Gender at the Crossing: Ideological Travelings of US and French Thought in Montreal Feminism

This article recounts a story about Montreal feminism using the narrative thread of its conceptual language. It is a astory of language as a political choice that guides our action, but also language as a political issue, a barrier, a tool that structures our thinking and that reflects and reproduces relations of power in knowledge production and dissemination. The article begins by briefly tracing the evolving meanings of gender in the US from the 1920s to the 21st century, then turns to identify elements limiting the evolving US understandings of gender relations from impacting French feminist and political theory, before shifting to focus on Francophone Montreal, Quebec, to survey its feminist thought, political traditions and social and geographic contexts, including its distinct added local imperative: the struggle for national liberation. The specific ways in which Quebec nationalism has foregrounded power and politics around language has had a major impact on how Quebec feminists have negotiated relations with their US feminist neighbors. OA