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Feminist Historiography and the Reconceptualisation of Historical Time

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1 Feminist Historiography and the Reconceptualisation of Historical Time Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Victoria Browne January, 2013 2 ABSTRACT This thesis conducts a reconceptualisation of historical time as a means of reorienting feminist historiography and changing the ways that we construct and approach histories of feminism. Various feminist theorists have argued that feminist theory requires a multilinear, multidirectional model of historical time, to enable productive encounters and exchanges between past and present feminisms, and account for the coexistence of parallel, intersecting feminist trajectories. This is particularly crucial in light of the continuing dominance of the phasic ‘wave’ model of feminist history, which is bound to notions of linear succession and teleological progress, and severely curtails the ways in which diverse feminist histories can be mapped, understood and related to one another. However, whilst alternative, multilinear, multidirectional notions of historical time have been mooted, there is rarely any clarity or elaboration on what exactly what this might mean or how it might work. This, I suggest, is because ‘historical time’ is itself an under-investigated and under-articulated concept. My contribution in this thesis, therefore, is to offer a detailed study of historical time, which makes sense of the idea that historical time is multilinear and multidirectional. In the course of this investigation, I develop a ‘polytemporal’ model of historical time, arguing that historical time is generated through a mix of different temporalities and fields of time, including the ‘time of the trace’, ‘narrative time’, ‘calendar time’ and ‘generational time’. Analysing each of these ‘times’ in turn, the thesis offers a thorough and internally complex account of historical time, demonstrating how thinking history ‘polytemporally’ can work, and how historical time can be understood as multilinear and multidirectional. Further, it offers concrete suggestions as to how this reconceptualised model can translate into a more nuanced and effective feminist historiographical practice, which opens up conversations between past and present feminisms in order to positively transform our presents and futures. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Sincerest thanks to Gillian Howie, for providing such exact and indispensable feedback on the first draft, and for your advice and support throughout the past four years. To Daniel Whistler, for your feedback, interest, and enthusiasm, especially during the latter stages. To everyone else who has made my time at the Liverpool Philosophy Department so enjoyable and edifying, especially Clare Carlisle, Simon Hailwood, Margrit Shildrick, and above all, Laura Green, for being an excellent co-conspirator. To Sîan Hawthorne, for being an inspirational teacher and friend, and for getting me into all this in the first place. To Michelle Bastian and Debi Withers, from whom I have learned such a lot, and I look forward to future projects together. To the rest of my friends and family for your unwavering support, humour and generosity, especially Margaret and Terry Hickman Smith, Alan Browne, Heather Lindsay and Alexandra Browne, Kath, Jamie and Jacob Cowen, Eva Crasnow, Elise McCave, Sally Ferguson, Daniel Lyons, Geoff Jamieson, Clare Greer, Niall Carson, and John Rigg. Most of all, to Sam, for having such faith in me, for your interest and insight, your incredible patience, and for all your efforts to keep me calm and positive. Acknowledgements must also go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, for funding this doctoral research. 4 LIST OF CONTENTS Thesis Introduction: Making History, Making Time 1 1. What is ‘Feminist Historiography’? 2. The Legacy of Speculative Philosophies of ‘World History’ 3. What is ‘Historical Time’? 3.1 Lived Time and Post-positivist Realism 3.2Pragmatic Pluralism and the Polytemporal Model of Historical Time 4. Chapter Outlines Chapter 1: The Hegemonic Model of Feminist History 33 1. Outlining the Hegemonic Model: Phases of Feminism 1.1 The Phases of Kristeva’s ‘Women’s Time’ 1.2 The Entrenchment of the Phasic Model 2. The Problem of Misrepresentation: Temporal Othering and Temporal Containment 3. The Temporal Logics of Feminism’s Hegemonic Model 3.1 Teleological Totalisation 3.2 Sequential Negation Chapter 2: The Time of the Trace 65 1. The Problem with Anti-Revisionism 2. The Problem with Anti-Realism 3. Indirect Realism 3.1 Metaphor, Split Reference, and Mimesis 3.2 The Trace 4. Restless Revisionism 5 Chapter 3: Narrative Time 97 1. The Structuralist Approach: Narrative Time versus Historical Time 2. The