What is it about?
This book chapter examines the specific characteristics of diaries kept by women during the Second World war for Mass Observation, the social research organisation founded in 1937. The diaries, including those of Nella Last and Naomi Mitchison are discussed in the broader context of the history of Mass Observation and the self-reflexive modernist ideas of the time.
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Why is it important?
The central logic of Mass Observation, that everyone acts as both observer and subject of others’ observations, generated a complex level of reflexivity for these public diarists such that every observation of another would always be in some way an observation of oneself and so, therefore, the divisive boundaries between people – between classes, between genders – became potentially open to dissolving, as is illustrated by quotation from some of the diaries. Especially when taken together, the diaries illustrate what might be termed ‘intersubjective autobiography’, concurrently projecting both an individual and a collective sense of self reflexivity that can be linked to a historical sense of agency.
Perspectives
It was a pleasure to be able to write about some of my favourite Mass-Observation wartime diaries, such as those of 'Muriel Green' and 'Lillian Rogers' (pseudonyms that will be familiar to those who have read other publications about the mass-Observation diaries) in this context and alongside the diary of Naomi Mitchison, who is one of the writers I most admire and indispensably one of the key cultural figures of 20th century Britain.
Dr Nick Hubble
Brunel University
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This page is a summary of: Documenting lives: Mass Observation, women's diaries, and everyday modernity, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/cbo9781139939799.024.
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