Ten years later Write the history of womenFrançoise Thébaud invites us to continue this unfinished adventure by not forgetting that of the genre. She thus makes us want to dive into a journey between knowledge, memory and power.
From the first women’s history course organized in the fall of 1973 by Michelle Perrot at Paris Diderot University – Paris 7, and entitled “ Do women have a story ? », To the publication in 2007 ofWrite the history of women and genre by Françoise Thébaud, revised and increased edition ofWrite the history of women Published in 1998, terminological evolution is important. The perplexity on the sex of official history is indeed not replaced, but supplemented by an injunction to transmit the history of women (Women’s History) and to participate in the constitution of a history of relations between the sexes (Gender History). The intellectual adventure to which we are invited by this work is therefore that of a process, even a propédeutics which, by questioning the visibility of both sexes and their social construction in the writing of history, questions historical discipline by gender. The 1998 edition ofWrite the history of women lit the history of women by a historiographical journey of more than twenty-five years ; That of 2007 continues this journey still relevant. The first part analysis “ The emergence of women’s history or the affirmation of a new study-study object ». The second, entitled “ The history of women in the feminine or the accumulation phase “, Pursues in particular the examination of the challenges of his quest for institutional recognition. The third part opens on “ Time of the genre “, That the English speakers named and thought in the mid -1980s as a gendered analysis of the cultural determination processes of gender difference. Reluctance to use the term “ gender “Illustrated, as Michèle Riot-Sacey pointed out, those of French historiography at” Thinking about the historicity of power relations ».
Françoise Thébaud, author, but also actress because “ participant of the adventure described To resume its own terms, finished the 1998 edition in the form of an invitation to continue this unfinished adventure. It begins the fourth part, entitled “ Time of gender and recognition ? “And added in the 2007 edition, by the observation of a appeasement of the controversies of the early 1990s around the gender and by “ Diffusion – or dilution ? – of his issues ». However, it does not go so far as to assert that the history of women and gender has been gradually integrated into the discipline, profession and research and teaching institutions. Indeed, for her, if it is legitimate to say that the genre “ French “Has become a” Useful category for historical analysis According to the American historian Joan Wallach Scott, that does not amount to saying that his legitimacy is not questioned. To illustrate this French resistance to gender, she quotes the recommendation of September 22, 2005 of the General Commission of Terminology and Neology, following the opinion of the French Academy, which denounces the abusive use of this word. This recommendation says that “ Gender substitution for sex does not meet a linguistic need “, But to an clumsy sliding of the grammatical sense to respond to the sirens of English-speaking puritanism that makes a gender cache. The controversies around this recommendation bear witness to the political issues of this terminology between knowledge, power and language. In 2006, the review Work, gender and societies has thus devoted a file to the challenges of this institutional prohibition of the genre, which explains the issues of this triptych, stressing that the order of words translates the order of society. “” Taking the words is not neutral, it is also discussing the opportunity and the novelty of the concepts that they designate and help to forge ». In this perspective, the gendered analysis of history is not a rhetorical formulation to succumb to the sirens of a story of Anglo-Saxon women, but it “ is (…) a reading grid, a way of thinking about the world and the political, through the prism of the difference of the sexes. »»
Thus, the so -called women’s and gender works are launching a challenge to institutionalized history, that of denouncing the dead angles of the historical approach and of questioning its conceptual and methodological rigor. This historiographical journey of more than thirty-five years of women’s history in France echoes both reflections on the practices of the profession of historian between knowledge, memory and power, and a questioning of possible national characteristics of the history of women. The epistemological reflection on French historian production is fueled by a perspective of this national production with international production, the Anglo-Saxon approach being enriched with more “comparisons” global In the 2007 edition. This work more broadly questions the challenges of a new history integrating objects of study until then marginalized. Writing the history of women and gender questions the concepts, categories and historical methods, in particular in the light of borders erected between author and actors/actresses of history, between history “ normal “And history” activist », Between the history of representations, social and cultural history, between speeches and practices. Paradoxically, it is undoubtedly because its legitimacy is to always be re-qualified that the history of women constitutes, at each stage of its development, one of the most fascinating laboratories of the historical discipline “ which is as much or more a speech on history as on the realities of the past which it is supposed to account for ».
By transmitting the memory of thirty-five years of research on the history of women and gender-not only French-this work undeniably invites us to reread history in the light of the exclusion and the invisibility of women. The recognition of women as a historical subject thus questions their rebirth as a subject of history, and the genre of this subject …