October 2014

I have been looking forward to this week’s readings and getting the opportunity to delve headfirst into Joan Scott’s work again for quite some time. Indeed, this time last year, I was experiencing “Gender as a Useful Category of Historical Analysis” for the first time in Dr. Mollin’s class on gender in United States history. In that particular class, we utilized Joan Scott’s foundational text as a foundational text for our class and our extensive discussions concerning gender naturally fell back on her writing throughout the semester. Dr. Mollin’s class proved to be one of my favorite classes of both my undergraduate and graduate career so you can imagine my excitement in getting to read Joan Scott’s work again. For reference, I pulled out my notebook from my gender class and glanced at my notes to see some of my initial reactions. I also found Joan Scott’s “Unanswered Questions” that I also read last year and it was interesting to re-read both works again and compare notes.

This time around, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I understood Scott more readily than before. In fact, I vividly remember feeling that Scott’s writing was dense last year (though after reading Foucault recently, how could I find Scott dense?!) and yet I did not get that impression this time around whatsoever. Perhaps it is because I understand her argument a bit better. I also enjoyed reading another work by Joan Scott, her piece on head scarves entitled, “Symptomatic Politics. The Banning of Islamic Head Scarves in French Public Schools.” I find her writing to be both captivating and transparent, she is remarkably clear in conveying precisely what she means to argue and say. Naturally, I appreciate that approach to historical writing (or really any writing for that matter).

I think what is perhaps most captivating about “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” (other than the fact that it proved to be the most influential women’s history essay to date) is that it questions precisely what gender is to begin with. Is it simply (or perhaps not so simply) a construction? Is it a product of the binary opposition of male versus female? Is it completely unrelated to sex? Scott defines gender utilizing “…two parts and several subsets,” she writes, “…gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (1067). Later she argues, “Gender, then, provides a way to decode meaning and to understand the complex connections among various forms of human interaction. When historians look for the ways in which the concept of gender legitimizes and constructs social relationships, they develop insight into the reciprocal nature of gender and society and into the particular and contextually specific ways in which politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics” (1070). Thus, gender is not a simple concept. It is multi-layered and multi-faceted and at times difficult to fully grasp. And yet, gender is a critical lens by which to view history and it is a category of analysis that is ultimately highly beneficial to historians and other scholars, alike.

I will have to admit that I enjoyed Geoff Eley’s A Crooked Line a bit more this time around. In particular, I appreciated his insight into the history of history, in Germany and elsewhere. I like being able to explore the background of history and it is one aspect of our class that I am enjoying most readily. I also appreciated the fact that Eley gave a bit of background to Carolyn Kay Steedman’s Landscape for a Good Woman as I read Eley prior to reading Steedman. Eley laid the foundation for what I was about to read and I approached Landscape for a Good Woman with a basic understanding of what I was going to experience. Eley writes, “Steedman is better described as a historian who understands the theoretical and philosophical implications of doing historical work. She pushes edgily on the boundaries of what historians think they do, but she manages to combine social and cultural history without turning the results into some risk-free and reassuring middle way…This is what we should take away from reading Steedman’s work: between social history and cultural history, there is really no need to choose (180-181). Thus, I began reading Landscape for a Good Woman with an eye towards both social and cultural history.

And Steedman did not disappoint. In fact, what I experienced in reading Landscape for a Good Woman was not quite what I had expected. I fully expected a purely biographical account but this book is far from it. Instead, Steedman weaves her own story in with discussions of class, motherhood, feminism, childhood, and other analyses. What results is an interesting rollercoaster ride through Steedman’s life and mind.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Steedman is blunt and at times, coarse in Landscape for a Good Woman. She is unapologetic about the way she presents her own life and that of her mother. And as a result, her writing is at times captivating, the history she tells is both personal and impersonal, both social and cultural. For example, concerning her mother she writes, “There was nothing we could do to pay back the debt of our existence. ‘Never have children dear,’ she said; ‘they ruin your life.’ Shock moves swiftly across the faces of women to whom I tell this story. But it is ordinary not to want your children, I silently assert; normal to find them a nuisance” (17).

