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Carolyn J. Eichner, "Feminism's Empire" (Cornell UP, 2022)
01:22:43
An interview with Carolyn J. Eichner
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall, Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you at New Balance. We believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running is all about. Run your way@newbalance.com if we knew more about our sleep, what would we do differently? Would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep?
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Michael Vann
With the All New Sleep Score, Apple.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions and sleep duration. Then every morning it combines these factors into an easy to understand score from 1 to 100 so you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from good 2 Excellent. Introducing the new sleep score on Apple Watch iPhone 11 or later required welcome.
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New Books Network Announcer
To the New Books Network.
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Michael Vann
Welcome to New Books in History, a channel in the New Books Network. I'm your host Michael Van of Sacramento State University. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Carolyn Eichner about feminism's empire, out with Cornell in 2022. She is a professor of history and Women's and Gender Studies and at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. This is her third book, Surmounting the Barricades, Women in the Paris Commune came out in 2004, and the Paris Commune, A Brief History came out in 2022. That means feminism's empire is her second book this year. Color me impressed. Furthermore, Surmounting the Barricades, Women in the Paris Commune was published in French as Franchise Le Barricade les Forms on the Commune de Paris, published by Edition de la Sorbonne in 2020, translated by Bastien Crepin. It was a finalist for the Pre Augustin theory in 2021, an award from the City of Paris for historical study concerning the period between antiquity in the late 19th century. But wait, there's more. This year she'll be a Fulbright Research Scholar in France and will be in residence at the Camargo foundation in beautiful, stunning Cassis. I am so very, very jealous. Professor Eichner. Carolyn, if I may, welcome to New Books in History. But perhaps I should say welcome back as our brilliant colleague Roxanne Pancisi had you on the New Books in French Studies channel earlier this year. So welcome back.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Thanks very much, Mike, and thank you for that lovely and generous introduction.
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Michael Vann
I really am going to tell you, I am so jealous of the Camargo Foundation. I. When I was a graduate student, one of my. In Aix en Provence, one of my joys was to take the bus over to Cassis and swim in the Kalanque, and. Oh, it's so gorgeous right there.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
I'm pretty thrilled about it.
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Michael Vann
Plus. Plus, you'll do fabulous intellectual work, but it's also really beautiful.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Oh, yeah, that too.
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Michael Vann
So, before we get into feminism's empire, would you please tell us a bit about yourself? I know you earned your PhD at UCLA, but how did you come to French history? And what drew you to the history of the Commune? To women's history, and now French feminist in the French colonial Empire, and. And New Caledonian history as well?
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Well, I had a slightly unusual path to French history, to any history. My undergraduate degree is in finance, which I disliked.
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Michael Vann
In finance?
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah.
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Michael Vann
You didn't want a real job?
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah, I just. I didn't. I. I didn't know what I was doing. I thought I had to have some sort of practical degree and have some sort of, you know, practical career. I actually thought that I could, you know, make money and then help people. It was a bizarre approach to some kind of. I just didn't know what route to take. So I got the degree in finance, but I really hated it. So I worked in marketing, and I hated that, too. And. And so my mother, who was wonderful and supportive, you know, saw I was miserable and said, what would you do in a perfect world? And I said, study history. And I really didn't even know what that meant, but I. I went to Northern Illinois University, where I had gone for my undergrad.
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Michael Vann
And you were a husky.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, I was. Yes, yes. And.
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Michael Vann
And I've got a good buddy buddy there. Eric Jones, who does Southeast Asian history and runs. Runs a podcast out of there, too. Two podcasts. So, anyway, I'm well familiar with niu.
- [05:14]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
It was a wonderful place for me. It was amazing. And I worked with Bill Bike and Harvey Smith and Mark. Can't remember her name. That's terrible. Anyway, but it was a wonderful and supportive place, and I got my master's, and then they said, you have to. They suggested that I go Elsewhere for my PhD, my Bachelor's and masters. And so I. I went to ucla, and by then I had already at niu. I discovered the Paris Commune, I discovered French history. I came to it with an interest in feminism, and that was. You know, I was Raised a feminist, and I had no connection to France, though. But as soon as I had a course on 19th century Europe and learned about French revolutions, I was drawn to the Commune and thought, you know, there must have been some sort of women involved in this. And that was. Sort of launched me. And so then ucla, I stuck with that for my dissertation, my interest in feminist history and, and my book on the. My first book, Surmounting the Barricades, is French Feminism in the Paris Commune. And so the, the idea of feminisms, the multiplicity of feminisms that existed in 19th century France is something that has consistently woven through my work. And as I was doing the Commune work and finishing the Commune, the first book, and the Commune, and I was thinking about race and the fact that the empire was an increasingly significant thing. And so that's what then shifted me to think about imperialism and to think about the intersections of feminism and imperialism and feminism and anti imperialism. And that's, and that's how I, I landed there. And then I, as. I'll, you know, I'll talk about in a little bit about how I selected these feminists, that. That's how I ended up with New Caledonia.
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Michael Vann
Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. And I mean, there, there's one figure that links that, but we'll, we'll be talking about her. And one of the things I really apprec your book and something you just alluded to is putting these important concepts in the plural. So not French feminism, but feminism that there's a variety of approaches and the same thing with socialism and even the different forms of imperialism. So there's not one sort of uniform category there. And I thought that came up really, really well in the book.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Thank you.
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Michael Vann
Yeah. So perhaps can you give us a quick sort of definition or sort of like sense of how you conceive of women's and maybe say a few words about how you use gender as an analytical tool.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Well, I, I consider myself a historian of women and gender, and I, I don't separate them out because I think it's, you know, they're fundamentally integrated and, and that the field has evolved, you know, historically. We don't really have time for me to give that, that history here. But gender, I think, is a fundamental analytical tool and particularly power, which kind of equates with everything in many ways. Looking at gender roles and gender relations, looking for gender. There's gender within larger, excuse me, institutions, structures. There's gender in politics, language, education, religion, families, law. I mean, gender pervades. And to understand history or I think any other Social science or humanities, one has to use gender as an analytical tool.
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Michael Vann
And I'm going to do a little bit of self promotion and give a little shout out to Karen Offan, who I did a podcast with just a few weeks ago, who played an important role in developing French women's history as a field. So you can go into the New Books archive and find the Karen often podcast. And you just told me she was one of your mentors too.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, yes, she was. Yes. And I listened to your podcast and it was wonderful.
