Gender and Citizenship [Hardcover]

Claudia Moscovici (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0847696944 | ISBN-13: 978-0847696949 | Publication Date: May 10, 2000 0

Moscovici proposes a new understanding of how gender relations were reformulated by both male and female writers in nineteenth-century France. She analyzes the different versions of gendered citizenship elaborated by Friedrich Hegel, George Sand, Honore de Balzac, Auguste Comte and Herculine Barbin revealing a shift from a single dialectical (or male-centered) definition of citizenship to a double dialectical (or bi-gendered) one in which each sex plays an important role in subject-citizenship and is defined as the negation of the other sex. Moscovici further argues that a double dialectical pattern of androgyny endows women with a (relational) cultural identity that secures their paradoxical roles as both representatives and outsiders to subject-citizenship in nineteenth-century French society and culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A fascinating and enlightening read. (Modern Language Review )

This book compellingly advances our understanding of the relation between gender and citizenship in French nineteenth-century contexts. As such, it represents a valuable contribution to any discourse seeking to de-naturalize sexual difference within modern cultures. (French Forum )

Gender and Citizenship brings together a number of important debates in feminist scholarship in interesting ways. . . . Moscovici helps us get beyond two poles which have too frequently sundered feminist theory: the pole represented by difference feminism that has worked to preserve what has been unique to women's situations and the pole represented by more integrationist models that has worked to overcome women's differences from men. (Linda Nicholson )

Although Claudia Moscovici does not discuss the parity movement in her insightful, new book, the 'paritaires' might be said to acknowledge what she calls 'the fundamental androgyny of the citizen-subject' and which is already in evidence in the nineteenth century. . . . Recognizing the self-contradictory nature of gender identity also allows us better to understand what feminist historian Joan Scott has labeled the 'paradoxical' positioning of women in relation to the public sphere--the very paradox that the paritaries in France are facing today. Their efforts to sex the universal and so double the individual represented by it would find theoretical support in Moscovici's examination of the emergence of a double dialectic. (Novel: A Forum On Fiction )

About the Author

Claudia Moscovici is assistant professor of humanities at Boston University. She is the author of From Sex Objects to Sexual Subjects (Routledge 1996).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (May 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847696944
• ISBN-13: 978-0847696949
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,814,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Claudia Moscovici is the author of "Velvet Totalitarianism," a critically acclaimed novel about a Romanian family's survival in an oppressive communist regime due to the strength of their love. This novel has been republished in translation in her native country, under the title "Intre Doua Lumi" (Curtea Veche Publishing, 2011, see book trailers below).

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici?feature=mhee#p/a/f/0/KURICuT8TcA

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici?feature=mhee#p/a/f/1/DgCdLdygaII

In 2002, she co-founded with Mexican sculptor Leonardo Pereznieto the international aesthetic movement postromanticism.com, devoted to celebrating beauty, passion and sensuality in contemporary art. She published a book on Romanticism and its postromantic survival called "Romanticism and Postromanticism," (Lexington Books, 2007).
She recently finished two books on psychopathic seduction and dangerous relationships: a nonfiction book called "Dangerous Liaisons: How to Recognize and Escape from Psychopathic Seduction" and a novel called "The Seducer".
This novel is a tragic love story about a woman who falls into the clutches of a dangerous, psychopathic lover.
You can preview sample chapters of "The Seducer" on Neatorama's Bitlit, by cutting and pasting the link below:

http://www.neatorama.com/bitlit/category/the-seducer/

You can also watch a video preview of the novel on youtube, by cutting and pasting the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClaudiaMoscovici