Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Moments of Danger: Race, Gender, and Memories of Empire

1992; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2505418

1468-2303

Vron Ware,

Latin American and Latino Studies

This essay arises out of a concern to understand how categories of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference particularly between women have been constructed in the past, in order to explore how these categories continue to be reproduced in more recent political and ideological conflicts. Until very recently, feminist theory relating to the writing of has tended to emphasize questions of gender and their articulation with class, with the result that issues of have been overlooked. Focusing on ideas about whiteness and the various constructions of white racial identity can offer new avenues of thought and action to those working to understand and dismantle systems of racial domination. The recognition that the lives of women of color are inescapably prescribed by definitions of race as well as gender can also be applied to women who fall into the category white. This essay argues for a feminist theory of that inquires into the construction and reproduction of racialized femininities. Focusing on images and ideas about white womanhood produced at particular points in the past, examples from the author's book Beyond the Pale illustrate a range of questions that flow from having a perspective of class, and gender. The essay looks briefly at the idea of historical memory, using a discussion of oral to consider ways in which social memory of Empire is continually affected and transformed by cultural forms in the present. Finally, by taking apart various constructions of white femininity in two narratives of cultural conflict, the essay demonstrates how a historically informed and antiracist feminism might intervene differently in debates about contemporary politics. To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognise the way it really was. . . . It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a of danger.' I have taken this brief extract from Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of and borrowed its vivid imagery as a means to introduce my own argument about race and gender in historical memory. I was immediately drawn to it because the act of seizing hold of a memory conveyed something of the urgency that I had felt in writing my book Beyond the Pale.2 I was 1. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (London, 1977), 257. I would like to thank Paul Gilroy for pointing me towards Benjamin and for helpful discussions held in the course of writing this essay. 2. Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London and New York, 1992). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 05:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms RACE, GENDER, AND MEMORIES OF EMPIRE 117 intrigued too by the phrase moment of danger and the possibilities of hijacking it to explore my preoccupations with the contemporary politics of race and gender, an area fraught with tensions of one kind or another. This essay arises out of a concern to understand how categories of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference, particularly between women, have been constructed in the past, in order to explore how these categories continue to be reproduced in more recent political and ideological conflicts. Such a project necessarily involves a consideration of the ways that feminist historiography has so far dealt with questions of difference. To put it another way, has history provided feminism with sufficient theoretical or historical evidence to make sense of ideas about racial and cultural difference today? My response to this question would be that until very recently feminist theory relating to the writing of has tended to emphasize questions of gender and their articulation with class with the result that issues of have been overlooked. In 1988, for example, Joan Scott wrote that: The realization of the of women's comes in the writing of histories that focus on women's experiences and analyze the ways in which gender constructs politics and politics construct gender. Feminist then becomes not the recounting of great deeds performed by women but the exposure of the silent and hidden of gender that are nonetheless present and in the organization of most societies. With this approach women's critically confronts the politics of existing histories and inevitably begins the rewriting of history.3 This is not to say that Scott herself has overlooked questions of race, either in her critique of the politics of existing histories or in her outline of the radical potential of women's history. It is rather that her descriptive phrase often silent and hidden operations could be applied just as well to other kinds of social relations in addition to gender, and the claim would have been all the more powerful if she had been able to be more explicit about and ethnicity as other kinds of defining forces in women's lives. Although I am writing specifically about British and taking into account the relatively recent impact of colonialism and decolonization, the general argument I am making is intended as a contribution to debates in feminism also taking place in the US. British and North American women have been communicating, exchanging ideas, and organizing transnationally for over 150 years. In the UK both black and white feminists have looked to the US for enlightenment about how to understand and talk about the relationships between race and gender that were intrinsic to the foundation of the women's movements there. A growing number of books on these problems by AfricanAmerican feminists like bell hooks, Angela Davis, and June Jordan and white feminists like Adrienne Rich have been lifelines for many of us. But this body of work does not address the specific relationships between black and white women in Britain, where we are struggling to understand the effects of 3. Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York 1988), 27. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.211 on Fri, 24 Jun 2016 05:04:29 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms