Hidden in the Archive of Gender and Science: The Agonistics of Knowledge and Learning

In this article the author looks at processes of becoming a woman philosopher and scientist in eighteenth-century Europe, by focusing on educational experiences, discourses and practices revolving around the Italian mathematician, scientist and philosopher Maria Gaetana Agnesi. The author uses the Arendtian notion of agonism as a lens through which she reads Agnesi's manuscripts at the Ambrosiana Biblioteca in Milan, by pointing to the non-discursive affects that these documents emanate. By tracing women mathematicians' historical emergence as subjects of knowledge, as well as creators of philosophy and culture, the author proposes a reconsideration of the history of women's science education as an agonistic process that has left traces in various archives of gender and science.