Podcast Summary: "Carolyn J. Eichner, 'Feminism's Empire'" (Cornell UP, 2022)
New Books in History / New Books Network – December 1, 2025
Host: Michael Vann
Guest: Prof. Carolyn J. Eichner
Overview
This episode features a deep dive into Carolyn J. Eichner's acclaimed book, Feminism’s Empire, an exploration of how five French feminists engaged with the questions of imperialism, race, gender, and anti-imperialist critique in the late 19th century. Through biographical profiles and a nuanced discussion of sources, theory, and context, Eichner and host Michael Vann shed light on the complexities, contradictions, and spectrum of feminist thought during the fraught history of the French Third Republic and its empire.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Carolyn Eichner’s Path to French Feminist History
- Eichner's background was unconventional: she started in finance, disliked it, and only pivoted to history after encouragement from her mother.
- She gravitated to women’s history and French history through the Paris Commune, discovering the neglected and complex role of women and multiple feminisms in revolutionary France.
Quote:
"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."
[05:13] — Prof. Eichner
2. Defining French Feminisms and Their Relationship to Empire
- Focus on the plural form of feminisms: underscoring multiple, sometimes contradictory, feminist currents.
- Gender, power, and their role in analyzing history: Eichner stresses the necessity of deploying gender as an analytical category, inseparable from women’s history.
- She explores how assumptions of superiority (European-ness, whiteness) informed both critiques and supports of imperialism.
Quote:
"Gender pervades. And to understand history...one has to use gender as an analytical tool." [08:10 — Prof. Eichner]
3. The Five Feminist Figures of the Book
Eichner outlines her criteria: she sought the first feminists to engage with imperial issues, by traveling, writing, or critiquing the empire, each representing a spectrum of class politics, ideology, and approaches.
- Louise Michel: Revolutionary anarchist feminist, Paris Communard, anti-imperialist—her engagement with the Kanak in New Caledonia became foundational to her critique of French imperialism.
- Paul Mink: Revolutionary socialist feminist, Communard, self-identified anti-imperialist; campaigned in Algeria.
- Leonie Rouzard: Republican socialist feminist, novelist ("Le Monde renversé"), critiqued patriarchy and empire imaginatively.
- Hubertine Auclair: Republican socialist and head of the women’s suffrage movement; used her publication La Citoyenne to address imperial issues from a suffragist lens, especially during her time in Algeria.
- Olympe Audouard: Liberal monarchist feminist, travel writer—her views reflected conservative, Catholic, and racial hierarchies, critical of France’s 'inability' to empire properly, but not of imperialism itself.
Notable insight:
- None of these feminists’ anti-imperialisms were "absolute"—each response to empire was situated and complex. Quote:
"None of their anti imperialisms were absolute. ... A clear binary between being pro imperial and anti imperial in this period I think is just impossible."
[12:37] — Prof. Eichner
4. Feminism, Law, and Comparisons Across Empires [37:29]
- Feminists often measured gender equity by reference to French law, especially the patriarchal Napoleonic Code.
- Olympe Audouard’s idealizations of the US or Turkish law often revealed deep racial and class biases, sometimes resulting in disturbing relativizations (e.g., whitewashing American slavery). Quote:
"She says that enslaved black women have more bodily autonomy and freedom because after they work in the fields, they can go...back to their hut and no one can touch them."
[36:44] — Prof. Eichner
- Rouzard, in her novel, inverts code to expose patriarchal injustice; Eau Claire highlights matriarchal practices among the Tuareg as exemplary.
5. Feminist Journalism and Imperial Critique: La Citoyenne [45:49]
- Eau Claire’s newspaper became a site for examining colonial women’s status, advancement of suffrage, and cross-imperial comparison.
- She believed in assimilating colonized women into French citizenship but through a lens of classic republican universalism. Quote:
"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."
[48:51] — Prof. Eichner
6. Louise Michel in New Caledonia: Encounter, Critique, Contradiction
- Sent as a political prisoner; developed relationships with the Kanak people, strove to represent their culture and valorize it to the French—yet sometimes filtered through contemporary paternalism and "civilizational" lenses.
- Tried to integrate indigenous knowledge into her anarchist pedagogy and theorized universalist education and linguistic unity (inspired by Kanak trade languages like Bislama).
