Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)

Based on a corpus of missionary postcards dating from the 1920s and 1930s and devoted to West Africa, this article aims to analyze the transmission of a certain conception of women's work in the colonial missionary context. The women at work, in this article, are therefore both missionary women...

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Main Author: Julien Bondaz
Format: Article
Language:fra
Published: Université de Poitiers 2019-02-01
Series:Images du Travail, Travail des Images
Subjects:
Online Access:http://journals.openedition.org/itti/688
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author Julien Bondaz
author_facet Julien Bondaz
author_sort Julien Bondaz
collection DOAJ
description Based on a corpus of missionary postcards dating from the 1920s and 1930s and devoted to West Africa, this article aims to analyze the transmission of a certain conception of women's work in the colonial missionary context. The women at work, in this article, are therefore both missionary women and African women, because work is precisely what brings them together in images, or even in their experience of femininity. In addition to their mission of evangelization, an essential part of the activity of the nuns was to transmit a body of knowledge and know-how in manual work, domestic work and medical or obstetric care. The nuns thus contributed to the diffusion of a conception of femininity articulating the figure of the good Christian, the good wife and the good mother, and of the social gender relations. The large circulation of missionary postcards in the inter-war period also made it necessary to detail the visual strategies of missionary enterprises and the role played by the images of women's work in this propaganda. The studied corpus underlines the ambivalence of missionary encounters, between emancipation and domination.
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spelling doaj.art-702a782b7ed64b9585209a2a4cb0c50b2023-10-03T13:01:33ZfraUniversité de PoitiersImages du Travail, Travail des Images2778-86282019-02-01610.4000/itti.688Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)Julien BondazBased on a corpus of missionary postcards dating from the 1920s and 1930s and devoted to West Africa, this article aims to analyze the transmission of a certain conception of women's work in the colonial missionary context. The women at work, in this article, are therefore both missionary women and African women, because work is precisely what brings them together in images, or even in their experience of femininity. In addition to their mission of evangelization, an essential part of the activity of the nuns was to transmit a body of knowledge and know-how in manual work, domestic work and medical or obstetric care. The nuns thus contributed to the diffusion of a conception of femininity articulating the figure of the good Christian, the good wife and the good mother, and of the social gender relations. The large circulation of missionary postcards in the inter-war period also made it necessary to detail the visual strategies of missionary enterprises and the role played by the images of women's work in this propaganda. The studied corpus underlines the ambivalence of missionary encounters, between emancipation and domination.http://journals.openedition.org/itti/688catholic missionswomen’s workdomestic workpostcardsWest Africa
spellingShingle Julien Bondaz
Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
Images du Travail, Travail des Images
catholic missions
women’s work
domestic work
postcards
West Africa
title Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
title_full Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
title_fullStr Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
title_full_unstemmed Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
title_short Le catéchisme et la machine à coudre. Cartes postales missionnaires et travail féminin en Afrique de l’Ouest (1920-1940)
title_sort le catechisme et la machine a coudre cartes postales missionnaires et travail feminin en afrique de l ouest 1920 1940
topic catholic missions
women’s work
domestic work
postcards
West Africa
url http://journals.openedition.org/itti/688
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