Suzanne Karpelès’ encounters in Indochina and Europe in 1931: multiple femininities, colonial relations and educative sites

This chapter explores articulations and ascriptions of femininities as action speech, matter and meeting intersected in Suzanne Karpelès’ encounters in Cambodia and Europe in 1931. The first section examines divergent intersections and performances of religion, colonialism, feminism and femininities at the Buddhist Institute in Phomn Penh and in newspaper reporting in France. The second section looks at Karpelès’ reconfiguration of femininities, internationalism, colonialism and “experience” around the language of international relations at the League of Nations’ Comité d’Entente des Grandes Associations in Paris. It also situates Karpelès in respect of gendered relations of expertise at the International Congress of Orientalists in Leiden. The next section unpacks Karpelès’ contestation of configurations of “the native woman” at the third Estates General of Feminism whilst also deploying colonist tropes around the “native mentalities” of indigenous pupils. The final section considers fascist ascriptions of femininity at the Institute for Educational Cinematography in Rome.