Holding History
We’ve been working on the history of this marvelous and maddening school for close to a decade, and Ann’s been one of our most important muses. We’ve met with her over many years, talking informally and formally. She is this history – she came to Lang in its very early days; she critiques this history – she has been instrumental in telling the comings and goings of Gender Studies; and she keeps this history alive – she has saved documents, flyers, and tales. Ann has helped us appreciate that The New School has always been a site for struggle and has modeled for us – as activist, scholar, colleague – how one might continue to love this imperfect institution. She holds us and our history in a warm, though mindful, embrace.
One of Ann’s projects that has served as a guide for us is the Feminist Memoir Project, a project undertaken with Rachel Blau DuPlessis in response to the discovery – disturbing but perhaps not surprising – that the women’s movement hardly appeared in emerging histories of the Sixties. It’s a wonderful volume, taking you deep into many moments of the women’s movement, its vantages and questions as varied and compelling as the women featured. Now these women’s voices were there for all to hear! But, ten years later, the pattern had barely changed.
What especially inspires us is what Ann did next. She wrote an essay admitting that Feminist Memoir Project hadn’t changed the prevailing narrative, and owning the anger and disappointment this realization provoked. Then she sought a deeper understanding of the phenomenon and arrived at a way to continue the struggle.
Ann’s deeper understanding took the form of acknowledging that women’s histories – at least the histories of the women’s movement – are structurally hard to remember. She utilizes Bill Hirst’s work on what kinds of memories are “sticky” and establishes that the women’s histories in question simply aren’t. They don’t tell a clear story, with a clear end, a unified voice, a charismatic spokesperson. Charismatic speakers were many, but none wanted to be a spokesperson. And the movement’s messages were many – as many as you would need for a movement whose goal was not some definable end state but the blossoming of as many kinds of lives as empowered liberated women might seek to live. Sticky political movements walk in lockstep, but not movements of liberation.
What to do about this? Ann names the temptation to learn to throw like a boy, and resists it. Something more than superficial would be lost if a movement like the women’s movement disciplined itself into sticky behaviors. The cacophony of voices of the women’s movement doesn’t represent a loss of focus. It’s not just a phase. It’s what liberation looks like. How can this abundance be held for future generations to discover?
This leads to a chastened sense of what historians can do. Many of the stories they want to tell aren’t sticky, and will likely be overlooked, simplified, bowdlerized. The struggle goes on. Our work on New School history tries to capture and convey a kindred cacophony, knowing we’ll always be out-shouted by tall men with catchy slogans. And in our documentary work we seek to produce an archive for those who come new to the struggle, to show them what liberated lives, lives owning the challenges and ambiguities – the uncertainties – look like.
Our approach to New School histories – polyvocal, collaborative, open-ended, and staving off pressure to “write the book” – is nurtured by these ideas and by Ann’s splendid example.
