Transatlantic conversations : feminism as travelling theory 9780754678359, 0754678350, 9780754696513, 0754696510

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TRANSATLANTIC CONVERSATIONS

The Feminist Imagination – Europe and Beyond Series Editors: Kathy Davis, Utrecht University, The Netherlands and Mary Evans, London School of Economics, UK With a specific focus on the notion of ‘cultural translation’ and ‘travelling theory’, this series operates on the assumption that ideas are shaped by the contexts in which they emerge, as well as by the ways that they ‘travel’ across borders and are received and re-articulated in new contexts. In demonstrating the complexity of the differences (and similarities) in feminist thought throughout Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world, the books in this series highlight the ways in which intellectual and political traditions, often read as homogeneous, are more often heterogeneous. It therefore provides a forum for the latest work that engages with the European experience, illuminating the various exchanges (from the USA as well as Europe) that have informed European feminism. The series thus allows for an international discussion about the history and imaginary of Europe from perspectives within and outside Europe, examining not only Europe’s colonial legacy, but also the various forms of ‘cultural imperialism’ that have shaped societies outside Europe. Considering aspects of Europe ‘abroad’ as well as Europe ‘at home’, this series is committed to publishing work that reveals the central and continued importance of the genealogy of feminist ideas to feminism and all those interested in questions of gender. Also in this series Framing Intersectionality Debates on a Multi-Faceted Concept in Gender Studies Edited by Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa Herrera Vivar and Linda Supik ISBN 978-1-4094-1898-6 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-4094-1899-3 (pbk)

Transatlantic Conversations Feminism as Travelling Theory

Edited by KATHY DAVIS Utrecht University, The Netherlands MARY EVANS London School of Economics, UK

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Kathy Davis and Mary Evans 2011 Kathy Davis and Mary Evans have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Transatlantic conversations : feminism as travelling theory. -- (The feminist imagination Europe and beyond) 1. Feminist theory--Europe--History. 2. Feminist theory-- United States--History. 3. Feminism--Cross-cultural studies. I. Series II. Davis, Kathy, 1949- III. Evans, Mary, 1946305.4'2'094-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davis, Kathy, 1949Transatlantic conversations : feminism as travelling theory / by Kathy Davis and Mary Evans. p. cm. -- (The feminist imagination : Europe and beyond) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7835-9 (hardback) 1. Feminism--United States--History. 2. Feminism--Europe--History. 3. Sex role--History. 4. Gender identity--History. I. Evans, Mary, 1946- II. Title. HQ1150.D38 2011 305.4209--dc22 2011005826 ISBN 9780754678359 (hbk)

Contents

Notes on Contributors Introduction – Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism as Travelling Theory Kathy Davis and Mary Evans PART I BECOMING A FEMINIST IN A TRANSATLANTIC CONTEXT 1 A Feminist Transatlantic Education Sarah Franklin 2 Crossings Clare Hemmings 3 My Father, an Agent of State Feminism and Other Unrelatable Conversations Gul Ozyegin 4 Bridging Different Gaps: East, West, Europe and the USA? Andrea Pető PART II ACTIVISM: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ACADEMY 5 Re-narrating Feminist Stories: Black British Women and Transatlantic Feminisms Ann Phoenix 6 Floating Signifiers and Fluid Identities: Feminist and Other Queer Travels renée c. hoogland 7 Writing in the Dark: Reflections on Becoming a Feminist Kelly Coate 8 Is there a Feminist in this Class? Academic Feminism and its Generations across the Atlantic Veronica Pravadelli 9 Chronos and Knowledge: A Target of the Feminist Agenda Today Maria Antonieta García De León

10 Passages to Feminism: Encounters and Rearticulations Christina Scharff PART III THEORETICAL ENGAGEMENTS 11 There are Many Transatlantics: Homonationalism, Homotransnationalism and Feminist– Queer–Trans of Colour Theories and Practices Paola Bacchetta and Jin Haritaworn 12 “Often What’s Not Said is Just as Important as What Is”: Transnational Feminist Encounters Carolyn Pedwell 13 On Not Engaging with What’s Right in Front of Us: Or Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Reading Women’s Writing Gabriele Griffin 14 Visions of Legacy: Legacies of Vision Gail Lewis 15 Feminist Travels: A Historical and Textual Journey Nancy A. Naples 16 Constellations – Conversations: Three Stories Gudrun-Axeli Knapp Epilogue Index

Notes on Contributors

Paola Bacchetta is Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Her PhD in sociology is from the Sorbonne, Paris. Her areas of research are transnational feminist and queer theories; queer of colour and decolonial queer theory; the inseparability of gender, sexuality, “race”-racism and postcoloniality; Hindu nationalism; political conflict; and feminist, queer and right-wing activisms in India, France and the USA. Her publications include: La construction des identités dans les discours nationalistes hindou: le Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh et la Rashtra Sevika Samiti, 1939–1992 (2 vols, micro-fiche; Lille: ANRT, Université de Lille III, 1996); Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologists (Women Unlimited, 2003); a co-edited anthology with Latin Americanist historian Margaret Power entitled Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists around the World (Routledge, 2002); and numerous journal articles and book chapters published in the USA, France, India, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Britain and Australia. Kelly Coate is a lecturer in higher education at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She began researching the higher education context during her PhD on the history of women’s studies as an academic subject area in the UK. She worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London for a number of years and moved to Galway in 2007. She researches and publishes on various aspects of higher education policy and practice, including globalization, gender, curriculum and the links between teaching and research. She is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Education Policy and an international advisor to the journal Gender and Education. Kathy Davis is Senior Researcher at the Institute of History and Culture at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and has held visiting chairs and research fellowships at Wellesley College, Columbia University, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University (USA) as well as the Maria Jahoda Chair for International Women’s Studies at Bochum University in Germany. Her publications include Reshaping the Female Body (Routledge, 1995), Dubious Equalities and Embodied Differences (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), The Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies (Sage, 2006) with Mary Evans and Judith Lorber, and The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders (Duke University Press, 2007). She is co-editor of The European Journal of Women’s Studies. Mary Evans taught sociology and women’s studies at the University of Kent from 1971 to 2007, where she was part of the group that set up the first UK MA in Women’s Studies. Her work has been primarily concerned with feminist readings of narrative literature, not the least important of which is feminist theory itself. Most recently she has published a study of detective fiction, The Imagination of Evil, and she hopes to begin a study of the gendered dynamic of class relations in the UK, provisionally titled Middlemarch Revisited.

Sarah Franklin is at present Professor of the Social Studies of Medicine and Associate Director of the BIOSS Centrre at the London School of Economics. She has written and edited 15 books on reproductive and genetic technologies and her most recent work has focussed on IVF research. A new book, entitled Biological Relatives: Substance, Interiority and the Genealogical Frontier will be published shortly. Maria Antonia García De León is Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Education, at the University Complutense in Madrid. She publishes in the field of Gender Sociology, Sociology of Cinema and Sociology of Education. She has conducted research on female elites in Spain, especially focused on the collective of highly qualified women (entrepreneurs, engineers, policies, professors, academics). In addition to her numerous articles, she has published the following books: Discriminated Elites (1994), Heirs and Wounded (2002), Illustrated-Rebel Women (2008) and Anthropologists and Sociologists (2009). She has also received the European Award Rene Descartes for the collective work Gendering Elites (2002). Gabriele Griffin holds the Anniversary Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of York, UK. Her research centres on women’s studies as a discipline, and on women’s contemporary cultural production. She is co-founding editor of the journal Feminist Theory (Sage), and editor of the “Research Methods in the Arts and Humanities” series of Edinburgh University Press. She has coordinated a number of multi-partner, large-scale EU-funded research projects including on “Integrated Research Methods in the Social Sciences and Humanities” (2004– 2007) and “Women’s Studies, Women’s Employment and Equal Opportunities 1945–2001” (2001–2003). Jin Haritaworn is Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies Fellow and works intellectually, politically and creatively at the nexus of critical race, gender and sexuality theory. Current interests include transnational sexuality studies, neoliberal citizenship, feminist/queer/trans of colour theories, queer necropolitics, homonationalism, affect and intimate publics, transgression and assimilation, Thai diaspora and mixed race, critiques of the trafficking paradigm, and other multi-issue theorizing. Work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals, including Social Justice, Sexualities, European Journal of Cultural Studies, European Journal of Women’s Studies and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and a monograph on sexual citizenship, gentrification and militarization is forthcoming in the Pluto series “Decolonial Studies, Postcolonial Horizons”. Clare Hemmings is Reader in Feminist Theory and current Director of the Gender Institute at LSE. She is interested in the various lives of feminist theory and sexuality studies: what theory does rather than what it purports to describe. She is the author of Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (2011) and Bisexual Spaces (2002), and the editor of ‘Transforming Academies’, special issue for Feminist Review (2010). She is a member of the Feminist Review Collective.

renée c. hoogland is an Associate Professor of English at Wayne State University in Detroit, where she teaches cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, visual culture, and critical theory. She is the author of Elizabeth Bowen: A Reputation in Writing (1994) and Lesbian Configurations (1997), and has published widely on feminist and queer theory, psychoanalysis, popular culture, visual arts, and Anglo-American literature. hoogland is currently working on a book entitled A Violent Embrace, on visual arts and aesthetic experience post-representation. Gudrun-Axeli Knapp is a Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany. From 1999 until 2009 she was the Director of the Interdisciplinary Programme in Gender Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy. She has published articles on feminist issues in various journals and books and has edited and co-authored several books on developments in international feminist theory, recently with a focus on social theory and interlocking structures of inequality and dominance. Gail Lewis is Reader in Identities and Psychosocial Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University, UK. She is also co-editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies (with Kathy Davis). She has researched the making of gendered and racialized subject positions in welfare discourses and practices. Her current preoccupations focus on the intersecting psychic, social and cultural processes through which subjectivity is constituted, especially in relation to racialized and gendered experience. She traces the multiple and contradictory social and psychic emotional geographies of affiliation and belonging that are inscribed in narratives of experience in various situated contexts, including those of organizations. Recent publications include “Birthing Racial Difference: Conversations with my Mother and Others” (2009), Studies in the Maternal, 1; “Animating Hatreds: Research Encounters, Organizational Secrets, Emotional Truths” (Routledge, 2009) in Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process, edited by Roisin Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill; “Reading Obama: Collective Responsibility and the Politics of Tears” (SUNY, 2010, with M. Jacqui Alexander and Gloria Wekker), in Who Shall be First? Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign, edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnnetta Betch-Cole. Nancy A. Naples is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches courses on feminist theory; feminist methodologies; gender, politics and the state; and sexual citizenship. She is author of Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis and Activist Scholarship (Routledge, 2003) and Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work and the War on Poverty (Routledge, 1998); she is editor of Community Activism and Feminist Politics: Organizing Across Race, Class, and Gender (Routledge, 1998); and co-editor of Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles with Transnational Politics (with Manisha Desai, Routledge, 2002); Teaching Feminist Activism (with Karen Bojar, Routledge, 2002) and The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossing and Mexican Immigrant Men by Lionel Cantú (with Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, New York University Press, 2009). Her research has been published in numerous

books and journals including International Feminist Journal of Politics; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Gender & Society; Women & Politics; Social Politics; and Feminist Economics. Gul Ozyegin is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the College of William and Mary, Virginia, USA and a former fellow (2006–2007) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the author of Untidy Gender: Domestic Service in Turkey (Temple University Press, 2001). Her recent research lies at the intersections of the sociology of gender and generations. She is currently finishing a book on the gender and sexual identities of young Turks born amid the social transformations of the 1980s. Carolyn Pedwell is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University. She is the author of Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge, 2010). Her work has also been published in Feminist Theory, Feminist Review and Body and Society. Her current research focuses on the transnational politics of empathy. Andrea Petö is an Associate Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University, where she is teaching courses on social and cultural history of Europe. Her books include: Women in Hungarian Politics 1945–1951 (Columbia University Press/East European Monographs New York, 2003), Geschlecht, Politik und Stalinismus in Ungarn. Eine Biographie von Júlia Rajk. Studien zur Geschichte Ungarns, Bd. 12 (Gabriele Schäfer Verlag, 2007). Presently she is working on gendered memory of the Second World War and political extremisms. Ann Phoenix is Professor and Co-Director at Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. Her research focuses on psychosocial identities. She currently co-directs the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre funded by the Department for Education and is writing up findings from an ESRC Professorial fellowship: “Transforming Experiences: Re-conceptualising Identities and ‘Non-normative’ Childhoods”. Veronica Pravadelli is Professor of Film Studies at University of Roma Tre, where she coordinates the PhD Program in Cinema. She received her PhD from Indiana University and has been Visiting Professor at Brown University. Her work focuses on gender studies, women’s cinema, Hollywood cinema and Italian post-neorealist cinema. Her main publications include Performance, Rewriting, Identity: Chantal Akerman’s Postmodern Cinema (2000), Il cinema di Luchino Visconti (2000), Alfred Hitchcock. Notorious (2003, 2007) and La grande Hollywood (2007, 2010). Christina Scharff is Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at the Centre for Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London. Her research interests include

gender, sexuality, young femininities, neoliberalism and entrepreneurial subjectivities. Christina has conducted qualitative research on young women’s dis-identification with feminism, which she has published in Sociology, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, Qualitative Research in Psychology and Critical Discourse Studies. Christina currently holds an ESRC research grant and is working on her monograph Repudiating Feminism, which is forthcoming in the Ashgate series ‘The Feminist Imagination – Europe and Beyond’. Prof. Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff are editors of New Femininities: Postfeminism, neoliberalism and subjectivity (2011). Christina’s next project will explore the psychic life of entrepreneurial subjects by researching the experiences of young women who work in the creative industries.

Introduction – Transatlantic Conversations: Feminism as Travelling Theory Kathy Davis and Mary Evans

This book was born of our long-term experiences as editors of the European Journal of Women’s Studies. This journal emerged out of a growing dissatisfaction among European feminist scholars with what was perceived as the hegemony of US feminist theory and scholarship within the field of women’s studies and the conviction that it was necessary to provide a platform for European feminist scholarship, a forum from which feminists could address specifically European concerns from European feminist perspectives. However, from the start, the project was rather more complex than we had at first envisioned. On the one hand, it was (over)-evident that US feminist scholarship had had an enormous impact on the development of women’s and gender studies in Europe. Many of us had come of age as feminists reading texts that were written in the USA (Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics (1970), Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1970) and Robin Morgan’s Sisterhood is Powerful (1970), just to name a few). These texts, with their powerful rhetorical presence, became the undisputed classics of feminist scholarship, alongside those equally forceful texts such as Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History (1973) and Juliet Mitchell’s Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974) and the many feminist interventions that interrogated the assumptions of disciplines across the academy. However, more contemporary texts coming from the USA also continue to grace the literature lists of our courses and provide our most cherished theoretical paradigms. Judith Butler and Donna Haraway are household names in European women’s studies as well as in other parts of the world.1 Even the critics of the hegemony of US feminism – feminists of colour and postcolonial feminists like bell hooks (1981, 2000) and Chandra Mohanty (2003) – enjoy a privileged existence in European scholarship, often replacing the more homegrown variety of the same critique. While there have been some examples of the circulation of European texts to the USA – the obvious example is so-called “French Feminism”2 – a closer look shows that this body of thought came into its own once it had been taken up in the USA, only then returning to Europe as a central strand of feminist thinking. Thus, it would seem that feminist theory is almost shorthand for theory that has been produced in the USA, making the need to retrieve other varieties of feminism a worthwhile project. On the other hand, it is not an unproblematic endeavour to determine what might constitute “European feminist scholarship”. During the past decade, we struggled in the journal to come up with something other than a defensive location, such as “not US American”. The boundaries of Europe are highly contested now, just as they have been in the past. While the journal initially took a pragmatic stance, accepting any article which could – however tenuously – be linked to Europe (through the author’s national origin, institutional location or through the topic), we increasingly came to see the journal’s function precisely in interrogating the

construction of Europe itself.3 We began to look for ways to explore critically how “Europe” has been constituted discursively and materially and how this has been part of historical and contemporary power relations and geo-political configurations. We began to see that, as a European journal, we would need to situate Europe – its history, its institutions, its political movements, its cultural productions – in a global context, to think not only about what happens “here”, but also about the ways the Europe is – and has always been – linked to other parts of the globe. This move is, of course, not limited to discussions in the European Journal of Women’s Studies or even within feminist scholarship in Europe. There has been a much more general trend within feminist theory to recognize the inevitable situated-ness of all knowledge, to reject all notions of universality, and attend to the local, historical and geopolitical space in which knowledge is produced and received (Haraway 1991a, b, Grewal and Kaplan 1994). Moreover, in the context of globalization, theories, including feminist theories, do not stay in one place. They circulate and, in the process, take on different meanings and are deployed in different ways (Davis 2007). In this volume, we explore the impact of US feminist theory on the intellectual practices of feminists on both sides of the Atlantic. US feminist theory has never been monolithic, but rather always the product of dissenting voices within and outside the USA. Nevertheless, it has played – and continues to play – a major role on the development of feminist thought worldwide. Moreover, it bears the imprint of its production in the USA, which has all-toofrequently regarded itself as the “centre”, while relegating other intellectual traditions to the periphery (Narayan and Harding 2000). The reliance of many of us on such theory without reflecting on the context of its production and reception requires more than acknowledgement; it requires serious and sustained reflection. In order to think about encounters with US feminist theory and the revisions, rearticulations and controversies that these encounters have generated, we have focused on the ways that feminist scholars from different generations and locations engage with feminism and feminist theory. The tone of the book is personal, recalling the various journeys we have taken toward feminism, the ways our “intellectual biographies” have developed, as well as our involvement in oppositional politics, within and outside the academy. As an illustration of the kind of “journey” which such an engagement with feminist theory entails, we begin with our own narratives, which have been the basis for our own longstanding conversations about feminism and its travels.

Mary Evans’ narrative On the British side of the Atlantic I grew up in a household in which there was a model (albeit as contradictory as most lived models are) of white, middle-class feminism. My mother (unlike her two sisters) had been freed from that paternal authority that refused higher education for women by the death of her father. After this death, my grandmother embarked upon European travel, encouragement for my mother’s education and a way of life that had hitherto been impossible. My mother trained as a teacher, left home and lived an autonomous and financially independent life. This was a pattern of life which it was assumed I would follow.

However, of course, like all stories about the past, this simple account contains nothing of the contradictions and tensions that our household contained. There is a slogan (“having it all”) that is always associated with women in the late twentieth-century West, but in the 1940s and 1950s my mother also attempted the same fusion of work, children and home. An enthusiast for domestic modernization, and relatively prosperous, she embraced all the artefacts of domestic improvement designed to make the life of the “housewife” less time-consuming. The memory of nylon sheets lingers on. It is, of course, a trivial instance within a personal history but it is emblematic, for me, of the way in which women in the second half of the twentieth century sought to combine different kinds of demands and did so with the encouragement and collusion of an increasingly consumer-driven economy. So we experimented with “convenience” food and clothes that demanded no ironing. Throughout other homes, different versions of these tensions existed as the suburban domestic revival of the 1950s (always more real for the prosperous than for others) began to appear less appealing. Even so, at the university I went to in 1964, only about 10 per cent of the students were women and this percentage was hardly different elsewhere. Higher education (and the access to the professions which went with it) was still largely the preserve of men. Yet this in itself did not, I think, provide the impetus towards feminism which was about to inform so much of the thinking and behaviour of so many in my generation. Much more crucial, at least to me and many of my friends, was the question of how, rather than where, we might inhabit the social world. Rebellion and resistance for the young in the 1950s had been formed in those iconic male figures of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Porter and the various heroes of Alan Sillitoe and other male authors and filmmakers. The one image of this kind of rejection of the status quo that I recall most vividly is that of Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s film A Bout de Souffle. Women were the accessory to resistance. It was this status within the political order that seemed to me crucial. Many other feminist authors have written of their “turn” to feminism in terms of their refusal to carry out menial tasks within the political movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s; archetypically it is suggested that women became feminists because they no longer wished to service male politics. However, when I took up my first university teaching job in 1971 and the male head of the department suggested that I might organize the tea and coffee, the comment was met by howls of laughter from my male colleagues. This was not a reflection on my ability to make tea or coffee but a recognition of both the obvious sexism and also the sheer absurdity of the remark. Something had changed in aspects of British culture between 1964 and 1971 and defining that change remains part of the challenge which we hope these chapters will address. Yet British culture did not change alone or unilaterally and it is here that I wish to emphasize the immense, if deeply contradictory, appeal of aspects of life in the USA to young people in Britain in the 1960s. President Kennedy presented, to Europe, an image of an essentially modern politician to a generation that had grown up with politicians (for example Harold Macmillan and General de Gaulle) whose history was bound up not just with the Second World War but also, in the case of Macmillan, the First. These men epitomized the formality, the emotional reserve, the rigidly policed masculinity, which contrasted so sharply with the informality of Kennedy. Put together with the heroes of the film Easy Rider, suddenly there seemed to be new cultural possibilities for Europeans about the presentation of the male

self. We all recognized the negative aspects of the social world of the USA, but we also could not but help see that it was a country in which white middle-class people could re-think numerous aspects of social convention. The paradox of this for feminists, I would suggest, is that, when we began to re-think the world for women, we did so in part through images of men: through male irreverence and rejection of authority that had always been (at least in Britain) an aspect of working class culture but was now being publicly claimed by middle-class men. As women, we wanted that same “sense of freedom”, that sense of being able to reject not just the immediate conventional world but also its history and its account of itself. The individual icons of male informality informed not just a new visual sense of the world but also the cultural and intellectual spheres: if we could change our dress and our personal behaviour then we could also change the way we were supposed to think about that world. My mother, and her friends, had claimed a place in a world which my generation now seemed intent on – if not destroying – then at least reconstructing. Our feminism (in which we took for granted that the same access to the middleclass world would be available to us) was about a re-thinking of the self, a re-thinking of personal relationships, a refusal of the idea that it was uniquely women’s responsibility to care for (and about) the private space. Thus British feminism, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, embraced the “liberation” agenda of the counter-culture of the USA with enthusiasm, but very rapidly – and as was appropriate for a country often described as the most class conscious in the whole world – we began to qualify the meaning of feminism. It was obvious to any observer of feminist politics in Britain at this time that feminism brought together sections of the white female middle class rather than women in general. Long-standing campaigners for women’s issues (the Abortion Law Reform Society, the Fawcett Society and others) joined forces with younger, less formally organized women to address numerous questions, which initially largely reflected the concerns of educated, white women. Although other, more general concerns (for example violence against women and child care), were rapidly added to the feminist agenda, there remained considerable distance and tension between demands that seemed to emerge out of individual concerns and those that seemed to articulate more collective politics. The problems implicit within a neo-liberal society around the meaning of feminism were epitomized in the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979: a “first” for British women achieved by a woman who was considered profoundly anti-feminist. The election of Margaret Thatcher did, however, dramatize the need to reconsider the difference between achievements by women and achievements for women, not least because Margaret Thatcher resurrected a female persona (of the ever-vigilant conscientious housewife) who had largely disappeared from public mythology. Her election plunged me into deep despair, not least because she was claimed as a symbol of female emancipation. When that despair was dulled into mere pessimism, I realized that her election presented a challenge: of how to define feminism in ways that made it inaccessible to the political right, of how to place, more rigorously, that sense of freedom and liberation that had been the initial attraction of feminist politics. And this, and hence this volume, encouraged me to return to the examination of the various roots of my feminism, not least those with what seemed to be the wide cultural horizons of the United States.

Kathy Davis’ narrative I came of age as a feminist in the US during my final year in college. However, before I could do anything much about it beyond reading some of the now-classic texts (Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Robin Morgan, Germaine Greer), I was off to Europe on a scholarship. This was the beginning of the 1970s in Germany and, while students had become radicalized, there was still no sign of a women’s movement. After a year of activism as a Marxist student, some of my friends and I initiated a women’s group. Beyond our anger at the exclusionary behaviour of our male so-called comrades-in-arms (yes, they wanted us to make the coffee and pass out flyers while they gave the speeches and envisioned life after the Revolution), we did not really know how to go about it. I knew that the feminist movement was in full swing in the USA, so I decided to go back and check it out – always with the idea of coming back to Germany and using what I had learned “there” to get things up and running “here” in Europe. This was my first experience with the problems of cross-Atlantic translation. While I had simply assumed that what I discovered in the USA could be applied without further ado in Germany, I found to my dismay that this was often not the case at all. The consciousnessraising groups seemed frivolous to my Marxist friends, who were convinced that we should be mobilizing proletarian women in factories. The struggles of poor welfare mothers that had inspired me during my stay in the USA were translated in Germany into campaigns for “Wages for Housework”, something that seemed incomprehensible to the feminists I had met in the USA. There were other differences too. The growing critique by African-American and US third world feminists concerning racism and exclusion within a predominantly white women’s movement was cavalierly dismissed by my German “sisters” as “an American thing”. In Europe, we had bigger fish to fry: fascism, colonialism and imperialism. Since then, I have taught women’s studies at different universities throughout Europe and have been back and forth on several different occasions to teach or do research in the USA. Along with being the editor of one of the leading European journals of women’s studies, I have, therefore, had ample opportunity to become familiar with the ways in which US feminist scholarship has been taken up in Europe as well as to compare the kinds of debates that have been waged on both sides of the Atlantic. Several things have become immediately apparent. First of all, US feminist scholarship has seldom paid much attention to scholarship outside its borders. The reason that is frequently given is Americans’ lack of proficiency in other languages. The fact that English has become the global lingua franca has only exacerbated this process. This has an immediate effect on the politics of translation, however, that goes well beyond the lack of attention to learning other languages. There seems to be a tacit acceptance that all that is really relevant and important for feminist theory will come from within the USA. While this has been well criticized, particularly by women of colour and US third world feminists (Mohanty 2003), it has resulted in an interest in the writings of “other” women, this usually meaning poor women of colour from the global South, rather than a concern with feminist theories that have been produced in other parts of the world (see Spivak 1985, for a pivotal critique). Second, European feminists have been quick to take up US feminist texts and there is no

denying that we have borrowed most extensively from US theoretical paradigms in our teaching and research. US texts make up, by far, the majority of the core readings in European women’s studies courses. Our best-known feminist books are often American in origin, appearing in unabridged form in the UK or translated in other parts of Europe. However, this has not occurred without a certain degree of rancour. One particular thorn in the side of European feminist scholarship is that we do not have the option of writing Feminist Theory (writ large). Already off-centre, we cannot take the “god’s eye view” (which is arguably a good thing, but …). If we want to publish in international journals (often a euphemism for US journals), we are compelled to “contextualize” – that is, explain what is specific about the Dutch/German/French context in which we have done our research and subsequently finds ways to link it to more “general” concerns (i.e. explain to a US audience why what we have to say is also relevant or of interest to them). Clearly, our US “sisters” have not had to confront this problem, rarely feeling compelled to explain themselves to anyone. Nevertheless – and this is my third point – topics and debates have emerged around the edges of this US feminist canon, which have often rearticulated US feminist concerns in specifically European ways. I remember, for example, using the US text All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave (Hull et al. 1982) in my introduction to women’s studies class in the 1980s and finding little resonance for it. My students regarded “race” as a US problem and saw little relevance to the situation in the Netherlands. I chalked much of this up to denial – a “typical” European phenomenon – and continued to draw my texts from the USA, where racism and the importance of making connections between multiple identities was at the forefront of feminist discussions. Nevertheless, my experiences in Europe made it clear that the idea of “race”, which was often unquestioningly used in the USA, needed to be rearticulated for a European context where histories of colonialism were not identical to the legacy of slavery that mobilized anti-racists in the USA. For example, when I used Ruth Frankenburg’s (1993) path-breaking study on “whiteness” and had my students write their geographies of race, white students did not just write about their first encounters with Surinamese, but also Moluccans, the “guest workers” from Turkey and Morocco. Through these stories, the importance of what was perceived as “traditional cultures” or religion (Islam) was in many ways more salient to patterns of exclusion and inclusion than skin colour. These kinds of disjunctures have not been limited to race and racialization – I have encountered them in thinking about women’s relationship to the (welfare) state, care and caretaking, medicalization and the surgical makeability of women’s bodies, the forms political activism take and more. In each case, I may have started with US feminist scholarship, but have invariably found myself having to rearticulate it in order to make sense of the realities of life in Europe. These same rearticulations have made me return to US feminist theory with a more critical eye and with an increased awareness of the need to look for – often inadvertent – signs of centrism and universalism. However, most importantly, the realization of how theories take on different meanings as they cross borders has instilled in me a conviction that feminist theory can only fully develop its critical potential through transnational dialogue.

About the book The chapters in the book are organized around three separate, but interrelated themes. The first theme concerns becoming a feminist in a transatlantic context. Each piece contains a biographical trajectory whereby the author discovers herself as a feminist, although feminism is defined and mobilized in very different ways. While each author expresses a general commitment to something called “feminism”, her journey toward feminism is shaped by her personal history, by generation and the point at which she entered feminism, and by her social location. While there are certain resonances in the experiences as feminists of the “baby boomer” generation (everyone seems to have read Kate Millet), for later generations, the motivations for becoming interested in feminism were quite different. Division of work may be less relevant to younger authors than, say, the pernicious affects of the “beauty myth” (see, for example, Carolyn Pedwell’s piece), or the author’s experiences as a former colonial subject in the UK (as Gail Lewis and Ann Phoenix write), or how having multifaceted histories of migration shaped the ways in which different authors entered feminism (for example, Gul Ozyegin and Christa Scharff). Being situated in Eastern Europe or outside Europe provided a different starting point for becoming feminist (as Andre Petö’s chapter attests). These locations offered a prism through which each of the authors engaged with US feminism, determined what spoke to them and what did not, and, ultimately, laid the groundwork for what they took on and what they left behind. These different histories confirm the hegemony of US feminism across the globe, the important role it played in these author’s intellectual biographies. At the same time, however, they show how there was not just one brand of US feminism, that US feminism itself was a product of dissenting voices and that these dissenting voices were also part of transatlantic conversations. The second theme concerns the search for a more encompassing form of activism, inside and outside the academy. Few of the authors regarded feminism as separate from other political agendas. Many were equally committed to anti-racist or anti-imperialist or queer political agendas and looked for ways to links these agendas in meaningful ways (see, for example, Nancy Naples in this volume). Casting an eye beyond national borders has often been a way to achieve a broader platform within the academy (as Alvarez, Coate and Pravadelli argue). Feminism has historically been linked to internationalism, and feminists worldwide have worked toward creating international alliances around issues of shared concern. Within recent years, this internationalism – under the guise of global feminism – has had to bear the brunt of considerable criticism. Many feminist scholars, borrowing from the critique of women of colour and third world feminists have criticized this version of internationalism as little more than another version of US feminism, this time with universalistic pretentions (see, for example, Griffin’s critique in this volume). This critique as formulated by US feminist scholars of colour and postcolonial feminists has itself become a travelling theory, much like the earlier versions of feminist theory inspired by the so-called “second wave” generation. Queer theory, initiated within the US academy, has also been taken up and rearticulated by queer and feminist thinkers across the globe, providing a foundation for a diasporic politics (see, for example, hoogland’s piece). Intersectional ways of thinking about and constructing political subjectivities and alliances have, by no means, been limited to the USA (see Davis 2008, and

Knapp in this volume). The transnational conversations that have emerged have been instrumental in developing a feminist politics that crosses national borders and explores the linkages between class, sexual orientation, ethnicity and more. The third theme concerns the theoretical engagements that have emerged as a result of transnational conversations. Theoretical concepts that start out in one place – for example, the USA – take on very different means when they travel. As Axeli-Knapp has deftly shown, even the Big Three (gender, race, class), which have become the standard ingredients of feminist scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, resonate very differently in different places. In a similar vein, the work of US feminist theorists like Judith Butler and Donna Haraway has been taken up with a vengeance in Europe, but in ways that are quite different than their usage in the USA. The authors of this volume show not only how theories can stimulate scholars working in very different locations and from different traditions, but that they invite revision and rearticulation. This opens up intriguing questions concerning the ownership of theory – questions which many of the authors in this volume have addressed. The question of what makes a theory inspiring enough to be taken up tends to be criticized either as a question of power or a matter of pragmatics (if it’s there, why not use it). This skirts the issue of how writing from outside the USA might be made not only available, but also accessible. If we think seriously about the issue of translation, it becomes essential not only to situate US theory (as one theory among many) and to critique its privileged position globally, but also to think seriously about the issue of translation, how ideas that are generated outside non-hegemonic language communities can be made accessible within global networks of circulation. In this sense, we need to think critically about how we employ the notion of “transatlantic” (as Paola Bacchetta and Jin Haritaworn point out). Why should we only look at the travels between the USA and Europe? What about other parts of North America (Canada?) What about the Caribbean and South America? What about the edges of Europe? Where does Turkey fit into the equation? Of course, feminisms have emerged and travelled in other parts of the world as well. The problem of the unidirectionality of how US feminism travels has been raised and criticized but often left dangling. This suggests that, any time we talk about theories that travel, we need to discuss them against the backdrop of theories which don’t. In short, it is clear that this conversation is only the beginning.

References Butler, J. 1989. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Davis, K. 2007. The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels Across Borders. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Davis, K. 2008. Intersectionality as Buzzword: A Sociology of Science Perspective on What Makes a Feminist Theory Successful. Feminist Theory, 9(1): 67–86.

Einhorn, B. and Gregory, J. (eds) 1998. The Idea of Europe (special issue). European Journal of Women’s Studies, 5(3–4). Firestone, S. 1970. The Dialectic of Sex. New York: Bantam Books. Frankenburg, R. 1993. The Social Construction of Whiteness. White Women, Race Matters. London: Routledge. Greer, G. 1970. The Female Eunuch. London: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Grewal, I. and Kaplan, C. 1994. Scattered Hegemonies. Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Haraway, D. 1991a. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. 1991b. Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. London: Free Association Books, pp. 183–202. Haraway, D. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium, FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™. Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge. hooks, bell. 1981. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston, MA: South End Press. hooks, bell. 2000. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Cambridge: South End Press. Hull, G.T., Scott, P.B. and Smith, B. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old Westbury: Feminist Press. Millet, K. 1970. Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday. Mitchell, J. 1974. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. London: Penguin. Mohanty, C. 2003. Feminism Without Borders. Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Morgan, R. 1970. Sisterhood is Powerful. New York: Vintage. Narayan, U. and Harding, S. 2000. Decentering the Center. Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rowbotham, S. 1973. Hidden from History. London: Pluto Spivak, G.C. 1985 Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism. Critical Inquiry, 12(1): 243–261. Spivak, G.C. 1988. In Other Worlds. Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Routledge.

1 Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1989) as well as Bodies that Matter (1993) have been translated in most European languages and are standard fare for gender studies courses. Donna Haraway’s work (1991a, b, 1997) has also been highly influential, particularly in the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. 2 See, for example, Spivak’s (1988) seminal “French Feminism in an International Frame”. 3 See, for example, the special issue “The Idea of Europe” (1998), edited by Barbara Einhorn and Jeanne Gregory, as well as numerous editorials.

PART I Becoming a Feminist in a Transatlantic Context

Chapter 1 A Feminist Transatlantic Education Sarah Franklin

My undergraduate education introduced me to feminism in two parts – first as a freshman “coed” at Dartmouth College, and then in the second part of my college education, at Smith. Dartmouth is one of the previously all-male Ivy League schools that became co-educational during the 1970s, and I was a bit naïve about what this meant when I was admitted in 1977 to join the incoming class of 1982. One thing it meant was that my feminist education was greatly accelerated. Playboy came to campus in the autumn of 1978 to shoot one of its first Women of the Ivy League issues, and I quickly became involved in the feminist protest on campus. Reading Andrea Dworkin and Mary Daly for the first time made a real impact as I was discovering them in the midst of my first real encounter with fraternity-style sexism, racism and the early signs of the neoconservative, anti-political correctness attitudes that were being fuelled by Republican funding and propaganda across the USA. Somewhat surprisingly, Dartmouth had a lot of feminist faculty and I took my first women’s studies courses there, in Philosophy (Claudia Card), and Literature (Brenda Silver and Elizabeth Baer). Here too I was introduced to radical feminist activism, and in particular the unforgettable Dartmouth Pyrofeminist Group whose seditious and inscrutable motto, BTMFD!, was emblazoned on their T-shirts and graffitied inside the men’s toilets.1 The most inspiring speaker I heard was Robin Morgan, who made the crucial point that we should never assume we need just one kind of feminism, because the congresswomen in Washington will always need the radical activists on the streets, and women’s studies academics at universities, as well as many other kinds of feminists to build a movement based on different roles, different strengths and different styles. That was a lesson relatively easily learned at Dartmouth, where feminism was in many ways in its infancy. After my first year I transferred to Smith, where a different scale of feminist education and activism awaited me. To the extent that 1970s feminist interventions into all the academic disciplines could be said to have been “streamed” in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Smith was where this download was happening. Home to several women’s bookstores, an enormous undergraduate library and a high-powered community of feminist academics, Smith was a women’s studies nirvana. A woman’s college and the largest of the socalled seven sisters schools, and also located in a town, Northampton, Massachusetts, already renowned for its music scene, alternative culture and left-wing politics, Smith was primed to become a feminist hotbed. The President at the time was Jill Ker Conway, the eminent historian of women’s education, and later celebrated memoirist. She was of the view that it was not advisable for Smith to set up a separate women’s studies programme, since it might marginalise feminist scholarship. Instead, she and other faculty set up a major research initiative at Smith called The Project on Women and Social Change. With central funding, several feminist academics were able to

launch, house and staff research initiatives related to their work, for which students were often employed as assistants. My first job was for Susan Bourque, finishing the landmark publication, Women of the Andes, that she and Kay Warren had just completed writing (I also mowed their lawns). I also worked for Elizabeth Spelman as she completed Inessential Woman, and for numerous other faculty, including Martha Acklesburg, Martha Fowlkes, Frederique Marglin and Pat Miller. Mostly, however, I played sports and partied and buried myself in feminist books, articles, fiction, poetry, music and art. True to the interdisciplinary model of the American liberal arts education, I read and was taught a vast range of feminist theory, from feminist critiques of Bhuddism to American women’s poetry. The mind-boggling effects of this tuition were amplified by the influx of work drawing on poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. It was the equivalent of feminist LSD. Like many in that period, I was very influenced by feminist literary criticism and in my senior thesis I tried to combine a reading of Villette with feminist anthropology to produce a “prolegomena for feminist political methodology”. I even threw in a bit of physics. This avid engagement with feminist theory left me at something of a loss as to graduate school (not to mention the rest of my life). I knew leaving Smith would be completely disorientating, so I decided to become even more confused by spending a year in Europe, and booked a one-year round trip ticket with TWA to Paris. At a loss for a better idea, I imagined furthering my education by learning to read Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray in French. In the vague way that many Americans equate Europe with learning, culture and art, I had a primarily intellectual and aesthetic yearning to experience “the Continent”. I found a job as an au pair in St Germain des Pres and signed up for lessons at the Alliance Francaise. Soon I was dressed entirely in black and filling up my notebooks with all manner of caffeine-inspired prose recording my impressions of Parisian life and culture. Toward the end of this somewhat chaotic, intense and exhausting – but exhilarating – period of reflection and exploration (and laundry and shopping and debt and childcare), I was increasingly confident I wanted to pursue graduate work, and I began to investigate possibilities. At the time, as I had already learned from my extensive investigations during my senior year at Smith, there were no graduate programmes in either feminist theory or women’s studies in the USA. The only programmes were those that were tied to a traditional discipline, such as women’s history. My preference, at the time, would have been to enter an interdisciplinary PhD programme in Feminist Theory, but no such programme existed. Mournfully, I began to reconsider Law School. It was in March 1983 that I visited the offices of the British Council in Paris, where I made a most unexpected and life-altering discovery. I discovered that in the UK there was a completely different system of postgraduate education, including the option of doing a one-year MA. Moreover, there was one, at the University of Kent, in Feminist Theory! In addition, it was surprisingly affordable (compared with the USA), and, best of all, the admissions were not yet closed for autumn admission. I wrote immediately to the Convenor, Mary Evans. One thing led to another quite quickly from there. I joined the programme in October 1983 and was immediately plunged into the kind of curriculum I had left behind – a broadly interdisciplinary infusion of feminist scholarship, focussed on theory. I felt back in my element

but immediately noticed some changes. Although it would be many years before the publication of Gender Trouble, its themes were becoming increasingly palpable as the critique of the category “woman” hybridised with sexual difference theory and began to reconstitute the “sex– gender” question, in particular through the feminist critique of biology. My experiences in France had indeed given me a slightly different take on both Simone de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray, and had increased my scepticism about the latter in particular. I became increasingly engaged with poststructuralism, postmodernism and psychoanalysis – which became the subject of my dissertation, via a critique of Freud’s biologism. Now I was experiencing these debates with a British inflection, and in particular the influence of socialist feminism – which was quite new to me. Of particular difficulty was the seemingly intransigent opposition between socialist and radical feminism – a polarisation that made little sense to me. While I could appreciate the different political allegiances and legacies behind the terms “radical” and “socialist” feminism at an intellectual level, I did not understand why they were also invested with so much emotion, or why they were the cause of so much conflict. I found the constant repetition of these “positions” illogical: why couldn’t you just combine elements of both? Isn’t that what Gayle Rubin did so brilliantly in “The Traffic in Women”? I had first read Donna Haraway in my senior year at Smith, and her work, along with that of other feminist science scholars, chimed closely with the arguments I found most intriguing from feminist anthropology – particular those contained in Nature, Culture and Gender, in which the Western tradition of positing nature as a “given” or “ground” for categories such as sex and gender was set alongside the critique of these categories from a comparative ethnographic perspective. As a lens through which to destabilise the presumed naturalism and biologism of so much social theory – not to mention social life – the science studies plus anthropology angle was very appealing. This interest did not fit neatly into the socialist feminist vs radical feminist, nor did it break down particularly clearly in transatlantic terms. Through my early interest in the debates about reproductive technologies, I became involved in the Feminist International Network of Resistance to New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies – FINRRAGE – which was founded in the mid-1980s. By then, I had also enrolled in the interdisciplinary PhD programme at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), where I was writing my dissertation on women’s experiences of IVF. The main point of FINRRAGE was to coordinate feminist positions internationally, and to share information about developments in the burgeoning fields of reproductive and genetic technology. Although some of the more prominent members of the network, such as Renate Klein, Jalna Hanmer, Maria Mies and Gena Corea, advocated a position of complete resistance to all forms of such technology, the reality on the ground of FINRRAGE activism was much more complex. The Forum Against Oppression of Women in Bombay, for example, had successfully lobbied to pass a law in the state of Maharashta in the late 1980s to ban the use of amniocentesis for sex selection, but they had not sought a complete ban on its use, in part to enable women in the Bhopal region to opt for its use to reduce the incidence of severe foetal abnormality in the wake of the Union Carbide catastrophe. This decision was one of many sources of disagreement within the FINRRAGE network over both policy and practice, replicating some of the schisms that had characterised other

international women’s collective actions during the UN Decade for Women. It was also an example of the complicated effort to balance support for women’s individual agency and reproductive choice against the effort to change the terms of those choices – in just the manner Rosalind Petchesky had so cogently outlined in her work on abortion, contraception and reproductive rights throughout the 1980s. There was no particularly European version of reproductive politics – then or now – that I could precisely identify, but there were certainly national, local and regional differences that mattered hugely for these issues – just as the case of Bhopal so dramatically illustrated. It mattered quite a bit to my own research on IVF, for example, that the UK had developed a very particular approach to legislation on human fertilisation and embryology. Here too, feminist reproductive politics were and remain quite complex. On the one hand, there was virtually no explicit feminist contribution to the lengthy debate over the Warnock Report that began in 1982 and lasted until the passage of legislation in 1990. On the other hand, the UK’s pioneering and unparalleled effort to regulate in this area was largely made possible by three women – the philosopher Mary Warnock, the developmental biologist and geneticist Anne McLaren, and the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Unravelling the gender politics of the history of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act – which has undoubtedly done more to protect the rights of women IVF patients in the UK than any other country has done worldwide, where IVF remains largely unregulated – remains a task for future feminist historians and sociologists. In the meantime, the closely related, but more quotidian question, of how to interpret women’s experiences of new reproductive and genetic technologies – and in particular women’s experiences of IVF – has received much fuller treatment by a large – and still growing – cohort of feminists internationally. In this debate the complicated question of women’s agency has not become clearer over time. While it is crucial to avoid the denunciatory rhetoric such as that often associated in particular with the so-called “FINRRAGE position” of universal opposition to the use of all such technologies (a characterisation of FINRRAGE politics that is itself highly disputable), it is also important not to depict women’s “choices” in the context of IVF as unproblematic. As numerous feminists have illustrated, perhaps most notably the anthropologist Rayna Rapp in her landmark study of amniocentesis, such choices require women to become “moral pioneers”, negotiating the difficult decisions that must be made on terms that are not by any means straightforward. It turns out that the lessons learned from the feminist debate about IVF, and the enormous and largely under-utilised feminist literature on new reproductive and genetic technologies more broadly, is now relevant to a much wider set of questions concerning biomedicine and bioscience in what has been dubbed “the age of biological control”. Rereading, for example, Shulamith Firestone’s extraordinarily prescient manifesto, The Dialectic of Sex, it is clear that the feminist engagement with reproductive technology prefigures much current debate about the redesign of the biological more broadly. As we have seen with the debates over stem cells, cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and “saviour siblings” – in legislatures and popular culture alike – there is little consistency either within or outside Europe. Countries with almost identical economic, political and scientific policy, such as Norway and Sweden, are diametrically opposed on topics such as embryo research, and not only for religious

reasons. It is a feminist perspective that adds much more depth to questions about bio-innovation, as is most vividly demonstrated through the work of Donna Haraway – who is arguably Firestone’s appropriately ironic successor. Haraway’s 1985 Cyborg Manifesto, published a mere 15 years after Firestone’s searing treatise, opened the way for a complete rethinking of feminist biopolitics. Trained herself by an eccentric British zoologist, the first version of the Cyborg Manifesto, appropriately penned in 1984 for the “Orwell Edition” of Socialist Review, dwelt at length on IVF – a topic that was dropped from the later published version that has since become one of the most iconic feminist essays of the 1980s. Interestingly, the essay is also a telling fusion of transatlantic elements, combining the characteristically US feminist attention to race, class and sexuality that is now referred to as intersectionality with an approach to biotechnology that owes more to the interwar British biofuturism associated with socialist geneticists such as Conrad Waddington, Desmond Bernal, Julian Huxley and H.G. Wells. Like Firestone, Haraway rejects the knee-jerk anti-technologism of the back-to-nature band (her famous “I would rather be a cyborg than a Goddess” remark refers to her longstanding discomfort with the purity politics characterising much eco-activism). Also like Firestone, Haraway’s trenchant disavowal of traditional kinship structures is energised by the vision of radically alternative visions of community and affinity. No doubt it is a product of my own biographical trajectory, from the cauldron of an early 1980s US feminist education to an academic career in the UK, that it is hard to read a theorist like Haraway from a purely “American” perspective. In her work, as in that of so many US feminist writers, I hear many common transatlantic refrains. These not only include the enormous influence of continental philosophy, psychoanalysis, poststructuralism and critical theory, but also the deeply European influence of socialist politics. From the perspective of contemporary biopolitics, it is equally difficult to sort out the US vs European strands of the complex debates concerning, for example, women’s experiences of IVF. At the level of national politics, it is easy enough to point to dramatic differences in public debates about stem cells, GM foods, or for that matter, abortion. Yet from the point of view of feminist theory, such differences are merely superficial if what we are asking is how to characterise the gender politics of what The Economist has dubbed “Biology’s Big Bang”, or indeed how to continue the long-standing feminist effort to address questions of women’s reproductive rights in a rapidly changing context of reproductive choice and control. Arguably, it is the link between these two themes – between the question of reproductive choice and control (exemplified by the protracted and deeply ambivalent feminist debate over new reproductive technologies), and the question of biological control (which essentially involves the technological manipulation of reproduction and genetics) – that presents one of the main theoretical and political challenges to feminism in the twenty-first century. In this context it is all but impossible for the debate not to take into account both transatlantic and international voices. At the same time, an area of feminist scholarship such as the literature on women’s experiences of IVF will continue to benefit from the increasing density of locally situated studies that now comprise a rich and invaluable comparative resource. In some ways, British and European feminists are in a better position to ensure such theorisations are more fully transnational than those in the still overly parochial US academy, but few feminists, even

in the US, could write credibly about a topic such as reproductive technology within a purely national frame. From my own perspective, it turns out that an interdisciplinary feminist education, even one as American as that I received as an undergraduate, has proven to be less US-centric than I might have imagined. The tools of radical critical analysis instilled by hearing Audre Lorde speak out against white feminist dominance of the US academy in the 1980s are no less useful in the context of the still very white and male-dominated culture of UK higher education 30 years later. Adrienne Rich’s essay about a woman-centred university, delivered as a commencement address at Smith in the late 1970s, is no less relevant today in the context of the ongoing effort to defend and promote feminist scholarship. The difficulty of finding institutional contexts that nurture and promote feminist theory has not lessened substantially since I was searching vainly for a postgraduate programme in women’s studies. Moreover, in the broad and intensifying effort to forge a feminist biopolitics, it will be some of the oldest as well as some of the most recent and original feminist thinking, from scholars such as Charis Thompson, a British social theorist based at Berkeley, that will continue to fill the large analytical gap in twentieth-century political thought left by the chronic absence of proper attention to reproduction and its role in social life. This crucial void, so tellingly identified in so much feminist literature from the 1970s onward, from the deficient category of the individual subject, to the under-definition of GDP, is the long-standing lacuna at the heart of post-Foucauldian debates about biopolitics. The “why did Foucault never write about contraception” question is now being answered in the growing body of feminist scholarship on the biosciences and biomedicine – a debate in which controversies over stem cells, bio-enhancement, regenerative medicine or cloning can be seen as reproductive politics writ large. These answers will by definition be transatlantic, as well as increasingly global. Perhaps too, as they age, the globalism of early US feminist work, such as Firestone’s, will also become more, rather than less, apparent. At the heart of her project was a concern with “modern embryology” that was more centrally focussed on contraceptive technology than on ectogenesis or artificial reproduction. In turn, her vision of a new means of pursuing scientific knowledge, technological innovation and human progress was primarily grounded in transformed social relations – namely the elimination of sex, race and class hierarchies. American though it may have been, her manifesto was dedicated to her European heroes – Karl Marx and Simone de Beauvoir. An artist by training and an activist by trade, the ground of her politics was the imagination – a domain happily unrestrained by national frontiers. If indeed this too is our main tool as feminist scholars and educators, we are indeed a lucky bunch. If we have made the commitments we have – often to difficult, financially unrewarding and stressful public sector jobs – it is because we have had the gift of finding someone like Mary Evans along the way. If there is reciprocity to such journeys, it is in the people who find us in turn because of the spaces we create and maintain, not only in our institutions, but in our beliefs and values. If the world of the neoliberal university may be mired in managerial excess and the double-speak of impact measures, performance audits and strategically synergised deliverables, it nevertheless cannot contain the force of feminist imagination. And even if that imagination is sometimes painful, costly and burdensome, its liveliness and resilience are

nonetheless confirmed in the very contact with what it struggles against. No surprise, then, that feminist theory is increasingly global, nor that it proves itself to be one of the best reproductive technologies of all.

1 Burn The Motherfuckers Down!

Chapter 2 Crossings Clare Hemmings

Representation The members of the Feminist Review Collective know well the importance and pitfalls of representation when sutured to location. Each year we review our list of Corresponding Editors and worry about the lack of representatives from Africa, Latin America, East Asia and Europe. And each year we affirm the importance of not reducing this editorial role to location, of not reifying a vision of the authentic editorial subject who comes to stand in for Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Bangladesh, Trinidad and Tobago, Italy, Australia, Serbia, India, the USA, Macedonia or Germany (where our current Corresponding Editors are “from”). We know this, yet we know other things too: that our London-based Collective needs to be local to function and put out the thrice yearly journal, and that our own networks need geographical as well as political extension in order that this be an international feminist knowledge project, not a vanity project. In September 2009 the Collective and Corresponding Editors find ourselves packed together in a too-hot room at SOAS, University of London discussing the role of the international group, assuring ourselves that the ambivalent significance of geography can be mobilised as a productive tension, can be prevented from slipping into national identifications. Yet at the next day’s transnational feminist conference for which we have come together, we participate in successive panels where we represent ourselves in national or regional terms. Despite discussing this openly, pushing ourselves to think transnationally or diasporically, it seems we are caught in our desire for representation.

History At a 2008 conference on Queer Europe, a USA-based psychoanalytically inclined male author announces the death of Judith Butler. Judith Butler is dead, he says. We need to think about a different future, one that values the queer past, that traces a line back to the early gay liberationists. That way we can move beyond the epistemological cul-de-sac of the heterosexual “matrix” (Butler 1990, 1993) and value a different Foucault from the one instantiated by queer theory: a pleasure-loving, open, embodied Foucault, caring for his-self and others (Foucault 1980, 1988); a multi-faceted European Foucault, returned to his proper intellectual lineage, not an American Foucault straitjacketed into cartographies of power. I ask the speaker if he would consider Wittig or de Beauvoir to be a similar precursor (de Beauvoir 1952, Wittig 1980); it appears not. I wonder to myself if the price of restoration of gay male

meaning to Europe must be the death of the female author. In her brilliant article, Sabine Hark discusses the rejection of Butler by German feminists as too American (2002). They resent her seductions of young feminist minds away from public policy and class analyses. Butler is too American for the new-materialist feminist Europeans too. She is once again too focused on sexual identity politics over the uncontainable imagination of embodied sexual difference. Too pragmatic. Too exclusive. Too lesbian to travel easily it seems. In 2007 I complete the first full draft of a manuscript on how the recent past of feminist theory is told, part of which retells that story through the affinities between Butler and Wittig (Hemmings 2011).

Travel Over the period 2003–2006, the group “Travelling Concepts” meets at least twice annually to discuss how concepts in feminist theory move back and forth across Europe. There are 24 of us from Italy, Greece, Hungary, Holland, Germany, the UK, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Croatia and Serbia, and much of the time is spent in working out how to talk to one another and how to listen in order to hear properly (Covi et al. 2006, Garstenauer et al. 2006, Skaerbaek et al. 2006, Vasterling et al. 2006). We focus on the development of a transnational critical pedagogy centred in Europe, one that is critical of European borders and politics. What counts as “European” is consistently debated and no agreement can ever be reached. The “borrowing” of US theory, its transformation in European translations of different kinds, is also important to the group, and we actively resist too much certainty and separation. Yet when we come to decide on a syllabus for a summer course we co-teach, we find it difficult to agree upon which authors to include in the specifically European reader we have insisted we want. We are faced with the limits of language and translation since we must teach in the global lingua franca. Members of the group often characterise each other’s behaviour through recourse to national stereotypes: my behaviour is typically British or un-British; others are typically Italian or non-Italian and so on. I am most British when I don’t respond with “passion”; my Italian colleagues are most Italian when they do – and perhaps these shared fictions provide us with some common agreement we can work with. In this context I often come to represent Anglo-Americanness, which itself often appears to be interchangeable with “English native speaker”. It is not a position I relish, and I resist the coupling on the basis of Britishness marginalisation with a fervency that surprises me. I spend considerable time highlighting different cultural and institutional ways in which it is the Americans who have power in this fictional romance.

Work I walk into the sun-dappled garden in Lewes where the 2004 Feminist Review summer meeting begins and join the other London-based collective members. The meeting that day is fast and furious and people talk over each other and at each other with little regard for formality. People confront each other about their work practices and about exclusions, and exercise and

examine their emotional responses to each other in startling ways. We break for drinks and Helen cracks open the bubbles, saying that we’ve done enough work now to deserve this. Everyone talks, everyone engages; it is at once overwhelming and comforting. I recognise this as a feminist home – the frustrations are as familiar as the pleasures.

Reading In the early 2000s I find myself teaching at the LSE. The cohort that I teach is international and interdisciplinary and I feel unprepared for the level of smart professionalism expected of me. I joke with a colleague at the expensive clothes others wear, though it’s not long before I develop a “work wardrobe” of my own. I have a tutorial in which a student asks me how I can guarantee she will get a job in the development industry when she graduates. I spend the first summer of my permanent contract reading transnational feminist theory in a small condo in Berkeley, sitting in the sunshine and eating grilled fish as if I were born to it. I swim every day in the hardly used public pool, immerse myself in Spivak’s cautionary tales and Sara Suleri’s resolute obscurity, and get distracted by my love of Coetzee, which I justify through Spivak’s love for him too (Coetzee 1987, Suleri 1992, Spivak 1999). I chide myself for my US focus (the LSE students – particularly the North American ones – want the transnational experience they have travelled for). So I read Franz Fanon, Philomena Essed, Gloria Wekker and Feminist Review journal (Essed 1991, Fanon 1991 [1952], Wekker 1993). I like the US work better though; I feel it fits with my interests and humanities orientation, and that I know where I am with it. I feel this as a lack on my part, and don’t tell anyone about it. Taking this further still I decide not to read anything American for a couple of years just as an experiment, but can’t sustain it, and ultimately feel stupid for being so banal.

Location I start teaching with immense enthusiasm in London before I finish my PhD. I live, with my American partner who has recently moved to London, in a spacious, disgusting, two-bedroom apartment in East London (when we moved out in 1998 we discovered a dense wall of mossy slime from the condensation behind the space heaters). I teach courses on sexuality, methodology, theory, race, representation, autobiography and social thought from a feminist perspective in North and South London. I work 10–12 hours a day writing new lectures for 15 hours of teaching a week. I love it, although I suffer for it – all my grey comes in that year. I interrupt one of the feminist theory courses when it became clear that conflicts between black feminist and lesbian feminist perspectives are not going to be resolved by theoretical reading alone. We have a two-day “teach-in” on race and sexuality which all students are active in, finding hooks the most useful in her direct addressing of difference tensions in the classroom, and Spivak the most helpful in terms of the politics of denial (Spivak 1993). The students in both places are primarily local, which is to say a mixture of old and new London, established and recent migrant, with English as variously first, second, third or fourth language, and

various levels of dis/comfort with academia. Where a theory came from is important to these students, as it is to me, but not in order to discount particular work, more as a way of locating the writer’s trustworthiness.

Research It is only later that I realise this isn’t what academic feminism is always like. From 1994 to 1995 I participate as a Fulbright Scholar in the 5 College Women’s Studies Research Centre in Massachusetts. This is a collaborative venture where 15 feminist thinkers from different international locations are brought together in a year-long research space (Dickinson House). We take turns to have our work dissected at the weekly research seminars and lectures, a motley crew of graduate students, professors, tenured academics and a few artists and writers. The group takes classes in “feminist improvisational theatre” (this is Lesbianville, USA after all), gossip about academic life, eat food together and argue about small and large things. This is my first time in the USA, and I travel its breadth in a junked Toyota on driveaway with the beautiful Richard, outstay my welcome in San Francisco and attend my first academic conference. I change my thesis topic to a scattered ethnography of bisexual meaning and culture in US lesbian and gay communities, learn to enjoy archives and create my own after grubbing around in bisexual community activists’ basements for meeting minutes, flyers and ephemera. It is also a year of desire – being desired for my Englishness (particularly my accent), wanting to have and to be (Diana Fuss is so helpful on this) the director of the 5 Colleges Centre, falling multiply and superficially in love, and learning to love in and through gender as not only coercion. This is the height of queer theory: the queer studies conference in Iowa welcomes 4,000 people who take over the liberal Iowa City. I stay with a pro-queer leftie GermanAmerican woman who feeds me and the six other students she houses during the visit. Sex party flyers are handed out randomly at the end of academic sessions on SM, bisexuality and Sedgwick’s Henry James (1991). I write home to friends of my amazement, underplaying my anxiousness, overstating my adventures.

Passion A group of feminist friends takes over the daily management of running York Women’s Centre from 1991. A donor left the building “to the women of York” and it has run as a centre ever since. Mostly students and activists, we provide information and support to women, and the centre also hosts Rape Crisis and a feminist counselling service. We have intense collective meetings on Monday nights for several hours, build up the database, produce a newsletter, staff the drop-in and live in each other’s pockets. York Centre for Voluntary Services begins conversations with us about applying for money for funded workers – we decide that this would be apolitical and contrary to the Marxist feminist spirit of transformation we want to inculcate. Drop-in visitors are encouraged to become volunteers, but the uncertain boundaries between service providers and users spirals out of control in ways that reflect the middle-class

background of the group: we just can’t find a way of negotiating the differences we are more intent on erasing. We read Marxist feminism and resist psychoanalysis identifying difficulties as structural in all contexts, never ontological. A kind of double life develops for me, in which an academic focus on subjectivity (French, American and British) feels incommensurable with a focus on conditions of clear and present inequality for women (British, Latin American and South African). It does not occur to me that I might not know the difference, of course. I don’t think of myself as choosing, but I gradually lose interest in the daily running of the Centre. What we had thought of as “making a difference” becomes shadowed by the clear impossibility of effecting that structural change. I try to rejoin the Centre as a worker when I get back from the USA, and run a series of safer sex workshops for women, but the collective passion has evaporated.

Summer Someone recommended this rather slim, modest-looking book to me and I sit down one weekend early evening to read it. It is the beginning of the summer break between the second and third years of my BA in English Literature, so it must be 1990. I read the first couple of pages absent-mindedly and realise I haven’t understood a word. I go back and read them again with proper attention and feel a few things connecting then immediately unravelling again. By midnight my brain is aching and I have only read ten pages; by the end of the weekend I have finished the first chapter. I teach English as a Foreign Language and Time Management to Dutch Secretarial students that summer, and so take a tip from the business models I am feigning familiarity with, reading two pages a day during the week, re-reading them on Saturday with Sunday off. By the end of the summer I have finished Gender Trouble (Butler 1990), and although the ache has not gone away, I have perhaps got used to it. I begin using the term “heterosexual matrix” to describe pretty much everything. I read Patterns of Dissonance (Braidotti 1991) and Epistemology of the Closet next (Sedgwick 1991).

Certainty We were clear that these forms of power were linked and we just weren’t interested in what the boys from the Trot Shop had to say about it. We knew that there was no feminism without sexual politics – freedom from and freedom to – and if they didn’t think that sexual identity was significant, then Margaret Thatcher sure did. We refused to let them take a leak in our separatist household on the way back from the Clause 28 demonstration (local as well as national demonstrations characterised 1989). We formed a blockade at the front of the house and sang “She’ll be coming round the mountain, hoo hoo” until they walked off. We read Sisterhood is Powerful (Morgan 1970) and puzzled over what on earth the grammars of Cixous and Irigaray might mean (Irigaray 1985a, Cixous et al. 1986). We had stopped reading men, so much of their psychoanalytic irony was lost, but we read “This Sex …” out loud together at the weekly women’s party and got totally turned on (Irigaray 1985b). No one talked

about how these actions – anti-Poll Tax, anti-Alton, anti-Clause 28 – produced pleasure and community; we were too busy being outraged. We imagined living in the Vermont mountains in a self-sustaining collective one of us had heard about, and we spent Christmas and New Year at the Women’s Holiday Home in Horton-in-Ribblesdale in North Yorkshire.

Translation Shakespeare and his Contemporaries – I hadn’t expected to like this course, the first one as an undergraduate in 1988, but the lecturer combined drama with critical reading, and encouraged us to re-write what we read from our own perspectives. Who wouldn’t be enthralled by Caliban or Shylock with their rages from the margins? (Shakespeare 2007 [1600], 2007 [1623]). Spivak sounded a word of caution then, suggesting we not rush off in search of such authentic figures, but read carefully, lean in to listen and not over-write. It was the first class to introduce me to postcolonial theory, and I don’t think I have ever recovered. It did so in a fundamentally literary context and for me postcolonial theory is Truong (2004), Rhys (2000 [1966]), Coetzee (1987) and Mistry (1997), more than it is the people who write about it. I rewrote a section of The Duchess of Malfi (Webster 2003 [1614]) as an ironic critique of Thatcher’s Britain and was devastated when the tutor disabused me of its brilliance. It didn’t translate. Later, I suffered through a course in Romantic Poetry where I struggled to engage with the texts, and wrote a blunt, untenable feminist-inspired essay that received the comment “I will not be bullied into giving this essay a better grade than it deserves”.

Movement We moved to Milton Keynes in 1986, Melanie and I, and embraced its flat, uniform expanse. We walked to the edge of the city in the snow where the street ended in a makeshift barrier that gave onto rolling fields – the city was as unfinished as we were. We lived in a cookie-cutter pre-fab on Milton Keynes Boulevard that belonged to her dad, and were allowed to stay there on the condition that we moved out at weekends so he could bed down with his girlfriend. We always went to Brighton to see my parents, and we never mentioned why we had suddenly become so attached to my mum’s Sunday lunch. We spent the six months we were there experimenting with the everyday, practising at being adults, eating plum tomatoes on toast while listening to reggae. We imagined ourselves Americans. I got a job as a Father Christmas fairy in Milton Keynes shopping mall, the first in the UK. It fairly sparkled, and people came from all over to shop in one place. I was paid £1.92 an hour to wear a pink tutu and entertain the children waiting to see the two Father Christmases (one on either side of the grotto) as the increasingly irate families inched their way past the hour wait markers. I shared tea-breaks with a teacher in his 50s who had recently been released from prison, after embezzling school funds (Father Christmas 1) and a young, unemployed middle-class “punk” hairdresser (Father Christmas 2). After work, I would meet Melanie at The Point, where she worked at the tenscreen cinema (the UK’s first multiplex), and we would go to the club upstairs and toy with the

young men we had no real interest in. When I had my hair cut and parted, Melanie told me I could be her Italian boyfriend. I loved walking or driving around with her so proud, but later I made a point of growing it back. Melanie never forgave me for leaving her to go to university, as she put it. I didn’t agree then, but I now know I abandoned our experiment for my own.

Story My brother and I grew up with au pairs: we lived with young Scandinavians, in particular, for most of my childhood, while mum and dad both worked full time. Both my parents were the first in their families to have a higher education: my father in history and then law at Cambridge; my mother at Eastbourne teacher training college. The value of education was thus never questioned. There was always a sense in our family that my dad had married beneath him, and my mum suffered direct comments of this kind from her in-laws. When my grandparents left the home they’d always lived in for an old-people’s home in Brighton, it was my mum who visited weekly and dragged me and my brother reluctantly along. She relishes the story of my grandmother stroking my hair, knowing how much I hated that and not saying, then watching from the side as I bit my grandmother’s hand. At school, I suffered from an excess of enthusiasm interpreted as arrogance (perhaps it was), and my father still has the report in his desk from 1979: “Clare’s French is excellent; pity her behaviour is not the same”. I would run the mile and half home every day, tromp loudly into the house, and throw myself front of the TV (once we got one). I had an unshakeable attachment to Starksy and Hutch, and Alas Smith and Jones. My father tells a story from 1978, rather too often for my liking, of my resistance to feminism aged ten. The story goes that I had overheard my parents discussing feminism with our au pair and had asked what that was. No one remembers how they defined it, but like my mum, I was adamant that feminism was stupid. When pushed for a reason, I said that no one would stop me marrying Starsky when I grew up, burst into tears and ran out of the room. Only the lure of the American-style cheesecake Waitrose had just started selling could lure me back downstairs.

Beginning I have been trying to make sense of why it doesn’t work to read these fragments forward in time, from Starksy and Hutch to the Collective, from Father Christmas to the Care of the Self, from Brighton to San Francisco, or Milton Keynes to Travelling Concepts. Or perhaps I should say why I don’t want you to read them that way, why I want you to read the “feminist transatlantic” in the same partial, half-remembered and insistently self-centred way I do. One reason is to flag the importance of memory in how we make sense of the ambiguities we struggle with in the present – they have a history, but not a clear or linear one in my experience. Another is to foreground the importance of time and place in how we become subjects, a sense of the folding over and in of time and place, and of how memory is embodied. I can’t tell you a story of moving from somewhere to somewhere else, from one set of intellectual and political

allegiances to another. That would be a neat resolution that I know can’t capture how these connections are lived. I can’t detach fantasy from reality when asked to reflect on transatlantic movements, theory and politics. I can’t tell you a story that separates my intellectual commitments from my desire for American-ness (and my pleasure in its desire for me), the taste of cheesecake from my discomfort with the literalness of location. I can’t separate my summer reading pleasures over time from my anger when queerness is stripped bare of its feminism. I can’t leave Melanie behind and tell you a narrative of becoming cosmopolitan because I miss her belief in me as Italian. When I think of Judith Butler, I think of a Milton Keynes shopping mall and a scratchy nylon tutu. And so I work backwards in part to disorient, and in part to illustrate, the framing of the past that the present effects. Does any of that matter? I think it does. Because to really engage the locational and representational dilemmas I inhabit now (to the tune of an American cop series) also requires attention to the histories we rehearse and rewrite to imagine ourselves capable of doing so.

References Braidotti, R. 1991. Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy. Cambridge: Polity. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York/London: Routledge. Cixous, H., Clément, C., et al. 1986. The Newly Born Woman. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Coetzee, J.M. 1987. Foe. London: Penguin. Covi, G., Anim-Addo, J., et al. 2006. ReSisters in Conversation: Representation Responsibility Complexity Pedagogy. York: Raw Nerve Books. de Beauvoir, S. 1952. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books. Essed, P. 1991. Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. London: Sage. Fanon, F. 1991 [1952]. Black Skins, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. Foucault, M. 1980. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Garstenauer, T., et al. 2006. Teaching Subjects in Between: Feminist Politics, Disciplines, Generations. York: Raw Nerve Books. Hark, S. 2002. Disputed Territories: Feminist Studies in Germany and Its Queer Discontents. American Studies Quarterly 46(1). Hemmings, C. 2011. Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Irigaray, L. 1985a. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, L. 1985b. This Sex Which is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mistry, R. 1997. A Fine Balance. London: Faber and Faber. Morgan, R. 1970. Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement. New York: Vintage Books. Rhys, J. 2000 [1966]. Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin. Sedgwick, E.K. 1991. Epistemology of the Closet. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Shakespeare, W. 2007 [1600]. The Merchant of Venice. London: Penguin Classics. Shakespeare, W. 2007 [1623]. The Tempest. London: Penguin Classics. Skaerbaek, E., Duhaček, D., et al. 2006. Common Passion, Different Voices: Reflections on Citizenship and Intersubjectivity. York: Raw Nerve Books. Spivak, G.C. 1993. Outside in the Teaching Machine. New York: Routledge. Spivak, G.C. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Suleri, S. 1992. Woman Skin Deep: Feminism and the Postcolonial Condition. Critical Inquiry 18(4): 756–769. Truong, M. 2004. The Book of Salt. New York: Vintage. Vasterling, V., Demény, E., et al. 2006. Practising Interdisciplinarity in Gender Studies. York: Raw Nerve Books. Webster, J. 2003 [1614]. The Duchess of Malfi. London: Methuen. Wekker, G. 1993. Mati-ism and Black Lesbianism. Journal of Homosexuality 24(3–4): 145– 158. Wittig, M. 1980. The Straight Mind. Gender Issues 1(1): 103–111.

Chapter 3 My Father, an Agent of State Feminism and Other Unrelatable Conversations Gul Ozyegin

I was born in 1955 in Ankara, where I spent my girlhood and most of my early adulthood until I moved to Philadelphia for graduate school, and eventually – after more than two decades of teaching in the USA and research stints in Turkey – became an accidental immigrant. As an immigrant scholar/teacher, I embrace and resist (in equal parts) inhabiting that uneasy position of being a bridge/translator between the West and non-West, while questioning this and similar binaries in my scholarship. Like many other accounts of coming-of-age as a feminist, I don’t have any defining moment or a transgressive episode in my life with which to illustrate how I became a feminist. Nonetheless, the peculiar influence of my authoritarian father on my feminist trajectory should not go unmentioned. My father, who belonged to the first generation of sons of the new Turkish Republic, personified (very confusingly to me when I was growing up) the contradictions of the top-down project of Turkish modernity and Westernization, in which gender equity/the woman question was central. He was a great admirer of Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the chief architect of what we today call State Feminism in feminist literature (the inclusion of women in political citizenship and top-down reforms initiated by the State, without the notable participation of women, for the improvement of the legal, social and economic status of women). He championed what he understood as Ataturk’s new ideals for Turkish women, and embraced a strong hostility towards religion and religious upbringing. As an ardent agent of state feminism, he was personally experimenting with Ataturk’s ideals as a father during my sisters’ and my formative years. Foremost, this meant for him the advocacy of girls’ education, which would place his daughters in the public world of money-making, power, and scientific and intellectual life with a mission of modernizing the country and its people, side by side with their male peers. I remember vividly one of my parents’ intense fights. It was about my oldest sister wanting to be sent to a teacher-training school, her best friend having already signed up. My mother had happily agreed. In my recollection my father’s objection was profound in its expressive force and vitality. He declared that primary school teaching was an inferior profession because it was a profession full of women, and instead my sister should aspire to become an engineer. For my mother, primary school teaching was simply the ideal female occupation, one which would allow her daughter to combine motherhood with paid employment (she would endlessly cite those less than full-time hours and long summer vacations), while elevating her status within the home with earnings. I also passionately wanted my sister to become an engineer. There was something seductive in imagining my sister as an engineer. When it became time to

choose my second oldest sister’s schooling, my father sought to persuade her to enrol at a technical school that was accepting female students for the first time, instead of a regular high school. Indeed, she became one of the first few female graduates of that school. By no account was my mother an ordinary woman; she was unique among mothers at this time because she was de facto a single mum due to my father’s absence from home (his job required him to be away from home for long stretches of time). She was quite aware of her anomalous position among her peers, saying often, “I am both the woman and the man of the house”. She wasn’t a model of deference and acquiescence: she was keenly aware of the importance of the domestic activities for her self-realization, and achieved authority through domestic manipulations. She had no illusions about female dependency – she herself was living through it and always communicated to us the importance of possessing a profession and the ability to earn wages, something to fall back on when men as providers fail you and your children. But still I didn’t want to be like my mother. Even though I was surrounded by female relatives and my parents’ friends who were professional women, including some female engineers and lawyers, my girlhood role model was a never-married woman – one of my mother’s childhood friends. Unlike my mother, she was unburdened with children and a husband – never mind that she was independently wealthy and didn’t need to work to earn her independence. To me she wonderfully represented female freedom and autonomy. A matrimony-less and childless future womanhood occupied the romance of my adolescence. When my mother was out in the afternoons attending women’s gatherings for tea, which were very popular among housewives at that time, I played with my three sisters. We played “the office”, not the “house”. I loved the part when I sat behind an imaginary huge office desk, when it was my turn to play the manager, and with rapid strokes of a pen signed the “documents” that my subordinate (one of the sisters) put in front of me; meanwhile my mother dreamed of entering me in an American-style national beauty contest (not because I possessed any particular beauty but on the account of my height and long legs). My father’s desire for his daughters to search for parity with men was full of patriarchal contradictions. My sisters and I were confronted with almost an irreconcilable patriarchal desire: that we obtain greater freedom and power in public but be sexually chaste (no boyfriends were allowed) and modestly androgynous in appearance (no miniskirts, and makeup was forbidden, except for a faintly applied light-coloured lipstick); that we become the possessors of high-powered careers but also domestic goddesses in serving men (I never saw my father bring groceries home, pour his own glass of water or touch a dirty dish in his life). His image of the new modern woman – truly matching what Ataturk envisioned – was powerless in challenging the traditional rules of female modesty and chastity, and domesticity. It is this fundamental contradiction in terms that feminists of my generation in Turkey had to grapple with. When I came to the USA, I happened to recount some of my father’s uncommon blending of what I considered his pro-feminist impulses with authoritarian and oppressive practices, to convey a more complex image of patriarchy in the country of my upbringing to one of my feminist buddies. She responded that the reason why my father was like that was because he did not have a son (my brother is the youngest child), and he was substituting his daughters as boys. Of course, it was a reasonable theory to entertain, but for me her reasoning tapped into

an easily recognizable vein of Western feminist paradigm of patriarchy in non-Western cultures, and painfully marked my very first failure in translation (both linguistically and culturally). Over the years, in meeting the challenges and pleasures of being a translator as well as a teacher and scholar, I failed countless times to offer my interlocutors a shared frame of reference. This question of translation continues to permeate my professional and personal life. My most chagrining transatlantic conversations in the USA – whether with feminist friends or in Women’s Studies classrooms – were animated by the larger question of grappling with the many contexts from which feminist theory and praxis arise. In particular, conversations about abortion, marriage and motherhood always touched sacred grounds that I hadn’t imagined existed among women. The nonchalant invocation of my own abortions in Turkey, where women were bestowed with the right to have abortion on demand – viewed through the lens of my interlocutors, a seeming anomaly in a Muslim country – met with complete silence when I was trying to make the simple point of why abortion rights had never became a subject of feminist activism in Turkey, compared with the situation in the USA, in our collective exploration of feminist politics of reproduction. After all these years, I am still terrified by my deep insensitivity as a rookie teacher/translator and how I failed to anticipate and take care of the deeper cultural context of American feminism. In discussions of unfamiliar forms of feminist activism, I used the example of some Turkish feminists who divorced their husbands to protest against the establishment of the Family Research Institute, which was formed for the purpose of strengthening family ties in the early 1990s. I argued that, by divorcing their husbands, these women hoped to underscore the familial dimension of women’s subordination, and I talked about how these individual-level actions were important in creating a discursivity/political space for feminism in the general culture to question women’s identities as wives and mothers, while my American students saw images of feminist frivolity, stupidity and extravagance. As a teenage Marxist, American feminism as a movement and a body of thought wasn’t on my radar. This was partly because everything American represented American Imperialism, except coveted Levis Jeans, the protestors against the Vietnam War, and of course Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. I heard about Gloria Steinem, but I don’t remember her name becoming a household name (I had started reading her books and Ms. magazine after I moved to the USA; unfortunately, the first one I read was Revolution from Within (1992) at a time when I was still calling myself a structuralist feminist and so was unable to see anything behind what I considered individualistic in her message). Aiding my continued disinterest in America during my university years was my sociology major, and the overwhelming preoccupation with dismissing American Sociology as utterly positivist, which inevitably meant never studying American culture and society through the lens of sociology. However, I remember rushing to the library at the American Cultural Council in Ankara to read and photocopy the latest issue of Signs, which wasn’t available in my university library. The writings of European Feminist thinkers such as Luce Irigaray and Julie Kristeva, Germaine Greer and the British Spare Rib magazine were, on the other hand, of great interest. My university education was consumed by an intense engagement with theories of ideology, reading Althusser, Gramsci, Poulantzas and works produced by the Birmingham School of Cultural studies, and its founder Stuart Hall (and of course later Foucault). Studying the power of ideology, and identifying education, media and

family as the ideological state apparatuses, boded well for feminist concerns, especially with regard to grappling with the question of women’s complicity in (re)producing their oppression, and what seemed to be the never-ending quest to “marry feminism with Marxism”. All the while, we (friends and family members) were painfully experiencing the personal impacts of what Althusser called the “repressive state apparatuses” – thanks to the military regime in Turkey during that period. Yet, the most influential thinker in my feminist socialization was Simone de Beauvoir, and her book The Second Sex. Thinking back, I think she resonated powerfully for me because of her existentialist claim that went beyond a demand for equality. She called for liberation, and provided some answers for me as to why Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis cannot explain women’s situation. However, most significant was her focus on identifying domesticity/home as the centre of the construction of women’s subjectivity (or more accurately, the lack of it), a realm of feminist inquiry and politics that still interests me tremendously. She placed her existential framework of immanence squarely on the oppressions of housework. “Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition (…). The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present” (1974, p. 504), she wrote, and she theorized home and its labours as confinement of a woman to immanence without possibility of transcendence, depriving her realization and expression of her individuality. In her dichotomous construction of transcendence and immanence, man exists as transcendence as he is able to realize his subjectivity with his occupational life and with creating history through contributions to the public world, constructing the meaning of the present and the past. Although de Beauvoir’s rigid dichotomy had been challenged intellectually in myriad ways (my favourite one is Iris Marion Young’s 1997 essay on House and Home), and has lost its resonance because of the diminishing importance of home, where a woman’s identity was moored, today the immensely complex set of issues involved in the global redivision of domestic and care labour between women, which organizes relationships between different groups of women on a global scale, brings back this dichotomy – with added complications of race, ethnicity, class and nationality – to the front of feminist theorizing about women, difference and inequality. Ironically, the military dictatorship of the early 1980s in Turkey nurtured the emergence of an independent women’s movement, initially organized as small consciousness-raising groups. We wanted to create our own political space for ourselves, independent of State feminism and leftist politics. For us the military dictatorship granted activism denied other political groups. We were spared being arrested for gathering or demonstrations because of our sex, because we were women, because we were demonstrating on Mother’s Day, carrying balloons and distributing flowers. The first Ankara group included women from different walks of life, and women with different leftist political persuasions, but academic women who were returning from abroad with newly minted PhD’s initiated and sustained this informal consciousnessraising group. “The personal is political” gave the group its vitality, while we were always searching for ways to enlarge, to reach a multitude of women. In addition to the mixture of personalities, the intellectual enthusiasm was intense, and the debates about searching for ways to marry Marxism with feminism, and whether one is first Marxist and then a feminist or vice versa, were heated. Out of all that came fissures, breakups of the group, formations of new

groups and cleavages. Yet in the women in these small groups lay the very form of feminist politics, intimately connected to the present, to the everyday, to subjectivity, to personal transformation, less separated from women’s own lives. Experiences of self-reflection, consciousness-raising, the negotiation between personal and public opened up a type of participation in political life in which the power of ritual, humour and playfulness was given prominence (for example, during the campaign against street sexual harassment, we handed out huge lapel pins with heads of purple beads to women in the streets, to be used to counter the unwanted sexual touching of men in crowded buses and streets). My growth as a feminist in a small group environment was interrupted when I moved to the USA, but it was the beginning of a feminist movement from the few to the many and from smaller to bigger discursive and institutional spaces. The feminist movement in Turkey today continues to change the course of women’s lives. When I encountered American feminism, the notion of commonality (common oppression) of women and the notion of sisterhood were being challenged by both African-American theorists and those representing Third World, post-colonial voices and lesbians. They articulated and interrogated the differences among women, a radically different politics from second-wave feminists in the 1970s, who focused on the differences between women and men. This was best crystallized in Gayatri Spivak’s wise words: “There has to be a simultaneous other focus: not merely who am I? But who is the other woman? How am I naming her? How does she name me?” (1987, p. 150). This was not just a challenge for the simple recognition of plurality, or a claim that there are “women”, multiple and subjects of different histories, not “woman” – it was a demand that feminism should reject any perspective that divorces the production of women’s subordination from race and colonialism. This renunciation of the white middle-class feminism was central to opening up new paths of feminist inquiry and provided us with intellectual legitimacy (and funding) that allowed me and many other “Third World” voices in the USA to commit ourselves to producing empirically grounded feminist scholarship with which we could rearticulate and enrich American/Western feminist theory. We were both inspired and charged to produce finely layered analyses of specific historical and cultural settings where women’s oppression was given a careful, nuanced account that in turn interrogated Western-centric categories of analysis in Western feminism to essentialize or universalize. In a sense, the women, and their “non-Western” worlds, that we studied bore witness in encountering and problematizing the pervasive image of the long-suffering, voiceless Third World women of the popular and feminist imagination of the West, with all its attending problems of translation. Although I think academic feminism in the USA with its discursive, pedagogical and institutional power offers still the best place to promote and disseminate feminist knowledge and activism produced elsewhere, there are many obstacles to overcoming the Western bias in much mainstream feminist theorizing. It seems that the limited influence of non-Western feminism on feminist theory will become more of a problem with the ever-increasing predominance of English as the global language of feminism. This is an enormously complex question because it fundamentally touches upon the place of feminists and feminist knowledge production in academia, perhaps representing one of the paradoxical consequences of the success of American feminists in legitimatizing and institutionalizing feminist scholarship.

Mainstream feminist journals in the USA are eager to publish non-Western authors and concerns. Although this may seem to be a positive development in terms of bringing nonWestern voices as constructors of theory to American readers, this voice comes with a loss, one associated with the process of making theory produced elsewhere “relatable”. Relatability usually involves accommodation to a dominant conceptual and methodological template. It means framing one’s questions with Western assumptions that are often treated as universal to establish relevance and transportability; it means being asked to engage with irrelevant but famous/fashionable works at the expense of dislodging “authentic” but lesser known sources, threatening the erasure of the cultural and intellectual context within which it is produced. In the end, these voices are valued much more for the descriptions of the worlds they convey, and the quotes from their informants, than the theories they forge. On the other hand, promotion of English as the privileged language in many non-Western universities effectively discourages development of theory in one’s own language while supporting a system of elitism. In Turkey, for example, scholars are encouraged as a requirement of their professional development and recognition to publish in English, and are given monetary incentives to publish in English and in Western journals, whereas in the hierarchical world of academia in the USA, at least at my institution, which otherwise champions international education, publishing in another language (like in Turkish) and/or in a non-Western journal brings a negative assessment. Recently, a mundane moment of teaching allowed me to recognize the power of one of our new sources of hope – the next generation. While I was reviewing term-paper proposals from students in my “Gender in Non-western Cultures” seminar, I noticed that two students happened to pick up the same topic: “Arranged Marriage in India”. One proposal set out to examine the topic from the standard perspective – how the institution of arranged marriage is the key cause of women’s subordination. The other proposal came from an American-born daughter of an Indian immigrant family. She opened her proposal with: “I am a product of an arranged marriage”. I felt enormously grateful for having her company in the feminist business of “translation” and “relatability”.

References de Beauvoir, S. 1974. The Second Sex, translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage. Spivak, G.C. 1987. French Feminism in an International Frame, in Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen. Steinem, G. 1992. Revolution from Within. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Young, I.M. 1997. House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme, in Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 4 Bridging Different Gaps: East, West, Europe and the USA? Andrea Pető

To start the story I have to say immediately that I have always wanted to be a historian and my trajectory as a feminist and as a historian has an obvious temporality connected to the political history of Europe. I was born in 1964, studied and started to work on the other side of the Iron Curtain in communist Hungary. I clearly remember the hot and sunny summer afternoon when I was listening to a broadcast on the portable radio in our kitchen, called a “Sokol”, about the work of Egyptologists excavating ancient tombs. (By the way, there were two types of radios available in the shops at that time; this was the Soviet brand.) I knew immediately that this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to know more about the lives of people of the past. I also was sure that it would be easy to achieve. After all, my father was an economist, who after sadly accepting the fact that his only child was a girl, planted every possible ambition in me and provided all the resources and networks I needed to achieve my desires. My mother was one of the few stay-at-home mums, very exceptional during communism, who only started to work outside the home after I had already grown up. My family had of course experienced all the possible horrors of the twentieth century that a family in Central Europe can survive: deportation, forced movement and imprisonment. Yet, we still maintained an inherent belief in democracy, progress and human rights. My political self was created, again, through information broadcast by radio. This time it was a different brand. It was from the landlocked stable called “Videoton”, the Hungarian brand of available radios. I was able to get the transmission from Radio Free Europe, and when the army crushed the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980–1981, I was listening to the radio with my father. He, who had been a prisoner after the 1956 uprising, strongly advised me not to get involved in politics. However, that was one of the few pieces of advice from him in my life that I have never taken. My family lived in the elite district of Buda, the hilly side of Budapest. I studied in an elite school specialising in English, where I performed as required so that I could be admitted to the university without problems. I began to feel that my dream of becoming an Egyptologist was close to being materialised, except for one problem: as I started to enrol in courses, I began to recognise that what was originally interesting to me in Egyptology (the lives of long dead people and the stories of those who were actually recovering those lives), was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. Instead of interesting lives and interesting stories, I was studying long dead languages and complicated hierarchies of gods and goddesses. It became clear to me that it would take decades for me to be able to hear what people in the past wanted to say to me.

After this bitter recognition, my dream of being an Egyptologist came to an end. I kept on studying history, but added sociology as a major without having any real master plan for the future. I passed all my exams with distinction but without any real effort and obtained a degree in sociology, along with my degree in history. Meanwhile during the summer I did some interviewing for a project, allowing me to earn some money that I did not need, but giving me considerable self-confidence as a historian. Moreover, this project took me through Hungarian history in the 1980s in ways that allowed me to not only get to know my own elite environment, but also discover how the Roma lived. This type of social responsibility was not unique among students of the ELTE, the University of Budapest, but produced a very rare combination of skills and sensibilities for a historian, who according to the standard of those times should “only” use documents as sources and believe in “objective science”. Luckily there were some exceptional personalities at the ELTE who had personal contacts outside the country during the last decade of communism when I was studying there. They provided up-to-date literature assignments in their classes, which was how I ended up writing my thesis on the seventeenth-century English utopian movement. Particularly important was the personal charisma of Eva Balázs (1915–2006), who systematically collected around herself – as one of the very few female professors – a group of scholars with the intention that they should think ambitiously about their professions, not accepting any limitations. She seemingly ignored the communist party censorship and developed an alternative personal network in institutions though which she could arrange anything from a scholarships to publication possibilities. I remember an encounter held in her cosy office after a seminar when she told me with some sadness in her voice that it was a pity that I was only interested in the future, not in the past. Otherwise, she said, I could have made a good historian. This was one of those key moments in my professional life and her words have come back to haunt me throughout my career. I did not become a specialist of the early modern period; I was too politically engaged and interested in how pasts shape our future, but I moved to contemporary history. In 1988, I accompanied my husband, István György Tóth to Freiburg, Germany and began studying, getting to know the equally charismatic Gottfried Schramm, who was a professor of Eastern European history. There I made a discovery that seems trivial in the light of the present, namely, that history can be interesting and have relevance for our future. I remember sitting in the unattractive concrete building of the University of Freiburg library for weeks on end, reading one book after another. I found a section in the library that was totally unknown to me: Frauengeschichte (women’s history). Given my training in Enlightenment history, where empresses and intellectual women were a part of our curricula, this should not have come as a surprise. The distinction between particular and general history explored by women’s history has been very useful in this context, as it helped me be aware of the different perspectives that structure the way women are written about. I did not have enough money to photocopy everything I wanted to take back with me, so I tried to remember what I had read and I made copious notes. (In 2008, when I moved from my old apartment, I had to throw away the notes I made then, and I did it with a bleeding heart.) The period in Freiburg marked the birth of my academic self. I am still working under the spell cast in 1988: combining the serious empirical work I was taught at ELTE with the theoretical innovation of an interdisciplinary approach. I spent, and I am still spending, days, weeks and

years in the archive, while trying to ground my findings in theoretical frames. When I got back to Hungary I knew what I wanted to do: to write books that were empirically grounded, theoretically interesting and have relevance for our future, for fighting for equality.

European and transatlantic connections When I am at an international conference, the first question usually asked is: how did you start working on gender? The question implies that “gender” is one of the products of the Western world, like Coca Cola or chewing gum, and had to be imported to the Eastern Bloc. By now, a whole literature has been developed about travelling concepts and travelling selves that questions this stereotypical essentialising of East and West, but my own story is different. It is connected to the progressive political tradition in countries that fell under Soviet domination. Coming from a family in which the men were always politically engaged in parties of progression – Peasant Party, Social Democrats and Communists – the fight for equality came “naturally” to me. The site where I hoped to find my intellectual (and political) home was the institution of “flying universities” in the 1960s. These were meetings that were held in private apartments during communism by intellectuals who otherwise were banned from teaching. I happily became engaged in one in the 1980s, dedicated to a critical examination of the history of the Soviet Union. The lecturer was Miklós Szabó (1935–2000), the historian of ideas. As the only woman in the group, while the wife of our host was busy in the kitchen, I was amazed when the discussion turned towards the policy of state-controlled consumption. Miklós Szabó pointed out that there was nothing wrong with everybody wanting refrigerators with a special section for cooling butter like they had in the USA. All the other members of the session were agreeing that it would be nice to have one. That was the last meeting I attended, because I was deeply disappointed with how privileged consumption was equated with political liberty. This story actually frames how I got involved in feminist politics. I was deeply unhappy with the hegemonic masculinity of the opposition movement, which uncritically accepted the neoliberal paradigms limiting its potential for critiquing the systems. The collapse of communism in 1989 did not find me on the barricades, but rather breastfeeding my son, who was born on 29 August. My friends and former professors were getting into Parliament or founding new institutions with frantic enthusiasm. They all wanted to be doing something new, as this window of opportunity was opening up for us. I, too, wanted in on this and took up a scholarship in Oxford, while my husband took care of our son in Budapest. When I returned in 1991, I was asked to work for a new university, the Central European University, which was one of many funded by the Hungarian-born American millionaire, George Soros. My time in Oxford had strengthened my dedication to women’s history and provided me with insights into new labour history (thanks to consultations with Erik Hobsbawm and Raphael Samuels) so that I could write my dissertation on employment and women. At the time of its founding, there were four of us working at the CEU Budapest “Campus” in one tiny rented office from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Castle Hill in Buda, while the centre of the university was in Prague. At that time it sounded slightly pretentious naming this tiny office the “Budapest Campus”, but our enthusiasm did not

acknowledge borders and then my transatlantic phase started by working for a university registered in the USA. My first transatlantic experience was meeting Americans for the first time, who were part of the massive influx of Americans to Budapest. Just as leading European historians had come to visit Budapest at the end of the 1980s, in the last years of communism, on the invitation of Eva Balázs, in the early 1990s scholars from the USA were appearing in large numbers. Thomas Lacquer, Joan Scott and Natalie Zemon Davis all arrived, and the CEU became a meeting point of cutting edge scholarship and brilliant minds. There was a lecture series on memory and remembrance, with Stephan Greenblatt and Lynn Hunt, following the launch of the journal of Memory and History. I once again found myself frantically reading books I had not encountered before, this time recommended by these visiting scholars. This was when I discovered The Glassworkers of Carmaux, the PhD dissertation of Joan Scott, published in 1974. As a historian who had also started off in labour history, this book epitomised what I have come to consider as “good history”. First it was easy to read. It did not use a great deal of the required jargon. You did not need to know much about France at the end of nineteenth century in order to understand the dilemmas facing these workers. It was also an elegantly slim volume, which invitingly stood out on the bookshelves. It was a political statement, exploring the process by which different branches of trade unionism had sprung up in a particular part of France at a particular moment in history. For someone who had always been interested in social change and how it happened, this book was an eye opener as far as transatlantic connections are concerned: an American scholar writing about France. Without discarding my basic social history training, in 1993 I happily started to teach a course on women’s history in Eastern Europe in the history department. Nowadays I am not particularly proud of that syllabus. The works I was teaching were mostly the result of the Cold War heritage, and were very descriptive. At that time, hardly anyone was working on the history of Eastern Europe in Eastern Europe. Fewer were publishing in other languages than their native language. English opened up a space for a lingua franca of the region. At the CEU we immediately recognised that the key element for international communication was to make the work of scholars of the region accessible to others. So began my career as an editor. In a period of 15 years, I produced ten edited volumes in English and two in Russian, in addition to six books in my native Hungarian language, in order to make the works of others accessible. Gender history also proceeded through collected volumes, and in some cases the individual chapters were developed as monographs. The books were spaces for communication and meeting points for scholars from “East” and “West”. For example, the first volume Women in History – Women’s History – was published in the CEU History Department Working Paper Series in 1994. While it was not perfect, it was the first attempt to publish the work of non-English-speakers on this subject outside the USA or UK. While German had been the traditional second language of the region, it had become less important to the extent that scholars preoccupied with the German unification tended to ignore Central Europe. After the unification was completed, there was a brief but unhappy period when German scholars also tried to enter the CEU. The Andrássy, the German speaking university, was founded in 2001. However, the German language could not regain its

importance in academic communication after its initial abandonment after 1989. From the late 1990s on, as Russia recovered from the collapse of communism and renewed its demand for intellectual leadership, more resources became available for gender studies in Russian. I also participated in this process by organising a conference and publishing a book in Minsk. Moreover, I organised the publication of books and a book series from Bishkek, in Kirgizstan. The highlight of this period of my life was a conference: “Transitions, Environments, Translations: The Meaning of Feminism in Contemporary Politics” in Princeton, organised by Joan Scott in 1996. This was my first academic trip to the USA and the participants were all working on the history of gender in former Eastern Europe. Now they can be called the founding scholars of gender studies in Eastern Europe: Hana Havelkova, Anastasia Posadskaya and Vlasta Jalusic among others. However, in Princeton at that time, we were a group of enthusiastic young women who were eager to change the world around us with the help of history. Looking back, the most remarkable element of that conference was that we were already problematising those issues which were so central to debates throughout the early 2000s: the “East”–“West” relationship and the problem of transatlantic communication. A path-breaking book was published based on this conference (Scott et al. 1997). When I recently collected the references for my impact factor, I recognised how widely the book is used as assigned reading in courses or as a starting point for further analyses. The main lesson for me in this period was the exploration of the potentials and limits of interdisciplinarity: how to integrate and develop further my disciplinary work in the field of feminist history.

Back to Europe My “American” period came to an end shortly after my move from the Department of History to the Department of Gender Studies. There were two reasons. The first was the debate that is called “Gender Trouble” at the CEU (Secor 2001, pp. 44–53, Scott 2010). The American colleagues Joan Scott, Elizabeth Grosz, and Judith Butler took a clear stand in the conflict, as did the European Network of Women’s Studies. The second reason for the end of my American period was the approaching EU Enlargement. As a result I spent a year at the European University Institute working on EU Enlargement between 2001 and 2002. I was the only member of the working group from the countries that were later to be called “New Europe”, and I was the only scholar working on gender. It was a painful lesson to learn that, during the weekly mandatory seminars, I would be asked as “The Hungarian Colleague” to share my opinion and that my opinion was “The Hungarian Opinion”, no matter whether the issues discussed that particular week were energy policy or corporate responsibility. I read day and night to catch up with the literature and prepare myself to answer intelligently the question about “The Hungarian Opinion”. This work gave me a basic overview of the EU mechanisms, policies and practices together with a most uncomfortable feeling about whether transnational aims can be achieved by efforts with a “national” grounding. At the same time in the EU Gender Studies programme there, headed by Luisa Passerini, I found a flourishing intellectual community of European gender scholars who

were doing gender studies with theoretical innovation. The politics of that programme fascinated me: it offered a space for American colleagues to come to meet “European colleagues”. This “Europeanness” was a process in the making rather than a state of the art in the Focus Group on Enlargement at the Schumann Center. The need for the Gender Studies at EUI to focus more on technocratic elements of EU gender policies was combined with theoretical discussions about gendering cultural history. The possibility of applying for EU research funding also opened up new perspectives for me. These projects necessitated project meetings nearly every three months, which entailed travelling to other European countries. Therefore, from 2001 on, I managed to travel to nearly every country in Europe for a meeting. I discovered that Europe is made at the conference dinners, and my conclusion is that money spent on culinary resources is, indeed, money well spent. Sitting around a meal with a white tablecloth, we were able to discuss all those issues that had never been raised before. We could compare teaching loads and research funding, argue about key texts and, of course, explore the merits of our various cuisines. The EU-funded enterprise that shaped my thinking about gender was ATHENA, the European Thematic Network of Women’s Studies. This network grew from a dozen universities to a mega network of 140 partners in all European countries, and initiated conversations about the institutionalisation of gender studies. I was particularly impressed with the initiator Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), whose deep conviction that Europe needs to face its own ghosts in a dialogue with other schools of thought shaped our discussions. Her article about thinking about European difference is one of the ground-breaking articles to deal with the European heritage of colonialism and fascism, a project in which I am also deeply interested (Braidotti 2002, pp. 158–183). The “Teaching with Empires” working group which was part of ATHENA was also important for me. Working with Margarita Birriel, a scholar of sixteenth-century Spain, is not only always refreshing and thought-provoking, but her involvement in Latin American thinking about colonialism and gender also widened my horizons enormously. Since all European countries had to face their colonial heritage in the way they frame their “national” histories, we put together a book consisting of the best practices of teaching (Clancy and Pető 2009). The USA had also changed, and more and more faculty members came to the CEU as “refugees from George Bush’s America”, who were different from those “Cold War Warriors” and intellectual adventurers who came in the founding phase in the early 1990s. The CEU, where I stared to teach again in 2004, received Hungarian accreditation, which was crucial in order to be eligible for any EU funding, and really became a meeting point of different intellectual traditions.

Making European connections The dominant national frame of history writing is one of the biggest challenges for historians. First comparative history then transnational and global history writing are trying to question this framework. The CEU is an excellent place to do this kind of scholarship; because of its

Hungarian accreditation, it is part of the Hungarian, European educational space, and it also has a US accreditation, so it is also “American”. In my research projects I have always tried to find projects which speak to transnational debates but are grounded in empirical work in Hungary. As an academic I have always had research questions rather than a particular field or historical period. My first book on the Hungarian women’s movement in 1945–1951 was born in response to the fact that the point of comparison for historians for post-1989 developments was the period before the First World War. This assumption conveniently forgets that the legacy of the Soviet occupation in 1945 should be evaluated. Moreover, it leaves unexplored the reaction of the women’s movement at the time against the Soviet type of politics. The book (published in 1998 in Hungarian and in 2003 in English) was a direct result of the school of Frauengeschichte in terms of its basic grounding in social history and its dedication to normative theory (Pető 2003a). My second book (published in 2001 in Hungarian and in 2007 in German) was more a product of the Anglo-Saxon tradition of life-story and memory literature. I explored the life story of Julia Rajk as she remembered it (Pető 2007). The next book emerged from my anticipation of the current strengthening of extreme right-wing women’s movements in Hungary and was situated in social-movement literature (Pető 2003b). I was doing interviews from the 1980s onwards and this particular interview project proved to be very important for my intellectual biography. It taught me about the multiplicity of truths and openness to the opinions of the others. The results of these interviews frightened me. Some of the interviewees, all active, female politicians, bluntly expressed Holocaust-denying views. I used the literature on the American extreme right, especially the works of Blee, to face the methodological challenge of interviewing members of a different community (Blee 1991, 1993). There are several similarities between the extreme right groups in the USA and the extreme right groups I studied in Hungary. Their appropriation of a national glorious past, their racism and their attachment to the cult of violence make it an enigma why so many women have joined them. The other important conclusion of the research was how different the Hungarian neo-conservatism emerging after 1989 was from the American one as far as roots and cultural patterns were concerned. This was due to the legacy of communism, which caused an openness towards any type of political thought as long as it was anti-communist. As a deeply political animal I was frightened by the relativisation of the Holocaust emerging not only in my interviews but also in the Hungarian public discourse, and I have developed a line of teaching about the Holocaust, memory and gender. I am also fighting in this course with the shadow of presentation of the Holocaust as non-gendered. This course has a specific “European” focus, although using literature mostly from the USA and Israel and it tries to combat the assumption that “Europe” is dead as far as the Jewish tradition is concerned. Like my scholarship, my teaching is also driven by questions and not by discipline. The course on Gender and Politics arose from consideration of why so few women are involved in politics and what we can do to change that. It examines the possibilities for progressive politics while posing several theoretical challenges, one of which is how to address the progressive political tradition of Eastern Europe, where most of the students come from, and to explore how this tradition was eliminated by the communist takeover. Several dissidents left

Europe before the Second World War, and the flow of progressive intellectuals leaving Eastern Europe continued during communism, making the issue of transatlantic communication essential for understanding the continuities and disruptions in progressive traditions. The biggest challenge for the teaching at the CEU, which is graduate school-accredited both in the USA and in Hungary, is the international student body. How does one apply the “American system of teaching” without mixing innovative teaching methods with the neoliberal marketisation of education? How does one choose a point of reference for teaching without risking colonialisation of a context where most of the students are not from the USA? My solution for the these dilemmas is to start the courses I am teaching with a theoretical introduction that explores the different approaches and schools of thought and to try to bring in literature in English from as many countries as possible. I would like to illustrate this with one course I am teaching on feminist historical crime fiction. One can not imagine a more “American” genre than crime fiction. This course starts with an introduction to the philosophy of detection and how and why scholars are detectives too. This is followed by an exploration of the classical formula of crime fiction, following by a confrontation with the different challenges posed by class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and postcolonial criticism. The course also deals with the issue of why, during communism, there were no crime stories, and why, after the collapse of communism, the genre flourished. The CEU is a place that grooms academics who are actively engaged in public debates instead of withdrawing into an ivory tower of academia and being concerned only with publication in peer-reviewed journals. I have also become very active as a feminist public intellectual in the media, hoping to foster some change in the very conservative Hungarian context. I have always worked for two academic audiences with sometimes conflicting value scales. The international community of scholars of gender, gender history, in particular, has its rules, fora and divas. This community, however, will never provide the necessary academic acknowledgement required for a university-tenured job in Hungary. The international environment is inspiring and sometimes depressing as far as its politics goes, but definitely an environment where I would like to be present. The same applies to the Hungarian academic community of historians where I earned my habilitation in 2005. The Hungarian system (as well as the French and the German) is more selective and hierarchical than the American: after the PhD there are two more hurdles to pass, the habilitation at the university, which requires a new book for associate professorship, and the doctorate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which requires another new book for appointment as a full professor. These hurdles effectively filter out nonconformist views and women from Hungarian academic life, where only 12 per cent of the professors are women. I am wondering, and I will get to know very soon, how these mechanisms will work in my case.

Looking backwards, looking forward So what I would have been if the communist world had not collapsed in 1989? My professional life was very much influenced by the political changes at the global level. Without the collapse of communism I am sure I would have been a history teacher in a grammar school

with a lot of enthusiastic students around me and always in a constant struggle with the leadership of the school. Teaching at the university level would have been an impossible dream for me back then. I would never have dreamed of teaching at the university because I would never have met the selection criterion for that job, which was loyalty to the communist regime and to mainstream “objective” science. While my knowledge of languages was a precondition for my integration into the academic community, it was definitely the opening up of the world after the collapse of the Iron Curtain that made it possible for me to have an academic job, not to mention embark upon my research in the field of oral history, gender, politics and memory. I am part of the 1989 generation. The experience that nothing is impossible made our generation what it is. Our closed world suddenly opened up and new possibilities emerged. However, as I have shown in this essay, this opening up had a very specific geographical and intellectual dynamic. During the 1989–2009 celebrations I have often thought about a conversation I had in which I was complaining to Eva Balázs on the phone about my missing the change of regime because of my maternal obligations. In her response, she wisely pointed out to me that there was another dimension that I seemed to be ignoring. There will always be regime changes and there will be other changes of regimes even during my lifetime. I should not regret for a second that I missed that one because of maternal obligations because, in her view – and she was a deep believer in the Annales School – I should think in terms of the long dureé. She was right. I participated in the transition in my own way, acting as a translator and working in a transnational intellectual space created by institutions, ideas and, last but not least, exceptional individuals. Now, when we are living in Europe with a growing extreme right wing and impending economic crises, I know that Eva Balázs was right back in 1989. It may well be that historical changes open up space for fulfilling a dream at least once in everybody’s life. In our neoconservative times, when the possibilities and communication channels are closing down and the world is getting smaller and smaller, it is empowering to think back to those happy, open days when everything seemed to be possible. We can hope that transatlantic communication and trans-European transactions will continue to flourish with dignity, empowering generations of women ready to implement change in spite of the difficult times ahead of us.

References Blee, K.M. 1991. Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. Los Angeles, CA: Berkeley University Press. Blee, K.M. 1993. Evidence, Empathy and Ethics: Lessons from Oral Histories of the Clan. Journal of American History, 80: 596–606. Braidotti, R. 2002. Identity, Subjectivity and Difference: A Critical Genealogy, in Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women’s Studies, edited by Griffin, G. and Braidotti, R. London: Zed Books, 158–183. Clancy, M. and Pető, A. 2009. Teaching Empires. Gender and Transnational Citizenship in Europe. ATHENA, University of Utrecht.

Pető, A. 2003a. Hungarian Women in Politics 1945–1951. East European Monographs Series. New York: Columbia University Press. Pető, A. 2003b. Napasszonyok és Holdkisasszonyok. A mai magyar konzervatív nõi politizálás alaktana [Women of the Sun and Girls of the Moon. The Changes in the Politicisation of Contemporary Hungarian Conservative Women]. Budapest: Balassi. Pető, A. 2007. Geschlecht, Politik und Stalinismus in Ungarn. Eine Biographie von Júlia Rajk. Studien zur Geschichte Ungarns, Bd. 12. Herne: Gabriele Schäfer Verlag. Scott, J.W. 2010. Fictious Unities: “Gender”, “East”, and “West” [Online]. Available at: http://www.women.it/cyberarchive/files/scott.htm [accessed 11 April 2010]. Scott, J.W., Kaplan, C. and Keats, D. 1997. Transitions, Environments, Translations: The Meanings of Feminism in Contemporary Politics. New York: Routledge. Secor, L. 2001. Gender Trouble. Who’s Afraid of Gender Studies in Eastern Europe? Lingua Franca, 11(4): 44–53.

PART II Activism: Inside and Outside the Academy

Chapter 5 Re-narrating Feminist Stories: Black British Women and Transatlantic Feminisms Ann Phoenix

To some extent, all UK feminist stories entail transatlantic conversations since the impetus for feminist activity and theorising has always been partly ideas generated by feminists in the much-larger USA. In this chapter, I want to focus on the ways in which transatlantic conversations have been central to black British feminists. This is a story that, from a twentyfirst century vantage point, is so commonplace that it can seem self-evident, part of a feminist canon that recognises that black women were central to putting difference on the late twentiethcentury feminist agenda. The telling of this story often glosses over the contestation, pain and anger that constituted the debates that were part of the history of the present. In doing so, tellers often speak of singular black feminism, treating black feminists as if they necessarily share one theoretical vantage point. This chapter aims to re-narrate a small part of the story of why black feminisms were central to feminisms in general and to black women in particular. It does so by focusing on the personal and the ways in which feminist stories are uneven, situated, characterised by varying levels of conflict, contradiction and pleasure, and always in transatlantic conversation, even when this is not recognised. The chapter first considers the reasons why black feminisms were crucial in the last century, then considers the social context within which black feminisms were produced and practised, before the final main section considers the inextricable linking of the personal and the political in reasons for black feminist organisation. Throughout, the chapter highlights some of the ways in which transatlantic conversations were central to feminist organising, even if those conversations were sometimes rather one-sided. The chapter presents a snapshot of a dynamic period in which black feminists’ concerns gained some recognition on a broader feminist agenda. In doing so, it indicates some of the currents that led to a change in feminist landscapes (i.e. it gives some indication of the history of the present).

Both feminism and anti-racism As a new postgraduate in Manchester, UK, in the late 1970s, it seemed self evident to me that, as a young black woman, both feminist and black, anti-racist organisations were necessary to my interests and to social justice. I was clear that many of my experiences from childhood onwards directly resulted from my embodiment of gender and racialisation. So the slogan “the personal is political” struck an immediate chord with me. It made my personal characteristics and identities relevant to gendered and racialised practices and legal formulations (e.g. about

race relations and sex discrimination) that (re)produce sexism and racism without individualising them. By the time I arrived in Manchester, I already knew of feminist campaigns and consciousness-raising groups. As a newcomer, therefore, I asked around for a consciousness-raising group I could join and went to feminist meetings to learn about the campaigns current at the time. Opportunely, various women were just coming together to found the Manchester Rape Crisis centre, enabling me to get to know other locally based feminists at the start of a campaign to which I was committed. I joined the Rape Crisis Group and an established consciousness-raising group in the area in which I lived, thanks to a male friend with whom I had studied psychology, whose girlfriend had moved to Manchester the previous year. Both these groups became central to my political activity and to the friendships I formed. Although we did not think of them as such, both were examples of transatlantic conversations in that consciousness-raising was pioneered by New York feminists in the 1960s as a form of political action that included campaigning on rape as well as abortion and childcare (Brownmiller 1999). By the time I joined the consciousness-raising group, many British feminists were already members of such groups, but publications, talks and media reports on US feminism were central to helping us plan activities and strategies and understand the personal issues at the heart of feminist politics (e.g. Chicago Women’s Liberation Union 1971, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective 1973). As Davis (2007) points out, Our Bodies Ourselves (Boston Women’s Health Book Collective 1973) has been used in this way around the globe. Knowing that it came from, and was widely used in, the USA, helped to give groups like ours the security of a feminist “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). Both groups provided spaces that were frequently pleasurable and strong, supportive friendships that have endured over the last three decades as well as helping to elucidate feminist issues for me. They motivated me into further intellectual enquiry and provided perspectives that influenced my research, for example, on mothers returning to paid employment after maternity leave or on the transition to motherhood. Both groups modelled the qualified, contingent way in which the personal is understood as political in that, in groups where I was the only black member, racialisation and racism were rarely mentioned. When the feminist gaze across the Atlantic began to recognise the anger against “white feminism” that black feminists were beginning to express and their contestation of theories and practices that (re)produced the exclusion of black women and men, many resisted thinking about uncomfortable differences between women by seeking to institute a hierarchy of oppressions in which gender trumped “race”. In a period when the burgeoning of “intersectionality” as a “buzzword” (Davis 2008) has made it commonplace to acknowledge that everybody is always simultaneously positioned in racialisation, gender, sexuality, embodiment, etc. (Lutz et al. 2010), it is salutary to remember how hard won and how far from obvious was this recognition. The following examples (Hancock 2007, Steinem 2008) locate racialised/gendered contestations historically and show their salience in debates about whether Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama was more deserving of selection as the Democratic frontrunner for the US presidential election in 2008. It is important to ask how we can avoid the kinds of divisive battles that occurred during the nineteenth-century quest for the vote. At that time, prominent women’s rights supporter Frederick Douglass [who had been enslaved] broke from white

female suffragettes as each side attempted to lobby the white male Congress to choose either blacks (meaning men) or women (meaning white women) for an expansion of suffrage. Already, political scientists are being called upon to answer such journalistic inquiries as ‘Is America more racist or sexist in the twenty first century?’ following the entry of Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) into the 2008 presidential race. This kind of unitary question invites what Elizabeth Martinez (1993a, b) terms the ‘Oppression Olympics’, where groups compete, rather than cooperate, in a struggle to obtain access to the fringes of opportunities and resources. (Hancock 2007) Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House … Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to make a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter). (Steinem 2008)

These two extracts provide powerful everyday examples establishing claims to the nature of social being – for Hancock as intersectional and for Steinem, as privileging gender over “race”. It is important to note, however, that, in the opinion editorial piece (from which the above extract comes), Steinem recognised that “The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together” and pledged to support Obama if he was selected. Yet, she presented her case in ways that are consistent with the “Oppression Olympics” approach critiqued by Hancock (above) and fuelled in the media during the US Democratic leadership campaign. The above examples provide an insight into why, for me, black political activity was as crucial as feminist activity, and I joined the local branch of a national anti-racist group. My understanding of black politics was influenced by US debates about the relative fruitfulness of the civil rights and Black Power movements (e.g. Carmichael and Hamilton 1967, Davis 1981). As with the feminist organisations to which I belonged, I continue to be committed to the anti-racist political aims they espouse. However, this group equally required me to fragment my understandings of social processes in that feminism was generally frowned upon and I rarely addressed it, even though everybody knew that I was a feminist, engaged in feminist organisations. In this context too, the personal was political in a qualified and contingent way. My experience, therefore, was that even campaigning groups committed to social justice were frequently reluctant to take on board social issues they considered outside their concerns. Paradoxically, these disjunctions helped me to experience the personal as political in particularly stark ways; feminist campaigning in groups where I was the only black woman and racialisation was hardly mentioned, and anti-racist political engagement in groups where feminism was generally frowned upon made the need for black feminism feel intensely personal. The ease with which such fragmentations occurred, and my acceptance of them, demonstrate how common were such social divisions and how little communication there was across social boundaries. My experience of late 1970s Britain was one of frequently being in situations that were racially informally segregated and where feminist concerns were not only far from mainstream, but also derided. In my experience both sets of campaigning were crucial. Each contributed to an understanding of the world and of social justice to which I subscribed. Each had been much influenced by writings from the USA. The separation between the issues was, however, tantalising, motivating me into further intellectual enquiry to understand the contradictions

between the simultaneous embodiment of racialisation and gender and the separation and distinction that characterised these social movements.

The context for black feminisms in the UK Given divisions such as those described above, it is not surprising that black feminists began to organise and campaign by themselves. In every city where they had a presence, a black women’s organisation could be found in the late 1970s. In Manchester, where I lived, the Abasindi black women’s co-operative was established in 1979 to create a political, cultural and educational resource and a community centre, focusing particularly on educational and cultural initiatives for young African Caribbean women who were mothers and their children (Watt, n.d.). Although I was not yet a mother, I was a frequent attendee because they aimed to cater for a range of black women’s needs. In recognition, for example, of how devalued black women’s hair was (and to some extent continues to be) in UK society, as well as the scarcity of accessible hairdressing services for black women who wanted to wear “natural” hairstyles, they provided a hairdressing service that also served as a meeting space for women that I much benefited from. For while issues of hairstyle can be viewed as trivial when it can be taken for granted both that it is easy to access the services one wants and needs, and that one’s hair and body are normative, black hair was both a feminist and a black consciousness and Black Power issue. It continues to be an area of difficulty for some young black feminists, as evidenced by recent public meetings where young black women have spoken and shared painful emotions about it (e.g. in discussions organised by Inspired Black Women in 2008). The importance of the forms of organisation represented by Abasindi has been recognised as crucial to consciousness-raising, to improving black women’s circumstances and to political campaigning (Bryan et al., 1985, Sudbury 1998). For me, they constituted simultaneous claims to recognition and redistribution in terms of changes to the social order. I would now draw on Judith Butler’s (2004) theorising to argue that Abasindi’s activities constituted political claims to liveable lives. Black women’s organisations were crucial to highlighting the issues that were considered specifically to concern black women, something to which the Combahee, black, lesbian, feminist group drew attention in 1977. Black, other Third-World and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of black and white men. There is also undeniably a personal genesis for black feminism. The publication of work by black feminists in the USA, such as the Combahee River Collective statement, was deeply exciting, providing much needed critical theory and filling in the gaps between feminisms and anti-racist politics. It is hard to convey now, from this vantage point, just how refreshing it was to find and be able to read writing by black feminists. In an

era before mass internet access, we were much more dependent on word of mouth, radical bookshops, the sharing round of material and meetings. The statement (now readily available on the internet) by the Combahee River Collective (1977), constituted a flashbulb moment for me and many other black women in that it discussed issues with which we could identify, but argued for alliances with white women and with black men on relevant issues. It powerfully expressed and validated the reasons why multiple sites of political engagement were important, but also made it clear that it was crucial to engage with issues specific to black women’s experiences without treating black women as if they were all the same and necessarily different from white women or men in general. This non-essentialising approach was particularly insightful and forward-looking. In all these developments, what happened in the USA was an important, intertextual background for what happened in the UK, more so than the other way round. It was not, however, the case that black feminists in Britain adopted US black feminist ideas wholesale. This is well demonstrated by the setting up of the Organisation of Women of Africa and African Descent (OWAAD) in 1978. OWAAD was concerned with the specificities of black British women’s experiences and, of course, drew for inspiration on US black women’s writing. It was, however, clearly concerned with the British context and, in contradistinction from black US (and indeed other European countries) feminist concerns, soon changed its name to the Organization for Women of African and Asian Descent, including Asian women within the category “black”. Its publications and the four conferences (1979–1982) held before it disbanded were groundbreaking in demonstrating the power of black women’s collective organisation and in elucidating black women’s experiences, contextualising them, and bringing them to wider attention (see Bryan et al. 1985). Publications from OWAAD had a direct impact on my political activity in that they partly inspired me to leave the Manchester Rape Crisis Collective, in which I had been a founder member, explaining clearly as I did so why it was untenable for me to stay in a context where there was a reluctance to address the then common interlinking of rape and “race” and what this meant for constructions of black men as well as how it rendered black women who were raped invisible. In particular, I felt that it was crucial to face and challenge commonplace assumptions that rapists were frequently black men and lack of recognition that black women who are raped are frequently viewed less sympathetically than white women – who are themselves much stigmatised and trivialised when raped (McCahill et al. 1979). Indeed, it was this invisibility of black women in legal work on violence against women that impelled Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) to coin the term “intersectionality”. In my consciousness-raising group issues of racialisation came more to the fore as I kept my activities less separate and I became more recognised as a feminist in the black politics I engaged with, although feminism had negligible impact on most members of the group. In keeping with a non-essentialist understanding of everyday practices, I was introduced to bell hooks’s (1981) “Ain’t I a Woman?” by a white woman, Ruth Frankenberg, then a friend of a friend, who at that time had just moved from the UK to California to do a PhD and, on a visit back, brought a copy with her. Ruth’s PhD was later to be published as White Women, Race Matters (the British edition of which was published in 1993 in a Routledge series edited by Avtar Brah, Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Gail Lewis and me). Throughout the rest of her too short life,

Ruth was concerned to analyse whiteness, rather than to treat it as an unmarked category. The publication of Hull et al.’s (1982) edited volume, All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, But Some of Us are Brave made it even clearer to me why it was important to think through “race” and gender simultaneously. Just saying the title often produced a moment of insight for listeners who had not previously thought about how blackness and femininity were differentiated or about the specificity of black women’s experiences. In that same year, the publication of Hazel Carby’s “White Woman Listen: Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood” (1982) and Pratibha Parmar’s “Asian Women: Race Class and Culture” (1982) in the Centre For Contemporary Cultural Studies’ The Empire Strikes Back, brought black feminisms into British academic contexts in new ways. The fact that they were widely read no doubt partly inspired the production, in 1984, of Feminist Review issue 17 (“Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives”), edited by Valerie Amos, Gail Lewis and Pratibha Parmar, which, in retrospect, marked a turning point in British feminist publishing and black women’s organising in that the white women collective turned over editorial control to a group of black women, with “black” including women of both African and Asian descent. The special issue was remarkable for setting a broad agenda of black feminist concerns, disrupting silences around “imperial feminism”, black lesbianism and Asian women’s contribution to UK history. The much-reproduced paper by Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar (1984), for example, was an early instance of “postcolonial feminism” that helped to create the conditions of possibility for Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s (1988) article on colonialism in feminist work and the way in which it stigmatises and essentialises “women of color”, which was also published in Feminist Review, but was from a US location, an example of the ways in which there are genuinely transatlantic conversations (rather than monologues) in feminist academic work. Equally important, Many Voices, together with the publications mentioned above, helped to destabilise knowledge about “women” and “black people”, foreshadowing Haraway’s (1989, p. 583) notion of “situated knowledge” and presenting analyses that Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) would later call “intersectionality”. These concepts, together with a non-essentialist view and scepticism towards taken-for-granted knowledge that came from deconstructing constructions of black women, influenced my academic work as I moved to London to take up a research post (in the same place where I now work once again) and began to write up my own research. At the time, the publication of the Black Women’s issue of Feminist Review generated a great deal of excitement and led to much debate and engagement. For me and other black women, a special issue of a major feminist publication was both courageous and spelled crucial recognition. As Lois McNay (2008) suggests, “the normative force of the idea of recognition is attractive”, particularly since lack of recognition and misrecognition had long meant that black women like me could not see ourselves reflected in normative constructions. At the same time, the special issue called for changes to power relations (including at state level) and theorised histories of injustice and oppression. It did not, therefore, fall into the trap identified by McNay (2008) of disconnecting the understanding of subject formation from the analysis of power relations. It also did not create a binary between recognition and “redistribution” in the way that Nancy Fraser (1995) did. My copy of the special issue was much used and borrowed until alas it failed to return to me. I could not get another, since the

issue had sold out. I am not suggesting that Feminist Review issue 17 presented the only groundbreaking treatment of the intersections of racialisation and gender at the time, or that it was universally acclaimed. It ran counter to Anthias and Yuval-Davis’s earlier (1983) paper in Feminist Review, which was also innovative in conducting intersectional analyses, but which argued for a focus on ethnicity, rather than blackness, and was much criticised, although it has subsequently been recognised as one of the most influential papers published in Feminist Review. In addition, the reactions to the special issue included much negative critique, and the suggestion that ethnocentrism, rather than racism, was the issue in feminism (Barrett and McIntosh 1985). It could be argued that a “Black Women’s” special issue implicitly suggested that all other issues were “White Women’s” issues, and so reflected and reproduced the marginalising tendencies evident in typologies of the time that constructed “black feminism” as separate from, and mutually exclusive of, “socialist”, “radical” and “liberal” feminisms. However, the special issue led to permanent change both to what was covered in the journal and to the composition of the collective. In the late 1980s, Avtar Brah, Gail Lewis and I joined the Feminist Review collective, where Naila Kabeer was already a member, and there have always been women from minoritised ethnic groups on the collective since. The special issue contributed to the revision of feminist politics of location and positionality by heightening recognition of feminist plurality and difference. It also provided a useful reminder that the political is as much about the personal as the personal is about the political (Mani 1989).

The political and the personal The reasons that I found black feminist writing and organisations both a relief and deeply inspiring are eloquently rehearsed by Barbara Smith, one of the members of the Combahee River Collective and a founder member of Kitchen Table Women of Color Press. Combahee was really so wonderful because it was the first time that I could be all of who I was in the same place. … In the early 1970s, to be a Black lesbian feminist meant that you were a person of total courage. It was almost frightening. I spent a lot of time wondering if I would ever be able to come out because I didn’t see any way that I could be Black and a feminist and a lesbian. I wasn’t thinking so much about being a feminist. I was just thinking about how could I add lesbian to being a Black woman. It was just like no place for us. That is what Combahee created, a place where we could be ourselves and where we were valued. A place without homophobia, a place without racism, a place without sexism. (Smith interview in Harris 1999)

Although I am not a lesbian, black feminist organisations provided a breathing space where it was not necessary to explain sexism or racism to constituencies that failed to understand them, or to explain the importance of what we would now call intersectional thinking. Such spaces were not, however, simply cosy and free from conflict since sexuality and divisions between “Asian” and “black” feminists in the UK context were sometimes heated sites of contestation. Black feminist organisations were also genuinely empowering in validating my right to want social justice that recognised racialisation and gender, rather than suppressing one or the other,

and in claims to recognition as a black woman. I experienced this validation as supportive. Being able to access material, media and feminists from across the Atlantic was undoubtedly germane to my claims to equality as a black woman and to enhancing the quality of my life and of supportive friendships. In retrospect, a major advantage of belonging to separate groups was that I was not tempted into the essentialism of identity politics and romanticisation of assumed similarity that is sometimes evident in feminist groups and that black feminist groups were sometimes criticised for. It helped me to make sense of critiques of identity politics that came from both sides of the Atlantic and to recognise the importance of attempts to do politics, without invoking identity politics (Amos and Parmar 1984, Yuval-Davis 1997). This dilemma produced, and continues to generate, theorising from a range of perspectives, enriched by transatlantic interchanges, that have helped to bring about the taken-for-grantedness of difference, multiplicity and intersectionality (e.g. Brah’s (1996) diaspora space; Harding’s (1991) standpoint theory; Kofoed’s (2006) and Staunaes’s (2005) poststructuralist intersectional approach; Lewis’s (2009) engagement with the psychosocial; and Yuval-Davis’s (1997, 2006) transversalism and multiple levels of belonging). In my own work, these experiences and publications meant that I have been committed to refusing treatment of black women and other minoritised ethnic groups that fits with a “normalised absence/pathologised presence” couplet (Phoenix, 1987). In practice, this has sometimes meant not doing comparisons of black women with white women (e.g. Phoenix 1991), while such racialised comparisons are sometimes necessary and apposite for the particular research question being investigated (e.g. Frosh et al. 2002), and sometimes it is appropriate to give particular (but contextualised) attention to one ethnicised group (e.g. Phoenix 2009, Tizard and Phoenix 1993).

Transatlantic collaborations? This is a story of transatlantic conversations and intertextual sharing in that black women who, like me, defined themselves as feminists, avidly read US black feminist work, and some developed relationships with “black and Third World” women in the USA, who had read their work and continue to read and cite it. Some moved to the USA, taking their work and ideas to wider US audiences. The importance of such conversations was central when Avtar Brah, Gail Lewis and I, in the UK, set up a Routledge series of books on “Race”, Gender and Ethnicity, with Kum-Kum Bhavnani, who had moved from the UK to the USA. The publisher was, of course, eager to publish books from the USA as well as from the UK in order to gain more sales than could be achieved in the UK alone. However, we were keen to engage a wider, transatlantic readership in debate on these issues and so were committed to publishing books from both countries. I have made this history sound too much like a transatlantic conversation that progressively produces a sharpening of ideas, political engagement and conceptual development. Yet, as is the case with so many ideas in the academy, intertextual interpenetration was more from the USA to the UK than vice versa. At one level, this hardly matters since, for example, the fact that the USA is so much larger than the UK, with a greater number of black feminist academics

and activists, provided a rich body of material on which UK-based black feminists could draw. It was certainly invaluable in informing my teaching and writing. It is also salutary to recognise that UK feminists engage with US feminist work partly because there is so much of it, with so many conferences at which to present, and partly because we need to publish in high-status US journals, which require us to cite US work. Without those incentives, UK feminists might not refer as much to US feminist work and theory might travel less. The point here is that it is not always for collaborative reasons designed to take forward understandings that scholars in the UK cite US work, but sometimes for more instrumental reasons. In addition, while EU funding rules encourage collaborations across EU countries, UK feminist academics tend to present UK work more frequently than they cite European work. This is partly a matter of language difference (which is not the case between the USA and UK). However, work from Scandinavian countries is often cited to highlight their exemplary welfare states and gender policies in comparison with those of the UK. As I listened to the USA debating questions of health care reform in 2009, it struck me that this highlights an excellent reason why feminist transatlantic conversations make sense from the USA as well as the UK and European side of the Atlantic: the understanding of oneself, one’s context and the ways in which things could be different, is much facilitated by examinations of commonalities and differences across nations. US feminists have sometimes been as blinkered about this as other US scholars often are. As is the case for black feminist borrowings from the USA, such examinations are about enabling the re-narrating, and taking forward, of feminist stories in critically engaged ways, rather than wholesale, unchanged importation.

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Chapter 6 Floating Signifiers and Fluid Identities: Feminist and Other Queer Travels renée c. hoogland

I suspect that I came into my feminist own in the mid-1980s, not so much through political awareness or activism, nor from a sense of social outrage or personal oppression, but primarily through critical theory, or, more precisely, out of frustration with the practices of literary criticism as they prevailed at the time in the English Department of one of the large research universities in the Netherlands, the University of Amsterdam. In other words, feminism, or, rather feminist theory was, for me, most definitely a solution to a problem, but the problem was not so much a political or social one as it was a problem of thought. However, let me backtrack a little. In retrospect, my early childhood and adolescence contained both everything and nothing to render me a staunch political feminist – one needs to tweak some expressions, and with a certain regularity – from the start. I grew up in a provincial town in the Netherlands, surrounded, or rather preceded, by strong women who had been forced to make their own living and provide for their children without the support of a husband, or, indeed, in these prewelfare state days, of the government. My grandmother, respectably widowed at an early age, loved to work, and did so, well beyond her retirement age, with zest and gusto, even though her limited wages never allowed her to live the genteel life she aspired to. My mother, in contrast, raised in a politically liberal, culturally enlightened middle-class milieu, and cherishing, I believe, the dream of the Happy Homemaker that postwar (cross-Atlantic) propaganda urged her to embrace in these years of national hardship and reconstruction, never expected to do more than work for a few years in some kind of service industry, probably as a secretary, before taking on the traditional role of wife and mother. Dutch culture generally, despite the country’s later reputation as somewhat wild and rebellious, was and remains grounded in some arch-traditional tenets about motherhood and work: even today, the Netherlands counts more highly educated married women in part-time – and thus lower paid – jobs than in any other country in the (post)industrialized world, i.e. white straight women who “willingly” abandon their professional ambitions in order for their husbands to pursue their careers and act as primary breadwinners. Despite my mother’s own wild streak and rebelliousness, her attitude complied with the larger pattern of the times. However, becoming a divorcée, and thus socially and financially déclassée, in the early 1960s – and I am using these resonant French terms deliberately, to suggest something of how I gather she felt, or was made to feel in these preliberation days – my mother (of two), like her mother before her, had to go out and make her own living. She did so, grudgingly, ultimately as, indeed, a secretary, which she continued to be, also during her brief second marriage ending with my stepfather’s death just before I

entered high school, until her early retirement allowed her to free herself from the bonds of what, I suspect, she never learned to appreciate as anything but enforced labour. My mother was, I confess, the most anti-ambitious and, indeed, the most anti-feminist person I know/knew. Yet her life, as much as my grandmother’s, made some things very clear to me at an early age. I did not need to have my consciousness raised to know that I would achieve at least one major feminist aim, i.e. financial independence. The most exciting moments of women’s lib in the Netherlands were over by the time I found myself in high school. I recall the “playful” protests of women’s rights groups like “Dolle Mina” (the name means “furious Mina” and refers to Wilhelmina Drucker, a Dutch socialist feminist of the first wave) that gained a great deal of media coverage in the early 1970s, e.g. the distribution of condoms in the streets of Amsterdam as part of their campaign for free birth control, or the clashes between this white, liberal, gender-mixed, largely upper middle class movement and the radical lesbian group “Paarse September” (“Purple September,” with reference to the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, whose most dramatic attack involved seizing eleven Israeli athletes as hostages at the September 1972 Olympic Games in Munich), who proclaimed, in 1972, that feminism needed to be thoroughly politicized, that lesbianism was a political choice, and that, hence, feminism and heterosexuality were incommensurable. Yet, apart from several large, and politically highly significant pro-abortion demonstrations, the political actions and “happenings” of the women’s movement, for me, formed part of the overall atmosphere of public unrest and civic protests – resulting in largescale rioting and public violence, massive strikes and national political crises – and the various protest movements, among which the squatters’ movement, perhaps, stands out, that dramatically changed the sociopolitical and the cultural landscape of the Netherlands in the 1970s. I guess I was just too young to be personally interested in “women’s issues” – oh, those days of blissful ignorance – and, despite my active involvement in Amnesty International and the Anti-Apartheids movement, not sufficiently politicized yet. I nonetheless graduated from high school with papers on the first wave of feminism (history), and such modest topics as “La Femme dans la Littérature” (French), so there must have been something that spurred me on to feminism and to feminist thought, a need that I did not fully recognize until I started writing my MA thesis in the mid-1980s. Given the widespread political activism and social unrest in the country at the time, it is kind of astonishing to realize that, in the early to mid 1980s, when women’s studies programmes in the USA were not just emerging but flourishing, the English Department at the University of Amsterdam had nothing more to offer their undergraduate students than two courses, respectively entitled “Women and the English Novel I” and “Women and the English novel II” – which I both duly took, if only because female writers represented in other classes largely remained restricted to such respectably canonized authors as Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. In other words, there were no women’s studies or even feminist literary criticism classes to take, and most of my early readings in the field occurred while I did a minor (on the graduate level) in the American Studies programme, taught by (male) American professors. I am sure the absence of what were probably considered to be unduly politicized topics within the realm of English Studies was partly an aspect of the typical mono-disciplinary tradition in modern language departments in the Netherlands generally, and that women’s, or even feminist

studies, were more thoroughly embedded in (some) Social Sciences curricula. In the English Department, however, there appeared to be a genuine resistance to have anything but “strictly” literary or linguistic concerns enter into the classroom. Indeed, I still remember, as a Graduate Teaching Assistant, hearing a senior faculty member say that his proposed course on World War I poetry would not focus in any way on “homosexuality”, because, surely, that would only be of interest to me (not actually identifying as a gay male) and another (female) colleague, whose sexual orientation was similarly dubious, i.e. non-straight. Being irked by this remark, and realizing that there was also something simply not “right” about such wilful blindness to what, in my view, was a central aspect – thematically, stylistically, socioculturally – of the body of work in question, this incident was not enough to galvanize my interest in what I later learned already existed elsewhere as “lesbian and gay studies”. There simply was no resonating context in which I could pursue my scholarly preoccupations in line with a burgeoning political consciousness, concerns that turned out to revolve around precisely such scholarly and intellectual questions as different modes of knowing, and interested forms of knowledge production. I finished my MA in 1986, trying to stretch the boundaries of traditional critical and theoretical models in order to accommodate the questions – ethical, aesthetic, political – that deeply concerned me, increasingly frustrated with the lack of interdisciplinary “thinking tools”, and the limitations imposed by what would come to be known (to me, rather late in the day) as “malestream” literary criticism. It was only when I once again found myself groping around for a sufficiently complex, socio-politically aware, critically sensitive and theoretically rigorous framework for my PhD research (on the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen) that I finally made my way to and read myself into feminist literary criticism and theory. Bowen belonged, and perhaps still belongs, to that large group of female authors who have been neglected, if not deliberately marginalized by mainstream literary criticism, and thus can be placed squarely in the tradition of what Elaine Showalter has famously dubbed “gynocritics”. More importantly, however, at least in my perspective, were the stylistic aspects of Bowen’s work, as much as her outspokenly ethical concerns, that had rendered her “unclassifiable” in traditional critical terms. While what was then called Anglo-American feminist criticism enabled me to situate Bowen in a particular, though obscured, literary tradition, it was so-called French feminist thought, and especially the feminist (re)appropriation of Freudian and Lacanian theory, as much as Julia Kristeva’s readings of Mikhail Bakhtin, that allowed me to both raise and explore the questions that I suspected to be central to Bowen’s work, as they were to my own developing critical consciousness. In other words, as pointed out earlier, it was in the first place as a solution to a problem of thought, of (not) being able actually to think certain things, rather than out of conscious political conviction, that I embraced feminism or, indeed, the travelling concepts of feminist theory. In retrospect, my timing was not all bad: 1985 turned out, as Judith Roof was to put it some years later, a “bumper year for a crop of feminist collections edited by established scholars and published by prestigious presses”, e.g. Showalter’s The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, Theory, Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt’s Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Race, and Class in Literature and Culture, and Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn’s Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. These were helpful

introductions into feminist appreciations/appropriations of social constructionism, ideology critique, psychoanalysis and debates around race and gender, while Toril Moi’s Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory, published the same year, urged me at once to think about how and why my location in the Netherlands, somewhere in between and nowhere in relation to the Anglo-American vs the French branches of feminist thought, would co-determine my “dancing through the minefields” of what was rapidly becoming a politically and theoretically fraught field of interdisciplinary, and necessarily, international scholarship. Today, the debate about Anglo-American vs French feminism may seem rather silly. After all, despite the differences in orientation, e.g. more pragmatic vs predominantly philosophical, theoretical vs critical, the bodies of ideas that would soon come to prevail in the AngloAmerican branch of literary and cultural feminist criticism could largely be traced to various schools of “continental philosophy”, or, more specifically, to the works of Lacan, Derrida and Foucault, as well as to French feminists such as Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and, to a lesser extent, the French/Canadian materialist feminist Monique Wittig. This has not changed much since then: the “Butler phenomenon”, and especially the overwhelming and continuing influence of Gender Trouble (1990) on both sides of the Atlantic, confirms the paradigm. While Butler, in this book, does critically engage with contemporary North American feminists (Rubin, Rose, Gallop), her main sources of inspiration can be found in continental philosophy (Beauvoir, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva and Wittig) and, to a lesser extent, in Freudian psychoanalysis. The widespread adoption of her seminal ideas about gender in many European countries thus reinscribes a system of mutual cross-fertilization that has marked the AngloAmerican vs European projects of academic feminism from their beginnings. Yet, the debate about national origins and the particularities of theoretical purviews as such has, it seems to me, produced some of the most significant critical insights for a variety of feminist critical undertakings generally, e.g. the untenability of a “view from nowhere”, or the insight that all knowledge is necessarily “situated”, as well as for me personally, being forced to negotiate my way through such debates, and, although relatively free to eclectically pick and choose those critical ideas and theoretical paradigms that seemed to offer me the most effective thinking tools, also to consciously reflect upon their origins and their in/translatability into different cultural contexts. It is therefore, perhaps, not a coincidence that one of the feminist thinkers to have had the most profound influence on my own early work was Teresa de Lauretis, raised in Italy/Italian and coming into the English language only at a later age, who more than any other of the widely read theorists in late 1980s/early 1990s feminist literary and cultural studies proved to be particularly sensitive to the differences in language – and thus in thought – that the travelling of ideas between the two continents inevitably entailed. The impossibility of unproblematically transplanting theoretical concepts from one context to another and inserting them into different sociocultural and political contexts, for most European feminists, as well as for non-African-American US feminists of colour – however defined – I suspect has most clearly come to the surface in the debates over what today counts as critical race theory, initially coming largely from the USA. The discrepancies between, on the one hand, various post/colonial histories in European countries, as well as the more recent concerns around migration, e.g. the Islamization of urban centres in different countries in Europe, and, on the other, the legacy of slavery and the Hispanicization of parts of the North

American continent, are simply too large to make any theory of race and/or ethnicity, feminist or otherwise, “fit” all the specific complexities that time, place and tradition make in the way racial and ethnic differences play out over time and cross-culturally. Having taught gender and sexuality studies at different universities throughout Europe for almost two decades, in order to permanently move to the USA several years ago, I most poignantly encountered such problems of trans-Atlantic translatability/transplantability in what feels almost like a reverse process. Teaching critical race theory to Dutch and other European students in the context of American Studies programmes proved difficult, but not impossible. Although most European students need to be made aware of the intrinsic significance of race as a founding structure of contemporary North America, they are reasonably well informed about African-Americans and African-American culture, largely through Hollywood film and other forms of popular culture, within North American society. North American students, in contrast, turn out to have practically no idea about post/colonial histories elsewhere in the world and, more importantly, find it almost impossible to “think” outside and beyond the black/white opposition that forms the parameter of their racial experience and their understanding thereof. Even 9/11, and the subsequent, ruthless criminalization of Muslims in the mainstream media, appears not to have succeeded in problematizing, or “complexifying” their racial/ethnic awareness outside a binary model. As a result, I find myself always including at least one or two postcolonial novels or films (e.g. Jamaican, Indo-Anglian) into my undergraduate course readings to confront students with the variability of racial constructs, and thus the “situatedness” and instability of racial/ethnic categories. Not only do such divergences between European and North American students point up differences in terms of sociohistorical location and cultural awareness, but they also expose highly varying investments in identity categories per se. This brings me to a final, and in a way, most salient moment of different experiences of difference, i.e. surrounding the question of sexuality. My own involvement with what used to be called lesbian and gay studies – initially, in the Netherlands, exclusively “gay studies” (“homostudies”) – sprang from my increasing frustration with feminist criticism and theory, whose founding structure, well into the 1980s, remained a notion of sexual difference as woman’s difference from man. My first regular teaching job after receiving my PhD in 1991 was as Assistant Professor of Lesbian and Gay Studies within the Comparative Literature Department of the University of Amsterdam. Living up to its proudly advertised image of a liberal, progressive institution, the University of Amsterdam boasted an interdisciplinary “working group” in this newly emerging sub-field, accommodating two part-time faculty in the Department of Social Science and two in Comparative Literature. Remarkably enough, the latter two positions were discontinued in 1993, despite student and faculty protest, on the perception that “lesbian and gay issues” were sufficiently integrated into regular curricula and the working group had made itself effectively redundant. This was, to say the least, a most peculiar perception, even in a city that proudly proclaims itself The Gay Capital of Europe, especially in light of the ongoing AIDS crisis, the prevailing prejudice against gays and lesbians – I was being repeatedly harassed by hostile “customers” while working as a volunteer in the local gay and lesbian bookstore – if not the still extremely precarious position of lesbian and gay studies programmes in The Netherlands (all but one extinct today), in

Europe, and in the Western world at large. Ironically, it was at the Catholic University in Nijmegen that a small lesbian and gay studies programme, later re-christened (no pun intended) “cultural sexuality studies” was in the process of being set up, and it was during my fifteenyear tenure there that I had my most extensive experiences of cross-Atlantic translation of what in the course of the 1990s became internationally known as “queer theory” – in itself a striking instance of cultural untranslatability. The differences and similarities between European and North American approaches to lesbian and gay, or, alternatively, sexuality studies and/or queer theory, come most prominently into view in, again, the context of undergraduate teaching. I recall that, in the early 1990s, Dutch students confessed to being afraid of enrolling in lesbian and gay studies classes, because fellow students might perceive them as being “gay” themselves. Admittedly, for many first-year students, fresh from high school, having recently left their home communities, our classes functioned as a relatively safe, if not respectable, space to “come out”, whether to themselves, their (new) friends or their families, and to talk about their sexual orientation, and its relevance to different modes of knowledge production, albeit it largely restricted to the humanities and social sciences. Since our programme drew a great many foreign (exchange) students, especially from Eastern Europe, whose home schools did not even offer women’s studies classes, let alone courses on lesbian and gay topics, most of our teaching was in English, and hence, most of the books and articles we used were of Anglo-American origin. While it was necessary to highlight and foreground cultural and historical specificities where gay and lesbian lives, politics and legal issues were concerned, it proved slightly easier to talk about questions of sexuality in theoretical and critical terms across language and national boundaries than it was to discuss race and ethnicity, or even gender. This may partly be a result of the thorough and long-standing naturalization, and thus essentialization, of gender as well as racial and ethnic differences in the history of Western thought, which makes it all the more difficult for students to see gender, race and ethnicity as socially constructed, hence variable, phenomena. The relatively recent “invention” of the homosexual as a distinct human species, as Saint Foucault teaches us, the medicalization of sexuality and the concurrent idea, prevailing throughout the first half of the twentieth century, but still adhered to in some sections of contemporary societies, that one can be cured of one’s “unnatural desires”, as well as the actual variability, if not fluidity, of at least some people’s sexual object choices and “lifestyles”, may all have contributed to the production of sexuality, and of sexual differences, as an object of knowledge and theoretical inquiry that is substantially “other” than the category of gender, as much as those of race and ethnicity. This, too, may have given theoretical work in the study of sexualities, whether under the banner of lesbian and gay studies, queer theory or, as most certificate programmes in the US define themselves, as LGBTQ studies, its positively international outlook and potential. Paradoxically, then, the notion “queer” and the project of queer theory appear more likely to flourish and be productive across cultural and national boundaries than (models of) other aspects of identity. The explicit object of some queer theorists to open up and explode any clearly defined and strictly demarcated identity category has obviously played a major role in the deconstruction of all forms of sexuality as natural, innate or biologically given, despite the occasional “identification” of some “gay gene”. Yet, huge discrepancies in the experience and

conceptualization of sexual identities remain. When I left the Netherlands in 2007, same-sex marriage had been fully legalized for six years – after more than twenty years of political and public debate, and active lobbying by the lesbian and gay movement – and somewhat to my own surprise (I had always believed that a change in the collective consciousness could not be simply effected by a change in the law), gay and lesbian rights had won all but universal support, gay and lesbian causes even being championed by the most right-wing Christian parties in the Dutch house of representatives. Gay and lesbian couples appeared to be warmly embraced by their friends and families, celebrities flaunted their “fluid” sexualities or, rather, sexual proclivities, on national television, and most students seemed totally comfortable discussing and writing about questions of sexuality, whether they identified as straight, gay/lesbian, transgender or queer, or refused to sexually identify themselves at all. I am sure I am sketching a rather too rosy picture here, and that in some pockets of Dutch society homophobia and heterosexism persist, but I do not think that I exaggerate in suggesting that a sociocultural landslide in the perception and evaluation of non-heterosexual lifestyles and living arrangements has nonetheless taken place since the late 1990s. My recent experiences, teaching at a large metropolitan research university in the heartland of the American Midwest, could not have provided a greater contrast in this respect, and have made me more keenly aware of the difficulties of translating not just theoretical concepts, but also, and perhaps primarily, sociocultural experiences from one context into another. With a largely working class student population, many of them practising Christians, a high percentage of African-American, as well as substantial numbers of Arab-American students, a majority coming out of the (failing) Detroit public school system, with others deliberately choosing to leave their elite high school backgrounds behind to join this highly diverse urban academic community, the differences I encounter inside the classroom today often appear to be even more pronounced than the differences I expected to run into by moving from a relatively small European Institute for Gender Studies into a large English Department in the USA. While clearly neither less nor more ignorant than their European counterparts, some of my American students feel extremely uncomfortable speaking, or flatly refuse to speak, about questions of sexuality, or to work with queer theoretical tools. Others seize the opportunity offered by the queer content of my classes to finally disclose – sometimes only at the advanced graduate level – their own “deviant” sexual inclinations. Yet others openly discuss their experiences as queer activists or performances as drag kings. Curiously, discussions of racial issues, although, as suggested, usually restricted to the opposition between black and white, lead to far less disjuncture and dissention. American students appear much better educated, in the sense of being much more consciously aware of racial differences and their significance, than their European counterparts. In light of the much longer history of racial conflict and public discussion, this should hardly be surprising. However, when questions of sexuality are concerned, the positions appear to be almost reversed. The almost nationwide, staunch opposition to, in Western European eyes, quite modest claims to gay civil rights rights – only five states (out of 50) issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples – may go some way to explain why “gay liberation”, despite its firm roots and strong tradition in the USA, has not (yet) issued in the same kind of “normalization” of homosexuality that some gay academics in Western European countries have now begun to deplore. Ultimately, it is, I think, the highly

divergent investments in identity categories per se, owing to hugely different trajectories of nation building, (post)colonization, geographical and geopolitical histories of the two continents, that renders the translation, or transplantation of theoretical concepts pertaining to collective and individual identities so problematical. Still, queer theory, especially in its wider aim to deconstruct any naturalized categories of identity, travelling back and forth across the Atlantic, has, perhaps even more pronouncedly than feminist theory, taught me a great deal about such difficulties, and has made my own transplantations, as a scholar and a teacher, across historical and cultural boundaries, both highly complex and infinitely interesting.

References Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cixous, H. 1976. The Laugh of the Medusa, translated by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs, 1(4): 875–893. Derrida, J. 1987. Of Grammatology, translated by G.C. Spivak. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Foucault, M. 1972. The Archeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books. Foucault, M. 1990. The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction, translated by R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books,. Greene, G. and Kahn, C. 1985. Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism. New York: Methuen. Irigaray, L. 1985. This Sex Which is Not One, translated by C. Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kolodny, A. 1980. Dancing Through the Mindefields: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of a Feminist Literary Criticism. Feminist Studies, 6: 1–25. Kristeva, J. 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, edited by L.S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press. Lacan, J. 1977. Écrits: A Selection, translated by A. Sheridan. New York: W.W. Norton. Lauretis, T. de 1984. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Lauretis, T. de 1987. Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Moi, T. 1985. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen. Newton, J. and Rosenfelt, D. 1985. Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Race, and Class in Literature and Culture. New York: Methuen. Roof, J. 1991. A Lure of Knowledge: Lesbian Sexuality and Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Showalter, E. 1982. A Literature of their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. London: Virago.

Showalter, E. 1985. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory. New York: Pantheon. Wittig, M. 1992. The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Chapter 7 Writing in the Dark: Reflections on Becoming a Feminist Kelly Coate

Drowning your watch: Time as a feminist issue After reading Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time (Griffiths 2000), I strengthened my resolve not to wear a watch. What was once a lazy attitude towards shopping for a new one has subsequently, over the past decade or so, become a mild form of conscientious objection towards the tyranny of clock time. Time is, of course, a feminist issue. The taking back or reclaiming of time – time for oneself rather than others – is a political act that has particular salience for women. There is precious little time in my life that I am not spending on the family’s needs, on students’ requests, on university managers’ demands; these claims on time are immediate and urgent. Time spent on myself is time to be relished. Given the demands of the typical day, the only time I carve out for myself tends to be pre-dawn: my writing and thinking time happens while the house is asleep, in the dark. We were asked to reflect here on journeys that we have made across the Atlantic and how our thinking and feminist scholarship have been shaped by these journeys. Travelling from one continent to another does indeed shape the imagination, but in this chapter I am not imagining my journey as a physical one from point A to point B. Instead, it is a travel through different zones of time, as the way in which I have experienced time is sharper and more real than the physical journeys I have made. Obviously time and space are connected within cultural theory. Those of us who move between countries are cognisant of interstices or third spaces and the hybrid identities they engender. We are physically in one location but tied to another location without belonging to either, and this interspatial perspective gives rise to the nomadic or the hybrid being. My sense, however, is that my feminist consciousness has been shaped more profoundly by time than by space. Feminism can be thought of more as a process of becoming rather than belonging (Braidotti 1994). Therefore the nomadic existence I wish to explore here is the nomad of time zones. Exploring feminist thought through the prism of time will also hopefully draw out alternative perspectives to the more geographically oriented North American vs European perspectives on feminist scholarship. While I understand and appreciate some of the key differences, I am aware that I also experienced the differences as my feminist knowledge developed at crucially different points in time. I first learned about feminism in North America when I was young, whereas my journey through European feminist thought has developed as I have matured. For me, then, these two geographically oriented distinctions are part of my own life history and I cannot disentangle the geographical locations from the experience of my

journey through different times in my life.

Revolutions Virginia Woolf’s writings make clear the transformative power of universities, and women’s relatively recent admittance to these institutions. The university has been the central institution in the journey I have undertaken, following in the footsteps of women scholars before me: but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction. (Woolf 1929, pp. 7–8)

I had much to learn when I arrived at the doors of the library at Northwestern University in Chicago in the 1980s. Fortunately they let me in, because up to that point my exposure to politics was limited to the type of conservative Republicanism typical of small towns in Ohio. Values there were largely shaped by the Constitutional defence of the right to bear arms (and a mistrust and fear of “big government”), the right to free speech (the Ku Klux Klan used to hand out leaflets in town on a Saturday, fully robed and hooded) and the centrality of Christian activities in the community. It was a shock to be surrounded at Northwestern by a preponderance of east coast liberals and famous surnames. I was on a very large “financial aid package”, as it is called in US higher education, but most of the students in my residence hall were fairly well off, well connected and more left of centre than I had realised Americans could be. There were also feminist scholars at Northwestern, and feminist perspectives were springing up in lots of the modules within my liberal arts degree: a course on women writers (e.g. Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper); feminist film theory (e.g. Doane 1987, de Lauretis 1984); and feminist literary criticism (e.g. Gilbert and Gubar 1979, Showalter 1977). I have dusty copies of some of these books on my shelves and flipping through them now brings back an entire world of familiar names and forgotten terminology. Before encountering these feminist writers, however, it was in the unlikely place of a module on Charles Dickens in the first year where I began to connect with feminist ideas. A postgraduate teaching assistant had been asked by the professor to give a lecture on feminist perspectives of Dickens, and a few derisory remarks from male students were muttered before the lecture began. Afterwards I went to see her because I was so puzzled. Did she mean to suggest that Dickens subconsciously disliked women? Was she suggesting that within any novel we can read beneath the text; we can discern attitudes towards women from the way those characters are formed in the novel; we can discover something about men and women not from the story itself but from a hidden drama beneath the surface? Her affirmative response was enough to get me hooked. Later, in the library, reading around some of the recommended texts for another module, I discovered The Female Eunuch (Greer 1970) and experienced a life-changing moment. My attachment to time that is my own can be partly attributed to this experience, because it

suggested so powerfully that time alone is potentially a life-changing time – and a time to be actively sought out and protected. Now that some of my research focuses on pedagogy in higher education, I can also appreciate that I was experiencing the joy of understanding a threshold concept (Meyer and Land 2005). Threshold concepts are challenging and initially troublesome, but once grasped will alter perceptions forever and represent a deep level of understanding that enables progression to higher levels of learning. The process of learning a threshold concept has been likened to stepping through a portal. Once through, it is impossible to return. The knowledge cannot be unlearned. My personal revolution, then, initially happened almost entirely in my head. I read books and selected as many feminist courses that I could squeeze into my programme. Feminist film and literary theories became particularly compelling because the psychoanalytic theory within much of it was difficult but fascinating. Learning to read a novel or watch a film through a feminist perspective comes with stepping through the feminist portal and is a skill that, once learned, cannot be undone. Realising that there could be a life within the subconscious mind that seeps out onto the celluloid or printed page of a novel was remarkable. I had thought movies were for entertainment purposes only, but now we watched Hitchcock movies in class with an even greater sense of horror. This was a time of profound learning which was precious and now evokes nostalgia: the time to read, think, deeply explore new ideas, to have my ideas challenged and developed, and to enjoy learning how to employ feminist theories to most aspects of life.

Waves The theory of course inevitably begins spilling into practice, but discovering feminist politics at the end of the second wave of the women’s movement was like showing up to the party a few days late. Those of us who were young feminists in the early 1990s were caught in between the second and the third wave, trying to figure out which direction to look. Looking backwards was always done with some envy, through hearing the stories of the events that had taken place. My favourite anecdote was about the first feminist caucus meeting of the British Sociological Association, where the men had to be physically locked out of the room so that they would stop interrupting the women. As it was explained, the role of women at the British Sociological Association conferences up to that point had largely been one of acknowledging the genius of the men. The idea that the women were finding a room of their own and locking the men out was hugely threatening. We all found out later what happens when the men are let back in, which is why we looked back on that history of feminist scholarship with envy and looked forward with some trepidation. At this point in time I had moved to London but was still spending several weeks a year in the USA. Although the second wave was officially over, it was easier then to find activist women and feminist scholarship. It was also possible to buy feminist magazines such as Spare Rib in the UK and Ms. in the USA. There were even women’s bookshops to buy them in, such as Silver Moon bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Although not wishing to make too much out of titles and names, it is notable that Silver

Moon and Spare Rib are words that evoke women’s time, even primordial time. The moon is of course hugely symbolic for women: it is what Griffiths (2000) would call symbolic of the cyclical, round time of the feminine as opposed to the linear, chronoscopic time of the masculine. The rib alludes to the time before being, which again figures largely in mythology and folklore as women’s time. The North American version of “popular” feminism, on the other hand, is the short, sharp Ms. It is a statement against what women become as they journey through lives defined largely by men, and it seems indicative to me of the sharp, blunt politics of feminism in the USA in those days. My introduction to feminism in the USA was mostly based on the feminist scholarship I discovered at university, and even much of that work was more theoretically sympathetic to European feminism than some of the most popular and more radical North American feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin. When I went on to conduct research on the history of women’s studies for my PhD (Coate 2000), it became clear that women’s studies in the USA had largely been shaped by the big political issues of the day: Vietnam, pornography and abortion. I, on the other hand, discovered feminist scholarship through literary and film theory, and therefore started off reading Toril Moi rather than Andrea Dworkin. When I interviewed women who had studied women’s studies in the USA, they seemed to have encountered a much more political version of women’s studies than I remembered. I therefore think that my introduction to feminist scholarship was unusual, having come to it through feminist theory rather than activism. Obviously, too, there were differences between women’s studies and feminist scholarship on either side of the Atlantic that were intriguing enough to inspire me through my PhD research. I spent most of the 1990s in the field of women’s studies, as a student, researcher and active member of the Women’s Studies Network (UK).

