PHILIPPE RAYNAUD
641
strength in the perpetual American obsessions with their natural equality
of condition; this natural success also helps explain the rather strict intel–
lectual limitations of American feminism regarding the passions. French
emancipatory movements, by contrast, have always had to fmd their place
and style in the world of quasi-aristocratic literary salons, the heroic
mythology of revolutionary movements (distinctly patriarchal among the
Communists), and the standardization of the republican state. Perhaps this
is why there is still a trace of irony in France that helps to preserve the
difference between the sexes without renouncing demands for political
justice and dignity. And, indeed, this may be the most desirable and
intelligent way to reconcile the revolutionary imagination with an aris–
tocratic heritage and democratic aspirations. In the United States, the
natural home of equality of condition, feminism has become only the
most recent, not to say most dour and cantankerous, banner under
which traditional democratic demands now march. In France, the land
of absolutism, women instead have managed to give revolutionary pas–
sions the most human of faces.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY MARK LILLA
Herbert Ferber
1906-1991
Weare saddened by the death
of an old friend and early contributor
