Is Academic Feminism Dead?: Theory in Practice

401 Pages·2000·0.85 MB·English

by  The Social Justice Group

Is Academic Feminism Dead?

Is Academic Feminism Dead?
Theory in Practice
edited by
The Social Justice Group at The Center
for Advanced Feminist Studies,
University of Minnesota
a
New York University Press
new york and london
new york university press
New York and London
© 2000 by New York University
All rights reserved
Chapter 5 has been reprinted from Akhil Gupta and James Fergu-
son, eds., Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a
Field Science,courtesy of the University of California Press.
© 1997 The Regents of the University of California.
Chapter 13 has been reprinted from Joanna Kadi, Thinking Class:
Sketches from a Cultural Worker,by permission of
South End Press. © 1996.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Is academic feminism dead? : theory in practice / edited by
The Social Justice Group at The Center for Advanced
Feminist Studies, University of Minnesota.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8147-2705-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 0-8147-2704-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Feminist theory. 2. Feminism and education.
3. Women’s studies. I. University of Minnesota.
Social Justice Group. II. Title.
HQ1190 .I76 2000
305.42'01—dc21 00-009147
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
part i Theory Binds: The Perils of Retrofit 5
1 Retrofit: Gender, Cultural, and Class Exclusions in
American Studies 8
VèVè A. Clark
2 Ethnocentrism/Essentialism: The Failure of the
Ontological Cure 47
Marilyn Frye
3 Maternal Presumption: The Personal Politics of
Reproductive Rights 61
Alice Adams
4 Sex, Gender, and Same-Sex Marriage 86
Peggy Pascoe
part ii Storytelling: Sites of Empowerment, Sites
of Exploitation 131
5 The Virtual Anthropologist 137
Kath Weston
6 How History Matters: Complicating the Categories
of “Western” and “Non-Western” Feminisms 168
Mrinalini Sinha
7 Bringing It All Home to the Bacon: APh.D.
(Packinghouse Daughter) Examines Her Legacy 187
Cheri Register
v
vi Contents
8 Blood Ties and Blasphemy: American Indian
Women and the Problem of History 204
Kathryn Shanley
9 Ella Que Tiene Jefes y No Los Ve, Se Queda en Cueros:
Chicana Intellectuals (Re)Creating Revolution 233
Edén E. Torres
part iii Starting Here, Starting Now: Challenges
to Academic Practices 261
10 Being Queer, Being Black: Living Out in
Afro-American Studies 266
Rhonda M. Williams
11 Learning to Think and Teach about Race and
Gender despite Graduate School: Obstacles
Women of Color Graduate Students Face
in Sociology 283
Mary Romero
12 Anger, Resentment, and the Place of Mind
in Academia 311
Diana L. Vélez
13 Stupidity “Deconstructed” 327
Joanna Kadi
14 To Challenge Academic Individualism 347
Sharon Doherty
Editors and Contributors 375
Index 381
Acknowledgments
This anthology was made possible by the generous support of the
Rockefeller Foundation, which allowed us to bring many of the con-
tributors to this collection to the University of Minnesota campus as
visiting scholars and to hold the conference, Thinking, Writing, Teach-
ing, and Creating Social Justice. We also are grateful for the support
of the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies at the University of Min-
nesota. We further thank those individuals who contributed to this
project at various stages in its development, including Asha Vahara-
jadan, Brit Abel, Melissa Buchard, Lisa Disch, David Zopfi-Jordan,
and Lou Huckbody. A special thanks goes to Shannon Olson, who
demonstrated in uncountable ways her dedication to this project as
well as her editorial skills. We especially appreciate the many long
hours she spent preparing the manuscript for publication. Finally, we
thank the editorial staff at New York University Press, Despina Gim-
bel, Rosalie Morales Kearns, and Niko Pfund. We are grateful not
only for their insights and extraordinary efforts, but also the kindness
they showed us throughout the editing process.
vii

Introduction
Feminist struggles for social justice—against inequality, exclusionary
practices, political disenfranchisement, and economic exploitation—
are struggles of theory and practice. So when activists took feminism
into the university in the 1970s, our aim was to transform all three:
theory, practice, and the university. Feminists challenged the ten-
dency of those privileged by and in academia to claim knowledge
while remaining indifferent to those they ignored or objectified.
Today such willed ignorance is constantly challenged by feminists
and others both inside and outside the university who refuse to place
uncritical faith in conventional figures of authority, even (or espe-
cially) when we slide back into those old practices ourselves.
Scholars who do transgressive work look outside the university for
new sources of knowledge and experience, but we need to do more
than mine those sources for what they can contribute to our work.
More than new “material,” transgressive scholarship demands a
widened community of knowers and knowledge producers and de-
mocratic critical engagement among them. This collection of essays is
an effort to build such an exchange, in which, as María Lugones says,
a crucial aspect of respectful engagement is regarding the other as a
faithful mirror of the self—as giving back an image of oneself one has
to take seriously—but also as someone with projects and engage-
ments of her own.1
The collection includes authors who are differently located in their
relationships to the university, not just “inside” or “outside.” These
writers highlight the ways the university perpetuates exclusionary
practices: alienating working-class people and promoting a middle-
class ethic, demanding too much of its faculty of color, and blocking
attempts at learning social justice or at changing the system from
within. These writers demonstrate the ways a commitment to social
justice demands critical consciousness regarding one’s location; the
1