Gender and genius Book

Christine Battersby's 1989 book Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics is described as a history, but reads more as a polemic. Battersby, currently a Reader Emerita in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, considers the concept of genius in the literary and visual arts. Battersby's focus seems to lie in the origins of modern thinking about genius in the eighteenth century and the shift in emphasis in the Romantic period, but the author extends the examination of the concept back to classical Greek and Roman thinking, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and up to late twentieth-century postmodernism. Much of the book is spent arguing what Battersby terms "cultural misogyny" (23) related to the idea of genius; the writer poses that argument against major thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle, to Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, Freud and Jung, as well as Derrida and Foucault. There is even argument against other feminists, including Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, and Cixous, among others.

For this reader, Battersby's adversarial stance overwhelms any hope of resolution or reconstitution in aesthetic theory. The writer reckons the idea of genius as misogynous, but does not want to let go of the idea of genius. Nor does the critic want to diminish the role of the author or artist, even though that would at least to deflect the problems with gender and genius. Although the book makes claims against essentialism (154), it appears to focus much more on sexuality (female/male) rather than gender (feminine/masculine). Further, the book seems to argue against an androgynous aesthetic, declaring clearly: "A feminist aesthetics should not be post-patriarchal; it should be anti-patriarchal" (148). Does that mean substituting misandry for misogyny? And where does that leave aesthetics?

As the title indicates, Battersby puts gender before genius, and both before aesthetics. That makes the book not such a good read for someone hoping for more understanding about beauty and art. [Posted to Goodreads 7 December 2016.]