The lady vanishes: Dilemmas of a feminist historian after the "linguistic turn"

Church History

Volumn 67, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 1-31

  Clark, Elizabeth A ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644581141     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3170769     Document Type: Article

References (112)

1. Hayden White, "New Historicism: A Comment," in The New Historicism, ed. H. Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 29
2. See, for example, Judith Newton, "History as Usual? Feminism and the 'New Historicism,' " Cultural Critique 9 (1988): 94-100
3. Amy Richlin, "Zeus Meets Metis: Foucault, Feminism, Classics," Helios 18 (1991): 162-77, with numerous examples
4. Kathleen Canning, "Introduction to Dialogue: Gender History/Women's History: Is Feminist Scholarship Losing Its Critical Edge?" Journal of Women's History 5 (1993): 105
5. Jane Caplan, "Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction: Notes for Historians," Central European History 22 (1989): 261
6. Newton, "History as Usual?" 94; cf. 99
7. Mary Poovey, "Feminism and Deconstruction," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 58
8. Kathleen Canning, "Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience," Signs 19 (1994): 371
9. cf. Isabel V. Hull, "Feminist and Gender History Through the Literary Looking Glass: German Historiography in Postmodern Times," Central European History 22 (1989): 279
10. For a summary of Smith's argument on these points, see John Mowitt's foreword to the book, pp. xiii-xv
11. Christine Pierce, "Postmodernism and Other Skepticisms," in Feminist Ethics, ed. Claudia Card (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), p. 61
12. Cf. Michel de Certeau, "History: Science and Fiction," in Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi, Theory and History of Literature 17 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), pp. 219-20
13. Poovey, "Feminism," p. 61
14. Smith, Discerning the Subject, p. 50
15. Gerald Graff, "Co-optation," in The New Historicism, p. 179
16. The position here described is associated with Stanley Fish; see Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)
17. Stanley Fish, "Commentary: The Young and the Restless," in The New Historicism, pp. 307, 309
18. For a historian's adaptation of this position, see Joan Wallach Scott, "History in Crisis? The Others' Side of the Story," American Historical Review 94 (1989): 690
19. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 14-15
20. Carol Thomas Neely, "Constructing the Subject: Feminist Practice and the New Renaissance Discourses," English Literary Renaissance 18 (1988): 13
21. see Gender Trouble, pp. 145-46
22. For a good discussion of "women's experience" from a theological perspective, see Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 50-58
23. See, for example, Sheila Greeve Davaney, "The Limits of the Appeal to Women's Experience," in Shaping New Vision: Gender and Values in American Culture, ed. Clarissa W. Atkinson, Constance H. Buchanan, and Margaret R. Miles (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987), p. 32
24. Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 113
25. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "Feminist Encounters: Locating the Politics of Experience," in Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Debates, ed. Michèle Barrett and Anne Phillips (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 77
26. Elizabeth Weed, "Introduction: Terms of Reference," in Coming to Terms: Feminism, Theory, Politics, ed. Elizabeth Weed (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. xxü-xxiii, citing a phrase from Ellen Rooney
27. Denise Riley, "Am I That Name?" Feminism and the Category of "Women" in History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 99-100
28. Laura Lee Downs, "If 'Woman' Is Just an Empty Category, Then Why Am I Afraid to Walk Alone at Night? Identity Politics Meets the Postmodern Subject," Comparative Studies in Society and History 35 (1993): 416
29. See, for example, Nancy Hartsock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism," in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and the Philosophy of Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1983)
30. Sandra Harding, "Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is 'Strong Objectivity?' "in Feminist Epistemologies, ed. Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 49-82
31. Sheila Greeve Davaney, "Problems with Feminist Theory: Historicity and the Search for Sure Foundations," in Embodied Love: Sensuality and Relationship as Feminist Values, ed. Paula M. Cooey, Sharon A. Farmer, and Mary Ellen Ross (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 93
