‘Taking Up Space’

Siham Bouamer is Assistant Professor of Global French Studies at the University of Cincinnati, USA. She co-edited Abdellah Taïa’s Queer Migrations (2021) and Diversity and Decolonization in French Studies (2022). Sonja Stojanovic is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She is the author of Mind the Ghost (2023).

This volume provides a fascinating, rich and critically significant panorama of women’s experiences in the French workplace through an analysis of post-1968 literature, film, artistic and media texts. It brings together chapters from 18 different authors that explore the gendered nature of women’s labour from the perspective of work space (rather than workplace) on the premise that women take up spaces in work that are already occupied and in which they become deviant social subjects. The editors invoke metaphors of the door to elucidate the ways in which women are either positioned behind closed doors, moving through revolving doors or seeking to blow the doors off. This inspiring and voluminous collection, analysing such a rich and wide-ranging corpus of texts, will be essential reading for scholars of French studies, feminism, the workplace and labour studies and speaks to the importance of cultural production in representing and challenging discrimination faced by working women today.

• AcknowledgmentsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction - Siham Bouamer and Sonja StojanovicPART IBehind Closed Doors: Work and Intimate SpacesA Transmedial and Transtemporal Reading of Labour on the Run in Albertine - Sarrazin’s L’AstragalePolly GalisGood Housekeeping: Domestic Noir and Domestic Work in Leïla Slimani’s Chanson douce - Ciara GormanA Woman’s Huis clos: Exhausted Feminism in Paule Constant’s Confidence pour confidence - Jennifer WillgingA Life’s Work: Accounting for Birth in Naissances - Amaleena DamléSexual Identity as Work in Mireille Best’s Il n’y a pas d’hommes au paradis - Blase A. ProvitolaPsychoanalytical Work in Chahdortt Djavann’s Je ne suis pas celle que je suis - Rebecca RosenbergPART IIRevolving Doors: Liminal and Precarious Spaces‘Be proud of all the Fatimas’: From Alienated Labour to Poetic Consciousness in Philippe Faucon’s Fatima - Siham BouamerChimerical Cashiers: Exposure, Ableism and the Foreign Body in Marie-Hélène Lafon’s Gordana and Nos vies - Sonja StojanovicSubterranean Space and Subjugation: ‘Being Below’ in Delphine de Vigan’s Les Heures souterraines - Dorthea Fronsman-CecilIn Concrete Terms: Gendering Labour in Anne Garréta’s Dans l’béton - Jennifer CarrWoman at Sea? Space and Work in Catherine Poulain’s Le grand marin - Amy WigelsworthFrom Cabaret to the Classroom: Bambi’s Professional Transition - Maxime FoersterPART III From Opening a Few Doors to Blowing Them OffWomen’s Bénévolat militant at the Beginning of the MLF - Sandra DarocziWomen Working – Women Rebelling. Female Community and Gender Relations in Ah!Nana - Valentina Denzel ‘Putting Us Back in Our Place’: #MeToo, Women and the Literary/Cultural Establishment - Mercédès BaillargeonBreaking Down Barriers and Advocating for Change in the French Film Industry: The Career and Activism of Actress Aïssa Maïga - Leslie Kealhofer-KempUnapologetically Visible? Representing and Reassessing Contemporary French Womanhood in Dix Pour Cent - Loïc BourdeauTracées to Black Excellence? Black Women at Work in Mariannes Noires by Mame-Fatou Niang and Kaytie Nielsen - Johanna Montlouis-GabrielConclusion - Siham Bouamer and Sonja Stojanovic