Nicastro on Redefining Women's Subjectivity Between Law and Revolution: A Foucauldian Analysis of Olympe de Gouges' 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and Female Citizen @alessia_ncs @GVAGrad

Alessia Nicastro, Geneva Graduate Institute, has published Redefining Women's Subjectivity Between Law and Revolution: A Foucauldian Analysis of Olympe de Gouges' 1791 Declaration of The Rights of Woman and Female Citizen. This paper has been accepted and presented by the author at the 11th International Conference on Gender and Women's Studies held on 13th July 2024 online, organized by the University of Mumbai, the International Center for Research and Development (ICRD), and Unique Conferences Canada. Here is the abstract.

This contribution investigates how Olympe de Gouges' "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen” (1791) contributed to reshape women’s subjectivity in international law and to advance a feminist vision of this field. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of subject, power, and resistance, this paper analyses how De Gouges' Declaration functioned as a political and discursive tool that disrupted the dominant gender relations of power embedded in legal discourses of the time. By claiming women's equality and citizenship, de Gouges’ work paved the way to the recognition of women as both political and legal subjects. The author concludes that de Gouges' Declaration was pivotal for revealing the androcentric character of the embryonic human rights law (which were only les droits de l'homme) and for highlighting the inherent contradictions in the Revolutionary ideals of equality, citizenship, and freedom.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.