The Concept of a Female Genius: Reflexion on Christine Battersby’s Gender and Genius

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Philosophy - Practical (Ethics, Aesthetics, Culture, Nature, Right, …), grade: 1,0, University of Vienna (Philosophie), course: Feministische AEsthetik, language: English, abstract: In the following paper I am going to present Christine Battersby’s text Gender and Genius, her methodes and goals, occuring critics and problems. The main problem is the question: Do we need the concept of a female genius? After Battersby’s historical research about the concept of the male genius in history (especially in the history of art and literature) she points out, that she wants to invent a new concept of genius. After her demonstration that genius had definitly a clear male connotation, she doest’t want to skip the notion genius but she wants to redefine it. She wants to invent the concept of a female genius. In paragraphe 2 I am going to point out some results of Battersby’s work, that show why women were excluded for such a long time from any form of art production. In paragraphe 3 I try to explain with Battersby how and why women accepted this exclusion sometimes and how they tried to resist and to fight back this kind of misogyny. Paragraphe 4 should answer the question why Battersby’s new concept of genius is called a female genius, while paragraphe 5 wants to bring in some arguments against the separation and categorization into female/feminine and male/masculine concept. The last paragraphe contains also a very short conclusion and my own point of view.