Who are the French “Indigenous Feminists”? About an interesting debate that occured during the Anticolonial Week in Paris, February 2007

Context of the French annual Anticolonial Week

In February 2007, a highly interesting collective action has attempted to contribute to the contemporary (difficult) French debate about “Republican-universalist” values and national identity in relationship to memory. A platform of around 50 local and national French NGOs, also including foreign NGOs from former French colonies, has organised indeed a serie of events called “Semaine Anticoloniale” (“anticolonial week” [1]). A big variety of events, like commemorations, demonstrations, debates and even a Colonialist Price ceremony, has been successfully carried through by all sorts of organisations : local civic initiatives from the so-called “banlieues” (city suburbs, some of them wellknown for "riots" esp. in November 2005), national organisations gathering people living in popular neighbourhoods with postcolonial immigration background ; activist groups dedicated to specific issues like about the status of the Comorian or the Nouvelle-Calédonie islands, ancient NGOs working in the fields formerly of decolonisation and now of international solidarity (like cedetim [2])… The Anticolonial Week has been officially supported by most left political parties yet not the social-democrat "Socialist Party". And though there has been such a smaller event of that kind already happening for the first time in 2006, the 2007 edition of the Anticolonial Week is considered by most participants as the very first one.

The ’Indigènes de la République’ Movement

One of those events in this very special week was feminist intended, and in a quite polemical way for France. More than 50 people have gathered indeed on Saturday afternoon during the Anticolonial Week for a debate convoked by a new French feminist group called “le collectif des féministes indigènes” (CFI), "the collective of indigenous feminists". This group stays in strong proximity to the "Mouvement des Indigènes de la République" (MIR), which means (French) Republic Movement of Indigenous People (created 2005). The "Collective of Indigenous Feminists" is considered as part of the Republic Movement of Indigenous People, though some “Feminist Indigènes” are not members of the movement as such. This movement analyses segregations of all kinds endured in France by the immigrant population or by the population of immigrant origin (especially from North-Africa and Black Africa) as a consequence of the colonial history of the country : “Indigènes” was indeed the name used for “native” people inside the former colonies. Beyond this analysis of discrimination pointing at French history, the movement is known also for the polemics it created in France (partly because the analysis hurts the self consciousness of the French Republic, partly also because of the radical rhetoric used by the movement, that some opponants describe as implicit racism against "white" people, and that some other analysts see as unproductively anchored in a "typically old leftist" tradition, for all against social-democracy oriented.). Anyway this "Indigènes de la République" movement has been the first one in the French public sphere to raise the topic of the consequences of French colonial history on contemporary society and current discriminations.

The Call by the French "indigeneous feminists"

With this event organised during the Anticolonial Week, the Indigeneous Feminists wanted to present and discuss their recent founding call “Appel des Féministes Indigènes”. In this highly interesting, quite lyric and very argumentative text, closer to the currently spreading post-colonial intellectual frame than to the usual “Indigènes de la République” quite "punchy" rhetoric, the Féministes Indigènes refer explicitely their own feminist philosophy to different historical traditions : the Western feminism, but also, on an equal level, the capacity of resistance against patriarchal domination invented at all times by their own “mothers” from different geographical and cultural horizons.

Thus, they denounce what they see as an implicit domination tendancy developed by Western feminists towards non-Western women regarding social and feminist battles. They insist also on their humiliation and angriness when facing Western patriarchal figures giving them lessons on the good Western feminism… and implicitely separating them in an non conscient racist way from their male counterparts as the latter being Barbarian people (unfeminist, thus uncivilised, i.e.unlike the former). Last, the “indigeneous feminists” claim their will to fight imperialism and North-South relationships as far as they are perverted by implicit domination thoughts… and last but not least, claim their right to organise themselves as a racial-based activist community (i.e. excluding White women) : not as a way of essentializing themselves as non-White women, but as a specific way of politically opposing to the priorisation between gender and social fights on the one side, both coming first, and racial considerations on the other side, considered as secondary battle. In short, they explain that this racial-based community they have recently formed is a way of looking for their own emancipation in a public and political debate troubled by implicit racial considerations in too many aspects.

