Vem provocerades och varför? Om receptionen av Karin Widerbergs Kunskapens kön

Abstract

The publication of Karin Widerbergs book The Gender of Knowledge started an unusually intense debate both inside and outside Academia. In the book the Norwegian professor of sociology Karin Widerberg analyses her own memories connected with gender, sexuality and the acquisition of knowledge and theorizes around such issues as niemory and subjectivity. Reviews contained praise or abuse both coached in highly emotional language, creating a polarized readership. This article tries to find explanations to this heated response through the means of a reception study. Thirty contributions, reviews as well as artides, have been studied, taking as a starting point Kjetil Korslund's review in Morgenbladet (Norway) The analysis shows that four themes recur: questions pertaining to theory of science and scientifie methods, university organisation, sexuality and language/ style. Arguments concerning these themes alone, however, do not explain the heated feelings found both in reviews and artides. One hypothesis put forward is that the Swedish context into which the publication of the Swedish version of Widerberg^ book took place promoted a very specific and touchy reading. The context was the publication and the reception of Ebba Witt Brattström's governmental report Gender, Pouier and the Challenge of Feminist Research in Higher Education (SOU 1995:110). A second hypothesis proposed is that Wiederberg in her concrete and sensual narratives of her memories both gråtes on our patriarchal ways of perceiving relations between men and women and breaks a tacit rule among women not to bring out their private experiences into the public area that an academic book constitutes. Whatever might be behind the polarized readings of Widerberg^ book its reception gives rise to important questions for todavs feminism.