A private eye on feminist agency: Reflections on self-documentation, biography, and political consciousness

• Published in: Women's studies international forum 1999-03, Vol.22 (2), p.237-247
• Main Authors: Bernold, Monika, Gehmacher, Johanna
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agency; Austria - ethnology; Authorship - history; Autobiographical Materials; Biographies; Biography as Topic; Causality; Collective Representation; Education - history; Feminism; Feminism - history; Feminist theory; Historical analysis; History; History of medicine; History, 20th Century; Nineteenth Century; Political consciousness; Politics; Social Change - history; Teachers; Teaching - history; Vienna, Austria; Women; Women - education; Women - history; Women - psychology; Women's Health - education; Women's Health - ethnology; Women's Health - history; Women's Rights - economics; Women's Rights - education; Women's Rights - history; Women's Rights - legislation & jurisprudence; Womens History; Writing
• ISSN: 0277-5395; 1879-243X
• DOI: 10.1016/S0277-5395(99)00010-2

In this article, the authors use the example of a schoolteacher and lifelong feminist activist born in Vienna in the late 19th century to discuss questions of biographical writing and the representation of feminist agency. They analyze the ambivalent status of a woman who can neither be conceptualized as a political leader or pioneer nor just as a nameless representative of a social group. In this way, they aim to challenge hidden paradigms in feminist history that make it difficult to represent types of biography that do not fit into conventional models of feminist agency. They propose to look at the archive that is the material background of biographical research as a strategic and symbolic space to discuss questions of memory and the ways in which past and present strategies of narrating and documenting women’s lives are intertwined. They argue that collecting and storing ‘facts’ always has strong imaginary aspects despite the realistic appeal of documents. By discussing two biographical models—the pioneer of women’s education and the political activist—as two possible ways to see the biography of their protagonist, they draw attention to the dependency of any biography on the biographer’s perspectives as well as the contingencies and limitations of any biographical model.