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As my thesitation takes me onto wobbly territory in the realm of what is commonly called “women’s history,” this seems an apt time to start to work out some of my own investments in that realm. The recent kerfuffle about one “Mercurius Rusticus” and his misogynistic blurt lets me know that, whatever progress has been made, the field remains vexed, and that those of us who are engaged in it had better stay engaged — and pay close attention to how we formulate that engagement.
First, some slightly irritated ground-clearing in response to two stupid questions. Please note that I use “women’s history” here largely as a signpost for “histories of the subaltern”: because I do not wish to speak to that of which I know nearly nothing, I stick to “women” and “gender.” But I have a feeling what I will say here and in future posts may apply to other areas as well.
To the question, “Why does women’s history matter?” I respond easily that I have yet to hear a convincing argument for why it doesn’t matter, and that to challenge any category of historical analysis is to challenge the historical endeavor itself. Why does history matter? is an important question, but if “history matters” can be taken as a given, “women’s history matters,” “military history matters,” “culinary history matters,” “the history of imperialism matters,” and every other formulation, easily follow. The more interesting questions are, “how can we do women’s history?”, “where will women’s history take us, as historians, as literaturians, as educators?”, “how is women’s history different from any other history?”, and so on. Crucially: “What is the difference between ‘women’s history’ and ‘gender history’?” To this last I hope to return in a later post.
To the argument that those who are engaged in the history of women, of gender, and of the family are sapping energy from other areas, I respond easily, “What the hell are you smoking?” Every creative act committed means that a range of others were not committed in that moment, with that energy. The cynical way to see it is that arithmetic progress entails geometric loss. This is the fundamental principle behind the impossibility of a Key to All Mythologies: no one can do everything, and every mythos that gets recorded eats up some time that could have gone to the others. If you find a solution to this problem, please give Doctor Causaubon a call; I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.
There are overtilled fields — many areas of Shakespeare studies and the American Civil War provide prime examples. A great deal of ink gets spilled producing largely unoriginal accounts of this or that. Yet the accusation to be levelled in that case is, precisely, of unoriginality, not of inutility.
The vast lacunae in the histories of women and of gender indicate that they will not approach supersaturation any time soon – not within my lifetime, anyhow. Scholars of early modern western Europe, for example, have only just begun, in the past ten years or so, to look for means to discover significant literacy rates for women of all classes. How women read, what they read, which women read, under what circumstances, to what purpose, and why any of this was so, are all open questions in the field of early modern studies. This is only one example. Because much of women’s political and creative agency took its roots in private or domestic spaces, in the informal economy, in manuscript rather than in print, through influence and string-pulling rather than through public action, their lives and the significance of their lives must be sought by means to which traditional historiography was never suited. Those means are not always obvious, the archive is often obscure, the problems vexed and multifaceted and their solutions roundabout.
In some ways, the unobviousness of gender history, of gendered historiography, is what makes it thrilling for its practitioners. Unobviousness is one place to which women’s history can take us: it enables us to question our assumptions about the nature of a given historical problem and about the materials by which we wish to assess that problem. Simply put, doing women’s history keeps us on our toes — a position especially necessary for wee mouse here.
There will be more on this. I am, for reasons obvious to my longtime readers, especially interested in how the historical and literary disciplines intersect in the “women’s history” enterprise. To be investigated.
Readers, your thoughts?
Recent acquisitions:
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains
Because I have this feeling that Paul Farmer is pretty awesome, but don’t actually know anything about his work.
John Stubbs, John Donne: The Reformed Soul
I probably should have looked into this before I bought it. I’m not too into biography to begin with (though I’ve been cooing covetously over the Hermione Lee Edith Wharton), I’m really not into purchasing hardcovers new, and I’m really really not into bad biographies of early modern poets. So we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
Jeanette Winterson, Tanglewreck
Um, Jeanette Winterson wrote a novel for kids. Hello, twelve-year-olds of New Eden: this is what you will be reading for the rest of the summer. Because you or your parents will have a choice between buying this book and having your skulls split. Period.
Noam Chomsky, Failed States
I hate Noam Chomsky. This is unfair, because the hatred stems solely from my associating his work with certain manarchist assholes I’ve had the misfortune to know. That, and watching Foucault totally wipe the floor with him that one time (thanks, YouTube). But New Eden Books incongruously carries a great deal of his work, and I endorse that message.
Noga Arikha, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours
A new history of my favorite biological phenomenon. And geared to a broad market, semi-miraculously. I positively twittered when I discovered it. (Used, in great condition, in hardcover, for eight bucks — thanks, Amazon!) I’m a little concerned about the trend in the reviews toward “Hey look at this neat book about all the crrrraaaazy stuff those crrrraaaazy backward premodern people actually believed!!!” Hopefully Arikha is less strident than that. Either way, I’m stoked.