Time for women’s studies If I timed anything right, it was that I enjoyed the final years of women’s studies in the UK before it fell off the radar under the pressures of new managerialism in UK universities, the Research Assessment Exercise and the changing political landscape (Coate 2006). When I started the MA in Gender and Society at Middlesex Polytechnic, there were plenty of women’s studies degree programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level to choose from in the UK. Being new to the UK academic world, I chose a programme that was in London, offered a parttime, evening option and had a curriculum that interested me. Beyond that, I wanted the MA to provide me with some of the intellectual excitement I had discovered as an undergraduate. It was to prove difficult to find intellectual excitement at 8.30 p.m. on a dark and wet evening in a dreary room in north London, and I began to spend more of my effort trying to figure out what we were all doing there. The women in the class were intelligent and friendly but also (it seemed to me, with my North American optimism) rather cynical and disgruntled to some extent. They spent lots of time talking about social class, which was not a topic for which psychoanalytic film theory had prepared me. The debates within feminist scholarship that had been developing in the UK throughout the 1970s and 1980s were unfamiliar territory. Socialist feminist thought was particularly difficult

for me: theories around the public and private, the sexual division of labour, and the “dual systems” of class and sex offered perspectives on the world and a language to explain gendered relations that I had not encountered previously. My copy of British Feminist Thought (Lovell 1990) is well-thumbed and marked. That feminist scholars spent so much energy debating the differences between Marxist, socialist and materialist feminisms seemed somehow exotic, as if they had all risen up from the women’s trade union disputes I was reading about and joined the academy. The history was not quite like that, but some feminist scholars had, of course, a background in left-wing political organisations. The relationship between left-wing political activism and the growing field of women’s studies was a difficult one, as the primacy of either class or sex in relation to oppression was contested, and the struggles of a collective, political movement would not sit easily in an academic culture based on individual competition. There were also other challenges to socialist feminist thought, such as the growing literature from black feminist scholars who theorised the intersections of class, race and sex. I found more of an intellectual home within the feminist cultural studies literature, which drew heavily on psychoanalysis. Whereas at undergraduate level in the USA I had studied the feminist scholars who employed psychoanalytic theories to critique film and literature, at postgraduate level in the UK the feminist scholars I encountered seemed to be directly engaging in psychoanalysis itself. Juliet Mitchell’s work on feminine sexuality, for instance, introduced me to the differences between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis (Mitchell 1990). Through the work of Melanie Klein, whom we were recommended to read in one module, I encountered psychoanalytic theory in its “pure” form before it is taken up for use towards some other analytical or theoretical function. Grappling with theories of the unconscious was an appealing exercise to me because the existence of the unconscious seemed obvious. After all, I had lacked a feminist consciousness until the age of 18 when I went off to university, so the idea that there were untapped resources within our minds, able to shed light on the very notion of our sense of self, seemed indisputable. What I did not share with other British feminist theorists was the sense of a class consciousness. In my hometown in Ohio, it seemed, we were all more or less middle class (I now know this was not the case, but I had no language of social class when I was growing up there). The other students on the MA seemed more willing to talk about class consciousness than the Lacanian unconscious, a tension which also later emerged as characterising other women’s studies programmes when I pursued my doctoral research. The women scholars and students who approached women’s studies from a theoretical, or academic, perspective sometimes found themselves at odds with those who wanted to begin with the personal (Coate 2006). What has gradually become more clear to me over the years is the profound nature of the seemingly simple statement that the “personal is political”, and this enabled me to move from a fascination with psychoanalysis towards an interest in understanding structures of power. Power structures were a site of exploration in the other major area of literature I encountered during the MA: British feminist scholarship in the sociology of education. One of the MA assignments I wrote in this area introduced me to scholars whose work became familiar to me over the years, e.g. Madeleine Arnot, Gaby Weiner, Valerie Walkerdine and

Debbie Epstein, amongst others. At the time I held an administrative post at King’s College London in the education department (who were also supporting my postgraduate studies), and therefore my research interests started to intersect with my “day job” in quite a productive way. The academic staff in the education department at King’s were very willing to allow an administrator to delve into some of their academic activities: small bits of teaching, attending seminars and presenting papers. My own scholarly identity became shaped by the sociology of education and I conducted my MA dissertation on the growing curiosity I had about the field of women’s studies itself as an academic discipline. The focus was firmly on the students and their expectations and experiences; I remember talking to some students at North London Polytechnic and East London Polytechnic, where women’s studies degree programmes had been established by Sue Lees and Maggie Humm, respectively. My own institution, Middlesex Polytechnic, became the University of Middlesex just before I graduated, helping me to become more attuned to the nuances of the higher education system in the UK. As soon as the MA was completed, I registered for a PhD at the Institute of Education in the University of London, with Diana Leonard as my supervisor. Diana initially suggested that I conduct research on the history of women’s studies in the UK higher education system. At first the idea was not hugely appealing, as I was more interested in what brought students into women’s studies than what had inspired women to establish the courses. This interest was simply a reflection of the fact that I had so recently been a student myself and wanted to continue to study that phenomenon, given that it had been such a transformational experience. Diana was right in saying that there would be more interest in a detailed, case study approach examining institutional factors in the development of women’s studies. After much discussion, the history of the subject area as it developed within UK higher education became the focus of the research, thus shifting my research interests from (broadly) cultural studies into the field of higher education research. One of the questions that shaped the research was whether women’s studies as a subject area was more easily established and recognised within higher education in the USA than in the UK. The amount of time I had spent as an undergraduate in the USA reading psychoanalytic film theory almost for fun started to seem an impossible luxury after experiencing UK higher education for a few years. What became apparent was that the former polytechnics and new universities of the 1960s had been at the forefront of establishing women’s studies degree programmes. The “old” universities were less amenable to both feminist scholarship and the recognition of women’s studies as a field in its own right. Yet even the “success” of women’s studies in the post-1992 sector was tenuous and short-lived, whereas in the USA the types of programmes and courses I encountered were compulsory in some universities. There are several reasons why women’s studies flourished in the USA in comparison to the UK. The non-specialist, liberal arts degree programmes of many USA universities are amenable to new types of knowledge. The structure of the curriculum is much less tightly controlled, and individual professors have more autonomy to develop modules that can be offered as elective modules (students are typically encouraged to select from a broad range of modules). It also seems that young feminist scholars in the USA did not find that offering a women’s studies module was a career-threatening move, as many of them seemed to find in the

UK. The interviews I conducted with feminist academics in the UK revealed quite shocking levels of sexism, which on the whole have not been reported in the histories of women’s studies in the US (Bird 2004). There were therefore quite fundamental differences between the character of the higher education systems in the UK and the USA which meant that the women’s studies “revolution” did not happen on this side of the Atlantic. The fact that women’s studies was not generally viewed as a valuable contribution to UK higher education (it was tolerated, at best) meant that we could get on with enjoying what we were doing and feel slightly subversive at the same time. At the Institute of Education, we had the Centre for Research on Education and Gender (CREG), the MA in Women’s Studies in Education, and a good number of feminist scholars and doctoral students. We had a room of our own then, literally, where the CREG resources were held and where we were encouraged to meet. Several of us were highly active within the Women’s Studies Network (UK) (WSN) and CREG for a brief time was the “home” of the WSN. Within the male-dominated ethos of the university, a feminist space was a luxury that, again, fills me with a sense of a time that has past and to which it is not possible to return. On reflection, though, I wonder whether I would go back to it. As Jackson (2000, p. 1) notes, “the history of women’s studies has not always been a happy one”. In other words, we were often a bit grumpy. Our feminist spaces were sometimes contested spaces and we were, as it was often said, living on the margins rather than in the mainstream. We were not accepted by the academy and it seemed as though we were sometimes reluctant to accept ourselves. I remember the disagreements within the WSN, the “womancotting” of each other’s work at conferences, the challenges and disruptions. What I discovered through my doctoral research is that tensions such as these characterised the development of women’s studies as an academic subject area in its own right. The feminist scholars who established the early courses were sometimes in dispute about the basics of the curriculum, and the students who came on to the early programmes often challenged the content they encountered. The personal, the academic and the political combined in women’s studies courses to create a potent mix which sometimes caused conflict between academic colleagues, between students and academics, and between students themselves. While at the time some of these disputes would have been uncomfortable, perhaps the compliant nature of the academy now could do with a bit of volatility. A significant event for me during this time was the annual conference in 1997 of the Women’s Studies Network (UK) called Women: Policy and Politics (Ali et al. 2000). This was held at the Institute of Education and attracted nearly 400 participants to London from across the world. My involvement in the WSN (UK) at this time was again experienced more as a process of becoming rather than belonging. Although I was on the organising committee of the conference and the steering committee of the Network, it was difficult to feel a sense of belonging to an organisation that was being pulled in different directions. On the one hand there were women who were effectively treating the WSN conferences as the continuation of the Women’s Liberation Movement conferences. On the other hand, there were feminist scholars who were pushing for a more mainstream role for the Network, akin to other professional associations (which is the reason why the WSN (UK) became the WSN (UK) Association and even later the Feminist and Women’s Studies Association).

The different directions in which the WSN could develop were not exactly polar opposites, but those who were pushing for greater academic legitimacy were viewed as making too many compromises to those who saw the WSN as the “academic arm of the women’s movement”. The Women’s Liberation Movement in any case had gone the way of most left-wing organisations from the 1960s. As Clegg and David suggest (2006, p. 154), the neoliberal turn during the 1990s signalled “the defeat of hope” for many on the left. The history of women’s studies may not be an entirely happy one, yet part of the passion at the time grew from the sense that there was hope. We may have been arguing with each other, but the absence of passion has been an enormous loss in higher education. Perhaps we did not appreciate the fact that, when we unlocked the door and let the men back in, they would bring with them an entire system of accountability and surveillance. The ushering in of new managerialism and the market economy in higher education seemed to encourage us to become the docile bodies that feminist theorists have often critiqued.

Greedy institutional time My first job on a committee as a new academic was to help with the review of the appraisal system in the institution. This was the start of a decade of committee attendance with busy work spinning out in the form of reviews of reviews and appraisals of appraisals. We had to benchmark and monitor, evaluate and assess. Or in the words of Alison Phipps (2010), I was experiencing “bureaucratic control, and suffocation, the urgency of email, forms in place of form, diarized days which daze, endless assessments, reviews which signal the end of trust”. One of the results of managerialism, as Castoriadis suggests, is the negation of time. “Determinacy”, he argues, “leads to the negation of time, to atemporality: if something is truly determined, it is determined since always and forever” (Castoriadis in Kenway and Fahey 2009). All of my available time was meticulously planned to meet the needs of the institution, and the institution had become a very greedy place. The loss of time was not the only loss. The MA in Women’s Studies was, like so many other women’s studies degrees in the early part of this century, deemed “inefficient” (or perhaps “inconvenient”), and was dropped from the books. The inevitable institutional review of academic activities resulted in the Centre for Research on Education and Gender losing its space within the new structures. Several feminist scholars left the institution, and the rest of us were too busy attending meetings and filling in forms to notice the impact of these changes before it was too late. My scholarship also drifted away from feminist work to focus on wherever the funding seemed to be coming from, and I spent several years working from one research contract to another. These projects were all focused on higher education policy and practice, and offered valuable research experience. Yet the mostly male teams in which I found myself sometimes “wrote out” any concern with gender in a project, even where it seemed to be quite a salient aspect of the research. This type of silencing of feminist scholarship and/or a gendered analysis of higher education is quite a prevalent feature of mainstream higher education research. There are very few male higher education researchers, for example, who engage with

feminist perspectives on higher education. One of my male colleagues once joked that he was certain there was a feminist handshake that we used to find each other at conferences. Another male colleague greeted my announcement that I was pregnant with merely a rolling of his eyes towards the ceiling. At times, then, it feels risky to be a feminist. The goal of the contemporary university is to be world-class and any suggestion that there might be some less than excellent practices within it is not tolerated very well. Some of us found out how difficult it is to challenge the status quo when we unsuccessfully tried to seek a resolution to alleged complaints of sexual harassment, for instance. The fact that these very serious complaints are still “alleged” is testament to our defeat. New managerialist practices have, somewhat paradoxically, protected certain forms of discrimination. The Research Assessment Exercise and its new incarnation as the Research Excellence Framework have ensured that academics can behave badly with impunity as long as they continue to publish and gain citations. The endless box ticking within benign “satisfaction” surveys means that students with serious complaints find few outlets for their grievances. It is easier for everyone to collude in a sense that progress has been made, the correct forms completed, and all signatures obtained than to actually challenge what has taken place behind closed doors. The demands were so incessant that there was little choice other than to get on with it. The arguments actually seemed to be lost before they even started. When we were arguing with each other in women’s studies courses, at least we felt we were getting somewhere: the debates were energising and passionate rather than crushing. Yet in the contemporary university, the requirement seems to be to join the “real world” (Evans 2010) and to stop moaning about it (or, as one well-known male academic recently said in a seminar to a feminist scholar: just “cool it”). I know that my experiences as an academic during this time have not been unusual, as others have written about how devastating the changes have been. Feminist scholars have added a particularly powerful voice to the critiques of the neoliberal university (e.g. Morley 2003, Evans 2004) and there is much more that needs to be documented. Perhaps it is time for another revolution.

Written in the dark Re-engaging in feminist scholarship has become easier since I left the UK. Now I recognise that to young feminists I am a member of an older generation. Just recently, I found myself in a room in London for a meeting with several of the old CREG gang: both former students and our supervisors. Those of us who were doing our PhD at the same time were reflecting on the supervisors we have become in relation to the supervisors we swore we would never become. The generational aspect of feminist scholarship is intriguing and powerful. Our personal lives and our feminist scholarship have woven together as the years go on, as we individually and collectively peer both forwards and backwards. The other day I handed Diana Leonard’s early book, Sex and Generation (1980), to a PhD student I am currently supervising. There was a strange feeling of passing wisdom down through the generations, just as when I introduced the same student to Diana at a conference a few months ago. Diana looked at her,

laughed, and said “You’re my grand-daughter”. What the younger generations of feminist scholars will take from us and what they will do with it is unknown. There is a re-assuring future orientation to feminist thinking, given that it is looking towards a better world. The PhD student who met Diana is not particularly interested in feminist theories in her research, but she is still interested in change. We spend our time talking more about the social imaginary than feminist theories (e.g. Castoriadis 2007, Taylor 2007), but there are fruitful intersections to be explored between feminism and the imaginary. Incidentally, this student does not wear a watch either, but for the younger generation, apparently, watches have become obsolete as single-function devices. That is not to say that the younger generation have an easier relationship with time, because the pressures of time are just as urgent (if not more so) for them. My biggest concern for the future of feminist scholarship in the academy is that it is becoming harder for women to find the time and space to carve out a room for themselves to think, to write and to become something other. I still wrote this chapter in the dark, but I like to think it is now a habit rather than a necessity. The time before dawn is, as I said before, the time not spent on anyone else, and certainly not time spent watching the clock. I had enough of clock time in a UK university, sometimes spending entire days running from one meeting to the next. In that sort of environment, the time gets squeezed for the type of thinking (looking forward, looking back) that pushes us further. David and Clegg (2008, p. 495) have written recently about the importance of bringing personal reflexivity into higher education research, because “the social realities of our multiple positioning make personal reflexivity paramount in reclaiming the political potential of socially situated, agentic, feminist, personal projects in the twenty-first century”. They have nicely vindicated the project of this book and this particular contribution, which has felt self-indulgent at times. Since moving from the UK, what I feel now is the space and time to read, think and learn again. The time zone I inhabit is both in the past and the future. Remembering is a necessary part of looking forward. Remembering the pressures in UK higher education, and engaging in conversations about UK higher education with my feminist colleagues there still, I have started to think and write about the loss of ethical relationships within higher education. The predominance of the market economy in universities has pushed out relationships based on trust, care and responsibility. Philosophy is becoming a creative outlet for me, but the philosophy of ethics is also, crucially, a future-oriented scholarship. Imagining relationships that could be otherwise just might help create a university that is otherwise. I feel that something might be happening. I am not in a hurry.

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Keynes: Open University Press. Bird, E. 2004. The Sexual Politics of Introducing Women’s Studies: Memories and Reflections from North America and the United Kingdom 1965–1995. Gender and Education, 16(1): 51–64. Braidotti, R. 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Castoriadis, C. 2007. Figures of the Unthinkable (Helen Arnold, Translator). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Clegg, S. and David, M. 2006. Passion, Pedagogies and the Project of the Personal in Higher Education. 21st Century Society, 1(2): 149–165. Coate, K. 1999. Feminist Knowledge and the Ivory Tower: A Case Study. Gender and Education, 11(2): 141–160. Coate, K. 2000. The History of Women’s Studies as an Academic Subject Area in Higher Education in the UK. Unpublished PhD Thesis: University of London. Coate, K. 2006. Imagining Women in the Curriculum: the Transgressive Impossibility of Women’s Studies. Studies in Higher Education, 31(4): 407–421. David, M. and Clegg, S. 2008. Power, Pedagogy, and Personalization in Global Higher Education: The Occlusion of Second Wave Feminism? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 29(4): 483–498. Doane, M.A. 1987. The Desire to Desire: the Women’s Films of the 1940s Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Epstein, D. and Johnson, R. 1998. Schooling Sexualities. Buckingham: Open University Press. Evans, M. 2004. Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities. London: Continuum. Evans, M. 2010. The Universities and the Challenges of Realism. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 9(1). Gilbert, S.M. and Gubar, S. 1979. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Greer, G. 1970. The Female Eunuch. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Griffiths, J. 2000. Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time. London: Flamingo. Humm, M. 1991. “Thinking of Things in Themselves”: Theory, Experience, Women’s Studies, in Aaron, J. and Walby, S. (eds) Out of the Margins: Women’s Studies in the Nineties. London: The Falmer Press. Jackson, S. 2000. Networking Women: A History of Ideas, Issues and Developments in Women’s Studies in Britain. Women’s Studies International Forum, 23(1): 1–11. Kenway, J. and Fahey, J. 2009. Imagining Research Otherwise, in Kenway, J. and Fahey, J. (eds) Globalizing the Research Imagination. London: Routledge. Klein, M. 1990. Envy and Gratitude: and Other Works 1946–1963. London: Virago Press. Lauretis, T. de 1984. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Lees, S. 1991. Feminist Politics and Women’s Studies: Struggle, Not Incorporation, in Aaron, J. and Walby, S. (eds) Out of the Margins: Women’s Studies in the Nineties. London: The

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Chapter 8 Is there a Feminist in this Class? Academic Feminism and its Generations across the Atlantic Veronica Pravadelli

My training in feminist theory began and developed during my graduate years in the USA in the first half of the 1990s. Ironically, while a college student at the University of Verona in the late 1980s I didn’t take advantage of the fact that my university housed Diotima, the most important feminist group of the country, founded in 1983 and led by philosophers Luisa Muraro and Adriana Cavarero. While this episode might indeed appear ironic in the context of this anthology, it can easily be explained. My degree, in fact, didn’t envision courses taught by any of the members of the Diotima group since they all worked in different departments and programmes, but my college trajectory did cross Diotima’s, albeit briefly. While for some time I was not completely aware of the existence of feminist theory, simply because no class had approached the issue, when I came to write my thesis I instinctually chose a feminist topic, namely the concept of virtue and female innocence in European drama and melodrama. Even though my project was inscribed within the literary field, and was framed by a formal and a Marxist paradigm, my tutor, a well-established (male) professor, both in Italy and the USA, suggested that I talk to the Diotima people and especially to Cavarero. Indeed, since my thesis focused on the figure of the virtuous bourgeois heroine – whose purity is endangered by an aristocratic villain – the theoretical discussion Diotima was pursuing at the time would have been very helpful. However, when I received the news that an American university had accepted my application and given me a full scholarship to start a graduate programme, I had to rush and finish my thesis. Because I had to leave for the USA, I never wrote the chapter on “melodrama and (Italian) feminist theory”. Melodrama, however, a most cherished topic for feminist critics, has remained to these days one of my areas of study. Although I finally missed the first opportunity to get involved in feminism, it is significant that it did(n’t) happen in the academic context. My generation has had a different involvement with feminism vis-à-vis those who participated in second-wave feminism and its aftermaths. This generational difference is most important if we want to understand the complex dynamics within feminist studies today. By the time we went to college, in fact, 1970s radicalism and activism had long gone and with it the collective spirit that had infused previous feminist practices. Somewhat like early twentieth-century suffragists, the collective stance of post-1968 feminism was intimately related to its political project to secure women basic rights. Differently, like many women of my generation, I came of age as a feminist via an individual trajectory – rather than a collective one – which took place mainly in university classrooms – and at home preparing for class and writing final papers – rather than in the political arena. Of course such a difference is neither better nor worse, neither more nor less feminist. Italian

feminists of the earlier generation often think of themselves as “better feminists” simply because they marched and protested vehemently. Giving a very simplistic twist to the word “political” they tend to think that you have to meet outside the institution (as if a feminist collective didn’t have rules), only among women, to do something really useful for women. I would claim that training in feminist theory in the classroom is the “feminist mode” that was historically available to women of my generation. As we know, this option was far more widespread in the English-speaking countries than everywhere else, foremost in the USA and UK – before Australia and Northern European countries joined in – since the institutionalization of Women’s Studies has unfortunately occurred only in these countries. Therefore – a bit like the managerial classes of African and Asian ex-colonies who have been educated in British, American and French universities – the world is full of female scholars trained in American (and later British) universities in gender studies. While some have remained in the host country, many have returned to their country of origin. It would be simplistic and unfair to look at this dynamic as an example of cultural colonialism. For many women, including myself, the involvement with feminism could only be possible in an American university. While we have rightly started to debate the hegemony of American feminism, this historical dynamic is, to my mind, unabashedly positive. As I learned to interpret cultural signs and products – in my case film and literature – through feminist and gender paradigms, I came to understand how the production of knowledge is heavily situated, to use a fashionable term. Although in the early 1990s the concept of “reading (watching, writing, etc.) like a woman” (Millett, Heilbrun, Mulvey, Doane, etc.) was already under attack because of its supposed universalism, it nevertheless made a lot of sense to me, since it clarified many episodes of my past, especially my family life. I must admit, however, that I became fully aware of this much later, since at the time, the heyday of postmodern theory, we were taught to be wary of the notion of subjectivity. That is, while cultural studies ordered us to be sceptical about gender identity at the expense of race – we must recognize that in American scholarship no other category was ever important and that, sadly, class was never on the agenda – postmodern theory intimated that must we get rid of the idea of subjectivity tout court. As many feminists deplored, it was unfortunate that at the moment when woman was becoming a “subject” – after millennia spent in the position of the object – postmodern philosophers started to say that it was necessary to relinquish such a notion. While intellectually I pretty much accepted the dominant positions, deep down, perhaps unconsciously, I cherished “reading like a woman” and, more generally, the idea of looking at texts as a gendered subject. Over time I have become also sceptical about the idea that a subject is the sum of her identity categories. I reject the mechanic apparatus devised by certain cultural critics according to which identity is a totality made up of one’s own gender, race, class, age, nationality, etc. Such a proposal was embraced by many feminists in the 1980s in the attempt to overcome the impasse of (White Bourgeois American) feminism’s universalism. As a result, however, the notion of identity has been reduced to a set of options, each defined a-priori from the outset. In this scenario any woman is placed in one of the sub-categories of the category “woman”. My problem, of course, is not with the opening up of the category of woman to specificities of class, race, nationality, etc., but with its reduction to a series of formulae in

which “the personal” is already inscribed within “the collective”, or better, in a series of “group identities”. The problem with identities is that they “are treated as fixed, accessible, and determinative, conferring upon the subject’s speech an aura of predictability”. Perhaps this reasoning made sense to 1970s and 1980s feminists. For me, looking for a perfect correspondence between the individual and the collective is a theoretical paradox. One needs at least to posit the psychic – which is always personal – as an intermediate wedge between the conscious self and the collective. On the other hand, “experience” cannot be known objectively, it “is not the raw material knowledge seeks to understand, but rather knowledge is the active process which produces its own objects of investigation, including empirical facts” (Fuss 1989, pp. 116–118). In the name of the “politically correct” and of “identity politics”, what got lost was a fundamental theoretical conquest, the notion that subjectivity is a process, not a given, as complex and multi-faceted as it might be, what Kristeva termed sujet-en-procès and what Butler would eventually redefine as the performative status of (gender and) subjectivity. In this scenario one cannot know in advance the trajectory of her identity. She can only interpret it retrospectively. Studying feminist thought has allowed me to understand my past experience, before I met feminism, but it has also obliged me to remap my future trajectory. My intellectual formation has developed in relation to two different processes: on the one hand, I have given a conscious and intellectual materiality to a whole series of facts, feelings and conflicts that have occurred throughout my life; on the other, I have also undergone a series of processes of unconscious identifications with images and figures (female and male) that I have encountered in my scholarly life. While it is obvious that only retrospectively can one recognize her unconscious processes, what I am describing is, I believe, not my peculiar trajectory but possibly any (female) scholar’s experience. Even the most “scientific” piece in cultural theory and criticism cannot but contain a certain degree of identification between the scholar and the object she investigates. The question of identification is central here. One doesn’t need to be a strictly psychoanalytic critic to appreciate its relevance. As we know, identification is the psychical process through which the self identifies with another. In so doing the self acquires an identity, one that is by definition in process since each identification alters it. In her beautiful book on the topic Diana Fuss has stated that “identification names the entry of history and culture into the subject, a subject that must bear the traces of each and every encounter with the external world. Identification is, from the beginning, a question of relation, of self to other, subject to object, inside to outside” (Fuss 1995, p. 3). Implicitly or explicitly, identification has been a key concept in feminist and gender theory, since most scholarship has had to tackle the issue of how a “woman becomes one”. Psychoanalysis has been central because it has explained the different options available to women in relation to sexual identity. However, sexuality is inherently social. In Gayle Rubin’s words “a sex/gender system is the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity”. Patriarchy has devised “a systematic social apparatus which takes up females as raw materials and fashions domesticated women as products” (Rubin 1996, p. 106). Differently from the lucky women who had a feminist mother, I had to learn this by myself. I grew up in a village in Northern Italy in a “traditional” family. My father was very warm

and affectionate, but also very domineering, while my mother worked at home, raised three children and had no feminist consciousness. Mine was, as I understood later, a “normal” patriarchal family. The first of three children, I had to fight constantly with my father to obtain some basic freedoms, like going out after dinner or training in the evening in a volleyball team. My father severely denied practically all my very modest requests: indeed all my female friends had more freedom that I had. My father’s excessive severity was very painful. Yet, as it became clear much later, my father’s behaviour would eventually shape my identity “in a positive way” a lot more than my mother’s, who was always quite supportive but had to give in almost as often as I had to. I slowly built up a very rebellious attitude toward any form of control and power and I especially refused to be told what I should or shouldn’t do. At the same time, I identified with my father, in the sense that I identified with his freedom to decide, while I refused the passive position. In my third year in college, the desire to decide became very strongly associated with a passion for studying. I identified with being a scholar, and it is through studying that, a few years later, I met feminism. In this scenario there was no place for my mother. Had I identified with her, I would never have left home to get a college and a postgraduate education. My father, and later my male college professor, were the closest examples of active agency I had met. Looking at (and using) psychoanalysis in the context of my personal experience, I like to think of my identification with certain male figures as the only way to become an active woman/subject. For these reasons, I always desired to be first equal, then different from men. This is probably one of the reasons why I have been reluctant to embrace fully the theory of sexual difference, including its Italian formulations. Such a position entails a separatist politics, an erasure of the relation with the male other, and a belief that maternal genealogies and the mother–daughter relation (Irigaray, Muraro) are the most important dynamics of female subject formation. It is in this context that I believe in the irreducible individuality of any woman’s trajectory: understanding the convergence between one’s intellectual and psychic processes is a necessary pre-condition if one wishes to define how one is situated. This attitude does not entail a “personal”, that is, impressionistic approach to feminism. On the contrary, it develops a great awareness about the production of knowledge and avoids any easy homology between the different layers of subjectivity. Because US feminism has often been dogmatic in ascertaining do’s and don’ts, in dictating what is fashionable and trendy and what is outmoded, I believe that understanding one’s own intellectual experience might also free oneself from the anxiety of not being trendy. I admit that I am often unable to do so. To be fashionable, the negative side of being updated, is very much a part of American academy and scholarship, the only place where there is also an academic star system. Most PhD students in the USA build up a psychical relation with their favourite scholars. Such a process is to some extent similar to the relation between moviegoers and their favourite actors/actresses. In her famous piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey (1989) has used psychoanalysis to explain the spectator’s fascination with the image. Cinema is founded, among other things, on a narcissistic dynamic whereby, like in Lacan’s mirror stage, the viewer both recognizes and misrecognizes herself in the image. While the cinema has “structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing it”, at the same time “cinema has distinguished itself in the production of ego ideals, through the star system for instance. Stars provide a focus or centre

both to screen space and screen story where they act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary” (p. 18). While the ordinary spectator knows quite well that she is not like the star she loves, she nevertheless identifies with her. She knows the difference, she knows the star “is better” than she is, but she also negates it. I think a very similar dynamic occurs between American graduate students and their favourite scholars. Several elements need to be considered: to some extent in the USA academia is pretty much governed, as any other field, by the rules of capitalism. For Europeans this doesn’t make much sense, since they tend to think that education (and the health system) should be made available to everybody. The fact that in the USA there are academic stars and university divas, that “some University professors are the titled champions, not unlike the Williams sisters in the tennis world, and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in the computer industry”, “heroes of a specific arena” (Cusset 2008, p. 193) is of course an integral aspect of the system. Like the image, the star can easily become a fetish, that is, an object of illusion, an object which covers a lack (for Freud the mother’s missing penis). While I don’t think that all academic stars deserve to be so, I believe that the great majority of feminist theorists that have reached such a status have produced very important scholarship. Perhaps there is no bigger star than Judith Butler, and nobody can question the relevance of her work. I should add that, unlike any other scholar or thinker, Butler is also a star in some European countries, as I witnessed at my university (Roma 3) a couple of years ago. No university professor can draw a huge crowd as Butler can. While her talk, titled “Vulnerability, Survivability”, was related to her current research, rather than to her queer stuff, it was obvious that the many young lesbian women in the audience, many of whom were not academics or students, looked at her as somebody who had legitimized their own lifestyle and sexual preference. Being a figure of identification, as well as a powerful figure, Butler had provided them with agency. Because they push you to act and change, ego ideals can be blatantly positive. Since it empowers the subject, the illusory quality of the relation between self and ego ideal has real political effects. Although I am no diva, on a much (much, much) smaller scale my classes at Roma 3 in feminist and gender theory have produced, in many students, a certain degree of identification. I sense a great similarity between my students’ experience and my own as a graduate student. Yet, working in a different context has forced me to reconsider the viability of American theories and methods for the Italian scenario. Some theoretical paradigms might be outmoded, or taken for granted in a certain context, but they might be radically new in others. When it comes to teaching, feminist and cultural theory makes sense in different ways in relation to the students’ context and experience. In contrast to other fields, film studies has been dominated by the hegemony of American and British feminism. Feminist film theory actually originated in England in the early 1970s, thanks especially to the work of Claire Johnston and Pam Cook on one side, and Laura Mulvey on the other. After 35 years, Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” remains the foundational piece of the field and it is one of the few pieces that regularly appears in anthologies and syllabi devoted to film theory, film analysis and aesthetics. In other words, beyond being the opening intervention in feminist film theory, it has long been a classic in film theory per se. As a graduate student I didn’t pay too much attention to the national identity of the feminist theorists I studied, and I tended to see the British and the American scholarship as

a continuum. My attitude implicitly imitated that of my teachers – I did most of my feminist training with male professors – and actually reflected the status of the field. The early British contributions had an immediate resonance in the US where Feminist Film Theory almost immediately blossomed and developed to the extent that it became the most relevant and sophisticated “method” of the field. While in feminist theory the hegemony of US scholarship has perhaps “colonial” overtones, in feminist film studies the dominant status of the BritishAmerican connection is a fact. Therefore it is quite difficult not to take it as the main reference. In other countries its development has been quite feeble. In Germany it has had some relevance while in France, notwithstanding the great impact of feminist philosophy, no feminist film theory and criticism has developed. In Italy there has been some interesting work done in the ‘70s, but the field waned away soon, mainly because scholars pursued different careers. Therefore, when I came back to Italy I obviously continued to base my research – I was then writing my dissertation – on the US/UK scholarship. As I tried to understand what had happened to Italian feminist film theory, I realized that the field was by then almost absent in academia. In my first teaching experiences I couldn’t devote a lot of time to the topic, but seven to eight years ago I started to teach feminist and gender studies in both my BA and my MA classes. Because Italy has always pursued a consistent politics of translation – it has always struck me that, though far less rich than the USA, Italy has always translated a lot more! – I had no problem in making up my reading list. Teaching feminist theory at the University of Roma 3, has been, from the very beginning, very rewarding. A huge number of students, mainly but not only female, have asked to write their BA and MA thesis on the topic. While the level of sophistication of these theses vary a lot, even for those who apply rather mechanically the “theory of the look”, writing becomes a true process of personal growth. Working on a woman filmmaker or discussing cinema and visual media from a gender perspective is never a purely intellectual (or curricular!) experience, as when students use other methods of investigation: it is always enmeshed with the student’s personal life. This is even more so for those who tackle issues in queer, lesbian and gay studies. I am extremely content to see that, in learning to read the coding of gender in cultural products, young women (and men) start to think at themselves as socially gendered subjects. It is equally true that “race matters less” for Italian students, far less than gender. Such an attitude can easily be explained if one considers some basic historical facts. Only very recently, in the last 20–25 years, has Italy seen the arrival of huge flows of immigrants, from all over the world. Until then it was mainly a country of emigrants. While it is by now as multicultural as any other Western country, for most Italians foreigners are still unwelcome guests. Although this scenario will be quite different in ten years’ time, most of my students grew up in a “race-less” context. Therefore, when US feminists boldly declare that it is improper, or wrong, to “simply” discuss gender issues, they are obviously blind to the fact that the racial history of their country is not the norm. In a few years, the Italian social fabric will be even more multicultural, since we already see in college classrooms black, Asian and Arab Italian students, what media have recently termed the “Generation Balotelli” (Balotelli is a young black Italian soccer player, of African descent, who has recently acquired fame both for his athletic performances and his irreverent behaviour). While the issue of race has a different temporality in Italy, vis-à-vis other European countries, global

dynamics are rapidly reducing local/national differences. Unfortunately, in contrast to most European countries, in Italy gender relations are still framed within very “traditional” frameworks, especially if we consider two parameters, the presence of women in “important” roles and positions, and the representation of woman in national media. One wonders, indeed, if feminism ever landed here. While the whole world has recently been updated on the ridiculous macho performances of PM Silvio Berlusconi, a minority of Italian women has long been aware that his huge political success obviously betrays a fascination for his lifestyle, including his vulgar virility. Berlusconi’s masculinity is but the most visible example of broader trends and habits: one only needs to look at Italian television or the online edition of the major Italian papers to see how the image of the sexy female body still looms large. The fact that college students are very sensitive towards feminist and gender studies indicates that other lifestyles are nevertheless “imagined in our community” (Anderson 1991/2006). In their teaching, Italian feminists should follow Spivak’s suggestion to be strategically essentialist: “we have to look at where the group – the person, the persons, or the movement – is situated when we make claims for or against essentialism. A strategy suits a situation; a strategy is not a theory” (Spivak with Rooney 1994, p. 154). Because the feminist debate of the 1970s and the 1980s has left little memory in the social fabric, the task of Italian contemporary feminism is to reposition such a debate at the centre of the cultural arena. Naturally, we need a “mode” suited to the transnational scenario we live in.

References Anderson, B. 1991/2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Butler, J. 2008. Vulnerability, Survivability. Paper presented at University of Roma 3, 27 March 2008. Cusset, F. 2008. French Theory. How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Fuss, D. 1989. Essentially Speaking. Feminism, Nature and Difference. New York; Routledge. Fuss, D. 1995. Identification Papers. New York: Routledge. Mulvey, L. 1989. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, in Visual and Other Pleasures, edited by L. Mulvey. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Rubin, G. 1996. The Traffic in Women: Notes on the “Political Economy” of Sex [1975], in Feminism and History, edited by J.W. Scott. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spivak, G.C. with Rooney, E. 1994. In a Word. Interview, in The Essential Difference, edited by N. Schor and E. Weed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Chapter 9 Chronos and Knowledge: A Target of the Feminist Agenda Today Maria Antonieta García De León

Introduction (on the double transition of female professional elites in Spain) I usually say that I am writing three memoirs: a personal, an academic and an intellectual one. These three memoirs are like three rivers that flow into the wide ocean of contemporary gender memoirs and are for particular groups of women: those illustrious rebels, now the notable scholars of today, and those who played a tough gender match and had a lucky escape from falling into the strict circle of domesticity that Franco’s regime had designed for them. They lived on the razor’s edge for more than a decade (the 1970s), on a fine line that divided the opportunity to be a professional woman from being reduced to being a housewife despite having a university degree. There is a general consensus in Spanish sociology that, within a country with one of the strongest and fastest rates of social change in Europe in recent decades, the most significant change is that concerning Spanish women. In a literary key, I once wrote: my grandmother was feudal; my mother, pre-capitalist; and I, postmodern. There is a generation of highly qualified professional women who carried out a double transition in Spain: politically and personally. This is an interesting generation both during the Transition and in transition because of the great social change experienced in their own lives. They were educated in the most old-fashioned patriarchal society under Franco and, to compound matters, in a poor country. However, decades later, they are professional women living in an advanced, egalitarian society as is Spain today. Their professional success is in itself a sociological phenomenon, which I have studied for over twenty years in my research on the Spanish female professional elites, who share characteristics with women in other countries. This is the generation of female scholars (sociologists, historians and economists amongst them) who produced knowledge from the perspective of gender studies and created a new scientific discipline from the late 1980s. This is my generation and, in it, I contextualize my knowledge, without forgetting that each human experience is singular.

How my conscience was born1 Hostile Contexts could well serve as the title for a book that I might write, a title which would be an understatement in describing how hostile the environment was for the personal (and

general) development of Spanish women. This environment can be understood as explicit (restrictive and discriminating laws) as well as decidedly indifferent (and I stress the use of the term indifferent) towards any goal that was not marriage. The Francoist dictatorship imposed the kingdom of domesticity as an ideology and a way of life. Spanish women were intensely socialized in this world, from both our families and our schools, to such an extent that we can talk about an unusual reinforcement of domesticity as a life goal for women. In other words, this was double domesticity: the traditional domesticity underlying all patriarchal societies and that imposed by Franco’s regime. The housewife was the ideal way of life, the imposed predominant social model for women by the political regime, the antithesis to paid work outside the home. In this context, when culture was available and one lived in a city and was opposed to Franco’s regime, it was possible that “one’s conscience was born”. This was a sine qua non element for someone to become a feminist. Even then, this was neither an easy nor a probable option. Being a feminist was an option for a very small minority of those women living in the period. For a long time, the word “feminist” (usually preceded by angry or mad) was used as a pejorative adjective, even in the mouths of men who, although Marxist, progressive and opposed to Franco’s regime, were still largely chauvinist. Looking back, I can think of several features that, in my opinion, were characteristic of my generation’s way of thinking. The first was the belief in the supremacy of life (life, life, life together with the knowledge required to understand it), which was notably different from men’s existential axis. Therefore, if I were forced to choose (but how can one force the immensity of life!), I would stress the idea of Life as opposed to Ideology, or in other words, women’s commitment to living, as opposed to men’s fascination for Leviathan politics and the “State’s ideological apparatus” (paraphrasing Althusser). As a consequence of the above, I would suggest that the range of women’s research interests is wider and/or more feminine (like life itself). Women are diversified as opposed to men’s single-mindedness in their quest for power (their obsession for achieving it), which prunes the branches of men’s lives, and gives them a single vision of life: work and, if possible, power, in any shape or form. Clearly, we are talking about female/male stereotypes of the period being discussed here. We know there are men who, like trees in bloom, allow many branches (to keep the pruning metaphor), each branch meaning a specialized division within work and life in the Spanish society of that time. Feminism provided a way for cultured women, the future professionals (as a sector of the cultured middle classes) to find “the other” within themselves, and some women also found a way to break away from the traditional enmity promoted systematically by a patriarchal society, the dominant system within women. We had to re-socialize in a new form of friendship, i.e. female friendship. To sum up, this was a new vision of the world, which was not an easy one, after intensive training within a patriarchal femininity. On the other hand, men did not have to find anyone, in a way. They did not have to change anything nor experiment with their own identity (it is only now that they begin to reflect on this, albeit hesitantly). What I have just explained are statements de facto, and they do not have any confrontational aim. Some women carried out a double transition, from a personal and from a political point of view, whereas men only went through the political transition. However, it is true that, because

of their relationship with the other gender, they had to re-socialize in their relationship to women and feminism.

Discriminated elites (researching female professional elites) Female politicians have been the subject of my research for twenty years, but I have also studied entrepreneurs, engineers, academic women, professors and mass media elites, amongst others, all belonging to the highest strata of society. Through sociological research on the female professional elites, I have conceived a theoretical framework that I can summarize in the following paradox, discriminated elites, which is also the title of one of my books. This expression aims to condense the common denominator of all these elite professional women. This common denominator means that, in general terms, there is a social phenomenon that I have analysed and diagnosed as “social superselection” (in other words, a form of social Darwinism for women). There is a correlative effect of the point above: being an elite, but being a discriminated elite. I would like to stress, on the one hand, how difficult it was for that generation of women (now aged 60–70) to access the professional world. This was truly the first generation of professional women, as previously, professional women had been mere exceptions. On the other hand, the new professional elites can be seen as both resisters of patriarchy and yet at the same time reproducing much of the social world of patriarchy. I have used a film metaphor to describe this – the gender match point phenomenon – in reference to that interesting opening scene in Woody Allen’s film Match Point (2008): which side of the net will the tennis ball fall? It is disheartening to think that the social destiny for women was so random and difficult in Spain not so long ago. I would now like to look at these women’s biographies, as they all belong to a successful professional elite. These biographies will provide us with the thread to lead us to their origins. In other words, we will travel their life journeys from today to their past as in a film flashback. After gathering and analysing the factors determining their social success, we stress the fact that the social success of this extremely qualified minority of women is an exception. However, they managed to prepare for this success from the framework of an extremely patriarchal society (which denied any professional activity for women), as it was the society under Franco in which they grew up, as daughters of Bernarda Alba,2 to mention Lorca’s archetypal women. From their biographies a number of important points emerge. First and most important were the demographic features of the family they were born into. Among those features were family position as either the only child or the first-born, and having many sisters (sorority phenomenon). Second was the crucial factor of support for the individual within the family, and here the father’s support was of extreme importance. This parental support, the father’s encouragement, can also be seen as the repair of the wound (the Freudian and historical anger that has caused them to be rebellious: leftist and feminist). This was the reason why one of my books was called Herederas y heridas, which can be translated as Heiresses and Wounds (2002). Once the women became adults, the next important condition for their success was the support of a husband. Each woman met a progressive husband who did not ask her to abandon

her career but encouraged her to follow it up (frequently causing a phenomenon of clear social homogamy), within the context where different inputs are being added up. Undoubtedly, this provided the basis for a good professional career, although separation and divorce were common at a later stage in their lives. These women’s journeys reflect the amount of resources that mobilized each biography – economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital (to follow Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology) – to which I would like to add the emotional capital of support from significant others (very significant for women). Conversely, it should also be deduced that the immense majority of women have not been able to mobilize such very qualified resources and have therefore not been so successful. In an interesting comment about my work the philosopher Celia Amoros suggested that: the double play (the father’s input + the husband’s) goes against the law of probabilities. It is an improbable combination. It highlights how difficult, from a probabilistic point of view, our professional careers are and, in short, teaches us a lot about how power is linked to masculinity, how women exercise power without being fully invested and how we are exposed to status immersion.3

Far from a weak scientific community My first research about women elites was published in 1982. When, in the late 1970s, I entered the field of the study of elites, I found that very little had been written about this topic generally in Spain, and practically nothing about women. Franco’s regime lasted from 1939 to 1975 and a dictatorship was not the ideal framework in which reflect on power, social classes and the whole conceptual apparatus that the study of that topic entails. In addition, Marxism (which dominated social sciences, perhaps as the complementary opposite to the above) did not encourage research on elites either. On the contrary, it instigated research on the disadvantaged sectors of society, namely the working classes, the trade unions and similar subjects, within the narrow margin permitted by a regime that defined itself as a state without classes or parties. Years later, through the influence of and contact with Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, with him and his team during my formative years in Paris, I found a type of sociology that cultivated a wide range of subjects and that did not show any ideological prejudice when, for instance, studying French employers or the sports activities of the elites. This showed great sociological imagination (I would like here to refer the reader to the indexes of their interesting Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Socials). All this was highly stimulating for me. Without any doubt, it was also very important for me to be in close contact with the group of well-known sociologists comprising Pierre Bourdieu himself (already an internationally known figure) and also his team: Monique de Saint Martin, Jean Claude Combessie, Remi Lenoir, to name but a few brilliant sociologists.4 Travelling abroad was like a breath of fresh air for those with intellectual interests. It also provided us with a certain sense of belonging to a scientific community, given that one feature of intellectual work in Spain was the solitude and the lack of team work, particularly in the realm of the social sciences. Looking back, now that Spain is a wealthy society, I can see the intellectual poverty we

lived in (in terms of resources), but also how wealthy we were from a political point of view: there was interest, debate, social criticism and commitment. We were The Best of Youth, as an RAI film defined the equivalent generation in Italy.5 We were the youth par excellence in a period of social transition: we were young during the Spanish Transition. I remember how keenly I read and underlined those books by the Argentinean publishing house with the quirky name Amorrortu (during those years I read imported books from Buenos Aires or Mexico), whose sociology book covers were shiny yellow, reminding me of Dutch cheese. With an adolescent’s enthusiasm, I read those basic books by the universally famous Berger and Luckmann (1968), Bottomore (1963), Zeitlin (1968) and Nisbet (1976), all of them widely read by the Spanish sociologists. I also read the unavoidable C.W. Mills (1957). Last but not least, I also had a good portion of Marxism or Philo-Marxism, as the taste of the different times required, and of great importance in order to reflect on the pair elites/classes: Bertaux (1977), Bourdieu (1977), Laurin-Frenette (1976) and little else. As regards books about women from a sociological point of view, the list was short and invariably reiterative: the classic Simmel (1925), amongst a very few. Incidentally (as a brief ex-cursus), something about translation and knowledge of foreign languages: going to university at all was mostly only possible for the children of professional fathers, and even then not in all cases. In that context, to know foreign languages was a double privilege, but through our knowledge of English and French we could read the authors not published in Spanish. From the point of view of feminist literature, if we could map intellectually the period (that is, if we had a Library of the Period made up of the sum of our individual book collections), we would observe just how similar these book collections were to each other within a student medium that was progressive, feminist and against Franco’s regime. What a seductive subject of research would be the standard book collection of a feminist woman of that period. What a precious possibility, to see what occupied our minds and warmed our hearts. They were delicate, sophisticated intellectual works, which required an extensive intellectual background. These works were not prevalent in the Spanish social sciences, more inclined to the so-called social problems rather than to subjects considered from the perspective of reflexivity. There were complex reasons for this which I have researched,6 but this is beyond the scope of this piece. Nevertheless, in my study Fifty Years of Bibliography on Women in Spain, 1940–1990 (1992), I had the opportunity to verify the fact that many female colleagues had read exactly the same books that I had: that was what there was. This gave me a measure of the accuracy of my observation, which was not surprising given how scant the resources were. Yet when analysing comparatively other bibliographies, I can observe and highlight the following feature: the internationalism of the feminist movement means that a whole generation of women from very different Western countries have read the same books. Thus, these names reappear invariably: Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone and Germaine Greer, amongst a few others. Last but not least, with regards to the sources we drew from, which is so relevant for knowledge, I need to highlight the phenomenon of bibliographical Anglo-centrism (as well as cultural Anglocentrism, obviously), which dominated those learning decades, as it does nowadays. With regards to the weakness of gender bibliography in general, it was very well diagnosed by M. Perrot (1986) and published in Annales,7 as a systematic predilection for the study of

sexuality/maternity and similar subjects; obsessed with the dialectics of oppression; and full of normative studies. These were some of the weaknesses pointed out by Perrot. In my case, such weaknesses were felt very early as heavy and boring topics. On many occasions, they were slogans of a social movement, feminism, which as such were valid and respectable for social action, but not very stimulating from a knowledge point of view. I ran away from a victim mentality, from essentialism, volunteerism, psychologism and other “isms”, which heavily impregnated the “woman studies”, as they were called then. I searched for a privileged group, the female elites, who, in principle, did not have many reasons to complain about society. It is well known that we were the subject as well as the object of our research. I would like to stress the fact that my generation of social scientists has a privileged position from which to carry out double archaeological work on gender: changing gender and changing gender studies. We have observed how our identities were undergoing a transformation both internally and socially – this also happened for men, but to a lesser extent. Equally, we have seen how those works of feminist propaganda were turning into scientific work. Therefore, in less than twenty years, we have moved from pamphlet writing to academic writing. This change has been impassioned from a human point of view, but also of great interest from a scientific and sociological point of view. This is why I refer to gender memorialism and reflexivity at the end of this text. Although the Transition was bright and full of life, we lived the darkness of the long night – Franco’s regime for women, if I can use this gender metaphor. There is a great deal of history that we could recount and write about. On the other hand, the task that I propose enriches the history of the academic disciplines (e.g. determining the moment and the degree to which each discipline incorporates (or does not) a gender perspective, nourishes the sociology of knowledge and provides data for a meta-sociology. This is all rare and meagre fruit within Spanish sociology, which has not reached the degree of sophistication required.

Searching for other horizons: North American universities University life as a scholar in Spain was dull. Unlike my intellectual work, the university environment and social life were not very stimulating. This is why I decided to study film directing (at the private institution called TAI, the only film school in the 1980s in Madrid), in order to find a younger and happier environment than within my Faculty of Pedagogy, dominated by an old-fashioned scholasticism that provided an environment of little intellectual interest as well as being very grim and sad. This way I could combine learning about film with being a young lecturer. I mainly taught sociology of education (I have published quite a number of works in this discipline). Nevertheless, I was always looking at what was happening abroad, and North America was my primary objective. Since that distant 1988 when I was a visiting scholar at the University of California San Diego until now, I have had the chance to work many times in the magnificent campuses and libraries of the east and west coast American universities. The influence of the interesting American feminist authors and sociologists has been enormous. Of their work I admire several things, including the freedom of their research

subjects as well as the freedom of their titles and expressive styles (this was highlighted by the contrast with the formal and corseted style of the Spanish social sciences, including feminist research, of the time), and the optimistic air brewing in the New World – the thought that everything is possible. And why not? For instance, some universities (such as Wellesley College, MA, where I worked for a year) produced female and feminist elites, encouraging female leadership. Years later, I realized how joyful my feminist re-socialization had been, even though it had been by osmosis (as when I was working in the library surrounded by all the College’s presidents, whose portraits hung on the walls). What a contrast it was with my Universidad Complutense in Madrid, full of bearded, circumspect vice-chancellors and without one single female authority on its walls. Lastly, I admire the respect and love for their feminist history, as well as their general history. By way of an example, in the 1980s, they archived (with a great array of resources) all the pamphlets of the Women’s Lib movement from 1968 and throughout the 1970s. This contrasts greatly with the situation in Spain, where we suffer from the shock of the old, and the risk of destruction of documents and archives is ever present. All of the above are features I admire greatly in the American scientific sector, which has a strong scientific community and great economic resources (this cannot be forgotten). Moving into more specific aspects, I focused on the study of biographies of social scientists, which I will touch upon briefly. In social science, within Anglophone bibliography, the voices of historical and biographical recovery are notable. There are outstanding authors who, from the gender perspective (i.e. mixing gender and sociology) have been undertaking this important intellectual work for the last 20 years. The English author Mary Evans also confirmed that, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it was commonplace for researchers to describe themselves and to be themselves objects of their research, thus making explicit the identity of authors, legitimating in turn autobiographies and biographies. As opposed to the above, there is a vacuum in Spanish social sciences (that not only affects its female researchers). This is why I would like to specifically select some titles from the ad hoc bibliography for these subjects and to highlight aspects that I find of extreme importance to be imported into gender studies in Spain. Amongst these aspects are the following: recovery and selection of authors and their works; avoidance of their invisibility in the present and oblivion in the future; the many biographies of feminist authors that together are a synthesis and an overall vision of the scientific field in which they work, and capture the contribution both individually and collectively. All of the above are fundamental factors in the professional socialization of the new generation of social scientists; lastly, they are a contribution to the general history of the discipline as a whole. Let me, therefore, give a few examples of the work that has influenced me and that I would recommend to others. First, Deegan’s introduction (1991) presents an interesting perspective of the discipline, a story told by and about female sociologists. In this introduction there is an analysis of a gender epistemology providing invaluable suggestions for further research (women’s issues as opposed to men’s topics, for example). There is nothing similar in Spanish sociology. Beyond these specific sections within Deegan’s work, what impresses and moves me is the courage and the willingness to make history with a feminist flavour. For example,

chapters begin with the title: “Founding Sisters: the Women who were Presidents of the American Sociological Association”. Other citations would include the collective work of the sociologists from the prestigious Berkeley University in 1994. To name one example, it is interesting to see how convenient it is for them to express themselves, to meet and to exchange personal and professional experiences amongst themselves and their readers. As highlighted by the prestigious Arlie Hochschild, this is an isolated female elite, equidistant from men’s world and the domestic world in general. Next, I would name the work of Barbara Laslett and Barrie Thorne (1997). This collective work contains eleven articles written by leading female sociologists. There are theoretical contributions that range from memoirs to the sociology of knowledge and social theory, including the feminist contribution to the “crafting and use of life histories as a genre”. The collective work by Ann Goetting and Sarah Fenstermaker (1995) also demands mention. It includes a valuable selection of eighteen significant articles (uniting life and sociology) as well as w theoretical introduction and conclusion by the authors. Ann Goetting talks about “Fictions of the Self” whereas Sarah Fenstermaker ponders on “Editing” women, memoirs and the sociological “I”. Goetting carries out a synthesis on the contributions of women’s biographies, which we reflect on here briefly. Women’s biographies cover the following voids within sociological literature: “Sensitive insight and confirmed connectedness”; knowledge gaps; and the intersection of micro and macro. Last but not least, “Women’s biography can contribute to the correction of the women’s obscurity within the academy and within the discipline of sociology”. Finally, let me mention two further studies: Our Studies, Ourselves: Sociologists’ Lives and Work (Glassner 2003) and Sarah Delamont’s Feminist Sociology (2003). The former collection (which is an indicator of the continuity of this topic both intellectually and bibliographically) contains twenty-two texts by famous American sociologists. The names and the authors are repeated systematically and expressively in this line of bibliographical production. Well-known authors of American sociology contribute to the book, namely Dorothy E. Smith, Cynthia F. Epstein, Barrie Thorne, Susan A. Ostrander, Rosanna Hertz and Verta Taylor, amongst others. The central questions that several chapters of the work attempt to respond to are the following: how much does personal biography matter in research? How much does a person’s research matter to her biography? The book has a clear intention of commitment to change within the discipline. For instance, Dorothy Smith states that her mission is to change her own profession of sociology and urges sociologists to explore how the self and society exist within texts. The latter text, by Delamont, I found absolutely crucial for all the subjects I have studied. There are lights and shadows in all of the above. I have already spoken about the lights, of my admiration. With regards to the shadows, I would like to highlight the huge ethnocentrism dominating American gender literature (or Anglophone literature, generally speaking). Only what is written in English matters. The English-speaking writers only read themselves, completely ignoring the very interesting Spanish production of very relevant feminists such as Amelia Valcárcel and Celia Amorós, and Mexican writers Marcela Lagarde and Marta Lamas, to name but a few. This is a serious but fair complaint against the Anglophone world (a lingua franca such as English is much more than a language, it is a very powerful weapon for

influence and domination). Feminist solidarity should fight against this deep scientific divide. The specific subject of working with female professional elites is only being tackled by a relatively limited number of specialists, who seem to agree on this appreciation. However, there are some unclear borders, e.g. the gender/power duality, which is widely studied nowadays. The first specialist I met who was working in this area was Cynthia Fuchs Epstein (herself a President of the American Sociological Association) and the author of a comparative study of female elites in different countries (1981). Equally long-standing is my collaboration with one of the not very common male specialists in gender (furthermore, in female elites), Mino Vianello, from the Universitá de la Sapienza in Roma. He successfully directed with great effort a comparative research of female elites in 27 industrialized countries, with an equal number of main researchers. His work was co-directed by Gwen Moore, from Albany University.

