,- ' J _}

TOWARD A FEMINIST HlSTOR Y

,pace opened by this debate and on the side of the critique of science power, but the direction of change is not necessarily _one way. As a
developed by the humanities, and of empiricism and humanism by constitutive element of social relationshi s based on erceived dif-
anti- structuralists feminists have begun to fmd not only a theoretical ferences . ween the sexes,gender involves four interrelated ele- (1), ,\ ',
voice of their own but scholarly and political allies as well. It 1S w1thm ments: first; culturally __available symbols that evoke multiple and
this space that we must articulate gender as an analytic·1;:ategory . often contradictqry) representations: Eve and Mary as symbols of
What should be done by historians who, after all, have seen their woman; for e.xample, m the Western Christian tradition-but .also,
discipline ne dismissed by some recent theorists as a relic of humanist myths of light and dark, purification and pollution, innocence and
thought? I do not think we should quit the archives or abandon the . corruption. For historians, the interesting questions are, Which sym-
study of the past, but we do have to change some of the .ways _we've • . bolic representations are invoked, how, and in what contexts? Sec-
gone about working, some of the questions we have asked. We need ond, normative co_;icepts that .set forth _ interpretations of the mean-
to scrutinize our methods of analysis, clarify our operative assump- • •ings of the symbols, that attempt to limit and contain their metaphoric
tions
, , explain how we think change occurs. lnstead of a search
and possibilities. These concepts .are expressed _in religious, educational,
_-, for single origins, we have to conceive of processes so interconnected scientific, legal, and political doctrines and typically take the form of
' that they cannot be disentangled Of course_, we identify problems to a fixed binary opposition, categorically and unequivocally asserting, .
. study, and these constitute beginnings or pomts of entry mto complex the meaning _of male ''and female, masculine and feminine. ln fact,
processes. But it is the processes we must contm_ually keep in mmd.
. . these _normative statements depend on the refusal or repression of
We 111 ust ask more often how things happened m order to fmd out. alternative possibilities, and sometimes overt contests about them take
why they happened; in anthropologist Michelle :t:-osaldo's formula- place (at what moments and under what circumstances ought to be
t io11, we must pursue not universal, general causality but meaningful a concern of historians). The position that emerges as dominant,
· explanation:"It now appears to me that womens place m human however, is stated .as the only possible one. Subsequent history ·is
social life is not in any direct sense a product of the things she does, written as if these .. normative positions were the product of social
but of the meaning her activities acquire through concrete social in- consensus rather than of conflict. An example of this kind of history
teraction" To pursue meaning, we need to dea~ with the md1v1dual is the treatment of the Victorian ideology of domesticity as if it were
,subject as well as social organization and to aruculate the ..n_ature of • created whole and only afterwards reacted to instead of being the
their interrelationships, for both are crucial to understand,ng how . constant subject of great differences of opinion. Another kind ..of ex-
gender works, how change occurs. Finally, we need to replace the . ample comes -from contemporary fundamentalist religious groups' that '
notion that social power is unified, _coherent, and centralized with have_ forcibly linked their p'ractice to a restoration of women's sup-
. something like Michel Foucault's concept of power as dispersed co_n- posedly more authentic "traditional" role, when, in fact, there is little
: stellations of unequal relationships, discursively constituted in soctal _historical precedent for the unquestioned performance of such a role.
"fields of for:ce."35 Within these processes and structures, there _is room The point of new historical investigation is to disrupt the notion of
(or a concept of human' agency as the attempt (at_least_partially _ra- fixity, to discover the nature of the debate. or repression that leads
tional) to construct an identity, a _life, a set of relationships, a society· to the appearance of timeless permanence in binary gender represen-
within certain limits and with language~conceptual language that tation. This kind of analysis must include a_notion of politics and ,
at once sets· boundaries and contains the possibility for negation, re- referenceto social institutions and organizations the third aspect ~
sistance, reinterpretation, the play of metaphoric invention and • of gender relationships. .
imagination. • some scholats, notably anthropologists, have restricted tire use of
My definition of gender has two parts and several subsets. They gender to the kinship system (focusing on household and family as
are interrelated but must be analytically distinct. The core of the def- • the basis for social organization). We •need a broader view that in-
inition rests on an integral connection between two propositions: . cludes not only kinship but also (especially for complex modern so-
gender is a constitutive element of .fil,lcial relationships based on per~. ctet_1es) the labor market sex-segregated labor market IS a part of
-ceived di((erences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of the process. of gen der construction), education (all~male, single-sex,
signifying relation ships
, of _er .. Changes in the organization_ of so- . or coeducational institutions are part of the same process), and the
cial re relationships
, always corr_espond·to changes in representat1ons_.of
--- polity (universal male suffrage is part of the process of gender con-
