Maria Tamboukou
Maria Tamboukou (BA, MA, PhD) is a scholar in Gender and Feminist Studies and has held research positions in a number of institutions including Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of East London, UK, Affiliated Professor in Gender Studies at Linnaeus University Sweden and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University, Australia. She is a member of the Scientific Board of the 'Hannah Arendt' Centre for Political Studies at the University of Verona, Italy and of the International Advisory Board, for the Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory (SELMA), at the University of Turku, Finland. She is the author of 8 monographs, 2 co-authored books, 4 edited volumes and more than 90 articles and book chapters. She has published in English, Greek and French and her work has been translated in Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Welsh and Greek. She has rich journal editorial experience, including co-editor of the journal Gender and Education and section editor of Matter: a Journal of New Materialist Research. Maria has been the recipient of research grants and fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Writing histories of the present is the central focus of her work, currently configured as an assemblage of feminist genealogies.
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Women’s stories leave traces of their will to rewrite their exclusion from oppressive regimes, defend their choice of civil and patriarchal disobedience, grasp their passage, claim their right to have rights and affirm their determination for new beginnings. What emerges from the encounter between theoretical abstractions and women’s lived experiences is the need to decolonize feminist theories and make cartographies of mobility assemblages, wherein nomadism is a component of entangled relations and not a category or a figuration of a subject position.
In this introductory chapter I give a historical overview of the garment industry particularly focusing on Paris and New York as its two main urban centres in the first half of the twentieth century. I further discuss the importance of women workers’ autobiographical narratives in writing counter-histories of the labour movement in general and the garment industry in particular.
Offering an overview of the current 'state of the field' and written by four authors with extensive experience in conducting research in and creating archives around the world, it demonstrates the different ways in which archive methodology, practice and theory can be employed, and shows how the ideas and approaches detailed in the book can be put into practice by other researchers, working on different kinds of archives and collections. The volume engages with crucial questions, including: What is 'an archive' and how does it come into existence? Why do archival research and how is it done? How can sense be made of the scale and scope of collections and archives? What are the best ways to analyse the traces of the past that remain? What are helpful criteria for evaluating the knowledge claims produced by archival research? What is the importance of community archives? How has the digital turn changed the way in which archival research is carried out? What role is played the questions that researchers bring into an archive? How do we deal with unexpected encounters in the archive?
A rigorous and accessible examination of the methods and choices that shape research 'on the ground' and the ways in which theory, practice and methodology inform one another, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in archival and documentary research.
This book explores entanglements of power relations and forces of desire in life narratives and visual images. The analysis draws on paintings and archival auto/biographical writings of six fin-desiècle women artists, who are brought together as narrative personae in a genealogical exploration of the constitution of the female self in art. The author offers an innovative theoretical approach to
narrative research by bringing together feminist theories with Foucauldian and DeleuzoGuattarian analytics. The book will be of particular interest for researchers and graduate students in the fields of feminist, narrative and visual studies.
Extracts from reviews:
This is a key book for those who wish to explore the relationships between life narratives and auto/biographical writings of six fin-de-siecle women artists— Rosa Bonheur and Anna Klumpke, Sofia Laskakaridou, Gwen John, Dora Carrington and Mary Bradish Titcomb. As an exploration of the female self in painting, their work covers four generations of practice across four different countries, France, USA, Greece and UK. […] As a narrative researcher Tamboukou has been seduced by the stories of women artists' and how their stories have created an archive of letters, journals, diaries which others have accessed to create a plethora of publications, notably in art history, around John and Carrington. […] The point that Tamboukou forcefully makes is that by delving into all of John's archives, a more complex and paradoxical picture emerges of an artist who inhabited the urban spaces of modernity, moving in between the contested boundaries of the private and the public. John's letters are shown to be “fluent” narrative texts in which she plays with identity in her correspondence with the artist Rodin […] Significantly, Tamboukou suggests that John emerges as a narratable self to become a nomadic and playful figure occupying different subject positions according to who she desired herself to be – in her room and the street, wandering the city and the country– and to whom. The important point about conducting this kind of intense narrative research is that for Tamboukou it has no beginning, middle or end but rather, and quoting the social historian Carolyn Steedman to re enforce this point, “you will find nothing in the Archive but stories caught half way through: the middle of things: discontinuities” (2001,45) but these methods allow her to explore narrative as a hybridity of life and fiction, an assemblage of actualities and virtualities that make up the real: life and texts […] Lines of flight is one of the many driving concepts taken from Deleuze's idea of writing (2002). For Deleuze, as for Tambou- kou, what is always more interesting is the experience of being in the middle, taking up fragments and lose ends of broken lines of flight which, according to Deleuze, is just another way of beginning. Tracing them becomes a metaphor for leaving one's self behind to arrive at a new place and permit a newborn self to emerge.
Prof. Janis Jefferies, Women's Studies International Forum 34 (2011) 161–164"
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces explores issues, questions, and problems emerging in the analysis of epistolary and visual narratives. The book focuses in particular on Gwen John’s letters and paintings. It offers an innovative theoretical approach to narrative analysis by drawing on Foucault’s theory of power, Deleuze and Guattari’s analytics of desire, and Cavarero’s concept of the narratable self. Furthermore, it examines the use of letters as documents of life in narrative research and highlights the dynamics of spatiality in the constitution of the female self in art. This study brings together theoretical insights that emerge from the analysis of life documents—some of them previously unpublished—combining innovative research with specific methodological suggestions on doing narrative analysis.
Extracts from reviews
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces takes us on a journey to explore Gwen John not only as a talented artist, but furthermore, as a passionate women in love with Rodin. The book is comprised of eight chapters offering a range of documents relating to John’s life and professional career. The book begins with a useful narration of John’s early life and artistic education at the Slade School of Fine Arts, and moves on to an extended narrative analysis of her letters, largely written after John’s 1904 move to Paris. […]In her analysis Tamboukou favors discourses of femininity and artistic creation, aiming to voice John’s letters as nomadic narratives of a wom- an artist who lived in solitude for most of her life. Tamboukou employs a number of theoretical approaches to explore issues relating to epistolary narrative, while drawing on Adriana Cavarero’s concept of the “narratable self” to examine “who Gwen John” was: both a woman artist encountering the male-dominated art scene, and an artist who had to pose as a model to survive […]The book highlights the connection between John’s letters and self-por- traits. Both provide narrative approaches for identifying her nomadic paths to becoming a distinguished artist. Tamboukou’s method for elaborating the various meanings of both visual and textual narratives results in a compelling portrait of the “real” Gwen John.
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces is a valuable contribution to the history of women artists, and will certainly be welcomed by feminist re- searchers and art historians.
Dr Maria Photiou, Biography 34.2 (Fall 2011), 364-366"
British artist Dora Carrington (1893-1932) was a voluminous correspondent and wrote beautiful letters both in content and in form as she was often intermingling writing with amazing illustrations. This monograph looks into Carrington’s letters, epistolary drawings and paintings and analyses narratives and visual images in their interrelation. The author interrogates and challenges the way letters have been used in women artists’ auto/biographical representations: her argument is that epistolary narratives cannot represent lives or subjects, but they are exceptionally useful tools throwing light on the constitution of the female self in art.
Considering the centrality of space in Carrington’s epistolary discourse the author suggests that Carrington’s letters, diaries, paintings and drawings can become part of a genealogy of spaces and powers, shedding light on the dark sphere of privacy and unravelling entanglements between the public, the private, and the right to privacy. The analysis further looks into Carrington’s amorous epistolary discourse following narrative modalities of how fin-de-siècle bohemian groups create conditions of impossibility for a woman to speak of her desire and recognize herself as an artist and as a subject in love."
The contributions included here clearly demonstrate the value of narrative methods for contemporary social research and practice. This book will be invaluable for all social science postgraduate students and researchers looking to use narrative methods in their own research."
Women’s stories leave traces of their will to rewrite their exclusion from oppressive regimes, defend their choice of civil and patriarchal disobedience, grasp their passage, claim their right to have rights and affirm their determination for new beginnings. What emerges from the encounter between theoretical abstractions and women’s lived experiences is the need to decolonize feminist theories and make cartographies of mobility assemblages, wherein nomadism is a component of entangled relations and not a category or a figuration of a subject position.
In this introductory chapter I give a historical overview of the garment industry particularly focusing on Paris and New York as its two main urban centres in the first half of the twentieth century. I further discuss the importance of women workers’ autobiographical narratives in writing counter-histories of the labour movement in general and the garment industry in particular.
Offering an overview of the current 'state of the field' and written by four authors with extensive experience in conducting research in and creating archives around the world, it demonstrates the different ways in which archive methodology, practice and theory can be employed, and shows how the ideas and approaches detailed in the book can be put into practice by other researchers, working on different kinds of archives and collections. The volume engages with crucial questions, including: What is 'an archive' and how does it come into existence? Why do archival research and how is it done? How can sense be made of the scale and scope of collections and archives? What are the best ways to analyse the traces of the past that remain? What are helpful criteria for evaluating the knowledge claims produced by archival research? What is the importance of community archives? How has the digital turn changed the way in which archival research is carried out? What role is played the questions that researchers bring into an archive? How do we deal with unexpected encounters in the archive?
