ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to this volume the editors observe: “This collection responds to current scholarly and political anxieties that feminist criticism is in a state of decline and crisis by meditating upon what it means to do feminist work in early modern studies at this historical juncture.” Their sense of “crisis” is easy to corroborate. In a recent article for differences, Emily Apter makes a similar observation, giving an account of a 2009 event on “Contemporary Feminist Practice” she attended at which:
What came to the fore—in addition to the manifest rifts among self-identified feminists—was a distinct uncertainty about where feminism stands at the current pass: pro- or anti-theory? Alive or dead? Stuck in white middle classness or responsive to wider communities of race, ethnicity, and social belonging? Politically activist (on behalf of equal pay, same-sex marriage, abortion rights) or politically enervated by reflexive pieties? Faithful to feminocentrism or committed instead to sex and gender pluralism (trans/homo/bi/inter/neutral/queer)? 1
So what is a “feminist” to do? Apter, prudently, does not attempt to answer such a thorny question definitively but instead suggests that the problem of time be confronted self-consciously in approaching it. She observes of the event she attended: “while temporal references abounded (labor time, the biological clock, intergenerational tensions in the women’s movement) nobody addressed the problem of time as such.” 2 Her concern with “Women’s Time”—echoing an earlier influential essay by Julia Kristeva—not only seems very apt to me, but of special interest to a volume such as this one that includes a “temporal reference” (“early modern”) in its title.