Rewriting French Feminisms: Muslim Women and Intersectional Storytelling with Fatima Daas and Faïza Guène

ABSTRACT

As intersectionality has burgeoned into a buzzword, it has not always retained its origins in black women’s lives and standpoints. Unfortunately, criticisms of the concept can further marginalise longstanding histories of resistance to overlapping systems of oppression. This article examines the value of an intersectional lens on transnational French-Algerian feminisms. It analyses the stories that circulate about intersectionality and feminism in France, particularly a misleading tension between, on the one hand, universalism, national identity and French feminism, and on the other, intersectionality. To ensure a situated and embodied approach, the recent works of two French writers, La petite dernière by Fatima Daas and La discrétion by Faïza Guène, guide this article’s rethinking of the epistemological bounds of (intersectional) feminism. An analysis of how the authors engage publicly with feminism, how their characters navigate sexism, racism, and Islamophobia in Paris and how the works are received, reveals a productive tension between the plural modes of resistance and agency Daas and Guène present, and dominant French feminist discourse. I argue for the value of an intersectional lens in bridging this gap and enabling the lives of Muslim women to shape the feminist project and participate in the construction of the universal.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• French feminisms
• epistemologies
• Muslim women
• francophone literature
• migrant

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I have referred to these texts by abbreviated French titles as the French-language originals guided this article’s analysis. The cited material, however, comes from translations by Lara Vergnaud (The Last One) and Sarah Ardizzone (Discretion) to ensure access to English readers.

2 I use the term ‘French feminism’ to refer to feminism informed by French Republican and universalist discourse in mainstream France, and understand it to centre white and middle-class concerns. I by no means wish to imply that ‘French feminism’ is a singular or homogenous movement, or that many more plural modes of doing feminism in France do not exist – I use the term with the goal of identifying and critiquing this dominant narrative.

3 Global news outlets also play into this narrative; headlines following Macron’s speech, such as, ‘Will American Ideas Tear France Apart?’ (Onishi 2021) from the New York Times, are a good example.

4 These issues are not unique to French feminism but common to most Western feminist movements. Figures such as bell hooks (2014), in the US context, and Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2000), in Australia, have notably outlined the necolonialism and imperialism associated with white-dominated feminism and the lack of attention in these frameworks to both whiteness and racial difference.

5 This is a generalisation, and it is important to note that, even within classic white French feminist works, such as Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, we see attention to intersections of class and race (McNicol 2021).

6 It is worth distinguishing here between ‘universal’ and (French) ‘universalism’ (see, for example, Diagne 2013).

7 Fatima (like Daas, who chooses to adopt a pseudonym) navigates a queer identity against the backdrop of Maghrebi origins (in Algeria, same-sex practices remain criminalised) and the beliefs of her family and Muslim community in France (wherein Islam is generally understood to prohibit same-sex relations).

8 E-book version, no page numbers.

9 Baldwin himself spent time in France and examines the flows between anti-racist struggles in his work, notably writing on Algerian independence and racism towards Algerians in the French context in No Name in the Street (1972).