Sisterhood and Brotherhood as Political Metaphors
Sororité et fraternité en tant que métaphores politiques
Abstract
Political communities are imagined (Anderson 1983). But what do we precisely imagine? This conference aims to expand the existing literature on sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity by reflecting on these metaphors through the lens of gender to analyse how they contribute to forming, ordering, and challenging political communities at various scales, starting from the French Revolution onwards.
Announcement
June 24th-25th, 2027, Université Paris 8 (espace Condorcet), Aubervilliers
Organiser
Arthur Duhé (Université Paris 8)
Argument
Political communities are imagined (Anderson 1983). But what do we precisely imagine? This conference aims to expand the existing literature on sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity by reflecting on these metaphors through the lens of gender to analyse how they contribute to forming, ordering, and challenging political communities at various scales, starting from the French Revolution onwards.
Politics is inherently loaded with metaphors. Through them, we imagine a broad range of communities at various scales, including nations, ethnic groups, religious communities, work associations, activist networks, and others. We also employ them to characterise relationships between political communities. Even though these verbal images do not always perfectly reflect social and political orders, they tell us something about how the latter are imagined by social actors – or how these social actors want others to imagine them. The contextual analysis of these images and the concrete practices they generate thus complete the social history of political concepts and ideas with a social history of political metaphors.
While this interdisciplinary conference is open to a broad range of topics, methods, and approaches, its focus on metaphors in context invites contributions to pay close attention to the terms associated with sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity, such as ‘brother(s)’, ‘sister(s)’, ‘siblings’, and their equivalents in other languages, as well as to references to a common mother and/or father. The decision by social actors not to use these metaphors, when documented and justified, is also relevant to the topic and a welcome area for reflection.
In continuity with the shift in contemporary scholarship on metaphors from the word level of analysis to that of the discourse (Haverkamp and Monod 2017), the conference attempts through these contextual analyses to avoid essentialising political metaphors and to study instead the variation of their meanings and their instrumental mobilisations. While there is no denying that brotherhood/fraternity has often enforced heteronormative masculinities, thus excluding both sisters and non-dominant masculinities, there are also alternative usages. Fraternity was indeed mobilised by female revolutionaries to demand the broadening of civil rights for women–though unsuccessfully (Kolly 2008, 2015; Vitry 2023)–and the heteronormative masculinity it endorsed was neither uncontested nor univocal (Martin 2011; Cohen 2023). The recent UW-Madison sorority lawsuit (2023) also reveals how sororal images could be employed by some women to support their ‘cisterhood’. The notion of ‘siblings’ in English, ‘Geschwister’ in German, or, in a more proactive and militant manner, ‘adelphité’ in French and ‘herman@’ in Spanish have been employed by various political actors to avoid gendered binary distinctions. Lastly, describing a community as composed of ‘brothers and sisters’ may also intend to desexualise gendered interactions (Vince 2015). Sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity may thus imply a rich variety of gendered representations.
These representations may result in exclusions from imagined communities and hierarchies within and among them. By contrast with the communities imagined around paternal and maternal metaphors, the bands of sisters and/or brothers are often assumed to be horizontal (Anderson 1983; Hunt 1992; Delaume 2021). However, both sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity can produce and reproduce exclusions and hierarchies (hooks 1986). The community of sisters and/or brothers cannot be understood without reflecting on its negative figures: the suspicion towards the false sister/brother, the exclusion of the non-sister/brother (Sénac 2017), and the hierarchical treatment of the little sister/brother (Duhé 2024, 2025).
Like any political metaphors, sisterhood and brotherhood/fraternity are rarely undisputed. Within the same community, some may disagree on the extension of these metaphors (who is a brother/sister, who is not, and on what grounds?) as well as their implications (what do we owe to our brothers/sisters?). Various social actors may thus compete to impose their interpretation of these metaphors. For instance, the notion of sisterhood was instrumental during the Cold War to both Western feminism which looked for a common language to sideline ideological conflicts among women and to the female activists of the Non-Aligned Movement who employed it to denounce the capitalistic global order imposed by the West (Baritono 2008; Cîrstocea 2024; Labelle 2024).
