Deborah Hernandez

12/14/2015

History 402

Joan Wallach Scott

When Joan Wallach Scott wrote, Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis? (1996), She

did not anticipate the broad field of influence her work would carry. The classic article, written

almost 20 years ago was written in an Intellectual frenze of a sort of wonderful kind as she

describes during an interview with Harry Kreisler on Conversations with history. The article was

written by scott in 1985, published 1986 while teaching at Brown University. It was here by the

faculty in her department, she began to read the works of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida

and the likes. Their poststructuralist analysis worked for Scott and in the heat of discovery, of

excitement, of wanting to touch every base, she wrote the article. Scotts,work reaches beyond

her fields of discipline and assembles itself in psychology and philosophy. She is a world

renowned French Historian touching upon French History, Womens History, Gender History,

Intellectual History psychoanalytic theory and Feminist Theory. Her work has driven important

theoretical work for feminist and spark international discussion and debates such as happened

before the start of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing,

China (1995) when right-to-life groups began indicating to the subversive meaning of gender.

Before Scott stumbled upon the work of Foucault, she had many intellectual influences. Her

father being one of her earliest, was a high school history teacher, involved in political activism.

Inspired, she participated in political rallying and continues today, through books like The

Politics of the Veil (2011).

Bernard E. Harcourts, a critical theorist, describes poststructuralism aim in his article An

Answer to the Question: What is Poststructuralism (2007), as ...attempts to explain how it

comes about that we fill those gaps in our knowledge and come to hold as true what we do

believeand at what distributive cost to society and the contemporary subject. (1)
 is a late 20th century movement applied in philosophy, literature, politics, art cultural

criticism, history and sociology. It challenges the notions of external and internal forces predates

structuralism, a theory It asserts that there is no structure or absolute truth

Born on December 18,1941 in Brooklyn New York, she grew up in a highly cognitively

stimulating household with engaging conversations in history and politics. She attended

Brandeis University in 1962 where she received her Bachelor's degree. She continued her

education at the University of Wisconsin earning her Master's and Ph.d in 1964 and 1969. Her

intellectual influence during this time was E.P. Thompson. His approach to labor history inspired

her to write several books such as her dissertation on the impact of technological changes on

French working-Class politics in late 19th century and The Glassworkers of Carmaux: French

Craftsmen and Political Action in a Nineteenth-Century City (1974). Later, while at Brown, she

uncovered the work of Michel Foucault, a French Historian using a new radical form of analysis,

Poststructuralism. Her most influential works of poststructuralism include, Gender: A Useful

Category of Historical Analysis?(1986). Her revision, Gender: Still A Useful Category of

Historical Analysis?(2010) And The Politics of the Veil (2007). The books carry a common

theme of language, power, knowledge and their relationship between structural societies.

Notably they begin to change, particularly in Gender: Still A Useful Category of Historical

Analysis? Scotts, discourse takes a step back from Foucauldian analysis and presents a

psychoanalytic theory intended to historicize her common themes.

It attempts to explain how it comes about that we fill those gaps in our knowledge and

come to hold as true what we do believeand at what distributive cost to society and the

contemporary subject

Scott sets out to analyze the concepts of gender and their relationship with structured

societies. She also suggest a new form of looking at history through gendered lenses and this

she argues, will affect our understanding of history. A re-examination of history using gender will

affect our understanding of race, gender and class throughout History. Because Scott uses
heavy foucauldian analysis and poststructuralism her ideas are enatly embedding with the

concept of meaning. This can be seen by the way in which she describes the meaning of

gender, arguing that it is not a biological phenomenon but rather a historical one ...produced,

reproduced, and transformed in different situations over time (6). In other words, the meaning

of gender has been taken to mean certain things at certain times, due to the circumstances of

that time. The variations of gender can be attributed to the power structures within social

organization. Power, is held within social organizations, and is non existent without it. It is the

concept of power, Scott argues, that drives the meaning of gender based on the perceived

differences between male and female and in turn, creating binary oppositions. She explains the

different ways in which the meaning of gender has been distorted by power. She explains how

cultural religious, educational, political and scientific notions ingrained in our psyche assert the

meaning of what it is to be male and female. These notions have been put into place in an

attempt to limit their objectivity. The conceptual ideas of gender then establish how power is

held and by who. This concept gives gender a concrete function for the ways in which society

structures itself and the wielding of power. How then does a society exist to form these binary

oppositions? According to Scott it is through knowledge. Knowledge offers a way of ordering

the world; as such it is not prior to social organization, it is inseparable from social organization.

(Gender and Politics of History). It is through the discussion of knowledge that she reveals the

way in which history should be reevaluated as, ...a way of critically understanding how history

operates as a site of the production of gender knowledge...(10) For Scott, this was the way to

historicise gender. Critically analyzing events in history and evaluating the structure of society

around sexual differences and the power inequalities that result from them. Gender History

should not simply be, a revaluation of events by inserting women in the history books, but rather

a critical analysis of fundamental questions of knowledge, power, and their meaning in

structured societies and vice versa. It is through It is these types of questions that really strike

at the core of foucauldian analysis and poststructuralism. In reevaluating history in this way, we
find can find the study of gender impacts all aspects of social life ( i.e race, ethnicity and class),

making gender a useful category of historical analysis.