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Michael Vann
Yeah, she was wonderful. So would you quickly introduce the five women that you profile in the book? Many listeners will know Louise Michel and Aberdeen Auclair, but maybe not as familiar with Olympe Audouard, excuse my pronunciation. Leonie Rouzad and Paul Mink. Could you do a quick introduction and maybe tell us how you came to pick these five individuals before we start going through the arguments in the book? Sure, sure.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
I think to make sense of it first, I think I'll give you kind of the thesis of the book. And so that sort of explains also how I picked the five individuals. So I was looking for the first feminists in the latter 19th century to not only engage with empire, to travel into empire, to, you know, fully engage in that way. And so, and that means physically or literarily, because with one Leonie Rozard, as I'll explain, she wrote a novel about, about imperialism. And, and I was doing this because I wanted to see, you know, as I mentioned a little bit before, the. The role of feminism and imperial and the ideas of, of imperialism and anti imperialism, the role of race in feminism as it developed, questions of whiteness, which I wasn't thinking about when I really started this because this book took a while, and questions of whiteness. And so these feminists were amongst the first of third Republican leftists to critique empire. And again, this is not something I recognize coming into it. But, you know, despite they had, they were, they adhered to very different feminisms, as I'll explain, so different and often conflicting feminisms. But the, the key factor was that they were feminists and this feminism led them to critique Empire before most anyone else on the left. So not just feminism, but anyone on the left, including socialists and anarchists. And I argue that, you know, these feminists are attuned to the structures and practices of control and explo. And they all sought change within and beyond the metropole. They all critiqued existing empires. But, and this is really key, they did not critique all critique imperialism per se. And some you know, sought to transform ideas of imperialism for their own ends and develop feminist imperialisms. So all of their anti imperialisms expo oppose exploitation, but they don't all oppose imperialism and none of their. Oh sorry, no, no, no, no, no.
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Michael Vann
Don'T mean interrupt, please continue.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Just going to say one other key thing is that none of their anti imperialisms were absolute. So this is real and this is a really central thing that there, there's a clear binary between being pro imperial and anti imperial in this period I think is just impossible.
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Michael Vann
So is this comparable to sort of a vulgar understanding of Marx on imperialism that while in his writings on India he says he detested the British Empire and it's self serving and ignorant, yet was a mechanism for a force of history that would move history forward, that despite all its evils it would bring India and China into a level of industrialization. Is it, is there maybe kind of an analog there?
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah, I think there could be. I mean none of them are Marxists but they, but there is something analogous about this idea of seeing that like the idea of empire, the idea that comes with a sense of the superiority of your. Of enlightenment thought really of, of Europeanness and of whiteness. I mean that's. And again that's, I'm speaking really broadly here because one thing I really want to be specific about is the, the differences amongst these feminists and the different feminisms and feminists and the differences between the imperial context. But yeah, yeah, this like, like sort of, you know, well, the way that imperialism is being done now is wrong for this reason or that reason. But maybe there's something in it that we can use to better things.
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Michael Vann
Right, right. Makes me sort of think about recent conversations about liberal imperialism and liberal interventionism that don't maybe question the overall power structure. And this group of women have a pretty wide range of ideologies and identities. Correct?
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Right, yes, exactly. And then you know, as you asked, but then I slightly diverted sorry to, to you know, sort of with that large. Within that larger context. I think then that the, this might make some more, more sense about the differences amongst these feminists and feminism. So they coincidentally fall on a range from far left to right with right being kind of center, center, right. And you know, this is a kind of a lovely coincidence for me because it allowed an analysis of the range of the period's feminisms and, and it was truly a coincidence. But so Louise Michelle, who is undoubtedly the most widely known of these feminists and who is probably the most well known person who participated in the Paris Commune and who I actually wrote very little about in my book on women in the Paris Commune, because historically she was the only woman who anyone paid any attention to in the Commune, as though she embodied all of Communard womanhood. And that basically erased the incredible variety and subtleties of Communard feminisms and socialisms and anarchisms. So there is a little bit of an irony that I now focus so much on her, but she was a revolutionary anarchist feminist and she is this. She. She was really appropriated by the French Communist party in the 20th century as this sort of image of she's. She's often called the Red Virgin, which I find more than slightly offensive, that she's reduced to this idea that she was married to the Revolution. But Michel's a theorist, a linguist, she was an ethnographer, a novelist, a poet, an artist, an educator. She was quite brilliant. And she's also a self identified anti imperialist. And she. And Paula Mink, the woman I'll speak with next. Speak, speak with, speak about next were the two that were self identified anti imperialists, which is a really rare thing in this early Third Republic especially. And her anti imperialism came out of her experience in New Caledonia. She was sent to the French prison colony in New Caledonia with 4,500 other Communards as punishment after the commune, 25 women out of 4, 500 prisoners. And. And then late in her life she also went to Algeria, which was. She had met the Algerian Kabil who had risen up against the French at the same time as the Commune and were also sent to the prison colony in New Caledonia. And she promised she would travel to Algeria to help their anti imperial cause. She did that at the very end of her life. The trip basically killed her. So when she was 70, in her 70s, and then Paul Mank, who's a revolution, so moving from left to a little tiny bit less left, Paul Mank, who's a revolutionary socialist feminist. So again, she's, she's not repo, she's not a republican, she's a revolutionary and she's also a Communard.
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Michael Vann
She.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
And after, in the decades after the Commune, she and Michel often traveled and spoke together, trying to agitate another Commune, basically another revolution. So Mink was a well known and dramatic orator, a journalist and also a self identified anti imperialist. And she traveled to Algeria in 1884 to an anti imperialist, anti capitalist, anti religion propaganda tour. And then Leonie Rouzard and Hubertin Eau Claire are both Republican socialist feminists. So they support the idea they see the republic as an ideal form, but they believe that France has never come close to attaining that ideal form. Maybe it came close in the revolution, but they sought the true republic, a social republic. And their politics are similar. So Leonie Rouzard is the one of these five feminists who did not physically travel into empire, but she was a novelist and she literally traveled into empire and used the imperial form to critique patriarchy and also to critique existing empires. And I look specifically at her book Le Monde, which was kind of a science fictiony futuristic piece. And then Hubertineau Clair, who's also I think fairly well known as the head of the women's suffrage movement in France in the late 19th century. So she was also, she was a journalist and a suffragist and she had a newspaper, La Citoyenne, which the main goal was advancing women's legal civic rights. And she and her journalists, who included both male and female feminists, were interested in empire and goings on well beyond France. And that really escalated when she moved to Algeria with her husband and then became very, very interested in questions of gender and empire. And then finally Au la Boudoir, who is, was a liberal monarchist feminist. And she was a really well known journalist, editor and travel writer. Her travel writing, her books went into. She's the only travel writer amongst these. You know, they all travel but she's the only one. So travel writer. Her books went into multiple editions and there were reviews in English journals, novelist order. She's critical of the French French imperialism, but again not imperialism per se. She thought that France was not worthy of being able to imperialize. She really thought, I mean she was very Catholic and really she adhered to all social, all hierarchies except gender. And she traveled to Turkey, Egypt, the American West Jerusalem, Algeria, Russia. And it was very clearly the most conservative of them.
