Geleerdengenialogie versus de biografie in gender- en wetenschapsstudies

Recently, a Dutch critic judged in a very negative way about the genre of biography as it has developed in the Netherlands. His argument, however, could have profited from the way biography has been discussed and experimented with in the context of women and gender studies. Questions regarding the role of (auto)biography in creating the modern story of 'autonomous man' who earned his fame in the public world, made women historians discuss whether the genre was fit for women as subjects. This debate resulted in a reflexive approach to the genre and a conscious handling of authorship, objectivity and subjectivity. In this article, it is shown that scientific biography has hardly profited from such insights. There is still a strong tendency to consider the biography of a scientist as part of a linear story of science as a succession of brilliant men. As an example, the recent biography of Dijksterhuis is analysed.

The main part of the article describes how form and function of the biography of women scientists have evolved from the rehabilitation of (forgotten) women to a thoroughly 'socialised' and contextualised history of women in science. In the latter, initially women tended to disappear behind the structural barriers and collective patterns of exclusion which these (collective) biographies allowed to discover. The emphasis on gender as a social and symbolic ordering principle, however, brought back the biography as 'case study', offering a specific perspective on the (discursive) relation between women, gender and science. Finally, it is argued that new developments in scientific biography (of men) - towards a more relational and social perspective on science - could profit from gender studies and the studies of gender and science because of its reflection on the nature of biography as well as for its insights in science as a social process.