从“他史”、“她史”到“两性史”——美国西部妇女史研究述论

美国西部妇女史近半个世纪的探索与妇女研究发展轨迹相当。70年代受女性主义运动及新社会史、后现代主义等学术思潮的影响,研究者们致力于“她史”,使得该研究得到了迅速的发展。80年代以后,女性研究的焦点转入社会性别理论,西部妇女史的研究中也广泛采用这一分析范畴,同时强调西部妇女多元文化的历史背景。90年代以来,随着理论的不断深化和史料的丰富,该研究从微观上强调西部妇女的族裔、文化、阶级、职业等的差异,从宏观上强调全新意义上的“两性史”,即要求在一个新的历史基准体系之下对各种妇女群体作出价值评估,并将妇女的历史编入西部历史之中。这一过程将使重写西部历史成为一项必需的事业。

The research on the history of the wom en in the west of the United States has traversed along the same track as the women’s studies in the past five decades.In the 1970s,influenced by the feminis t movement,the new social history,post-modernism and other academic t rends,researchers focussed their a ttention on the study of the“she historyand crowned it with quick success.In the 1980s,w hen the focus of women’s studies shited to the gender theory,the research on the history of the western women also wid ely adopted this analytic category,at the same time stressing the multi-culture historical background of the western women.Sin ce the 1990s,with the deepening of th eory and the enriching of historical materials,this research has,microscopically,emphasized the differences of the w estern women in ethnic origin,cultu re,class and occupation,and,macroscopically,emphasized the“history of both sexesin its entirely new sense;in other wo rds,this latter requires of people to re-evaluate the various women groups under a new historical criterion system and include women’s history in the history of the western region.This process will make the r ewriting of the western history an ab solutely necessary task.