Legacies of Quebec Women's "Écriture au féminin": Bilingual Transformances, Translation Politicized, Subaltern Versions of the Text of the Street

Abstract

The experimental feminist writing that developed in Quebec in the 1970s and 1980s -- l'ecriture au feminin -- is an example of avant - garde creative work that has had political impact. This article traces the effects of this ecriture: bilingual writing by bilingual authors who were "tuned in" to early feminist texts, translation practices which highlight and openly discus feminist interventions in translated texts and the streetwise writing of younger women of the 1990s. The idea of translation links the different sections of the article: it is a trope for women's writing as a movement from private to public discourse, and an expression of Canadian women's attempts to communicate across the language gap. It refers to the creative and visible work that actual interlingual feminist translation has become and, in the last section, stands for the work of creative writing. Just as ecriture au feminin made a visible splash in the 1970s literary production in Quebec, its impact has been to trigger and make visible other types of Canada's women's textual production.The experimental writing by women -- "ecriture au feminin" -- that flourished in Quebec in the late 1970s and early 1980s had a profound effect on the literary environment of its time, developing a political significance well beyond that of many other avant - garde literary movements. A feminist approach to writing that foregrounded gender in every aspect of language and textuality was characteristic of writers such as France Theoret, Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik and many other Quebec women of the period. Yet these women not only authored challenging experimental texts, they were also public speakers, journalists, teachers, playwrights, publishers and even filmmakers who were thus able to bring their ideas into a more public forum than many other avant - garde writers. By the mid 1980s they were exerting a marked influence on Anglo - Canadian writing and translation, and their continued energetic participation in the literary and socio - cultural scene of Quebec set an example for the next generation of Quebec women writers, particularly in regard to their capacity for effective interventions. In the following study I trace the transfer of Quebec's ecriture au feminin into other contexts, from a short introduction to this radical feminist writing practise, to its "transformance" into bilingual English - Canadian writing and its effects on translation proper, and ending with an analysis of a new generation of Quebec women writers as subaltern feminist translators of the "text of the street."My emphasis on translation as a central aspect of the transfer process of the 1980s and the creative process of the 1990s stems from the immensely important role that actual French - English translations have played in making the experimental Quebec texts of the 1970s available to anglophone readers, and on the increasing importance that translation theory has acquired in contemporary discourse on cultural transfer. The work of "feminist" translators of ecriture au feminin, and the theoretical texts devolving from these translations by writers such as Barbara Godard and Susanne de Lotbiniere - Harwood, have helped underscore and broaden our knowledge that language is descriptive as well as prescriptive, a carrier of both innovative ideas and traditional ideologies, and a powerful, polyphonic tool to which every woman writer or translator potentially has access. The bilingual English/French writing projects of the 1980s carried out by Lola Lemire Tostevin, Gail Scott and Daphne Marlatt/Nicole Brossard will serve as examples of the cultural transfer of ecriture au feminin into English Canada, while the ostensibly socio - critical texts of such 1990s authors as Anne Dandurand, Claire De, Flora Balzano and Helene Monette will illustrate how the translated "text of the street" can be read as a trope for a gendered subaltern approach to writing in the 1990s. "Feminist" translation practices and theories derived from the actual work of translating Quebec's ecriture au feminin will link the two sections. …