On Australian feminist tradition: three notes on conduct, inheritance and the relations of historiography and jurisprudence

Abstract

This essay is a meditation on how Australian feminists inherit traditions of practice, and how they have reimagined disciplinary personae. I focus on Ann Curthoys as an exemplar, and her contributions to the creation of a field of feminist history. In particular, I draw out how Ann Curthoys has placed the conduct of relations with others, and how those relations might be experienced in time and place, at the centre of her history writing. I emphasise that this has been accomplished through interlocution, with those whom she read (such as Simone De Beauvoir), as well as with those whom she worked alongside to invent feminist disciplinary personae adequate to address the specificity of Austral..