"What's in a Name?" On Writing the History of Feminism

Bibliographic Data

ID4413331
AuthorsClaire Goldberg Moses (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume38
Issue3
Pages757-779
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFeminist Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0046-3663 • E-ISSN: 2153-3873
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/fem.2012.0060
OpenAlexW4205683051
LanguageEN
Citations received9

'What's in a Name?" On WritingtheHistoryofFeminism Claire GoldbergMoses I wrote thisarticleoriginally as a keynote addressforan audienceofseveralhundred feminist academics — veryfew of them North Americans or Europeans—at an interna tionalconference sponsored byPekingUniversity, Beijing,China, inJune 1998. Over the course of the subsequent decade, I presented slightly revised versions numerous times, but always in international settings. When the editors suggested that it be included in this issue, I wondered how best to revise it for the Feminist Studies audience. Was the his tory described heretoowellknown m the UnitedStatestomerit publication in a schol arly publication.'' WouldthelanguagethatI had adopted forspeaking toaudienceswhose firstlanguagewas notEnglishseemtoosimplistic, notsophisticated enough, fora schol arly journal? And yet, I was told, students in our women's studies doctoral program who had access tothepaper werecirculating itand quoting fromit. Clearlytherewas some thing here that deepened their understanding of an epistemological and theoretical issue of consequence. Or at leastthatis myhope, fortheargument thatI putforth is basedonmy politicaland intellectual commitments tofeminism and tothestudy ofhistory. My strat egyforrevising thelecture forpublication wastolimit revisions and instead add a coda in which I reflect on what I have done and why — in other words, on the intellectual auto biography embedded here. In my work as a historian, I focus on women's collective activities in the West, especially in the United States and Europe, and especially those activities that are intended to further the interests of women.1 This presentation is intended to share a small part of that work with you and also to explore my most recent interest, which is to examine the names we use for this kind of collective activity—by women and FeministStudies38, no. 3 (Fall 2012). © 2012 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 757 758 Claire Goldberg Moses on behalf of women—and then to question the significance of our naming practices.2 In other words, what is at stake in naming a par ticular form of women's collective action "feminism"! When is it not called "feminism"! What happens when this distinction is parsed too carefully! What does the history of the scope of the term "feminism" tell us about its political successes and shortcomings! In the most traditional histories, women's public activities have been largely ignored, and the only political power that has been rec ognized is women's power in the background, usually in the family, to influence men. But after more than three decades of a revived practice of women's studies research in history, this traditional view has been challenged, and the remarkable diversity of women's public political activities has been made visible. Recent studies focused on Western settings have unearthed women's participation in just about every type of political activity men have participated in, both on the left and on the right of the political spectrum — even including move ments to strengthen male, white, and bourgeois-class supremacy. Much of the historical research in the United States and West ern Europe has reflected on the conditions that have discouraged or encouraged women's political activities.3 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women's exclusion from those state or religious activities deemed "public" precluded certain kinds of organizing but did not inhibit their coming together in neighborhood settings or cre ating associational structures, often within their churches, that were neither absolutely "public" nor wholly "private." Such groups usu ally addressed issues traditionally considered appropriate for wom en's attention, such as the price of food or sexual behavior and moral ity. Some women, however, were also encouraged to enter arenas not generally considered "womanly" by male coworkers, friends, or spouses. And if their activism was often confined to auxiliary work in male-led movements such as antislavery or labor, they were also sometimes inspired by emancipatory ideologies to challenge their own oppression, usually in opposition to the wishes of their male allies. This seems to have been the experience of the earliest advocates of voting rights for women who had come to political consciousness first in the antislavery movement, only to discover that their efforts were disparaged simply because they were women. Additionally, historians Claire GoldbergMoses 759 have noted that many women were inspired to daring activism by other women—teachers, mothers, sisters, friends. Around

Art history · Biography · China · Feminism · Media studies · Political science · Presentation (obstetrics) · Publishing · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law

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