Phenomenological Approach: The ‘Affinity’ Between Narrative Time and Lived Time 3.The Hermeneutical Approach: Intersubjective Narrations of Historical Time 3.1 Shifting Patterns of Historical Time 3.2 Pluritopic Hermeneutics and Narrativity 4. Fractured Forms and Contrapuntal Reading Chapter 4: Calendar Time 128 1. The Reification of Calendar Time 2. The Distinction between ‘Time-Reckoning’ and ‘Time-Measuring’ 3. A Deepened Account of Public Time: Coordination and Diversity 4. Sticky Signs, Hot and Cold Chronologies, Anachronisms, and Specificity Chapter 5: Generational Time 158 1. Generational Anxieties 2. Oedipus Interrupted 2.1 Psychoanalytic Interventions 2.2 Mythic Reimaginings 3. Many Generational Symbolic Orders and Imaginaries 3.1 Shifting Symbolics and Historical Resonances 3.2 Repetition with Variation 6 Chapter 6: Repetition 190 1. Recollecting Forwards and the Untimely Event 2. Repetition in Practice 2.1 Historical Blind Spots and Remembering Others Within 2.2 Historiographical Transference and Dialogue Chapter 7: Polytemporality 216 1. Against Totality 2. Polytemporality 2.1 Complex Coevalness 2.2 Translating Temporalities Conclusion: Polytemporal Historiography and Coalitional Politics Thesis Conclusion: Towards a Polytemporal Historiography 242 Bibliography 253 Total word count: 97, 712 7 THESIS INTRODUCTION Making History, Making Time OVERVIEW If there is a distinct feminist attitude towards tradition, it would usually be characterised as one of suspicion, skepticism and iconoclasm. Feminists have sought to unsettle tradition and the aura of inevitability it bestows, often by appealing to shifting historical patterns and paradigms to demonstrate the instability and contingency of traditional sociocultural ideas about sex and gender. In this regard, feminists have used history as a subversive tool to undermine tradition. Yet, as feminism itself has become a historical ‘tradition’, with ‘icons’ of its own, interesting and important questions have emerged for feminists to address: How can feminism draw on its own history for inspiration and strategy without passively conforming to the expectations of past feminisms, or setting the past up as a nostalgic ideal against which to measure and compare the present? Conversely, how can feminists usher in new ideas and approaches in light of new conditions and problems, without enacting a violent or needless negation of past feminisms? Moreover, how can feminists construct and narrate ‘feminist history’ without instating or reproducing a hegemonic master narrative? Any response to these questions has to engage a conception of ‘historical time’, which governs the temporal logics we employ as we write and read histories of feminism, and the ways that we connect feminisms of the past to feminisms of the present and future. The dominant model of historical time within contemporary western historiography remains bound to notions of linear succession, teleological progress, and totality, and informs a hegemonic model of feminist history in the singular, presented as a progressive series of successive ‘phases’ or ‘waves’. This hegemonic model severely curtails the ways in which diverse feminist histories can be mapped and understood, as it functions by blocking out or 8 distorting trajectories which do not fit into the dominant frame. It also fosters restrictive forms of historiographical and theoretical practice, as the model of successive phases or waves implies that only one approach is possible at a time, and moreover, that older forms of theory and practice necessarily become obsolete and must always be overtaken by newer ones. The hegemonic model of feminist history thus relies upon a progressivist understanding of historical change through time, whilst also constructing an antagonistic relation between feminisms old and new. Accordingly, various feminist theorists have begun to call for an alternative model of historical time: a model which is multilinear, and can therefore account for the coexistence of intersecting, parallel trajectories; and which is also multidirectional, and can therefore account for the ways in which the past affects and shapes the present, but also for the ways in which present perspectives can affect and shape our relation to the past. Such a multilinear, multidirectional model of historical time would enable a more heterogeneous understanding of feminist histories in the plural, and would also enable more fruitful interactions and conversations between feminisms of the past and the present. ‘Historical time’, however, is one of the most notoriously vague and under-investigated concepts within historiographical and philosophical discourse. Thus, whilst multilinear and multidirectional notions of historical time have been mooted, there is rarely any clarity or elaboration on what
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