Feminism and the Politics of Canonisation in American Political Thought 1851-1978

用女权主义的方式讲述一段女权主义的历史意味着什么？作为对女权主义思想史的干预，我的研究将重建跨越一个世纪的政治激进主义的案例，讲述一个关于保护和变革以及记忆和遗忘的故事。这将围绕1851年至1978年间美国的妇女解放运动展开。我将以新的方式对女权主义者讲述、复杂和掩盖自己历史的模式进行理论推导。通过收集女权主义激进主义的线索，我将探索一些问题，包括：随着时间的推移，对过去人物的记忆对活动人士有什么不同的目的？不同的群体(包括工人阶级、黑人、酷儿)是否以不同的方式使用记忆？通过这样做，我的研究将有助于女权主义学者，特别是黑人女权主义学者的工作，包括金伯利·斯普林格、维尼·布赖恩、阿什利·D·法默、戴奥·F·戈尔、珍妮·西奥哈里斯和科莫兹·伍达德。尽管这些学者进行了重要的工作，但女权主义者、黑人、同性恋和/或工人阶级活动家的历史仍然是一个研究较少的领域。这项研究将有广泛的空间来展示新的发现和协同效应。我的项目将特别关注接待历史，以及历史作为活动家资源的方式。我认为接受史是指研究历史人物是如何随着时间的推移被不同的个人和团体纪念和解释的。首先，我将在为我的MPHIL进行的研究的基础上，重建Sojerner Truth的女权主义接受史。Sojerner Truth是一位女权活动家，从奴隶制中解放出来，在19世纪40年代末至1883年期间在政界表现突出和活跃。在第二个例子中，我将把Truth的接受史与伊丽莎白·卡迪·斯坦顿(Elizabeth Cady Stanton)和苏珊·B·安东尼(Susan B.Anthony)的接受史进行对比，这两位早期女权活动家参与了重要的历史保护工作，但有时会使用种族主义漫画来讲述黑人女权活动家的历史。进入到20世纪60-70年代激进的女权主义时期，我接下来将考虑弗洛伦斯·豪的作品，她是女性研究的先驱，积极寻求出版女权主义历史的方法。在此之后，我将重建姐妹会的政治思想和实践，姐妹会是一群黑人女性作家和艺术家，她们从女权主义历史中汲取力量，支持自己的激进主义。关于姐妹情谊的部分将由为我的MPHIL进行的现有研究提供信息。我将利用前面的小说挖掘工作作为一个机会来思考一系列紧迫的问题，问：女权主义者是如何对待一段不充分的、往往是种族主义的历史的？历史纪念在当代政治理论化和激进主义中占有什么位置？本文采用的主要研究方法是历史研究，包括广泛的档案研究。这将使我能够为女权主义历史的小说挖掘工作做出贡献，从而促进对女权主义者和早期女权活动家的政治优先事项和实际方法的了解。这篇论文还参与了政治理论家正在进行的重新评估政治理论学科本身的历史所包含的内容的努力。这种方法是由布兰登·特里和埃琳·皮内达关于民权运动的工作，亚多姆·盖塔乔关于后殖民激进主义的工作，以及凯蒂·威克斯关于家务劳动工资运动的工作启发的。正如所有这些理论家所问的那样，将激进主义文本视为政治理论会带来什么？在雕像被拆除，国家正在计算他们的集体历史的当代时刻，这篇论文将为正在进行的关于历史如何被讲述、如何被讲述以及如何被讲述的对话提供创新的论点。

What does it mean to tell a history of feminism in a feminist way? As an intervention in the history of feminist thought, my research will reconstruct cases that span over a century of political activism to tell a story of conservation and transformation, and of memory and forgetting. This will be centred around the women's liberation movement in the United States, between 1851 and 1978. I will theorise in new ways about the modes through which feminists have told, complicated, and obscured their own history. By drawing together strands of feminist activism, I will explore questions including: What various purposes have the memories of past figures served for activists over time? Have different groups (including working class, black, queer) used memory in contrasting ways? In doing so, my research will contribute to work conducted by feminist academics, especially black feminist academics, including Kimberly Springer, Wini Breines, Ashley D. Farmer, Dayo F. Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Woodard. Despite important work conducted by these academics, the history of activists who are feminist, black, queer, and/or working class remains an understudied area. There is extensive room for new findings and synergies - room which this research will inhabit. My project will pay particular attention to reception histories and the way history has served as a resource for activists. I take reception history to mean the study of how historical figures have been memorialised and interpreted by different individuals and groups over time. In the first instance, I will build on research conducted for my MPhil and reconstruct a feminist reception history of Sojourner Truth, an activist for women's rights who emancipated herself from slavery and was prominent and active in political circles between the late 1840s and 1883. In the second instance, I will contrast Truth's reception history with reception histories of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two early women's rights activists that engaged in important historical preservation work - but who, at times, used racist caricatures in telling the history of Black women's rights activists. Moving to a period of radical feminism in the 1960s-70s, I will next consider the work of Florence Howe, a pioneer in Women's Studies who actively sought ways to publish feminist history. I will follow this with a reconstruction of the political thought and practice of The Sisterhood, a group of black women writers and artists who drew strength from feminist history to support their own activism. The section on the Sisterhood will be informed by existing research conducted for my MPhil. I will use the preceding novel excavation work as an occasion for thinking about a series of pressing issues, asking: How have feminists reckoned with an inadequate and often racist history? And what place does historical memorialisation have in contemporary political theorising and activism? The primary research method used in this thesis will be historical, including extensive archival research. This will enable me to contribute to the novel excavation work of feminist history, thereby advancing knowledge of the political priorities and practical methods of feminists and early women's rights activists. This thesis also participates in ongoing efforts by political theorists to reassess what is included in histories of the discipline of political theory itself. This approach is informed by the work of Brandon Terry and Erin Pineda on the Civil Rights Movement, Adom Getachew on Post-Colonial activism, and Kathi Weeks on the Wages for Housework movement. As all of these theorists have asked, what follows from treating activist texts as political theory? Conducted in a contemporary moment in which statues are being torn down and nations are reckoning with their collective histories, this thesis will contribute innovative arguments to ongoing conversations about how history has, could, and should be told.