The conference is particularly interested in papers addressing topics and communities that have been understudied, including those in the Global South. Areas of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to the following research questions:
(1) Thinking sisterhood and brotherhood together
Are sororal and fraternal metaphors symmetrical and do they form similar political communities? How are these two images employed within the same community? How are these metaphors mobilised to describe and shape the relationships of brothers with their sisters and vice versa?
(2) Examining the exclusions and hierarchies produced by sisterhood and/or brotherhood.
Who belongs to the band of brothers and/or sisters, who is forgotten or excluded, and on what grounds? What social order is implied and/or produced by sororal and fraternal metaphors? How are these political images mobilised to support or subvert heteronormative representations of masculinity and/or femininity?
(3) Analysing the productions of sisterhood and brotherhood
How have these metaphors been involved in the production of dominant and subversive masculinities and femininities? Through what practices, rituals, and institutions?
Submission guidelines
Proposal for contribution, including the name of the author, the title of the contribution, an abstract (approximately 500 words, excluding the bibliography), and a short biographical note, should be sent to the conference organiser (politicalmetaphors@proton.me) by October, 2nd. Contributions to the conference may lead to a publication as an edited volume or a special issue. Financial support for travel and accommodation expenses may be considered.
Calendar
- Submission deadline : October 2nd, 2026
- Decision date on the abstracts November, 2026
- Conference : June 24th-25th, 2027
Contact : politicalmetaphors@proton.me
Scientific Committee
- Maira Abreu (Université Paris 8);
- Hourya Bentouhami (Université Toulouse 2);
- Aylon Cohen (University of Oxford);
- Samuel Hayat (Sciences Po);
- Réjane Sénac (Sciences Po);
- Alexandre de Vitry (Université Paris 4).
Keynote speaker
Geneviève Fraisse (EHESS)
Bibliography
(selected)
Abreu, Maira, and Adília Martins de Carvalho. 2023. « « Soutien aux trois Marias ! » Sociohistoire d’une mobilisation féministe internationale (1973-1974) ». Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire 58 (2): 79–102.
Anderson, Benedict R. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso.
Banti, Alberto Mario. 2000. La nazione del Risorgimento : parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita. Einaudi.
Banti, Alberto Mario. 2014. Sublime madre nostra: la nazione italiana dal Risorgimento al fascismo. Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa.
Baritono, Raffaella. 2008. ‘An Ideology of Sisterhood?: American Women’s Movements between Nationalism and Transnationalism’. Journal of Political Ideologies 13 (2): 181–99.
Barthélémy, Pascale. 2022. Sororité et colonialisme. Françaises et Africaines au temps de la Guerre froide (1944-1962). Éditions de la Sorbonne.
Beins, Agatha. 2010. ‘Sisterly Solidarity: Politics and Rhetoric of the Direct Address in US Feminism in the 1970s’. Women: A Cultural Review 21 (3): 292–308.
Bentouhami-Molino, Hourya. 2025. ‘Manger le père, déchoir les mères. Le repas totémique chez Freud et le contrat sexo-racial entre frères’. Cahiers du genre 79 (2): 225–56.
Bertrand, Gilles, Catherine Brice, and Gilles Montègre. 2012. Fraternité. Pour une histoire du concept. CRIHIPA.
Blumenberg, Hans. 2010. Paradigms for a Metaphorology. Translated by Robert Savage. Cornell University Press.
Borgetto, Michel. 1993. La Notion de fraternité en droit public français. Le Passé, le présent et l’avenir de la solidarité. Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence.
Brice, Catherine. 2017. Frères de sang, frères d’armes, frères ennemis : la fraternité en Italie (1820-1924). Éditions de l’École française de Rome.
Chapoutot, Johann. 2013. Fascisme, nazisme et régimes autoritaires en Europe : 1918-1945. Presses universitaires de France.
Chapoutot, Johann. 2018. The Law of Blood: Thinking and Acting as a Nazi. Translated by Miranda Richmond Mouillot. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Cîrstocea, Ioana. 2024. 'Géopolitique de la « sororité » : Construire un sujet féministe universel dans le cadre onusien (1975-1995)’. Raisons Politiques 95 (3): 181–204.
Cohen, Aylon A. 2023. ‘Sodomy, Equality, Fraternity: Bodily Practice and the Rise of Modern Democracy’. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.
David, Marcel. 1987. Fraternité et révolution française, 1789-1799. Éditions Aubier.
