Calling Cards: Theory and Practice in the Study of Race, Gender, and Culture

Chapter 9: Questioning Our Methodological Metaphors

Chapter 9 Questioning Our Methodological Metaphors Barbara E. L’Eplattenier Of all the artifacts I saw in the Vassar archives, the calling cards enchanted me the most. Stiffened pieces of paper three-fourths of an inch by two inches, they were embossed or printed with the names of the women I was researching. When I held them in my hands, they seemed to embody tradition and refinement, elegance and grace, a gentler, slower way of life—a symbol of the middle-class lifestyle during the Progressive Era. Small, disposable, and static, they were a transient, fleeting way to show that you had come to call and left quietly. I adored them. As a historian, though, calling cards do not represent what I do. I don’t simply come to call and leave quietly. Instead, I come with a radical agenda: to “shape the future by telling over more precise stories of the past” (Kerber 310). I am a historian because I want to make a difference, the same way, I suspect, many of the contributors in this collection feel. Our interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and multidisciplinary historical work is our contribution to social justice and change. When I research and construct a history, I do so out of desire to make the world a better place through historical representation. My point here is not to criticize, but to remind us that metaphors are powerful tools—especially metaphors used to conceptualize the methods by which we carry out our work. They carry implications, possibilities, and limitations for the way in which we conduct historical research; our biases, known and unknown, are reflected within them. 133 134 Barbara E. L’Eplattenier In this chapter, I want to examine the implications and limitations of the prevailing metaphor of historical methodology in rhetoric and composition—that of the map as a guide. One source of this metaphor is Cheryl Glenn’s 1995 Rhetorical Review article, “Remapping Rhetorical Territory.” She begins the essay by saying: Until recently, we could pull out a neatly folded history of rhetoric out of our glove compartment, unfold it, and navigate our course through the web of lines that connected the principal centers of rhetoric. . . . Now we are turning to a new map, or rather, to new, often partially completed maps that reflect and coordinate our current institutional, intellectual , political, and personal values. (287) These new maps are “created” by viewing the terrain from different angles, using different lenses to see what emerges in the landscape, a strategy that has been extremely fruitful for our field. My own work on female writing program administrators working at Vassar during the turn of the century developed as a result of overlaying multiple maps to see what appeared (L’Eplattenier). The results were impressive: previously blank landscapes suddenly became populated with people. Satisfied with what I found, I didn’t question my methodology much; it was fairly transparent. But Rose Schneiderman changed all that for me. During the Progressive Era (1890–1920), Rose Schneiderman, along with her colleagues Clara Lemlich and Pauline Newman, worked to organize unions in sweatshops, eliminate human rights violations within the workplace, and help women obtain political power in the form of the vote. All three were Yiddish-speaking, Jewish immigrants from Russia who went to work in New York sweatshops in their teens to help support their families, and all had been exposed to socialist and Marxist ideas early in their lives. The stark material conditions and inhumane treatment of workers, combined with the women’s socialist leanings and a desire to improve life for working women, turned them into lifelong union organizers and advocates for the laboring class. From their writings, it is easy to see what motivated them. According to Pauline Newman, Most of these so-called factories were located in old wooden walkups with rickety stairs, splintered and sagging floors. The few windows were never washed and their broken panes were mended with cardboard. . . . In the winter a stove stood in 135 Questioning Our Methodological Metaphors the middle of the floor, a concession to the need for heat, but its warmth rarely reached the workers seated near the windows. During the summer months the constant burning of gas jets added their unwelcome heat and smell to an atmosphere already intolerably humid and oppressive. . . . There was no drinking water available. . . . Dirt, smells, and vermin were as much a part of the...