Action as narration/narration as action: reading Maud Gonne’s auto/biographical writings as marginalized knowledges of the historiographical operation

Abstract

Feminist historians have long argued that women have been absent from history, and recovering their position in the historical discourse has been one of the main projects of academic feminism for the last 40 years. But while women’s marginal position as historical subjects has been recognized and addressed their actual contribution to the historiographical operation is still a grey area that needs further research and exploration. Narratives are at the heart of how women have attempted to write history and it is this marginalized area that I address in this paper by focusing on Maud Gonne’s controversial autobiography, Servant of the Queen, as well as on moments of her correspondence with her life-long friend William Butler Yeats. Gonne’s auto/biographical narratives are read as discursive effects of fierce power relations at play, but are also theorized as recorded processes wherein Gonne as the author of her political story emerges from the margins of knowledge production and actively inserts herself in the discourses of Irish history.

Keywords:

• Action
• narration
• historiographical operation
• Maude Gonne
• Hannah Arendt

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the organizers of the 1st Irish Conference on Narrative Inquiry at the Sligo Institute of Technology for inviting me to give the keynote speech, an event that triggered my interest in Maud Gonne's autobiography and letters. I also want to thank my friend Brenda Keneghan, who suggested that Gonne would be an intriguing historical figure for my narrative inquiries.

Note on contributor

Maria Tamboukou (BA, MA, PhD) is Professor of Feminist Studies, at the University of East London, UK. Her research activity develops in the areas of philosophies and epistemologies in the social sciences, feminist theories, narrative analytics and archival research. Writing feminist genealogies is the central focus of her work. She is the author of 7 monographs and more than 70 journal articles and book chapters. Recent publications include the monographs Sewing, Writing and Fighting, Gendering the Memory of Work, Women Workers’ Education, as well as the co-authored book The Archive Project.

ORCID

Maria Tamboukou http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6380-4415

Notes

1. William Butler Yeats, A Bronze Head, 1939.

2. ‘went to you’ refers to their mystical encounters and communication.

3. Gwen John to JQ, letter dated 5 May 1915, in New York Public Library, John Quinn Papers, General Correspondence, Box 23, John Gwen 1910–1924 (NYPL/ JQP/B23).

4. MG to JQ, letter dated 15 July 1915, in Londraville (1999, 156).

5. This essay was first presented at the meetings of the American Historical Association in December 1985.