Aurélie Knüfer
IUF, CRISES (EA 4424), Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry (aurelie.knufer@ univ-montp3.fr, ORCID: 0009-0009-5094-0571).
(Re)cognition and gathering of women according to Anna Wheeler and Concordia
Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine the link, in the work of two radical nineteenth-century philosophers, between the question of knowledge of women’s nature and that of their political subjectivation. This link can first be seen in Anna Wheeler’s address to women, the last chapter of the Appeal of One Half the Human Race, a work co-authored with William Thompson (1825). It is then at the heart of the debate between the philosopher and the theorist and activist Concordia in the Owenist magazine The Crisis (1833). What kind of self-knowledge do women need to acquire in order to mobilise and act collectively? What institutional mechanisms are likely to make it possible for women to be frank and reveal their true selves, thereby ensuring that they recognise each other? These are the questions that run through these writings. If the contributions of Anna Wheeler and Concordia can be included in a feminist history of recognition, it should be borne in mind that what matters above all for them is not so much the recognition of men by men, in the sense of their identification as beings of equal dignity and value, but rather women’s own knowledge of what they are, individually and collectively, and what they could become.
Keywords: Recognition; Self-knowledge; Feminism; Owenism; Sisterhood.