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Michael Vann
For the non specialists in 19th century France, what is a liberal monarchist? Is this an orleanist? Is this sort of spirit of 1830 or.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, yes, that's. She's exactly an orleanist. She thought that the republic was just that France was incapable of being her vision of republicanism. She thought that it was kind of the later Catholic idea of what a republic is, which was very conservative. But she thought that France, I mean she was particularly. She abhorred the Paris Commune and she, I guess you could say she held it against France. But even before that during the Second Empire she remained monarchist, but she had liberal politics in the. That very classic sense of liberalism. And you know, she didn't rule out republicanism again. So it's, you know, I think a liberal monarchist. I mean it. Thank you for asking that, because it definitely requires some definition. And it's, you know, this idea of classical liberalism, the satisfaction with class hierarchies, general race, racial hierarchies, but not gender hierarchy.
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Michael Vann
And one of the things that I think she also can illustrate is still the incredible political diversity within France in the first couple decades of the Third Republic that I think non French historians say, okay, well they established a Republic in 1870 and okay, show's over and it's been republics ever since then with the little Vichy issue. But there's, it's, it's not a, a settled issue in the 1870s, 1880s. I mean, it's this still hotly contested and there are a huge variety of political visions that are, they are competing and it's what really not till like the late 1780s that the Republic really starts to get its footing, would you say?
- [23:42]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean the, the, the 1870s especially were just, there was no clear idea that the republic was going to hold. And, and, and that's, and, and you know, monarchism and multiple different political forces were contesting for power. And that was, that was, it was, it was not a stable Republic into the 80s. And so, so yeah, thank you for pointing that out. So, you know, I mean, I, I focused on the, the multiple feminisms and then also the multiple socialisms, but it went, you know, that word multiple could really span the ideological spectrum in terms of the French political landscape.
- [24:22]
Michael Vann
Absolutely. And I, what I enjoyed, you know, having read so much, you know, Third Republican politics over the years is inserting these different feminist political perspectives into this, this ferment, which most of what I've read since graduate school was focused more on men and the politics as the domain of these third Republican men, you know, and Jules Ferry and the others. And here, here are voices from those who are politically excluded, yet playing a very prominent role in challenging these basic definitions, political definitions of what France can be and should be.
- [25:08]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, yes, absolutely. I mean, this is, you know, I really think that you can't fully understand the historical context if you don't try to remedy the way that, I mean, these women, their politics, these ideas were basically written out of history. And so it's not a question of just sort of pulling them back and like, oh, yes, I mean, oh yes, they did this, they did that. But it fundamentally alters our understanding once you recognize that gender politics in its various forms was Integral to socialist, to anarchists, to monarchists, to all of these different political forms. Otherwise, it's kind of an aberration of what had happened. The version that comes down to us.
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Michael Vann
Absolutely, absolutely. I found this book to be just a fantastic contribution to that argument and really widening my understanding of French politics in this time period. So before we get into the various arguments in the different chapters, could you say a few words on your source material for the book? Use a wide range of sources. Tell us a bit how you worked through the archives and libraries and what sort of sources you pulled from.
- [26:30]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Sure. I worked on this book for a long time. I mean, you mentioned I had another book come out this year, and I worked on it on and off. And then, while it's not always the best idea, it did allow me to get to a lot of archives and to really get to a lot of sources. And I did. The majority probably of the work was at the Bibliotheque Historique de la Bil de Paris, historical library of the city of Paris, the Bayesville Pays, where Hubertino Clerp's papers are. And just there are many, many of the journals that I. The newspapers that I used are there. There's also the Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand, which is the feminist library in Paris, which is an extraordinary, incredibly invaluable collections. But Louise Michel's papers are at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. They're now digitized. They weren't when I was using them at first. And then some of the, you know, the classic. I said the Bibliotheque Nationale, the National Library, the National Archives, the national. The. The Overseas Archives in Exxon, Provence, had pretty substantial material for Algeria and for New Caledonia. And then I was in New Caledonia and did research in the archives and some libraries there also. And so there's, you know, pretty substantial. And then in the, you know, there's also quite a few digitized, especially newspapers from the period in recent years, which has been, you know, very helpful. And then for the specific feminists, Louise Michel and Olympaudoire published a lot. Ubertin Eau Claire's newspaper, La Citoyenne, was an extraordinary source. And then the police archives. I did a lot of work in the police archives because these women were seen as very dangerous characters. Police spies followed them especially. Especially Michel and Mink throughout their lives. And that provides an extraordinary source. I mean, one has to look at that with the recognition of the judgment and perspective of the people making the observations. The police spies that literally Waited outside of their doors and. But then attended their talks and, you know, took notes on them, sometimes very detailed notes, but always with, you know, there's a commentary on what they looked like and, you know, and it was always denigrating and sexist and, you know, saying things like, you know, her forehead was large and she had bad hygiene. You know, I mean, this sort of. Yeah, yeah, literally. Literally. So, you know, again, you have these sources like that and where you have to, you know, read between the lines and recognize the source of the source. But. And then there's some.
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Michael Vann
It sounds like some of those you wouldn't even have to read between the lines are sort of hitting you over the head with it.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Right, right, right. But then at the same time they might be then saying, you know, she gave a talk on, you know, the, the crimes of France in Algeria. And you know, and then they're. They're giving you this information. But then you also have to think it's like, okay, how do I read this information? You know, in, in many ways they may be reporting it as saying it's shocking that she's so critical, but, you know, for me it's like, okay, she was critical.
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Michael Vann
So.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah. And then, you know, a sort of vast array of sources on French imperialism, on French feminisms, and on empires beyond France. And.
