The purpose of this piece by Elsa Barkley Brown is to point out the way feminist historians, and the fact that the majority of them are white women, aren’t going to impact the systems and oppressions they wish to if they continue trying to see history through the lens of gender, specifically “women”, without acknowledging the race, economic status, sexuality, and other circumstances that make up these histories. Barkley Brown points out that the two main fears of these feminist historians is that there will be a problem of “too many identities” and that this will lose the “voice of gender”.
The experiences of African American, Latina, Asian American, and Native American women are seen as “other” and white middle class women as the norm. By both ignoring these identities existences as unique, while all occurring simultaneously with overlapping experiences or circumstances, ignores and splices history up into separate categories that make it impossible to make large scale change. These ideas ignore the reality of most women’s and people’s experiences, which then keep intact the exact institutions that feminist are seeking to break down.
Barkley Brown does an amazing job comparing the reality of experiences to the likeness of jazz, all happening simultaneous while each being unique, with classical music which can only be played in one way, conducted by one person, with everyone else being completely silent. This is such an amazing way to show the one-sidedness and failure of gender history in it’s current state of being centered around white middle class women and then not seeing why larger changes haven’t and can’t be made. By excluding voices and experiences “women’s history” and feminism can’t move forward. A really good point, and in an oversimplified way sums up the piece, that Barkley Brown points out is that “we have still to recognize that all women do not have the same gender (p.300).”
I really enjoyed this piece and I think you did an excellent job of summarizing and reflecting it. I loved the relation of jazz to the dynamics of gender history, as well. Barkley Brown writes, “jazz an expression of true democracy, for each person is allowed, in fact required, to be an individual, to go her or his own way, and yet to do so in concert with the group” and then goes on to explain how history is very much like this with everyone always talking at once and that we need to look at history as a continuous dialogue at all times rather than isolating and looking at one conversation at a time. She also goes on to explain how “we need to recognize not only differences but also the relational
nature of those difference,” which relates to the conversations that we have been having as a class. I look forward to discussing this piece further in class.