WMST 100

1
WMST 100

• Topic 2.3 World Wars, Suburbia and the
  Subsequent Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950
• Reading
• Baxandall et. al. In RWL, 57-71

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• War, Women and Feminism
• 1. Introduction New Historicism History from
  the Ground Up and Structuralism
•  
• 1. History from the ground up
• -history of entire social body not just elites
• -or tells a history from the perspective of the
  oppressed rather than the oppressors
• -Marxist

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 2. Structuralism (the Annales)
•         time dealt with differently which meant
  different theoretical engagement
• structure - long term (language)
• conjoncture - medium term (social life)
• event - momentary term (political and individual
  events)

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 3. Postmodern/structuralism and history
• -        semiotic influx
• -        cultural emphasis
• -        questioning the production of history
• -        narrativization
• -        fiction repressed of history
• -        mythological foundations

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• Two examples I will use of rewriting history
• Françoise Thébaud (1994). The Great War and the
  Triumph of Sexual Division. In Françoise Thébaud
  (ed.) A History of Women in the West, Vol 5,
  Toward a Cultural Identity in the 20th Century,
  21-75. Harvard University Press
• Gisela Bock (1994). Nazi Gender Politics and
  Womens History In Françoise Thébaud (ed). In A
  History of Women in the West, vol. 5, Toward a
  Cultural Identity in the 20th century, 148-176.
  Harvard University Press.

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 2. Feminism and WWI
•       gender ideology and nationalism
•       men fight for country women keep home
  fires burning - safety
•       agreeable to maternal feminism (sexual
  difference - men and womens relationality)
•       equality feminism reject separate spheres
  but sought to prove womens worth as citizens and
  took up nationalism (sexual sameness -
  individualism)

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• outset of war - gender play in the political
  rhetoric
• separate spheres gender ideology used to define
  the roles of men and women
• change of this ideology largely due to length of
  war
• war changes gender ideology
• gender affects war, war affects gender

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• womens labour was now necessary to maintain the
  smooth operations of both the home and the battle
  front
• needed labour meant womens entrance to the
  public world
• gender ideology of separate spheres
• (women at home and men in the public world)
  Ultimately women were substitute and temporary
  labour

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WMST 100

• feminine metaphors for women doing masculine
  jobs
• strung artillery shells like pearls
• knitted steel beams with grace,
  steadfastness, and finesse

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 3. Social context of Nazism (WWII 1939-1945)
•       not evil in essentialistic sense
•       rather in synthetic sense - produced by
  ideology
•       eugenics and social Darwinism
•       history of Jews as oppressed people since
  4th century C.E.
•       Spencer, Sumner, and Fiske equally
  advocated such theories - never acted upon

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 4. Gisela Bock Nazi Gender Politics
• 0gender ideology as a means to examine Nazism
• intersection of racial and gender politics
• 1.      self-perception of regime explicitly
  male
• 2.      policies for cleansing the social body
  initially enacted upon the bodies of women as
  reproducers of lower races (antinatalism)
• 3.      experimentation for mass murder tested
  upon women and children

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 4.      men of the lower races threats to the
  women of the pure race
• 5.      Governmental control of reproduction and
  the family (headed by men)
• 6.      emphasis on fatherhood over motherhood
• 7.      indoctrination of girls and women into
  racial and gender ideological state policies via
  womens organizations and health education

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 5. A Gender Reading of Nazism (Gisela Block)
•       provides for us a view of the
  manifestation of this ideology in Nazism
•       sterilization of womens to ensure
  purification of race
•       uplifting of the volksgemeinschaft (ethnic
  community)
•       government benefit used to increase pure
  races

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

•       see a shift from antinatalism
•       the control of the individual female body
  to genocide or the purification and control of
  the larger social body
•       volkskoper (social racial body) must be
  cleansed of its pollutants
•       domination of nature (feminized - like
  women, like Jews - the other)
•       super race of men or the ubermench

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

•       Himmler we must constantly recognize that
  we are engaged in a primitive, primordial,
  natural race struggle.

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

• 6. Movement into 2nd wave feminism
•       Gender as a category of analysis is a root
  metaphor
•       called upon in order to uphold a
  particular view of the world and its operations
•       World Wars - topsy- turvy time (carnival)
•       reassertion of gender ideology of separate
  spheres

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World Wars, Suburbia and the Subsequent
Submergence of Feminism 1920-1950

•       feminisms won some ground
•       separate spheres and patriarchal family
  -concretely symbolized by the suburbia
•       rise of 2nd wave feminism