Feminist Theory and Historical Practice
Rereading Elizabeth Blackwell
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4496007 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Regina Morantz‐sanchez (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1992 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 51 |
| Publication date | 1992-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2505415 |
| OpenAlex | W2314246886 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
This essay assesses the value of social constructivist theories of science to the history of medicine. It highlights particularly the ways in which feminist theorists have turned their attention to gender as a category of analysis in scientific thinking, producing an approach to modern science that asks how it became identified with objectivity, reason, and mind, set in opposition to subjectivity, feeling, and nature. In the history of medicine this new work has allowed a group of scholars to better explain not only how women were marginalized in the profession but also the manner in which politics, male anxiety about shifts in power relations between the sexes, social and political upheaval, professional concerns, and changes in the family all had an impact on the production of knowledge regarding the female body, including the discovery, definition, and treatment of a wide range of female ailments, from anorexia nervosa to fibroid tumors. Building on the work in the history of medicine already accomplished, the essay offers a critical rereading of the writings of Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer nineteenth-century woman physician and leader of the woman's medical movement. It contends that Blackwell, who lived through a revolutionary change in medical thinking brought on by discoveries in immunology and bacteriology, remained critical of as the best form of knowing and suspicious of the laboratory medicine that promoted it so enthusiastically. Moreover, her critiques of radical objectivity and scientific reductionism deserve to be recognized as foreshadowing the maternalist strain of thinking among contemporary feminist philosophers and thinkers such as Sara Ruddick and others. In the last thirty years, ever since Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that culture has historically influenced the pursuit of science and helped shape which scientific paradigms eventually prevail, the image of scientific knowledge as neutral, value-free, and privileged has become slightly tarnished. Indeed, post-Kuhnian debates within a variety of disciplines have only added to suspicions that the structures of knowledge that have informed and dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment are less authoritative than they originally seemed. Busy philosophers from many different perspectives are rejecting the foundationalism that has guided the post-Enlightenment search for truth, itself premised on * The author wishes to thank George Sanchez, Ann Lombard, Mario Biagoli, Emily Abel, Anita Clair Fellman, Margaret Finnegan, Barbara Bair, Gerald Grob, and especially Louise Newman, who rendered helpful critical readings of this essay. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.128 on Mon, 18 Jul 2016 05:53:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 52 REGINA MORANTZ-SANCHEZ the belief that thoughtful and reasonable people can, indeed, explain the world as it actually exists. Instead, they prefer versions of William James's argument that What we say about reality . . . depends on the perspective in which we
Epistemology · Sociology · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Medical History and Innovations · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 1993 - 2025 (33) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |