Writing in the Feminine in French and English Canada: A Question of Ethnics

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Marie Carriиre, who teaches French studies at the University of New
Brunswick, analyzes the work of five feminist authors: Nicole Brossard,
France Théoret, Di Brandt, Erin Mouré, and Lola Lemire Tostevin. Their
shared ground is their feminism, their exploration and inscription of
feminist poetics, as well as their attention to the maternal and the
mother–daughter relationship.

The book is divided into four parts. Part 1 (“Poetics, Ethics, and
Writing in the Feminine”) provides background on the various contexts
(social, political, linguistic, cultural). Part 2 (“Mothers and
Daughters”) examines the suppression of the mother by phallocentric
psychoanalysis, religion, and traditional culture. Part 3
(“Mothertongues”) proposes a new concept of the maternal, while Part
4 (“Beyond Ethics”) presents a comparative analysis of exclusive
utopias (lesbian, for instance) and the feminist, relational ethics of
love and social perspective. A recurring theme in Carriиre’s
intriguing study is the tension between self-retreat (so necessary for
the poet) and the identification with the other to which feminism
aspires.