The seven young ladies presenting the content of the call and thus introducing the debate were remarkably all around 25-30 years old, all quite brilliant and radiant, most from North-African origin except one, most unveiled except one also. “This is the first time I find a place where I can peacefully share my experiences and my point of view”, said Fatima. “We want a group where we can speak about the complexity of the subject, I mean this mix of race and gender discriminations, without taking the risk at this step of any injunction referring “from outside” to our origins, too often implicitely considered as archaic”, said Houria Bouteldja. “Our political attempt is quite similar to the one of Mexican Chicanas, the women of Mexican descent in the United States, who have battled as feminists”, said Nadia.

A passionate French context

After exposing their purpose, the seven women had to face as expected a quite passionate though relatively decent debate, and this last point really deserves to be mentioned. Readers of this relation who are not used to the French political context have to know indeed that this polemical topic, that is even more accurate since 9.11 because of the growing “clash of civilisations” international atmosphere, has become especially violent for several years in the French Republic, for the French political culture usually considers such expressions as a radical, aggressive negation of its universalist values and national identity, therefore is systematically dismissed as “communautarism”… a word still used by most people and intellectuals in France as an radical insult to describe political attempts intending to fight against real existing community-based discriminations. In this context, the legal rejection of the muslim “veil” in schools by a 2004 law, has passionately focalised the debate as a radical symbol (and splitted activist circles), maybe more passionately than in any other Western country.

A rich contradictory debate

During the debate itself, amoung the first reactions, a woman said she was shocked and could not understand what she had heard, that it was really scandalous to forget this way about universality of rights and about former feminist struggles for real universalism then she wanted to leave the room immediately. Yet she did not. A man spoke about the stupidity of the young ladies, about the actual beauty of orientalism and oriental women that had to be appreciated as such… and was laughed at by the others.

Several participants attending the meeting expressed their quite admirative approbation to the quality of the Call and to the analyses shared with the audience by the group. Two activists of gay movements, one with foreign origin, said this new offensive intrusion, with implicit post-colonialist intellectual frame, into the French debate about combined discriminations would help other activists facing similar problems to analyse their own situation in their whole complexity and to struggle for their rights.

A black-skinned woman spoke positively about the purpose of the collective of Indigènes Feministes but objected that its analysis was not really new and that the collective had to be careful not to pretend being inventing a new way, as those considerations about mixed discriminations regarding both gender and race had been already expressed in different ways by feminists with foreign origins in France and on an international level in former decades. To this objection, one of the Féministes Indigènes answered that, on the one hand, the collective was conscious of this fact and was only starting with its own reflections, but that, on the other hand, it is rooted in the current French period, i.e. in a society that has its specificity.

Many objections, sooth or more polemical, shared by different kinds of actors, have focused on the racialist vocabulary used by the Féministes Indigènes : not only shocking, but for all dangerous as it actually creates/may create/reinforces the racial gap it wants to point at. Some others, closer to the political choices of the group, have made objections at two different levels : the Feministes Indigènes should put quotation marks when using terms like “Arabs” or “White” ; they be too extremist in their analysis of North-South solidarity relationships being perverted by inconscient racist or imperialist thoughts, because this shows that they are unaware of the real solidarity existing especially in women’s struggles around the world. This last argument was also more aggressively expressed by some other participants and led at the end to some furious even short exchange about the implicit racist content of international relationships as carried by some activists. At this point of the debate, an eminent feminist, Christine Delphy, exposed in an argumentation that aimed at defending the Féministes Indigènes, that universalism was often contested to non-white people, and that white intellectuals and activists quite often hardly accept to be criticised for being able of discriminations and besides hardly endure also to be here and there racialized just the way they do with “others”, in short, to be criticised for not being so perfectly “universal”. Besides, she said, race, just like racism, is definitely a social construction. And if feminism has of course universalism as a common shared goal in all its components, it has yet to be aware also of all specific situations and to work on them.

Another objection, carried by feminists involved for a long time in women’s rights’ struggles on different levels and apparently opposed to the Call, has concerned the functioning of the group itself : expressed as a question (are you a group organised on a community-based principle in order to have your own space to exchange experiences, or do you consider yourself also as a political group?), the objection suggested that the problem was with the community-based intended political action, not with the analysis of mixed discriminations as such. At different moments of the discussion, the Féministes Indigènes have answered that they were only starting with their reflection and project, and have insisted on the fact that they were producing their analyses in a non-racialised but in a political, i.e. historically and socially determined, space.

Karine Gantin