Critical Biography Without Subjects and Objects: An Encounter With Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth

Abstract

Retracing my own research experience in creating a sociological narrative about a famous industrial engineer and mother, I describe how I began to question modernist images of self, interests, and power. As I reflected on how best to characterize Gilbreth's management of women, I began to see that may notion of how to write critical, historical biography rested heavily on a binary, modernist conceptual foundation. My research experience rocked this foundation by convincing me that we should see selves as multiple and interests as malleable, and that we should broaden our conception of power to include disciplinary power which circulates through people rather than belonging to them. The paper concludes by affirming the merits of new ways of writing about people that acknowledge their multiple selves without sacrificing the political strength of modernist language.