Women, Gender, and the Enlightenment: A Historical Turn
Author(s)
LaVopa, Anthony J.
Abstract
Women, Gender, and Enlightenment registers the force of the impact that feminist scholarship has had, and will continue to have, on the study of the Enlightenment and on the historical discipline as a whole. Aside from its huge importance for Enlightenment studies, the volume marks the accomplishments of the historical study of women and gender but at the same time points us in new directions. It may also prove to be a pivotal moment in the development of feminism itself. The volume derives its explanatory and interpretive energy from a series of linked propositions: that the categories masculine and feminine are not self evident and unchanging facts of nature, but socially constructed and historically contingent perceptions of difference; that their naturalization has had the effect of putting them beyond the bounds of legitimate questioning and critique; and that by denaturalizing them – by revealing their constructed and hence contingent status – historical analysis can expose the arbitrary power inherent in patriarchal structures of authority.
