MADE IN AMERICA - FRENCH FEMINISM IN ACAD EMIA

Much has been written in U.S. feminist scholarship about ''French femi nism'', but few French feminists recognize themselves or their movemen t in these studies. This article looks at this disjuncture between the American version of ''French feminism'' and the movement whose practi ce and theory had an impact on French politics, culture, and society o ver the past two decades. The premise of the article is that the disju ncture is not simply a matter of ''getting the story wrong''. Although I describe (very briefly) the movement that feminist activists and sc holars have constructed for themselves, the interest of this paper is more so on the construction of knowledge in the U.S. and the impact of U.S. feminist scholarship on the French movement. In the American con struction of ''French feminism'', theorists Helene Cixous, Julia Krist eva, and Luce Irigaray, along with the group Psychanalyse et politique , are the significant exemplars. Theory is privileged over activism, p oststructuralism over materialist theories, literary and philosophical discourse over the social and historical.