1. Feminism and Universalism
Francoise Lionnet
Feminism and Universalism

2. Structural dissymetry
“Western” modes of analysis/concrete status of women in various non-Western cultures
Non-Western women’s subjective experience of their own position

3. Politics of representation
Politics of representation and the necessity of interdisciplinary work
Representation of women as the object of (patriarchal) knowledge
Academic feminism and its (real) others

4. Rights, bodily integrity, female excision
A violation of basic human rights—Enlightenment notion of the sovereign individual subject Vs
Collective identity grounded in cultural solidarity

5. The ideal test-case African immigrant women brought to trial
Non-understanding of the terms of the trial
Punishing women and children—women treated not as individuals but as representatives of their culture
Feminist movements in Africa and the Middle East against fgm
Right to bodily integrity not an absolute value in Western society
Abortion and reproductive rights throw up contradictions

6. Power inscribed on the woman’s body
Tradition: part of a network of power within which conflicting notions of freedom, community and authority hold ground (375)
M Foucault: “system of subjection” of individual bodies within a specific cultural code
The French state sees the body as sovereign, belonging to the citizen; Malian society—body is meaningful in relation to societal customs: body as a contested site

7. Who is universal?
Immigrants subsumed under French law//women subsumed under patriarchal tradition
Both claim to be universal; both impose constraints on the human body
Lionnet is critical of both cultural relativism and an uncritical universalism