Power is memory (as conclusions) I have recently researched social scientists and academic women, an objective proposed for the collective feminist agenda. This line of research has the following leitmotif, to reclaim the contribution of such professionals to the realm of social sciences in Spain and to trace our genealogy and scientific inheritance amongst ourselves. Naming is fundamental (i.e. it gives foundations), and it classifies and allocates problems. As the Spanish feminist philosopher Amelia Valcárcel said, “Power is Memory”. In our case, creating genealogy of and in our knowledge is crucial, both for the moment we live and for the purpose of legacy. The situation is now ripe for this double moment. All this is connected to the academic elite, female scientists par excellence who must be mentioned and recognized as well as their knowledge, in the form of heritage and/or intellectual traditions to be created. These elites and this problem are part of my current research. One must name problems, following the tradition of Betty Friedan, who coined the problem “that has no name” (i.e. the alienation of the housewife). Today’s problem has a name: the power of women, in the terms and proportion defined by equality. We do not want more but we do not want less. Finally, let me name certain key areas where I think attention is necessary: a call to attention on the anti-memorialism of gender/of women. This really is a key area for the empowerment of women. However, it is not simply a question of gender, but of the scientific community. Note that, in our bibliography in Spanish, there is no Who’s Who of Women, which is very common in the Anglo-Saxon world; this is a basic tool of any self-respecting scientific community. Amongst the gender battles that I fight (or that we must fight at a generational level) features the battle of ageism against women and the devastating social and psychological effects on women as a consequence. This is no trivial matter: it is a compulsory subject for a generation that will soon be relieved by the next one. Neither is this a narcissistic nor a personal question, but a crucial, generational question of a scientific community. Arming ourselves against such

specific harmful sexism and ageism and empowering ourselves as Founding Sisters (as the Americans say) is fundamental in a society that does not appreciate experience nor accumulated wisdom and is in the hands of the onslaught of the Empire of Youth as the dominant myth of our contemporary society Regarding the work of the feminist agenda today, I will summarize it in three key words, memory, mastery and goals, which I translate respectively (following the strictest and most intelligent notary logic) into these other three terms: balance, legacy and heirs/heiresses. In other words, there is a need to reunite the assets, the resources to share; to establish heritage; and to establish who the heirs/heiresses are. All these acts hark back to power, a central matter in the social world, as Weber would say, and of our scientific work per se. Our mastery, as an interesting generation (which underwent a double transition) has its roots today in those three crucial terms. Without these, it is as if nothing had happened. At most, it would be like a beautiful film that dealt with a rebellious youth, proposed another way of living and doing that was non-androcentric, and then disappeared.

References Alberdi, I. and García de León, M.A. 1990. Sociology of Women. Sociology in Spain. Madrid: CSIC. Alpern, S. et al. 1992. The Challenge of Feminist Biography: Writing the Lives of Modern American Women. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Alpern, S. et al. 2006. The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopaedia of Third-wave Feminism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Anderson, L. 1997. Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century: Remembered Futures. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf. Ashley, K., Gilmore, L. and Peters, G. (eds) 1994. Autobiography and Postmodernism. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Berger, B.B. 1990. Authors in Their Own Lives: Intellectual Autobiographies. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley University Press. Berger, P. and Luckmann, T. 1968. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Bertaux, D. 1977. Destins Personnels et Structure de Classe. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Bottomore, T. 1963. Karl Marx. London: Pearson Educational Books. Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burgan, M. 2006. Whatever Happened to the Faculty? Drift and Decision in Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Butler, J.P. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cosslett, T. et al. 2000. Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods. London: Routledge.

Deegan, M.J. 1991. Women in Sociology: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook. New York: Greenwood Press. Delamont, S. 2003. Feminist Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Evans, M. 1997, Introducción al pensamiento feminista contemporáneo. Madrid: Minerva Ediciones. Fenstermaker, S. and West, C. 2002. Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change. New York: Routledge. Fonow, M.M. and Cook, J.A. 1991. Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. García de León, M.A. 1994. Elites Discriminadas. Barcelona: Anthropos. García de León, M.A. 2002. Herederas y Heridas. Madrid: Cátedra. García de León, M.A. 2008. Rebeldes Ilustradas (La Otra Transición). Barcelona: Anthropos. García de León, M.A. 2009. Antropólogas, politólogas y sociólogas. Madrid: Plaza y Valdés. Gardasdóttir H. 2006. Latin America Women as a Moving Force. Göteburg: Haina. Gilmore, L. 1994. Autobiographics. A Feminist Theory of Women Self-representation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Glassner, B. 2003. Our Studies, Ourselves: Sociologists’ Lives and Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glassner, B. and Hertz, R. 1999. Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Goetting, A and Fenstermaker, S. 1995. Individual Voices, Collective Visions: Fifty Years of Women in Sociology. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Griffin, G. 2002. Doing Women’s Studies: Employment Opportunities, Personal Impacts and Social Consequences. London: Zed Books. Gunes, S. 1990. Feminist Knowledge. Critique and Construct. London: Routledge. Halley, J.E. 2006. Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hertz, R. and Imber, J.B. 1995. Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Heilbrun, C.G. 1989. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: Ballantine Books. Kaufman, J.S. 2003. From Girls in Their Elements to Women in Science: Rethinking Socialization through Memory-work. New York: Peter Lang. Laslett, P. 1983. The World We Have Lost. London: Routledge. Laurin-Frenette, N. 1976. Production de l’Etat at Formes de la Nation. Montreal: Optique. Laybourn, K. (ed.) 1997. Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Leggott, S. 2001. History and Autobiography in Contemporary Spanish Women’s Testimonial Writings. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press. McAdams, D.P., Josselson, L. and Lieblich, A. (eds) 2006. Identity and Story: Creating Self in Narrative. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Meadow-Orlans, K.P. and Wallace, R.A. 1994. Gender and the Academic Experience: Berkeley Women Sociologists. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. Miller, N.K. 1988. Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing. New York: Columbia University Press. Miller, N.K. 1991. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge. Miller, N. K. 2002. But Enough About Me: Why We Read Other People’s Lives. New York: Columbia University Press. Mills, C.W. 1957. The Power Elite. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nisbet, R. 1976. The Making of Modern Society. Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Powell, J.L. and Owen, D. 2007. Reconstructing Postmodernism. New York: Nova Science. Rishoi, C. 2003. From Girl to Woman: American Women’s Coming-of-age Narratives. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Showalter, E. 2001. Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage. New York: Scribner. Siegel, K. 1999. Women’s Autobiographies, Culture, Feminism. New York: Peter Lang. Simmel, G. 1955. Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations. Glencoe, Ill: Free Press. Smith, S. 2002. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, S. and Watson, J. 1992. De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, S. and Watson, J. 1996. Getting a Life: Everyday Uses of Autobiography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, S. and Watson, J. 1998. Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Thorne, B. and Yalom, M. (ed.) 1982. Re-Thinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions. New York: Longman. Watson, M. and Kimmich, A.B. 1999. Women and Autobiography. Wilmington, DE: SR Books. Webster, B.J. et al. 1989. Interpreting Women’s Lives: Feminist Theory and Personal Narratives. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Zeitlin, I. 1968. Ideology and the Development of Social Theory. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

1 This is part of the well-known Spanish title of a book by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú which, because of its simplicity and expressivity, I would like to use here (the English title of the book was simply I, Rigoberta Menchú). 2 The House of Bernarda Alba, Federico García Lorca’s last play, was written in 1936 and first performed in 1945. 3 Amorós, Celia. 2005. La gran diferencia y sus pequeñas consecuencias… para las luchas de las mujeres. Madrid: Cátedra, p. 107. 4 In Masculine Domination, Bourdieu makes a reference to my work Discriminated Elites (1994). 5 La meglio gioventù (2003), Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy. Translated into English as The Best of Youth. 6 García de León, M.A. (2009). Antropólogas, politólogas y sociólogas (Género, biografía y ciencias sociales). Madrid and México D.F.: Plaza y Valdés. 7 Perrot, M. et al. (March–April 1986) Culture et pouvoir des femmes. Essay d’historiographie.

Chapter 10 Passages to Feminism: Encounters and Rearticulations Christina Scharff

This chapter is about my experiences of becoming, and being, a feminist. Because I began to identify as a feminist during my studies in the USA, this is also a chapter about my encounters with US feminist theory. I will start by exploring the insights and difficulties that have emerged from my intellectual and physical journeys across the Atlantic. Then, I will take a closer look at my passage to feminism and reflect on my experiences of being a feminist. I will show that, although my physical passage to feminism took place abroad and in the past, my intellectual journey is an ongoing process. Having conducted research on how young women think, talk and feel about feminism, I had to talk about “my” feminism in encounters with the research participants, and realised that these conversations sometimes involved reformulations of my own feminism. By reflecting on interviews with several respondents, I will show that I frequently found myself in situations where I claimed feminism, but simultaneously reaffirmed exclusionary norms that I would have otherwise challenged. For example, respondents frequently associated feminism with unfeminine women, man-haters and lesbians. I did not always contest these homophobic constructions of feminists. Occasionally, I even evoked these associations myself in order to deflect verbal strategies that some research participants used to attack commonly held stereotypes of feminism. By exploring these moments where I negotiated and rearticulated feminism, I will demonstrate that I gained useful insights from Judith Butler’s performativity theory (1993, 1999). Her work on sex, gender, sexuality and the heterosexual matrix helped me to understand those moments where I affirmed heterosexual conventions. Ironically then, this chapter takes an unexpected turn in that it does not discuss theoretical revisions or controversies that were generated by my encounters with US feminist theory, but instead shifts its focus to interrogating my passage to feminism.

Encounters with US feminist theory When I first started to reflect upon my encounters with US feminist theory, and my passage to feminism, I was thinking about travelling, both in terms of theory and space. I became a feminist as a result of my intellectual and physical journeys. Having been raised in Germany, I moved to the UK to do my undergraduate degree and developed an interest in feminism during my first year at university. This interest became even stronger as I left the UK for the USA, where I spent a year as an exchange student. Taking courses in women’s studies, sociology and politics, I encountered a whole new way of thinking that I embraced with enthusiasm. The concepts of intersectionality and difference soon began to frame my thinking. I enjoyed seeing the social world in a new and different light, attentive to the complex ways in which the

intersecting dynamics of gender, sexuality, race and class shape our lives. When I came back to Europe, I was delighted to be able to pursue similar ways of thinking during my postgraduate degrees in the UK. Through my studies in the UK and the USA, my intellectual journeys have become entangled with my journeys through space; it seems that I picked up feminism at university and abroad. And even though my feminism is something that I live out in Europe and outside academia, it has mainly come to life in an American academic context. While my passage to feminism was certainly inspiring and empowering, it was also uprooting and ambivalent. The entanglement of my feminist identity with my life abroad bears difficulties. I encountered feminist theory in English, which is not my native language, and continue to practise theory and writing in a language once foreign to me. Indeed, I now find it difficult to write and talk about feminist theory in my mother tongue and prefer to do so in English. Sometimes, I wonder where my German-speaking self has gone and whether it has been written out by the hegemony of the English language; but if subjectivity is something that is changing and constantly produced, then there is no true and authentic self that has disappeared. Indeed, I would say that my academic, intellectual self has reconstituted itself along the lines of words and theories from a different place, both in terms of space and theoretical perspective. This has certainly had an eye-opening and transgressive effect. It broadened my ways of thinking by giving me access to different forms of meaning-making. Yet, sometimes, there remains this feeling of a slight mis-fit. For example, I frequently find myself reading texts in “international” journals that contain numerous cultural references that I am unfamiliar with and which are left unexplained. I, however, have to provide a detailed account of cultural specificities when I write about the German-speaking context. Moving away from the subjective to a more theoretical level, my positioning as a researcher raises further dilemmas. While my intellectual home is Anglo-American feminist, social and cultural theory, I also conduct research in Germany. This means that my work is located in different cultural, linguistic and theoretical contexts. In writing up my research, I have to translate German statements into English. While the use of two languages creates difficulties in terms of translating words and concepts that do not exist in both languages, the analytical work involved in translating also provides methodological, analytical and theoretical insights. Detailed study of language difference and translation can, for example, tell us more about the relationships between the researcher and the researched (Marhia et al. 2009). Working across languages and engaging in processes of translation bears particular challenges, but it also generates research findings. Similarly, the application of theoretical concepts to different contexts can offer fascinating insights, but can also entail methodological and theoretical difficulties. Mainly working with Anglo-American concepts and theories – such as Butler’s performativity theory, queer theory, and intersectionality – I have to reflect on the implications of applying theoretical concepts to contexts that they did not emerge from. Within German-speaking feminist academia, there has been a debate about the uses and abuses of drawing on US critical whiteness studies (also see Mary Evans and Kathy Davis’s introduction in this volume). Motivated by a critical engagement with whiteness as a position of structural advantage, Germany’s frequently neglected history of colonialism, and challenges to German-speaking feminism as privileging gender over race, various critical theorists began using the insights of US critical whiteness

theory. However, the transfer of analytical categories that have emerged from a different context has also been subject to criticisms. Gabriele Dietze (2006), for instance, argues that early uses of critical whiteness studies in Germany restricted the application of its critical tools to racial differences, leaving undertheorised patterns of power and dominance in the mobilisation of cultural differences. This debate demonstrates that theoretical concepts that emerged from within the USA do, and do not, travel across the Atlantic, and that they have to be applied critically and reflexively. As I will outline in more detail below, I researched young women’s negotiations of feminism in Germany and the UK. My focus on two countries gave rise to methodological challenges, both in terms of the travelling of theories and the issue of language difference and translation. Research across borders also raises the question of how to research, and write about, the role of different cultural contexts in shaping the phenomenon under investigation. The story of feminism is told differently in Germany than in the UK and, in fact, also encompasses the existence of two German states until 1989. In addition, young women’s positionings in relation to gender, class, sexuality, race and ethnicity may be lived out differently depending on the cultural context. Therefore, I had expected to find differences in how feminism was negotiated in my main research sites of Berlin and London. When analysing the data, however, I found that there were few differences in the research participants’ accounts that seemed to be culturally specific. These variants related to the individuals associated with feminism, and the sartorial choices feminists were imagined to make. Several women that I met in Berlin associated Alice Schwarzer1 with feminism, while British respondents thought of Germaine Greer, suffragettes and Margaret Thatcher. Feminists were described as unfeminine in both contexts. In Germany however, feminists were thought to wear purple and not shave their armpits while the image of the bra-burner was much more frequently evoked in the UK. Apart from these variations, negotiations of feminism were remarkably similar. The main themes of my research – such as the role of heteronormativity in rejections of feminism – equally came to the fore in both countries. Interestingly, Umut Erel (2009) also found that differences between Germany and the UK did not present themselves clearly in the life-stories of the migrant women she interviewed. Judging on my experience of conducting research across borders, I would argue that it is important to be sensitive and attentive to the research context, but that it remains to be seen how exactly this context affects the phenomenon under study. While I have highlighted the challenges and insights that emerge from research across cultural contexts, and the entanglement of my intellectual and geographical journeys, I have not yet interrogated my identification as feminist. My account of how I became a feminist could be read as a journey that I completed in the past. However, in reflecting on my passage to feminism, I became aware that I travel to feminism time and time again. By discussing several moments where I talked about my identification as a feminist with my research participants, I will explore my passage to feminism in these instances and the way in which my feminism changes across contexts. I will draw on Judith Butler’s work when reflecting on the moments where I claim feminism in different ways, and show the insights that can be gained from applying her US-based theory. While my chapter began with critical reflections on my encounters with US feminist theory, the personal and reflexive journey I will embark on now

will move away from examining my use of North-American feminist concepts to exploring my passage to feminism as an ongoing project.

Feminism contested and repudiated After beginning to identify as a feminist, I noted that the term “feminism” frequently evoked negative responses both in the UK, where I live now, and in Germany. Becoming aware that feminism is both taken into account, but also fiercely repudiated (Gill 2007, McRobbie 2009), I wanted to research this phenomenon in both countries. My interest in the topic was intellectual, but also personal: during debates about feminism or gender issues, I frequently felt vulnerable and attacked. Dismissive attitudes towards feminism and the more or less overt aggressiveness that emerged from casual discussions about gender issues, or from my statements that there still are inequalities and that I am a feminist, prompted me to research views of, and feelings about, feminism. Given my interest in the affective politics involved in negotiations of feminism – particularly amongst young women – I conducted qualitative indepth interviews to hear their subjective accounts. Of course, “young women” does not represent a homogenous entity and I tried, as much as possible, to hear the accounts of a diverse group of women in Germany and the UK. Similarly, “feminism” is a contingent term representing many different theories, and there is no one women’s movement with a unified set of goals. For these reasons, I abstained from defining feminism in a specific way and instead asked the research participants whether they had ever heard of the term, and if yes, how they would define it and what they would associate with it. I had started my research thinking that it was only those “other” women who did not feel comfortable claiming feminism, and who had an ambivalent, if not negative, relationship with it. During the research process, however, I became aware that my relationship with feminism was equally something that I continuously negotiated. In sharing this observation, I do not want to suggest that the process of becoming a feminist usually involves a linear progression towards a clear endpoint. As Mary Evans and Kathy Davis’s reflections show, what we think “our” feminism is changes over time. What I want to suggest here is slightly different. I want to shed light on moments in the research process where I discussed my relationship with feminism in ways that paralleled the research participants’ repudiations of feminism. Conducting, analysing and transcribing the interviews made me aware that my identification as feminist contained tensions and ambivalences that resonated with the accounts of the interviewees. Interestingly, with regard to the themes and questions that inform this volume, Judith Butler’s work helped me understand my ambivalent relationship with feminism. As I mentioned above, many research participants associated feminism with unfeminine women, man-haters and/or lesbians. Respondents frequently repudiated feminism because they did not want to be seen as unfeminine, man-hating or lesbian. Butler’s performativity theory allowed me to explore such rejections of feminism in more detail. Her work highlights the link between gender identity, sexuality and the heterosexual matrix and allows us to interpret rejections of feminism as doings of femininity and, in some cases, heterosexuality. She argues that sex and gender are materialised through regulatory norms and are assumed through a

process of citation and reiteration that also constitutes subjects. Sexed identity, according to Butler, is the effect of repeated performative acts that are structured by the heterosexual matrix. Taking into account women’s positioning in the heterosexual matrix, I asked myself what it means when a woman says that she is not a feminist because she is not a man-hater. Does this mean that she wants people to know that she likes men, thereby taking up heterosexual norms? Listening to portrayals of feminists as these “unfeminine women”, man-bashers or butch lesbians over and over again, I came to think that these are not merely stereotypes, but stereotypes that actually do something. In light of Butler’s argument, statements such as “I would hesitate to call myself a feminist because I would not want to be regarded as an unfeminine woman who hates men” can be read as performative acts of femininity and, potentially, heterosexuality. Butler’s framework lends itself to exploring repudiations of feminism. When I first became aware of how useful her theoretical framework might be for my research, I wondered to what extent my interpretation and analysis were influenced by the popularity of her theory in the academic and feminist context that I worked in. Would I have come to similar conclusions if Judith Butler’s work had not had currency? It is difficult, if not impossible, to answer that question. What I think I can show, however, is that Butler’s theory has the ability to travel with regards to my research. Her emphasis on the close link between gender identity and heteronormativity provides a valuable theoretical tool to explore young women’s reluctance to claim feminism as stemming from a fear that this stance might disrupt their “femininity”. Given that I identify as a woman and am also positioned within the heterosexual matrix, Butler’s work sheds light on my implication in these processes and the way my feminism passes through moments of identification and disidentification. The culturally established link between feminism and man-hating on the one hand, and the heterosexist requirement that women desire men on the other, not only gave rise to affirmations of one’s femininity and/or heterosexuality on the part of the respondents, but also on my part. In this specific instance, the adaptation of North American theoretical concepts did not involve rearticulations; instead, my feminism was rearticulated.

Passages to feminism: Talking to Carrie Towards the end of her interview, one research participant, Carrie, wanted to know whether I was a feminist and I said “yes”. Subsequently, Carrie asked: “So, do you hate men?”, to which I replied “No. No. I am heterosexual. I have a boyfriend. No, I get on well with my dad and my brother”. Taking up the widely established link between feminism and man-hating, Carrie then inquired: “So, in what ways are you a feminist?” Carrie had been quite hostile towards feminism and feminists throughout the interview; she overtly addressed me as a man-hater, which made me feel vulnerable. I did not want to occupy the space of a man-hater and consequently claimed normative heterosexuality by talking about my positive relationships with men. In doing so, I reproduced and reinforced heterosexist norms that I would otherwise contest. My response to Carrie reveals the firm grip of regulatory heteronorms in this specific instance. It demonstrates my identification and positioning as female in the heterosexual matrix

and – in congruence with the research participants – my felt need to assert that I have positive relationships with men. I use the word “no” three times in this short statement to reject the appellation “man-hater”. I not only reproduce heterosexist conventions by affirming that I like and desire men, but also inversely confirm the links between man-hatred and female homosexuality. Instead of answering Carrie’s question by simply saying I am not a man-hater, I stress that I am heterosexual. In addition, I establish normative heterosexuality and kinship relations by referring to my relationship and my good rapport with my father and brother. My dialogue with Carrie demonstrates how a feminist, who would like to think of herself as being critical of regulatory norms, reproduces exactly those norms in the conversation. This is not to argue that critical thinkers have the ability to move beyond the regulatory force of norms. On the contrary, the passage highlights that heterosexual conventions are not easily escaped from. In this instance, the appellation of man-hater, which followed from my identification as feminist, quite literally does something by moving me away from feminist politics to a reaffirmation of heteronorms. Transcribing and analysing this moment, I realised that my negotiations of feminism were similar to those of the research participants: both contained repudiations of homosexuality and affirmations of heterosexual norms. In this conversation, my identification as feminist entails a move to and away from feminism. I was scared of being positioned as a man-hater and sought to undo this positioning by reinstalling exclusionary heteronorms, thereby moving away from what I consider a feminist stance. Butler’s work on heterosexual norms has emerged from a different context, but can be usefully applied to my research because it illustrates how heteronormativity mediates rearticulations of feminism. Another interesting aspect of my dialogue with Carrie relates to my feelings of unease in sharing my reaction to being interpellated as a man-hater. In transcribing the interview extract and in writing it up here, I cringe and feel embarrassed that I did not challenge the construction of feminists as man-haters and homosexuals. Moreover, I am imagining that the readers of this volume are outraged by my affirmation of heteronorms. This fantasy involves a fear of not being “a good feminist”, but also reveals my embeddedness in culturally widespread notions of feminists as dogmatic and harsh. Indeed, my fantasy about a group of feminists scolding me is not dissimilar from the research participants’ portrayal of feminism as a dogmatic doctrine; feminism was frequently rejected as extreme, ideological and rigid. My fantasy about sharing this incident with a group of dogmatic feminists illustrates again that my negotiations of feminism are similar to those of the research participants. While I reject the portrayal of feminism as dogmatic on a more “rational” level, my fears around discussing this interview extract indicate that I have “taken on” cultural constructions of feminists as strict. Even though I identify as a feminist, my identification also contains processes of dis-identification. Feminism is not a position I easily claim, but rather one that I have to negotiate continually. This negotiation means that my passage to feminism is something that happens over and over again, and that this is a process which is fraught with contradictions that reflect wider social trends and norms.

Passages to feminism: Talking to Miranda and Julia

While my affirmation of heterosexuality was particularly pronounced in my conversation with Carrie, it occurred in other interviews too. Another research participant, Miranda, was also hostile to feminism. She had told me that she had learnt about it at university. When I asked her what she thought about it, she said that she really “hated it all”. Later on, her husband came into the room (I conducted the interview at her house) and brought us something to drink. Referring to me, Miranda said “that’s the feminist” and added “she likes men”. This situation made me feel very exposed: it made me wonder what would happen if I did not pass as somebody who liked men. After her husband had left the room, I picked up the conversation and asked Miranda what he thought about feminists. Miranda replied: Uhm, yes, well, I don’t think he really, he’s given it much thought. The first thing that he also thought about feminists was bisexual, sorry, that was the first thing that I know came up in his mind. Christina: Did you talk about it beforehand, before I came, that you’d do this interview – you know, when did he tell you that he thought feminists were bisexual? Miranda: Uhm, I told him that I am being, taking part in research, sorry, this is – but he was just joking. He said … I said … Because then I haven’t seen him much in the last two days because he was working late, and I said that a friend of my lecturer is coming to do some research on feminism, and he said, ‘oh is she a feminist?’, and I said, ‘I don’t know if she is a feminist, but she is doing her research on it’, ‘is she bisexual?’ – Christina: [Embarrassed laughter], I am not – I am heterosexual. Uhm, but yeah … Miranda: Why do people think that, or – but I guess it is the same that when I thought lesbian, first thing […]

The conversation with Miranda continued to make me feel uncomfortable. I had the feeling that there was a tension because I had not disclosed my sexual orientation. I subsequently resolved this tension by claiming heterosexuality. It felt like a relief to say it, but also like a lie and betrayal to my investment in challenging heterosexual norms. I felt that I could only occupy the position of a feminist by also claiming heterosexuality. Similar to the dialogue with Carrie, my passage to feminism in this interview involved an affirmation of feminism, but also a painful reinstatement of norms that I consider violent, and that made me feel vulnerable at that moment. Butler’s work on the violent workings of heterosexual norms allows me to shed light on my felt need to claim heterosexuality in my conversation with Miranda. Even though I seek to challenge the dominance of heterosexual norms, I affirmed them during this interview. In this instance, US-based feminist theory travels well and brings to the fore certain ambivalences; travelling theory can provide insights into the revisions that are involved in my encounters with feminism. In response to the violent workings of heterosexual norms, my feminism was something that I had to negotiate in ways that differed according to context. For example, I also interviewed women who turned out to identify as feminists and with whom I could share experiences of encountering hostile reactions to feminism. Some research participants were particularly reflexive about the dilemmas surrounding their feminism, which enabled me to claim feminism without colluding with heterosexual norms. Julia was a research participant who had discussed at length the dilemma of being feminist, feminine and lesbian. Just before the end of the interview, Julia asked me about my thoughts on young women’s relationships with feminism. I felt able to discuss them in a very open manner:

Christina: Have you ever heard of Judith Butler? Julia: Heard yes, but I haven’t read anything by her. Christina: So, I think that this heteronormativity, and the fitting in, I think, that feminism is generally linked to militant women, who are not feminine, and that, if you say, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this!’ that, through this, you say ‘I am not one of those unfeminine women’ and that you reinforce your femininity through that. This is my main argument, that this plays a really central role. And this fear – what is it then, that produces fear about feminism, so, you know, of – Julia: Yes, and what is it, that produces so much fear about being unfeminine? […]

This brief extract demonstrates my comfort in talking about my research, and my anxieties about being a feminist. (By the way, I had to translate this extract and continue to feel unhappy with the result, pondering how German filler words could be translated into English.) The extract is remarkable for its openness because I talk about fears and anxiety. Julia picks up on my discussion about fears and we have a conversation about feminism that does not require the affirmation of exclusionary norms on my part. I also use professional terminology and refer to key theorists in the field. Indeed, I mention Judith Butler in the interview. Her theory travels from the USA to Europe, but also from my theoretical framework to the research encounter. Here, her work has the ability to travel from theory to practice. In this instance, my passage to feminism and the way I communicate my feminist awareness did not involve any negotiation. Depending on the context, and more specifically the particular research participant’s feelings towards feminism, I articulated feminism in different ways. My claims to feminism differed across the interviews and were shaped by my encounters with the research participants. I used Judith Butler’s work to make sense of this process. In the context of my research, I did not revise US-based feminist theory: I revised my own feminism and beliefs.

Conclusion I began this chapter by reflecting on how I became a feminist and how this journey was shaped by my encounters with the USA and American feminist theory. Having explored the eyeopening aspects of becoming a feminist through my studies abroad, but also the challenges involved in my passage to feminism in an Anglo-American academic context, I began to discuss my identification as feminist in more depth. I realised that my passage to feminism is continually ongoing and that my feminism has to be negotiated in ways that sometimes reflect broader cultural norms and contain processes of dis-identification. While the beginning of the chapter demonstrated that my becoming a feminist is intertwined with encounters with US theory, the chapter also illustrated that it is a journey that I continue to undertake. Butler’s USbased theory helped me to reflect on these processes and to illustrate the ambivalences involved in my passage to feminism. Importantly, I do not make the argument that theoretical frameworks do not have to be revised as they travel from one context to another. Nor has my thinking only been informed by Butler’s work; it has also been shaped by feminists who are based in Europe. With regard to the instances that I discussed in this chapter, however, Butler’s theory provided very useful insights and exposed my feminism as something that is rearticulated and revised. Instead of discussing the revisions involved in my use of US feminist

theory, this chapter has taken a different turn by highlighting how my feminism has been rearticulated in my encounters with the respondents.

References Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Dietze, G. 2006. Critical Whiteness Theory und Kritischer Okzidentalismus. Zwei Figuren hegemonialer Selbstreflexion, in Weiß – Weißsein – Whiteness: Kritische Studien zu Gender und Rassismus, edited by M. Tißberger et al. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Gill, R. 2007. Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity Press. Marhia, N., Pereira, M.d.M. and Scharff, C.M. 2009. Lost (And Found) in Translation. Special Issue. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 6(3). McRobbie, A. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Umut, E. 2009. Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship: Life-stories from Britain and Germany. Farnham: Ashgate.

1 Alice Scharzer is a well-known German feminist activist and public figure. She is founder of Emma, a German feminist magazine which celebrated its 30th birthday in 2007. She is also a very controversial figure due to her stance on pornography and Islam. Interestingly, this footnote illustrates the politics I discussed above: I explain who Alice Schwarzer is but do not provide a footnote on Germaine Greer or the suffragettes. I should make it clear, however, that nobody has asked me to include this footnote. I added this footnote in order to make my work more accessible to readers who may not be familiar with this German context.

PART III Theoretical Engagements

Chapter 11 There are Many Transatlantics: Homonationalism, Homotransnationalism and Feminist–Queer–Trans of Colour Theories and Practices Paola Bacchetta and Jin Haritaworn

Introduction by Jin Haritaworn I first came across Paola Bacchetta’s work when reading the forerunning collective statement “Transnational Feminist Practices against War” circulated in October 2001 (Bacchetta et al. 2002). I later found her writings on queer and trans organising in India, and her early critical interrogation of gender, class and North–South divides in international lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movements. By the time we started talking about the possibility of doing a joint panel on homonationalism at the Critical Ethnic Studies conference at University of California, Riverside in spring 2011, our work had taken a parallel turn to the complicities and convergences between Northern gay and women’s rights discourses and hegemonic projects of nationalism, racism, neocolonialism and the globalising “war on terror”, and the changed parameters of women, queer and trans of colour activism and critique which arise from this. This piece was written as a series of email exchanges, which themselves gave rise to other transatlantic collaborations (e.g. KFPA 2010).1 We chose the form of the mutual interview, agreeing on some questions beforehand and doing the editing jointly, in order to enable a lively conversation between our different voices and positionalities, shaped by both privilege and oppression, and different generations, politicisations and biographies. We begin by thinking about the feminist–queer–trans Atlantic, which we suggest should be understood as a heterogenous, contested formation shaped by multiple histories and sites of violence. This book is titled Transatlantic Feminist Conversations. Perhaps we can begin by addressing our relations to Feminism? And to the Transatlantic? JH: I have a complicated relationship to both feminism and the transatlantic. A masculinepresenting, female-assigned, trans-identified person of colour with light skin and class privileges, I often find myself passing into spaces that most MTFs (trans women and others categorised as “male to female”), especially MTFs of colour, have little to no access to. At the same time, feminisms, particularly those articulated by migrant, transnational and postcolonial feminists and feminists of colour, have been hugely influential to my political and theoretical project, and the queer and trans movements that I consider myself part of. Much of what we are trying to do seems to be a translation of earlier feminist struggles around positionality and

coalition politics, as well as an attempt to learn from the hard lessons of complicity, backlash and institutionalisation (Bacchetta et al. 2002, Incite! 2006). Who is left behind when social movements in the North attempt to go global? As LGBT movements and sexuality studies are turning to race and the Global South, who can speak for sexual and gendered subalterns? Whose genders and sexualities gain value, visibility and universality, and whose are patronised, particularised or marginalised in international LGBT rights “connectivities” (Grewal 2005, Bacchetta 1999, Manalansan 2005)? How may single-issue agendas around gay marriage, gays in the military and hate crime benefit a small handful of professionalised activists, often white gay non-trans men, in the Global North (see Nair 2009)? What is the role of not only women’s, but also gay (and to a lesser extent trans) rights talk in pink washing, diversifying and politically correcting humanitarian militarism and neocolonial development practices – from Israel/Palestine to Malawi (Moumneh 2009, Ndashe 2010)? What challenges arise from the increasing centrality of Islamophobia in these movements, including for allies like myself, who are not immediately interpellated by the “war on terror”? What we need is a decolonisation of sexual and trans/gender theory and politics along earlier feminist lines. As the recent backlashes, however, suggest – from the forceful disappearing of the first academic anthology on queerness and raciality in Britain (edited by Kuntsman and Miyake 2008), to the defensive reactions against Joseph Massad’s (2007) Desiring Arabs – the present context may be a harder one to intervene in. Beside the hegemony of a white gay culture which lacks a strong critical tradition of dealing with difference, the postpolitical and revanchist impulses of Northern neoliberal and militaristic hegemony also play a role in this. My relationship with the transatlantic is similarly ambivalent. What is at stake, for a German-raised person of migrant Southeast Asian parentage, in orienting myself further “West” – and what gets left behind? I find myself looking to North America a lot these days. There are a number of exciting movements, e.g. around violence against women/queer/trans people of colour, prison abolition and immigration, which start with, rather than tack on, the realities of the most vulnerable sexually and gender non-conforming people, and offer a sharp analysis of power both in its interpersonal and its institutional faces. In Western Europe, radical critiques are less available, reflecting a stronger social democratic tradition and faith in the state. Nevertheless, even the most radical analyses from the USA often remain parochial to its borders, and disinterested in other sites. Second, it would be easy to limit the transatlantic to UK–US conversations, in a way that normalises this axis continentally, globally and geopolitically. What is missed by bypassing other axes of conversation, such as “Europe”, which has been a key arena for globalising Orientalist gender discourses, from the travelling “burka bans” to the moral panic over “homophobic Muslims”? Why is a critical revisiting of North–South encounters especially important at this moment, and what is to be gained by foregrounding other axes, such as South–South, and various encounters, say between racialised queers, along all these axes? How about you? PB: My relationship to the transatlantic is complex, too. I’m a multiply racialised, mixed

lesbian with a genealogy in four sites: Venezuela, Italy, Turkey and Northeast Africa. I was born in the USA but have lived much of my life outside, in yet other Empires, postcolonies and neocolonies. This is partially due to queer exile. The longest I’ve lived anywhere is in Paris, France: fifteen solid years with regular returns for long and short stays. I spent six years in India with regular returns, and two and a half years in Rome, Italy. I’ve worked with feminist, queer, anti-racism, pro-immigration and anti-neocolonialism movements in the USA, France and Italy, and in India with feminist, queer and anti-right-wing movements. I’ve had differential relations to gendered, racialised and class privilege in each site. For example, I came out early as a lesbian and have gone through various phases: androgyny, but also being passed-as-a-woman, that is, misread as positioned in the category “woman” with which (before and after Wittig 2000 and Fanon 1952) I have had an ambiguous relation, including dis-identification. Violent as it is, being passed-as-a-woman (even if sometimes forcibly) opens certain realms of access, as you rightly point out. But of course it also lays one bare to other forms of vulnerabilities. In France I’m misread as Mahgrebian and targeted by specific types of neoracism (Balibar 1991) or that form of cultural racism (Fanon 1964, Guillaumin 1972) that, while appearing to rely on post-bio-“race” criteria (culture, religion, etc.), remains dependent on sedimentations of earlier morphological referents (Bancel et al. 2004). In contrast, in India I’ve been passed as a middle class NRI (Non-resident Indian) with class, chromatic and cultural capital. In the USA, depending upon internal regional criteria, I’m variously framed as Latina, South Asian and Middle Eastern. I now have class privilege as a tenured professor, though I remember well my class marginality, including as undocumented during seven years of exile in Europe. I’ve had an intense relationship to intersectional feminist and queer of colour theories and practices since my first collective, Dyketactics!, based in Philadelphia in 1975, which produced critical analytics of imperialism, genocide, racism, sexism and sexualities (Bacchetta 2009a). Living in multiple sites with access to theory in various languages, has often forced me to notice contextual limitations in theory production and interpretation. We’re all limited; perhaps our connectivities together can begin to open things up. What do you think about how the conversational axis of the transatlantic might relate to other conversational axes produced across and with different geopolitical scales and sites, such as within and across European contexts but also intra-South, North–South, South– South, and other contexts? PB: Before speaking of interconnectivities at other axes, perhaps we could first situate the axis we began with, the USA and Europe? It always already implicates sites outside itself that are integral to its genealogy and present. There are, of course, many transatlantics and in them the North, intra-North, South, intra-South, and North–South variously enter, converge, fragment, separate, congeal or escape, leaving traces. Perhaps we can begin by recalling what we’re urged to forget about the USA and Europe? For example, that the USA is part of the territory many First Nation peoples have long called Turtle Island. To evoke this space’s Native name is to resist forced amnesia about its status as a settler colony produced through attempted genocide, slavery and the many forms of labour

exploitation of subjects from subaltern sites (in the sense of Gramsci) in the Global South and Europe (Gilroy 1993). This USA, formed through violence, now sets itself up as the beacon of freedom for the world. France, too, was formed through materialised, institutional, cultural and symbolic violence. It is prolonged today in State-induced amnesia (Stora 1994) about French slavery (Vergès 2006), and in State reproductions of colonial “civilising mission” and “progress” narratives (Rabah undated, Khiari 2006, Bancel et al. 2003, Ferro 2003, Constantini 2008). These latter are periodically re-inscribed into the juridical and educational apparatuses of the State, such as via Law no. 2005-158, passed on 23 February 2005, article 4 of which mandated teaching students the “positive role of the French” colonial “presence” … “especially in North Africa”.2 You mention that you look today to US analytics and practices that centre extremely fragile queer subjects and critique multiple materialised, symbolic power formations. In the USA they have a long history, though relatively unknown in Europe. Transnational connectivities between the USA and France have until recently been inter-national-normative (Bacchetta 2010), that is, involving flows of theory to and from dominant sectors across national borders. Analytics inseparably engaging with gender, sexualities, racism, class, religion, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, have been blocked. Today, often via the internet, some alternative, subaltern connectivities are being forged in France, between France and other sites in Europe, and beyond (Groupe du 6 novembre 2001, Bacchetta 2009b). However, to evoke yet another axis, in India too, there’s engagement with the same nationalnormative US feminist and queer theories that flow to France. I’ve seen little or no interest in India for US feminist or queer of colour critiques. There is, however, quite a brilliant intellectual production in India that remains quasi-unknown in the West. This includes not only feminist theorising, published by both feminist and mainstream presses in India, but also superbly innovative work in subaltern studies, postcolonial theory, critiques of the parochialism of theorising in Western academic disciplines (for example sociology), writings on queer subjects and texts in South Asia, low-caste protest movements, and the list goes on. PB: Perhaps you could speak a bit about how homo-nationalism, homo-neoliberalism and homo-neocolonialism are produced and manifested in the sites in which you are situated? And about any other forms of dominant feminist and lgbtq (as opposed to critically queer) analytics and practices that have emerged in those sites? JH: Homonationalism, the term coined by Puar (2007) to describe the convergences and complicities between homonormative (Duggan 2003) and nationalist projects, and its transnational equivalents follow in the footsteps of a long tradition of colonial feminism, amply documented by postcolonial and transnational feminists. I’m thinking, for example, of the argument, formulated by Spivak and others that white women entered into sovereignty by joining white men in “saving brown women from brown men” (Spivak 1999: 284–311, see also Yeğenoğlu 1998, Mohanty 1991). In Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, white gay men have mimicked this strategy by actively inserting a new notion of gay victimhood into existing figurations of hyper-oppressed female subalterns. Jennifer Petzen and I (Haritaworn and Petzen 2011) examine this with regard to the politics of the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany

(LSVD), which over the last decade has crafted the homophobic Muslim as a new figure which nevertheless became immediately intelligible and familiar as the latest arrival to an existing archive of Muslim criminals, patriarchs, honour killers and the dangers of the ghetto. This is a function of what Lisa Duggan (2003) calls a “homonormative” identity politics and the rise of paid activism and consumer citizenship as much as of a resurgence in militarism, nationalism and imperialism, and a shift in white European identities (see Grewal 2005). As Yasemin Yıldız (2009) shows, the category “Muslim” is hugely productive in this. Disparate histories of colonialism, slavery, genocide and migration are collapsed into a single globalised trope of civilisation and modernity, thus enabling the cohering of nations, Europe and a West, who all share the same enemy (without and, in West Europe, within). Narratives of gay fear and gay safety thus serve to both bring home and diversify global agendas of war, terror and security, and also offer new possibilities to perform respectability and belonging for a small range of homonormative, national and assimilating subjects (Kuntsman 2009, Haritaworn 2008). It is important to note that homonationalist discourse is highly malleable. Born in the offices of paid functionaries, and out of a distinctly Orientalist obsession, it nevertheless does not stay there: in Berlin, the language of Hasskriminalität, “hate crime”, which explicitly targets people of colour racialised as Muslim, was spearheaded not by gay, but by white genderqueer activists from alternative queer scenes (Haritaworn in press). Besides the proliferation of victim groups (including not only gays and lesbians but also trans people and at times even sex workers), there is a parallel proliferation of perpetrator populations: the same homonationalists who target “Muslims” in Europe have more recently shown themselves interested in homophobes and, to a lesser extent, transphobes in Uganda, Malawi, Poland, Russia and Jamaica (Ekine n.d., Gosine 2009a, b, Ndashe 2010). Moreover, the turn to the ethnic and to the Global South and Eastern Europe cannot be understood outside a wider racialisation of sexuality transnationally, which nevertheless works through different racial formations in different national and local contexts: US debates around Proposition 8 – the referendum that reversed same-sex marriage rights – target Latin@s and African Americans (this is extended in current discussions about the homophobia of black churches). Canadian hate crime debates in British Columbia are racialised similarly to their Western European counterparts, but target Sikh men rather than Muslim men as violently homophobic.3 Can we think together about the relationship of the productions and operations of homonationalism to the local to transnational? How does it travel across borders? What makes it so transposable? PB: Perhaps we could productively distinguish between three dimensions in Puar’s (2007) notion? One, which I’ll call homonationalism 1, is perpetuated by states. A second, homonationalism 2, is maintained by subjects within a nation, including feminists and lgbtq subjects. A third, which we could call homotransnationalism, is based on homonationalism 1 and 2, but is differentiated by its transnational scale of circulation. The three are deeply interrelated. They manifest themselves variably in diverse sites. Can we think a bit about French homonationalism 1 as an example? First, today it appears as Homo-Republicanism and Homo-laicité. It is characterised by State claims to protect

women and lgbtq subjects against more-sexist-and-homophobic-than-thou racialised others. It relies on several binaries. One is laicité as normative vs Islam as anormative. This is not exactly the secularism vs religion binary that underlies Church vs State discourses in some Protestant contexts. Relations between religions, civil societies and states are contextual formations, thus they take on different forms in specific sites. For example, Indian secularism is produced in relation to hegemonic upper-caste Hinduism, described as a way of life, without a Church, with multiple divinities and spiritual paths. Accordingly the Indian State defines secularism not as the separation of Church and State, but rather as the State’s protection and representation of all of India’s many religions (Kothari 1970, Bhargava 2005). Similarly, laicité has meaning primarily in relation to France’s dominant (ex)religion, Catholicism. Laicité refers to lay people (as opposed to clergy) within a Catholic community. I mention this not simply to highlight laicité’s particularist genealogy, but rather to evoke the politics of the French unavowed continued relation to Catholicism. Another binary in French homonationalism1 is “good” national-normative (French) Islam vs “bad” (transnational) Islam des caves (basements in banlieues or suburban slums). Ultimately, the French State doesn’t desire the complete separation of Islam and the State; instead, it wants Islam in France to become French (Bouzar 2001, Dakhlia 2005). To create “good” nationalised Islam, the State constructed the central Paris Mosque and formed a council of acceptable French Muslim representatives; to destroy “bad” Islam it criminalised banlieues Islamic sects (Berger et al. 2006). Also in homonationalism 1, there is the division of racialised subjects into nationalnormative assimilable vs unassimilable. The assimilable are objects of Franco-French saviour and civilising mission narratives. An example is Fadela Amara, former leader of the group Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives) and now Urban Regeneration Minister in the right-wing Sarkozy Government. She made her reputation assigning, in a queerphobic xenophobic manner, sexual anormativity to racialised men in the banlieues she currently oversees (Bacchetta 1999, Amara 2003, Bouzar 2001, Bilé 2005). She also testified for the State to ban the veil. In contrast, some unassimilable subjects are: Muslim women wearing “Islamic cloth” (Rabbah 1998, p. 275); or any racialised subject who critiques French neocolonialism such as Les Indigènes de la République (The Indigenous of the Republic). Homonationalism 1 also guides the separation of lgbtq people of colour into assimilable vs unassimilable. The former are constructed as persecuted in the Global South and finding freedom in France. Abdellah Taia, an out gay Moroccan writer living in Paris, gets framed this way. In contrast, unassimilable queers get erased. Two examples are Badia Hadj Nasser, whose 1986 novel, Le Voile Mis a Nu (The Veil Made Naked) portrays women in their childhood home, Morocco, tranquilly meeting for same-sex on flat rooftops of their adjoining homes; and veiled lesbians who oppose the anti-veil law (Bacchetta 2009b). Second, French homonationalism 2 is manifested in white feminist and lgbtq discourses that reproduce homonationalism 1. A majority of white feminists and lgbtq subjects believe the State protects their rights against hyper-sexist and hyper-queerphobic racialised others. Many feminists and queers of colour denounce these notions as reproductions of colonial racism (Guénif-Souilamas and Macé 2004, Kaddour 2001). Third, there’s homotransnationalism. This helps form and reinforce “national”

homonationalism 1 and 2. By homotransnationalism I mean the production and specifically transnational circulation of neocolonial, orientalist, sexist and queerphobic discourses, such as about persecuted Muslim women or queers. They flow mainly across Global Northern borders but also elsewhere. They appear in several genres. There are political speeches (or amplifications of homonationalism 1). There are cultural productions that deploy “experiences” of assimilable racialised subjects or “observations” by dominantly positioned subjects (as in homonationalism 2). Examples include the book Reading Lolita in Teheran or the film Not Without My Daughter. There is also the book Libre de le Dire (Free To Say It), co-authored by Taslima Nasreen and Caroline Fourest, which jointly claims that there is no freedom of speech in Bangladesh and glorifies France. There are also selective inter-national social movement campaigns, such as around gay persecution in Egypt. JH: I would like to think some more about what you call homotransnationalism. Besides the spectacular circulation of cultural productions and international campaigns (from the hangings in Iran to the murder music campaign), there are also quieter travels. To return to my hate crime example, we have in the last few years seen the near-simultaneous rise of white gay activism targeting racialised inner-city neighbourhoods in order to perform them as sites in need of greater surveillance. Besides Shoreditch, Grønland, Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Schöneberg, the New West in Amsterdam and Norrebrø in Copenhagen have become scripted as settings of violence against queer people, in ways that reverberate with the protectionist turn that you observe in France. What many of these mobile (hate) crime scenes have in common is firstly that they are imaginable as Muslim, secondly they are already heavily surveilled and policed, and thirdly (and unlike the banlieues, which nevertheless act as a dystopic point of warning and comparison) they are either gentrifying or emerging on the map of central locations that have become attractive places to live and invest in. Notably, these travels so far seem to occur without sustained reference to other transnational sites. Written as intensely local dramas, of vulnerable queer lovers and hateful others in the ambivalent bio- and necropolitical space of the queerly “revitalising” inner city, they nevertheless conceal their globalised underpinnings in homotransnationalism. Thus, local hate crime dramas distract from the fact that hate crime legislation has long been part of an EU agenda that has already been brokered by the same oligarchies that pursue a homonationalist politics locally, and will sooner or later enter into national law. How do we begin to map these connectivities? How do they inscribe themselves in older archives of “Muslim sexism” (whose travels have been far more visible) and “the ghetto”? How do these metonymies and repetitions serve to depoliticise neoliberal revanchism, and rewrite it through an Orientalist script that directs the spotlight away from the market and the state, and onto deficient cultures, backward religions, pathological affects and irresponsible intimacies? How do these activations follow, join, accelerate and normalise intersecting mobilities, of capital, neoliberal and militarist ideologies, surveillance, urban development and carceral and demographic techniques? With regard to the latter, for example, I am struck by the ubiquity of numbers in both the Proposition 8 debate, and in European studies comparing homophobic attitudes in “migrant” vs “German” or “Dutch” youth, where statistics became proof and ingredients for expertise on “Muslim”, Latin@ and African American homophobia (see Simon (2008) for an example and El-Tayeb

(in press) for a critique of the European studies). PB: It seems to me it’s important to address the effects of homo-nationalism, homoneoliberalism and homo-neocolonialism on feminist and queer subalterns … JH: There have been contradictory effects. Take the rise of new identity categories such as “queer Muslim”, “queer Arab” and “queer migrant” over the past decade, and the increase in visibility for groups and individuals who possess enough capital to perform these identities in a way that is publically intelligible. Besides an immense burden of representation, the price for this visibility has often been participation in patron–client relationships with homonationalist and homo-neocolonialist groups and individuals whose agendas serve neoliberal funding demands rather than the good of those habitually run over on the intersections. We have also witnessed the ascent of a new class of multiply minoritised subjects who have been able to pass as, for instance, exceptional queer Muslims breaking free from their oppressive communities – what you have considered through the distinction between “assimilable” (authenticised, martyrised) vs “unassimilable” sexual subalterns, and what Puar (2007), drawing on Chow (2002), calls coercive mimeticism. The appropriation of standpoint thinking by hegemonic projects has been an especially powerful tool to normalise and politically correct punitive practices of war, occupation, policing, incarceration and border control. Less spectacularly, there have been a number of important interventions which refuse to privilege homophobic violence over other kinds of violence, including that perpetrated by the state – from the work of Helem and Meem in Lebanon, Gays and Lesbians aus der Türkei in Germany, the Safra Project in Britain, AlQaws in Israel/Palestine, to wider queer/trans of colour coalitions such as SUSPECT in Berlin (see also El Tayeb in press, nohomonationalism.blogspot.com, rashamoumneh.com and blacklooks.org). Ironically, such work often becomes more complicated with increasing visibility and professionalisation, and is often policed and domesticated by funding relationships that are inseparable from exceptionalist, neocolonial, neoliberal and even militarist paradigms (see Puar 2007 on exceptionalism). To give one example, which also serves to illustrate the overlaps of homonationalism, homo-neoliberalism and homo-neocolonialism, many sexual minority groups in the Global South rely on funding from the very organisations which pursue anti-immigration and carceral agendas in the Global North. The ambivalence of queer and trans of colour visibility must be understood as an outflow of hegemonic regimes of sexual citizenship and recognition that foreground a particular notion of violence as the new single issue for international LGBT rights organising. The current hate crime activism tends to rely on figurations of victimhood that confer capital to those who seem most worthy of protection and belonging (Lamble 2008). While interest in the hyperbolic suffering of queer and trans bodies in the South periodically resurfaces, the debates about hate crime in Western Europe have typically figured the victim as white, middle-class, often nontrans male, and conforming to national neoliberal ideals of privacy, respectability, freedom and choice (Haritaworn, forthcoming), and the perpetrators as young Muslim men from “the ghetto”. Ironically, the noise which this violence talk produces serves to drone out much of the violence affecting queer and trans people of colour: from violence in racialised communities,

which is becoming ever harder to address in a context eager to turn it into more violence (Razack 2004), to the increasing racism of dominant gay, queer and trans scenes, which is as normalised as it is unspeakable, to the unfettered violence of the market and the revanchist neoliberal state, among whose first victims are often low-income, sexually and gender nonconforming people of colour. Thus, calls for increased policing in queerly “revitalising” areas are indifferent to the fact that low-income queer and trans people of colour are especially vulnerable to police violence and displacement from neighbourhoods that are sexually and racially heterogeneous and affordable (Manalansan 2005, Sylvia Rivera Law Project et al. 2009). Can we discuss some interesting analytics and practices that we might reflect upon under the wider rubrics of “dissonances,” “resistances” or “transgressions”, including those that directly or indirectly confront homo-nationalism, homo-neoliberalism and homoneocolonialism, in the sites in which we’re based? How are they connected locally, nationally, transnationally (or not)? What constraints are these critiques subject to? PB: I think transnational feminist, decolonial feminist, anti-racist, queer of colour, and transnational queer theorisings that are critically mindful of capitalism, neoliberalism and neo/colonialism are vital among points of departure for us today (e.g. Alarcon 1990, Anzaldúa 2007, Avicolli Mecca 2009, Bacchetta 2006, Bessis 2002, Collins 2000, 2005, Cotton in press, Crenshaw 1991, Davis 1981, Duggan 2003, Eng et al. 2005, Falquet 2008, Ferguson 2004, Gosine 2009a, b, Grewal 2005, Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 2001, Guy-Sheftall 1995, hooks 1992, Hull et al. 1982, Incite! 2006, Johnson 2004, Johnson and Henderson 2005, Jordon 2002, Justice et al. 2010, Khiari 2006, Kuntsman 2009, Lubhéid 2008, Manalasan 2003, Miyake and Kuntsman 2008, Moraga and Anzaldua 1981, Munoz 1999, Stanley and Smith in press, Stryker and Whittle 2006, Trinh 1989, Trujillo 1998). In France there is the problem with what is admissible as theory, but also with queer (and straight) of colour access to the academy. In the entire French academy there is only one out lesbian of colour professor, hired only last year. She does excellent work on migration but none on queer theory. There is not a single out trans professor (white or of colour). There are some courses on race and gender (not sexualities) but not one course on queer of colour theories (from anywhere). Students of colour, queer and straight, have trouble finding professors to work with. After the PhD they don’t get hired. Recently some US black feminist theories and US-Indian postcolonial theories have been translated and published in France, but in a sense, insofar as they’re selected as a function of white academic readership, they are made to function as residuals of flows embedded in the power of US Empire. In France they can all too easily be deployed substitutively, to further invisibilise French queer of colour theorisings that inseparably critique French racism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism. JH: I agree. What is striking in Europe is the absence and erasure of homegrown queer of colour critiques from public and intellectual debates. As the topic of sexual nationalism is getting “hot”, we can immediately notice its white-washing, especially in academic debates (see SUSPECT 2010b). First articles are coming out on topics like Islamophobia or

intersectionality, yet they often limit themselves to isolated local case studies, or describe the problem as new, parochial or divorced from wider trends and developments, thus missing the connectivities, travels and continuities around gendered racism, neocolonialism, homotransnationalism, neoliberalism and militarism that we have discussed in this conversation. Other writings within sexualities studies, on topics such as globalisation and gentrification, have shown themselves celebratory or agnostic towards the race, class and geopolitical bases of the processes under examination. What is worse, some academics are closely following the directions set by homonationalist activists, reflected in the growth of papers and articles, some widely disseminated, on Muslim homophobia, the dangerous inner city or the sexual bases of “community cohesion” (a post-9/11 concept from Britain which was key in institutionalising notions of South Asian unassimilability, see Fekete et al. 2010, Kundnani 2007). You are right, the white-washing of the intersection of race, trans/gender and sexuality occurs within a university that remains highly inaccessible to migrant queer and queer of colour, let alone trans of colour, scholarship. This is likely to get worse in our current context of neoliberal restructuring, recession and backlash. There has been a certain market for queer/women of colour critiques from the USA, which seems to me to reflect not only a transatlantic asymmetry, but also an ignorance or hostility to homegrown struggles around antiracist feminism or anti-racist queer critique. This may be why, say on intersectionality syllabi in Germany, you are sometimes more likely to find women of colour from the USA than migrant and black feminists from Germany, such as Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (1999), May Ayim (formerly Opitz, e.g. Oguntuye et al. 1986) and FeMigra (Akin et al. 1994), to name just a few. As I said in the beginning, much of what we are trying to do, in forging transnational queer and trans critiques, is deeply indebted to earlier transnational feminist and queer of colour theories, including your own! Other literatures which I have found useful, especially in making sense of the drama of the queer lover and the hateful Other and its peculiar ambivalent setting in the gentrifying “ghetto” include critical prison studies, biopolitics and necropolitics, affect studies, trans studies and studies of neoliberalism, policing and gentrification (e.g. Gilmore 2007, Cotten in press, Mbembe 2003, Puar 2007, Ahmed 2004, Spade 2007, A. Smith 2007, N. Smith 2002; see SUSPECT 2010a). Some of these firmly remain white boy/person territory. We clearly need more space for anti-racist and decolonial feminist, queer and trans critique, both in and outside the institution!