A rigorous and accessible examination of the methods and choices that shape research 'on the ground' and the ways in which theory, practice and methodology inform one another, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in archival and documentary research.
This book explores entanglements of power relations and forces of desire in life narratives and visual images. The analysis draws on paintings and archival auto/biographical writings of six fin-desiècle women artists, who are brought together as narrative personae in a genealogical exploration of the constitution of the female self in art. The author offers an innovative theoretical approach to
narrative research by bringing together feminist theories with Foucauldian and DeleuzoGuattarian analytics. The book will be of particular interest for researchers and graduate students in the fields of feminist, narrative and visual studies.
Extracts from reviews:
This is a key book for those who wish to explore the relationships between life narratives and auto/biographical writings of six fin-de-siecle women artists— Rosa Bonheur and Anna Klumpke, Sofia Laskakaridou, Gwen John, Dora Carrington and Mary Bradish Titcomb. As an exploration of the female self in painting, their work covers four generations of practice across four different countries, France, USA, Greece and UK. […] As a narrative researcher Tamboukou has been seduced by the stories of women artists' and how their stories have created an archive of letters, journals, diaries which others have accessed to create a plethora of publications, notably in art history, around John and Carrington. […] The point that Tamboukou forcefully makes is that by delving into all of John's archives, a more complex and paradoxical picture emerges of an artist who inhabited the urban spaces of modernity, moving in between the contested boundaries of the private and the public. John's letters are shown to be “fluent” narrative texts in which she plays with identity in her correspondence with the artist Rodin […] Significantly, Tamboukou suggests that John emerges as a narratable self to become a nomadic and playful figure occupying different subject positions according to who she desired herself to be – in her room and the street, wandering the city and the country– and to whom. The important point about conducting this kind of intense narrative research is that for Tamboukou it has no beginning, middle or end but rather, and quoting the social historian Carolyn Steedman to re enforce this point, “you will find nothing in the Archive but stories caught half way through: the middle of things: discontinuities” (2001,45) but these methods allow her to explore narrative as a hybridity of life and fiction, an assemblage of actualities and virtualities that make up the real: life and texts […] Lines of flight is one of the many driving concepts taken from Deleuze's idea of writing (2002). For Deleuze, as for Tambou- kou, what is always more interesting is the experience of being in the middle, taking up fragments and lose ends of broken lines of flight which, according to Deleuze, is just another way of beginning. Tracing them becomes a metaphor for leaving one's self behind to arrive at a new place and permit a newborn self to emerge.
Prof. Janis Jefferies, Women's Studies International Forum 34 (2011) 161–164"
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces explores issues, questions, and problems emerging in the analysis of epistolary and visual narratives. The book focuses in particular on Gwen John’s letters and paintings. It offers an innovative theoretical approach to narrative analysis by drawing on Foucault’s theory of power, Deleuze and Guattari’s analytics of desire, and Cavarero’s concept of the narratable self. Furthermore, it examines the use of letters as documents of life in narrative research and highlights the dynamics of spatiality in the constitution of the female self in art. This study brings together theoretical insights that emerge from the analysis of life documents—some of them previously unpublished—combining innovative research with specific methodological suggestions on doing narrative analysis.
Extracts from reviews
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces takes us on a journey to explore Gwen John not only as a talented artist, but furthermore, as a passionate women in love with Rodin. The book is comprised of eight chapters offering a range of documents relating to John’s life and professional career. The book begins with a useful narration of John’s early life and artistic education at the Slade School of Fine Arts, and moves on to an extended narrative analysis of her letters, largely written after John’s 1904 move to Paris. […]In her analysis Tamboukou favors discourses of femininity and artistic creation, aiming to voice John’s letters as nomadic narratives of a wom- an artist who lived in solitude for most of her life. Tamboukou employs a number of theoretical approaches to explore issues relating to epistolary narrative, while drawing on Adriana Cavarero’s concept of the “narratable self” to examine “who Gwen John” was: both a woman artist encountering the male-dominated art scene, and an artist who had to pose as a model to survive […]The book highlights the connection between John’s letters and self-por- traits. Both provide narrative approaches for identifying her nomadic paths to becoming a distinguished artist. Tamboukou’s method for elaborating the various meanings of both visual and textual narratives results in a compelling portrait of the “real” Gwen John.
