Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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at the end of the 1960s, and particularly after

May 1968, did much to change notions of the

family in France. Indeed, the ‘nuclear’ family

model was portrayed as constraining, particu-

larly for young adults and for women.

Thus, from the 1970s onwards, the ‘fam-

ily’ underwent a number of far-reaching

transformations. First, the nature of marriage

changed. French couples began to marry later,

often after a period of living together or, in-

deed, they started increasingly not to marry at

all, opting instead for unions libres. Further-

more, marriage has become increasingly un-

stable, with divorce rates standing at around

1 in 3 of all marriages, depending on the re-

gion of the country. Although for a certain

time it was thought that marriage remained a

popular institution because of the number of

remarriages after divorce, the marriage rate

had gone into decline in France by the 1990s.

As a result of increased divorce rates, two

new forms of families thus developed: the sin-

gle- parent family (la famille monoparentale)

and the reconstituted family (la famille

recomposée), made up of stepbrothers and

sisters and/or half-brothers and -sisters. The

increase in divorce and marriage instability

may be bemoaned by some, but to others it is

simply the logical extension of the changes in

the nature of marriage in France which took

place in the first half of the twentieth century.

At that time, marriage became less an institu-

tion whose primary function was to perpetu-

ate the family line and transmit property

across the generations, and more an institu-

tion based entirely on the affection and love

existing between two partners. It is clear that

the former, traditional model of marriage is

more stable than the latter ‘companionship’

family model.

Second, the nuclear family of the immedi-

ate postwar period was based on a strict divi-

sion of labour between husband and wife. For

many (if not all) couples, the model of ‘man

the breadwinner’ and ‘woman the homemaker’

did hold true. However, from the 1970s on-

wards, the nature of women’s employment

patterns changed. In the 1950s and 1960s,

mothers in France tended to give up work on

the birth of their children and only return once

their children were independent—if they re-

turned at all. From the 1970s onwards, moth-

ers in France began to work for longer and

longer proportions of their child-rearing years.

Indeed, it was discovered in the 1982 census

that it was more common for families with

children to have two working parents than to

have one. The economic dependence of a

woman on a man, the remaining economic

function of the nuclear family in the 1950s and

1960s, was therefore disappearing.

The increase in women’s participation in

the labour market, coupled with later mar-

riage, the prospect of marriage instability and

the greater availability of birth control meas-

ures, have all contributed to a steep decline in

the birth rate in France since World War II.

The ‘baby boom’ after the war in France is

well-known. Indeed, until the 1970s the aver-

age number of births per French woman was

over two. That is, it was at a rate which

would not only replace, but rejuvenate, the

population. However, from the 1970s on-

wards, the French birth rate began to drop

below the replacement rate of two children

per woman. Indeed, demographic decline is a

question which has traditionally preoccupied

French governments and a number of incen-

tives are provided by the state to make the

lives of parents easier and thus encourage

them to have larger families. However, some

argue that certain of these measures—for ex-

ample, the state making it easier for mothers

to go out to work—encourage the limiting of

family size and are thus counterproductive.

None the less, it should be stressed that

France remains one of the more fecund coun-

tries in the European Union.

Although the birth rate has fallen in France,

the population continues to grow because of

its increased longevity. This more aged popu-

lation, in which one marriage partner (usually

the woman) outlives the other, often lives alone.

Kin groups are more dispersed than in the past,

which means that elderly relatives are less likely

to move in with their children when they are

widowed or become infirm. This phenomenon,

coupled with later marriage and higher rates

family

199

of divorce, means that ‘families’ (or, perhaps

more accurately, ‘households’) containing a

single person are set to become the dominant

family form in France, particularly in large

towns and cities. However, there is also evi-

dence to suggest that, as grown-up children

find it increasingly difficult to find employ-

ment, they are staying at home for longer and

longer periods with their parents.

JAN WINDEBANK

See also: abortion/contraception; child care;

demographic developments; marriage/cohabi-

tation; women and employment; women and

social policy

Further reading

Hantrais, L. (1982) Contemporary French So-

ciety, Basingstoke: Macmillan (a discussion

of the developments in French society from

1945 to the late 1970s; includes texts in

French).

Fanon, Frantz

b. 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique;

d. 1961, Bethesda, USA

Psychiatrist and writer

A psychiatrist and writer turned militant na-

tionalist and socialist revolutionary, Fanon’s

The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la

terre) of 1961 earned him international atten-

tion. Converted to the cause of self-determi-

nation for Algeria through his work as direc-

tor of the psychiatric hospital at Blida-Joinville

between 1953 and 1956, his understanding of

clinical alienation disclosed the depersonali-

zation suffered by Algerians under French co-

lonial rule.

In Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire,

masques blancs), in 1952, Fanon had already

criticized the human consequences of encoun-

ters with racism he had known in Martinique

and France by linking the interplay of self-con-

sciousness and recognition in Hegel’s Phenom-

enology of Mind and the dynamics of preju-

dice analysed by Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew

(Réflexions sur la question juive) in order to

account for the torment of black women and

men subjected to racism under the culture of

colonial rule. Long before he advocated mili-

tancy and revolution, Fanon denounced rac-

ism as part of a more general cultural system

to be resisted and overcome.

By the time he died in 1961, Fanon had

evolved from a supporter of the négritude

movement linked to Aimé Césaire and the

journal Présence africaine to a proponent of

socialist revolution in Africa whose views on

violence were in line with those taken up in

the United States by individuals associated

with the Black Power movement. After resign-

ing his post at Blida-Joinville, Fanon attended

the 1956 Congress of Black Writers and Art-

ists in Paris before moving to Tunis, where he

wrote for the Algerian National Liberation

Front newspaper, El Moudjahid. In 1960, he

was appointed ambassador of the Provisional

Algerian Government to Ghana. The same

year, he contracted leukaemia and completed

The Wretched of the Earth before dying out-

side Washington DC, where he had been sent

for medical treatment.

There were, in David Caute’s apt words,

three successive Fanons: the de-alienated man

of Black Skins, White Masks, the Algerian

citizen of A Dying Colonialism (L’An Cinq de

la révolution algérienne) of 1959, and the

committed socialist revolutionary of The

Wretched of the Earth. Among these, the

most enduring remains the final Fanon who

came to see the ‘wretched of the earth’ of

Third World peasantry alluded to in the open-

ing line of the Internationale as the class of

authentic revolution in Africa. Renewed inter-

est in Fanon’s writings, in evidence since the

mid-1980s has resituated them with regard to

theories of the post-colonial and a revised

politics of identity.

STEVEN UNGAR

Further reading

Bhabha, H. (1994) ‘Interrogating Identity:

Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Preroga-

tive’ , in The Location of Culture, London

and New York: Routledge (essay by

Fanon’s leading post-colonial exponent).

Caute, D. (1970) Frantz Fanon, New York:

Viking (essential reading).

Gendzier, I. (1973) Frantz Fanon: A Critical

Study, New York: Pantheon (a critical study

and biography).

Farge, Arlette

b. 1941, France

Feminist historian and journalist

Focusing in the main on the eighteenth cen-

tury, Farge’s work foregrounds women’s his-

tory. Her publications include Le Miroir des

femmes (Women’s Mirror), La Vie fragile: vio-

lence, pouvoir et solidarité a Paris au XVIIIe

siècle (Fragile Life: Violence, Power and Soli-

darity in Eighteenth-Century Paris) and Dire

et mal dire: l’opinion publique au XVIIIe

siècle (Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century

France). She works at the Centre National de

la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.

ALEX HUGHES

Further reading

Barthes, R. (1990) The Fashion System, trans.

M.Ward and R.Berkeley, Berkeley: Univer-

sity of California Press (French edition

(1967): Système de la mode, Paris: Seuil) (a

semiotic analysis of la mode).

Herpin, N. (1986) ‘L’Habillement, la classe

sociale et la mode’, Économie et statistique

188 (May) (a useful reading on fashion and

style as social indicators).

Lipovetsky, G. (1994) The Empire of Fash-

ion: Dressing Modern Democracy,

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

(a reading of modern democracy in the light

of fashion and trends).

Zeldin, T. (1983) ‘How to be Chic’, in The

French, London: Collins (a cultural analysis).

fast food

Le fast-food is as rife in France as anywhere

else in the Western world. The meal of choice

for many young French is un Macdo, though

indigenous chains such as Love Burger or

Flunch provide competition. Latterly, big-

name chefs such as Paul Bocuse or Michel

Guérard have joined the trend with pre-pre-

pared meals (frozen or vacuum-packed),

whose quality is generally deemed to be excel-

lent.

KEITH READER

Further reading

De Courtivron, I. and Marks, E. (eds) (1981)

New French Feminisms, Brighton: Har-

vester Press (an anthology of over fifty

French feminist texts, translated into Eng-

lish; includes a good introduction and se-

lected bibliography).

Duchen, C. (1986) Feminism in France: From

May ’68 to Mitterrand, London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul (to date, the best account, in

English, of second wave feminist thought

and activism in France).

