The Collective and Historical Self

Vulnerable Epistemologies, Affective Politics, and Intergenerational Herstories

Abstract

This paper investigates women’s multiple practices of doing and writing history at the intersections of history, epistemology, and politics. Drawing on archival material, I focus on the Greek feminist birth control movement, which was part of the broader women’s liberation movement, and highlight how it involved two simultaneous processes: the development of a feminist political agenda and the formation of knowledge. The analysis unfolds in three parts. The first section focuses on history and feminist intersubjectivities, exploring how the concept of history has been reconfigured in feminist historiography and the role of these reconfigurations within the Greek birth control movement. The second section examines the archives as central to knowledge production, specifically referencing the role of the Delfis Archival Center (Αρχείο Γυναικών Δελφύς) in Athens. Finally, the paper addresses studies of futurity and temporality, arguing for a reconfiguration of historical time itself. This multidirectional approach reveals how the Greek feminist birth control movement represents a political history of knowledge, marked by vulnerability, anxiety, and responsibility, as women strive to ensure their histories endure and effect small but meaningful political change over time.