‘I am a Feminist Scholar’: The Performative of Feminist History

Abstract

The prefaces to two collections of essays by feminist scholars, Gerda Lerner and Joan Kelly, reveal a fusion of historical scholarship and feminism. These texts of feminist history are read through the theories of the performative as a way of exploring the intersections of the performances which gave rise to the written texts and the texts themselves, as well as how the texts demonstrate the theatricality of feminist discovery and change. The declaration of their status as feminist scholars, positioning their work within the relationship of the personal and the political, constitutes a performative act of performing their community. The ‘doing’ of history foregrounds and reveals the ‘history done’, as the performative of feminist history constructs a once erased feminist past. Understanding history as performance serves feminism as an active political movement.