Finding Difference in Emotional Communities: New Feminisms of Women's Lives in the Nineteenth Century CE and Sixth Millennium BCE

Penny Bickle; Kate Morris

doi:10.1017/S0959774321000585

Finding Difference in Emotional Communities: New Feminisms of Women's Lives in the Nineteenth Century CE and Sixth Millennium BCE

Penny Bickle, Kate Morris

Archaeology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

This paper explores notions of relationality and emotional communities to re-tell accounts of women's lives in the nineteenth century CE and second half of the sixth millennium BCE, within the framework of posthumanist feminism. We argue that in both of these contexts women's work, spaces and material cultures have been devalued in comparison with those categorized as masculine. To counter androcentric accounts, we consider how different tasks and forms of material culture can create ‘emotional communities’ among groups, forming shared participation in social worlds. Our focus is first the mourning cultures of the Victorian period in the UK, where we argue objects of emotion may have operated to create shared spaces outside of the home, breaking down oppositions of domestic and private. Second, we turn to the ways in which tasks considered female have been downplayed in the Neolithic of central Europe, exploring the assemblages of bodies, grinding stones and hide working to show how emotional currents may have flowed through these materials, creating experiences of aging and different forms of prestige. In conclusion, we argue that the concept of emotional communities provides a useful methodology to answer the challenge set by posthumanist feminism of thinking difference as positive.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	305-319
Journal	Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Volume	32
Issue number	2
Early online date	24 Jan 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774321000585
Publication status	Published - May 2022

Bibliographical note

Access to Document

10.1017/S0959774321000585Licence: CC BY

17470218221079848
© The Author(s), 2022
Final published version, 612 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Finding Difference in Emotional Communities: New Feminisms of Women's Lives in the Nineteenth Century CE and Sixth Millennium BCE",

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