Currently reading:
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
Wandering through the Barnes & Noble at Union Square trying to survive the heat last summer, a good friend and one of the best readers I know all but forced me to purchase this wild, disturbing novel-in-verse, and it’s been sitting on my shelf, more or less forgotten, since. Last night I needed some poetry to calm me, so I picked it up. I was totally floored. There will definitely be more on this. Anyone who can recommend anything like it will get a virtual cookie.
Tatiana Tolstaia, White Walls
As already mentioned, I’m a bit of a freak for things Russian. Had the course registration cards fallen differently during the fall of my sophomore year in the Petri Dish, I might’ve fallen into Slavistry. But the latest my understanding of Russian literature goes is Bulgakov and Nabokov. So I thought I’d give Tolstaia a whirl, and so far I have been rewarded. These very short stories are almost gemlike in their glittering minuteness, and follow my favorites of the Dead Russians (especially Gogol and Bulgakov) in combining gritty hyperrealism with dreamlike style, surreal images, and the occasional supernatural happening. As far as I can tell (not far), the translation is tight. More on these, perhaps, later, when I’ve read more of them.
Jean Howard and Phyllis Rackin, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories
I’m not sure that this is a foundational text of feminist scholarship in early modern English literature, but it sure reads like a foundational text. Deceptively straightforward, stunningly lucid. (Frightening how rare “lucid” is as a modifier in descriptions of academic prose.) It does a kind of work that I’ve only recently come to appreciate: a careful, methodical feminist reassessment of canonical texts. Until recently — really, until I started reading this book — this kind of basic, recuperative feminist reading drove me insane, because I came to political consciousness as radically queered feminisms came into maturity in the academy. But I’m beginning to realize how important it is to read work like this, to understand the history of feminist scholarship so that I can begin to find my place within it.
Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale
A New York as big and grand and mythical as that of Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay, indiscernable boundaries between the real and the fantastical, fabulously evocative prose. Given all this, I should love it, but a hundred pages in, I’m starting to find Helprin pretentious and a little annoying. Perhaps it’s precisely the self-congratulatory New Yorkness of it that makes me nuts — what keeps me from being as in love with New York as I want to be is that New York is entirely too in love with itself. Still, a pleasing romp that I will perhaps save for a plane trip Out West in a month.
Now I need to impose a moratorium on book-buying. I’d like NEB to keep paying me, not the other way ’round.
In which a certain Squadrato has tagged me to write eight questions, things I regularly wonder about, ponder, contemplate, etc. She is also anti-rules, and I like that about her.
1. Why, in the company of older men, is it so difficult to be a Good Feminist? I’m not talking nuance, kids, I’m talking straight-up no-two-ways-about-it women-aren’t-toys patriarchy-exists-and-does-stupid-shit Feminism 101. It should be easy as pie, but it ain’t. A friend just told me a story about telling off some guy for referring erroneously to her, a scholar in her own right, as the “date” of one of the “real” scholars at the conference she was attending (who happens to be a gay man, which is another issue altogether). Her story reminded me of a lot of experiences I’ve had, in which sticking up for myself or someone else has inevitably led to me feeling small and vulnerable and stupid, getting branded with the “crazy feminist” label and thus feeling I’ve given a bad name to the Cause, and so on. People call this “internalizing oppression,” and I say that’s a load of crap. The whole point of resistant politics is that whatever you’re resisting is also inside you, or it wouldn’t have any power. “Internalizing” means absolutely nothing, and doesn’t even remotely distinguish one person operating within a given power structure from another. So why does standing up for the simplest and easiest of all possible feminisms — because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to look myself or my friends in the eye the next day — make me feel more like a Little Woman than just about anything else can?
2. How long would it take me to become loosely conversant in Italian? To read Italian as well as I read French? To read early forms of Italian? My French fluency took about ten years, give or take, depending on your definition of fluency. I have some competence in Spanish. Will the next Romance language be easier or more difficult? Will it come more quickly? Where can I get some dollars for a year of lounging around somewhere in Tuscany having grapes fed to me by a luscious country lass while she teaches me to read Dante? Or, you know. Aretino.
3. Am I going to crash and burn here? Am I going to get my limbs chewed off by the big toothy maw of Academe? Really. I worry about this. There’s no way to know. Will it all prove too tough on my delicate little neurons? Or will I simply burn out? Will I walk out of a library somewhere someday, throw my reams of painfully accumulated notes under a train and run away for a life that would be unrecognizable to my current self? As I talk to my far-flung friends, hear about their adventures and their plans or lack of plans, I begin to realize how narrow is the path on which I’m setting myself. I’m beginning to realize how many other choices there are in life, how very big the world is (despite evidence to the contrary), and how wildly varied the available paths. What, in short, will become of me in this crazy world I’m about to throw myself (back) into?
