Narratives from within: an Arendtian approach to life histories and the writing of history

In this paper I draw on my current research of writing a genealogy of women artists, focusing in particular on the life history of the American working-class artist, May Stevens (1924-). I am particularly interested in how an analysis of the textual and visual narratives in her work, seen in the context of her life history, can intervene in the formation of historical discourses around gender and art education, a grey area that I suggest needs to be further explored. In looking into the interrelation between life histories and the writing of history, I follow Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of biographies within the political and I highlight the importance of history painting in creating critical communities of remembrance. I argue that this is where gender becomes crucially important: not just as an analytic category as influentially theorised by Joan Scott but as a politically situated position for re-imagining women as historical subjects and thus rewriting history.