Madeleine de Scudéry on conversation and its feminist ends

Bibliographic Data

ID21597973
AuthorsAllauren Samantha Forbes (0000-0001-5627-6258, McMaster University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume30
Issue1
Pages48-70
Publication date2022-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2021.1978386
OpenAlexW3203381963
LanguageFR
Citations received1
References cited24

Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) is best remembered as a novelist rather than as a philosopher, but she is both a gifted literary figure and an overlooked philosopher. These roles are, at least in her case, inseparable. Through her dialogues, Scudéry offers an account of the conversation that is at once a rhetorical social art as well as a substantive philosophical phenomenon and socio-political practice with feminist effects. According to Scudéry, how one converses and what one converses about provides new knowledge and ways of thinking as well as the potential to reshape our social and political relations. Scudérian conversation is not only a means to acquire and practice rhetoric – an art characterized by gendered hierarchy –but also a means of teaching women that equality in historically gendered domains is possible. Ultimately, Scudérian conversation is a kind of feminist praxis that flies under the radar in virtue of appearing to be merely a social art

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Conversation · Epistemology · Humanism · Linguistics · Literature · Politics · Praxis · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Social practice · Sociology · Theology · Historical and Literary Analyses · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Philosophy · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought

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