When racialized, migrant or Muslim women are conceived as possible femi-nist subjects— that is, when their relationship with white femifemi-nists might be defined by reciprocal recognition and equality, rather than by benevolence and asymmetry— moral dispositions and emotions shift. I have described how in Quebec the topic of intersectionality and the inclusion of racialized women into the Quebecois feminist project raised some objections, on the ground that white feminists already had their own feminist analysis and did
not want to be challenged and their whiteness to be decentered. However, as I related in chapter 3, these objections have not stalled the efforts of many Quebecois organizations to include politically racialized women. Some isolated white Quebecois feminists have vocally opposed this process and have sometimes left their feminist organization because of this political di-vergence.69 However, interviewees working in Montreal’s women’s rights organizations never adopted this type of position in interviews. The situa-tion was strikingly different in France, where several interviewees displayed harsh moral judgments about veiled Muslim women and lamented the loss of a true feminist subject.70 Their moral dispositions and their emotions ef-ficiently drew the boundary between a good feminist subject and a bad one.
When feminism is understood as a social question, all women might be enrolled in the feminist project as passive beneficiaries. However, when fem-inism is understood, and lived, as a political practice defining political rela-tions between women, feminist whiteness takes on a new face. Indeed, when Muslim or racialized women are perceived as possible feminist peers (and all the more so when they make this claim politically), some white feminists may use moral judgment, indignation, and disapproval alongside anger and melancholy to police the boundaries of what they perceive to be the good, and the right, feminist subject. Asked about her analysis of the mobilization of racialized women in an alternate International Women’s Day march in Paris, the “March 8 for all,” Claudine declares:
When I think about the “March 8 for all” I think that these groups of migrant girls— I don’t like the term “racialized” at all— I think that these groups of migrant girls who go there are completely wrong. It’s true it comes from a divergence on the veil issue, certainly, but I don’t think that these people will help them— well, if they need help— because I find this is really a kind of “maternalist”71 attitude. . . . They don’t even know we exist! . . . They hold a lot of wrong ideas about us.
Moral judgments about the right type of feminism and the right type of fem-inist subjectivity surface and draw boundaries between “us” and “them” in an effective way. On the one hand, Claudine places her conception of fem-inism, and herself, as a reference point (which should not be ignored or misinterpreted by racialized women, as she thinks it is)— a moral and polit-ical standard to be adopted if one wishes to be called and recognized as a fem-inist. On the other hand, she rejects any responsibility for the deep rift that
Feminist Whiteness 113 has emerged between her organization, which is supposed to be inclusive and representative of the French women’s rights movement, and racialized women demonstrating on their own terms and in opposition to the official International Women’s Day march. A comrade of Claudine’s, Nelly, a white woman in her seventies who was also a former member of the class struggle trend during the second wave, talks about a prominent white French feminist who denounced the 2004 law in these terms:
Nelly: She allied with the “Indigenous”!72 They are our enemies! . . . And the veil, is it not a symbol of women's oppression? To pretend that there are islamiste73 women who are feminists, it's a fundamental contradiction for us.
Question: Everybody agrees in your organization on this?
Nelly: Yes, yes.
Question: Did it lead to scissions with some feminist groups?
Nelly: Well . . . there is the “March 8 for all.” I don't know, well, they are pro- veil and pro- prostitution. . . . That's new. We never had this type of confu-sion before.
Question: Did you talk with the organizing committee of this alternate march?
Nelly: No, no . . . it’s like with fascists, you don’t talk with them, it’s useless.
Anger as well as political and moral indignation saturates this interview se-quence.74 The Islamic feminist subject is defined, a priori, as an impossible—
and a wrong— one, and dialogue, discussion, or any kind of relationship with this feminist subject is presented as impossible and pointless. What is more, the claims made by racialized women as feminists— since the “March 8 for all” is a self- defined feminist march— are presented as bringing confusion, troubling the boundaries and the identity of the proper feminist collective subject. A trace of melancholy is also perceptible, and in fact melancholy per-meated Nelly’s interview. She longed for the unity of the feminist movement that characterized, in her memories, the early 1980s and the creation of the Maison des femmes in Paris. Hence, racialized women’s claim to constitute their own collective feminist subject is perceived as troubling both the inter-viewee and to feminism.
In a similar vein, the following two quotations from interviews illustrate the ways in which white feminists whose political subjectivation was marked by the revolutionary Left in the seventies police the boundaries of the proper
white feminist subject and reject any claim from racialized women to be real feminist subjects, accusing them of false consciousness or attributing to them wrong modes of political subjectivation. Anick comments on the short- lived group that self- defined as “indigenous feminist,” one of the first feminist collectives in the mid- 2000s to articulate a postcolonial feminist po-sition in the French public sphere:
Anick: Well, they don't bother me. They can continue with their ravings. I'm not gonna forbid them. Their message, it's not . . . it's a nationalist and ra-cialist vision of the world . . . like other women who decide to assemble on some basis, be it . . . religious or geographical, etc. It's not a problem, but it's not a message. It's not new.
Question: They had a critique of the feminist movement that did not include . . .
Anick: First it’s not true, and second it’s never justified, it’s never proven.
This attitude of moral reprobation and feigned indifference of course contrasts with the benevolent care that characterized relationships with racialized women in the context of service provision by feminist or-ganizations. The harsh delegitimation and disqualification of the in-digenous feminist message and its strong critique of white feminism denotes the adoption by Anick of a moral standpoint of authority and self- righteousness. Here again, discussion with self- identified nonwhite feminists is presented as pointless in the name of irreconcilable positions on what is (proper) feminism. Presenting the dispute as one between right and wrong political conceptions of feminism obscures and evades discus-sion about racism and whiteness within the movement. Asked about her thoughts on a newly created group of Afro- feminists in Paris, Claudine seems at pains to understand why a Black French feminist would create her own organization and participate in the “March 8 for all.” Feeling that her organization has been accused of not doing anything to include racialized women, she explains:
Claudine: But Annie and Leila, they published a book [on migrant women organizing]. . . ! She can go to libraries and documentation centers also!
Who will teach her that? It's us! There is a generation problem as well.
Why didn't she go to the network for migrant and refugee women. . . ? Question: Well, it's a network for migrant women.
Feminist Whiteness 115 Claudine: But at least she will see real work; she won't be able to say that we
did not do anything. . . . Why doesn't she go to the organization against female mutilations? There are African women there!
Question: I'm not sure that is what she is looking for.
Claudine: She wants a nonspecialist organization. . . ? What does she want?! . . . I can talk with her, but it’s a little bit tricky if she is pro- veil and for the legalization of prostitution. . . . But we can still talk to her, teach her things, because some things that are being said about us are totally false!
Claudine’s exasperation during this exchange denotes her feeling that the demands made by French Black feminists are illegitimate. Her responses op-erate several shifts that are strategies of deflection and blame avoidance. She suggests the problem is one of “generation” rather than racism, and as she tries to prove that there are some organizations that fit nonwhite women’s needs, she operates a series of shifts that work around race and racism. She refers to several organizations or networks for migrant women, or organizations with African women that lobby against female genital mutilation, thereby confusing racialization and migration, and dismissing the very identity of the activist who is the object of the discussion as both French and Black. She then shifts grounds, from trying to “fix” Afro- feminists in an already existing
“specialized” feminist niche, to declaring that the question is not the inclu-siveness of the white feminist movement, but one of political standing on the veil and prostitution. Here political boundary making preserves Claudine’s moral high ground and prevents any challenge to her feminist authority.
Her irritated exclamation, “What does she want?!”— while an unintended avowal of ignorance on her part— strangely echoes the second- wave fem-inist motto “What do they [women] want?” an ironical portrayal of men’s angry and ignorant reaction to feminist demands. Finally, throughout her response, Claudine continues to situate herself in the position of the knowl-edgeable educator, correcting mistakes and establishing a truth that absolves her from criticism and racism: “She won’t be able to say we didn’t do any-thing.” Initiated to inquire about white feminist organizations’ inclusiveness, the conversation spurs irritation and anger and ends with the drawing of a political and moral boundary that preserves the privileged position of fem-inist whiteness. Hence, when the “other” racialized woman is perceived as a potential fellow feminist, as a possible part of a common political collec-tive subject, she is either “returned” to “specific” organizations that suppos-edly address her “specific” needs or she is excluded on the grounds that her
political position cannot be accommodated by a proper feminist collective subject. Never considered an equal or an interlocutor, she is dismissed before any interaction can occur, before any resentment or criticism she may utter can be heard and recognized as legitimate.
Anger and fear are not the only moral emotions that characterize white feminists’ discourse on race and racism inside the feminist movement.
Another interesting moral emotion that pervades discourses from older white feminists is that of melancholy, a longing for a long- lost unity of the collective feminist “we.” One is here reminded of Cristina Beltrán’s interro-gation on the subject of Latino politics in the United States. Indeed, she asks,
“Is Latino politics a project defined by loss?” and “Does the memory of such passionate and participatory politics inspire future political action— or does it render all that follows a disappointment?”75 Several French interviewees in their sixties expressed deep melancholy, suggesting that true feminism existed in the past, but that now all that was left to do was to mourn a loss never to be replaced, the loss of unity, the loss of collective action and huge demonstrations. Nelly admits she sees “no future” for her umbrella organi-zation that gathers women’s rights organiorgani-zations at the national level. She remembers the 1990s as a time of great activity, and the 1970s as the time of true unity within the movement (despite the numerous conflicts that in fact characterized this period). Similarly, Claudine depicts the feminist movement as experiencing a setback, an in- between- waves moment, that translates into the impossibility of mobilizing a collective presence for street demonstrations. While in fact numerous new feminist organizations have been created in France in the last two decades, while new racialized feminist subjectivities have emerged, Claudine’s perception of the movement is one of a lost subject. One could argue that, in fact, at the very moment when ra-cial difference becomes politicized in the French feminist public space, when racism becomes a political issue for new organizations headed by nonwhite feminists, suddenly, for some white feminists, the feminist subject itself is lost and to be mourned. Of course, turning to melancholy, lamenting the loss of the true feminist subject, evades the question of power and privileges within the current feminist collective subject. While the past is presented as a time of true unity and true feminism, present feminist contestations of per-vasive white privilege inside the movement are made irrelevant and illegiti-mate. Feminism is located in the past, and present- day challenge to feminist whiteness ignored.
Feminist Whiteness 117 I thus described two types of moral disposition that are adopted by white feminists I interviewed when encountering nonwhite women. In the first in-stance, racialized women are the object of benevolent and professional care.
There feminist whiteness is characterized by some degree of ambivalence, because racialized/ migrant women are granted autonomy in their decisions, while at the same time portrayed as feminist subjects to be educated. The service relation that typically elicits this moral disposition encourages white feminists to be aware of their own prejudices and entails a self- reflection on the ethical dimension of the relationship with racialized/ migrant women.
Indeed, white feminists working in shelters or community centers often re-flect on the power relations that exist in the context of their social work with racialized/ migrant women and try to develop tools to mitigate the effects of these power asymmetries on racialized/ migrant women who are receiving help. However, these benevolent dispositions depend in large part on the assumption that racialized/ migrant women are part of the feminist project as the recipient of help, the object of care, embodying the social subject of feminism, women, and the concomitant expectation that they will not be transformed into feminists; that is, that the social, political, and moral dis-tance that marks their relationship to white feminists providing service may not be reduced. Feminist intervention is, most of the time, not about creating a political relationship with service recipients.
A second type of moral disposition displayed by white feminists contrasts with this first benevolent and pragmatic attitude. It is elicited when racialized women are perceived as articulating feminist claims and a self- defined feminist identity. Some white French feminists especially display moral dispositions marked by anger, to some extent also fear— of being criticized and called racists76— and by self- righteousness. They work to preserve a moral high ground by rejecting claims by racialized women as illegiti-mate. They portray veiled Muslim women as impossible or improper femi-nist subjects, thereby policing the boundaries of what they consider to be the proper feminist subject. Because feminism, as a political project, rather than a social one, is a project of establishing free and equal relations with women, some white French feminists prefer no relations at all with racialized feminists. Indeed, any type of relation would entail answering legitimate questions about the historical exclusion of racialized women, and would mean transforming the boundaries of the feminist subject, a topic I go back to in chapter 6.
A powerful rationale that pervades the discourses that present veiled Muslim women as improper feminist subjects and that legitimize their ex-clusion from the feminist project as defined by white feminists is that of sec-ularism (see chapter 3). To conclude this exploration of forms of feminist whiteness, I thus turn to the complex relationship between nationalism, sec-ularism, and whiteness that is reshaping feminist whiteness, in particular in France.