32. idem, "The Limit of the Appeal," pp. 43, 45-46
33. Bat-Ami Bar On, "Marginality and Epistemic Privilege," in Feminist Epistemologies, pp. 86-97, argues that women cannot even substitute for Marx's proletariat, who had social marginality but economic centrality - women have no such centrality
34. Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1063
35. Joan W. Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 784-86
36. Scott, "Evidence," 777-78
37. Joan W. Scott, "History and Difference," Daedalus 116 (1987): 113
38. Scott, "Evidence," 786-87 n. 26
39. Scott has now attempted to write a feminist history via deconstructive readings: see Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996)
40. Scott, "Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 48
41. Elizabeth Grosz, "Conclusion: A Note on Essentialism and Difference," in Feminist Knowledge: Critique and Construct, ed. Sneja Gunew (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 338
42. For some nuanced discussions that reject the charge that these French feminists can be labelled "essentialists," see Naomi Schor, "This Essentialism Which Is Not One: Coming to Grips with Irigaray," differences 1 (1989): 38-58
43. and E. Jane Burns, Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 7-9
44. For a discussion influenced by French feminism that also takes account of "social construction" arguments, see Naomi Schor, "Dreaming Dissymetry: Barthes, Foucault, and Sexual Difference," in Coming to Terms, pp. 47-58, esp. pp. 57-58
45. cf. Moira Gatens, "Towards a Feminist Philosophy of the Body," in Crossing Boundaries, p. 62
46. For a pointed critique of theorists' appeal to this "non- biological" body, see Vicki Kirby, "Corpus delicti: the Body at the Scene of Writing," in Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces, ed. Rosalyn Diprose and Robyn Ferrell (North Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991), p. 91
47. Scott, "Gender," 1059
48. "Deconstructing Equality," p. 44
49. Scott, "Evidence," 796
50. See Gayatri C. Spivak, "Criticism, Feminism and the Institution," Thesis Eleven 10/11 (1984): 184
51. Naomi Schor, Reading in Detail, p. 97
52. Fuss, Essentially Speaking, p. 118
53. Grosz, "Conclusion," p. 342
54. See also Jane Flax, "The End of Innocence," in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 445-63
55. Scott, "Evidence," 791
56. Hull, "Feminist and Gender History," 291
57. Ibid
58. Caplan, "Postmodernism," 272
59. See discussion in Bryan D. Palmer, Descent Into Discourse: The Reification of Language and the Writing of Social History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), pp. 11-12
60. Caplan, "Postmodernism," pp. 266,272
61. Miller, "The Text's Heroine," pp. 117-18
62. Elizabeth A. Clark, "Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 56 (1989): 634-36
63. Richlin, "Zeus Meets Metis," 165-70
64. and see Elizabeth A. Clark, "Ideology, History, and the Construction of 'Woman' in Late Ancient Christianity," Journal of Early Christian Studies 2 (1994): 165
65. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "French Feminism in an International Frame," Yale French Studies 62 (1981): 177-78
66. Nancy Fraser, "The Uses and Abuses of French Discourse Theories," in Revaluing French Feminism: Critical Essays on Difference, Agency, and Culture, ed. Nancy Fraser and Sandra Lee Bartky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 180-81
67. Speculum 65 (1990): 59-86
68. Spiegel, "History," 72, 82, 83
69. Spiegel, "History," 84, citing Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
70. Spiegel, "History," 77
71. For a different view see Dominic LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 30-34
72. Hull, "Feminist and Gender History," 293
73. Joan Scott, however, in "A Statistical Representation of Work: La Statistique de l'industrie à Paris, 1847-1848" (in Gender and the Politics of History, pp. 113-38), argues against separating statistical reports from other kinds of historical texts; imagining that "numbers are purer" "denies the inherently political aspects of representation . . ." (pp. 114-15)
74. See the critique of Scott by Valverde, "Poststructuralist Gender Historians," 233
75. idem, "As If Subjects Existed: Analyzing Social Discourses," The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 28 (1991): 177
76. Evelyne Patlagean, "Ancienne hagiographie byzantine et histoire sociale," Annales: e, s, c 23 (1968): 114, borrowing from Lévi-Strauss
77. See Elizabeth A. Clark, "Ascetic Renunciation and Feminine Advancement: A Paradox of Late Ancient Christianity," Anglican Theological Review 63 (1981): 240-57
