Gender and Memory: critical and feminist articulations

Abstract

In this essay we reflect critically about the relationship between memory and gender, from a perspective grounded in critical social psychology, feminist theories and memory studies. We review and critique the uses of the notion of memory in feminist approaches and of gender in memory studies. A critical analysis of gender and memory should focus on their joint and mutual constitution, emphasizing the gendered ways in which we remember. We consider it important to problematize uses of "Women's Memory" in essentialist and normalizing terms. The construction of gendered memories operates in a historically dynamic and complex analytical field, so that they may or may not be destabilizing depending on their uses, the intended use, and the historical moment in which they are invoked.