SOURCE: "Region/Body: In? Of? And? Or? (Alter/Native) Separatism in the Politics of Nicole Brossard," in Essays on Canadian Writing, No. 61, Spring, 1997, pp. 1-16.

In the following essay, Verwaayen discusses the role of separatism in the politics set forth by Brossard in her writing.

"What kind of message is this?" was one feminist response during a CBC round table (aired on "Prime Time Magazine" in prereferendum October 1995) in reaction to propagandist remarks made by Lucien Bouchard in a recent "yes"-side campaign linking reproduction and the sovereignty project in Quebec. While Bouchard's alienating comments exemplify a centuries-old validation of women through their reproductive function, their assigned use-value in Western tradition, my purpose here is to trace how the patriarchal impetus of the Quebec separatist movement circumscribes feminist aims and to suggest, through the movement from the regional to the international in the fiction of Nicole Brossard, the...