A few thoughts (without any particular claim to coherence) on Sarah Bagley as I read further into her own words and the literature on women's rhetoric:
1) Is it more historically and textually accurate to look at Bagley as primarily a labor activist? That, consciously or unconsciously, agitating for labor was a priori to women's rights agitation (i.e., to what extent would the vote have been useful if women laborers had no time in which to exercise it?) However, this is not to say that her gender was absented (in fact, it might have found expression through absence) from her rhetoric, rather it played into a rights talk that strategically emphasized labor rights over women's rights. Perhaps Bagley had to choose (I use this word very, very tentatively) which to emphasize, and she chose the former. But, if she strategically chose the former, How? Why?
2) Building off point #1, to what extent does Bagley fit into a line of women that includes Mother Jones and Emma Goldman, rather than Angelina Grimke, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony?
3) There appears to be a dialectical tension between Bagley as labor reformer and Bagley as woman. How does this compare to women who agitated primarily for rights other than women's rights? This poses an interesting problem: One the one hand, such a woman would be a de facto feminist by virtue of her existence and rhetorical style (for breaking gender norms, speaking on behalf of herself and class, advocating in public). But on the other hand, such a woman would be anti-feminist based on substantive content (women as lowly servants to men in their joint(?) goals).
4) Perhaps these three points lead to an additional reason, aside from a possible class bias, that resulted in the exclusion of Bagley from the women's rhetoric canon. Was her contradictory position as lower-class, laborer and woman responsible for her exclusion? In this case, I'm wondering if something along the lines of W.E.B. Du Bois' double consciousness is at work here? (And in what ways that phenomenon has lead to the exclusion of other women from the feminist canon, most notably non-white women--see especially bell hooks).
5) Most controversially: To what extent has the study of women's rhetoric suffered from the constraints of canonization--a process that has virtually eliminated the presence of Sarah Bagley? With few exceptions, does Bagley's rhetoric demonstrate how class has been suppressed by historical and contemporary understandings of feminist rhetoric? Are we being tyrannized by the canon? Or is it just a blind spot?
Any thoughts?
Can you explain what you mean by double consciousness? Additionally, is it really possible to do any sort of academic study without canonization? The canon is tyrannical, and yet without the epistemic clarity it provides, how will we justify our scholarship?
ReplyDeleteDu Bois coined the term to refer to African American experience in the United States. I know only of it, not much about it, and though he applies the term to the issue of race, I can see how it might manifest in gender or class. In one respect, it is a reflexive understanding of self. Meaning, how one sees one self through the eyes of another person. It can also refer to dual identity, I believe, and the conflict between those identities. Again, Du Bois coined the term in relation to Black Americans, and I'm not certain whether anyone uses it in other ways or among other groups. If you're interested in the phenomenon, check out The Souls of Black Folk.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your second question, is the suggestion that to study something from within the academy is to already canonize it? In that sense, I would agree with you. For someone, like myself, interested in theorizing resistance, the notion is quite troubling and I think it hints to some of the ways activism and academic inquiry can never be wholly compatible. The first is much more, and necessarily more, guerilla than the latter. The latter is already stale by the time it gets to print--sometimes by the time it is even articulated. However, I'm probably taking this in a different direction than you intended. (Although, one way to bust the canon would be to overfill it so that it is no longer heuristically useful.)
I'm not sure I understand your third question. In what ways does the canon provide epistemic clarity? And, how does that clarity allow us to justify what we study? Do you mean the way in which the canon allows us to differentiate knowledge and non-knowledge? Important and non-important? And if so, doesn't that make the epistemic clarity that the canon provides somewhat troubling...especially for a PoMo like yourself? Or, are you saying that the canon allows us to say: Look, we've totally ignored this totally awesome bit of history, thus providing justification for its study...and in that case, the canon is a necessary evil?
I think I was saying the last bit, yes - that the canon lets us see the flaws and lacks in our understanding.
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