78. Caroline Walker Bynum, "Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner's Theory of Liminality," in Anthropology and the Study of Religion, ed. Frank Reynolds and Robert Moore (Chicago: Center for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1984), pp. 105-25
79. Ben Edwin Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins, Sather Classical Lectures 37 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 5-6,96, 153
80. For the "liberal" and "conservative" trajectories that were elaborated from Paul's teaching on women, see Dennis R. MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983)
81. Often itself a literary fiction: see Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. V. M. Crawford (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961; French and original English publication, 1907), p. 71
82. For more traditional scholars, a sign of the work's authenticity; see Georg Luck, "Notes on the Vita Macrinae of Gregory of Nyssa," in The Biographical Works of Gregory of Nyssa, ed. Andreas Spira, Patristic Monograph Series 12 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1984), pp. 21-22
83. [Gerontius], Vie de Sainte Mélanie, prologus (SC 90, 124, 126)
84. Hippolyte Delehaye, Cinq leçons sur la méthode hagiographique, SubsHag 21 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1934), p. 27
85. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 61 adds Aquitania, Taraconia, and Gaul, as well
86. Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 55 (Butler, 149); this section of the Lausiac History is now thought to report on Melania the Elder, not on Silvania
87. See discussion in F. R. Ankersmit, History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 140-41
88. For a similar point, see Hayden White, "'Figuring the nature of the times deceased': Literary Theory and Historical Writing," in The Future of Literary Theory, ed. Ralph Cohen (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 23-24
89. Barthes, "The Discourse of History," p. 18
90. Hayden White, "The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory," History and Theory 23, 1 (1984)
91. Hayden White, "Droysen's Historik: Historical Writing as a Bourgeois Science," History and Theory 19 (1980), reprinted in White, The Content of the Form, p. 87
92. Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva in particular attack narrativity as an "ideological instrument"; see discussion in White, "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and Desublimation," Critical Inquiry 8 (1982)
93. Sande Cohen, Historical Culture: On the Recoding of an Academic Discipline (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 16
94. White, "Droysen's Historik," p. 102
95. Hayden White, "Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination," History and Theory 14 (1975): 60
96. Arnaldo Momigliano, "The Rhetoric of History and the History of Rhetoric: On Hayden White's Tropes," in Comparative Criticism, p. 261
97. Richard Reitzenstein, "Des Athanasius Werk über das Leben des Antonius," Sitzungs-berichte, Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 5 (1914): 30-32
98. So Karl Holl, "Die Schriftstellerische Form des griechischen Heiligenlebens," Neue Jahrbücher für das Klassische Altertum 29 (1912): 426
99. Gerontius, Vita Melaniae Junioris 54 (SC 90, 232, 234)
100. For a survey of these, see Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 60-84
101. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 132, 134
102. Deirdre J. Good, Reconstructing the Tradition of Sophia in Gnostic Literature, SBL Monograph Series 32 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), esp. pp. xix-xx
103. Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her, p. 140
104. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), chap. 3
105. David M. Halperin, "Why is Diotima a Woman?" in Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 113-151
106. See also Luce Irigaray's emphasis on the fecundity of love in Diotima's speech: "Sorcerer Love: A Reading of Plato's Symposium, Diotima's Speech," in Revaluing French Feminism, ed. Fraser and Bartky, pp. 64-76, esp. pp. 69-70
107. Halperin, "Why Is Diotima a Woman?" 150, 137
108. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 153, borrowing a phrase from Claude Lévi-Strauss
109. De virginitate 13 (SC 119, 422)
110. De opificio hominis 16 (PG 44, 185)
111. De perfection (Jaeger 8.1, 195-96)
112. See Elizabeth A. Clark, "Sex, Shame, and Rhetoric: Engendering Early Christian Ethics," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59 (1992): 221-45, esp. 230-35, for examples