Selling out to the (Wo)man.

Yes, I know. I haven't posted anything stunning, smart, or worth discussing in days. The reason is I have been in a hotel room in Phoenix trying to put together an anthology. I got back last night, and was at work again all day. All that is swimming around my mind is whether or not "French Feminism" is a legitimate field or an invention by U.S. feminists? I am supposed to put together 4 anthologies on the French feminist theorists. The interesting thing about this, is 3 of the 4 (Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and Helen Cixous) denounce Feminism and are not at all considered crucial players in the women's movement in France. I was intoxicated by the work of Luce Irigaray in graduate school, but as one grows older, one's tastes change.

In fact, I always consider my relationship to Irigaray as bittersweet. It is like meeting up again with a lover who you were passionate about and discovering that you don't have any traces of that old feeeling again. Worse, when I read the scholarship on these three French theorists, I feel so far removed from that tiny corner of Continental Philosophy that talks about the (im)possibility of a woman speaker and the inevitableness of the symbolic order. So, I have to swallow my doubts and dutifully produce a massive work that will perpetuate the illusion that these thinkers are to be reckoned with Internationally. I am, perhaps, participating in the cultural construction of 'French feminism."

How to get through it?