The Gendered Division of Labour in Understanding Genocide: Developing a Feminist Theory of Political Knowledge

• In Event: 4211 - Feminist Theory and Institutions

Abstract

In the 1980s and 1990s, key feminist debates revolved around the relationship between masculine fields of knowledge, like science, and feminism. In her seminal work The Science Question in Feminism, Sandra Harding outlined a theory of the masculine structure of the scientific field, including its gendered origins, goals, meanings and repercussions. While sparking a lively debate throughout the 2000s regarding the emancipatory potential of objectivism and standpoint theory, as well as developments in intersectional and postcolonial theory, the original question regarding gender and knowledge fields has remained largely undertheorized. This paper applies this question to the context of political knowledge, using a two-year comparative ethnographic study and 200 interviews with young, educated, international visitors about their experiences learning about genocide at four of the world’s largest human rights museums (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau Concentration Camp, the Cambodian Killing Fields, and Residential Schools in Canada).

Focusing on visitor patterns in observing, interpreting and ultimately ‘understanding’ political history, my findings show evidence for a gendered “division of labour” across institutional and emotional engagement with political histories of violence and human rights abuses. I find men visitors overwhelmingly interpret genocide with reference to political institutions and historical context, while expressing little emotional affect and identification with historical actors. On the other hand, women visitors rarely focus on particulars of political and historical context (such as legal categories, political organizations, and adjacent historical events), but often reflect on and emotionally engage with a spectrum of historical actors. The result is a highly gender-stratified outcome for political knowledge: men engaging with political institutions while opting out of the interpersonal moral aims of these initiatives, and women taking on interpersonal aims while avoiding their links to masculine political institutions.

Author

• Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia