De la Mujer Invisible al Feminismo Ineludible: Política y Antropología en la Historiografía de la Mujer

Abstract

The historiography of women since the beginning of its contemporary wave in the 1970s is analyzed along two related dimensions: First, its politicization on behalf of the social movement in favor of women’s rights that gave birth to it; second, the central role that the anthropological question, 'What is a woman?', and the diversity of responses that this question has generated. The author argues that an intensive politicization and the development of an increasingly materialistic anthropology are two interdependent tendencies that have come to characterize women's history. The same trends can now be seen in other historical specialties, owing in great part to the influence of women's history. In the last decade, on the other hand, a 'new feminism' has emerged based on a realist anthropology that promises to launch a 'new historiography of women'. The Anglo-American literature is the principal but not the exclusive focus of the article.