénélope no. 12 (Spring 1985): 129-38, and Michèle Riot-Sarcey, "Mémoire et oubli," ibid.: 139-48. I would also like to thank Patrick Hutton and Bonnie Smith for their counsel. Notes 1. "Presentation et objectifs du colloque," printed on the cover of the official program. The organizers also prepared a collection of abstracts, which was distributed to all those registered at the colloquium. The preceedings of the Toulouse Colloquium, edited by Marie-France Brive, Dominque Godineau, and Yvonne Knibiehler, are scheduled to appear in late 1989. 2. Such discussions took place in several of the workshops that I attended. 3. Organizational plans are discussed in Etudes féministes, no. 5 (Spring 1986) and no. 6 (Summer 1989). 4. I use the term "historical memory" here to connote a type of remembrance that is already partially constructed by published historical accounts. This is somewhat similar to what Pierre Nora appears to have meant when he argued, rather grandly: "What we call memory today is therefore not memory but already history. What we take to be flare-ups of memory are in fact its final consumption in the flames of history. The quest for memory is the search for one's history." See Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire," Representations no. 26 (Spring, 1989): 13. 5. Biographies of some of these figures are, of course, far more accessible than others; for example, the two extant biographies of Etta Palm d'Aelders in Dutch have never been translated. 6. On the aftermath, see Karen Offen, "Liberty, Equality, and Justice for Women: The Theory and Practice of Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Europe," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Mosher Stuard, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), 335-73. 7. New books published during 1988-89 will be reviewed in another essay, currently in preparation. For a summary of the literature to the early 1970s, see Jane Abray, "Feminism in the French Revolution," American Historical Review 80 (June, 1975), and Louis Devance, "Le Féminisme pendant la Révolution française," Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 229 (July-September 1977). For more recent works to 1986, see Linda S. Popofsky and Marianne B. Sheldon, "French and American Women in the Age of Democratic Revolution, 1770-1815: A Comparative Perspective," in History of European Ideas, 8 nos. 4-5 (1987). 8. On the press coverage, see the preface to the published proceedings: Congrès français et international du Droit des Femmes (Paris, 1889), i. (Many of these clippings are preserved in folders at the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Paris.) Even a recent study of the 1889 Exposition based on an American doctoral dissertation makes no mention of either of the women's congresses held that summer; see Brenda Nelms, The Third Republic and the Centennial of 1789 (New York: Garland, 1987). 9. "Circulaire de la Commission d'Organisation," Congrès Français et international du Droit des femmes de 1889, dated 26 March 1889; copy in the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 10. See Deraismes's speech, Congrès Français et international du Droit des femmes (Paris, 1889), 2-11. The passages concerning the revolution (4-5) have been omitted in the version reprinted in Maria Deraismes: Ce que veulent les femmes, articles et discours de 1869 à 1894, ed. Odile Krakovitch...
|