David, Marcel. 1992. Le printemps de la fraternité. Genèse et vicissitudes, 1830-1851. Éditions Aubier.
David, Marcel. 1993. ‘La fraternité, des velléités aux anticipations (1814-1830)’. Revue historique de droit français et étranger (1922-), 19–37.
David, Marcel. 1994. ‘La fraternité au temps du dénigrement (1800-1814)’. Annales historiques de la Révolution française, no. 295: 1–18.
Delaume, Chloé. 2021. Sororité. Éditions du Point.
Duhé, Arthur. 2024. ‘A Brotherhood of Nations: Imagining the Nation-Based Order during the Springtime of Nations (1848)’. Review of International Studies, 1–26.
Duhé, Arthur. 2025. Fraternité. Anamosa.
Duhé, Arthur. 2026. ‘From Friendship among States to Brotherhood of Nations: Friends and Brothers in the Age of Revolutions (1789;1848)’. European History Quarterly.
Evans, Elizabeth. 2015. The Politics of Third Wave Feminisms. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Haugevik, Kristin M., and Iver B. Neumann. 2018. Kinship in International Relations. Routledge.
Haverkamp, Anselm, and Jean-Claude Monod. 2017. Philosophie de la métaphore : penser avec Blumenberg. Hermann.
Hayat, Samuel. 2022. ‘Fraternité. Réponses aux anti-Lumières’. La Nuit 5.
hooks, bell. 1986. ‘Sisterhood: Political Solidarity between Women’. Feminist Review, no. 23: 125–38.
Hunt, Lynn A. 1992. The Family Romance of the French Revolution. University of California Press.
Janusz, Sharon. 1994. ‘Feminism and Metaphor: Friend, Foe, Force?’ Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 9 (4): 289–300.
Kolly, Bérengère. 2008. ‘Frères et sœurs politiques. La fraternité à l’épreuve des femmes, 1789–1793’. Genre & Histoire, no. 3.
Kolly, Bérengère. 2012. ‘Et de nos soeurs séparées...’ Lectures de la Sororité. With Geneviève Fraisse. Éditions Lussaud.
Kolly, Bérengère. 2015. ‘La politique dans le réel. Éducation, travail, citoyenneté. La Voix Des Femmes.’ In Quand les socialistes inventaient l’avenir, by Thomas Bouchet, Vincent Bourdeau, Edward Castleton, Ludovic Frobert, and François Jarrige. La Découverte.
Labelle, Sandrine. 2024. ‘« We Can’t Find a Basis for Unity but We Feel We Should » Conflits et sororité autour des conférences indochinoises qui se sont tenues au Canada en 1971’. Labour 93: 79–113.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 2008. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
Lyshaug, Brenda. 2006. ‘Solidarity without “Sisterhood”? Feminism and the Ethics of Coalition Building’. Politics & Gender 2 (1): 77–100.
Martin, Brian Joseph. 2011. Napoleonic Friendship: Military Fraternity, Intimacy, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France. University Press of New England.
Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Cornell University Press.
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Ozouf, Mona. 1989. ‘Fraternity’. In A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, by François Furet, Mona Ozouf, and Arthur Goldhammer. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Payne, Jenny Gunnarsson. 2012. ‘The Logics of Sisterhood: Intra-Feminist Debates in Swedish Feminist Zines’. European Journal of Women’s Studies 19 (2): 187–202.
Sénac, Réjane. 2017. Les Non-Frères au pays de l’égalité. Les Presses de Sciences Po.
Serna, Pierre, ed. 2019. Républiques Sœurs : le Directoire et la Révolution atlantique. Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Vince, Natalya. 2015. Our Fighting Sisters. Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012. Manchester University Press.
Vitry, Alexandre de. 2023. Le Droit de choisir ses frères ? Éditions Gallimard.
Yekelchyk, Serhy. 2004. Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. University of Toronto Press.
Places
- Espace Condorcet - 15 cours des Humanités
Aubervilliers, France (93)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Keywords
- sisterhood, brotherhood, fraternity, metaphors, sororité, fraternité
Contact(s)
- Arthur Duhé
courriel : politicalmetaphors [at] proton [dot] me
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Sisterhood and Brotherhood as Political Metaphors », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, June 18, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/16ffa
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