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Newsletter 33: News from National Committees: Switzerland

Over 300 speakers and participants from Switzerland and abroad met at the 11th Swiss Congress of Women Historians. Size and reception of the congress were a success. The conference, organized by undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Zurich, centered on the topic "Experience: Just a discourse?". The terms "experience" and "discourse" hence circled in various and manifold forms through the conference rooms: sometimes touched on tangentially, sometimes discussed as focal point of theory development in the field of history. The dichotomous representation of the terms "experience" and "discourse" turned out to be a challenge. It was not always possible to fruitfully overcome the conception of these two terms as opposing elements of subjective experience vs. deterministic discourse.

Especially Kathleen Canning criticized dualistic perspectives, not only with regard to discourse and experience. Canning presented the US debate on experience and discourse following the linguistic turn. Through the linguistic turn the term "discourse" has become an unquestionable category, the term "experience" has recently been elevated to a similar status. Canning warned that experiences should not be idealized. Although it may be difficult to gain evidence of the experience of those who do not write their own history, these histories are to be written and digested with the uncertainties that remain.

Barbara Duden's presentation looked at experience from a different angle: she is concerned with exposing and verbalizing the corporal experience of the human body, which is being distorted by today's medical sciences. Duden's statement during the discussion that "What did not come through the senses, is not in the mind" showed that, despite Canning's criticism, dichotomies are still leading. Duden used a complex terminology to show how the "historical somatology" can, through "heartfelt listening", make the experiences of the body accessible. The audience criticized Duden's romantic view of a holistic corporal experience.

Moving from corporal experience to the definition of experience, Ute Daniel dedicated her presentation to the latter topic. Experiences are situational interpretations, that can be explained but not defined, and which require the existence of a person capable of acting. Experience results from the interaction between subject and object and is insofar structured narratively, and neither subjective or authentic nor discursive. Daniel seemed to be moving against a discourse-deterministic or authentic-subjective definition of experience at the same time. She pointed out an important observation: the existence of a gender-specific imbalance in living and narrating experience. Until recently, women did not realize their experiences as meaningful or important events.

During the course of the ensuing workshops, several other definitions and aspects of "experience" - which were not covered in the main presentations - were discussed, for example the psychoanalytical term of a repressed, difficult-to-articulate experience.

To round out the program and to fulfil the aspiration of a complete gender history, one of the main presentations was dedicated to the history of men. Martin Dinges discussed the "manhood" in terms of cultural constructions. The history of men analyses men in relative gender constellations. Of particular interest are hierarchies, especially among men. Dinges suggests an analysis of different kinds of manhood with an approach of structural history looking at labor, the role in the house and homosociality in parallel.

Following the workshops on gender history related to experience and discourse, panel discussions on science policy were held. On Friday, the discussion centered on strategies and problems of growth and development of young talents in academia. Graduate and post-doctoral students are often not fully recognized as serious researchers, despite the fact that about 60% of the scientific research at Swiss universities is done by that group of academics.

Marianne Hänsler, Zurich / translated by Stephan Bosshart