The feminist challenge to socialist history

Women's History Review

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 201-214

  Clegg, Sue ^a  

^a LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0042063141     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612029700200146     Document Type: Review

References (47)

1. See, for example, the exchanges in the Journal of Women's History (1993) 5, pp. 89-128
2. and in this Journal the exchanges with Joan Hoff. Joan Hoff (1994) Gender as a postmodern category of paralysis, Women's History Review, 3, pp. 149468.
3. Susan Kingsley Kent (1996) Mistrials and diatribulations: a reply to Joan Hoff, Women's History Review, 5, pp. 9-18.
4. Caroline Ramazanoglu (1996) Unravelling postmodern paralysis: a response to Joan Hoff, Women's History Review, 5, pp. 19-23.
5. Joan Hoff (1996) Areply to my critics, Women's History Review, 5, pp. 25-30.
6. Mary Maynard (1995) Beyond the 'Big Three': the development of feminist theory into the 1990s, Women's History Review, 4, pp. 259-281.
7. Christopher Norris (1992) Uncritical Theory; postmodernism intellectuals and the Gulf War (London: Lawrence & Wishart).
8. Also Christopher Norris (1990) What's Wrong with Postmodernism: critical theory and ends of philosophy (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf). I have used the term post-structuralism in preference to post-modernism as this is the term commonly used in the debates in feminist history, but the sets of ideas referred to are common and the terms imprecise.
9. For examples see Judith M. Bennett (1989) Feminism and history, Gender and History, 1, pp. 251-272
10. Olwen Hufton & Joan Wallach Scott (1983) Survey articles: women, History Past and Present, 101, pp. 125-157.
11. Joan Wallach Scott (1988) Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press). 'Hidden from history', however, should not be taken as absolute: labour and social history both include accounts of women's lives and the problems of women's history mirror the general problems of history from below. Despite criticism, including self-criticism, the work of writers like Edward Thompson did provide insights into the lives of women activists
12. see, for example, the sections on Joanna Southcott in E. P. Thompson (1968) The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
13. The distinctive component of feminist analysis, however, is in the assessment of the political and theoretical significance of women's role in history. June Purvis provides an overview of these developments, in From 'women worthies' to poststructuralism? Debate and controversy in women's history in Britain, in June Purvis (Ed.) (1995) Women's History in Britain, 1850-1945, pp. 1-22 (London: UCL Press).
14. In addition to the works already cited see also Denise Riley (1988) Am 1 That Name?Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
15. Bridget Hill (1993) Women's history: a study in change, continuity or standing still? Women's History Review, 2, pp. 2-22.
16. E. P. Thompson (1968) The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 8, 9.
17. David McNally (1993) E. P. Thompson: Class struggle and historical materialism, International Socialism Journal, 61, pp. 75-90.
18. E. P. Thompson (1978) The Poverty of Theory and other essays (London: Merlin Press). The most remarkable aspect of the debate was the theoretical inadequacy of the versions of Marxism from both sides, on the one hand marred by empiricism, on the other idealism. Althusser's later self-criticism also led to political voluntarism. There can be no doubt, however, that in terms of the richness of historical scholarship the E. P. Thompson tradition has been the more fruitful.
19. Raphael Samuel (Ed.)(1981) People's History and Socialist Theory, pp. xxxi (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).
20. See, for example, Gregor McLennan (1981) Marxism and Methodologies of History (London: Verso)
21. For a fuller discussion of some of the issues see Alex Callinicos (1989) Making History. Agency , Structure and Change in Social Theory, pp. 39-95 (Cambridge: Polity Press).
22. Sheila Rowbotham (1981) The trouble with patriarchy, in People's History and Socialist Theory.
23. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History, p. 34.
24. See, for example, Sylvia Walby (1986) Patriarchy at Work (Cambridge: Polity Press).
25. Hill (1993) Women's history: a study in change, continuity or standing still? Women's History Review, 2, pp. 2-22.
26. Judith M. Bennett (1993) Women's history; a study in continuity and change, Women's History Review, 2, pp. 173-184.
27. Liz Stanley (1990) Feminist Praxis. Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology (London: Routledge).
28. Riley, Am I That Name ? pp. 15.
29. Norman Geras (1983) Marx and Human Nature: refutation of a legend (London: Verso).
30. Angela Carter (1985) Nights at the Circus (London: Picador).
31. Ellen Wood (1986) The Retreat Form Class: a new 'true' socialism (London: Verso).
32. Kathleen Canning (1993) German particularities in women's history/ gender history, Journal of Women's History, 5, pp. 103-114.
33. Callinicos, Theories and Narratives Reflections on the Philosophy of History, p. 67.
34. Roy Bhaskar (1991) Philosophy and the Idea of Freedom (Oxford: Blackwell)
35. Alex Callinicos (1989) Against Postmodernism: a Marxist critique (Cambridge: Polity Press).
36. Heidi Hartmann (1981) The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism, in Lynn Sargent (Ed.) Women and Revolution: the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism. A Debate on Class and Patriarchy (London: Pluto)
37. Walby, Patriarchy at Work.
38. Robert Gray (1993) Factory legislation and the gendering of jobs in the North of England, 1830-1860, Gender and History, 5, pp. 56-80.
39. Karl Marx (1976) Capital: a critique of political economy, Volume 1, pp. 389411 (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
40. Gray, Factory Legislation.
41. Sonya Rose (1992) Limited Livelihoods: gender and class in nineteenth-century England, p. 18 (London: Routledge).
42. Johanna Brenner & Maria Ramas (1984) Rethinking women's oppression, New Left Review, 144, pp. 33-71.
43. Rose, Limited Livelihoods.
44. Jane Humphries (1981) Protective legislation, the capitalist state and working-class men: the case of the 1842 Mines Regulation Act, Feminist Review, 7, pp. 1-33.
45. Wally Seccombe (1993) Weathering the Storm: working-class families from the Industrial Revolution to the fertility decline (London: Verso).
46. Anna Clark (1993) Comment, Journal of Women's History, 5, pp. 115-120.
47. Sue Clegg (1996) From the women's movement to feminisms, in Colin Barker & Paul Kennedy (Eds) To Make Another World: studies in protest and collective action, pp. 45-67 (Aldershot: Avebury Press).