I was recently giving a paper on Franco-Anglo Feminisms in Canada at panel on Canadian Feminisms at the Hypatia/CSW conference, Exploring Collaborative Contestations and Diversifying Philosophy, at Villanova. A subject that seems little discussed outside Québec and Franco-Canada is the place and the impact of francophone writings. As it sometimes happens, the planets lined up nicely, and the week of my presentation an article appeared in the New Yorker on the impact, or lack of, French Canadian literature. Is this also the case for feminist theories? As a Franco-Ontarian born, but Québec-raised feminist philosopher, who attends feminist conferences mostly in English, I have wondered about the lack of attention to Québec-Franco writings. If English is becoming universal, it has the potential to serve as a common language. This comes at cost, and I worry, especially now that I teach in both languages, that we are losing the richness of minority languages; and French is a minority language in North America. The situation of francophones in North America is complex: we stand as past (and present) colonizers but also as colonized and under threat of extinction. It makes for difficult politics and the role of languages in preserving identity is lived very intensely by Canadian and Québécois French speakers. I believe in cross-linguistic enrichment and my goal here is to plead for increased translation. Of course there is a danger: to translate could have as a consequence less engagement with the original language. For a careful treatment of the perils of translation see Elissa Marder’s article ‘Force and Translation; Or, The Polymorphous Body of Language,’ PhiloSOPHIA, Vol. 3(1), 2013. However, I hope translation will create a curiosity and encourage students to seek the original.
When I teach, I always endeavor to expose students to writings of authors from different traditions. This has meant, for example, that my students in my Éthiques féministes class got to read, in French, articles by Eva Kittay, Annette Baier, Marilyn Friedman as well as Susan Moller Okin. For this I am most grateful to the work of Sandra Laugier, Patricia Paperman, and Pascale Molinière, who got behind the translation of Joan Tronto’s work, which in turn created interest for Anglo-American feminist writings. However, I am at a loss when I teach Feminist Ethics to introduce my students to the writings of Diane Lamoureux, for example. It is not only that writers from different cultures or languages bring a different perspective; it is also that they have a different philosophical background that they draw upon. For example, the use of vulnerability by French feminists in an ethics of care framework is quite different than that of their Anglo-American counterparts. At least as an initial step, translation is crucial. In Canada, the Canada Council does give grants for this and I am extremely pleased that Fernwood Press decided to make available Mélissa Blais’s book on the Montréal Massacre and its aftermath. The book, “Je haïs les féministes!” (Éditions du Remue-Ménage, 2009), analyzes the manner in which the massacre, which occurred at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989 has been discussed, what has been emphasized and what is missing. It is an important book as it rises above the specificity of that event to highlight the manner in which feminist and antifeminist discourses are presented and represented in the Press. I am glad that I can use this book in my feminist class (“Mélissa Blais “I hate Feminists!”: December 6th 1989 and its aftermath, Fernwood Publishing, 2014).
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