Herstory revisited

This text deals with a very particular dilemma: how should I, a post-linguistic-turn gender historian, deal with the reality that women are constantly excluded from the continuing writing of the past (or are silenced in the history that is played out in front of my eyes) without falling back on the herstory tradition that the majority of us academics say we have left behind? The problem is discussed in theoretical terms, but also empirically in relation to two specific situations. The first is a commission to write a history of women and the women’s movement for the Swedish city of Lund. The second is an invitation to address a Social Democratic women’s association on the subject of the Swedish general election campaign of 2010, and more specifically the media resistance shown towards Mona Sahlin, the female candidate for prime minister. With the help of a further example – the play Historia A by the dramatic arts collective Potato Potato, a reaction to the omission of women from Swedish school history textbooks – I will conclude by illustrating the new path I would advocate: a very queer women’s history – Herstory revisited,or Herstory 2.0