Abstract
Gender is being taken up as an analytical category towards the end of the twentieth century. In a famous 1986 article, the American historian Joan W. Scott defined it as a mode of referring to the social organization of the relation between the sexes, a notion introduced in order to ‘discover the range in sex roles and in sexual symbolism in different societies and periods, to find what meanings they had and how they functioned to maintain the social order or to promote its change’.1 Often the term ‘gender’ has been used to refer to the areas (whether structural or ideological) that concern women, children and the family, while areas like diplomacy, international relations, high politics and war have not yet been explicitly tested against the touchstone of the relation between the sexes: men, understood as ‘public men’ (J. Elshtain Bethke), seem in fact to exist ‘beyond gender relations to the same degree they dominate them. While the imperative that women’s history always be related to men’s has become commonplace, up to now the reverse has hardly been true. Military history and the history of warfare are a case in point. They have dealt exclusively with men — and for good reason, since in the Western world (at least within Europe) war has generally been a form of direct confrontation between groups of men. Nonetheless, explicitly male-specific issues have not been raised in this field, for example in its connection with the history of masculinity’.2
Who was Penthesilea? Clearly, I have not done justice to her, nor she to me. With her piercing eyes and cutting tongue, for me she was a little too sharp. Every appearance, every phrase of hers was a challenge to someone or other…. The inhabited world, as far as we knew it, had revolted against us, with ever more cruelty, ever more fervour. Against us women, said Penthesilea. Against us humans, retorted Arisbe. Penthesilea: The men will be satisfied. Arisbe: You call them satisfied at reducing themselves to butchers? Penthesilea: They are butchers. They are just doing what turns them on. Arisbe: And us? What if we became butchers too? Penthesilea: We do what has to be done. But it does not amuse us. Arisbe: Ought we to do what they do in order to demonstrate our difference? Penthesilea: Yes. Aeno: But that’s no way to live. Penthesilea: Not to live. But to die, yes…. I rebuked Penthesilea fiercely: You want to die, so you make the others keep you company…. Cheek!, shrieked Penthesilea. And you are the one to say that! You, are neither fish nor flesh! A little more and we’d have been tooth and nail at each other…. Until now, I had forgotten all that.
(Author’s translation from the German: Christa Wolf, Kassandra (Hamburg: Lutherhand, 1992, 13th edn))
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Notes
J. Scott, ‘Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis’, American Historical Review, 91 (1986) p. 105.
See also N. Zemon Davis, ‘Women’s History in Transition: the European Case’, Feminist Studies, 3 (1975–6), p. 90.
G. Bock, ‘Women’s History and Gender History: Aspects of An International Debate’, Gender & History, (1989) p. 17.
On the dichotomy private/public see J. Elshtain Bethke, Public Man, Private Women (Princeton University Press, 1981).
J. Elshtain Bethke, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
C. Schmitt, The Concept of Political (Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 1976).
G. Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris, in Tutte le opere, vol. X, edited by V. Zaccaria (Milan: Mondadori, 1987) p. 391.
On the figure of the woman warrior, see for exemple chapters IX and X of the volume of P. Samuel, Amazones, guerrieres et gaillardes (Brussels: Edition Complexe, 1975) pp. 185–238.
On the figure of the queen warrior see A. Fraser, Bodicea’s Chariot. The Warrior Queens (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988).
H. Blumenberg, ‘Wirklichskeitbegriff and Wirkungspotential des Mythos’, in M. Fuhrmann (ed.) Terror and Spiel. Probleme des Mythosrezeption (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1971) p. 34.
A. Cavarero, Nonostante Platone (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1990) p. 4.
J. J. Bachhofen, Il matriarcato (1861) 1 (Turin: Einaudi, 1988) pp. 95, 99.
For a reconstruction of the Amazonic myth see G. Cadogan Rothery, The Amazons in Antiquity and Modern Times (London: F. Griffiths, 1910);
see also D. von Bothmer, Amazons in Greek Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957);
Sir Gahalad (pseud. of Bertha Eckstein-Diener), Mütter und Amazonen. Liebe und Macht im Frauenreich (1932) (Berlin/Frankfurt: 1987);
M. Hammes, Die Amazonen. Vom Mutterrecht und der Erfindung des gebärden Mannes (Frankfurt: 1982).
W. Lederer in Gynecofobia ou la peur des femmes (Paris: Payot, 1970) p. 57 underlined that Amazons have been considered ‘des étrangères belliqueuses, que les héros grecs finirent par vaincre et que l’opinion antique considérait avec un mélange d’effroi, d’estime et de pitié’.
M. Meiorin, ‘Amazzoni dal mito al fumetto’, in Donne e guerra. Milo e storia (Udine: DARS, 1989) p. 24.
See M. Zimmer Bradley, The Shattered Chain (New York: DAW, 1976);
S. McKee Charnas, Motherlines (New York/Berkeley: 1976);
J. Russ, The Female Man (New York: 1975)
and J. Russ, ‘When it Changed’ in H. Ellison (ed.), Again, Dangerous Visions (New York: Doubleday, 1972).
See also J. A. Salmonson (ed.) the two anthologies Amazons! (New York: DAW, 1979) and Amazons II (New York: DAW, 1982).
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© 1994 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Russo, V.E. (1994). The Constitution of a Gendered Enemy. In: Addis, E., Russo, V.E., Sebesta, L., Campling, J. (eds) Women Soldiers. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23495-0_3
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