Language Is Not Neutral: The Construction of Knowledge in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Since the hierarchical relationship and cleavage characterizing national and linguistic communication channels persist in women''s studies and, indeed, increasingly constitute an impediment to their growth internationally, this essay puts forward the question of the hegemony of English-speaking feminist scholarship and the marginalization of large segments of feminist thought worldwide. It also questions the capacity of researchers from linguistic peripheries, in the current case French-speaking feminists, to overcome the isolation imposed by linguistic partition and the one-way flow of scholarship, let alone be read, understood, and cited by the large English-speaking feminist scientific and scholarly community.