Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s

In the 1730s, there were many doubts about the nature of heat and fire. In view of this, the Academy of Sciences in Paris proposed a prize for the dissertation that brought a solution to this issue. In a context in which women's education was directed solely at the domestic sphere, Marquise Émi...

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Main Authors: Jaene Guimarães Pereira, Ana Paula Bispo Silva
Format: Article
Language:Portuguese
Published: Associação Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências (ABRAPEC) 2023-10-01
Series:Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências
Subjects:
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author Jaene Guimarães Pereira
Ana Paula Bispo Silva
author_facet Jaene Guimarães Pereira
Ana Paula Bispo Silva
author_sort Jaene Guimarães Pereira
collection DOAJ
description In the 1730s, there were many doubts about the nature of heat and fire. In view of this, the Academy of Sciences in Paris proposed a prize for the dissertation that brought a solution to this issue. In a context in which women's education was directed solely at the domestic sphere, Marquise Émilie du Châtelet submitted her Dissertation on the nature and propagation of Fire and overcame the obstacles that limited women's participation in Science. Academia managed to prevent her physical presence, but her name and her ideas transcended the barriers of the Enlightenment and the determinist thought of that period, and she became a recognized, published and recommended woman. In this work, we present this character and an analysis of her work on Fire. In order to do so, this research relied mostly on bibliographical information, which implied the search and analysis of primary, secondary and tertiary sources for the study of Du Châtelet’s Dissertation. For the analysis of primary and secondary sources, we relied on a poststructuralist feminist perspective for the understanding of the marquise's role in her time. In this way, in a poststructuralist feminist reading, the marquise is an example that there are no biological, structural and temporal limits that justify the ideological barriers used to essentially support the participation of women in scientific fields. The fact of being a woman was decisive for her historiographic erasure, denouncing a deliberate choice made by men during centuries of exclusion and silencing of women.
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spelling doaj.art-0fafc354a3a940d298c5885b60d7e8fe2023-11-20T00:21:37ZporAssociação Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências (ABRAPEC)Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências1984-26862023-10-0123u127https://doi.org/10.28976/1984-2686rbpec2023u955981Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’sJaene Guimarães Pereira0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4608-7506Ana Paula Bispo Silva1https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8465-0614Universidade Estadual da ParaíbaUniversidade Estadual da ParaíbaIn the 1730s, there were many doubts about the nature of heat and fire. In view of this, the Academy of Sciences in Paris proposed a prize for the dissertation that brought a solution to this issue. In a context in which women's education was directed solely at the domestic sphere, Marquise Émilie du Châtelet submitted her Dissertation on the nature and propagation of Fire and overcame the obstacles that limited women's participation in Science. Academia managed to prevent her physical presence, but her name and her ideas transcended the barriers of the Enlightenment and the determinist thought of that period, and she became a recognized, published and recommended woman. In this work, we present this character and an analysis of her work on Fire. In order to do so, this research relied mostly on bibliographical information, which implied the search and analysis of primary, secondary and tertiary sources for the study of Du Châtelet’s Dissertation. For the analysis of primary and secondary sources, we relied on a poststructuralist feminist perspective for the understanding of the marquise's role in her time. In this way, in a poststructuralist feminist reading, the marquise is an example that there are no biological, structural and temporal limits that justify the ideological barriers used to essentially support the participation of women in scientific fields. The fact of being a woman was decisive for her historiographic erasure, denouncing a deliberate choice made by men during centuries of exclusion and silencing of women.women and scienceémilie du châteletnature of fire
spellingShingle Jaene Guimarães Pereira
Ana Paula Bispo Silva
Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências
women and science
émilie du châtelet
nature of fire
title Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
title_full Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
title_fullStr Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
title_full_unstemmed Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
title_short Women and the Sciences: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis of the Marquise du Châtelet’s
title_sort women and the sciences a feminist poststructuralist analysis of the marquise du chatelet s
topic women and science
émilie du châtelet
nature of fire
work_keys_str_mv AT jaeneguimaraespereira womenandthesciencesafeministpoststructuralistanalysisofthemarquiseduchatelets
AT anapaulabisposilva womenandthesciencesafeministpoststructuralistanalysisofthemarquiseduchatelets