Moments of Danger: Race, Gender, and Memories of Empire
Author(s)
Ware, Vron
Abstract
Based on a desire to understand how categories of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference, particularly between women, have been constructed in the past, the reproduction of these categories in more recent political and ideological conflicts is explored. The analysis considers the ways that feminist historiography has dealt with questions of difference, ie, the role of “women’s history” in providing feminism with sufficient theoretical or historical evidence to understand ideas about racial and cultural difference. It is contended that a feminist theory of history must inquire into the construction and reproduction of “racialized” femininities. Ideas about white womanhood produced at particular points in the past illustrate a range of questions that emerge from a perspective of race, class, and gender. The analysis also shows how a historically informed and “antiracist” feminism might intervene differently in contemporary political debates by dissecting various constructions of white femininity in two narratives of cultural conflict.