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Michael Vann
Yeah, so let's get into the book. Tell us about chapter one, Ideologies and intimacies of imperialism.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Okay, so the introduction in chapter one, especially the first part of chapter one, really sort of lay things out in terms of, you know, what's. What I'm going to be talking about. And it's. It, you know, but chapter one lays out the landscape of French feminisms and their interrelationships to imperialism. So really, you know, explain the different feminisms and then also introduce the feminists and talk about the relationships amongst the ideologies and the people. And so, and I'm really emphasizing the importance of reasonable examining Mid to late 19th century French imperialist history, you know, with the inclusion of multiple feminisms as a way to. Of better understanding power matrices, really. And it gives us a gendered lens to better understand, you know, power relationships in both metropolitan. The metropolitan colonies. And so, you know, I talk about how for feminists, ideologies and embodied experiences in empire shape their imperial critiques. And so, you know, give the kind of the context, the specific context into which they traveled. Feminists, French feminists in the metropole, they're marginalized already by their politics and by their gender. And then as they travel into empire. They're privileged as elite white women in colonial spaces, but they're also othered. And so they have these particular perspectives. And what these women did was in. In different ways that they used this other perspective to try to redefine Frenchness. They tried to develop a different. For each of them a kind of Frenchness that was. Had a greater gender equity and in some cases greater racial equity, depending on the feminist. And. And I talk about the idea of intimacy. The titles. This chapter is Ideologies and Intimacies of Imperialism. And I think about intimacy not just as sexual, but physical emotional proximity. So the quotidian interactions and physical violence, regimes of control. I mean, the intimacy that is something that I think is an important way of understanding the imperial context, the colonial context, experience of. Of people under colonialism. And these feminists are observing this and critiquing it and influenced it. So it's this, you know, this sort of co. Constitution. It's influencing them. And they are trying to influence their context as well as friends, but they're also experiencing the intimacy of being in empire. And sometimes it is very uncomfortable for them. And. And that's when we especially can kind of see this like, you know, window into their ideas of propriety or elite deference. And this chapter then also looks at the way. So when these women are in these imperial contexts, they're looking at different kinds of institutions and structures as ways of comparison, comparing it to France as a way to try to change France. And so this chapter talks specifically about the way that they looked at women's social and sexual standings. And for this specifically, when this is o' Doyle, the most conservative and then Menk, the revolutionary socialist. France came out better in these contexts. Whereas when we get talking about chapter two, where I'm talking about different kind of categories that they analyze. France comes up short. But Odouard goes to the American West. She has an absurdly idealized idea of white America, which is in which men and women are equal, it's safe for women to be anywhere. There's basically no sexual violence. And that, you know, whiteness will triumph over Indians. And she really denigrates Indians. So it's a really brutal racist kind of thing.
- [35:15]
Michael Vann
And was she the one who had this rather startling view of American slavery that the very nostalgic. And that there was an order.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's, you know, that's that in the. In the next chapter. I don't want to like, it's sort of weird to stick, but. But absolutely. This is this was her over reliance on law. And I talk about law and the focus on law and the way that they saw that if you could change law, then this is for the. Because she's a liberal monarchist and she really, really puts a lot of weight on law. She sees miscegenation law in the United States because before she traveled, she would study law codes of place, and she sees miscegenation law. So she says, okay, so white men can't touch black women, including enslaved women. And so when she's comparing married white French women who are living under the Napoleonic Code, which is, you know, a law code, that married women had the. The same rights as a child, a minor child, and had no bodily autonomy, intensely patriarchal and misogynist legal code in France, for specifically for married women, she's saying that enslaved black women have more bodily autonomy and freedom because after they work in the fields, they can go, as she said, back to their hut and no one can touch them.
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Michael Vann
Right.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
So it is shocking. It is shocking. And. But it is really. She. She relies on the law and her. This idealized sense of. Of whiteness. She's especially. Especially for Yankees, but even for southern whites.
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Michael Vann
Right, right.
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Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah, so that's. Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
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Michael Vann
Yeah, I was just going to say that I just want listeners to know that the book's divided into six chapters, and the five women we talked about play various roles at different points in the chapters. So they sort of come in and out according to your analysis. So what do you argue in chapter two? We've already alluded to some of this. This is the chapter section, Sex, Love and the Law Transforming Frenchness.
- [37:29]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Okay, thanks. So this looks at feminists who focus on law as a way of trying to reconceptualize Frenchness. So as they're reading about or experiencing living it in imperial context, they are comparing it to the French legal system. And as I, you know, briefly explained, the Napoleonic Code, which looms large. So for. For feminists in France, this tends to be a big focus, the law code. But then they compare it in other contexts. Importantly, there's a greater focus on the law, the more moderate the class politics of the woman. So Louise Michel. Not interested. She's just not interested. She is a revolutionary. She thinks we just need to get rid of all of it. And in general, Paul Leminck also is a revolutionary socialist feminist, but her story with law is a bit more complex. And then on the farthest right o'dwa, she really sees the law as maintaining white authority and protecting white Civilization. You can really see this when she's in the American West. So the different feminists have different politics, different goals. But what this chapter talks about is the way that their interests intersect in law and the judicial regulation of intimacies, as well as relationship between the state and traditional practices and women's lives. So Michelle is really not part of this chapter because this is not her concern. But I really saw this focus on these, specifically these three sites, marriage, women's legal status and polygamy. And this is about patriarchal law and power relations. And they're comparing it with the Napoleonic Code. So marriage is obvious. Right. It's like gendered, social, sexual, economic and legal construct. So makes sense that feminists are interested in it. With Odois, the example we talked about for when she was in the United States with enslaved black women, comparing their bodily autonomy and freedom to married French women. And Rozad, in her novel Le Mond Rond Versay, she inverts the Napoleonic Code, like, literally to say, man owes obedience to women, and she inverts everything and, you know, to shed light on patriarchal inequity, because everyone is just shocked at, like, how could people live like this? And it is indeed how women live. So. And then Au Claire writes about how marriage is an economic disaster for French women. And then she also looks at Berridge and in colonial context, and then the idea of women's legal status sort of more broadly. O'Douard talks about how Turkey allows paternity suits, whereas France does not. The late and brilliant Rachel Fuchs wrote a lot about that in France. And Odouard idealizes certain. In the way that o' Douard idealizes certain aspects of. Of American law and custom and life. She does something similar in the Turkish context, and this is especially because she. She is really operating in elite circles and says that women live so well in Turkey because, you know, she's invited into the elite harems, etc. But then. But for the legal. The legal part, it's really this kind of. She says there are paternity suits there and not in France. Au Clair looks at the Tuareg people in North Africa and how they are matriarchies, and she really puts that as an ideal for France to follow, which is pretty fascinating, I thought.