Nomadic Narratives, Visual Forces is a valuable contribution to the history of women artists, and will certainly be welcomed by feminist re- searchers and art historians.
Dr Maria Photiou, Biography 34.2 (Fall 2011), 364-366"
British artist Dora Carrington (1893-1932) was a voluminous correspondent and wrote beautiful letters both in content and in form as she was often intermingling writing with amazing illustrations. This monograph looks into Carrington’s letters, epistolary drawings and paintings and analyses narratives and visual images in their interrelation. The author interrogates and challenges the way letters have been used in women artists’ auto/biographical representations: her argument is that epistolary narratives cannot represent lives or subjects, but they are exceptionally useful tools throwing light on the constitution of the female self in art.
Considering the centrality of space in Carrington’s epistolary discourse the author suggests that Carrington’s letters, diaries, paintings and drawings can become part of a genealogy of spaces and powers, shedding light on the dark sphere of privacy and unravelling entanglements between the public, the private, and the right to privacy. The analysis further looks into Carrington’s amorous epistolary discourse following narrative modalities of how fin-de-siècle bohemian groups create conditions of impossibility for a woman to speak of her desire and recognize herself as an artist and as a subject in love."
The contributions included here clearly demonstrate the value of narrative methods for contemporary social research and practice. This book will be invaluable for all social science postgraduate students and researchers looking to use narrative methods in their own research."
women mathematicians and scientists of the Victorian period,
Mary Somerville and Ada Lovelace, while also considering the
imperceptibility of Sophie Germain, an important French
mathematician and philosopher in their epistolary exchanges and
philosophical writings. Drawing on the importance of
mathematical correspondences and epistolary education in the
creation, circulation and dissemination of knowledge, as well as
in processes of formal and informal learning, the author argues
that Lovelace’s and Somerville’s letters leave traces of a
remarkable genealogical line of women’s mentorship and
personal relations in the nineteenth century world of British
mathematics in the backdrop of contradictory discourses around
gender, mathematics, and science education.
an eighteenth-century woman mathematician, philosopher and
scientist. The central argument of the paper is that Du Châtelet’s
letters leave traces of the process of becoming a femme
philosophe, while also throwing light in her involvement in the
scientific, philosophical and cultural formations of the early
modern period. In this context Du Châtelet’s personal letters carry
inscriptions of love as a creative force of life and are tightly
intertwined with her ‘laboratory letters’, her correspondence with
important mathematicians and scientists of her times. In thus
making connections between ‘the personal’ and the ‘scientific’ in
Du Châtelet’s correspondence, the paper sketches a feminist
critical perspective on a plane of thinking around love as an
existential force in its interrelation with mathematics, science and
philosophy.
In this paper the author considers the educational experiences
and ideas of Émilie Du Châtelet and Maria Gaetana Agnesi, two
women mathematicians, scientists and philosophers in eighteenth-
century Europe. By tracing their historical emergence as
subjects of scientific knowledge, as well as creators of philosophy
and culture, the author argues that we need to revisit the history
of women’s science education and deconstruct the image of “the
exceptional woman”. In doing so the author proposes the notion
of the event as a useful theoretical lens through which we can
understand women’s historical constitution as mathematicians,
philosophers and scientists.
To put it simply: can we still use ‘the nomadic subject’ in the era of the recent huge refugee crises, which have uprooted millions of people across the globe and have forced them to take up nomadic paths as the only feasible way of going on living? When the majority of these forced nomads today are reportedly women and children, how can the feminist notion of the nomadic subject enable us to grasp the condition of migrant and refugee women on the move? In the light of feminist relational ethics how do migrant and refugee woman challenge our perception of the subject of feminism and force us to revise who we are and how we relate to ourselves and to others?
Taking up the salience of stories not only in recounting experiences, but also in forming an experiential basis for changing the subject and its world, I plan to interview twenty migrant and refugee women about their experiences of being on the move. I will attempt to encourage these women to tell stories about their decision to leave, as well as about their experiences of ‘travelling alone’ without feeling obliged to limit themselves within discourses of victimization and vulnerability. Following lines from Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, I ask them to recount their lives as ‘who they are’, as unique and unrepeatable human beings, and not as ‘what they are’ —objectified ‘refugees’, ‘victims’, ‘stateless subjects’. The question to explore is whether nomadism can correlate with any component of their lived experiences, or whether it needs to be discarded as a concept that cannot encompass processes of becoming-free, when confronted with ‘the real'.