4. How many people, aside from my creepy second cousin, actually participate in the culture of naked karaoke?
5. What is it, really, that annoys me about campy gay men, and mainstream gay male culture? Is it drone-ish conformism? Is it that I can’t stand certain traits – gossippiness, hypertrophied consumerism, pop culture connoisseurship, overconcern for one’s physical appearance and that of others – in women, and seeing the burlesque of it in men is just too much? Is it organizations like the HRC that give a bad rap to homonormativity? Why am I less annoyed by lesbonormativity (you know, U-Hauls, flannel, drum circles, Starhawk)? Is this fair? Am I allowed to maintain my prejudice and still consider myself a good person and a good queer?
6. Why is it so difficult to be a good caregiver? My dad, whom I love and who is very important to me, is having surgery tomorrow and I’m already finding it difficult to be sympathetic. I’m worried about him and I want to do anything I can to make this easier for him, so why have I been snappish and inconsiderate all day? Of course, it’s difficult to walk the line between caring and being taken advantage of — a recurrent problem between me and the old man — but why is it so difficult to say, “Okay, mouse, suck it up for two weeks, respond to and anticipate his every wish with a smile and a curtsy, and then you can go back to asserting yourself”?
7. What is the difference between eroticism and sexuality? This is one I’ve been working on for a while, because I insist that there is a difference, and that eroticism is more important to me than sexuality is, but I can’t for the life of me put my finger on why. I have a lot of relationships that I would term “erotic,” but with people with whom I would never dream of engaging in any sex act (aside from making out, which I think should be desexualized anyway). A lot of my crushes work this way, too. I started thinking about this in an undergrad seminar on early modern sexualities, about how one of the keys to unlocking the problems of talking about sexuality, and about its history in particular, might be the disarticulation of Eros and Sex. I have more to say about this, but for now I’ll leave it here. Please commment; I’m curious.
8. Perhaps most importantly, when the eff will the third season of Battlestar Galactica be released on DVD?!
I’ve realized that I am afraid of tagging. This may stop someday. For now, you know. Here’s a meme. Do it. Or something.
Posting in non-predetermined styles to resume shortly.
1. The Supreme Court ruling on Gonzalez vs. Planned Parenthood and Gonzalez vs. Carhart:
I am as frightened and enraged as everyone else is. I am also in awe, yet again, of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I don’t know what else there is to say.
2. The Virginia Tech killings:
I think Horace’s post on academic freedom and the dangers of pathologizing students is very apt. Universities, even and especially primarily undergraduate institutions like my little alma mater, are at risk as it is of returning to operating in loco parentis. Adding “security” questions into the bargain will only alienate students from faculty and vice versa, and both from their administrations. Good pedagogy and healthy relationships do not stand up under the influence of mistrust and paranoia. It is not VT’s fault that a very troubled individual shot dozens of innocent people to death. Universities are not and should not be equipped to deal with massacres, lest it lead to the kind of fight-fire-with-fire mentality exhibited in this outrageous Daily News opinion piece. So let us mourn, continue to love each other as well as we know how, and, in the immortal words of Crosby, Stills and Nash, teach our children well.
3. The French présidentielle:
I took a vow months ago not to speak, write, or converse in non-verbal signs or grunts about this topic. If you’re desperate for my opinion, it is well summed-up by the image that decks the cover of this week’s Economist. Monday will teach us things, and then we will be waiting again, perhaps to learn more, or only to shake our heads, on May 6. We cannot know, because the French electorate is notoriously unpredictable. My guess? Nicolas Sarkozy is simply going to be the next Président de la République, and all we can do is cross our fingers and hope he knows what he’s doing. In the words of a famous French comedian from the banlieue: “Nicolas, je connais plein de jeunes des banlieues qui vont voter pour vous, et vous savez pourquoi? Parce que comme ça, au moins vous ne serez plus au ministère de l’intérieure.”
4. The American presidential:
I re-take my French oath. Foutez-moi la paix.
5. Imus:
Hooliganery notwithstanding, Tenured Radical still has the best take on this I’ve yet seen. And Gwen Ifill remains high on my list of heroes.
There. I did it. I commented on Current Events. Your regularly scheduled narcissism, snark, conveyance of senses of superiority and other items totally irrelevant to your life will continue shortly.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this NYT article about the pressure on young women to be hot, smart, accomplished polymaths, and to do it all “effortlessly,” in the exasperatedly sighing term of one of the young women interviewed. Further evidence that the college admissions process is slowly destroying, at least for the very privileged, what was once viewed as the glory of youth.