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1 Archived at: . 2 For the entire text of the Law see: . 3 For both Muslims and Sikhs, the same groups that were constructed as criminally queer in the past are now constructed as criminally homophobic. The 2009 film Rex vs. Singh retells this with regard to the early sodomy court cases against Sikh men in British Columbia.

Chapter 12 “Often What’s Not Said is Just as Important as What Is”: Transnational Feminist Encounters Carolyn Pedwell

As I sit down at my desk to continue work on this chapter, I’m feeling a bit on edge. For some unclear reason I assumed that this piece would write itself, but it’s proving significantly more challenging than I expected. I allow myself to procrastinate by opening some post. Passing over the bills and bank statements, I see there’s a letter from my Grandfather in Canada. He often forwards me newspaper and magazine articles that he thinks I’ll be interested in. A few weeks ago he sent a piece about recent initiatives by some Muslim groups to make Sharia law applicable in Canada and the debates about multiculturalism, religious freedom and gender equality that have ensued. Today’s article focuses on his local school board’s decision to hold the district’s first prom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students. As I read through the clipping, I feel a surge pride as well as a sense of wonder that my grandfather, an 85-year-old former pig farmer, continues to be more engaged in issues of difference, equality and social justice than most people I know. A couple years ago, I bought him a copy of Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004) for his birthday. He said that he had to read it twice to take it all in but that, to his mind, one of the key messages was that often what’s not said is just as important as what is – an observation that seemed to me to cut to the core, not only of Butler’s often complex style of argumentation, but also of the critical thrust of feminist studies itself. That is, feminist studies’ commitment to addressing the significance of silences, but also its interrogation of the underlying power structures which enable and naturalise certain utterances and ways of knowing while rendering others invisible or unintelligible.1 Speaking to my mother on the phone later that evening, I ask her why she thinks that Grandpa has turned out to be so open-minded – such a feminist in fact – when many others of his generation and social group seem to be much more conservative. She says that he’s always been a “free thinker” and wonders if it might have something to do with the fact that his parents (her grandparents) would have had to be very open to difference and change themselves in order to leave England in their twenties and travel across the Atlantic to make a new life in Canada, whatever challenges and hardships presented themselves. They had left Hertfordshire for Winnipeg in the 1920s in the hope of finding better opportunities outside the constraints of the British class system, an experience which my Mom thinks made them more conscious of, and inclined to fight, the social injustices they saw in Canada. For a raft of historical and political reasons, I’m wary of positing any unproblematic link between the experience of travelling to Canada as a European settler and an attitude of openness and respect for difference – we need only to look to Aboriginal history to see the dangers of presuming this. Yet (at risk of sounding too epic), I can’t help wondering whether my great grandparents’

transatlantic journey might have in some way planted the seeds for my own – that there might be something to my Mom’s suggestion that the experience of crossing borders and boundaries could make one more likely to question them. I was born in 1978 in the suburbs of Toronto. I don’t remember my parents ever discussing the topic of “feminism” explicitly with me or each other, yet, beneath the surface, feminist ideals were fundamental to how I was raised. Growing up in the 1980s, both my parents worked full-time as high school teachers. While my father was a vice-principal, having previously taught chemistry, my mother was the head of the maths department and coach of the women’s volleyball team. As a child, I recall complaining that, while many of my friends had stay-at-home mothers who would be there when they returned from school with snacks waiting, my mom was at work all day and didn’t get home until five or six o’clock. At the time, this seemed like a grave injustice. My parents explained to me, however, that although other families might choose to organise things differently, they had decided that it was important that both of them be able to work and pursue their careers on an equal par – a conversation which had a profound effect on my developing expectations of what was possible and desirable in my own life. Another memory that stands out from a couple years after this (I would have been about nine) is of my Mom helping me with a class assignment that involved designing my own board game. We were writing out some instructions about what a player must do depending on where “he” landed on the playing board after rolling the dice and my Mom said, “actually, you don’t have to use the word ‘he’ – everything always says ‘he’, but why not say ‘she’ in the instructions?” This was just one moment, an offhand comment perhaps, but one that was I think was formative in the development of my early feminist consciousness: the normative subject of homework assignments (and the world) didn’t have to be a “he”! While the model of gender equality my family offered was not without its contradictions, my parents worked hard to instil in my brother and myself a belief that we could do and be whatever we wanted, regardless of gender. Of course, it was not always smooth sailing in this regard. A few weeks after working on the board game assignment, I was sent to the principal’s office at school for wearing a bright yellow T-shirt I had found in my Mom’s closet with a slogan ironed onto it in sparkly letters reading “Let’s face it, girls are smarter”. Being sent to the principal’s office signified that you had done something wrong and evidently my sartorial choice had offended the school’s (gender-blind) gender-equality policy, but even at age nine I recall having the sense that there was more to it than that. Was this really only about enforcing “equality” or was it somehow also indicative of an underlying anxiety regarding the implications of female independence, ambition and achievement? Perhaps this is reading too much back into a small incident, but, regardless of its “accuracy”, my interpretation encapsulates a particular tension that I felt growing up, and increasingly from my late teens onwards: on the one hand, there was and is a powerful (and in some senses empowering) message that girls and women can do and be whatever they want now, free from traditional gendered barriers and constraints. On the other hand, there is the persistent and agonizing difficulty of doing this – not primarily because formal structures prevent it (although in some important ways they do), but rather (or also) because of deeply embedded ideals of femininity which continue to discipline girls’ and women’s embodied subjectivities and practices in line with more traditional gender norms and

expectations.2 It was, in part, my interest in, and experience of, this gendered “double-bind” that drew me to the work of American feminists such as Naomi Wolf and Susan Bordo as an undergraduate in the late 1990s. Painting a disturbing yet compelling image of contemporary femininity, Wolf argued in the Beauty Myth (1990) that, although many educated, middle-class women in the “first world” can “enjoy freedoms unavailable to any women ever before”, this freedom remains violently constrained by the pervading pressure to approximate impossible ideals of feminine beauty (p. 9). Her description of the psychological manifestations of this tension was gripping: Inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is a secret “underlife” poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is a dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging and dread of lost control. (p. 10)

Wolf’s polemic analysis resonated so deeply with me and several other young women I knew, I think, because it laid bare the often unarticulated and, yet intense, anxiety, fear and shame that many of us felt frequently about our bodies, despite the fact that we were, by all other accounts, privileged and successful. Like Bordo’s Unbearable Weight (1993), it offered vital evidence that we weren’t crazy, neurotic or pathological, that, in fact, our inner turmoil was shared by millions of other young women trying to grapple with the same impossible cultural contradictions. From Wolf’s perspective, women’s preoccupation with their bodies pointed not only to the continuing forms of patriarchal control and gendered inequality – despite ubiquitous cultural messages that women could now “have it all” – but also to a more insidious and violent backlash against second-wave feminist gains in the industrialised West. While different in style and critical perspective, these books were similarly empowering (if I can use such a contested term), because they offered the possibility of replacing debilitating feelings of frustration, helplessness and despair with a what seemed like a more productive and focused anger – that is, an anger that might bring women together in a desire to interrogate and transform the cultural ideals that constrained us. Since moving to London 2001, I have revisited these texts many times. As I pursued an MSc and later a PhD in Gender Studies, I found that the writing of Wolf and Bordo resonated closely with the work of feminist theorists working in the UK. In figuring “anorexia” as a “metaphor for our time” (Orbach, 1993), authors such as Susie Orbach and Helen Malson insisted that widespread experiences of eating disorders and body image distress in Western Europe and North America be understood as signifying something crucial “about what it means to be a woman in late twentieth Western century culture” (Malson, 1998, p. 6). Writing more recently, Angela McRobbie (2009) argues that feminine “pathology” is now so normalised in contemporary post-feminist culture that it has become one of the primary social expectations through which feminine subjectivities are produced. In my present role as a lecturer in cultural studies at a university in the north of England, it seems significant that so many of my female undergraduates want to write dissertations on body image and eating disorders – and like me more than ten years before – they often cite texts such as The Beauty Myth and Unbearable Weight as among those with which they most identify. As such, I remain convinced that these authors had – and continue to have – something important to say about the complex and often

vexed relationships among femininity, culture and embodied subjectivity on both sides of the Atlantic (and beyond). Yet as I my research progressed, I began to engage more deeply with some of the salient critiques of the feminist literatures on eating disorders and body image – for example, the implications of some authors’ reliance on the dominant “media effects model” which could obscure analysis of the more complex and varied causes and experiences of eating disorders, which both fragmented and exceeded models focused primarily on the links between gender and culture. I was struck, for instance, by Becky Thompson’s (1992) claim that, rather than relating exclusively to the patriarchal “cultural of thinness” in the West, eating disorders represent ways in which women cope with a broader host of traumas, including sexual abuse, racism, classism, heterosexism and poverty. In underscoring the need for a more “intersectional” analysis of experiences of disordered eating and body image distress, texts like Thompson’s echoed the powerful writing of black and postcolonial feminist scholars, such as bell hooks (1984), Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991) and Sherene Razack (1998), that I had first encountered as an undergraduate. Through exposing mainstream feminist theory’s implicit (and unacknowledged) white, middle-class subject, these authors had pushed me to think more critically about the relationships between sexism and racism and to interrogate the privileges my own whiteness entailed. They also prompted me to examine the ways in which dominant discourses of nationalism, multiculturalism and cultural difference were often articulated through, and indeed served to uphold, hierarchies of gender, race, class and sexuality – issues which I was able to explore in further depth as a postgraduate through the work of Gayatri Spivak (1988), Anne McClintock (1995), Avtar Brah (1996), Rey Chow (1996), Uma Narayan (1997) and Sara Ahmed (2001). These were also concerns that linked back to my earlier experiences in Canada. Coming of age in the suburbs of Toronto, multiculturalism seemed to a have more than one meaning. On the one hand, it was as ordinary and yet visceral part of life. My brother and I grew up living beside, playing on the street with and going to school with kids of a multitude of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. At the time, I don’t think that this was something we thought about very much – it was, in many ways, un-noteworthy. On the other hand, multiculturalism was also something “important” that we learned about in school. Indeed, it was Canada’s enlightened “multiculturalism mosaic” (which encouraged preservation of and respect for cultural differences), we were taught, which distinguished us from the USA and their misguided “melting pot” (which demanded a relinquishing of differences in order to become “American”). Yet, looking back, in its awkward mix of the prescriptive and the celebratory, the “official” discourse of multiculturalism seemed somehow to undermine existing multiculturalism in its lived experience. It could also keep the underlying operation of racism hidden from view. A particular memory from high school stands out in this respect. I was hanging out at lunch in cafeteria with a group of friends (we would have been about fourteen), when a teacher came over and, in a bright and approving tone, remarked “my, what a lovely multicultural group!” As it happened, I didn’t read too much into it. It was true, we were “multicultural” – while we had all been born in Canada, many of our parents hailed from different countries (India, Trinidad, Japan, Grenada and the Ukraine to name a few), but as the teacher walked on I realised that her

comment had left some of my friends feeling disconcerted – I suppose because it wasn’t clear what an appropriate response would be to a remark that appeared to be granting praise where it didn’t seem necessary or relevant. As my friend (whose parents had moved from Grenada to Toronto in the 1960s) later put it, we weren’t friends with each other out of some kind of wellmeaning multicultural tolerance of “difference”, but rather because we liked each other and got along. While not intended as such, the teacher’s words seemed to undercut this in a way that, for some of my friends, was experienced as yet another uncomfortable reminder of being perceived as “different”. My own experience of initially “not getting it” in this moment – of realising that I hadn’t understood how words or actions might affect others who were differently located than myself differently – was one that compelled me to further interrogate the privileged ways of seeing (and not seeing) that my white Anglo-Saxon location entailed. Alongside a number of other events and encounters, it also heightened my awareness of how the dominant Canadian discourse of multiculturalism – the ideal of the happy “multicultural mosaic” – routinely operated to re-privilege whiteness. While this version of multiculturalism presented a vision of equality in difference, it often did so by positioning “non-white” bodies as the source of “difference” – difference which, when celebrated, could provide proof of the “host” society’s benevolence.3 In my PhD work, I started to ask more critical questions about the relationships between gender, culture and race that authors such as Wolf, Bordo and Orbach set out, and the implications of their analyses as they “travelled” more widely across feminist theory. I became particularly interested in how their arguments were being mobilised to make cross-cultural comparisons between anorexia and other embodied practices, such as Muslim veiling, as a means to counter contemporary discourses of cultural essentialism and racism. I looked, for example, at the work of Mervat Nasser (1999), who argued that the “new” veiling phenomena represented a contemporary “equivalent” to the growing epidemic of anorexia in the industrialised West. Contra essentialist constructions of “Western” and “Muslim” practices as essentially different, she claimed that both anorexia and veiling could function as forms of problem-solving which, in the absence of real power or control, help women cope with competing cultural demands of ambitious professional goals and pressure to maintain a traditional female identity.4 I also examined a range of comparisons made by feminist theorists between veiling and other practices understood to be linked to the Western “beauty system” (Wolf, 1990) – from high heels and makeup, to a contemporary fashion for “porno-chic”, to cosmetic labiaplasty.5 In many ways, I found these analyses compelling. Through highlighting the gendered oppression, control and/or devaluation involved in embodied practices common in “the West”, they interrogated neocolonialist representations of Western cultural superiority, freedom and gender equality and complicated dominant perceptions of “the veil” as a sign of Muslim women’s subordination and oppression. Moreover, these analyses simultaneously sought to underscore the significant psychological strain many girls and women continue to experience – across cultural and geo-political locations – in the face of seemingly intractable social contradictions and constraints. In other words, they demonstrated the cross-cultural relevance of the gendered double-bind that had so strongly shaped my own experience. Such analyses seemed particularly salient in the post-9/11 context of the “War Against Terror” in which dualistic portrayals of “oppressed Muslim women” and “liberated Western women”

were everywhere, furnishing the dominant rhetoric of “a deadly clash of civilizations between a medievalist Islam and a modern, enlightened West” (Razack, 2008, p. 5). The events of 11 September 2001 and their aftermath had certainly transformed my own understanding of links among gender, cultural difference, nationalism and imperialism. The twin towers had fallen two weeks before I was due to fly to London to begin my Masters degree. While packing up my possessions over the next fourteen days in Toronto, I remained glued to the news coverage on CNN. Meanwhile, more and more homes dotted across the city began to fly American flags. Initially, I didn’t reflect too much on their meaning. Preoccupied by my own shock at what had happened and anxiety about my imminent transatlantic journey, I suppose I was content to see them as a sign of sympathy and solidarity in the face of immense trauma and grief. At a dinner with some friends from university a few days after the attacks, we were discussing the events and an acquaintance declared (referring to Afghanistan) that “the Americans should just blow the whole country away”. I remember feeling shocked and ill at this comment, especially since no one seemed inclined to counter it. A few days later, another acquaintance asked me if I was still going to move to London after everything that had happed. “My husband hated London”, she warned me: “there were so many Muslims there”. These and other jarring incidents made me think again about the American flags. Forget the nationalist rift between Canada and the USA, they now seemed to urge, there’s now a much “darker” and more dangerous “other” we must unite to defeat. In London, I also encountered similar expressions of Islamophobia and racialised nationalism, which made me ever more aware of the neo-imperialism underscoring dominant responses to the attacks on both sides of the Atlantic. However, in the international community of graduate students with whom I lived and studied, I also found a much more diverse and critical range of perspectives regarding the events and their implications. Within the first two weeks, some fellow students had organised a candlelight vigil to protest the American military’s bombing of Afghanistan. In the years to follow, we would march alongside thousands of others to Trafalgar Square in protest against the war in Iraq and George W. Bush’s visit to London. As a student of gender studies, it was both fascinating and disturbing to see how the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq were widely being “legitimated” though protofeminist discourses. This violence was not about oil or imperialism, the rhetoric went, it was about the “progressive” nations of “the West” liberating Afghani and Iraqi women from the patriarchal oppression of their “backward” Muslim cultures – liberation which was signified almost entirely by images of Muslim women “de-veiling”. Gender, as Sherene Razack puts it, was clearly operating here “as a kind of technology of empire enabling the West to make the case for its own modernity and for civilizational projects around the globe” (2008, p. 18). In this context, feminist analyses which sought to interrogate this gendered cultural essentialism and neo-imperialism seemed all the more crucial. Yet, as I contemplated my response to these cross-cultural analyses, I wondered how much of my receptiveness was fuelled by the traces of my personal pain and anger – by my lingering desire to somehow hold “Western culture” accountable for my own difficult experiences – and to what extent I was actually convinced that they succeeded in disrupting cultural essentialism and racism or in addressing the diversity of embodied experiences of anorexia or veiling themselves. In my own writing, I wanted to think more carefully about the critical implications of

feminist comparisons’ positioning of figures such as “the anorexic” and “the veiled woman” as metaphors for their “respective” cultures.6 On the one hand, in depicting anorexia and veiling as culturally embedded and produced, these analogies sought to move away from the decontextualising and depoliticising frames in which these practices have been interpreted historically (i.e. as individual pathology in the case of anorexia and as religious fanaticism and/or patriarchal oppression in the case of veiling). On the other hand, when “the anorexic” and “the veiled women” were mobilised to make wider political arguments about the links between gender and culture, the meaning and contours of anorexia and veiling could become fixed in (other) troubling ways. For example, when anorexia is employed as synecdoche for Western culture’s patriarchal, consumer-driven oppression of women, it is often constructed as a condition “caused” exclusively by media ideals of feminine thinness and beauty in ways that constitute “anorexics” as cultural dupes and efface the many other complex factors which may combine to produce anorexia in particular contexts.7 In turn, figuring “the veiled woman” as gendered counterpart to “the anorexic”, could reaffirm essentialist representations of “the veil” as the primary indicator of Muslim women’s social and cultural positioning and thus cover over the complexity of social, economic and political factors structuring Muslim women’s lives in very different regimes (many of whom do not wear the veil).8 Moreover, in redrawing discrete boundaries between “Western” and “non-Western” practices, these analyses were often unable to account for processes of cultural hybridity, intermixture and re-appropriation. I was also concerned to explore how these comparisons might be situated in relation to wider politics of knowledge-making within transnational feminist theory, and particularly postcolonial feminist analyses of comparativism and “self-referentiality”.9 It could be argued, for example, that the primary role of “the veiled woman” in some of these comparisons was to help Westerners become more developed, aware and multifaceted subjects (through encouraging reflection on their “own” practices and cultural assumptions), in ways that functioned to maintain, rather than radically disrupt, both the fixed position of “the veiled woman” and the implicit authority of the “Western feminist subject”.10 As such, it seemed to me that, despite their productive possibilities, these cross-cultural comparisons could restrict analysis of the complexities of the embodied practices they drew together, in ways that were often more likely to shore up, then critically unravel, essentialist understandings of gender, cultural difference and embodied practice. In my wider research, I have examined the rhetorical effects of a range of cross-cultural comparisons beyond the anorexia/veiling analogy, such as those made between “African” female genital cutting and “Western” body modifications.11 On the whole, my work argues that, to the extent that comparisons over-privilege cross-cultural commonality or invest in it as an analytical end-point, they risk re-directing attention away from the relationships of power and social antagonism that function to constitute bodies, groups and practices as “different”. Comparative strategies can therefore set restrictive limits on the ways in which we can “know” and engage with a range of embodied practices. They can also defer or close-off in depth analysis of the specific (and yet shifting) processes through which cultural essentialism are perpetuated with respect to embodied practices and may in fact reify, rather than disrupt, the racialised hierarchies that feminist theorists set out to address. Rather than seeking to establish how embodied practices or their imagined subjects are fundamentally similar, I

suggest, we might more fruitfully unpack how they have been (re)produced in and through one another. In a sense, my critical focus in this project – my interest in attending to that which feminist cross-cultural comparisons can leave out, cover over or move us away from – seems to link quite closely to my grandfather’s précis of Precarious Life: that often what’s not said is just as important as what is. Perhaps my work has moved in this direction, in part, because my own passage to feminism (a feminism committed to addressing gendered relations of power in their articulation with processes of racism, imperialism, classism and heterosexism) has taken shape through encounters and experiences that compelled me to examine the complexity of what lies beneath (and indeed conditions) the surface. The complexity my research seeks to unravel relates to how gendered cultural differences are (re) produced through multi-layered relations of power that cannot be theorised adequately through reference to “gender” and/or “culture” alone, nor through understanding these categories as bounded or all-encompassing.12 Moving away from frameworks premised on cross-cultural comparison or analogy, I’ve tried to think through how embodied practices such as veiling, anorexia, genital cutting and cosmetic surgery are constituted relationally through wider webs of transnational encounter – encounters of colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, patriarchy, racism, capitalism and neo-liberalism and feminism. These webs are at once discursive, material, cultural, social, political and economic, and yet continuously woven from the perspective of our own personal biographies and social locations. Indeed, as my own experiences have shown me, we are always inside the webs we weave, reproducing and redirecting their strands through our actions and interactions with others.

References Ahmed, L. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam. Historical Roots of Modern Debate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ahmed, S. 2001. Strange Encounters. Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge. Ahmed, S. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bannerji, H. 2000. The Dark Side of the Nation. Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. Bordo, S. 1993. Unbearable Weight. Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Brah, A. 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities, London: Routledge. Brain, J. 2006. Hungry for Meaning. Discourses of the Anorexic Body. PhD thesis. London: London School of Economics. Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that Matter. On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. London: Routledge. Butler J. 1999. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Butler J. 2004. Precarious Life. The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.

Butler J. 2006. The Age of the World Target. Self-Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Chow, R. 1996. Where Have All the Natives Gone?, in Contemporary Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, edited by P. Mongia. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Duits, L. and van Zoonen, L. 2006. Headscarves and Porno-Chic. Disciplining Girls’ Bodies in the European Multicultural Society, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(2): 103– 117. Göle, N. 1996. The Forbidden Modern. Civilization and Veiling. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Gressgård, R. 2006. The Veiled Woman, the Anorexic and the Transsexual. The European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(4): 325–341. Hemmings, C. 2011. Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory. London: Duke University Press. Hirschmann, N. J. 1998. Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling and the Question of Free Agency, Constellations, 5(3): 345–368. hooks, b. 1984. Feminist Theory. From Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jeffreys, S. 2005. Beauty and Misogyny. Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. London: Routledge. Macdonald, M. 2006. Muslim Women and the Veil. Problems of Image and Voice in Media Representations. Feminist Media Studies, 6(1): 7–23. Malson, H. 1998. The Thin Woman. Feminism, Post-structuralism and the Social Psychology of Anorexia Nervosa. London: Routledge. McClintock, A. 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context. London: Routledge. McRobbie, A. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism. London: Sage Publications. Mohanty, C.T. 1991. Under Western Eyes: Feminism and Colonial Discourse, in Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, edited by C.T. Mohanty et al. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Narayan, U. 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities Traditions, and Third-World Feminism. New York: Routledge. Nasser, M. 1999. The New Veiling Phenomenon – is it an Anorexic Equivalent? A Polemic. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 9: 407–412. Orbach, S. 1993. Hunger Strike. The Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age. London: Penguin Books. Pedwell, C. 2007. Theorising “African” Female Genital Cutting and “Western” Body Modification: Critique of the Continuum and Analogue Approaches. Feminist Review, 86: 45–66. Pedwell, C. 2008a. Weaving Relational Webs: Theorising Cultural Difference and Embodied Practice. Feminist Theory, 9(1): 87–107. Pedwell, C. 2008b. Intersections and Entanglements: Tracing “the Anorexic” and “the Veiled Woman”, in Gender and Citizenship in a Multicultural Context, edited by E. Oleksy et al.

Oxford: Peter Lang. Pedwell, C. 2010a. Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison. London: Routledge. Pedwell, C. 2010b. The Limits of Cross-Cultural Analogy: Muslim Veiling and “Western” Fashion and Beauty Practices, in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neo-Liberalism and Identity, edited by R. Gill and C. Scharff. London: Palgrave. Phillips, A. 2007. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Razack, S. 1998. Looking White People in the Eye. Gender, Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Razack, S. 2008. Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Spivak, G.C. 1988. Can the Subaltern Speak? in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg. Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. Thompson, B.W. 1992. “A Way Outa No Way”: Eating Problems among African-American, Latina and White Women. Gender and Society, 6(4): 546–561. Wolf, N. 1990. The Beauty Myth. How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. London: Chatto and Windus.

1 See Spivak (1988), Butler (1999, 2004). 2 See Butler (1993, 1999), McRobbie (2009). 3 See Bannerji (2000), Ahmed (2001, 2004). 4 See also Gressgård (2006). 5 See Hirschmann (1998), Jeffreys (2005) and Duits and van Zoonen (2006). 6 See Pedwell (2008b, 2010a, b). 7 See Thompson (1992), Brain (2006). 8 See Ahmed (1992), Göle (1996), Macdonald (2006). 9 See Spivak (1988), Chow (2006). 10 See Hemmings (2011). 11 See Pedwell (2007, 2008a, 2010a). 12 See Phillips (2007).

Chapter 13 On Not Engaging with What’s Right in Front of Us: Or Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Reading Women’s Writing Gabriele Griffin

When I went to university in the UK in 1976, feminism and all it denotes was still conspicuously absent from the canon of literature we were taught on the English literature course I attended. Ditto any of the work we now term “postcolonial”1 and, indeed, anything we now know as “theory”. Biographical criticism and textual aesthetics ruled the day. All the professors were men, some lecturers were women, but (or is that “and”?) most of the students were female. Sexism, buoyed up by the 1960s liberation struggles, which were interpreted especially by men as a licence to expect sexual availability from women, was rife; affairs between young male lecturers and female students were legion, becoming well documented in the so-called campus novels, and leading in some instances, as in the case of a female colleague of mine, to women leaving universities without completing their degrees when these affairs ended and/or were superseded by new ones, usually at the instigation of the men involved.2 It was not until the late 1970s, the outbreak of what became known as the “canon wars”, and the employment of a new generation of staff in UK universities, of whom I was one, that critiquing the canon became a possibility and with that the re-writing of curricula to include hitherto marginalized voices – then understood mainly as “women’s writing” – as well as theory. In terms of curriculum innovation, “women’s writing” courses on undergraduate English literature curricula were in the 1980s what “postcolonial literature” became in the 1990s: the space where curricular and cultural orthodoxies were challenged. The early women’s writing courses were fuelled by the desire to uncover “hidden histories”, “think back through our mothers” and produce genealogies of female cultural work that had been neglected by publishers and university teachers alike. I remember this period strongly as anti-patriarchal, not only because patriarchy was still a term much in currency then, but also because my own history was one of reacting against the strictures of a patriarch whose overweening authority had shaped my childhood and from which I had been desperate to escape since my early teenage years. Looking back I think I have a much better understanding of the landscape that shaped my parents’ lives and consequently that of my sisters, my brother and myself, and I feel more forgiving towards the ways in which my father sought to control us. My parents were from the east of Germany, displaced by the Second World War, with traumatic effects particularly for my father, who was sent to Switzerland in 1938 because of his tuberculosis and never saw his family again. My mother, too, had lost her parents by the time she met my father in the mid-1950s, and so their desire, I think, was to (re)create the families they no longer and/or had never had in a context where they themselves, like millions others

across Europe at the time, had lost their roots and were seeking to build new lives. In our generation, i.e. among those born during or after the Second World War but before the 1970s, parents were still parents rather than “best friends”, there were house rules (you certainly could not bring a lover home to stay overnight in your bed), and in consequence, one wanted to leave home in ways that seem virtually unknown to those born after the 1970s who seem to want to live long-term and happily with their parents who are their “best friends”.3 Antipatriarchalism is no longer (what it was), certainly in many northern European countries. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s anti-patriarchalism and the desire to uncover hidden histories among those born in the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, led to the construction of women’s writing courses that traced female writing genealogies across the centuries, typically in the UK starting with Mary Wollstonecraft (and, in time, her daughter Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein), sometimes taking in earlier novels such as Mary Hays’s (1759) Memoirs of Emma Courtney or Charlotte Lennox’s (1752) The Female Quixote,4 then progressing via Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and the poetry of Emily Dickinson to modernism’s Virginia Woolf and her “Room of One’s Own”, and often “ending” with Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. The subject was clear – wronged women articulating their discontent with patriarchal rule. For a while, and despite the fact that race riots were occurring in Britain at the same time, we did not notice that these wronged women were all white. Anti-patriarchalism went hand in hand with a strong sense of the heterosexism (not a word then in use) of the canon of English literature as it was at the time, and so – in English literature degree courses that were still strongly taught, and in many ways continue to be so, through a genre-based periodization (Shakespeare/Renaissance plays/poetry; eighteenth-century; Romantic poetry; nineteenthcentury novel; modernist poetry) – it seemed an achievement to agree to teach a course titled “Edwardians and Moderns” and make its content somewhat surreptitiously centre predominantly on lesbian writers from Charlotte Mew to Gertrude Stein and H.D. It is hard to remember this in the light of so much change and institutionalization of the previously marginalized within higher education over the past 25 years, but women’s writing courses were highly contested in the late 1970s and early 1980s – just teaching those put one into a transgressive position, and teaching lesbian writing even more so. One fact that made it possible not to notice that all the wronged women were white was that there were very few women from diverse ethnic backgrounds in the seminars of the UK institutions where I taught then – one or two at most in any given year. More noticeable were the so-called “mature” women students (all white) – officially, women over the age of 21 but in actuality in most cases women in their thirties, forties and fifties who had gone through the British school system at the time when the infamous 11+ examination (which qualified you to go to grammar school and hence, potentially, to university) had still been in operation and was weighted against girls, who were given a handicap because girls were expected to do better in school at that age than boys. This meant that girls effectively had to gain higher marks than boys in these exams to be allowed to go to grammar school, and many girls who passed on a par with boys could not proceed to grammar school because of this. I taught quite a few of these women during the 1980s; their resentment against a system that had denied them a certain level of education was palpable, and it fuelled the anti-patriarchal sentiment so powerfully present

at the time. The resonance and rhetoric of class, for this was of course also a matter of class, were much stronger than those of race. The year 1983 changed all that. It was the year Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was published in the UK by the Women’s Press – the first novel by a black woman to gain wide cultural currency on both sides of the Atlantic, creating an opportunity for a new genealogy of female writers to be un- and discovered, that of black women. The Color Purple was the first book by a black woman widely taught on English literature (as opposed to American Studies or Commonwealth Literature) courses in the UK – mostly on women’s writing courses. It had everything: anti-patriarchalism (articulated through the central character Celie’s changing relationship to “God”, the addresses of most of her letters, and her changing relationship to the men around her); class oppression (the black poor of the American south); a lesbian relationship (between Celie and Shug, a heroine who is unfazed by the men around her and rides to Celie’s rescue); and, of course, race issues. These were framed in particular ways, for instance around the issue of a little black girl praying to an old white man, and also, importantly and controversially, in terms of intra-racial oppression, the oppression of black women by black men in the USA.5 The novel, with its epistolary form, provided rich sources for analysis but from first teaching it, I had a strong sense that this text spoke to the American situation, to histories of slavery and plantation life that were somewhat removed from the British context with its histories of calls for labour participation from the colonies in the “home country”, for example. So I began a quest for writing by black women from within the British context. In fact, when The Color Purple appeared, there were very few fictional texts by black women writers from or living in Britain available; they were not widely distributed, and not read on English Literature courses. I think, for instance, of Buchi Emecheta’s work, her autobiographical fictions such as In the Ditch (1972) and Second Class Citizen (1974), or her autobiography Head Above Water (1986). In reflecting now on why these texts had not made it into English Literature courses, it is obvious that in the 1980s the selection of reading material on literature courses, including importantly feminist ones, was still very strongly influenced by issues of textual aesthetics that determined the “worth” of a given piece of writing. As young lecturers who on the whole were still often being handed courses to teach, rather than being allowed to develop our own course content, we were, in Simone de Beauvoir’s terms, “dutiful daughters”, and when we had the chance to set the content of our courses, we often did it on the principle of equivalence, in a not entirely misguided attempt to show our male colleagues that women did produce literature worthy of academic analysis. This meant, inter alia, that we looked for texts for which aesthetic and stylistic claims of excellence or importance could be made as much as for texts with specific gendered concerns. We were also in thrall to another influence, not coming so much from the USA but instead from “continental Europe”: French feminist theory, as it was known, and in particular Julia Kristeva’s (1977) Desire in Language and Revolution in Poetic Language (1984), Hélène Cixous’ (1990) “The Laugh of the Medusa” and “Sorties”, and Luce Irigaray’s (1977) This Sex Which is Not One and Speculum of the Other Woman (1974). These texts were translated and became available in English in the mid-1980s. The article from the USA which was part of this phenomenon and was much cited at the time was Annette Kolodny’s (1980) “Dancing through

the Minefield” and later Rachel du Blau Plessis’s (1990) The Pink Guitar. What these texts had in common was a concern with stylistic divergence and innovation, writing that disrupted convention, experimental work in aesthetic, stylistic and semantic terms which spoke to and about women’s experiences on multiple levels. We searched for writing that in various ways exemplified or elucidated what was known as écriture feminine, writing that spoke to women’s bodily experiences of cyclicity, leakage and multiplicity of erogenous zones. Realist narratives did not fit these paradigms. They “belonged” to the tradition of linear narratives, closed readings and masculinist ways of viewing the world that feminism, and especially literary feminism, explicitly rejected. However, much of the early writing by black women in Britain was precisely about documenting everyday experiences of racism, degradation and oppression, and this was most often done in a realist mode. I therefore think now that one of the reasons why these writings did not gain the prominence they deserved at the time when they first appeared was that the theoretical “mood” then favoured experimental work. This, in turn, meant that poetry and work for theatre (it was not yet called “performance” work) became more prominent under the banner of women’s writing, and, for a time, it was easier to find and teach texts by poets such as Grace Nichols, Amryl Johnson and Merle Collins than to access novels by black women. “Women’s Writing”, after all, spoke to the identity of the writer (or so it was interpreted), not to the specificity of the genre. Stylistic divergence was particularly readily found in modernist women’s writing, in poetry and in texts for performance. The first novel by a black woman from Britain that I taught was Joan Riley’s (1985) The Unbelonging. It had certain things in common with The Color Purple: it was a female Bildungsroman of a little black girl, in this instance come to the UK, who had to emancipate herself from her oppressive background, and who managed her experiences of degradation through another form of fantasy, not letters to God, as Celie produced, but her dream life, which transported her back to her home country and the time before she had to confront racism and incestuous assaults in England. Like The Color Purple, The Unbelonging explored both racism across communities and sexist oppression within the black community, and like Alice Walker, Joan Riley was much criticized for the latter. I remember seeing her at a reading in Leicester, where I then lived, at a now defunct independent bookshop called Blackthorn’s, where she said that she was not prepared to discuss the intra-racial tensions explored in the novel because she had already had so much “stick” because of this. The Unbelonging also belonged to the category of biographical fiction and confessional writing, which was very much en vogue then, and a common mode of writing. It was seen as part of the feminist attempt to validate women’s experiences through narrating these. Many similar narratives were to follow, texts such as Simi Bedford’s (1991) Yoruba Girl Dancing, or indeed Jackie Kay’s The Adoption Papers. These came to sit side by side with those of African-American writers such as Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou that continued to be widely taught. Teaching texts that originated in the USA to some extent deflected from the race politics going on under our very noses. Racism, so it was implicitly suggested by the textual choices we made, was something that happened elsewhere, indeed on another continent, and it was embedded in a history the UK did not share. However, as indicated above, I was living in

Leicester at the time, and that city had its own and intermittently explosive race issues.6 The house I had in Leicester was in an area called Highfields where many of the so-called Ugandan Asians that had come to Britain after their expulsion from Uganda by Idi Amin had settled. They were my neighbours. I was thus very aware of the fact that The Color Purple and, indeed, The Unbelonging, did not speak to the (few) Asian women students we had. It spoke to the effects of certain histories of slavery in the USA, but not to the post-Second World War waves of immigration into Britain that were shaping the raced landscape of the UK of the 1980s. The issues that Asian women, as women from the Indian sub-continent were frequently called then, faced, such as exploitation in sweatshops, forced marriages, lack of access to the public sphere, patriarchalism and issues arising from being part of “honour cultures” were very different from the ones that surfaced in black women’s writing, such as incestuous abuse, teenage pregnancy and early motherhood, single parenthood, infant abandonment, especially where babies were mixed-race, and the failure of men to take caring responsibility within family structures. Grace Dayley’s play “Rose’s Story”, first completed in 1983, as much as Buchi Emecheta’s biographical fictions, exemplified these themes; indeed, Dayley who was a student at the Southbank University in London at the time and put the play on stage there, wrote in her afterword that “nearly 50% of the women in the cast were unmarried mothers and could probably make analogies with their lives” (p. 80).7 The differences between the needs and specificities of women’s concerns from diverse ethnic communities were gradually, vociferously and contentiously coming to the fore during the 1980s; the claim coming from the USA of a universal sisterhood and articulated in the various Sisterhood is … anthologies edited by Robin Morgan, a claim much contested in the 1980s, not least by black and Asian women, was quickly superseded by the acknowledgment of and insistence on differences between diverse ethnic groups’ concerns. The short phase of UK coalition politics across ethnic groups of the late 1970s and early 1980s, exemplified in the brief life of the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent (OWAAD, 1978– 1982) and the history of Southall Black Sisters, and documented over successive issues of feminist magazines and journals such as Spare Rib and Feminist Review,8 gave way to the difference politics of the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was still very little writing by women of South Asian descent available on the British literary scene. One reason for this was that, in the South Asian communities – where they allowed their daughters to study and gain the higher education that has been the bedrock of many of such women writers to emerge in the 1990s and 2000s (one need only think of figures such as Meera Syal and Monica Ali) – so-called “professional” qualifications such as those needed to become lawyers, accountants, doctors, pharmacists or accountants were much more highly favoured than literary ones, or women’s studies. There were thus few female students of South Asian descent in the latter subjects (and “student demand” in an increasingly market-led higher education system such as the UK was a powerful argument for curriculum change), few were becoming writers, and it was difficult for them to publish and be heard. One of the first such writers to gain currency was Suniti Namjoshi,9 whose Feminist Fables (1981) spoke to the feminist preoccupation with reclaiming literary genres such as fairy tales, science fiction, crime fiction for women, and, indeed, she was more often taught from that perspective than for her Indian roots. Ismat Chughtai’s The Quilt and Other Stories was not published in the UK

until 1991, for example. Underlying the notion of “student demand” – a new rhetoric in Britain in the 1980s, very much a Thatcherite concept, and frequently interpreted on women’s writing courses as demanding the inclusion of work by writers from a greater social and ethnic range – was a certain essentialism that suggested that women from different ethnic groups should see work from their communities on our courses, thus validating those texts as part of the mainstream, worthy of academic consideration and important for contemporary literature syllabi. This was, of course, a laudable intention and, even though it has been the object of critiques, for instance in the context of advocacy issues (who can/should speak for whom and on what basis, if at all), I still consider it a highly significant moment in the development of feminist work because it brought cultural production that had been completely marginalized until then into universities, and it predated the establishment of postcolonial literature/theory by some considerable time. Indeed, many feminists shifted from and between the two textual domains (women’s writing, including by black and South Asian women, and postcolonial literature) in the 1990s. The critique of this mapping of literatures onto students’ identities also brought with it the colouring of whiteness, the demand, voiced strongly from within British academe in now classic texts such as Hazel V. Carby’s10 “White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood”, Vron Ware’s (1992) Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History and, from the USA, Ruth Frankenberg’s subsequent White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (1993), that white women engage with their colour as colour and not treat it as unexamined privilege. Maybe this is where we are at now. If I consider the publishing reality as I encounter it in 2010, essentialized differences still determine largely who writes about what – although not necessarily who teaches what. Few white (women) writers in Britain write in any central way about people from other ethnic backgrounds and, indeed, they would easily be susceptible to criticisms of “not knowing what they are talking about” if they did. Having taught black and South Asian women’s theatre texts for a number of years, I became, in the 1990s, increasingly frustrated by the fact that there was little by way of secondary material on their work, in particular on their work for theatre. This was important for me, partly because the work was so ephemeral, meaning that it appeared in small print runs and thus also quickly disappeared, and there was little one could give to students who asked for secondary sources. This led me to write Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain. When I went to meet the editor at Cambridge University Press after I had finished the volume, the first thing she said to me was “I thought you’d be black”. I immediately felt guilty and as if I had to explain, possibly even excuse, myself – what was I, a white woman, doing, writing about black and South Asian women’s theatre work? I held, and hold, on to the notion that race should not determine the parameters of your writing, and that it continues to be important to publicize cultural work from diverse ethnic communities, including by writers not from those groups. Not engaging still strikes me as not an option – not least, for example, because one of my sisters has mixed-race children, and I see in their experiences the necessity for that engagement. I also note that, in the essentialized ways in which people – women and men – continue to write predominantly or exclusively about their own ethnic groups, there is little difference between work in the UK and work in the USA.

However, notions such as intersectionality, transnationalism and trans culturalism have taken over from some of the feminist race and ethnicity debates of the 1980s and 1990s, and post 9/11 and the London bombings, questions of Islam, Muslim identities, veiled women and the role of religion in shaping the political have become prominent and dominant, including in feminist discourses on both sides of the Atlantic. These questions were initially, and in many ways continue to be, treated in a highly gendered way – Islamic terrorism was a man’s game and women featured mainly as the oppressed. As female suicide bombers have become more visible, and as questions of aggression and war have been scrutinized by feminists, however, the interplay between ethnicity and femininity on the one hand and of the nature and relation between the public and the private on the other has gained ground, and issues of colour – white, black and brown – have receded. The landscape of race, ethnicity and gender has moved in new directions, both in the UK and in the USA.

References Bedford, S. 1991. Yoruba Girl Dancing. London: Mandarin. Carby, H.V. 1982. White Woman Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood. Reprinted 1997 in Black British Feminisms, edited by H. Safia Mirza. London: Routledge, 45–54. Cixous, H. 1990. The Laugh of the Medusa, in New French Feminisms, edited by E. Marks and I. de Courtivron. Brighton: Harvester Press, 245–264. Cixous, H. 1990. Sorties, in New French Feminisms, edited by E. Marks and I. de Courtivron. Brighton: Harvester Press, 90–98. Dayley, G. 1983. Rose’s Story, in Plays by Women, 4, edited by M. Wandor. London: Methuen, 55–80. Du Blau Plessis, R. 1990. The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice. New York: Routledge. Emecheta, B. 1972. In the Ditch. (Revised 1979). London: Allison and Busby. Emecheta, B. 1974. Second Class Citizen. (Reprinted in 1994). Oxford: Heinemann. Emecheta, B. 1986. Head Above Water: An Autobiography. London: Flamingo. Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. London: Routledge. Griffin, G. 2003. Contemporary Black and Asian Women Playwrights in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hays, M. 1759. The Memoirs of Emma Courtney. [New edition 1987]. London: Pandora Press. Irigaray, L. 1974. Speculum of the Other Woman, translated in 1985 by G.C. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Irigaray, L. 1977. This Sex Which Is Not One, translated in 1985 by C. Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kay, J. 1991. The Adoption Papers. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books.

Kolodny, A. 1980. Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, and Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism, in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2001), edited by V.B. Leitch. New York: Norton. Kristeva, J. 1977. Desire in Language (translated in 1980 by L.S. Roudiz et al.). Oxford: Blackwell. Kristeva, J. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language (translated in 1984 by Margaret Waller). New York: Columbia University Press. Lennox, C. 1752. The Female Quixote. (New edition 1986). London: Pandora Press. Namjoshi, S. 1981. Feminist Fables. London: Sheba Press. Riley, J. 1985. The Unbelonging. London: Women’s Press. Shange, N. 1977. For Colored Girls Who Have Committed Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. (Reprinted in 1985). London: Methuen. Walker, A. 1982. The Color Purple. (Reprinted in 1983). London: Women’s Press. Wallace, M. 1990. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. New York: The Dial Press. Ware, V. 1992. Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History. London: Verso.

1 “Commonwealth literature”, reflecting England’s empiric past, was taught in some institutions but not in the one I attended. 2 It is also the case that some of these affairs ended in long-term or permanent unions, and that some male staff had to seek employment elsewhere as a function of their affairs. 3 This is part of the transformation of intimacy, kinship structures and family relations that has begun to be documented mainly post-2000 and which is commonly regarded as an effect of the 1968 generation’s interventions, the baby boom and the greater degree of economic activities of women from the 1970s onwards. 4 Both were published in Pandora’s “Mothers of the Novel” series – short-lived but of utmost importance in the 1980s when it was very difficult to get hold of these texts. 5 In this the text resonated with a number of others from the 1970s and 1980s such as Ntozake Shange’s (1977) famous choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Committed Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, to Michele Wallace’s (1990) Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. 6 See http://www.leeds.ac.uk/brasian/interactive_papers.htm for a project on “Writing British Asian Cities”, which has a number of working papers published in 2009 looking at the histories of Asian migration to Leicester, Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in the UK. 7 Methuen’s “Plays by Women” series, like “Mothers of the Novel”, was another short-lived series that was critical for the establishment of women’s writing and feminist drama courses in the UK. The history of how feminist publishing houses in the UK produced genre-based series (on science fiction, for instance) during the 1980s and 1990s as a way of making women’s cultural work available still needs to be written. 8 The autumn 1984 issue (vol. 17) of Feminist Review, for example, was a special issue titled “Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives”. It is worth noting that “black” was here still used to cover both women of South Asian descent and women of African and Caribbean descent, as is evident from the contributors. 9 Significantly she was an “older” woman (born 1941 in India) who had come to the UK via Canada. 10 Hazel V. Carby is professor of African and American Literature at Yale University today. The history of the exodus of black academics from the UK to the USA – of which there are many – is yet to be written.

Chapter 14 Visions of Legacy: Legacies of Vision Gail Lewis

Introduction The invitation to contribute to this volume provides an opportunity to orientate myself in times that I increasingly feel to be without compass. By so describing these times I mean that, for me, they are times when I am more often stuck on the horns of ambiguity – not so much about how to judge or characterise a given political situation but more about how to think and behave strategically in order to address that political situation. It involves, I think, a question of what kinds of new political subjectivity and oppositional practices might be developed collectively in order to move to that next step – the step towards construct that must necessarily follow the deconstruction of opposition. At the same time, the ambiguity that seems to pervade my thinking (or perhaps it is more an ambiguity of feeling or political subjectivity) these days appears to be related to the question of generational inheritance. Even with this there is a double-ness, involving both what I and “my generation” assumed as part of our political inheritance and what I and “my generation” have bequeathed as inheritance. One thing is for sure: I have lost the certainty of youth! One expression of my condition of ambiguity is that I am not entirely sure to which generation I belong. In part this is simply a condition of disavowal (i.e. a simultaneous knowing and not knowing, as you will see when I sketch out the moments of my formation), but it is also, I think, an expression of the fact that there are no clearly defined or definable lines of direction between biographical age and, for example, formations of feminism, anti-racism, allegiances to queer politics, anti-globalisation or environmental activism, struggles for bodily autonomy, practices of intimate life – one could go on. Of course the body, in its materiality, may say otherwise, but the sense of self as a political subject seems to lack (refuse?) any simple – or fixed – temporal location or teleology. Yet one has a history and brings that history – and its ideological, social and psychic lineages – to bear on contemporary experiences and so this piece is a description of a conversation staged in my mind between an event that I attended at the Imperial War Museum in London in 2009 and a book about the political life and legacy of a Caribbean woman called Claudia Jones. For many women involved in that version of feminism in Britain (now) called Black British feminism, Claudia Jones was an inspirational figure and heroine on a par with Angela Davies and Winnie Mandela. Yet there seems to be far too little knowledge of her and her work among feminist constituencies more broadly, which may be related to her political trajectory and the restrictions on imagined affiliations that result from racialisation of political imaginaries, as if it is only possible to hear and see as applicable to “me”/”us” as well as her and her and her voices and visions (whether historical or contemporary) if they are couched in

some metaphorical mid-Atlantic accent, or a certain US-accented theory or analysis seemingly able to speak not just to but “for” all. Plus ça change, but my desire in this piece is not organised around that seemingly intractable problem. Rather, as I have already indicated, my concern is to recount a mental “conversation” between an event and a book (Boyce Davies 2008) that offers an account and analysis of the work of Claudia Jones. That said, it is not the full scope and details of the book with which I engage, rather it provides a selective jumping off point for some preoccupations that have a trans-Atlantic flavour. First though, a brief outline of some of the key biographical points in Claudia Jones’s political life is worthwhile. She was born in Trinidad in the early part of the twentieth century, although she grew up in the USA from the age of nine. Her political engagement began at an early age and she is remarkable for the reach of her activism and the breadth of her political vision – a vision that embraced culture as much as ideology as key tools in the armoury of emancipation politics. She was a member of the Communist Party in the USA and active in struggles for workers and women’s rights, racial equality and anti-colonialism, peace and international solidarity – a tireless round of activism that led to her being arrested three times with eventual imprisonment, despite serious health problems. Eventually the US State deported her to Britain (as a national of a British colony) in 1955. In London she joined the British Communist Party but was also active and a leading figure in a number of West Indian organisations in London/England. She was founder and co-founder of the West Indian Workers and Student’s Association and the newspaper West Indian Gazette, and significantly was the force behind the first London Carnival held in 1959, i.e. the event that would grow into the annual Notting Hill Carnival. She did this in the wake of the anti-black race riots in the late 1950s and in so doing set in train one of the most significant and lasting inscriptions of Caribbean presence in Britain. Claudia Jones’s inexhaustible anti-imperialist activism meant that she worked within the parameters of the ‘black Atlantic’ that signals so powerfully the multi-sited character of trans-Atlantic conversations of whatever period. She died in 1964 and is buried alongside Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery in north London – and as the title of Carol Boyce Davies’s book notes, it is to the “Left of Karl Marx” that her grave and political vision lie.1 Her significance for black feminism in Britain is precisely her capacity to see and understand the array and shape of affiliations among numerous and on the surface unconnected struggles, her capacity for strategic thinking and political vision and her unrelenting global reach yet unshakeable Caribbean identification. For many of us she modelled a form of political subjectivity that is constituted across a multiplicity of identifications, even while maintaining and making claim to a situated and particular identity. It is in testimony to and analysis of the importance and legacy of Claudia Jones’s political life that Carol Boyce Davies delivers her book. She traces the roots and dimensions of Claudia Jones’s politics and effects and locates her both in her times and in the formation of black feminist political praxis across the trans-Atlantic diaspora and beyond. The book is simultaneously a work of historical excavation and claim and an analysis for this time of the work involved in the formation of political subjectivity and collectivity. It is a vital and fulsome contribution to an emergent Claudia Jones scholarship and challenges its readers to think through the contemporary relevance of Jones’s vision and legacy. What follows then is simultaneously a multi-sited trans-Atlantic conversation and a cross-

generational one. It is multiply trans-Atlantic in that it implicitly traces the flow between the Caribbean, the USA and Britain of some of the ideas that informed the development of a certain moment of Black British feminism and it does so in conversation with aspects of Carol Boyce Davies’s book on Claudia Jones who, as noted, was herself a multi-sited political subject. It is cross-generational in that it stages a conversation with a political progenitor as brought to me by Carol Boyce Davies and also in so far as it engages questions that arose in my mind as I listened to the debates among a group of biographically younger women at the Imperial War Museum (IWM). It is also trans-Atlantic in that it reads the IWM event against the grain of some ideas raised in the book and intra-generational (in the biographical sense) in the conversation I have with the book’s author.

In conversation One Saturday morning in early March 2009, as the sun struggled to whisper its existence behind the grey clouds that filled the London sky, I made my way down Kennington Park Road en route to the IWM. I was going to attend an event called to discuss the practice and politics of black women’s hair, beauty and skin. The event had been organised by a group of young black women calling themselves Inspired Black Women, who aim to educate and agitate about issues pertinent to the lives of black women – across a host of ethnic and national heritages – in contemporary London. They had recruited the help of 100 Black Men, a group, as the name states, of black men equally concerned to educate and agitate around issues of race, racism and gender, but with a specific appeal to young black men to stand up and take responsibility for themselves, each other and the wider community. 100 Black Men use film as a central tool in their work. Inspired Black Women collaborated with them for the event at the IWM to organise a screening of three films that looked at the issues of hair, beauty and skin. They were attempting to take the pulse of community feelings about and responses to these issues and to initiate an on-going discussion.2 I was to meet my sister Ann there, her daughter (and my god-daughter) being one of the founders of Inspired Black Women. We decided in advance that we would go not to contribute but listen, as we were interested in hearing what the younger generation(s?) of women were saying, and how they were analysing the issues. Women of all skin tones, hair styles and forms of beauty were represented and we wondered if and how this variety of black womanhood, this embodiment of the very themes to be discussed, would impact the discussions that were about to begin. I couldn’t help but be struck by the ironies that marked the occasion. First, here we were in the Imperial War Museum to discuss ways in which legacies of the colonial inscription of black women’s bodies intrude into the present of post-imperial Britain – and whether that mattered or not. Second, we were meeting in one of the spaces charged with narrating and memorialising the national story in ways that allow for “diversity” yet without radically disrupting its modernist inscription and taken-for-granted teleology. Third, we were doing so at a time when Britain was once again involved in a neo-colonial war in a part of the world subject to its own histories of colonial subjection/inscription and resistance. And fourth, after

walking up the concourse into the face of the enormous cannon that sits at the façade of the museum, to get into the designated room we had to pass example after example of other war machines, stationary, mounted or air-borne. What paradox! A couple of days later the book arrived through my letter box and I was able to immediately find material and argumentation from Jones that would help me make further sense of the contradictions as well as indicating generational continuities and duties. For it was clear that in the hands and mind of Claudia Jones, those pieces of anti-peace equipment could be seized upon as an opportunity to tell us why the struggle for peace now, as then, is as central to black women’s lives as is/was access to care, work and equality of pay for jobs across the breadth of the economy. Boyce Davies (2008) states it thus: “the formulation ‘peace work’ gives us perhaps the most significant overarching and organizing moral framework in which to locate all of her positions. It accounts for and describes her various contributions to a range of struggles for human justice” (p. 213). That it did so was testimony to the expectation with which I had awaited this book. I had known for a few years before its publication that Carole Boyce -Davies had been researching the political life and legacy of Claudia Jones. I had long looked forward to the moment when I would hold a copy in my hands and absorb all there was to learn about one of our founding mothers. I was excited by the prospect of seeing how Boyce Davies would approach organising a narrative of the political importance of such a huge, but too often inadequately remembered or valorised, figure such as Claudia Jones, inadequately remembered by feminists as well as those on the left, if such a divide makes any real political sense. When it finally arrived on my desk in the troubled times of 2009, I was keen to see what inferences might be drawn from both the legacy of Claudia Jones and the book itself about the character and possibilities of the current conjuncture as played out across the social and political landscape of Britain. Once I had the book – had held it, read it and scrutinised every photograph – I was filled with inspiration and thoughts about the travel of political ideas and alliances across the Atlantic. I was also reminded that the USA is only one among several edges on the western side of the Atlantic and that the edges encapsulated in the Caribbean have also been locations from which political ideas and subjectivities have emerged and influenced the making of feminism in post-imperial Britain.3 Thinking about this stirred in me a desire to have something of a conversation about the disjunctions between the vocabularies of interpretation and representation which predominated in Claudia Jones’s times and in which she claimed her place, and those which characterise the times that frame the book as an intervention in debates about the politics of transnational feminist praxis and that were so alive in the IWM event. Reading the book sent me on a trail: I went up to Highgate, to Claudia Jones’s grave, not having been there for a number of years; I re-read other pieces by Carole Boyce Davies – her “Remembering Beryl Gilroy” piece in Jenda and a later piece from the same journal on Condoleeza Rice (Boyce Davies 2002, 2006); I looked back at my old pamphlets from OWAAD and old copies of Speak Out, which the Brixton Black Women’s Group, of which I was a longstanding member, used to publish; I remembered stories my parents told me about some of the places referred to in the book such as Victory House, the Paramount Club on Tottenham Court Road; I remembered that Andre Shevington had been a friend of my own birth

father; that our house (a crumbling tenement of rented rooms in Kilburn Park4 that was occupied by people from the Caribbean) had a petrol lamp thrown into it at the time of the Notting Hill riots; the incessant, necessary and joyful music that poured out of every floor carrying bluebeat, and jazz and church songs into the decaying London street. I remembered Ricky and Cecil and Gerlin and Althea and Eddie, Jessica and Eric;5 and 1976 Carnival and the emergence of a strong black feminist voice in Britain. It was clear that, while Boyce Davies’s book was about the life and political legacy of an extraordinary foremother of feminism in Britain, it also spoke parts of my life in a personal and intimate way, as well as politically. Indeed as an intervention, I felt that the book reminded its readers of the value and central pedagogical importance of the political work of recuperation of key black women foremothers. This is clear in the book’s insistence on “taking space” and in the double-movement captured in Boyce Davies’s definition of the “radical black female subject” as simultaneously the embodied and sentient individual and the public position that is articulated in a particular praxis of black female consciousness and subjectivity. Both dimensions must be recognised and engaged with if women like Claudia Jones are to be accorded the all-round respect they are due. There is more too, a more signalled by the conjunction of the two occurrences. For me the conjunction of my receipt of the book on Claudia Jones and the meeting at the IWM seemed uncoincidental, as if it had been somehow arranged by those who had crossed – urging me to engage with the questions of intergenerational inheritance, what constitutes the political today and how mobilisations might be convened under its sign. At least these were among the questions that I read as posed by the IWM event and as enfolded into the core of this adroitly crafted, meticulously researched and oh so urgent exposition and analysis of the life, thought and contribution of Claudia Jones, questions that are themselves part of a transatlantic conversation that crosses decades, generations and very different political times. At their heart seems to be this. How, in the wake of the demise of discourses of the political that posited a single direction of travel within a Manichean structure of antagonism and the emergence of new vocabularies and epistemologies through which injustice, exploitation and oppression are articulated, might it be possible to engage in the recuperation of a political subject located in the “old” language and transform that act of recuperation into an intervention into the gender, anti-racist, sexual and class politics articulated in the “new” vocabularies? Posing this question requires, I think, a distinction between two things. On the one hand is the legacy of Claudia Jones and what we might do with that legacy (alongside that of other key figures and struggles). On the other hand are works of recuperation, such as this book, but understood more broadly as deploying in (its) their own right the very legacies (it) they excavate and animate as a means of making (its) their own political stands. This then requires that readers of works such as this (that re-enter the many centuries-long trans-Atlantic conversations) hold that distinction whilst recognising that in the recuperation and the history lesson lies a call to arms, including a challenge to examine the reader’s own location as regards the “radical black female subject”. Earlier I gave a hint about the location from which I engaged with the Jones book in the context of this essay. Given my last point maybe it is appropriate that I expand on that a little because it gives greater clarity to why I see that the issues posed to a larger stage are also

keenly felt at a personal level. I situate my formation at the crossing points of four “moments”. There was the moment of transformation of the relation between state and citizen in Britain in the development of the welfare state in which the languages of class provided the grammar and vocabulary for all kinds of antagonisms and unequal relations and struggles for social justice. There was the Claudia Jones’s “moment” when “the empire came home”, an arrival in part propelled in response to the huge demand for labour in which a set of imperial global relations was utilised as the conduit through which to meet the labour shortages. “They” were now “here” and there was a collapse of the spatial relations of empire, with its economies and knowledge frames of “race” and racialised gender, that were deeply inscribed in the British social formation and national imaginary, but which were consistently disavowed. Nevertheless our presence and the demands and claims we were to make were soon to give rise to a language of “race” as the grammar through which to articulate social antagonism and social claim. This was coupled with the “moment” of anti-imperialism. What these struggles did was to provide a language of the international and the non-aligned as a site of struggle, often through discourses of nationalism – but including the possibility of an emergent political subjectivity of “anti-imperialist”. Soon to come was the moment of feminism, and though it required a year in Sri Lanka before I was able to adopt the identity of feminist, what this (and the other “new social movements”) signalled was a widening of the political agenda around antagonisms and inequalities that were themselves subjugated or ignored within dominant paradigms of oppositional politics. This nomenclature marked a shift from convening around and mobilisation of a classed and/or anti-colonial political subject and the emergence of new political and social subjects of the kind Boyce Davies conjures in her notion of the “radical black female subject” that Claudia Jones embodies. In describing the contexts of my formation as political subject I am attempting to draw attention to an important element in this trans-Atlantic conversation, which is that I am among that constituency of black women in Britain who might claim to be direct descendents of Claudia Jones’s work as public intellectual and activist. This is especially true in terms of the black feminism that Boyce Davies ascribes to Jones and others among her comrades. From this ground a political (diasporic) subjectivity developed that led me to – and was reinforced by – participation in black British feminist praxis. As a member of Brixton Black Women’s Group and one of the co-founders of OWWAD, a feminist base was established from which I could engage in trade union, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and (what I would now call) queer politics. What this means is that there is a certain articulation of black feminism that has genealogical connection (but with inevitable development) to the political visions, theorisation and practice of Claudia Jones. For example Boyce Davies (2008) argues: The point remains that black feminist theorising of the varying interconnections between race, class, and gender were operative in the early determining of a black feminist practice, as it was in the succeeding generation. (p. 44)

And a resounding and faithful echo can be found in this: We discussed … the experiences we had upon first arriving in Britain, the types of jobs we are doing and the ways Black women are being exploited and discriminated against in employment, the housing conditions we face and the education that we and our children are (not) getting, the many health issues which concern us, the different forms of State harassment we

are facing, … the situation of our sisters in the Third World. (Editorial 1979)

Boyce Davies is referring to the work of Claudia Jones and others in the 1940s and 1950s, and my reference comes from an OWAAD document published on the cusp of the 1980s, on the cusp of what Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques were to call “new times” (Hall and Jacques 1989). These times were simultaneously constituted by and constitutive of Thatcherism (and the US counterpart in “Reagonomics”; the bourgeois backlash against Manley in Jamaica and the general rise of IMF-led retrenchment throughout the Caribbean), and their inauguration of the neo-liberal modes of state-craft and governmentality that profoundly ruptured the postSecond World War settlements across and beyond the multi-axial configuration that is the transAtlantic. In both statements there seems to be a repetition across geographies and generations. Yet there is something in this repetition that begs yet more pressing questions. On the one hand, we can ask what were the material–ideological continuities that made it possible to sustain this kind of vocabulary of struggle with its implicit theorisation of the links between systems of exploitation and oppression – what in today’s language we might refer to as the mutually constitutive relations among them? In this regard one feature that seems to be particularly significant is that the impact of the social, political, economic and cultural changes that were to announce themselves under the signs of “global retrenchment”, “the end of the Cold War”, “post-Fordism”, “postcolonial” and “postmodernism” was not yet fully discernible. Nor had the full impact of the claims made by “new social movements” on the terms of what elsewhere I have referred to as “subordinated inclusions” (Lewis 1998) in the social relations of citizenship been fully articulated or felt. This meant that the vocabularies and grammars that had emerged in different historical conditions maintained their capacity to articulate claims made in the name of social justice for a while. On the other hand (and this is perhaps the more substantial question), we can ask how the norms of intelligibility made possible the kinds of political subjectivity through which those located across the matrix of mutually constitutive systems of exploitation and oppression could “know” themselves: know themselves as agentic subjects capable of (indeed compelled to) producing such a black feminist praxis that was trans-Atlantic, indeed transnational in its orientation? In this context it seems significant that this repeated theoretical–political position emerged from spaces in which Caribbean, African (continental) and South Asian women were working to craft a politics of presence in multiple arena of social and political practice in late-1970s, 1980s and early-1990s Britain. I think this connects to the argument (in chapter 4 of Boyce Davies’s book) about the way Claudia Jones re-made herself when, upon her deportation from the USA, she chose to come to London as the location of her “exile”. One condition of possibility for this choice was that London had already become a centre of Caribbean anticolonial consciousness and activity, and recognising this extends beyond the life and activism of Claudia Jones and expands the sense of legacy bequeathed to my own and subsequent generations of black feminisms. An expansion of legacy premised on two things. First, the capacity of the state, even in its more repressive aspects, to determine our subjectivities and the “selves” we become is not total. Second, there exist within the parameters of geographies of domination (whether these be colonial, global capital or military) counter-geographies

within which new modes of connection and belonging may be crafted outside of the modernist logics of the nation. This is a point made so beautifully by Claudia Jones: “What is an ocean between us? We know how to build bridges” (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 131), but in a different accent than I express it in here, a shift in accent that speaks to the shifting vocabularies associated with different generations of activists and their formulation of the political problematic. The way we pose questions then (even in apparent repetition) is an intergenerational issue. In relation to feminist praxis, the point is to note both the possibility for a new crafting of self facilitated by the state’s (and hegemonic discourse’s) inability to totalise and the range of women who, in the 1970s–1990s version of black feminism in Britain, were encompassed in the vocabulary of “black”, for in its multi-ethnicity and multi-nationality this black feminism had already disrupted the national inscription of black women’s struggles and political visions. Thus, there was already a possibility that the modernist and colonial logic of the nation, as well as the modes of racist and sexual and gender subordination and exclusion connected with it, could be greeted as unintelligible, subject to critique and contestation from other, counterdiscourses of belonging that had a multi-sited trans-Atlantic and transnational provenance. As I read it, this is precisely what is gestured to by Claudia Jones when, in connection with her tireless work to establish a London carnival in the image of that in Trinidad, she says that carnival is the “spirit of a people that cannot be contained, that which therefore contains the genesis of their own (self-articulated) freedom” (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 182). Boyce Davies contrasts such an approach to our African-American counterparts for whom, she argues, there was a tendency at this time toward a privileging of race or gender as the primary dimension of analysis and, moreover, that this was framed within a national narrative (p. 4). It is also in contrast to what appeared to be the political sensibility at the event at the IWM, where, despite the multi-ethnicity of the audience, the horizons seemed to be encapsulated in a frame of the national, or at most a bi-national geography of black women’s possibility that stretched between Britain and the USA. For those of us in Britain whose visions of the political were formed in the context of another conjuncture, it was as if there was a direct line of ideological inheritance from Claudia Jones in that we always drew legitimacy for our claims/demands/analyses from a more complex and multi-polar trans-Atlantic geography and, widening out from there, by locating our struggles in an international, anti-imperial frame that also held the state as significant object in sight. To frame our politics thus was to resist the norm of intelligibility that is the “nation” and the constructed correspondence between territoriality and the creation of belonging, subjectivity – especially political subjectivity and action. It also resisted a narrowed version of the trans-Atlantic to only Europe and the USA – or at most Europe, the USA and Canada – especially in what we might call orthodox feminist discussions about transAtlantic conversations, connections and disjunctions. In my mind the more expansive imaginary might be formulated as a point about excess, excess in relation to subjects and subjectivity in the context of discourses of nation and oppression and exploitation. Excess in the sense of pushing-out, over-spilling, resisting constraint or intelligibility within dominant (dare I say hegemonic) systems of representation and meaning-making and transnational feminism is one locus of praxis that simultaneously

embodies and enacts this excess. It is: the understanding that the nation-states in which we live as subjects have been produced out of specific political imperatives and histories and that they therefore seek to contain, arbitrarily, a variety of peoples subject to the whims of these same nation-state enterprises. (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 21)

So, in thinking about excess, I repeat that it seems significant that black British feminism’s repeat of Jones’s vision emerged in the spaces in which Caribbean, African and South Asian women sought to craft a politics of presence. This speaks a genealogy not just of biographical or geographical heritage, or even of one of the refrains around which we united as “black” – “we are here because you were there”. Rather it is this latter but refracted through another lens in the colonial/anti-colonial optic. This is the issue of what the Cuban writer Benítez-Rojo (1992) calls the “repeating island”, in which he claims that a feature of the repeat is the character of the struggle for nation/ality in the context of the radical hybridity and syncreticism that the shared, if differentiated, history (especially of the plantation) of the Caribbean produced. While cautioning against a drift to an idealist characterisation of the Caribbean as a zone of contact that successfully and finally resists inscription into the modernist discourse of the nation with a discrete territorial boundedness, Hitchcock (2003) argues that the Caribbean rearticulates both national identity and numerous forms of identitarian positions that differently configure as “one ‘crosses’ the Caribbean” (p. 28). The troubled and failed attempt to establish West Indian Federation in the 1950s provides a painful reminder that there were (and are) no guarantees that the “repeating island” imaginary will manifest in the institutionalisation of a deterritorialised unity in multiplicity. Yet had it succeeded, “Federation in the Caribbean [would have been] the first of a series of great steps required to ensure full national independence as a whole and self government for its units” (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 90); so said an edition of West Indian Gazette. So this would seem to suggest that the transnational feminist imaginary articulated in both the politics of Claudia Jones and black British feminism was cultivated in the social and political horizons that emerged from Caribbean cultural and historical specificity, a stance that simultaneously looked inward to the “here, now” and outwards to multiple places of origin, resisting the enclosing of spaces and subjects within stable borders of nation-state formations. Indeed this is one of the central legacies of the trans-Atlantic subject Claudia Jones.6 It also seems clear that, for Claudia Jones, the specificity of black women’s angle of vision derives from their multiple locations in systems of oppression and their super-exploitation in capitalist social relations. This is not to be read as a claim for hierarchy of oppressions, but rather that their mutuality results in a kaleidoscopic vision as well as a more multiply layered lived experience of intersecting oppressions and exploitation. For Jones it is an angle of vision and insight derived from her own experiences and those of her mother and sisters (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 44) that was to allow her “to see the connections between their family’s singular struggles” (p. 199) and the more generalised conditions of life and struggles of black and working class people. Posed in this way it does seem to anticipate the formulations articulated by many of the black feminists of the 1980s, 1990s and beyond. Yet viewed through a feminist optic formulated in more poststructuralist terms and/or with the accent that concerns about the sociality of affect and emotions brings, I also wonder

whether what is central here is precisely the issue of subjectivity, despite the fact that Boyce Davies quotes Claudia Jones as saying: The responsibility for overcoming these special forms of white chauvinism rests, not with the “subjectivity” of Negro women as it is often put, but squarely on the shoulders of white men and white women. Negro men have a responsibility particularly in relation to rooting out attitudes of male superiority as regards women in general. (Boyce Davies 2008, p. 46, my emphasis)

I can hear the echo of a particular moment of challenge to white feminists (of all political hues) about this very issue of responsibility for racism and for its eradication, but reading this statement from Jones with the grain of what the Boyce Davies book tells us about the pedagogical spaces of Claudia Jones’s learning and knowledge production (her own experience and that of other black women around her; her geographical movement from Trinidad, to New York, to London; and her movement of vision back and forth across a communist world alongside a “black Atlantic”) does seem to place subjectivity as one of the sites that is very much at stake in the demarcation of the political. This too, I think, was part of the implicit logic of some of the debate at the IWM about hair, skin and beauty. By this I mean that maybe we need to distinguish between two things that seem to me be another central message of Claudia Jones and Boyce Davies’s reading of Claudia Jones. In so far as this quotation is a forceful statement that black women bear no responsibility for the conditions of super-exploitation and oppression that we (then and now) are subject to, it seems uncontroversial. However, I am not sure that this means subjectivity is redundant or marginal, for doesn’t subjectivity enter in another, different way? Doesn’t it enter as gesturing toward an excavation, articulation and theorisation of what kinds of “self” are possible and what kinds of collective subject are both possible and necessary if the conditions of our individual and collective subjugation are to be challenged? I guess this is to pose the question in the context of paradigms established by the convergence of poststructuralist, postcolonial and psychosocial epistemology that view “the subject” as always formed within the discursive (and for the psychosocial also the psychological) realms and practices of their times. To return to the point I made earlier in this essay, such a framing was not of course paradigmatic in Claudia Jones’s time, but it is in these times. Since reading and thinking about trans-Atlantic conversations that stretch across the last half of the twentieth and into the twentyfirst centuries extends our political sensibilities beyond the labour of “simple” reclamation and into an intervention engaging the question of what constitutes the political in these times, I think maybe we need to hold the question of subjectivity in this fuller or more expanded sense. This is to emphasise a question posed by Boyce Davies: “What are all the in/visible identities that remain hidden as a dominant discourse is constituted?” (Boyce Davies 1994, p. 21), and which is echoed in the conception of “migratory subjectivity”, whereby she traces black feminisms’ contestatory politics to mobile and multiple locations. By way of drawing to a close, I want to return to the occasion at the IWM, for in my reading that event did seem to indicate a shift in orientation that may have some bearing on the contemporary significance of the trans-Atlantic legacies of Claudia Jones. Some of this is already signalled by the location – the IWM, the ironies of which I have already referred to. However, there is another point of central significance that speaks to the politics of “race” and

nation in the Britain of now. In many ways things feel far removed from the times, languages and epistemologies that predominated in Claudia Jones’s lifetime. Despite the institutionalisation of Carnival and the proliferation of cultural forms that traverse the British social terrain, this is a moment in which a discourse of the multicultural has been displaced while at the same time being identified as causing the chief antagonisms and problems that scar the horizons of the social. In its stead a discourse of Britishness is being promoted in a way that stresses homogeneity and attempts to enfold what are called the settled minority populations (us Caribbeans among them) into the reconfigured nation as part of the conditionality of citizenship. So institutions demarcated as key sites dedicated to the memorialisation of the national story, such as the IWM, open their doors to “minority” events in a gesture toward that enfolding and as an indication of our acceptance of the terms of citizenship. I have spoken too about how shifting vocabularies have implications for the ways in which the political is conceived and how political identities can be articulated. In this context what was notable at the event was the subtle but significant shifts in the ways in which enduring issues related to how black women’s bodies are represented and indeed enter into global circuits of production and consumption via “products” for hair, skin and beauty were spoken. Absent were the languages of both the anti-colonial and the postcolonial and in their stead a more atomised vocabulary and grammar seemed to prevail in which ownership of self was spoken in terms of an individual act of authenticity dependent on any woman’s personal preferences. Each utterance was to be named as the property of the individual as opposed to any collective subject, and this ownership was taken as a sign of groundedness. This is not to say that heartfelt outrage was absent, or that there was no echo of a vocabulary of exploitation and oppression and pursuit for social justice. There was, and this took the form of an implicit opposition to the corporate capital of the cosmetics industry with the idealised “white, blonde woman” as the beacon of beauty and the recognition that this had a global reach. Yet within this, the orientation was inward, toward the nation as if the objective was not to undo the national as much as find a place within it. Not the multiple visions of Claudia Jones’s anti-colonial, anti-racist, internationalist, pan-Africanist, Caribbean feminist and Marxist–Leninist project, but a much more introspective and circumscribed political vision. So this is where Boyce Davies’s book appears as an intervention. For in its act of recuperation it demonstrates the continued relevance of Claudia Jones’s commitment to a struggle for connection across multiple constituencies with varied needs and understandings. In reading Jones’s life we learn that the political always has to be constituted in practice with the resources available. While we have to work hard in the reading to draw inferences about the character of now, its very structure offers the tools with which we might begin that mapping. For it speaks continually to excess and to what might be involved (and at stake) in the continual crafting and re-crafting of individual and collective subjectivity as we survey the life and political vision of Claudia Jones across a multiplicity of trans-Atlantic sites and struggles. In doing that it resists any attempt to contain and restrain that life within any linearity or the borders of any particular nation-state and shows that, like selves and experience, the constitution of history must itself be historicised even while it always exceeds attempts at

recuperation. Jones’s life and Boyce Davies’s rendering of it proffer a legacy of vision that speaks of possible futures – futures that might be fashioned from the smallest and most unlikely locations, even perhaps from the talk among a few tens of black women meeting together in the impossible space of the Imperial War Museum.

References Benítez-Rojo, A. 1992. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Boyce Davies, C. 1994. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New York: Routledge. Boyce Davies, C. 2002. Remembering Beryl Gilroy. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies, 2(1). Boyce Davies, C. 2006. CON-DOL-EE-ZZA: Diaspora, Transnationalism or the Limits of Domestic Racial or Feminist Discourses. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies, 9. Boyce Davies, C. 2008. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Editorial. 1979. FOWAAD! The Newsletter of OWAAD, July. Hall, S. and Jacques, M. 1989. New Times. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hitchcock, 2003. Imaginary States: Studies in Cultural Transnationalism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Johnson, B. 1985. “I Think of My Mother”: Notes on the Life and Times of Claudia Jones. London: Karia Press. Lewis, G. 1998. Coming Apart at the Seams: The Crises of the Welfare State, in Unsettling Welfare: the Reconstruction of Social Policy, edited by G. Hughes and G. Lewis. London: Routledge. Rock, C. 2009. Good Hair, directed by J. Stilson. HBO Films.

1 The full details of Claudia Jones’s life are amply and sensitively covered in Boyce Davis’s book. Another, though much shorter, account of the life and legacy of Jones is also to be found in Buzz Johnson’s “I Think of My Mother”: Notes on the Life and Times of Claudia Jones (1985). 2 Since that event African-American comedian Chris Rock has brought out his wonderful and insightful film Good Hair, in which the relationship black women (and men) have with their (women’s) hair is humorously and painfully explored even while the infrastructure (products, salons, protocols) of black hair maintenance is queered. The film is as serious as your life, to use the telling phrase that Val Wilmer used to describe black jazz. 3 To say nothing of those “edges” formed on the western boundaries of the continent of Africa. 4 This is approximately within a two mile radius of Ladbrooke Grove, the epicentre of the Notting Hill riots. 5 These were among the people who were both central figures in the development of a progressive black political praxis in Britain and key to my own formation as a black radical and feminist. I knew them in the following capacities (but these are only a few of the notable contributions they made): Jessica and Eric Huntley ran a black bookshop in the Ealing area of London from which they both cultivated black and anti-colonial consciousness and hosted numerous events connected with those political visions; Althea and Eddie Lecointe were similarly active in the Finsbury Park area of London; Ricky Cambridge and Cecil Gutzmore were the founders of the Black Liberator a Althusserian-influenced theoretical journal dedicated to black, antiimperialist and class struggle; Cecil was also a key figure in the Brixton Defence Campaign, with which we in the Brixton Black Women’s Group were also centrally involved and which was set up in the wake of the Brixton Riots in 1981. The campaign offered legal and political defence and monitored the activities of the police and the direction of thinking that culminated in the Scarman report into the causes of the riots (or what we referred to as riotous rebellion). Of these, though, it was Gerlin Bean who was the most fundamental influence on my political formation: she showed me what it meant to be a black feminist and still remain connected to black community struggles, and more importantly, she modelled the kind of courage it takes to be a political activist. She is deserving of her own publically recorded tribute and analysis, and, who knows, someday some of us may get together to do it. 6 Boyce Davis’s book makes it clear that this was both a rationale for the establishment of the West Indian Gazette, which Jones co-founded, and the logic of Carnival in its British manifestation with its multiple valency as a response to racist murder, declaration of presence, claim to belonging and demonstration of origins in an “elsewhere” that had much to offer the new location.

Chapter 15 Feminist Travels: A Historical and Textual Journey Nancy A. Naples

I have been working in academia for almost 30 years now (that includes my stint as a graduate student). I love the main tools of my trade, namely, books and journals, perhaps as a consequence of growing up in a working class household with few books around. We did have an encyclopaedia, to which I frequently referred. My mother also dropped me off at a local library during her weekly trip to the grocery store, but with a large family (I am oldest of seven children), there didn’t seem to be a space for accumulation of any sort, including books. Once I began my life in academia, I set about accumulating books on diverse fields of knowledge that sparked my imagination. Sad to say, I rarely read fiction. I was too busy trying to keep up with the ever-expanding academic field of gender and sexuality studies, theories of the state, feminist methodology, social movements and globalization. As a consequence of what some might call hoarding behaviour, I have accumulated a large library that I recently decided to purge of texts and journals that are either out of date or easily accessible online. While I know that I will not move to a kindle and e-book mode of engaging with texts, my book shelves, both at home and in my office, are bulging from the weight of dusty volumes that I no longer use in classes or refer to for my research. This purging exercise has offered me the opportunity to reconnect with the writers and activists who informed my engagement with critical pedagogy and feminist scholarship. It has also led me to think more explicitly about the social locations from which this knowledge derived and to note the strong influence of socialist feminist scholars in the USA and Europe as well as Third World feminists in the USA and postcolonial scholars from other parts of the world.1

Early feminist lessons The fact that I was often drawn to the work of feminist scholars of colour and activist scholars located outside the USA can be partly explained by my early introduction to feminism by African American and Puerto Rican women activists from poor neighbourhoods in my home town of New York City (Naples 1998a). Like many of the activist women I worked with in the 1970s, I did not embrace feminism. I was working at a woman’s organization in New York City where, among other activities, I designed and directed a programme for pregnant teens and teen mothers. Through this project, I worked with many women and some men from around the city who were interested in improving educational, health and social services for these young women, most of whom were Latina or African American. I did not have time for what I saw as endless meetings with predominantly white middle-class women who I thought

comprised the bulk of feminists in the National Organization for Women and other liberal feminist groups that had formed during the late 1960s and 1970s. My social and political network had not led me to the consciousness-raising or other kinds of feminist groups that were also meeting during this time, although I now know that there were countless radical and socialist feminist groups meeting around the city. Had I discovered these groups, I most likely would not have understood the radical impulse that led to their creation nor the exciting possibilities that feminist politics represented. When I returned to graduate school to gain greater insight into the organization of the state, social policy and community-based organizing (and, I should add, for a credential that I wrongly thought would enhance my credibility as an advocate), I found my way to feminism through Marxism. I was mentored by other graduate students, many of whom also came from working class backgrounds and who found that Marxism initially offered them a critical platform for their politics. I attended the Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY). Given my class background, I did not realize that one could be paid to go to graduate school and that tuition is often included in graduate education, so I applied to the only school I thought I could afford on my full-time social work salary. I quickly realized that I could not continue my full-time job and after only one semester resigned from my position. Fortunately, I found employment as a research assistant and was able to survive economically, although I continued some of my advocacy work for some time after that. I look back on those years and cannot believe how I juggled all the competing demands on my time. I also recall the amazing group of students who also found their way to CUNY. We were former social workers, dancers, construction workers, high school teachers, cab drivers, bi-lingual educators, nurses, immigrants, community activists, mothers, fathers, who had returned to graduate school searching for answers to questions about how to contribute to social change efforts in our local communities as well as broad-based movements for social justice. Many of us were also interested in learning about, or helping to design strategies for, participatory democracy and anti-racism. Some of us found our way into an ongoing Marxism seminar offered by George Fischer, a charismatic figure who encouraged us to find our own voices but to stay close to the text, a pedagogical approach that I continue to use in my own graduate seminars. It was 1980 and feminism was alive and well at CUNY and beyond. Among the faculty were sociologists Judith Lorber (founding editor of Gender & Society, the official journal of Sociologists for Women), Gaye Tuchman and Cynthia Epstein; anthropologists June Nash and Eleanor Leacock; historians Joan Kelly and Blanche Wiesen Cook; and art historian Linda Nochlin.2 In this interdisciplinary environment, I quickly learned what feminism meant and why it was relevant to my life. I also discovered the rich varieties of feminist perspectives. Socialist feminism spoke most directly to my burgeoning political consciousness. In an effort to understand feminist critiques of Marxism and how feminists drew on Marxism to deepen analyses of gender oppression, I found my way to the exciting work of European, Third World and postcolonial feminists.

Marxist feminism, socialist feminism and their discontents

Texts that I rediscovered on my recent effort to thin my bookshelves included several books by British feminist Ann Oakley. As evidence of transatlantic feminist connections in the 1970s, one of my CUNY professors, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, is quoted on the back of her book, The Sociology of Housework (1974). Does the volume stand the test of time? The Sociology of Housework offers a window into the social context for feminist interventions of the 1970s. Some of the findings accurately reflect current trends including women’s ongoing dissatisfaction with their unequal responsibility for household labour, the oppressive double day and negative attitudes towards the women’s movement (the parallel here can be found in the negativity by which many women view feminism, a trend that continues in the current generation of students I teach). On the back cover of The Sociology of Housework, Professor Epstein mentions Oakley’s companion volume, Woman’s Work: The Housewife Past and Present (1976), which Epstein asserts “is of the utmost importance for anyone who wishes to analyze the current position of women in any historical and intellectual context”. One of my most vivid memories was debating the pros and cons of the campaign for wages for housework, which was ignited when my colleagues and I read The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, coauthored by Italian feminist Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James. James founded the International Wages for Housework Campaign and coordinates Global Women’s Strike. My students and I still debate the analysis of women’s housework from the point of view of commodification and the class differences that are embedded in who can purchase housework and care work. In 2007 James conducted a multi-city speaking tour in the USA to celebrate the 35 years of the International Wages for Housework Campaign. It is a testament to the power of Dalla Costa and James’s analysis and James’s activism that the campaign continues to draw supporters. Annette Kuhn and AnnMarie Wolpe’s (1978) edited collective, Feminism and Materialism was one of the first books I read that helped shaped my feminist perspective as I was searching for a way to understand the relationship between class and gender inequalities. One of the central analyses that changed the nature of the debate about the relationship between capitalism and feminism is found in the article, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” by US economist Heidi Hartmann (1981). This essay formed the lead chapter in the edited book by Lydia Sargent (1981) that I still use in my feminist theory courses. Sargent explains in her introduction that the 1960s and 1970s gave rise to the need to address the following questions: “how can women understand their particular oppression in a way that can confront the narrowness of marxist terminology (as used by the men in the movement) which focuses on work and economic relations as the primary (sometimes only) area of importance” and how to “develop a new theory which understands the importance of reproduction, family, and sexuality as central to current analyses and future visions?” (p. xx). This powerful collection includes chapters by many feminist scholars engaged in this praxis-oriented mode of analysis. In addition to Hartmann, the authors include Iris Young, Gloria Joseph, Sandra Harding, Lise Vogel, Ann Ferguson and Nancy Folbre, all of whom went on to produce path-breaking theoretical work that I continue to draw upon for inspiration.

The challenge of intersectional analyses One central goal of my burgeoning feminist consciousness centred on understanding the intersection of race with gender and class. I appreciated the black feminist, Latina feminist and Third World feminist critique of socialist feminism that sparked rich conversations among my feminist cohort at CUNY. Intersectional analyses of black feminists and other feminists of colour posed a fundamental challenge to any feminist organizing or theorizing that does not recognize the multiplicity of women’s experiences and perspectives. There is no doubt that black feminism has transformed feminist scholarship over the past two decades and continues to invigorate the intellectual and political imagination of young scholars today, many of whom are contributing their own feminist perspectives to the field. One of the first essays I read that raised the issue of intersectionality was by Gloria Joseph (1981). Her chapter in Sargent’s book, “The Incompatible Ménage à Trois: Marxism, Feminism, and Racism”, captured the limits of the additive approach. This led me to the work of scholars now defined as feminist standpoint theorists, including Dorothy Smith (1987), Sandra Harding (1986) and Nancy Hartsock (1983). Their work still informs my own version of materialist feminism (see, for example, Naples 2003). Hartsock’s (1983) book Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism offered an especially important intervention into socialist feminist debates as she articulated a new feminist method, standpoint epistemology. One of my favourite quotes from Dorothy Smith (1987) involved her description of the “origin story” of “feminist standpoint theory”: Feminist standpoint theory, as a general class of theory in feminism, was brought into being by Sandra Harding (1986), not to create a new theoretical enclave but to analyze the merits and problems of feminist theoretical work that sought a radical break with existing disciplines through locating knowledge or inquiry in women’s standpoint or in women’s experience. Those she identified had been working independently of one another and have continued to do so. In a sense, Harding created us. (Smith 1987, p. 392)

Here Smith makes the crucial point that feminist scholarship and politics must be understood as a collective story rather than the property of individuals who often become identified with specific concepts or insights. Feminist sociologist Laurel Richardson (1997) defines “a collective story” as one that “tells the experience of a sociologically constructed category of people, in the context of larger sociocultural and historical forces” (p. 14). My feminist travels from identifying as a socialist feminist to being a materialist feminist engaged in conversations with postmodern and poststructuralist theories is clearly a collective story (Naples 2003). This collective story is also a transnational tale. As scholars and activists travelled from one location to another, read each other’s work, and engaged together in different political struggles, stories about feminist politics and theoretical insights were told and retold numerous times. In fact, it is difficult to trace the origins of many important feminist insights. Perhaps that is a key lesson learned over the past forty years, namely, that no one person can claim ownership of ideas that were generated in feminist conversations, debates and political struggle. Nowhere is this clearer than in the development of intersectionality as a feminist framework;3 as the concept and conceptualization travelled across continents and disciplines it

took on various forms and purposes. I have witnessed the contestation over the meaning, intent, and value of the framework, which indicate its continued significance for feminist work. In fact, these travels reveal another strength of feminist praxis, namely, the vibrancy of reflexive strategies for reinvigorating feminist theory and practice (see, for example, Naples 2003). Early challenges to reductive feminist analyses include Angela Davis’s (1983) now classic book Women, Race, and Class and Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis’s essay on “Contextualizing feminism” (1983). One of the first efforts to articulate an intersectional viewpoint that I came across was written by the Combahee River Collective in 1977, although their vision was also found in other writing and political speeches during this time frame. I was thrilled to find the quote from US welfare rights activist Jonnie Tillmon (1972) who wrote in the 1972 issue of Ms Magazine: “I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any one of those things you count less as a human being. If you’re all those things, you don’t count at all. Except as a statistic.” Her powerful analysis resonates to this day as does her point that poor women’s “issues are so important to all women – the right to a living wage for women’s work, the right to life itself”. In my effort to link gender, race and class into a systematic political and theoretical framework, I also turned to the intersectional lenses offered by other US feminists of colour including bell hooks, Maxine Baca-Zinn, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, and Third World feminist Chandra Talpede Mohanty. The collections Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology edited by Barbara Smith (1983), who was a founding member of the Combahee River Collective, and This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (1983), proved central to my ability to connect my activism with African American and Latina community workers during the 1970s with the intersectional form of feminism that most spoke to me. They will remain on my book shelves and my course outlines since they continue to inspire young feminists and other social justice activists I teach, even those who do not identify as feminists (and, unfortunately, the latter are growing in proportion to the former; see, for example, Naples 2009). These collections and the writings of other feminists of colour and third world feminists were also read across the Atlantic. In addition, as Wilson noted in her discussion of the Barnard conference, scholars and activists were travelling internationally to participate and attend different feminist events. For example, the announcement for the conference “Common Differences: Third World Women and Feminist Perspectives”, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in April, 1983, was included in the Noticeboard of the Spring 1983 issue of the British socialist feminist collective’s publication, Feminist Review. It is not surprising that Mohanty’s (1988) now classic work, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” was first published in Feminist Review.4 It was in Feminist Review that I first read important black feminist and postcolonial analyses including Amina Mama’s (1984) “Black Women, the Economic Crisis and the British State” and Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar’s (1984) “Challenging Imperial Feminism” (1984), which were both included in the special issue of Feminist Review on “Many Voices, One Chant: Black Feminist Perspectives”. Of course, black feminist and postcolonial scholarship has expanded exponentially since that time and continues to invigorate feminist theory and praxis. Some of

this exciting work now fills many shelves in my office. I refer to this work often and still find the early interventions such as Amos and Parmar’s essay to be as vital today as 25 years ago. In fact, this essay was chosen as one of a select few to be featured in Feminist Review’s twenty-fifth anniversary issue. The editors of the issue explain that their “editorial policy is to give priority to work which seems to us to further the theoretical and political debates central to the women’s liberation movement” (p. 4). While I no longer see an “unconscious consensus” among white feminists that successfully excludes “large numbers of Black women from participating in any meaningful way” in the women’s movement, I do see the continued need to foreground anti-racist politics within the women’s movement and other social justice movements. Early efforts to de-centre a privileged white standpoint in feminist scholarship are found in the Illinois conference, “Common Differences”, which took up the title of a co-authored book by the same name by Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis (1981) that I also found on my bookshelf. This book illustrates one of the many attempts by anti-racist feminists to work across differences in order to challenge racism in the women’s movement. Along with the effort to move beyond the additive approach mentioned above, Black feminist authors challenged the dominance of white women’s voices and perspectives in feminist scholarship. Hazel Carby’s (1982) influential article, “White Women Listen: Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood” and Joseph and Lewis’s (1981) effort to work through the challenges of an antiracist politics both left their mark on my feminist politics. Since I was especially interested in understanding the construction of racism, sexism and class inequalities through the state, I was drawn to analyses that examined the reproduction and challenge to economic and social inequality through social policy. My research on social policy was shaped by the work of several British feminists including Elizabeth Wilson, who concludes her book on Women and the Welfare State (1977) with the following comment: “What feminists, socialists, and all those who desire to see constructive changes in social relations, should seek are ways whereby social welfare care instead of trying desperately to shore up the family in its present inadequacies, would extend the possibility of social relationships that are more successfully supportive and nurturant” (p. 187). In rereading this quote, I was struck by how relevant it is in today’s context. As gays and lesbians in different social locations struggle for relationship recognition, efforts to broaden what counts as family and to gain support for diverse forms of relationships without valorizing marriage or the nuclear family seem far from view.

Materialist feminism and postmodern challenges My engagement with feminism as a graduate student in NYC led me to the now legendary “Scholar and the Feminist IX” conference held at Barnard in 1982. The conference has come to represent the surfacing of the so-called feminist sex wars. Carole Vance, who coordinated the conference, published many of the papers in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (1984/1992) including Gayle Rubin’s provocative analysis of “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”. As I scanned across the shelf holding this

book, I also noticed several other books that I read voraciously in the early 1980s including Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, edited by Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell and Sharon Thompson (1983). Texts written earlier also filled this shelf, including Sexual Politics by Kate Millett (1952/1970), The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, by Michel Foucault (1981) and the two special issues of Signs: Journal of Cultural and Society on “Women: Sex and Sexuality” (1980). The first issue included Adrienne Rich’s powerful essay on “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”.5 I continue to draw on these authors for courses I teach in gender and sexuality studies, sexual citizenship and sociology of the body. Historians Ellen Dubois and Linda Gordon (1983) first published their Barnard conference paper in Feminist Review, which was co-founded in Britain in 1979 by Wilson, Angela Weir and other British feminists. Like many contemporary feminist journals, it currently has an internationally diverse list of editors. From the point of view of transatlantic dialogues, it is interesting to note that the 1983 issue included a commentary by Elizabeth Wilson, who attended the Barnard conference and mentioned participation by feminists from Holland and France as well as Britain. Her essay highlights the similarities and differences in the debate over the sexuality as it played itself out in the USA and Britain. Reviewing early issues of the journal, I was reminded of the importance of this journal for facilitating and shaping transatlantic dialogues on many central issues include reproductive rights, economic development, poverty and labour.6 Another British scholar who also contributed to my early feminist education is Michèle Barrett. I recall my excitement when I first read her book, Women’s Oppression Today (1980). I just finished reading Zillah Eisenstein’s Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism (1979). Barrett questions Eisenstein’s emphasis on capitalism’s uses of patriarchy and her failure to “resolve the problem of the analytic independence of ‘patriarchy’ from capitalism” (Barrett 1980, 16). Barrett argues that the goal of Marxist feminism “must be to identify the operation of gender relations as and where they may be distinct from, or connected with, the processes of production, and reproduction understood by historical materialism” (p. 9).7 She defines the key concepts of patriarchy, reproduction and ideology and emphasizes the importance of the distinction between sex and gender. The distinction between sex and gender has been effectively challenged in recent years in that sex should also be understood as socially constructed (see, for example, Butler 1990, 1994, Degler 2000, Herdt 1993, Lorber 1984). The call for intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, sexuality and nation led to a fundamental challenge to additive approaches like Marxism feminism (see for example, Vogel 1983) or the subsequent formulation, socialist feminism, as discussed by Eisenstein (1979). However, Barrett’s attention to sexual practice, cultural production of gender, and the institutions of the family, education the labour market and the state provided an important foundation for multi-sited analyses that challenge the distinction between culture and political economy and are the hallmark of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship. Barrett’s scholarship, along with many of us who identify with materialist feminism (see, for example, Hennessy and Ingraham 1997), has shifted in the context of postmodern challenges to grand narratives and the search for origins of oppression and the “will to truth” (Barrett 1991, p. 143). The work of Michel Foucault has been especially influential in feminist engagements with poststructuralism and postmodernism. Barrett’s insightful book, The Politics

of Truth: From Marx to Foucault (1991) examines Foucault’s critical interventions with focus on his critique of Marxist notions of ideology, his changing view of “the subject” and his focus on the body and sexuality. While acknowledging his contributions to feminist theorizing, Barrett critiques his claim to a neutral stance in his work, thereby rendering invisible his androcentic perspective, and his problematic positions on rape, age of consent, the sexuality of children and his Eurocentrism (pp. 151–152). However, she finds that Foucault “offers a much more sophisticated methodology for providing an account of sexual identity than the traditional ‘social construction of gender’ models on which feminist have tended to rely” (p. 150).

Feminist methodology and activist research Moving to my library section on feminist methodology, I also found Oakley’s 2000 book, Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences and Caroline Ramazanoglŭ’s Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices (2002) as further evidence that the transatlantic conversation continued to inform my scholarship well into this decade. Among the early texts that shaped my thinking on feminist research is Helen Roberts’s edited collection, Doing Feminist Research (1981), where I first encountered the work of French feminist Christine Delphi and Australian scholar Dale Spender, whose book Man Made Language (1980) I found on a nearby shelf. Ann Oakley’s essay on “Interviewing Women: a Contradiction in Terms”, anticipates discussions of researchers’ positionality in shaping research relationships. While Oakley does not complicate her analysis of women to recognize the diversity of women’s lives as shaped by race, class, culture, nation, sexuality, religion and ability, she touches on a number of issues that continue to inform feminist methodological debates, not least of which is the challenge to the presumed objectivity of the researcher. For example, she notes that feminist research “requires further that the mythology of hygienic research with its accompanying mystification of the researcher and the researched as objective instruments of data production any place by the recognition of personal involvement is more than dangers bias it is the conditions under which people come to know each other and to the others into their lives” (p. 58). Her essay also foreshadows Judith Stacey’s (1991) provocative essay, “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?” in that she raises the question of friendship as it results from repeated interviewing and field work and the contradictions it poses for the question: what counts as data. Stacey (1991) argues that the development of friendship with research subjects could contribute to greater exploitation than in other less obtrusive methodologies. Stacey points out, however, that postmodern strategies that acknowledge the partiality of “ethnographic truths” and research findings cannot counter feminist concerns about the “inherently unequal reciprocity with informants; nor can it resolve the feminist reporting quandaries” (p. 117). One strategy that feminist scholars have emphasized over the past decades is the value of a collaborative approach to research in which both the researcher and the research subjects coproduce knowledge. In fact, as Dorothy Smith (1991) argues, rather than see the knowledge gained from interviewing participants as the end point of analysis, this knowledge becomes the point of departure from which to explore how the “relations of ruling” organize everyday life.

Smith has influenced my approach to feminist epistemology, methodology and method more than any other feminist scholar. I first discovered her work when I ran across a pamphlet on Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go (1977) in the St Mark’s Bookshop located in the East Village of Manhattan early during my graduate training. I still have the pamphlet, which reminds me of the era long before blogs, when the latest political views were expressed in short treatises often produced in small quantities for independent bookstores, rallies and informal distribution. Smith’s training at the London School of Economics and at the University of California Berkeley contributes to her transatlantic perspective. She spent most of her academic career in Canadian universities, but in her feminist travels has influenced scholars in many different parts of the world. For example, on a research visit to the University of South Australia, faculty and graduate students were thrilled to hear my reference to Smith’s work in the talk I gave for the Intersections Seminar Series sponsored by the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies. Smith had also visited the Institute, where her work is widely read and put into practice. Feminist scholars using Smith’s institutional ethnographic approach interrogate the institutional forms and procedures, organizational processes and discursive frames used to construct institutional practices that land in peoples’ lives. In my view, this approach reflects the political goals of the Women’s Movement by offering a methodology focused on social change and grounded in the lives of people, rather then in capitalism or neoliberal or any other institutionalized practice. US activist scholar Ellen Pence (1996) uses Smith’s approach to explore “how things are put together” (Smith 1999) to identify effective activist interventions for battered women. She wanted to understand how safe battered women remain after they report abuse to the police. Pence developed what she terms a “safety audit” to identify ways criminal justice and law enforcement policies and practices can be enhanced to ensure the safety of women and to ensure the accountability of the offender. Pence’s safety audit has been used by police departments, criminal justice and probation departments, and family law clinics, in diverse settings across the country. Pence asserts that her approach is not an evaluation of individual workers’ performances but an examination of how the institution or system is set up to mange domestic violence cases. The feminist praxis illustrated by Pence’s approach is what drew me to activist research written by scholars from different parts of the globe. Activist scholars influenced by historical materialism spoke more forcefully to my interest in understanding the dynamics of power and resistance in everyday struggles designed to challenge inequality, discrimination and oppression than any other feminist approaches (see, for example, Naples 1998b, Naples and Desai 2002). During the 1990s, when feminist political economic analyses seemed to be displaced by exciting new postmodern and cultural studies in the USA, I kept looking across the Atlantic and elsewhere for work that retained the materialist framework that informed my early feminist education (see, for example, Phizacklea 1990, Rowbotham and Mitter 1994). This is not to say that many USA-based feminists were not producing important materialist analyses. However, this work seemed to be eclipsed by a form of postmodern cultural studies that often did not connect to the materialist tradition that I found most useful for my own feminist praxis. Yet, even Feminist Review, the journal that I judged most sensitive to political economic dimensions of women’s lives, has found it difficult to keep the class dimension in

view in its socialist feminist publishing praxis. Revisiting the impact and continuing challenge of feminist praxis as embodied in the journal after 25 years of publication, founding collective member Gail Lewis (2005) notes: that despite an ever-deepening understanding among feminists of all persuasions that “[t]he axes of the subject’s identifications and experiences are multiple, because locations in gender, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality complicate one another, […] one cannot easily sever, separate out, or subsume under one another the strands of multiple determinations. For instance, colonial regimes needed and global economies continue to need ‘classes’ as well as ‘races’ in order to achieve their goals and class identifications call particular women to specific psychological and cultural itineraries that may collide and/or converge with itineraries of race and nation” (Smith and Watson, 1992: xiv), the class dimension has become the poor and neglected relation in this constellation.

