Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality and Women's Experience of Modern War, 1914-18

本研究考察了第一次世界大战期间在英国或西线附近服役的英美女性的经历、社区、工作、友谊、亲密关系和欲望，以批评和扰乱性别和战争的历史以及女同性恋、男同性恋和酷儿的历史实践。在关注那些利用现代战争造成的社会混乱的女性时，我的项目以挑衅和揭示的方式展示了性和性别的特殊流动性，从而突出了当前历史工作的成就和缺点，在性别历史的情况下，往往忽视了女性的性行为，或者在女同性恋历史的情况下，太容易声称性身份对个人来说是一个陌生或不熟悉的过程。首先从20世纪70年代的解放政治开始，然后是福柯式的知识和权力分析，政治动机的女同性恋和男同性恋生活谱系在巩固身份和社区方面发挥了至关重要的作用。然而，随着90年代酷儿理论的出现，围绕异性恋/同性恋二元的身份形成似乎越来越不稳定，这表明需要重新思考将性行为历史化的可用途径。本书开篇持续批判了女同性恋、男同性恋和酷儿历史学家的一系列做法，探讨了几个对身份史至关重要的概念——分类、身份、规范和越轨——这些概念总是与现代战争中性别经验的具体方面有关。利用普遍存在的性别困惑的机会，一些女性——比如埃尔西·诺克和玛丽·奇泽姆——利用她们新获得的行动自由变得更像男人，在家里和前线附近从事各种非传统的工作。性别历史学家和女同性恋历史学家有时会将这些女性与现代的“女同性恋”类别联系起来，尽管这些女性自己可能并不认为自己是女同性恋。仔细审查档案痕迹的目的——日记、已发表和未发表的作品、官方文件、相册、剪报——澄清这些女性生活和工作的社会和文化背景，并不是要放弃身份历史，因为继续承认其政治价值很重要。相反，其目的是提请注意其局限性，然后决定是否有必要修改它，设计新的框架或要求交叉模型。随着身份政治——无论是女同性恋、男同性恋还是酷儿——的衰落，我们需要更好地理解历史编纂实践是如何塑造和制约我们对过去性行为的看法的，它使一些行为、欲望、身份或关系更清晰地得到关注，而另一些行为、欲望、身份或关系则被模糊或排除在外。女同性恋、男同性恋和酷儿的历史需要更大的方法论适应性、弹性甚至多元化——这是一种冒险的冒险，类似于历史学家琼·斯科特（Joan Scott）的“不确定的历史”概念，“没有清晰的地图，没有下一步的计划”（2007）。一种研究性历史的新方法，不那么依赖于规范与偏差之间的紧张关系，不那么受现代政治身份的束缚，有望让人们接触到迄今为止看不见的、甚至是不可思议的性行为。通过选择这个丰富而引人注目的巨大社会动荡的时代作为重新审视性行为历史的地点，《令人不安的实践》绘制了女性在现代战争中的经历的地形，通过-à-vis她们重新定义的性别角色来取代“女同性恋”，并将标签和类别问题化，以更好地应对女性性行为的流动性。这个项目通过与酷儿理论的前沿接触，为女性、性和第一次世界大战的历史编纂指明了一个令人兴奋的新方向。

This study examines the experiences, communities, work, friendships, intimacies, and desires of Anglo-American women who served in Britain or near the Western Front during the First World War in order to critique and disturb both the history of gender and war and the practice of lesbian, gay, and queer history. In focusing on women who exploited the social disruptions of modern war, my project demonstrates in provocative and revealing ways the exceptional fluidity of sexuality and gender, and thus highlights the achievements and shortcomings of current historical work that, in the case of gender history, too often overlooks female sexuality or, in the case of lesbian history, too readily claims individuals for whom sexual identity was an alien or unfamiliar process. Emerging first from the liberation politics of the 1970s and, later, the Foucauldian analysis of knowledge and power, politically motivated genealogies of lesbian and gay lives have played a crucial role in consolidating identities and communities. However, with the advent of 90s queer theory, identity formations pivoting around a hetero/homo binary appear increasingly unstable, suggesting the need to rethink available pathways in historicizing sexuality. Opening with a sustained critique of a range of practices in lesbian, gay and queer historiographies, the book explores several concepts crucial to identity history-categorization, identity, normativity and deviance-always in relation to specific aspects of the gendered experience of modern war. Capitalizing on the opportunities of widespread gender confusion, some women-such as Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm-used their newfound freedom of movement to become more like men, taking up diverse and unconventional forms of employment, both at home and in proximity to the front lines. Gender historians and historians of lesbianism have sometimes linked such women to the modern category of 'lesbian,' even though these women themselves may not have self-identified as such. The objective of scrutinizing archival traces-diaries, published and unpublished writings, official papers, photograph albums, newspaper cuttings-and clarifying the social and cultural context of these women's lives and work is not to propose an abandonment of identity history, for it is important to continue recognizing its political value. Instead, the aim is to draw attention to its limitations and then determine whether it is necessary to modify it, devise new frameworks or call for intersecting models. With the ebb of identity politics-whether lesbian, gay or queer-we need to better understand how historiographical practices have shaped and conditioned our view of the sexual past, bringing some acts, desires, identities or relations more clearly into focus even as others are obscured or excluded. Lesbian, gay and queer history requires greater methodological pliancy, elasticity and even pluralism-a risky venture akin to historian Joan Scott's notion of an 'undetermined history,' with 'no clear map, no plan for what comes next' (2007). A new approach to the history of sexuality less reliant on the tension between normative and deviant, less tethered to modern political identities, promises to yield access to sexualities as yet invisible or even inconceivable. By choosing this rich and compelling era of tremendous social upheaval as a site in which to re-examine the history of sexuality, Disturbing Practices maps the topography of women's experiences of modern war vis-à-vis their redefined gender roles to displace the 'lesbian' and problematize labels and categories to better grapple with the fluidity of female sexuality. This project points to an exciting new direction in the historiography of women, sexuality, and the First World War through an engagement with the cutting-edge of queer theory.