Writing from Experience: The Place of the Personal in French Feminist Writing

Through a discussion of the work of Marie Cardinal and Annie Ernaux, this article aims to problematize the anglophone academic world's tendency to associate French feminisms predominantly with avant-garde or highly theoretical texts. The work of Ernaux and Cardinal is presented alongside a discussion of its reception by readers and critics in France, and by academics in English-speaking countries. The first part of the article identifies aspects of Ernaux's and Cardinal's works which cannot be encompassed within a critical framework based on the dichotomy between naive realism on the one hand and the politically and linguistically radical text on the other. Ernaux's plain language, for instance, is clearly very unlike the linguistic experimentation of ‘feminine writing’ nonetheless the emphasis on social class in her writing constitutes a political intervention which is at least equally valid.The reception study in the second part of the article provides further evidence of the relevance to gender politics in France of Cardinal's The Words to Say It (1975) and texts published by Annie Ernaux in the 1980s and 1990s. The ambivalent response of critics seems to indicate the troubling nature of writing which combines the codes of realism and autobiography (or autobiographical fiction in Cardinal's case) with the depiction of taboo subjects such as menstruation, or a daughter's response to her mother's debilitating illness and death. The article also charts the widespread popularity of these texts in France, particularly with women readers, and gives some examples of the pleasures described in letters to the authors. In conclusion, we argue that the ambivalent space between popular and high culture occupied (albeit differently) by Ernaux and Cardinal may be particularly effective in terms of gender politics, and that even in the late 1990s, the personal may be as political as ever.     

The MacArthur Treatment Competence Study. II

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of three standardized and objectively scored measures, the MacArthur Treatment Competence Research Instruments. They were designed to assess abilities related conceptually to four legal standards for competence to consent to treatment: understanding, appreciation, rational manipulation (reasoning), and expressing a choice. Scoring reliability, internal consistency, intertest correlations, and test-retest correlations were examined with data from samples of hospitalized patients with schizophrenia, major depression, and ischemic heart disease, as well as matched non-ill community samples. The results indicate very good interscorer reliability and provide guidance for the use of the instruments and interpretation of their results in future research on patients' decisional abilities in treatment contexts.     

The United Kingdom: Federalism in Denial?

In May 1999, the United Kingdom took an historic step towardbecoming a regionalized state with the creation of the NationalAssembly for Wales and the Scottish Parliament. This articleoutlines the historical background and new government architectureof the UK. This new architecture must be understood within afederal model and as a possible step toward federalism, despiteofficial aversion to the term. Serious questions must be raisedabout whether the new intergovernmental mechanisms, such asthe Joint Ministerial Committee, will be effective, given thesevere asymmetries in the new system. Instead of a multilateralintergovernmental system, such as characterizes most federalsystems, three very different, bilateral intergovernmental arrangementsare developing between each territory and London.     

Methodological debate in poverty studies: towards ‘participatory qual–quant’?

Compared with the divisive views of the past, integrative thinking has recently come to characterise the methodological debate on poverty. ‘Qualitative vs quantitative’ has given way to ‘qual–quant’; ‘cross-disciplinarity’ has replaced ‘economics vs anthropology’. This article attempts to review this change. It begins with a historical overview of the pure economic approach to poverty and its critique. The critique, both from within economics and from the participatory and anthropological disciplines, is examined, and recent trends are considered. The current ‘qual–quant’ approach is illustrated with examples, and the author concludes that the future may well see the emergence of a ‘participatory qual–quant’ approach.     

Hirt, Almut/Maisack, Christoph/Moritz, Johanna: Tierschutzgesetz

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