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Ideas in Context
Gendering the Renaissance Commonwealth
This pioneering and innovative study challenges modern assumptions of what constitutes the political and the public in Renaissance thought. Offering gendered readings of a wide array of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century political thinkers, with a particular focus on the two prime thinkers of the early modern state, Niccolò Machiavelli and Jean Bodin, Anna Becker reconstructs a neglected but important classical tradition in political thought. Exploring how 'the political' was incorporated into a wide array of 'private' or 'apolitical' topics by early modern thinkers, Becker demonstrates how both republican and absolutist thinkers - the two poles which organise early modern political thought - relied on gendered justifications. In doing so, she reveals how the foundations of the modern state were significantly shaped by gendered concerns.
- GenresGender
282 pages, Hardcover
Published January 2, 2020
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March 7, 2021
This book is really amazing and worth every penny. I had to write a review on it for my master's subject on History of Political Philosophy and it was a genuine pleasure to go through this book.
Assuming Joan Scott’s notion of “gender as primary way of signifying relationships of power.”, Becker distances from the binary divide between public and private sphere, as framed in Hannah Arendt’s influential interpretation of Aristotle, and rejects the simplistic dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion of women from “the political”.
Almost redundantly, each new chapter picks on the latter’s ideas in a very fluid and story-telling style, allowing a captivating reading, where one can follow her findings and conclusions through an exemplary and explorative approach with little knowledge of these thinkers, as all essential ideas and concepts are explained and put into context. It is made obvious that, by paying attention to seemingly apolitical matters, the understanding of the fluidity of concepts and deep entanglement of past and present are essential for better using gender as a “useful category of historical analysis".
One of the great merits of this book is the rejection of gender as synonym of women, but rather as the constitutive element of social and political relations that are complex and nuanced and therefore cannot be described by mere inclusion/exclusion dichotomies that are sometimes the best way to highlight historical injustice, but not necessarily enough to make justice. Indeed, instead of echoing women’s invisibility under a simplistic narrative of patriarchy’s oppression, Becker gives - both man and women - substance by acknowledging their (more or less limited in relative terms) political role, in an integrated perspective. She states that “Gender,(…) can help trace ideas, make them visible, and show us the alterity from past modes of thinking that we were otherwise in danger of missing altogheter.” And indeed, by shedding a light over “the politics of the private”, we are reminded that “there are no linear narratives of progress to be told”.
Without giving away any spoilers, the question that lingers after one read the whole book is this: who hurt Jean Bodin? This guy is mostly well-known for introducing the idea of sovereignty but Becker makes clear how this was a gendered notion that ultimately resulted in the "invention of a tradition", fueling patriarchal ideas that remained influent to this day.
Assuming Joan Scott’s notion of “gender as primary way of signifying relationships of power.”, Becker distances from the binary divide between public and private sphere, as framed in Hannah Arendt’s influential interpretation of Aristotle, and rejects the simplistic dichotomy of inclusion/exclusion of women from “the political”.
Almost redundantly, each new chapter picks on the latter’s ideas in a very fluid and story-telling style, allowing a captivating reading, where one can follow her findings and conclusions through an exemplary and explorative approach with little knowledge of these thinkers, as all essential ideas and concepts are explained and put into context. It is made obvious that, by paying attention to seemingly apolitical matters, the understanding of the fluidity of concepts and deep entanglement of past and present are essential for better using gender as a “useful category of historical analysis".
One of the great merits of this book is the rejection of gender as synonym of women, but rather as the constitutive element of social and political relations that are complex and nuanced and therefore cannot be described by mere inclusion/exclusion dichotomies that are sometimes the best way to highlight historical injustice, but not necessarily enough to make justice. Indeed, instead of echoing women’s invisibility under a simplistic narrative of patriarchy’s oppression, Becker gives - both man and women - substance by acknowledging their (more or less limited in relative terms) political role, in an integrated perspective. She states that “Gender,(…) can help trace ideas, make them visible, and show us the alterity from past modes of thinking that we were otherwise in danger of missing altogheter.” And indeed, by shedding a light over “the politics of the private”, we are reminded that “there are no linear narratives of progress to be told”.
Without giving away any spoilers, the question that lingers after one read the whole book is this: who hurt Jean Bodin? This guy is mostly well-known for introducing the idea of sovereignty but Becker makes clear how this was a gendered notion that ultimately resulted in the "invention of a tradition", fueling patriarchal ideas that remained influent to this day.
Displaying 1 of 1 review