- [41:40]
Michael Vann
Yeah. And what I was really struck by was your discussion of that's white and the Mormons and the discussion of polygamy and Mormonism. And is it Odelard that.
- [41:55]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
That.
- [41:56]
Michael Vann
That engages Mormon polygamy?
- [41:58]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes. Yes. Because this is where she, you know, she talks about being in the kingdom of the Mormons. Yes. Yeah. And she says, you know, the Mormons have polygamy and they literally, of course, own up to it. It's part of what they do. And that the French really have a kind of polygamy, but it's not recognize that you are. It's more of a social polygamy that men marry a woman, but then they have lovers, mistresses. But at least the Mormons, as she said, have to. Well, she says give the woman, you know, shelter, money and their name and, you know, recognize them. And so she's using this again. This is, that's a great example of how they used these contexts, you know, this, this, the colonized American west, as a way of saying that this is a way that France could, you know, improve. And she's not suggesting that there's legal, you know, polygamy, because polygamy is something that they uniformly, these feminists uniformly critique. Michelle doesn't write about it, but yeah, it's. She's kind of shining the light on French hypocrisy.
- [43:11]
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- [44:22]
Michael Vann
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels.
- [44:25]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Jack Daniels and Music are made for each other.
- [44:28]
Michael Vann
They share a rhythm and the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas.
- [44:35]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
There's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly.
- [44:39]
Michael Vann
Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks.
- [44:42]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume.
- [44:44]
Michael Vann
Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Yeah, and just in terms of the structure of the chapter and what you're doing intellectually and geographically, I found it so fascinating to contrast the uses of this understanding of Islam or Ottoman legal codes with the Mormon example, which is an otherness, but it's a whiteness that's other. And I thought that was just an amazing sort of global historical insight. I really enjoyed that. So the third chapter focuses on Eau Claire's feminist newspaper, La Citoyenne. And for the non French special, this is the feminine form of the noun citizen. So citizen Citoyen. Citoyen. That's the name of the newspaper and the newspaper and the alternative empires in her discourse. So how does Eau Clair engage imperialism in this paper?
- [45:49]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
So as I mentioned before, its primary focus is to advance women's suffrage, but then they, they look at women's lives and status in contexts around the world and in multiple imperial contexts. And Eau Claire is she very much in the process of writing this. And then she writes of the newspaper, and then she writes a series of articles that become a book, the Arab Woman, where she is pointing out the aspects of Arab women's lives. And this is, these are Algerian. She's using that term to just cover Algerian women compared to French women's lives. And she, Auclair, believes that she's an assimilationist. She believes that France needs to allow Algerians to become French because she believes, and I think she actually believes that, that everyone really wants to be French and that Algerian women wanted to be, you know, have the kind of, to be friendship. She even, she lived there. She did all this kind of investigation. So she never learned Arabic or any other language of the region. But she, you know, examined their lives, said, okay, certain things are better. Like there's they allow divorce. And Eclair also wrote about the importance of women maintaining their names. She was opposed to the patronym. And in the Algerian culture, she was looking at women maintain their names at marriage. And she saw that as a really significant thing. And so she, you know, kind of looked at the pros and cons and. And she just took these imperial concepts really of kind of racialization and ethnographic categorization and even sexualization and applied it in these contexts to examine and critique their world and said, look, we can. France has to do better if French women have the vote. If French women have greater equity and equality, we can better the situation for Algeria, and that will be better for everyone. And so there's a lot of similarity with British feminists in this. Feminist imperialist in certain ways, except Eau Claire is not just instrumentalizing it for her own politics. She, I believe, is literally trying to. She literally believes that she can elevate this society by introducing greater gender equity in France, which then will introduce greater gender equity in Algeria and make the world better.
- [48:52]
Michael Vann
Chapter four centers on Louise Michel's exile to New Caledonia, the penal colony she sent there for her role in the Paris Commune. Actually, chapter five focuses on that as well. So tell us about Michelle's time in New Caledonia.
- [49:09]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Okay, so the chapters are divided up. The. The chapter four looks at the politics of. In everyday colonial encounters and the New Caledonian context. And then chapter five looks at the. The methods of turning revolutionary ideals into universal practice praxis. So for chapter four, so Michelle is, as I mentioned, sent to New Caledonia with 4,500 other Communards. And she is, while of course not being happy to be being exiled, is actually quite interested and excited in this experience. In many ways, she's an eternal optimist in any way. She isn't. But. So she is sent to this prison colony. And one of the things that she experienced and writes about is the gendered nature of the prison colony and how intense, masculinized space that it is, which is, of course, not surprising. But she critiques this as a way of really critiquing this, the larger, you know, patriarchal element in France and in political authority and in imperialism. And she also. She was very. She's interested in the Kanak people. And the Kanak people, the indigenous people in New Caledonia are. The French have, you know, categorized them as Melanesian. And this is sort of constructed category of Polynesians and Melanesians in the. In the Pacific, with Polynesians being whiter and Melanesians being blacker. And that's where this categorization comes from. And so then, you know, with Sub Saharan Africans, Melanesians are considered by the French as their lowest colonial subjects because of the racist structure. And the French think that the. The Kanak have no culture and really denigrate them. And Michelle disagrees. She becomes interested in the Kanak. She forms relationships with Kanak men, and in particular Daomi, a man named Dao Mi, becomes her kind of informant. His English is. Sorry, his French English. His French is okay. He's pretty good. And together they translate and transcribe the indigenous. Some indigenous Kanak oral tales. Kanak culture is an oral culture. And Michelle, I mean, she, first of all, she recognizes that the Kanak have a culture. She values the Kanak culture. She values the Kanak as a people. She values their tradition and their spirituality and all of these things that the friendship. They're invisible to the French because they choose for them to be invisible to the French. I mean, the French choose not to see or recognize this. And for Michel, she wants to represent the Kanak to the French as a people with a culture. And yet at the same time, she does term the Kanak Stone age and childlike and uses these kinds of terms. And when she does translate and transcribe the tales, she cleans them up.
- [52:52]
Michael Vann
Yeah, she takes out some of the more risque tales.
- [52:55]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Right.
- [52:55]
Michael Vann
So what balderizes the.
