More than Paradoxes to Offer: Feminist History as Critical Practice

Book reviewed in this article:
Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man By Joan Wallach Scott     

Crimes of reason, crimes of passion: suicide and the adulterous woman in nineteenth-century France

The anxieties that determined the nineteenth-century French obsession with female behavior found symbolic expression in the adulterous and suicidal woman. We see this clearly in novels where both adultery and suicide feature prominently, but the anxiety these themes provoked was not limited to works of fiction. A striking number of moral essays and medical studies were devoted to the subject of feminine nature during this period, and it is here especially that the dangerous tendencies of independent and sexually active women were revealed. By analyzing the literary representation of the suicidal and adulterous woman in the works of male and female writer alongside the theories of physicians, critics, and moral reformers, the author demonstrates how this image came to symbolize much more than the violation of ethical standards. In literature as in life, unconventional women needed to be severely punished lest their defiant attitudes inspire further acts of rebellion.     

Diderot: Les Dernières Années, 1770–84

This article provides an account of the Enlightenment dispute over hermeneutical skepticism with particular reference to the idea of hermeneutical probability in the philosophical work of Christian August Crusius. The essay sheds new light on the hermeneutical issues addressed in the philosophical school of the so-called Thomasians based mainly in Leipzig in the first half of the eighteenth century (inter alia Rüdiger, Hoffmann, and Crusius). The paper deals with Crusius’ wide-ranging efforts to cope with the uncertain character of most parts of human knowledge and his attempts to construct a workable theory of hermeneutical probability. This raises points of central interest relating to probabilism in the methodology of textual interpretation and connects Crusius to contemporary discussions of hermeneutical skepticism.     

Do online newspapers promote or undermine nation‐building in divided societies? Evidence from Africa

Seminal contributions to the study of nation‐building emphasized the role of newspapers in the development of national consciousness. But do such theories apply in the modern context of online news sites, especially in diverse, postcolonial societies? Because online news sites contain forums for reader comments, this provides an opportunity to assess the relationship between exposure to media content and citizen sentiments. We investigate the extent to which a major online news site makes ethnic categories salient in sub‐Saharan Africa's largest country, Nigeria. Analysing more than 35,000 news articles and 300,000 comments, we find that commenters frequently broadcast strong expressions of subnational ethnic animus in response to a wide variety of stories. In particular, the use of some ethnic categories in headlines is associated with more than 40 percentage point increase in the probability of at least one reader making an ethnic‐based comment. Extending the analysis to South Africa, we show that these patterns generalize beyond Nigeria. By amplifying ethnic animus, ‘national’ newspapers may impede nation‐building efforts.