 TOW ARD A FEMJN 1ST HISTORY Gender 45
~on➔- It makes little sense to force these institutions back to be bet~er to say, g_~~de~ is a, prin~ary field within whi~h or by means
[u11ctio11al utility in the kinship system, or to argue that contempo- o~ which power Is arttcul~ted. Get1der is not the only, field,'-bu-t it
rary relationships between men and women are arti.facts ·of older kin- s~e11:~ to. have been a persistent and recurrent way of enabling the
ship systems based on the exchange of women.36 Gender is con- •• s1gmf1cat1on of power in the West, in the Judea-Christian as well as
structeJ through kinship, but not exclusively;-it is constructed as well. the lslami~ tradition. As such, this part of the definition might seem
i11 the economy and the polity, which, in our society at least, now . to belong m the normative section of the argument, yet it does not,
operate largely independently of kinship. . • • . for conc~pts of power, though they may build on gende.r, are not
,- • The fourth aspect of'-gender is subjectiv~- i~~!\.t_i_~y. l agree with _an- a~ways lttet~lly about gender. itself. ·French sociologist Pierre Bour-
(!!J thropolog1st Gayl~Jz-1c:1bin> ~~~ thatpsy~h~al:ysis ?.ff~~ an
important theory about the reproduction of ender, a de~1pt1on of
d1eu has written about how the "di-visi_on du monde," based on ref-
erences to "biological differences and notably those that refer to the
the "transformation of the biologica se~ual(ty__C>f individuals as they . division of the labor of procreatiqn and reproduction,-'' operates as
:ire encu turate ."·' But t e universa c aim of psychoanalysis gives "the best founded of collective illusions." Established as an objective
Ille pause."i..,'WTfthough Lacanian theory may ~e h~lpful for thinking_ set of refer~nces, concepts of gender structure perceptiofl and the
;1bout the construction of gendered identity, historians need to wor~ • concrete and symbolic organization of all social life. 40 1:o the extent
in a more historical way. 1£ gender identit)1 .is based only•• and uni"'. that these references establi_sh distributions of powe; (differential
vctsally on fear of castration, the point of histori~_;a.l i_nqu_i_~y}~. ~.7nied. control over _or access to material and symbolic resources), gender
rvloreover, real men and women do not always or hte_~aUy fuH1ll the .becomes implicated in the conception and construction of powe(it-
terms either of their society's prescription~ or. o_f our a~~lytic cate- self. The French anthropQlogist M:imrice Godelier has plit it this way:
f.ories. Historians need instead to examine th_e ways in ~~-i~h ~en- "It is not sexuality__which..P.~_U!:}t~ sq<;:_iety, bt1t society which haunts
dered identities are substantively constru<:~~c~ ~nd relate their fmdmgs • the body's sexuality ..$ex-rela:ted differences between bodies are con-
to a range of activities, social organizations, .and· histoi;ically"'specific tinually summoned as testimony to social relations and phe~omena
cultural representations. The best efforts in this area so far_have been, that have nothing to do with· sexuality. Not only as testimony to, but
nut surprisingly, biographies: Biddy Mar~in's interpret~tlon of Lou. also testimony for-:-in other words, as.legitimation." 41
1\m.lreas Salome, Kathryn ~klar's :depiction of Catharu1:e ,Be~cher, . The legitimizing function of gendei: works in many w~ys. Bourdieu
Jacqueline Hall's life ~f Jes~1e Da~el Ames, ar_id Mary H1U s _discus- for example, showed how, in certain cultures, agricultural exploita:
sion of Charlotte Perkms Gilman. But collective treatm_!';QJs.are also tion was organized according to concepts. of time and season that
possible, as Mrinalinq. Sinha a11d Lou Rat~~ h~ve shown _inJh_eir re~ rested on specific definitions of the opposition between masculine
spective studies of the terri1s of construction of g~n_der 1den_my for an9_feminine. Gayatr~ Spiv~.k has <l~ne a pointed analysis of the uses _!
l',ritish •colonial administra_t?rs in_ In_dia an~ for _Bnttsh-ed~;c1.ted In- of gender an9 .
colonialism .in certain texts of British
42 •·· . ·'"'". •• .. •
and American '.
dians who emerged as ant1-1mpenahst, naqonahst leaders. wo~e~ wr~ter~. Natalie Davis has shown how concepts of mas- •
The first part of my definition of gender consists? then, of all four • culme and feminine related to understandings and ·criticisms of the
of these elements and no one of them operates without the others. rules of social order in early mddern France. 43 Hi~torian Caroline
Yet they do not ~perate simultaneously, with one simply reflecting· Bynum has thrown new light on medieval spirit~ality through her
• the others. A q~estion for historical research is, in fact, what the atten~ion to .the rel_ationships. between concepts ,of masculine and
rebtionships among the four aspetts are: The sketch I have offered ~em~nine and ~eligious behavior. Her work gives us important insight
of the process of constructing gender relationships could. bC:. ~s~d to mto t~e ways m which these concepts informed the politics of monas-
discuss class, race, ethnicity, or, for that matter, any so_c1alproce~s._ tic institutions. as.well as of individual believers. 44 Art historians have
l\ly point was to clarify and specify ho.w one needs t9 t:l).ink about ope?e? a new_Jerritory by rea~ing soc(al implications froin literal
the effect of gen<ler in social. and institutiona.Lrelationships, beca1~s_e dep~ct1ons of women anq men. These m_terpretations are bas.ed on
this thinking is ofteh not done precisely·or systeruati_cc:!,lly. The ti-1~9- the idea_ that conceptu:;il languages employ differentiation to ·estabiish
rizi11g of geucler, ho·wever, is developed in my second propqsition: .~eaning. a~d_ th~t. sex_u'al difference ~s . a primary'_ ~ay of's1gmfymg
000

gcnd~r is a primary way of signifying rel_atio~ships of P.?~er._lt rJ?-ight . d1fferent1at1on. Gender,·. then, provides a way to decode· meaiiing
7J