French feminisms, global imperialisms—some historiographical reflections on writing Feminism’s Empire

Abstract

ABSTRACT French feminisms and anti-imperialisms co-constituted each other in many ways in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Yet there exist few histories of the intersections of the period’s feminisms and empire, in either French or English. The absence of scholarship investigating the links between two major nineteenth-century ideological, social, and political forces raises myriad questions that emerge at the junctures of institutions, interests, power, epistemologies, politics, and history. Why the silences concerning the relationships between feminisms and imperialisms? How would analyzing their complex relationships alter our understandings of not only these two major conceptual frameworks, but also of gender, race, whiteness, religion, and class—and their intersections—during this period. My book, Feminism’s Empire, emerged from these questions; its central arguments engage, critique, and explain their intricacies.