Antoinette Fouque

Antoinette Fouque (born 1936 as Antoinette Grugnardi), is a psychoanalyst and one of the leading figures of the French women's liberation movement.

Fouque was born in a poor neighbourhood of Marseille to Alexis Grugnardi, a Corsican syndicalist. Early in life, Fouque listened to the speeches of communist leader Maurice Thorez. She became a teacher, married René Fouque, and developed an interest in Latin culture and Italian literature. With René Fouque, Anoinette Fouque participated in the literary journal Cahiers du Sud. Between 1965 and 1969, she read Italian manuscripts for Éditions du Seuil. Fouque read Lacan before reading Freud.[1]

With the French writer and feminist Monique Wittig, author of L’Opoponax (Editions de Minuit, 1964), Josiane Chanel and many other women, Fouque was active in one of the early women's groups which finally gathered together in 1970 to form the French Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF), a movement consisting of multiple groups throughout France without any formal leadership.[2] Fouque herself denied being feminist, and rejected Simone de Beauvoir's existentialism in favour of structuralism and libertarian Marxism. Her group was called Psychanalyse et Politique. Conflicts developed within the movement when Antoinette Fouque incorporated, in October 1979, an association called "MLF" she was president of, something denounced as a approriation by most women of the French women's movement including Simone de Beauvoir[3]. Monique Wittig, in an interview recorded in 1979, explains that the division between herself and Fouque was primarily because of their divergent views of feminism.[4]

Fouque underwent psychoanalysis with Jacques Lacan; she said that this helped her "not to yield to the feminist illusion. He made me avoid the idea that a woman can only be a failed man. He allowed me to criticize Sartre and Beauvoir." Fouque also underwent psychoanalysis with Luce Irigaray. In 1974, Fouque met Serge Leclaire and discussed undergoing analysis with him, but the analysis did not take place. Leclaire became a friend of Fouque, and worked with Psychanalyse et Politique. Between 1978 and 1982, Fouque underwent psychoanalysis with Bela Grunberger. Fouque stated that she found Grunberger misogynistic.[5]

Fouque has been decorated with the Legion of Honour, and was awarded a doctorate in political science by the University of Paris 8. She has appeared on French television with the actress Catherine Deneuve.[6]

References

  1. ^ Roudinesco, Elisabeth. (1990). Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-72997-4. 
  2. ^ Françoise Picq, Libération des Femmes, les années-mouvement, éd.Seuil, Paris 1993.
  3. ^ Chroniques d'une imposture, Du Mouvement de libération des femmes à une marque commerciale, Preface by Simone de Beauvoir, AMLF, 1981.
  4. ^ "MLF, Le Mythe des Origines, Entretien Inédit sur sa fondation avec Monique Wittig, Revue ProChoix n°46, Hiver 2009.
  5. ^ Roudinesco, Elisabeth. (1990). Jacques Lacan & Co: A History of Psychoanalysis in France, 1925-1985. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-72997-4. 
  6. ^ Zeldin, Theodore. (1994). An Intimate History of Humanity. Chicago: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-017160-X.