Furthermore, in discussing her father near the beginning of her book Steedman writes, “A father like mine dictated each day’s existence; our lives would have been quite different had he not been there. But he didn’t matter, and his singular unimportance needs explaining. His not mattering has an effect like this: I don’t quite believe in male power; somehow the iron of patriarchy didn’t enter my soul. I accept the idea of male power intellectually, of course (and I will eat my words the day I am raped, or the knife is slipped between my ribs; though I know that will not be the case: in the dreams it is a woman who holds the knife, and only a woman can kill)” (19).

Wait, what? What did I just read?

This is precisely what about Steedman is so captivating and yet so confusing. She often looks back on her childhood fondly, admiring her mother and father at varying times. And yet, there are other times in which (like above) she is blatantly displeased with the choices and actions of her parents and with their effects on her childhood (among other things). What results is a confusing and sometimes difficult story to follow. And yet, I still enjoyed this book to some extent. I enjoyed Steedman’s honesty and a look into a time and place quite different from my own. And also an approach to history that I am not quite used to experiencing. However, I still found myself somewhat confused by the end of the book. What precisely was Steedman attempting to accomplish? What was her purpose for examining her childhood? What was her argument (if there was one)? Perhaps I got too caught up in the stories at hand to be able to understand Steedman’s writing on a deeper level. I am hoping my colleagues will be able to answer my questions and that we will be able to traverse this landscape together through our upcoming discussion next Tuesday.

Although I have read Michel Foucault in other classes (more so in the anthropology courses of my past), I still approached this week’s readings with a healthy amount of trepidation. Interestingly, I found myself pleasantly surprised with my reaction to Foucault this time around. Though immensely dense and at times overwhelmingly convoluted, I discovered that I actually do enjoy Foucault. I think this is due to the fact that his work is so difficult and often times difficult to get through. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment. Call me crazy.

I had read Foucault’s take on Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prior to this class and it is one of Foucault’s ideas that I find especially interesting. Of particular interest to me has always been Foucault’s argument that, “The practice of placing individuals under ‘observation’ is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures. Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labor, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penalty? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (Discipline and Punish, Panopticism). Thus, Foucault makes the connection between prisons and a slew of other institutions. Don’t kids often like to say they feel like they are in prison when they are at school? I bet they don’t know that through his work, Foucault would wholeheartedly agree.

I also felt that the article by Patricia O’Brien within Lynn Hunt’s book, The Cultural History was especially interesting. In fact, I had no idea that Foucault was so shunned by historians at one time. Indeed, in relaying Foucault’s rocky past with historians O’Brien writes, “Michel Foucault’s reception by historians has been troubled and contentious” (27) and that interestingly, Foucault maintained that his works were “…not the work of an ‘historian’” (28), which most likely angered his critics even more. And lastly, “Foucault’s perceived marginality as a historian gave way in the 1970s to a grudging recognition of the historical aspects of his work” (28). I also found myself wondering: were historians highly critical of him simply because he was not a historian? Do we historians still treat non-historians in a similar vein? Or did historians dislike him because, “Foucault’s controversial work stands as an alternative approach in the new history of culture…Foucault questioned the very principle implicit in all social history: that society itself is the reality to be studied” (27)?

Ultimately, near the end of “Michel Foucault’s History of Culture,” O’Brien argues, “He sought to undermine the assumptions of a discipline that still ghettoizes histories of women, homosexuals, and minorities, a discipline that still understands power, for the most part, as an attribute of a nation or class. Although Foucault was blind to gender as an analytic category, his method of studying power through discourse holds great promise for work in this area” (45). I thought this to be a rather bold statement. Do we, as historians, still “ghettoize” women, homosexuals, and minorities? (This book was published in 1989, the year I was born!) I would hope that we are moving far from the days of the “great man history” or the white man’s history. Clearly, though, this particular chapter within Hunt’s book is suggesting otherwise. I will be interested to hear what my colleagues have to say about this statement as well…