- [52:59]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Anything about bodies and also elements of misogyny in the culture. So she's both representing the Kanak to. Excuse me too, in hopes of the Kanaka, sorry, that the French and the rest of the world will see them more for what they truly are like. But she's also advancing her own politics at the same time. And the tales, she publishes them in two different. First, they're published serially in a deportee owned French language newspaper in New Caledonia, of which there were several. And then in addition, in 1875, when she's in New Caledonia, it's published in France. And then she redoes them in 1885 after she's returned to France after the general amnesty for Communards. And that second version is even more cleaned up. And the comparisons, I speak a lot about the comparisons between the two as a way of seeing what she was looking for, what she was trying to do with these tales and, and part of all of this project too, she's. She's. When she's writing, she's theorizing the logic of French civilizational rankings and she's critiquing the extinction narrative in which the French, you know, say. Well, the French and most other imperialized say that these, you know, this group of people that we are imperializing is. Is They're. They're going to become extinct anyway. So, you know, we are free to take their land and, you know, physically.
- [54:33]
Michael Vann
Which is. Which is central to settler colonialism.
- [54:35]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah, exactly.
- [54:36]
Michael Vann
I think you cite a Native American scholar who. That's right, foundational to the settler colonial project.
- [54:43]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Exactly, exactly. And so she's, you know, contesting this. And then she argues that the Kanak are in some ways more civilized than the French, and the French are in some ways more civilized than the Canuck. And this is really this very, very clear example to me that a clear anti imperialist versus pro imperialist position just is impossible in this context. Because Michel is more. Michel is less racist and less invested in hierarchies of race, of ethnicity, of education, of culture than most anyone I've ever encountered, you know, reading in this period. And yet she's of her time. Right? You cannot escape your time. And I think that this is a really interesting and important thing that we cannot say. Oh, she's not really anti imperialist by our standards. Well, no, she's not, but it's. How do you define that and that there just is no clear binary, is it?
- [55:51]
Michael Vann
Does she shade into sort of noble savage discourse?
- [55:58]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Sort of. You know, I mean, you could look at it this way, yes, but not. I mean, in some ways she's a little bit more clear eyed than that. I mean, because she really, she's a kind of a mystical person in certain ways and she really, you know, admires their connection to the earth and you know, and that can also, you know, of course, play into a noble savage kind of thing. But it's, it's more balanced because she's, she's. What she's saying is that like children, they just need to be educated. They need some of the benefits. I mean, you know, as I'll talk about with the next chapter. Michelle is an educator and she's trained as a teacher. Developing anarchist pedagogy is central to her thought and writing through for decades. And a lot of Kanak ideas then come into that because she recognizes that they have some better kind of inter human and inter, you know, species relationships. Like, you know, recognizing like the life and spirituality and trees and this kind of thing that Western culture doesn't recognize. So there's some idealization, but it's a little more clear eyed, I think, in many ways.
- [57:17]
Michael Vann
Well, let's get into chapter five then, which is universal language, universal education, universal revolution. And here you really get into some of the things that Louise Michelle is doing in terms of analyzing language and promoting a unifying language and also her educational and revolutionary work in New Caledonia.
- [57:44]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
So she is as part of her. So she has this universal ideal and it is not French universalism, it is an anarchist universalism that she is looking to break down barriers between people. And one that she thinks is really significant is language. And so she's interested in universal language. And she's not the only person interest, interested in universal language in this period. This is the period where Esperanto develops as a uni, as a universal language and Volupok and there are all these other universal languages of which I knew nothing about before doing this research, which is really, really fascinating.
- [58:26]
Michael Vann
And I loved reading that section of the book and it came, it, it came as a real surprise to me. I'm like, oh, but this just fabulous.
- [58:34]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
And thanks. Yeah, I mean this, you know, the stuff with the language and then the, the, the language in the. Looking for a universal language. And then also her use of linguistics was quite a surprise to me and it involved kind of a deep dive in, in areas that, you know, I had no real knowledge about before. But she, to, to, she's looking for an originary language also. So it's sort of a two pronged thing. So the Kanak have 26 languages, still have 26 languages. New Caledonia is an archipelago and so different languages are spoken in different islands and then also in different areas of the Grand Terre, the big, the main, the main, main island. But they use a trade language called Bis Lema to communicate amongst themselves and also with traders. And it was originally English based with some Chinese and Portuguese and different Kannak languages and then became French based by the 19th century. And so she sees this as a real, an organic language. In contrast, she's not opposed to Esperanto, but she sees those constructed languages as inorganic and as Bixlama is being used. And she thinks that this is an extraordinary ideal. And, and when she's seeing this, she's also then doing this search for original human language. And she is a self trained linguist, she's also a self trained ethnographer. She continually has books sent to her in New Caledonia. They take a long time to get there, but she gets a lot of them. In looking for the original human language. She had this black notebook which when I started doing this research, the International Institute for Social History actually let me hold and use and then later it was digitized and I could no longer do that. So that was, you know, for those of us who love this stuff, that was very exciting to have her notebook. And in the notebook are pages and pages of comparative linguistics and language fragments. She's just, you know, she is comparing words and phrases from dozens of languages and talking about language groups in this search for an original human language. You know, at the Same time that she's really valorizing the existence of this kind of universal language.
- [61:02]
New Books Network Announcer
Yeah.
- [61:03]
Michael Vann
So, you know, as, as a scholar of imperialism, I find, I found that just so fascinating because she's this sort of left wing version of British Orientalists a century earlier in India, like India Jones and some of these other scholars who are trying to, you know, doing these linguistic investigations. And here is coming from a very different perspective with a different relationship to empire and so forth. I just found that whole language section fascinating. What does she do in terms of education and developing an anarchist, anarchist pedagogy in New Caledonia?
- [61:47]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Well, as I mentioned, she was trained as a teacher. She taught starting in the 1860s in Paris and she was consistently developing a more equitable pedagogy with, you know, a very strong feminist and class based equity kind of a program. And in the Paris Commune, she was involved in redeveloping an educational program so that it managed for mandatory secular education. She's intensely anti clerical. They're all intensely anti clerical, except for O'Duar, who's intensely clerical. But this is really, it's really significant thing for her in New Caledonia. She is learning again, you know, from this, you know, what we would call indigenous ways of knowing. And she's trying to integrate this into her pedagogy. And she, she, she's a New Caledonian for several seven years and for the last few years she's allowed to just live in the capital Noumea, as opposed to in the, the prison. It was an outdoor prison, like a prison without walls. Some prisoners were in actual physical enclosures and she wasn't, they were out on.
- [63:08]
Michael Vann
A, on a peninsula.