Picq, F. (1993) Libération des femmes: les

années-mouvement, Paris: Éditions du Seuil

(an interesting retrospective assessment of

the French Women’s Liberation Movement

by one of its well-known activists).

feminist press

Written by women for women, newspapers,

magazines, intellectual journals, pamphlets and

books within the category of ‘feminist press’

were initially linked with the Women’s Libera-

tion Movement (Mouvement de Liberation des

Femmes or MLF) in the 1970s and early 1980s,

and have since contributed to the creation of a

feminist culture within the spheres of intellec-

tual, social, economic and political life.

A decade of feminist struggle, from 1968,

produced an explosion of feminist writing and

the foundation of numerous publications with

varying aims, content and style. By the end of

the 1970s, it is estimated that thirty-five titles

(excluding regional, neighbourhood and

workplace publications) were in circulation

nationally. Their emergence responded to a need

and desire for theoretical debate, the exchange

of practical information and analysis of issues

such as sexual liberation, homosexuality, rape,

prostitution, violence against women, the rep-

resentation of women in writing and visual

forms of communication and of equality in the

workplace. These periodicals and newspapers,

of both a general and more specialist orienta-

tion, nearly always represented a particular

political current within the MLF.

The category of general publications in-

cluded, among many: Le Torchon Brûle, an

autonomous publication which aimed to re-

flect the views of all MLF groups; Les

Pétroleuses and Les Cahiers du féminisme,

published by groups within the MLF’s lutte

des classes current; Histoires d’elles, Questions

féministes and Les Nouvelles Féministes, set

up by groups within the current Féministes

Révolutionnaires; Le Quotidien des femmes

and Des Femmes en mouvement, both pub-

lished by the group Psych et Po (Psychanalyse

et Politique). Among the specialist feminist

publications were the gay and lesbian review

Masques, the history review Pénélope, the car-

toon magazine Ah Nana and Sorcières, pub-

lished by Éditions Stock, which dealt with one

specialist feminist theme per issue. As the ma-

jority of feminist newspapers and magazines

feminist press

206

relied upon unpaid editorial teams and oper-

ated on meagre budgets, their publication was

irregular and sales took place at demonstra-

tions, meetings and feminist bookshops. A few,

however, such as Les Cahiers du féminisms

and Questions féministes managed to attract

regular subscribers while Le Quotidien des

Femmes and Des Femmes en Mouvement ap-

peared to benefit from the unlimited private

funds of Psych et Po’s main helmswoman,

Antoinette Fouque, although both titles even-

tually folded due to lack of readers.

The precarious finances of the majority of

these publications meant that many only sur-

vived during a short period. While it was never

the intention or hope that these publications

should reach a mass readership (in their hey-

day an estimated 150,000 women bought at

least one title), their influence has not been

negligible. First, they provided the mainstream

press, and especially women’s magazines such

as Elle and Marie-Claire, with bold new

themes and ideas and inspired the launch of F

Magazine, in 1978, which was aimed at a large

feminist readership. Second, their provocative

tone and the challenge that they presented to

trade unionists and women in the mainstream

Left led publications such as Antoinette—the

women’s magazine of the Confédération

Générale du Travail (CGT)—to reconsider

women’s issues in a new light. The magazine’s

editors began to take an oppositional stance

to the trade union’s male leaders, which finally

led to the dismissal of the entire editorial team

in 1983, when it refused to withdraw support

for the Polish trade union, Solidarity, as in-

structed by the CGT’s leadership. Women in

the Confédération Française Démocratique du

Travail (CFDT) also began to be active around

feminist issues, and 1977 saw the publication

of Jeannette Laot’s Stratégie pour les femmes.

As far as the two main parties of the Left

were concerned, a number of Communist

women formed a group, in 1978, which pub-

lished the feminist magazine Elles voient rouge

and in the Socialist Party, the feminist publi-

cation Mignonnes allons voir sous la rose was

launched after the party’s 1977 Nantes con-

gress. Both publications were used by their

editors and supporters to question sexist

thinking and practices within their respective

parties, eventually leading to the departure of

the women concerned from both parties.

The 1970s were also marked by the estab-

lishment of about a dozen feminist publishing

houses, including Psych et Po’s Des Femmes

publishing venture, which gave women the op-

portunity to (re)discover and create their own

champions in real life and fiction. Campaign-

ing feminist writers included Annie Leclerc,

Gisèle Halimi, Christine Delphy and Monique

Wittig, while writers such as Marguerite Duras,

Christiane Rochefort and Nathalie Sarraute

contributed original styles and substance to

French literature. Furthermore, this period saw

the publication of the first histories of French

feminism and the MLF, and introduced the pub-

lic to certain hallmarks of écriture féminine such

as Hélène Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa

(Le Rire de la méduse), Julia Kristeva’s About

Chinese Women (Des Chinoises) and Luce

Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman

(Speculum de l’autre femme) and This Sex which

Is not One (Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un).