My father tossed me the paper this weekend, looked down at me over his specs as he ashed his cigarette: “Here. More food for the fire.”
Indeed. But an incensed feminist tirade would do no good here — anyone who reads this blog has either made the tirade hirself or knows exactly what I have to say about it all.
What struck me as strange, as I put down the article and looked down at my dog over my own specs, sighed and ashed my cigarette, was that the article emphasized the pressure itself, and not the objects of it. My own high school experience in a small, insular, white, ultra-wealthy New England suburb was mostly analogous to those of the young women interviewed by the NYT. But Esther puts it best: “How do you achieve and still be genuine?”
It was cool to be smart at my high school. Some of the most popular kids were at the top of my class, scored unfathomable scores on SAT’s, AP tests and the like, took all the hardest classes, and did a gazillion “extra-curriculars.” What was most definitely not cool, what the cool kids made abundantly clear was most definitely not cool, were my interests: art and leftism. It was important to do well in A.P. English, but totally weird to memorize that wacky Emily Dickinson poem — not to mention devoting an evening every week to editing the student literary magazine, CV-building extra-curricular activity though it may have been. It was important to score a five on the A.P. United States History examination, but it was totally weird to insist on asking questions about the deeply complicated gender politics of the temperance movement or why our textbook didn’t have room for more than a cursory glance at the roles of non-white people in the abolitionist movement.
Being a polymath came at the price of forsaking any genuine interests we might have had. With a very few exceptions — kids I admired very much indeed and who are now making wonderful people of themselves — mine was a high-school populated by iron-willed automatons who were nonetheless destined for some brand of success. All of us were anxious out of our brains about college and grades and meeting with approval from teachers and parents. Of course we were anxious — we were teenagers and that’s what teenagers do. And of course there was a lot of pressure on us: we were, so the story ran, the scions of a class of people who had, for better or for worse, made themselves Very Important by accruing a fuckton of cash, and we were therefore more or less likely to be running the world, just as our parents had done, within twenty years.
Luckily for everyone, I will not be running anything more earth-shattering than a neat little corner of an English department office somewhere. This is because I was convinced that the automaton-effect was fundamentally evil, that it was good and right to kick it in the grass reading Emily Dickinson and shout Leninist soundbytes at the school principal when he tore down the adverts for our fledgling GSA. I’m not patting myself on the back — those years were horrendous, and it was probably unwise to be quoting Lenin in any context. I was a complete idiot. What I am doing is pointing to the real danger — that the pressure on young privileged kids guides them to dangerous values. Numbers — grades, scores, class rank, a university’s U.S. News and World Report ranking — were the ultimate indicator of success. Our dynamism was fabricated — on paper, awards and an endless list of activities frequently disguised a void. We were not engaged with the world around us. Most of us did not know that there was a world around us, despite the best efforts of generous, conscientious educators.
I suppose the point towards which I’ve been meandering is that young people should be kicked and prodded, and that “pressure” is not in itself a bad thing. What we as future or current parents and educators, or simply as citizens of the world, should be concerned with is thinking critically about how, exactly, that kicking and prodding is structured, and to what goal it tends. What I learned in the Petri Dish was what it feels like to be constantly assailed by pressure — but this time it was the pressure to think critically, the pressure that told me that no matter how agonizingly I worked, no matter how well-developed were my ideas or my papers or my political inclinations, there would always be a challenge at the end, another problem that needed resolving, another question to be posed that would push me still farther.
I will never forget a moment in the office of — let’s call her Professor Revolutionary, when, in tears and at the end of my rope, I blurted out “But what you’re asking is impossible! It’s never enough for you, is it?!” She looked me in the eye and with her characteristic fierceness said, “No, Neophyte. But it’s got nothing to do with me. Nothing will ever be enough. Don’t let that paralyse you.” It was devastating. But she was right. When it comes to engaging with the world, nothing will ever be enough. And to learn that as a young person is a good thing. I’ve never felt intellectual, emotional, or political pressure like that put on me by Revolutionary — and no single person has ever had the impact on what my mother calls my “fierceness,” my refusal to accept things as they are, that Revolutionary had.
It’s not “pressure” that’s a problem. It’s the narrow categories into which elite schools “pressure” their students that need rethinking. The intensity of high school should be about what adolescence is about: railing against absolutely everything as wildly as possible. How do we get to that rethinking? I have no idea. But thanks to the intellectual pressure-cooker that was my world in the Petri Dish, I know better than to let it paralyse me.
