Bringing Women Back in: A Search for Alternative Historiographies

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Periodical article

Title:	Bringing Women Back in: A Search for Alternative Historiographies
Author:	Ahikire, Josephine
Year:	1994
Periodical:	Quest: An International African Journal of Philosophy (ISSN 1011-226X)
Volume:	8
Issue:	2
Period:	December
Pages:	3-20
Language:	English
Notes:	biblio. refs.
Geographic terms:	Uganda Subsaharan Africa Africa
Subjects:	women historiography Historical/Biographical research Philosophy, Psychology history epistemology
Abstract:	The field of women's studies as it is unfolding in Africa in general, and in Uganda in particular, generally fails to challenge ruling discourses and consequently runs the risk of achieving no more than the integration of women into the existing order. There is an almost total detheorization and depoliticization of women's studies. In the area of history the effort to problematize the position of women is similarly limited. Hence part of the struggle to change gender relations involves a reconstruction of women's past. The author highlights some of the questions that need to be raised so as to transform the rationale of traditional historiography. She focuses on the need for a more critical methodological rethinking of gender processes in order to arrive at a better representation of women in history. She also examines some epistemological concerns, notably the controversy among feminist writers about the legitimation of knowledge and the question of who writes about whom. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in French (p. 2).