To love all that pleases: Autobiography, dialectic, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1919--1939

This dissertation explores concepts of individuality articulated in autobiographical texts written by women who were members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) during the years between the two world wars. It argues that these texts demonstrate a diaiecticism that characterized the philosophy and practice of the WILPF, that provided the basis for that organization's activism during the interwar years, and that resonated with the philosophy of the Frankfurt School. Chapter One draws on the records of the WILPF's international congresses to show that the organization shared the Frankfurt School's commitment to dialectical thinking, to emancipatory social change, and to the integration of theory and practice. The chapter argues further that WILPF members developed a concept of resilient and autonomous selfhood that allowed them, in contrast to the Frankfurt School philosophers, to maintain a dialectic between theory and practice, and thus to take political action. Chapter Two traces patterns of dialectical thinking through sixteen WILPF autobiographies, focusing on their authors' interrogations of the categories of gender, class, and religious affiliation. WILPF autobiographers blurred but did not completely abandon the distinctions-male/female, bourgeoisie/proletariat, religion/reason-on which these categories were founded. Rather, they incorporated elements of each into their lives, striving to avoid the tragedy of choosing one good over another, to love all that pleased them even when doing so appeared illogical. The following three chapters are case studies of autobiographies written by WILPF members Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Lida Gustava Heymann and Anita Augspurg (a joint autobiography), and Mary Church Terrell. Supplementing close readings of these texts with analysis of relevant archival material and of the cultural paradigms within which their authors lived and worked, the three case study chapters explore in depth these women's pursuit of dialectical approaches to the tensions that structure their texts, paying particular attention to the ways in which their concepts of selfhood influenced that pursuit and, specifically, their relationships with the WILPF. These three narratives, like other WILPF autobiographies, amply illustrate the difficulty of the project that WILPF members pursued, and the magnitude of their achievement in persisting nevertheless.