Gendering the Memory of Work
This book explores gendered aspects in the memory of work by looking at auto/biographical narratives and political writings of women workers in the garment industry. The author draws on cutting-edge theoretical approaches and insights in memory studies, neo-materialism and discourse analysis, particularly looking at entanglements and intra-actions between places, bodies and objects.
Tamboukou aims to enrich our appreciation of the role of womens labour history in the wider realm of cultural memory, as well as in the politics of womens work. The book addresses a significant gap in the literature by focusing on the memory of work from a gendered perspective. It also examines the relationship between workspaces and personal spaces: the intimate, intense and often invisible ways through which workers occupy workspaces and populate them with their ideas, emotions, beliefs, habits and everyday practices.
The book will be a theoretical and methodological toolbox for students and researchers in the interface of the social sciences and the humanities, as well as a vital resource in womens labour history. It will be particularly relevant for sociologists, cultural theorists, feminist scholars and social historians.
Maria Tamboukou is Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of East London, UK.
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Gendering the Memory of Work
Women workers narratives
Maria Tamboukou
First published 2016
by Routledge
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2016 Maria Tamboukou
The right of Maria Tamboukou to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tamboukou, Maria, 1958 author.
Title: Gendering the memory of work : women workers narratives / Maria Tamboukou.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge research in gender and society
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002240 | ISBN 9781138842458 (hardback) ISBN 9781315731537 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Women-EmploymentHistory. | Clothing workersHistory. | Women dressmakersHistory. | WomenBiography. | Clothing tradeHistory.
Classification: LCC HD6053 .T326 2016 | DDC 687.092/52dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002240
ISBN: 978-1-138-84245-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73153-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
In loving memory of my mother, Teta Gravari-Tamboukou
Contents
The scene is still vivid in my memory: Athens, immediately in the aftermath of the fall of dictatorship, reading group: Samir Amin, oil crisis and the imminent fall of capitalism, which we were all preparing for. I had an uneasy feeling within the group: was it because I was the only one who had actually done the reading? Later on I would learn that yes, I was the nerd: not only had I read the book and written notes, I was also wearing a silly dress amongst young women and men all dressed in the revolutionary uniform: blue jeans and khaki jackets. What was I thinking? a friend later asked me; nothing much: I was just wearing a dress my mum had made for me. I could not afford revolutionary clothes. I grew up wearing clothes that my mother had designed and sewn; she was a seamstress and she always had nice pieces of fabric that she could easily turn into girls dresses for me and my sister. She was also a socialist and remained so till the end. But socialism and nice clothes were not incompatible entities for her. I remembered that when I was reading about Rose Pesottas industrial campaigns in LA in the early thirties, when women garment workers would picket their ateliers impeccably dressed. It is the stories of socialist seamstresses that I have followed in this book, bringing together memories of work and agonistic politics.
The book is a component in a wider assemblage of writing genealogies of some seamstresses who shook the world on both sides of the Atlantic during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It draws on archival research in the Bibliothque Historique De la Ville de Paris and the New York Public Library. I want to express my gratitude to their librarians and archivists for generously supporting my work and for giving me permission to quote from the Fonds Jeanne Bouvier and Rose Pesottas and Fannia Mary Cohns Papers. I also want to thank the University of East London for supporting my research in Paris and New York through two small grants in 2011 and 2013, as well as with a sabbatical leave in the spring of 2014. My colleagues and PhD students at the Centre for Narrative Research have been the intellectual community that has created conditions of possibility for the richness of the seamstresses storyworlds to emerge and unfold: I thank them all!
I cannot stop repeating how much the people I love have always supported me both materially, emotionally and intellectually. Thank you, Mihali, Ariagni and Anna. Phoning my mum from Paris to tell her that I was thinking of you today while reading Bouviers papers is the sweetest memory I keep from writing a book about the seamstresses labour and struggles.