- Michel’s support of the Kanak during the 1878 revolt made her notable among Communards, many of whom identified with the French colonial authorities instead. Quote:
"Michel is more...less racist and less invested in hierarchies of race...than most anyone I've ever encountered...and yet she's of her time. Right? You cannot escape your time."
[54:43] — Prof. Eichner
- This section demonstrates the impossibility of fully divorcing even radical feminisms from their historical context’s biases.
7. Language, Education, and Universalism in Anarchist Thought
- Michel’s interest in universal language led her to value organic, hybrid trade languages over constructed languages like Esperanto ([57:44]).
- She led schools for both colonizers’ and Kanak children, integrating indigenous methods when possible.
8. The Figure of ‘The Jew’ in French Feminism and Empire [70:09]
- The feminists’ differing approaches to antisemitism illustrated broader class and political divides:
- Olympe Audouard: virulent, racialized antisemitism rooted in Catholic elitism.
- Hubertine Auclair: instrumentalized antisemitic tropes for political ends, pandering to anti-Republican prejudices to advance the cause of women’s rights.
- Michel: anti-antisemitic, arguing instead that capitalism distorts and deforms both Jewish and Christian identities. Quote:
"They all use this idea of Jewish difference to foster their own agenda."
[70:29] — Prof. Eichner
Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments
-
On finding feminist plurality in history:
"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."
[23:41] — Prof. Eichner -
On Louise Michel’s challenge to the extinction discourse in colonialism:
"She’s theorizing the logic of French civilizational rankings and she’s critiquing the extinction narrative in which the French...say that these, you know, this group of people that we are imperializing is...going to become extinct anyway. So, you know, we are free to take their land."
[54:32] — Prof. Eichner -
On reading police archives about feminist activists:
"Police spies followed them especially Michel and Mink throughout their lives. ... There’s a commentary on what they looked like and, you know, and it was always denigrating and sexist...her forehead was large and she had bad hygiene."
[26:30] — Prof. Eichner -
On the inability for historical binaries in anti-imperialism:
"A clear anti-imperialist versus pro-imperialist position just is impossible in this context. ... It’s much more complex and often contradictory than that."
[54:43], [63:08] — Prof. Eichner
Suggested Readings and Future Work
-
Book recommendations by Prof. Eichner:
- Jennifer Boiten’s Passionate Mobility and Women’s Defiance of French Colonial Policing (forthcoming, University of Chicago Press, November)
- Rachel Mesch, Before Three: Gender Stories from 19th Century France (Stanford)
-
Current Project:
- Eichner is exploring the significance of naming practices—how states, revolutions, and individuals wield first and last names as tools of assimilation, identity, and resistance across contexts from France to Russia to colonial settings.
"I’m working on a book on names, on personal names...the significance and meaning that names have to individuals and groups...and the ways in which the state and religion are interested in controlling and monitoring names..."
[78:27] — Prof. Eichner
Timestamps of Key Segments
- [03:38] Eichner's biography and academic journey
- [07:23] Introducing the five feminist subjects and book’s thesis
- [12:54] On complexities of anti-imperialism in feminist critique
- [21:43] Explanation of "liberal monarchist" and political divisions in the Third Republic
- [26:30] Discussion of archival sources, especially police files
- [30:41] Chapter 1: Ideologies and intimacies of imperialism
- [37:29] Chapter 2: Law, sex, love, and reciprocal critique of legal systems
- [45:49] Chapter 3: Eau Claire’s La Citoyenne and feminism in empire
- [49:09] Chapters 4 and 5: Louise Michel in New Caledonia, Kanak encounters
- [57:44] On universal language, education, and anarchist thought
- [70:09] Last full chapter: The ‘Jew’ as the familiar stranger—antisemitism and feminism
- [77:38] Book recommendations
- [78:27] Eichner's new project on the politics and meaning of names
Episode Tone and Style
The tone is collegial, deeply informed, and richly interpretive, with Eichner’s passion for reclaiming the erased diversity and complexity of feminist engagement in imperial contexts infusing every answer. Vann’s questions are perceptive and often inject wry humor or personal context, creating a warm, accessible intellectual conversation.
This summary captures the breadth and depth of the episode, providing both an engaging overview and clear entry points into the most significant discussions and arguments of Feminism’s Empire and its implications for the history of feminism, empire, and modern France.