Heroines of Liberty: A Roundtable (ASECS Womens Caucus)
ISECS/ASECS Conference, Los Angeles, August 3-10, 2003
In _The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge_ (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984), Jean-François Lyotard identifies the hero of liberty as one of his two narratives of legitimation. Lyotard describes this eighteenth-century hero of liberty as a practical one whose task, through consensus and agreement, is to acquire freedom from forces that prevent self-governance and then to formulate laws that are just (Lyotard 35, 60).
This roundtable will interrogate Lyotards category while focusing on the role of women in the acquisition of freedom in the Enlightenment. Who were the heroines of liberty? How did the actions and writings of these women contribute, in general, to the struggle for freedom in the eighteenth-century? More particularly, how did women work both to acquire freedom for women and to formulate just laws which protected women? How did feminine subjects of emancipation define liberty? What were the stakes of emancipation for women? Can we speak of a mistress narrative of emancipation for eighteenth-century women? If such a narrative of feminine legitimation existed, can we use it as a tool to impact womens rights and the condition of women in the twenty-first century, or, as Lyotard suggests, do we no longer have recourse to the grand narratives (Lyotard 60)?
As the roundtable will focus on discussion, presentations will belimited to 10 minutes.