I don’t write a post for each publication I do, but I believe this deserves one. Its potential outreach goes far beyond my usual circles and it is a topic of interest which has caused a lot of ink to flow. But sadly, in my opinion, no-one has ever done justice to this topic. Three years ago, I was involved in a project with scientific grounds but a view toward public history (including publications for non-specialists) – the best kind of project. I was asked to paint a small history of women fighting according to an investigation of the fight books. This topic was close to my heart for many years, but I never managed to write a good piece on the subject. Beware English readers, the original publication is in French – but if I find time (and maybe support of one of you readers), I’ll publish an English translation in a journal. Perhaps it will even be an extended version?
The Book
The book is massive, containing 15 illustrated chapters published by one of the top French publishing houses. It’s edited by Martial Poirson (Professor of Theatre Studies in Paris). He managed to assemble an impressive multidisciplinary team of top authors in order to produce a new history of feminine violence in the West. Nor is this simply another project focusing on the victimisation of women as a result of violence, or re-telling the same old dubious stories about women and violence. No, instead this is a new investigation about women who were involved in violent situations, including those who inflicted violence. This new investigation also focuses on the stories of ‘ordinary’ women disfigured by generations of historical discourse, as opposed to dealing only with well-known figures. Is it a sometimes disturbing (and hopefully mind-blowing) history, dealing with new readings and approaches to the past, and this new book is not there just to illustrate previous poor historical discourses, but to add to it with detailed comments on images (i.e. their production, use and reception).
There may be some readers who, understandably, may be worried that this publication is another example of history produced by men for men about women. This is not the case at all; Martial and I are two of three men involved in this adventure, and the rest of the book is composed of chapters written by women, incredible women I might add.
Caption of one page of the chapter. Read the full chapter here
My chapter in a nutshell
As anyone familiar with the fight books will already know, there are examples of illustrations of women performing martial techniques in the late medieval fight books. There are not many of them, but there they are. This female presence disappeared in the Renaissance, and women combatants were mostly made invisible in the genre by men up to the late nineteenth century. Women then re-appear in the early twentieth-century fight books, at which point they not only feature again in fight books, but also author them. In this piece, I explore the reasons behind these presences and absences, while searching for the women fighting in other kinds of documents when they are no longer on the pages of the fight books. I hope you will enjoy the read as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Bonus track (sadly not included in the publication, I was limited in space!). The self-defence techniques for women on bicycle in the early twentieth century. Here performed at Dreynevent 2017 in Vienna with my friends Erle, Billy, and Valentine 😉 4:26 video.