From the mid-1980s, feminist publication has

increasingly entered the mainstream as women’s

studies have become a feature of the higher edu-

cation curriculum, as big publishers (e.g. Seuil,

Stock and Éditions Syros) have established their

own ‘women’s series’ and as trade unions, pro-

fessional and political organizations have gradu-

ally attached more importance to women’s sec-

tions or committees. However, the relative ac-

ceptance of feminist publications within the main-

stream has not occurred without the exaction of

a price, which is that the most original and un-

compromising type of publications (Histoires

d’elles or Pénélope) have gradually disappeared.

Those which have survived (Cahiers du

féminisms and Nouvelles Questions féministes)

or which have been set up in recent years (Clio:

histoire, femmes et société and Résonances-

Femmes) have done so either because they have

adopted a more ‘serious’ and less doctrinaire tone

or because they have achieved and maintained

academic respectability.

KHURSHEED WADIA

feminist press

207

See also: écriture féminine; feminism (move-

ments/groups); feminist thought; parties and

movements; publishing l’edition

Further reading

Burke, C. (1978) ‘Report from Paris: Wom-

en’s Writing and the Women’s Movement’

, Signs 3, 4:843–55 (useful appraisal of

feminist writings).

De Courtivron, I. and Marks, E. (eds) (1981)

New French Feminisms, Brighton: Har-

vester Press (brings together over fifty

French feminist texts, translated into Eng-

lish; also has a good introduction and se-

lected bibliography).

Duchen, C. (1986) Feminism in France: From

May ’68 to Mitterrand, London: Routledge

& Kegan Paul (the best account, in Eng-

lish, of French second wave feminist

thought and activism).

Picq, F. (1993) Libération des femmes: les

années-mouvement, Paris: Éditions du Seuil

(one of its well-known activists assesses ret-

rospectively the French Women’s Libera-

tion Movement).

feminist thought

A good working definition of feminist thought

has been provided by the philosopher Michèle

Le Doeuff: ‘Depuis deux siècles, une féministe

est une femme qui ne laisse à personne le soin

de penser a sa place; de penser, tout court, et

plus particulièrement de penser ce que c’est la

condition féminine, ou ce qu’elle devrait être’

(‘For the last two hundred years, a feminist has

been a woman who lets no one do her thinking

for her: thinking full stop, but more especially,

thinking about what women’s condition is, or

what it ought to be’; Le Doeuff 1989).

The number of French women fitting this

definition rose steadily throughout the first half

of the twentieth century, as educational and

career opportunities expanded. The right to vote

(granted in 1944) transformed the possibilities

of the feminine condition. Economic expansion

in the 1960s provided the conditions to turn

the possibilities into reality. More women were

taking up new roles as producers as well as con-

sumers in the market economy, just as that

economy and its culture were undergoing the

radical political and philosophical critique that

shaped the revolutionary events of May 1968.

Women, experiencing what for many was the

novelty of acting for the first time as independ-

ent economic subjects, found themselves in a

cultural politics where the agenda had been set

by Marx, Freud and Lacan, and the dominant

discourses were those of Barthes, Foucault and

Derrida. The women’s groups who came to-

gether in the aftermath of the May events to

form the MLF (Mouvement de Liberation des

Femmes) developed within and against those

radical masculine doctrines and the conscious-

ness of the theoretical dimension of practice

which is the distinctive mark of contemporary

French feminism. Their activities over the sub-

sequent years, foregrounding and challenging

masculinist bias in the production of thought,

and creating opportunities for women to par-

ticipate fully in all areas of intellectual activity,

have transformed the cultural landscape in

France. In the process, they have also made a

distinctive contribution to the course of femi-

nism elsewhere in Europe and America.

For most Anglo-American feminists, who

know France chiefly through the bias of hu-

manities departments, the work of Julia

Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous (of-

ten known only partially and belatedly,

through translations) are synonymous with

French feminist thought. The real situation is

more complex. Feminist thought nowadays

operates within a multitude of disciplines: phi-

losophy, sociology, linguistics, literature, psy-

choanalysis, history and politics. Within

France, perceptions of the importance of dif-

ferent individuals and groups have varied, as

intellectual fashions and emphases change.

Outside France, this fashion-effect has been

compounded by the inevitable distortions pro-

duced by the special interests of academic and

publishing networks.

Postwar feminist thought begins, famously,

feminist thought