Writing Gaullist Feminism: Françoise Parturier's Open Letters 1968–1974

Abstract

Gaullist feminist Françoise Parturier's open letters written during the second wave women's movement in France are striking examples of how politically engaged women use writing in innovative ways in order to make intellectual interventions. Her polemical feminist writing takes up and reconfigures traditional ways of interacting in the public space, recalling earlier precedents such as Zola's 1898 J'accuse, instrumental in the revisiting of the Dreyfus affair. In this context, Parturier's letters and her rhetorical innovation can be seen as a bridging step to the formal experimentation characteristic of écriture féminine culminating in the radical shattering of conventions more readily associated with radical writings by Hélène Cixous and Annie Leclerc.Les lettres ouvertes de Françoise Parturier, féministe gaulliste, écrites et publiées pendant les années du deuxième mouvement féministe en France sont des exemples saisissants des interventions des femmes engagées dans la sphère publique. De cette façon, elles suivent une tradition de l'engagement qui rappelle des précédents importants comme J'accuse, la lettre ouverte d'Emile Zola (1898), catalyseur pour la reconsidération de l'Affaire Dreyfus. Dans ce contexte, les lettres de Parturier et ses stratégies rhétoriques novatrices peuvent être vues comme un pas vers l'expérimentation formelle de l'écriture féminine et la rupture radicale avec certaines conventions littéraires que représentent les écrits d'Hélène Cixous et d'Annie Leclerc.This article examines the contribution of writer Françoise Parturier to key debates of the second wave women's movement in France. Through her work and intellectual interventions Parturier claimed to be in the vanguard of the events of the women's liberation movement. Her two book-length open letters-Lettre ouverte aux hommes (1968a) and Lettre ouverte aux femmes (1974)-form key texts which are considered here in the context of her wider interventions in the public arena through her interaction with figures such as Gisèle Halimi and Françoise Giroud.

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“…It is pro-woman writing and hinges on identifying potential areas of contestation (preconceptions that shape understandings) within discourse to insert a passionate alternative conviction (Flannery, 2001). Feminist polemics involve rhetorical (intellectual) interventions, which reconfigure the way we think of the past (Long, 2011). Writing a counternarrative that breaks away from taken-for-granted knowledge and taken-for-granted actors requires a persuasive writing style.…”