On Only Paradoxes to Offer

In Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man, Joan Scott argues two important points. First, and most importantly to this book, she argues that “feminist agency is paradoxical in its expression” (16). Second, she argues that feminist agency does indeed have a history. This second argument is part of her larger attempt to strengthen the importance of gender history in the academy, a field that Scott can be given credit (at least in part) for creating in her important essay, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (American Historical Review 91, no. 5).

Essential to her first argument, which will be the one discussed throughout this critical essay, is the idea that feminism’s goal was to eliminate sexual difference. However, this became paradoxical because it made claims on behalf of “women,” which is a category created through assumptions of sexual difference. By using a category that is differentiated by sex from the norm (“men”), it becomes impossible to eliminate that sexual difference. To illustrate this, Scott tells us the stories of Olympe de Gouges, Jeanne Deroin, Hubertine Auclert, and Madeleine Pelletier to illustrate how women used republican ideas—all four women were involved in the first three republics—to fight for women’s rights.

The biographical details of all four women are fascinating to learn about, and Scott’s text is heavily sourced (133 notes in the 35-page chapter of Madeleine Pelletier!). Furthermore, she relies heavily on theorists ranging from Judith Butler to Edward Said, Michel Foucault, and Luce Irigaray. Despite the denseness of the theorists she draws upon, Scott never gets noticeably bogged down in theory. She takes what is necessary for understanding feminism and constructions of gender and weaves it into the book. As a result, Joan Scott is an excellent, readable historian—including for those who are unfamiliar with French history or gender studies.

Written in 1996, this work appears to have been written to engage with feminist debates rather than as an independent project to write a comprehensive history of French feminism. In this respect, Only Paradoxes to Offer was (and frankly, still is) timely. Scott engages in the debate between feminists over whether to emphasize equality or difference between women and men and leaves us with no conclusion. Indeed, she argues that these debates are good, healthy, and have a long tradition. There will be no resolution in the near future, as gender is fundamentally a category rooted in difference.

While her argument is strong, her chapters only occasionally come back to her argument. For most of the text, it seems that she does not find it important to connect her examples with her argument as she is writing. Eventually, she does tie each chapter together nicely. Moreover, this work could use a sizable bibliography. While Scott does have hundreds of notes, there is no information on further reading or any sort of bibliography outside of the sources that she herself cited. As someone interested in learning more about this subject, a bibliography should be a staple of any serious work of history (or non-fiction more broadly).

Nevertheless, Scott’s work is crucial for any historian or general reader interested in gender and/or France. In truth, her work (namely “Gender and the Politics of History”) should be on the shelf of every history buff due to its impact on the field. This book is one that I would place on the must-read list for all who enjoy reading about European history.