“But History and I”: Repairing Genealogy’s Gender Problem
This is the first in a series of responses to Theological Genealogies of Modernity, a special issue of Modern Theology edited by Darren Sarisky, Pui-Him Ip, and Austin Stevenson. The following is written by Caroline Wills in response to “Genderealogy: Erasure and Repair,” an article by Christine Helmer and Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft.
An obvious question to some and one obscure to others: “Where are the women in genealogy?” The retracing of theological genealogies, a subset of intellectual history, primarily center on the usual male suspects of Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Luther, and then after the Enlightenment, diverging in countless, again male-centric, directions. There are exceptions, of course—Theresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, or Catherine of Siena—who occasionally manage to break through and secure a foothold on the outskirts of the Western canon. Yet still, even here women lurk in the shadows, playing handmaiden to their many male counterparts. Should they manage to wrestle their way into genealogy’s narrative, rather than doing so as “theologian” and “philosopher,” they are relegated to the sidelines with terms like “mystic,” “visionary,” or perhaps the “village crazy lady.” The curious lack of women’s contributions within narratives of intellectual history might to some extent be explained by the historical limitations barring women from educational opportunity, religious authority, and political power. Yet even those exceptional women who, despite the odds, managed to earn named credit for their influence on the shape of history remain afterthoughts in most genealogical accounts. Perhaps even more curious is the paucity of women writing genealogies: just as genealogical subjects trend towards white and male, so too are their genealogical authors. Despite conscious, contemporary efforts to diversify syllabi and incorporate the voices of those relegated to the margins of history, genealogy remains largely the territory of white men. It is this phenomenon that Christine Helmer and Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft critique in their article “Genderealogy: Erasure and Repair,” arguing that the lack of female subjects is not a contingent product of historical circumstance but rather built into the very method of genealogy.
Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (1638–39), Artemisia Gentileschi
Genealogy, understood in the critical tradition of Michel Foucault, is primarily interested in individuals who possess the power and the freedom to act. It necessitates a subject free from both institutional and bodily limitation, who exerts their will on the world through the sheer force of their ideas. Genealogy relies upon a notion of selfhood wherein freedom is valued over communal participation, ownership preferred to collaboration, and disembodiment over the messy realities of embodied experience. This necessarily limits the inclusion of women and minorities who were largely barred, or at the very least severely limited, from participating in political, educational, and ecclesiastical institutions. By virtue of their reproductive potential and exclusion from the traditional channels of institutional authority, women and minorities complicate such a limited notion of selfhood yet fail to meet the requisite criteria for subjectivity in the genealogical tradition. Thus, genealogies’ subjects are male individuals whose affordances included the power to impose themselves on the world. And as consequence, genealogical method fixes a predictable set of men who are continually narrated as history’s primary protagonists—or villains, depending on the story one wants to tell. The genealogical project depends so heavily upon the hyper-individualized subject that it cannot afford to expand its notion of subjectivity to include relational knowledge and communal participation; rather, it must erase them.
If one agrees that the exclusion of women and minorities is built into the very framework of the genealogical project, the question turns to one of repair. The most obvious answer might consist in the retrieval of women and constructing a matrilineal reversal of the genealogical method, effectively doubling the existing structure, and inserting women and minorities in place of the usual set of male thinkers. Others might even call for the disposal of genealogy altogether judging the project irredeemable. Helmer and Ravenscroft point to another, far more inventive possibility for the future of genealogical study, which they coin “genderealogy.” In their own words:
The fixing of a community, not of particular individuals, is genderealogy’s intention. It has to do with recognizing the generativity of interlocuters in communion and dialogue with one another. It also has to do with the recognition that it is wrong to suppose that the production of knowledge can be planned out, in a linear way, in advance— that it will sometimes occur in the least expected, or most unlikely places.
In other words, genealogy, and most especially theological genealogy, must recognize its communal character. Knowledge is seldom discovered in isolation but requires relationship and dialogue. Ideas are not predictable and easily traced to individual contributions but rather relational, and endlessly surprising.
Whether genderealogy is a viable option for the task of accounting for history remains an open question. While theological genealogy prioritizes theological treatises and formal systematic accounts of doctrine which are typically plotted along narratives of decline, genderealogy refuses strict demarcations concerning source material. Unlike genealogy, genderealogy is not a predetermined methodology; quite the opposite. It urges one to step back from methodological strictures, allowing conversations, experiences, and art to serve as legitimate sources for historical interpretation and theological investigation. While genderealogy’s historiographical potential is indeterminate, we should also be wary of granting historiographical authority to the standard genealogical approach given the narrowness of modern notions of genre and genealogy’s imposition of contemporary, highly gendered notions of selfhood onto the past. However, what genderealogy undoubtably offers is an invitation for the inclusion of modes of theology long viewed as outside the purview of serious theological inquiry. Moving toward genderealogy requires not only an expansion of subjectivity but demands the exploration of genres of writing wherein the artistic and the poetic are understood as authoritative. Thinking with Helmer and Ravenscroft on this point, a short but dense poem by Emily Dickinson might prove to be a helpful guide and case study in exploring the possibilities which genderealogy opens and the challenges it poses to predominant models of theological genealogy:
Witchcraft was hung, in History,
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day—
In the first line Dickinson reminds us of the historical reality of violence and the difficulty of narrating oneself into an inimical history. Yet despite the violence against women in history and attempts to destroy marginalized voices, in the second line the female “I” asserts her place in history: part declaration and part challenge. While the transgressive nature of the second line holds, what is even more remarkable in Dickinson’s arresting marriage of “But History and I,” is that it moves to a “we” in the following line. The female “I” is not the self of domination and possession but instead signals the constituting of a relationship between history and the feminine self. History becomes a collaborator, and like the feminine self, she is not merely acted upon but acts in conjunction with those around her. While the first line of the poem is written in the past tense with an isolated and objectified “History,” the following three lines present an understanding of history that is not only acted within but that also acts in tandem with others in the present moment. Both “History” and the feminine “I” are recognized simultaneously as subject and object, as those with agency within the world around them while also recognizing the limitations of that agency. Relatedly, Dickinson masterfully transitions history from a static object in the past to a participant in the present. The relationship between history and the self prioritizes the present moment while simultaneously acknowledging the present’s historicity.
These two qualities of Dickinson’s poem, its relational posture and the orientation to the present, are at the heart of Helmer and Ravenscroft’s vision for genderealogy. While theological genealogy typically characterizes the story of modernity as one of decline, genderealogy points to genealogy’s reliance upon some of modernity’s essential features, namely hyper-individualism, the ownership of ideas, and strictures of genre. Genderealogy challenges these assumptions, beckoning us to recognize that our existence is a God-given gift. To mistake the thoughts of our predecessors, or our own, as property rather than grace is to perpetuate some of the very mistakes that theological genealogies seek to correct. To be sure, prioritizing community and the present is not to say that we should not read the work of genealogy’s usual cast of characters: we should. Rather, our task must be to spend the entire fortune of the canon’s treasury while opening the canon for expansion rather than subtraction, allowing the mutable and expansive nature of our relationships with others to transfigure the texts to speak imaginatively to the present.
[You can read the response of Christine Helmer and Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft to this article here.]
Caroline Wills is a PhD student in theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.