Description

In this volume of L’Époque Conradienne are published most of the papers presented during the 2006 Limoges Conference entitled « Femininity, a privilege – not feminism, an attitude »*. The “feminine” in Joseph Conrad’s fictions: from ideology to a poetics of heterogeneity. Colleagues from France, Britain, Poland, Norway, South Africa and Canada offered new light on Conrad’s position on the question of the feminine – a question which took a new turn at the beginning of the 20th century, when Modernism modified the perception of gender divisions.
A majority of articles deal with the question of clichés and stereotypes and the way Conrad allows the emergence of new representations of gendered identities and of a sexualized worldview – characteristics not often associated with Conrad’s fiction. Several also tackle the question of the relationship between patriarchy and imperialism: does his critical approach to imperialism address or obliterate the question of patriarchy? Finally, all tend to prove that there is definitely a place for feminist criticism and the question of feminine writing in Conradian studies – pointing out that our reading of Conrad’s fiction is modified if we scrutinize “femininity” (the “privilege”) with the tools of the “attitude”, “feminism”. Such approaches pave the way for a further exploration of that field.