Writing Feminist Genealogies

In this paper I consider the critical role of auto/biographies in the writing of a Foucauldian genealogy of women teachers at the turn of the nineteenth century in Britain. In isolating points of convergence between feminist theories and the Foucauldian genealogical project, I explore the deployment of self-technologies of women teachers in a particular historical stage and geographical site, which I have identified as having a particular genealogical significance. What I suggest is that a genealogical approach to women teachers’ auto/biographical writings at the turn of the century, creates new perspectives from where to theorise the different modes in which they chose to mould themselves and calls into question given discourses surrounding the persona of the woman teacher