- [63:09]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Right, right, exactly. They were out on a peninsula which was guarded at the end. And while much of, of the grandeur of New Caledonia is quite lush, this was a very arid peninsula. And they were sort of, you know, these urban, these Parisian revolutionaries were kind of dumped there and like, okay, you know, go ahead, survive. And the, and the way she met Canuck was the Canuck served as sort of, you know, they come and sell stuff, right? They, and they could, you know, interact in that way and you know, in living, living there. And this is, you know, the context in which she's really, you know, developing her critique of, you know, the gendered nature of the prison colony, etc. And you know, the whole power structures. But the French want to pardon her pretty early on because she's, she's become a little too heroic and people, you know, really, you know, she would like, they would like her to kind of come back and then sort of, I think disappear. But she refuses to return to France until there's a general amnesty for everyone. So, and that's 1880. So for the few years before that she's allowed to live in the capital and open a school for the children of French colonizers, colonists. And but on Sundays she teaches the Kanak and the French government does not want this to happen. And so she like teaches them off, you know, in the bush and you know, and, but she's teaching the Canuck and she's learning from the Canuck. And this is what she's talking about in developing this, this, this kind of pedagogy. And this is where she's saying that, you know, to help kind of elevate them in their civilizational development, you know, help them climb the civilizational ladder, a little Western education would be beneficial. And again, this comes back to this, you know, impossibility of the anti imperial, pro imperial binary, that it's much more complex and often contradictory than that. And, but you know, after her time in the Commune, she continues to develop the anarchist pedagogy. She opens a, an anarchist school. She lives in London for a long time because the French police harass her non stop. And she's. Many other French leftists live in London, especially in the 1890s, she opens an international school and these, you know, kind of continues to develop these ideas. And then at the end of her life when she goes to Algeria, she's very much focusing on, she wants to talk to teachers because she feels that education is the way to bring about, you know, an anti capitalist, anti imperialist revolution.
- [65:46]
Michael Vann
And what's her role in 1878 in the Kanak uprising?
- [65:51]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
So, so the, the Canuck rise up in 1878 in a really highly coordinated, sophisticated uprising against the French. They had attacked the French and risen up against the French multiple times over the decades, but then they didn't for several years. And it seems fairly clear that they were planning this. I don't have, you know, sources on this, but other scholars have also, you know, said this. And it's a surprise and brutal attack and the French respond with massive force. And many of the Communards side with the French. And for the last week of the Paris Commune IT 72 day revolutionary civil war. The final week is a brutal bloodbath in which the French army slaughters 15 to 20,000 Parisians in the streets. And then these Communards are the people who couldn't escape and who or who weren't slaughtered and were then sent to New Caledonia. So their friends and comrades and family members have been slaughtered by the French government and they've been shipped a four month sea voyage away. And yet when the Canuck rise up and the French are like, you know, we are, you know, going to defend our right to be here. Many of the Communards side with the French and some even fight with the French because they choose whiteness and you know, quote unquote, civilization over blackness and what they see as savagery. And Michelle does not. She. Some of the other Communards are sort of a little soft on it at the beginning especially. Well, you know, I mean, it's understanding that they're rising up, but Michelle is the only one who consistently supports the Kanak against the French. There's a anonymous publication like more than a decade later that, you know, says that really basically says Michelle was right. But then it's, it's a, it's anonymous and it's also a sort of an odd thing that really misinterprets her role and things. But, but aside from that sort of anonymous person that really is. There are some communists later who are, you know, say, well, imperialism is bad. And that's. By the mid mid 1880s and into the 1890s, anti imperialism is a significant force and you know, know, in the third republic, but not in the 18, not in 1878, in, in New Caledonia. And she, you know, in her time in New Caledonia, she, you know, encounters these Algerian Kabil who are also exiled there after their 1871 uprising, many of whom also side with the French against the Canuck. You know, it's.
- [68:50]
Michael Vann
And many of these, I found that really fascinating.
- [68:53]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, yes. And many of them are elites and you know, perhaps there's something in, in that kind of alliance, you know. And then ultimately, you know, as I mentioned, she, she's able to travel to Algeria and in 1904, she really just, I mean, she's, she and Manx travel and speak, travel and speak all, you know, around France and England and Belgium and then she ultimately makes us, makes it to Algeria because she very much believes that her embodied presence there will make a difference in being able to bring about an anti imperial, anti capitalist, anti religious uprising.
- [69:34]
Michael Vann
What year does she die in?
- [69:36]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
1904.
- [69:37]
Michael Vann
1904.
- [69:38]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah. So no, 19. Oh, sorry, January of 1905.
- [69:41]
Michael Vann
Oh five, yeah. Just after the Algeria trip.
- [69:44]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. Like she, she dies in Marseille, she comes back and she, she's already quite ill and it's just, I mean it was. They just Kept going from city to city. She traveled with a young anarchist, Ernest. And it was a really, really packed schedule and she was not young.
- [70:10]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah. So the last full chapter in the book is entitled Familiar Stranger the figure of the Jew in scare quotes. How did the image of the Jew as other factor into this history of feminism and empire?
- [70:30]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
So the, so Jews were both in France and in empire, right? And so there is this, there are, there were the familiar stranger, right? They go into Jews are all over. And so there's a familiarity and a preconceived idea already amongst these women, amongst French people about Jews and what Jews were like at home and then abroad. It's a, it's orientalized version. And the orientalized version of the Jew is also present in the French metropole. And so this was not something I was looking for in doing this research. It was just, you know, as I was doing this research I kept seeing the way that the figure of the Jew appeared in all sorts of different places in the politics and the arguments especially of Odoir and then of Eau Claire in different ways and then ultimately Michel. So they all wrote about Jews in imperial context and in French, all three. So Claire, Michel. And what I saw was the further right their class politics, the more they adhere to the status quo, the less tolerance they had of others others. So Odoir is intensely anti Semitic. Eau Claire instrumentalizes anti Semitism to advance her politics. And Michelle is. Believes that capitalism is the problem and it deforms anyone whether you're a Christian or a Jew. And she's anti religion, anti capitalist and anti anti Semitism. So and they all use this idea of Jewish difference to foster their own agenda. And this is a. Something that Lisa Silverman has written about in the. In the context of central Europe. But I found it really useful the idea that, you know, Jewish difference is something that's socially constructed and historically specific. It's like how the Jew is constructed as not the, the proper Christian masculinity or not the property Christian femininity. And you know, it's, it's this, this other. So O'Duard had a very racialized and gendered version of the figure of the Jew. And anti Semitism like interwove her liberalism and her elite class politics. A lot of her anti Semitism is Catholic based, blaming Jews for rejecting Christ. She speaks about Jews and writes about Jews in Constantinople, Jews in Jerusalem, Jews in Russia. She describes them as dirty, dishonest Jewish men is feminized Jewish women is highly sexualized. She argues that despite often looking poor, that all Jews have basically caves. The quote is caves filled with gold. That they hide their wealth and that all Jews have this wealth. They hide their wealth because they're so cheap that they, you know, don't even spend it on themselves. And, and this is something, I mean, this just interweaves so many of her arguments and in this, in imperial context again, and you're describing the filthiness of impoverished people, but attributing it to being Jews. And Au Claire.
