Feminist Recovery and Re-reading of Historical Knowledge Production

Abstract

Conventional recording and interpretation of sources determine what constitutes a major historical event, thereby rendering certain past events and actions inconsequential. One of the dominant methods of historical record-keeping and study is the recovery, analysis, and contextualisation of archival material. Mainstream archives are often perceived and understood as historical facts. The question of women recurs in addressing voices from “below,” where emancipation is a process rather than an end, and women are agents rather than mere beneficiaries. The principles of selection and evaluation common to all historiographies align with a pre-fabricated statist perspective. This view of contradiction supports a hierarchised view of gender relations without acknowledging women’s agency. To formulate an alternative historiography for those neglected by the mainstream statist perspective of record keeping, merely rewriting is not essential. Nevertheless, the paper argues that understanding the process through which the dominant source was recorded, as well as re-reading and re-interpreting it, is crucial. Reading against the grain or between the lines, especially in the case of prescriptive texts, or examining how myths and narratives evolve in a diachronic context, raises new questions. Thus, it is essential to understand how historical events influence the present and shape contemporary society, as well as how current developments, in turn, reshape our understanding of history and the methodologies we employ to investigate the questions we pose as researchers. This step is significant in the shift away from the hegemonic production of historical knowledge. Therefore, the paper explores what constitutes dominant archives in their formulation, production, and circulation. How does it contextualise the contemporary with respect to the questions of relative visibility and invisibility? In what ways can the neglected be recovered by reading the archives? How is the feminist recovery/re-reading of the past and simultaneous production of historiography and knowledge positioned?