ABSTRACT
Zemon Davis searched for an image that she could give to history that would suggest the complexity, commitment, and multiple vision that she believes must be at its heart, and found one in Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. This chapter presents a shift in the understanding of the term 'gender' to a pivotal place in the approach of some historians of women who were influenced by the ideas of Foucault and Derrida. Karen Offen called for feminists to draw on the valuable features of the historical traditions of Anglo-American and European scholars: the vision of equality should be combined with the reclaiming of the power of difference, of womanliness as women define it. Judith Bennett insisted that studying the historical intersection of race, class, gender, and other related factors will not bring moral and political vision back into women's history. Real historical women have been oppressed, and the ways and means of oppression need to be analyzed and fought.
