Joan Scott in Boston 50 Review:
“The personal is the political” was a reality for me long before it became the mantra of Second Wave feminism in the United States. In 1951, when I was ten years old, my father, Samuel Wallach, a New York City high school teacher, was suspended from his job for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into communism in the public schools. He was fired for insubordination two years later—one of some 350 teachers who were fired or resigned in those years.
The history of my family was deeply affected by that event. I learned early about the intrusive operations of state power in the daily routines of domestic life: there were unexpected visits from the FBI, subpoenas served, telephones tapped, subversive books wrapped in brown paper and stuffed in the back of closets, hushed conversations (in Yiddish, the household language of secrecy) between my parents. On the day of my father’s firing, when he called to report the news, I overheard my mother “congratulate” him in an ironic tone, her voice catching, tears in her eyes. I understood, in the way children do, the complexity of her response, without fully grasping the details. For years, we all breathed a general air of anxiety.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.