Sexing Political Culture in the History of France By Alison M. M ...

The chapters in this volume present a highly varied array of examples of the role of gender and sexuality in French politics and ideology, and as such they focus on some surprising questions not commonly found in survey studies of the history of France. Even though there is a great deal of variety in the topics covered, there is also much continuity found across all the chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 14 strongly indicate the recurrent manifestation of concerns about secularism or religion (Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam), alongside those about gender and sex, suggesting that French nationalist uptakes of gendered and sexualized imagery may indeed derive from its history of struggle with and against religion. Chapters 6, 7, 9, 13, and 14 all consider the specific question of the French nation as a feminine icon. Chapters 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 all consider the recurrence of concerns about masculinity in the construction of political and national ideologies. Most of the chapters consider both gender and sexuality as concurrent, often intermeshed themes; however, chapters 1, 2, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 13 are somewhat more emphatically focused on sexualized forms of representation. The figure of Joan of Arc recurs in several of the chapters (especially chapter 5). The figure of Marianne rears her head repeatedly in the span of topics covered in this work, though there are no chapters specifically focused on her, because this area in the study of French gendered nationalism has already been extensively historicized. Questions of inappropriate sexual desire recur in many of the national and political discussions we examine, and concerns about gender differentiation appear in the chapters focused on the early modern period (chapters 2 and 3), those on the long nineteenth century (chapters 4 and 6), the interwar period (chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11) and on the recent past (chapters 13 and 14). Franco-German relations are considered in several of the chapters (7, 11, and 12).

As much as we found continuities in our collective labor, however, we have also found great divergence, variation, and the generation of new and surprising forms of gendered and sexualized concerns at different junctures across history. If these themes have long persisted in political cultures, it is clear, too, that they are not one and the same concern at any