Writing Gaullist Feminism: Francoise Parturier's Open Letters 1968-1974

Gaullist feminist Francoise Parturier's open letters written during the second wave women's movement in France are striking examples of how politically engaged women use writing in innovative ways in order to make intellectual interventions. Her polemical feminist writing takes up and reconfigures traditional ways of interacting in the public space, recalling earlier precedents such as Zola's 1898 J'accuse, instrumental in the revisiting of the Dreyfus affair. In this context, Parturier's letters and her rhetorical innovation can be seen as a bridging step to the formal experimentation characteristic of ecriture feminine culminating in the radical shattering of conventions more readily associated with radical writings by Helene Cixous and Annie Leclerc.