This article analyzes the critical move of certain feminists toward republicanism and explores the hypothesis that such a move represents important points of contact with a current of popular republicanism. Based on classical authors and adopting specific criteria for looking at the constitutive diversity of republicanism, we seek a way to define this current and as well as the aristocratic one which serves as its counterpoint. Our hypothesis is based, on the one hand, on analysis of feminist critiques of certain current formulations which, to a greater or lesser extent, share the republican ideal that contemporary society must endow public life with renewed meaning. On the other hand, it draws from particular proposals that have been elaborated in order to appropriate this ideal. Our analysis then makes it possible to suggest that the concerns that characterize the popular republican current offer more promising sources for combining the ideal of a renewed public sphere with demands for justice. Through this focus, we emphasize feminist contributions to democratic theory.
feminist theory; popular republicanism; aristocratic republicanism; democratic theory