- [74:09]
Michael Vann
She.
- [74:11]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Kind of is willing to accept most any ally to advance women's suffrage. And she uses the figure of the Jew. She instrumentalizes anti Semitism for her own political purposes to advance her Republican politics. And she basically panders to anti Republican antisemitism, even though she's such a strong Republican. And one of the ways she does this is she publishes in Etoir Durumont's La Libre Parole, this intensely anti Semitic newspaper. And she's willing to write about Jews as foreign, as interlopers. She, she takes advantage of, she kind of piggybacks on xenophobia. She talks about how. And she does this as a way of, of critiquing French gender hierarchies and the Napoleonic Code. You know, for example, she says that a German man, a German Jewish man could, you know, come to France and become a citizen and then, you know, vote and a French woman, and she's like. And she says, we daughters of Joan of Arc can never, can never vote, can never, you know, be have this kind of citizenship. And so she, you know, there's a soft kind of anti Semitism and then sometimes more overt. And then finally, Michel is not an anti Semite. She's a she, though. That's it. I don't think I have time to go to that. But it's a really interesting, complex thing where many of her critics said she wasn't, but because of her alliance with, With some, not some, some anti driver science. Anyway. So she, she argues that capitalism created the idea of the Jew and that it defigures the capitalism, disfigures everyone. And she wrote a novel called Le Clock Dans in which it almost seems anti Semitic because she is really using these tropes of the rich and insensitive and exploitative Jew. But then there's the. Then the revolution comes and it's led by this Jewish man's son and daughter who read Kropotkin and who bring these ideas of anarchism and, and then in the new world, the. Their father, the capitalist, the Jew realizes that in his youth he was a poet, he had sensitivity, he cared, and capitalism had deformed him. And in the new world, and then the son dies and the daughter really brings the revolution. She leads the revolution and the father, you know, stops being exploitative capitalists and comes back to his true self. And so that, you know, Jews are essentially greedy and exploitative, it's that capitalism creates them that way, which at the same time is saying that Jews at that time were, you know, capitalist Jews were exploitative. So it's extremely complex.
- [77:29]
Michael Vann
Yeah, so you've been really generous with your time, but I've got two more questions before I let you go. First, can you suggest two books for the listeners?
- [77:39]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Sure. One book I am really excited about is Jennifer Botan's forthcoming book, Passionate Mobility and Women's Defiance of French colonial policing. 1919, 1952. And that's coming out with University of Chicago Press in November.
- [77:58]
Michael Vann
And that's our colleague Jennifer Boite.
- [78:00]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Yes, Jennifer Boiten. Yes, it's. I've read bits of it and it's brilliant. And then another book that I found really groundbreaking and wonderful and important is Rachel Mesh's Before Three Gender Stories from 19th Century France and it's published by Stanford.
- [78:20]
Michael Vann
Yeah, fantastic.
- [78:22]
New Books Network Announcer
Great.
- [78:22]
Michael Vann
And finally, what are you working on now and what can we hope to see from you next?
- [78:27]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
I'm working on a book on names, on personal names. And I'm interested in the significance and meaning that names have to individuals and groups. First names and last names and the ways in which the state and religion are interested in controlling and monitoring names and the interaction between individuals and groups and the state and forces of authority. I published a piece from this several years ago about feminist opposition to the patronym in 19th century France. I alluded to that a little bit about Hubertine au Clair. And then I also look at the way that the Napoleonic state mandated that all children be named after heroes from antiquity or saints on the Catholic calendar. And you know what that meant. And then the way that certain revolutionaries and radicals would challenge that. And I look at revolutionary naming in the French Revolution, but also in the Russian Revolution and some other comparative contexts. The way that people gave children names like in the Russian Revolution, naming children, things like, you know, atheists, electrification, Marxa for girls, Lenina, putting your politics on a child so, you know, what does that mean, you know, for that child and in the larger political context. And then also the French state's mandate, state mandating under Napoleon that all Jews take permanent last names as a way of assimilating And Jews, which doesn't really, you know, it's a way of assimilating Jews but also marking them. And, and then at the end of the 19th century, the French state also did this with Algerian Muslims demanding that they take permanent last names instead of their traditional naming structures. And the differences in the, in this. And also in the middle, sorry, in the middle of the century, the way that the state mandated that formerly enslaved people in Les Anti and the Antilles were given last names. So what names people were given? The ways in which that they were allowed choice. The, the ways that in the Caribbean context and in the Algerian context, they were also often given intensely insulting and offensive names. You know, what that meant, looking at the way this changed over time. So these are, these are kind of three different sections of the book. But this overall idea of the significance of personal names, first and last names for individuals and for the state is. It's a big question. It's a big project.
- [81:25]
Michael Vann
That's fascinating. I love that. Just a little personal anecdote. One of my closest friends since high school, he still, still very close friend. His, his father was born in the Philippines and during the Japanese occupation, and his parents named him Mussolini. And it's Mussolini.
- [81:47]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Ignacio, this is a, this is exactly what I'm talking about. That's, that's a, that's something for, for us, for a 2 year old to carry or a 40 year old.
- [81:59]
Michael Vann
Yeah, yeah, I know.
- [82:04]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
And this is the thing. It is, it is pervasive. It is extraordinary about this, you know, how people put their politics on their child. And, you know, I just find it a completely fascinating thing in terms of political movements, individuals within movements, and just the kind of personal experience of bearing that name.
- [82:23]
Michael Vann
Oh, what a great project. What a fantastic project. Well, hey, Carolyn Eichner, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
- [82:31]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
Thank you very much, Mike. I've really, really enjoyed it.
- [82:35]
Michael Vann
So this has been a conversation with Professor Carolyn Eichner of University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee about feminism's empire, out with Cornell in 2022. I'm Michael Vann of Sacramento State University, and this has been an episode of New Books in History, a channel on the New Books Network. Thank you for listening.
- [82:53]
Professor Carolyn Eichner
It.