Gerard Coll-Planas. Feminist Review 94 (2010): 170–172.

Feminist Review, 2010

2007

Women's Studies International Forum, 2020

Sexual repression during Franco's dictatorship in Spain (1939-1975) seriously affected women of the era. The aim of this study was to explore, describe and understand women's experiences regarding sexuality during the era of Francoist repression. A qualitative study was designed based on Gadamer's hermeneutic phenomenology. Ten in-depth interviews and a focus group session with four participants were carried out. All participants were women who had been sexually active during the Franco era. An inductive strategy was used in the data analysis in search of emerging themes. The following themes emerged: 1. 'The environment of Francoist repression: The regime permeates sexuality'. 2. 'Repressive practices and heteronormativity: from sexual/reproductive slavery to homophobia'. 3. 'Sex education: sociocultural consequences of Francoist repression'. Social and political repression have been a heavy burden on Spanish women for decades, imposing upon them a strict morality that profoundly affected their beliefs and dignity as well as their emotional and sexual lives. The long-lasting effects of the historical period in which they lived extend to the present. Women brought up during Francoism, who were not able to change their social attitudes, continue to show rejection of homosexuality or sexual intercourse for pleasure and also have difficulty in rebuilding their love lives with their partners.

Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 2020

This article analyzes the labor gender policies and the strategies of "genderization" put forward by the Franco Dictatorship in Spain. The Franco regime understood that women were the touchstone of society and key in both biological and sociocultural reproduction. Legislative regulations and sanctioned discourses accentuated the division between productive-public and reproductive-domestic spheres, relegating women to the latter. Nevertheless, to what extent did women embrace and challenge the regime's idealistic view of gender? This article contemplates female employment within and beyond official discourse. Oral sources used in this article suggest that socioeconomic reality overflowed the narrow limits of normative femininity. Not all women could enjoy the "honor" of embodying the exalted role of "perfect (house) wife" that the Franco regime had entrusted to them. In addition, this article explores changes in the ideal of femininity throughout the dictatorship. The Franco regime underwent crucial transformations during its almost 40 years of existence. This article argues that its adaptation had repercussions on sociocultural patterns and gender policies. Francoism built its early notion of normative femininity on the ideals of domesticity and Catholic morality, but (re)shaped the meanings of womanhood and (re)adjusted the legal system to fit the new circumstances that arose in the Cold War context.

2018

This dissertation, Deviant Sexualities: Placing Sexuality in Post-'68 French Lesbian, Gay, and Queer Literature/Politics, argues that modern French sexual minority politics, whose origins can be traced back to the student and worker uprisings of May 1968, has largely been about the making, unmaking, and remaking of space. In it, I analyze the artistic, theoretical, and activist work of four 20th-and 21st-century French figures politically invested in matters of gay, lesbian, and/or queer sexuality. Tracking the spatial configuration and logic of these thinkers' political visions brings to the fore the underappreciated ways in which post-'68 French LGBTQ thought is responsive to and conditioned by the French nation-state's foundational principle of Republican universalism. The first chapter's examination of iconic gay liberationist leader Guy Hocquenghem's activism, theory of desire, and the motif of travel in his understudied novels brings to light the "hyper-pluralistic universalism" that animates his politics. The second chapter dispels radical lesbian and materialist feminist Monique Wittig's reputation as the advocate of a parochial lesbian separatism by turning to Wittig's fiction to clarify her vision for the abolition of hetero-patriarchy called for in her essays. The third chapter elucidates the trenchant critique of Republican universalism at the heart of Guillaume Dustan's highly controversial "gay ghetto" autofiction. The fourth and final chapter addresses the emergence in the late 1990s of queer theory, culture, and politics in France and the nationalistic, anti-American overtones of its notoriously hostile reception. In it, I argue that French queer feminist performance artist, writer, and activist Wendy Delorme's work and the reactions it has inspired reveals sexual minority politics to be a site where the forces of sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, and nationalism converge. the support, encouragement, expertise, and inspiration of a number of people. First and foremost, my utmost thanks go out to my advisor, Christy Wampole, for her attentive supervision, contagious commitment to feminist scholarship, and unwavering generosity with her time, kindness and insight. It would be difficult to overstate my gratitude to Nick Nesbitt for his mentorship from my very first days on campus. During my time at Princeton, I have benefited immensely from the wisdom and critical acumen of Gayle Salamon, Wendy Belcher, Katie Chenoweth, Göran Blix, and Heather Love, whose seminar on queer and feminist method forever changed the way I approach scholarly research. I would also like to thank Lucien Nouis and Emily Apter, who fostered my appreciation for French literature and feminist theory during my undergraduate years at New York University and encouraged me to pursue graduate study.

In this paper, I study the butchered text of José Luis Borau’s TVE production of Miau as a hybrid text shaped both by Galdós’s original novel and the Francoist censors’ social agenda. I focus on the competing models of masculinity depicted onscreen: the frustrated impotence of the honorable Ramón Villaamil and the success of the morally bankrupt Víctor Cadalso. The construction of masculinity is pertinent both at the end of the nineteenth century, when Golden Age models of heroic masculinity gave way to new bourgeois ideals, and the end of the Francoist regime, which had called for a return to heroic masculinity anchored in a renewed nationalism. I argue that, while the censoring of Miau clearly seeks to promote conservative social values, the remaining footage ultimately highlights the utter failure of honorability and triumph of corruption in Spanish society, ironically promoting a sense of masculinity at odds with Francoist discourse.

The French Revolution is one of the most memorable events in world history. It's enduring legacy of liberty, egality and fraternity have had ground-breaking implications for democracy and human rights, resonating all over the world. Key figures and events such as the fall of the Bastille, King Louis XVI, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and Napoleon are easily recognisable to even those who are not familiar with history. Yet, very little is routinely known about experiences which lie outside of mainstream narratives of the French Revolution. Despite women and queer people having played integral roles in the French Revolution, accounts of their contributions are difficult to uncover, as they have been erased from the patriarchal, heteronormative historical narrative of the French Revolution. This essay assesses how people who transgressed heteronormative boundaries were constructed as 'others' within the French Revolution and in its subsequent historiography by firstly, using feminist and queer theory to critique dominant historiographical narratives of the French Revolution and secondly, to explore alternative narratives of women and queer people during the French Revolution.

Medieval Feminist Forum, 2000

s recently edited collection of essays on gender transgressions represents an important contribution to the growing corpus of studies on sexuality and gender in the Middle Ages. The Foreword identifies the collection as a rewriting of commonly received notions from the '60s and '70s that designate the medieval period as one dominated by conservative views on gender roles and sexual mores. To refute these views, the nine wide-ranging essays explore the contested sites of sodomy, cross-dressing, and same-sex relations in Old French literature. Through a skillful combination of literary and historical analysis, and occasional references to modern theory, the contributors offer dramatic readings of medieval works ranging from the canonical to the obscure , including the Roman de la Rose, Marie de France's Lais, Arthurian literature, Richars li biaus, and Yde et Olive. The collection provides abundant evidence that transgressive behavior functioned as a motif through which medieval writers investigated conventional treatments of sexuality, gender, and identity.

U. Mich. JL Reform, 1999

This Article discusses how, through its juridical apparatus, the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco sought to define and to contain homosexuality, followed by examples of how underground queer activism contested homophobic laws. The Article concludes by analyzing a literary work to illustrate the social impact of Francoism's homophobic law against homosexuality.