Christine Delphy is a French sociologist and a central figure in French and international feminism since the 1970s. She was central in unveiling the structural importance of the family in women's oppression and more recently the mechanisms behind the war on terror, extending and reinforcing that very oppression. Her work includes Close to Home: a materialist analysis of women's oppression, Separate and dominate: feminism and racism after the War on Terror.
Barbara Karatsioli met with Delphy to talk about the two strands of her activist life, feminism and gender equality in France, and a feminist response to issues of war and peace. Here, French colonialism and the treatment of Islam become central categories in Delphy’s thought-provoking critique.
Barbara Karatsioli (BK): There’s an anecdote about a woman who found a magic lantern. Granted one wish, she asked the genie for gender equality, an unattainable wish according to the genie who asked her to choose again. She asked for the end of war (in Palestine) and peace, and this forced the genie to go back to the first wish, saying gender equality was a more plausible one to grant! In this interview, I would like to engage with you on these two issues: feminism and gender equality on the one hand and war and peace on the other. The approach to both requires taking a radical, centuries-long road.