Lewis’s comments reminded me of the first paper I presented at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in 1986 on women’s anti-poverty activism. It was scheduled for 8:00 on the first full day of the conference and only the presenters were in attendance. Long-time scholar and antipoverty activist Guida West (1981) was also on the panel. When I expressed surprise at the lack of attendance she told me that sessions concerning poor women were not as popular as others that addressed topics such as sexuality, popular culture, women’s movement and feminist theory. Since my activism and early feminism had been shaped by lessons taught to me by working class women of colour who were fighting for safe, healthy and economically secure lives for their families and neighbours in poor urban communities, I was surprised by West’s revelation. This experience and many more that followed confirmed that my feminist perspective differed profoundly from many others, whose feminisms were shaped by other concerns and experiences. I continue to trouble over how to teach students about the diversity of feminisms and women’s movements and the relationship between women’s experiences and the social structures and cultural messages and practices that contour their everyday lives and political strategies. In her 1981 book, Subject Women: Where Women Stand Today – Politically, Economically, Socially, Emotionally, Ann Oakley presents a table consisting of “tendencies in the women’s liberation movement”, which includes assessments of “what’s wrong?”, “who benefits?”, “how de we fight?”, “how did our oppression begin?” and “what is your relation to men?” Tendencies included socialist feminists, cultural feminists and female supremacists. In my first women’s studies course, taught in 1983, I used a similar formulation to introduce students to the variety of feminist perspectives. While I still use a version of this strategy to give my students a historical perspective on the development of women’s studies as a field (minus the origins frame), I no long rely on these distinctions to characterize contemporary feminist perspectives. Chela Sandoval’s (2000), Methodology of the Oppressed is especially persuasive in demonstrating the limits of this approach and postmodern challenges have persuasively discredited feminist “origin” stories of patriarchy and gender inequality. The diversity of feminisms has also expanded along with attention to women’s lives in global perspective. I now believe that it is no longer possible to present a comprehensive overview of the exciting diversity of theoretical approaches, visions and political strategies.

Closing thoughts

This journey through my bookshelves has just begun and I expect to rediscover many more texts that shaped my feminist consciousness, research and teaching. Meanwhile, I am in the midst of designing a new course on the body and embodiment that includes many contributions from European feminists as well as from scholars located in universities in other parts of the globe. In this sense, the transatlantic conversation has clearly widened beyond the USA, Canada, Australia and Western Europe. English still dominates in feminist books, journals and conferences. However, conferences like Women’s Worlds and the World Social Forum are creating many opportunities to challenge the dominance of Western feminism, albeit raising other dilemmas for feminist praxis. Cyberspace has been especially important for helping to broaden what counts as feminism and to expand the diversity of voices contributing to debates over epistemology and methodology. In fact, as I thin my bookshelves, I increasingly find myself drawing from online posts, internet articles and feminist websites for my teaching and research. Online conversations with feminists in different parts of the world are sometimes replacing the face-to-face discussions that shaped my engagement with feminism during the 1980s. However, I continue to treasure the books and journals that I have rediscovered, even as I am letting some of them go in their physical form.

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of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575–99. Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Revinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Harding, S. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hartmann, H. 1981. The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Toward a More Progressive Union, in Women and Revolution, edited by L. Sargent. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1–41. Hartsock, N. 1983. Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. New York: Longman. Hennessy, R. and Ingraham, C. 1997. Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. New York: Routledge. Herdt, G. 1993. Third Sex Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. hooks, b. 1984. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Boston, MA: South End Press. Joseph, G. 1981. The Incompatible Ménage à Trois: Marxism, Feminism, and Racism, in Women and Revolution, edited by L. Sargent. Boston, MA: South End Press, pp. 91–108. Joseph, G. and Lewis, J. 1981. Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and White Feminist Perspectives. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Kaplan, C. 1994. Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Kelly, J. 1986. Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kondo, D. 1999. Fabricating Masculinity: Gender, Race, and Nation in a Transnational Frame, in Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State, edited by C. Kaplan et al. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 296–319. Kuhn, A. and Wolpe, A. 1978. Feminism and Materialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Land, H. 1980. The Family Wage. Feminist Review, 6: 55–77. Leacock, E.B. 1971. Culture of Poverty: A Critique. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lewis, G. 2005. Feminist Review: 25 Years and Beyond. Feminist Review, 81: 5–11. Lorber, J. 1984. Women Physicians: Careers, Status, and Power. New York: Tavistock Publications. Lorber, J. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Luce, I. and Burke, C. 1980. When Our Lips Speak Together. Signs, 6(1): 69–79. MacDonald, G., Osborne, R.L. and Smith, C.C. (eds) 2005. Feminism, Law, Inclusion: Intersectionality in Action. Toronto Ontario Canada: Sumach Press, pp. 9–69, 140–61. Mama, A. 1984. Black Women, the Economic Crisis and the British State. Feminist Review, 16: 21–35. Mama, A. 1995. Beyond the Masks: Race, Gender and Subjectivity. London: Routledge. Manalasan IV, M. F. 2006. Queer Intersections: Sexuality and Gender in Migration Studies. International Migration Review, 40(1): 224–249.

McCall, L. 2001. Complex Inequality: Gender, Class and Race in the New Economy. New York: Routledge. McRobbie, A. 1982. The Politics of Feminist Research: Between Talk, Text and Action. Feminist Review, 12: 46–57. Mies, M. 1986. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale. London: Zed Books. Millett, K. 1952/1970. Sexual Politics. New York: Doubleday. Mohanty, C.T. 1983. On Salvaging Difference: The Politics of Black Women’s Studies. Women’s Studies International Forum, Special Issue: Women in Academe, 6(2): 243–248. Mohanty, C.T. 1988. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Feminist Review, 30: 61–88. Mohanty, C.T. 2003. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mohanty, C.T. and Martin, B. 1986. Feminist Politics: What’s Home Got To Do With It? in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, edited by T. de Lauretis. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 191–212. Mohanty, C., Russo, A. and Torres, L. 1991. Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa, G. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Watertown, MA: Persephone Press. Moraga, C. and Anzaldúa, G. 1983. This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press. Naples, N.A. 1987. Women Against Poverty: The Unpaid and Paid Community Work of Women From Low Income Neighborhoods (Annual Conference of the National Women’s Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, June 1987). Naples, N.A. 1998a. Grassroots Warriors: Activist Mothering, Community Work and the War on Poverty. New York: Routledge. Naples, N.A. 1998b. Community Activism and Feminist Politics: Organization Across Gender, Race, and Class. New York: Routledge. Naples, N.A. 2003. Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research. New York: Routledge. Naples, N.A. 2009. Teaching Intersectionality Intersectionally. International Journal of Feminist Politics, 11(4): 566–577. Naples, N.A. and Desai, M. 2002. Women’s Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics. New York: Routledge. Nash, J. and Fernandez-Kelly, M.P. 1983. Women, Men, and the New International Division of Labor. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Nochlin, L. 1989. Women, Art, And Power And Other Essays. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Oakley, A. 1976. Women’s Work: The Housewife Past and Present. New York: Random House Oakley, A. 1974. The Sociology of Housework. New York: Pantheon Books Oakley, A. 1981. Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms, in Doing Feminist Research, edited by H. Roberts. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 30–61.

Oakley, A. 2000. Experiments in Knowing: Gender and Method in the Social Sciences. New York: New Press. Pence, E. 1996. Safety for Battered Women in a Textually Mediated Legal System. PhD dissertation. Graduate Department, Sociology in Education, University of Toronto. Phizacklea, A. 1990. Unpacking the Fashion Industry. London: Routledge. Prins, B. 2006. Narrative accounts of origins: a blind spot in the intersectional approach? European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(3), 277–290. Ramazanoglŭ, C. with Holland, J. 2002. Feminist Methodology: Challenges and Choices. London: Sage Publications. Rich, A. 1980. Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(4), 631–660. Richardson, L. 1997. Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Roberts, H. 1981. Doing Feminist Research. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rowbotham, S. 1973a. Hidden From History. London: Pluto Press. Rowbotham, S. 1973b. Women, Resistance & Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World. New York: Random House. Rowbotham, S. 1981. Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the Making of Socialism. London: Merlin Press. Rowbotham, S. and Mitter, S. 1994. Dignity and Daily Bread: New Forms of Economic Organising Among Poor Women in the Third World and the First. New York: Routledge. Rubin, G. 1984. Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, edited by Carole S. Vance. London: Pandora, 267–319. Sandoval, C. 2000. Methodology of the Oppressed. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sargent, L. (Ed.) 1981. Women and Revolution. Boston, MA: South End Press. Signs. 1980a. Women: Sex and Sexuality. Signs: Journal of Cultural and Society, 5(4). Signs. 1980b. Women: Sex and Sexuality, Part 2. Signs Journal of Cultural and Society, 6(1). Smith, B. (ed.) 1983. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. Smith, D.E. 1977. Feminism and Marxism: A Place to Begin, A Way to Go. Vancourver, BC: New Star Books. Smith, D.E. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Smith, D.E. 1991. Conceptual Practices of Power. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Smith, D. 1999. Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Smith, S.A. and Watson, J. 1992. De/colonizing the subject: the politics of gender in women’s autobiography. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Snitow, A., Stansell, C. and Thompson, S. 1983. Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality.

New York: Monthly Review Press. Sokoloff, N.J. 1980. Between Money and Love: The Dialectics of Women’s Home and Market Work. New York: Praeger. Spender, D. 1980. Man Made Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Stacey, J. 1991. Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography? in Women’s Words, edited by S. Berger Gluck et al. New York: Routledge, 111–19. Tillmon, J. 1972. ‘Welfare is a Woman’s Issue’, Ms. Magazine 1(Spring), 111–16. Tuchman, G. with Fortin, N. 1989. Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Vance, C.S. 1984/1992. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. London: Pandora Press. Vogel, L. 1983. Questions on the Woman Question. Monthly Review, 31, 39–59. Weir, A. and McIntosh, M. 1982. Towards a Wages Strategy for Women. Feminist Review, 10, 5–20. West, G. 1981. The National Welfare Rights Movement: The Social Protest of Poor Women. New York: Praeger. Wilson, E. 1977. Women and the Welfare State. London: Tavistock. Wilson, E. 1983. The Context of “Between Pleasure and Danger”; The Barnard Conference on Sexuality. Feminist Review, 13, 35–41. Young, I. M. 1980. Socialist Feminism and the Limits of Dual Systems Theory. Socialist Review, 50/51, 169–188.

1 See, for example, Grewal, and Kaplan (1994), Mohanty et al. (1991), Mohanty (2003) and Alexander (2005). 2 See, for example, Lorber (1984, 1994), Tuchman with Fortin (1989), Epstein (1981), Nash and Fernandez-Kelly (1983), Leacock (1971), Kelly (1986), Cook (1978) and Nochlin (1989). 3 See, for example, Anthias and Yuval-Davis (1983), Anzaldúa (1987), Baca Zinn and Dill (1996), Brah and Phoenix (2004), Collins (1998a, b, 1999, 2000), Combahee River Collective (1977), Crenshaw (1991), Davis (1983), Glenn (1992), Ken (2008), Kondo (1999), McDonald et al. (2005), Mama (1995), Manalasan (2006), McCall (2001), Moraga and Anzaldúa (1983), Mohanty et al. (1991), Pelak (2006) and Prins (2006). 4 I feel very fortunate that I came to academic feminism during the 1980s following the establishment of Feminist Review and Women’s Studies International Forum and the USA-based journals Signs: Journal of Women in Society and Culture, first published in 1975, Quest: A Feminist Quarterly, Feminist Studies and Women’s Studies Quarterly, as well as the explosion of feminist literature debating strategies for social change and with a commitment to praxis. As time goes by, I am increasingly aware of the privileged vantage point I had as a young feminist scholar during this era. 5 In next issue, the editors published the Carolyn Burke’s translation of Luce Irigaray’s (1980) “When Our Lips Speak Together”. Signs also introduced me to the work of US feminists Catherine MacKinnon, Donna Haraway, Evelyn Fox Keller, Chela Sandavol and Temma Kaplan, Nigerian feminist Simi Afonja, Mexican feminists Josefina Aranda and Lourdes Arizpe, Columbian feminist Magdalena Leon de Leal, Australia feminist Diane Bell, and German feminist Gisela Bock. 6 In reviewing early issues of Feminist Review, I came upon Hilary Land’s (1980) important analysis of “the family wage” as well as Weir’s and Mary McIntosh’s (1982) discussion of “a wages strategy for women”. Angela McRobbie’s (1982) article on “The Politics of Feminist Research: Between Talk, Text and Action” offered another vantage point on the challenges of feminist research. All three of these articles informed my feminist approach to labour and activist research. 7 Feminist critique and reworking of Marxism for feminist purposes was a multinational endeavour with scholars like Christine Delphy (1975), Sheila Rowbotham (1973a, b, 1981), Barbara Ehrenreich (1984), Zillah Eisenstein (1979), Nancy Hartsock (1983), Maria Mies (1986), Dorothy Smith (1987), Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James (1972) and June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly (1983) contributing important insights on feminist materialism. Closer to home, CUNY graduate Natalie Sokoloff (1980) provided inspiration through her publication, Between Money and Love: The Dialectics of Women’s Home and Market Work.

Chapter 16 Constellations – Conversations: Three Stories Gudrun-Axeli Knapp

I. If I had to write a story about how transatlantic conversations influenced the developments of German-speaking feminist theory, I would start as follows. The women’s movement and feminism have been transnational endeavours from their very beginnings. Although the routes transnationality took in practice were more limited than claims to global sisterhood suggested, the history of feminist politics is characterized by a variety of more or less parochial transnational entanglements. In a different way, this entanglement also characterizes feminist scholarship, which cannot be adequately described from an autocentric national perspective. Realizing feminist theory’s simultaneously translocal and situated character has undoubtedly been one of the most productive learning processes of the last three decades. Recognizing the local forms of transnationality has drawn attention to how these encounters shape the countours of feminism quite differently across Europe and around the globe (Griffin and Braidotti 2002, Ferree and Tripp 2006). Against this background, writing about feminist theory in the German-speaking context implies outlining its constellations of encounter and collision, the travelling theories, influential traditions and situated questions it has faced. Germanophone feminist theory also owes its basic features and development to problems always represented by constellations of concepts, not by the category of Geschlecht (gender) alone. From the beginning, Geschlecht and Klasse (class), or rather, the interplay between capitalism and androcentrism in the shaping of gender relations, were at the centre of much feminist theorizing. In the 1970s and 1980s, the formative years of feminism and women’s studies, the foundations of a strong critical theory orientation in feminist scholarship were laid. This orientation certainly echoed the student movement in its criticism of society, but it was also rooted in the critique of modernity that is a particular tradition in German sociology. As I later show, the critical theory tradition remains important to feminist approaches today, in spite of the significant shifts feminist theory underwent in the 1990s, when the constellation of sex, gender and sexuality excited a heated debate. Within only a few years, a whole set of different interdisciplinary approaches based on antifoundational criticism had entered Germanophone theory and changed its concerns. The strong, sometimes exclusive, focus on culture, meaning, language and discourse which then animated the debate was mainly inspired by the theories of Judith Butler (1990) and Donna Haraway (1991) and by social constructivism (for an overview, see Becker-Schmidt and Knapp 2000). More recently, along with older questions of

intersectionality, nationality, ethnicity and race have become important (Knapp 2009, p. 261). The perspective determining this introduction is a birds-eye-view on a discourse in motion. Upon a closer examination of the development this discourse took over time, it is especially its debate-shaped character that leaps to the eye. The debates are indicators of feminism’s “hot” epistemic culture, a culture that is shaped by tensions between scholarship and activism and by the aporiae of an “imagined community” (Anderson). In the German-speaking context, too, there were issues that concentrated the feminist (theory) discussions at certain points. The domestic-work-debate during the 1970s dealt with the political and theoretical expansion of the concept of societally necessary “work”. The offender–victim and co-perpetrator debates disputed the involvement of women in the perpetuation of patriarchal power relations. In the 1980s a discussion on politics of equality and difference followed, which pointed to the dilemmatic structure of both axioms. The ideas of Luce Irigaray and Italian affidamento-feminism played an important role in the controversial politics of equality and difference in the German-speaking parts of Europe at that time. Eventually, in the 1990s far-reaching paradigmatic deferrals took place in two arenas of feminist theory. One was the so-called sex–gender, or rather sex–gender–sexuality, debate. The other was the discussion about the social and cultural heterogeneity of genus-groups, which has moved into the centre of attention under the heading of “Intersectionality”. Indeed, influential texts of US colleagues had already been received in the past – I will get back to this later. However, it is the development of the debates in the 1990s that would doubtlessly have been unthinkable without the impulses from US feminism. At the same time one should remember that the US feminist theory, which came to Germany across the Atlantic in the 1990s, was not purely “American” (whatever that may be). American feminism itself was shaped by “travelling concepts”, “travelling theories” and “travelling theorists” that had crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction. This obviously applies in the case of post-structuralism, to theories coming from France, which only became known as “French Theory” and “French feminism” when they reached USA. This also applies – although historically antecedent – to a “sociology of knowledge” and “phenomenology” coming from Germany, which also impacted feminist theory in diverse, albeit more indirect, ways. However, that these transfers were not always placid “journeys” can be demonstrated by the fate of many Jewish scientists from Germany and Europe, who after having been displaced by the Nazis influenced the developments in many disciplines in the American academy. Social psychology, for instance, was shaped by exiled scholars, such as Lewin, Heider, Köhler and Lazarsfeld. The problem, or impossibility, of a clear distinction between “US” and “European” scholarship has become explicit in the opposite direction, too, if one remembers that after the Second World War American social psychology and sociology were transferred to Germany in order to establish – in the sense of a re-education – a Nazi-ideology-free, modern, in other words empirical, science. It was Jewish scholars like Adorno and Horkheimer, immigrating back to Germany, who conducted influential empirical studies on prejudice during their exile in the USA and who challenged the establishment of a positivist and empiricist sociology in Germany in the “positivist dispute” (Adorno et al. 1976). Yet, in spite of these complex “histoires croisees” (Zimmermann and Werner) of theory that make it difficult to determine contextual characteristics without relying on stereotypes of

national scholarly traditions, there is something quite unique about American feminism and feminist theory. I think that, indeed, the multi-ethnic constitution of the American society, a society that was formed mainly from descendants of migrants, slaves, refugees and expatriates, has shaped not only its social structure and political culture profoundly, but also the particular way feminist scholars have reflected difference, liberty and equality. The historical, political and socio-cultural conditions under which “transatlantic conversations” in feminism take place ought to be analysed more precisely than is possible within the limits of this short chapter. Jaques Derrida’s reflections on the “states of theory” (and this also holds true for feminist theory) helpfully hint at the relevance of the political– institutional, socio-economical, psycho-historical and phantasmic–libidinous conditions for the respective “thought-collectives” (Fleck), as well as for the knowledge they generate. Derrida, who ingeniously comments on the American academies’ passion for “neologisms, newisms, postisms, parasitisms, and other small seismisms” in theory debates and their short-hand replications within the doxographic discourse, goes so far as to denote Theory, with capital T, as a “South-Californian artifact” (Derrida 1997, p. 5). Taking up his suggestion and bearing in mind a remark Kathy Davis makes in her introductory essay, I think that it could be worthwhile to also look at the varying emphases on Theory (with a capital T). Diverging emphases and ambivalences about Theory might shape transnational conversations to a degree we have not been aware of. Feminism forms and fractures this emphasis on Theory with its nation-specific characteristics in the field of interaction and tension of empirically founded expertise, theory and activism. The propinquity, respectively distance between both poles, is also historically changeable, as is documented by the history of an increasing division of labour and professionalization of feminist scholarship on the one hand and feminist politics, especially in the European context, on the other hand. In Germany for instance, the journal Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis, founded in 1978 and discontinued after 30 years on 7 March 2008, became a victim of this development. In a final analysis Gisela Notz, longstanding member of the editorial team of the Beiträge, writes that part of its eventual failure was their aspiration to constantly measure feminist theory with its practicality, as the constituitive connection between theory and political practice had weakened (Notz 2008). Yet also in the academy there is no homogeneous situation. The capital Ts in theory tend to appear much larger against the background of an empirical science tradition, and empirical–pragmatic forms of expertise, than they actually are or might be. This is a sensitive topic, as in feminist theory “Theory” with capital T is occasionally equated “as such” with academization and selfcentred middle class l’art pour l’art-feminism, or alternatively associated with fantastic metanarratives of radical societal change popular in the 1970s and discredited by “postmodernism”. I think that, for an analysis of “transatlantic conversations” one should not merely focus on the contents of travelling theories, but also differentiate more clearly than before between different understandings, emphases and rhetorics of theory within the feminist discourse. As a context of arrival and reception of Anglophone feminist “Theory” and “theories”, Germany represented a complex constellation. On the one hand, Germany – despite unification – was still discernable as Old West and Old East Germany and, on the other hand, there was a common “German” history, marked by wars and especially by the detrimental effects of racist

Nazi-identity-politics, whose legacy was constantly evoked on several occasions in the process of unification. In retrospect, it seems necessary to explain that, at that time, when the postwar period of the Cold War came to an end with the fall of both the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, European countries witnessed drastic transformation processes on all levels of culture and society. A relevant part of the feminist theory discussion in West Germany passionately lunged at the epistemological and theoretical subtleties of the sex–gender debate. It was only partly distracted by historical events. This period of “transnational conversations”, which hitherto is one of the most intense Germanophone reception periods of the US feminist poststructuralism, the so-called “postmodern theory” and of the constructivist approaches, we have not yet comprehended. We would, however, clearly misunderstand the shifts in the feminist discussions of the 1990s if we would read them solely as an increasing hegemony of US “imports”, as they were sometimes dismissively called, which repressed the old-established forms of social criticism and opened a way for “post-feminism”. What happened was neither a friendly takeover of one discourse by another, nor a simple outvoting of former perspectives, but a polyphone and quite dissonant happening of challenges, inspirations, resistances, attractions, defences, justifications, revisions, rereadings and workings through. Or, in Derrida’s words, which stress the projective and identitive aspects of these happenings: “Contamination, parasitism, grafting, transference, assimilation, etc.” (Derrida 1997, p. 10). Furthermore, one would have to differentiate more precisely the particular disciplinary contexts of reception. There are varying proximities and distances between the Germanophone and US discourses, according to the disciplines. The spectrum ranges from American and English Studies and the widely Anglophone-influenced social psychology on the one hand, to German Literature and some subfields of sociology on the other hand. Undoubtedly, the transfers via American studies have been the most influential. They were strongly influenced by approaches and themes coming from the American version of cultural studies and accelerated the cultural turn in Germanophone feminist theory, whereas German feminists in social psychology still had to struggle with the heritage of a science that understands itself as experimental and nomothetic. One would also have to differentiate more precisely between thematic distributions of American feminist theory, for example, the reception of Donna Haraway’s texts, who had the greatest influence in the field of feminist science studies, the growing reception of intersectional approaches, which were particularily taken up by feminist theory influenced by migration research and postcolonial studies, as well as the sex–gender debate. The sex–gender debate for its part was divided into two strands: one was the rather sociologically orientated, constructivist gender studies, whose main concern was “gender”, and the other was formed through the controversy around Judith Butler and the beginning formation of a Queer Theory. In my perception, it was especially the deconstructivist and constructivist–microsociological criticism of heteronormativity and the gender binary that created a furor in the media beyond the academic feminism. The sex–gender debate and the reception of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) at times instigated a real hype in the Germanophone world, where many were excited by the alleged multiplication of the sexes: “Why not 7 (Wetterer 1992) or 87 [sexes] (Teubner 1993), or possibly think so many sexes as there are human beings?” (Haas 1995, p. 8). The point was no longer to revolutionize the societal organization of gender relations, or at

least reform them – for instance by reforming the gendered division of labour, a demand of the older feminism which now appeared rather modest. Now the categorical differentiation of two genders and its connection with normalizing dispositifs of knowledge and power moved to the centre of attention. This had consequences in various areas. Especially in the course of the establishment of queer feminism did the re-centring inspire experimental forms of feminist culture, which was celebrated by the media as “new feminism”. In feminist theory, this shift instigated intensified debates on epistemological issues with regard to the relation between nature–culture and thus, while broadening and enhancing feminist theory in some respects, narrowed the focus through its concentration on cultural processes and more micrological forms of social structuring. Its outcome has been debated more recently. My – admittedly speculative – supposition regarding the reception of Judith Butler in Germany is that she has attracted especially a younger generation of theoretically interested feminists, who might have felt that the disarmed social criticism at the beginning of the 1990s was not radical enough anymore – too little “capital T”, too few prospects – and who looked toward California and Judith Butler with her deconstructive emphasis and the provocative complexity of her thinking. As always in the academy, when the wheel turns around, it revolves with the help of “in” and “out” – constructions that are rather polemic than differentiating. Thus there was the socalled radical postmodern “(post)feminism” with its utopian dreams of overcoming the heteronormative gender-binarism as “in” and as new vanguard of feminist theory. Hopelessly “out” was the so-called “traditional” feminism, which was charged with severe errors in reasoning: namely the sins of universalism, essentialism, naïve realism and thinking in dualisms. In retrospect and regarding “travelling theories”, the widespread willingness to apply this “sin”-catalogue and its often superficial and inadequate justifications without further inquiry and without – for the Germanophone context – appropriate specifications of former approaches, is in need of explanation. The No-Nos of postmodern theory, as they travelled the Atlantic route, were often reduced to stereotypes of criticism and thus missed the substantial points of critique. At times, the notion of “deconstruction” became completely interchangeable with critique as such (Knapp 1998). A related problematic is connected to the differentiations between “socialist”, “liberal” and “radical” strands in feminism, which gained popularity simultaneously in historiographic reports on feminism and which were borrowed from a US context. As Myra Marx Ferree has shown in her comparative research, what counts as “liberal” feminism in the USA has no parallel in the German context. By taking over the American classifications of different strands of feminism, Germanophone historiographers of feminism structured their narratives in a way in part alien to the context they intended to describe (Marx Ferree 2011). I think the sense of progress and the belief in conquest expressed in the above-mentioned repetition of the “sin”-catalogue (universalism, essentialism and ontological reasoning), to a certain degree lived on the fact that older texts had simply become unfamiliar. They were no longer read closely because there was so much new stuff to read. The loss of familiarity with the works of the first generation of “second-wave” feminist theorists was one condition of possibility to increasingly turn to unspecified package-criticism. This detachment did not come unexpectedly: it was promoted by the growing quantity of new forthcoming literature, whose abundance one could hardly oversee in one’s own discipline, let alone in one’s own country.

The bulk of new publications and the growing transnational orientation of the feminist discourse suggested new forms of selectivity and furthermore benefitted a re-disciplinarization of feminist scholarship. The selectivity accompanying the “latest news-mode” in feminism should not be underestimated; this counts especially true for transatlantic conversations where the unfamiliarity with the respective contexts plays an important role. Regarding the “post-isms” and “new-isms” of the 1990s, I had the impression that, with the “postmodern” and “deconstructive” approaches, not only an emphasis (for my part highly welcome) on Theory, but also a particular rhetorical emphasis on criticism was taken on, an emphasis that, strangely enough, somehow felt “alien” to me without my being able to wholly understand this mixed feeling of fascination, irritation and boredom at that time. I remember reading an American publication on postmodern theory with one of my seminars, which dealt with the critique of the knowing subject, the critique of modernity and the crisis of representation. Neither the students nor I could wholeheartedly appreciate the postistic emphasis of the text. The students asked: what’s so new about it? Why do they re-invent the wheel? That was also my initial reaction – remembering the diverse forms of critiques of the epistemic subject, critiques of the epistemic object and of the modern concept of signification I had come across in my own academic socialization by teachers of the second generation of the early Frankfurt School tradition with its characteristic combination of epistemology, social philosophy, social theory and psychoanalysis. It was only later and by diving into the many variations of American “postmodernism” and “postmodern theory” during a research stay at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna that I was able to understand how particularities of the American context had shaped this debate and why it encompassed much more than a mere repetition of earlier forms of anti-foundationalist critique (Benhabib 1992, Huyssen and Scherpe 1989, Knapp 1998). One would have to analyse the transatlantic passing on of the emphasis of criticism more closely and in more detail. With regard to the travels of deconstruction one could ask: what was the “original” philosophical problematic Derrida took up with his idea of deconstruction? What conditions did Derrida’s critique of logo-centrism encounter in the US context, what echo did it bring forth, what did US feminists make of it, how was it circulated in the doxographic discourse, which translated the processual activity of deconstructing into a reified entity, the “monster” of deconstructivism, and what happened to both on their way across the Atlantic Ocean to Old Europe and to the Germanophone countries? In what relationship do rumours and reason stand? How is this relation shaped by the difference between mentioning and using theories? (Derrida 1997, p. 33). As to the common charges against universalism, essentialism and ontological reasoning, I hardly find any colleagues from earlier feminist-academic debates, in which I have participated since the beginning of the 1980s, who seriously believed in a universal identity of female oppression and related experiences and who would have thought that a conceptually unmediated access to social reality was possible. However, the way these mediations were reflected differed from that in the 1990s with their growing attention to the linguistic conditions of proposing associated with the linguistic turn. The dominant scholarly traditions in the German context of the 1970s and 1980s, in which the feminists of this generation were trained, were primarily historically orientated. Anti-positivist and anti-empiricist attitudes were the rule rather than the exception. We were possibly not quite aware of the multifarious antecedent

forms of epistemological and social critique, whose philosophic roots can be followed back to the critical traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time these critical traditions were present and reflected in the theories we related to from a feminist perspective. This holds true for the older “Frankfurt School”, for instance; it holds true for different versions of French Marxism, for the feminist discussions on psychoanalysis and also for those strands which, by extension, locate themselves in a sociology of knowledge and the hermeneutic tradition. A distinct awareness of the historical specificity of knowledge and the known was a genuine feature of the Germanophone sociological – and humanistic – tradition, as it was of early feminism. The accentuation concerning its historicity has undoubtedly changed in the course of time: namely from concentration on the historicity of societal phenomena and societal conditions towards processes of meaning production and interpretation; from a view through the lens of history to a look at the historicity of the lens. In one respect, the critique of earlier Germanophone feminism was clearly justified: although we were aware of the historicity and changeability of the body, we did not reflect on the cultural and historical aspects of distinguishing two, and only two, genders but we presupposed them in our theories. It was this aspect of the sex–gender debate that really turned out to be an eyeopener. In my opinion, the productivity of the sex–gender debate only became visible after the “vom-Vom-zum-Zum” rhetoric, as Ernst Jandl satirized in his poem, cooled down, after the hype was over and one could start to recollect, review and work through again. Judith Butler herself has worked through this process in her works following Gender Trouble. While reproaches against universalism, essentialism and ontological reasoning, directed at the older feminism, are too general, as they underestimate former feminists’ awareness of contextuality and historicity, another aspect of critique, arising in the 1990s, does apply in some areas: namely the accusation that, regarding gender as a category and principle of social structuring, differences between women were not adequately considered theoretically. Indeed, in the 1970s there were debates concerning this issue. The first autonomous “SummerUniversities” in Berlin already knew about the controversy regarding the relationship between “women” and “lesbians” or class and gender. It is true, however, that differences along the lines of origin, ethnic and racialized identification moved into the centre of feminist discussion only much later. This mirrors contextual backgrounds: Germany’s longstanding denial to reflect itself as an immigration country, its notorious difficulty with the genuine racist race-concept and, furthermore, a preponderance in dealing with anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, prevented a more intensive grappling with the colour-line of racism and the history of German colonialism. Besides the sex–gender debate, it is the US debate on intersectionality that has currently influenced the Germanophone feminist discourse most strongly. It is in the broader context of this debate that the colonial past and current forms of racism have moved from the outskirts more to the centre of feminist theory.

II. If I had to write a story about the Anglo-American feminist influences on the developments in

the Germanophone context, about how it “really” was, I would, as a theoretically inclined sociologist who deems empirical foundations to be essential, look at the field in a quantitative way to find answers to the following questions: which US feminist authors were quoted, how often, since when and in what way? There are some German reconstructions of the feminist discourses that investigate the different ways in which US feminism was received, but they are not empirical studies in a narrow sense of the word. These still have to be conducted. In preparation of this article I have simulated an empirical approach by scanning through my library and leafing through important publications of the Germanophone women’s and gender studies of the 1970s and 1980s in order to look at who made a transatlantic reference to whom. This is evidently not an empirical study; however, this rummaging through my shelves made me find some interesting aspects that may be quite telling regarding the questions of “transatlantic conversations” and “travelling feminist theories”. The first impression is that of a comparatively chronological contiguity, in which some classics of US feminism were brought onto the market in German translations. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique appeared in 1963 and was translated into German 1966. Kate Millet’s book Sexual Politics was published in 1969 and was released in Germany in 1971 as Sexus und Herrschaft. The number of relevant translations increased when the first feminist publishers or feminist collectives attended to their distribution. The publishing house Frauenoffensive in Munich, which emerged from the Trikont Publishers in 1974, released Adrienne Rich’s Von Frauen geboren. Mutterschaft als Erfahrung und Institution in 1978, four years after the English original. It published Mary Daly’s book Gyn/ecology: a Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1981) and, at the same time as its English edition (Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy), Reine Lust. Elemental-feministische Philosophie in 1986. Nancy Chodorow’s book The Reproduction of Mothering, already well received in the 1980s, was published in 1985 by Frauenoffensive, too, with the title Das Erbe der Mütter. Psychoanalyse und Soziologie der Geschlechter. The Berlin Orlanda publishing house (previously known as Frauenselbstverlag and as sub rosa) was founded at the same time in 1974. Among the translations that were published there, texts by Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde (1988, 1994, Schultz 1983) and later bell hooks (1994, 1996) were the most prominent. Orlanda was the only German feminist publishing house that focused on “black women” and I credit it with spreading and promoting the works of the black feminists from the USA and Afro-German feminists. The fact that Orlanda has employed predominantly black women is an example of the cherished feminist impetus to combine theory and practice. Audre Lorde’s reading session in Hannover, organized by Orlanda, was one of my most intensive encounters with feminists from the USA. The journal Beiträge zur feministischen Theorie und Praxis, founded in 1978, played a central role as mediator between academia and women’s movement for 30 years. Its altogether 69 editions dealt with issues such as labour, nation, money, prostitution, racism, fundamentalism, globalization and many more. A short review of approximately ten editions from the 1980s shows that references to the US discourse vary strongly, depending on the subject at hand. In contributions dealing with the topic “labour”, for instance, they hardly appear, but when questions on sexuality and the lesbian movement arise, references to American feminists are frequently made, likewise in the engagement with the topics

genetics/reproductive technologies and racism. These varying thematic references to texts of US feminism also apply to the transdisciplinary journal Feministische Studien, founded in 1982, a German counterpart to Signs. At times this journal, which is conceptually deeply rooted in the German and European tradition of social criticism, commented sceptically on the “imports” from the USA. Yet it was this same journal which most closely attended the developments in the USA and in US feminism, and which played an important role as a transatlantic translator. Its first issue, “In den Brüchen der Zeit”, which was published in 1982, included an article by Lerke Gravenhorst: “Zum Beispiel USA: Die Neue Rechte und ihre Versuche, den patriarchalen Kapitalismus wiederherzustellen” (“For Example USA: The New Right-Wing and its Attempt to Restore Patriarchal Capitalism”); I translated an article by Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne for Studien in 1985, namely “Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology”, which gave an overview on the relevance of feminist approaches in history, on literary studies, anthropology and on sociology in the USA. Londa Schiebinger’s contribution “Race and Gender in 18th century Science” was published in its German translation “‘Rasse’ und Geschlecht in der Naturwissenschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts” in the Feministische Studien in 1993. The translation is telling: the usage of the term “race”, in the English original without quotation marks and in its German translation with distancing quotation marks, reflects different contextual conditions. The German translation of the title puts only the term “race” in brackets, but not gender, something which is analytically inconsistent, but consistent with the situated state of debates. Feministische Studien brought home the sex–gender discussion into the German-speaking context and to a broader feminist public with an issue called “Kritik der Kategorie ‘Geschlecht’”, published in 1993. Up until now this issue has been one of the best-selling editions of the journal. It seems peculiar – whereas the German term “Geschlecht” encompasses a variety of connotations, like species, genealogy, sexuality, sex, genre and grammatical gender, and not permitting a clear distinction between sex and gender, something which has been praised by the US scholar Joan Scott, the reception of the Anglophone distinction between sex and gender triggered a hitherto unparalleled controversy. The paradox lay in that, in Germany, the reception of the sex–gender distinction solely took place under the sign of its deconstruction. There had been no widespread use of the duality of sex and gender before – and, obviously, there was no such distinction after the debate. Rather, the contextually alien duality of sex and gender functioned like a deferred stage for a radicalization of antifoundationalist reflections. Something similar applies to the concept of “identity”, which had played hardly any role in the early years of German feminist theory with its prominent tradition of identity-logics critique and critical adaptation of psychoanalysis. The term “identity” gained popularity in Germany in the course of an increasing reception of US texts, but not as an affirmative concept, while in the context of queer theory it was imported under the sign of deconstruction; in the context of intersectionality, with its strong influence from black feminist theory, “identity” was taken up under the sign of the conflicting multiplicity of identities and “intersectional invisbility” (Crenshaw). In my perception, both echo the specific meaning of the identity discourse in US political and everyday culture. In Germany “identity”, as a label for ethnic groups, was corrupted by nationalist and National-socialist identitypolitics in German history. Efforts to reactivate something like a “German identity” by the

authorities after the Second World War and in the process of unification was always met with unease and criticism in the public and still evokes widespread irritation. Similar to the above-mentioned contributions to the transatlantic theory transfers, one should not underestimate the importance of translations that were published in the Marxist journal Das Argument, which played a crucial role too. Initiated by Frigga Haug, ARGUMENT had an autonomous female editorial team from 1982. Besides independent book publications, brought to the market in a segment of the programme called “Feministische Wissenschaft”, members of the editorial team organized thematic focuses in the journal. As far as I can see, texts by Donna Haraway were first issued in ARGUMENT. The female crime-series Ariadne, a branch of ARGUMENT-productions, undoubtedly leads the hit-list of translations from the USA, admittedly not as “travelling theory”, but as documents of a travelling feminist culture. Towards the end of the 1970s, women’s studies underwent processes of gradual institutionalization. The section of women’s studies in the German Sociological Association was founded in 1979 and was one of the first female cooperations in an academic society in Germany. The first volume of the publication series of this section was edited by Ursula Beer in 1987 under the heading “Klasse Geschlecht. Feministische Gesellschaftsanalyse und Wissenschaftskritik”. If we take this volume as an example of the discussion in a feminist academic context and if we look at its references, we will get a very clear picture: it predominantly refers to a German and French tradition of social and knowledge criticism (Gesellschaftsund Erkenntniskritik). Here the self-understanding of feminist (social) science as critique, but not as politics, is hotly debated. In many contributions one can recognize references to the Anglophone discourse, especially to texts that deal with the relationship between feminism and Marxism. Authors from England who are mentioned in these publications are Michéle Barret or Sheila Rowbotham. US authors who are often referred to are Dorothy Dinnerstein, Carolyn Merchant, Evelyn Fox-Keller, Nancy Hartsock, Alison Jaggar, Jessica Benjamin, Nancy Chodorow, Sandra Harding and Iris Young. This sample is not a coincidence. It reflects the thematic spectrum of the volume, but it also mirrors a certain nonsimultaneousness of the German and the Anglo-American discourse. In Germany there were no science studies and no feminist epistemological debates comparable to the discussions in the USA. Philosophy, for instance, is one of the disciplines in Germany, whereas feminists and feminist topics have been scandalously marginalized to date. In this regard, science-critical and epistemological contributions from the USA have had an enormous impact. Marlis Krüger’s article “Überlegungen und Thesen zu einer feministischen (Sozial-)Wissenschaft” in Klasse Geschlecht stands out, as it highlights these discussions. As an academic who had lived in New York for some time, she was one of the “go-betweens”, who notably promoted theory transfer across the Atlantic. In comparison, an article I wrote for this volume still reveals my lack of familiarity with US feminist literature at that time: I quote from a small random repertoire of theorists I had come across (Chodorow, Dinnerstein, Fox-Keller), but I also refer to Mary Daly’s reflections on “stereotypes”, although I find her texts – content-wise – abstracted. Today I interpret this peculiar ignorance towards feminist “camps” or theoretical “strands” as a symptom of the early phase of (participating in) an academic social movement. As much as we naturally read in a transdisciplinary manner and every publication that seemed to be feminist, our reception depended to a large degree on what came to the German market

coincidentally. Daly was promoted by “Frauenoffensive” and was quite visible with her big hard-cover volumes in this feminist publishing house. As a feminist one quoted feminists. This was a different motivation from contemporary citation politics, which are shaped by the criteria of academic evaluation procedures. What should also be taken into account is the impact of computerization and the increase in review articles and books (American Feminist Thought, British Feminist Thought, Italian Feminist Thought etc.), on search processes, reception possibilities and the manner of reception. The spaces one can visit nowadays are vast. America has come closer now than ever before. Then again, review articles imply canonization and pre-selection, which makes the reading of remote texts and peculiar references rather improbable. In any case, it is a new constellation, which has drastically changed the ways theories travel.

III. If I had to tell the story “Transatlantic Conversations” from a biographical perspective, it could look like this. In retrospect, the start of my professorship “Women’s and Gender Studies” at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology of the Leibniz University in Hannover was an “enormous change in the last minute” (Grace Paley). At the job centre, where I was signed on between various short-term contracts and stand-in appointments, my agent had already started to count the eleventh hour. Her blunt comment (“too old and overqualified”) prompted me to submit a cumulus for my habilitation at the University of Bremen. After having speedily finished my dissertation, I was hesitant about settling my future at university. Although it was a place of manifold inspirations, intensive discussions and friendships, it was also a place beyond “real” life – whatever “real” signified, for in effect it was here where, during the semester, the greater part of my life took place. However, I had already decided on a future with science or, even better, to delve into scholarship, long before. This was the reason why I had dropped my job as a journalist at the age of 28 and started to study during the winter term of 1972–1973. My interest in looking at social and historical nexuses and constellations of inequality and dominance had grown during my stay in the USA, where I had emigrated after having passed my exams as a certified gymnastics teacher in 1967. The formal immigration was necessary to obtain a working permit. It was there, in Chicago – far away from my familiar surroundings in a working class Ruhr area – where I experienced social disparity and injustice full blast and where pictures of war and violence in Vietnam began to get under my skin. It was in Chicago where I saw movies of the liberation of Auschwitz for the first time and where I was confronted with Germany’s National Socialist past by Jewish acquaintances. Against the backdrop of their family stories of experienced danger and murders, and their flight into exile, they kept addressing me as “German”, which I was according to my passport and origin. Everyday life in postwar Germany had been full of historical fragments, which I, like many of my generation, had already started to inquire into. However, it was only in the USA that the many facets of impressions, information and sciolism came together and shaped my individual grappling with social pathologies, historical involvements and responsibilities.

The prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes among Americans shocked me as much as the daily racism I witnessed on the streets and in the Health Club on South Wabash, where I worked. In Chicago, far away from university, I experienced the emergence of the student and hippie movement. Partly alienated by the forms of protest, partly fascinated I drifted – with a Camcorder – between Be-ins, Love-ins and Sit-ins, and returned home to Germany two years later with a strong desire to become a journalist (in order to change the world). A journalist I did become – and the world was changing anyway. My work as an editor of a daily newspaper in Lower-Saxony was interesting and satisfying; nevertheless, as time grew on I had the feeling that I could look only superficially at phenomena and that I was not capable of writing the way I would like to. My hope of finding answers to my “big” questions was the reason why I eventually went to study at university. Hanover, this much I knew, was considered to be a stronghold of critical studies. The university offered an array of different courses, namely – in the “old” Frankfurt tradition – social philosophy, Marxist-orientated social theory, material and detailed social history, elements of a psychoanalytically orientated subject theory and across the European tradition of a philosophical critique of knowledge. A continuity through the many seminars was the question: what are the appropriate means of analysing complex societal constellations and dynamics? We read mainly Kant, Hegel, Marx and Freud, but also the French enlightenment philosophers and the classics from the history of sociology. Of course, we also dealt with the positivism dispute, with texts of critical theory, as well as variants of structuralism from Levy Strauss to Althusser and the early works of Foucault. We read exclusively primary sources and were regularly instructed not to waste any time on secondary sources – advice I found only partly convincing. The comprehension of arguments, the comparison of controversial debates and substantiated critique were the means that accommodated my distinct inclination not to simply “believe” anything. If “sociology” was not a sociology in the more specific sense of a social science, “psychology” as an academic discipline in Hanover was all the more out of the ordinary. It was explicitly understood as a political psychology. This held true for all lecturers, especially for Peter Brückner in his seminars, which were held in Club Voltaire during his suspension in 1972–1973 and in 1977–1981 after being accused of supporting Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Fraction. The main topics of discussion were the social history and the political psychology of social rebellion. Brückner’s seminars were forums of controversial discussions, including the latest protest movements, such as the women’s movement. One seminar focused on the “ghetto riots” and the anti-racist movements in the USA. I particularly remember this seminar, as it allowed me to reflect on the phenomenon of racism, which I had witnessed in Chicago, in a broader perspective. This momentum of belated reflection and appropriation of inadequately grasped experiences became very important in my studies in various thematic contexts. This holds true especially for my relatively belated – but for that reason, lasting – involvement with questions regarding gender. In “real life” and in younger years I had experienced impositions of femininity-clichés and the constraint of the “role of a woman” during the 1950s and 1960s. However, my aversive reactions regarding the normative suggestions were not conscious. Ultimately it was the discussions and research experiences of the “Hannoveraner Arbeiterinnenprojekt”, a study on working class women, conducted by

Professor Regina Becker-Schmidt, who had then come to Hanover, and also my exchange with other feminist scholars who did research on “Women and Work”, that had paved my way into women’s studies and the women’s movement (in this order) in the mid 1970s. At the beginning of our studies we did not have any female role models, and when the first female professors were appointed, they were not natural-born feminists. Regina Becker-Schmidt experienced the transition into feminism together with us, her students. While biographical experiences and problematics were leading my way into the social sciences, my path within the social sciences and within university was accompanied by friendships and close scholarly co-operations within the feminist network. What becomes visible as an “individual path” only in retrospect stems from a complex constellation of experience, repulsions and identifications. Topical interests might become obvious because they impose themselves upon oneself socially or politically. They might also come about within academic work through research processing and differentiation, as well as through the “opportunism of opportunities” in a professional life full of vicissitudes. Yet there are questions that follow us through our lives because they have a specific weight. In my case it was definitely the gender question which had had the greatest continuity in my academic life, but it could never be separated from the older questions regarding social inequality, antiSemitism and racism. In recent years the debate on inequality and difference among women has moved to the centre of feminist theory in Germany. This shift and diversification of discussion is symbolized by the triad “race/ethnicity, class and gender” and by the term “intersectionality”, coined in the context of black feminism. While some scholars have warned against a crisis of feminism and a de-centring of the category “gender”, I do not see this development as critical. On the contrary, the broadening of analytical perspectives, as programmatic as it might still be, was long overdue as in some strands of gender studies people had started to forget that gender relations can only be studied by taking into account their societal embedding. The discussion on intersectionality engages me in particular because it allows to take up my earlier “big questions” again in an integrative perspective and abreast with contemporary problems: how are sex–gender relations/heteronormative sexuality, class and configurations of ethnicity and race/ism embedded into society, economy and culture. What happens to these specific constituted, yet interdependent relationalities under the social, political and economical transformations which we have been experiencing? Regarding a political “diagnosis of our time”, I think that a focus on intersectionality leads us further: it harbours a remarkable potential to think about old Europe in new ways. The societies of Europe were formed or developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as simultaneously modern, bourgeois–patriarchal, nationally constituted capitalist societies. Analyses which focus on only one of these features (the modern, the bourgeois-patriarchal, the national, etc.) cannot really grasp their historical co-constitution and their contemporary configuration. In order to grasp the ongoing transformations under conditions of Europeanization and globalization, we need an appropriate and complex understanding of the historical status quo ante and the contradictions of European modernity. Such an analysis would centre on the historically paradoxical concurrence between promises of freedom, equality and individual rights on the one hand and, on the other hand, political, juridical, scientific and economic discourses and practices which invented, institutionalized, legitimated,

abused and exploited differences and inequality along the axis of sex/gender, class, race and ethnicity. To enable such a reconstruction, we have to look at the contextual biases, the flawed axiomatic dispositions and at the temporal index of theories and concepts – and this includes feminist concepts – that are available for such an endeavour. Reflecting the travels and the contextual baggage of theories is an essential aspect of this project. I perceive this debate, in which an increasing number of feminist colleagues are involved, as a new impetus of feminism and feminist theorizing, which may instigate far-reaching changes in the international women’s – and gender – studies, but also in other academic fields. To engage in this “struggle for complexity” makes sense for me biographically because I am convinced that a thorough understanding of the contradictions and conflicts of our time is only possible as long as the humanities and social sciences are not simply regressed to echosciences that merely repeat what is “the case”. Shortly after having been appointed as Professor for Women’s and Gender Studies at the Leibniz University of Hanover, an awareness of an “enormous change” took hold of me while I was reading an official notification concerning my future emeritus status (“Jubiläumsdienstzeit” §3 of the “Dienstjubiläumsverordnung”) and “salary service age” up to the end of my term of service on 31 March 2010. Never before on my quite consequential detours had I come across such a precise outlook on my future. For me the discrepancy between the certainty of this disclosure, which mirrored my future as a calendrical progress, and my self-perception of being a beginner in so many areas, was downright shocking. That in the academic world the questions are allowed to become greater than the answers represents a moment of freedom and a good worthy of protection against the imperatives of practicality. This holds true for the feminist constellation in a particular way. Arising from discontent and the processing of difference, as a network of communications across various fields, nations and practices, it is the feminist constellation which has been and still is our university of many places. By raising questions too big to be easily answered, the transnational feminist network keeps alive the real meaning of the term “university”. If it is true that egotism, indifference and ignorance against the other are current trends, it is the feminist constellation that, by holding on to the possibility of shared perspectives of critique while acknowledging difference and alterity, represents a precious potential.

References1 Adorno, T.W. et al. 1976. The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, translated by G. Adey and D. Frisby. London: Heinemann. Anderson, B. 1983. Imagined Communitied. Reflections in the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Becker-Schmidt, R. and Knapp, G.-A. 2000. Feministische Theorien zur Einführung (Junius). Beer, U. 1987. Klasse Geschlecht. Feministische Gesellschaftsanalyse und Wissenschaftskritik. Bielefeld: AJZ-Verlag. Benhabib, S. 1992. Kritik, Norm und Utopie. Die normativen Grundlagen der Kritischen

Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Chodorow, N. 1985. Das Erbe der Mütter. Psychoanalyse und Soziologie der Geschlechter. München: Frauenoffensive. Crenshaw, K.W. 2000. The Intersection of Race and Gender Discrimination. Backgroundpaper for the United Nations Regional Expert Group Meeting (21–24 November, Zagreb, Croatia). Daly, M. 1981. Gyn-Ökologie. Eine Meta-Ethik des radikalen Feminismus. München: Frauenoffensive. Daly, M. 1986. Reine Lust. Elemental-feministische Philosophie. München: Frauenoffensive. Derrida, J. 1997. Einige Statements und Binsenweisheiten über Neologismen, New-Ismen, Post-Ismen, Parasitismen und andere kleine Seismen. Berlin: Merve Verlag. Feministische Studien. 1993. Kritik der Kategorie “Geschlecht”, 11(2). Ferree, M. and Tripp, A.M. 2006. Global Feminism: Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights. New York: New York University Press. Fleck, L. 1999. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Friedan. 1966. Der Weiblichkeitswahn. Ein vehementer Protest gegen das Wunschbild von der Frau. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Griffin, G. and Braidotti, R. (eds) 2002. Thinking Differently. A Reader in European Women’s Studies. London and New York: ZED Books. Haas, E. 1995. “Verwirrung der Geschlechter”. Dekonstruktion und Feminismus. München: Profil. Haas, E. (ed.) 1995. “Verwirrung der Geschlechter”. Dekonstruktion und Feminismus. München: Profil. Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association. hooks, b. 1994. Black Looks. Popkultur – Medien – Rassismus. Berlin: Orlanda. hooks, b. 1996. Sehnsucht und Widerstand. Kultur, Ethnie, Geschlecht. Berlin: Orlanda. Huyssen, A. and Scherpe, K. 1989. Postmoderne. Zeichen eines kulturellen Wandels. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Knapp, G.-A. 1998. Postmoderne Theorie oder Theorie der Postmoderne? Anmerkungen aus feministischer Sicht, in Kurskorrekturen. Feminismus zwischen Kritischer Theorie und Postmoderne, edited by G.-A. Knapp. Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 25–84. Knapp, G.-A. 2009. Traveling Theories – Situated Questions: Feminist Theory in the German Context, in Global Gender Research: Transnational Perspectives, edited by C.E. Bose and K. Minjeon. New York: Routledge, 261–278. Knapp, G.-A. 2009. Traveling Theories – Situated Questions: Feminist Theory in the German Context, in Bose C.E. and Minjeong Kim (eds) Global Gender Research. Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge, pp. 261–278.

Krüger, M. 1987. Überlegungen und Thesen zu einer feministischen (Sozial-) Wissenschaft, in Beer, U. (ed.) Klasse Geschlecht. Feministischer Gesellschaftsanalyse und Wissenschaftskritik, Bielefeld (AJZ-Verlag), pp. 58–84. Lorde, A. 1994. Die Quelle unserer Macht. Gedichte. Berlin: Orlanda Verlag. Lorde, A. and Rich, A. 1983. Macht und Sinnlichkeit. Ausgewählte Texte. Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag. Marx Ferree, M. 2011. Sisterhood Since the Sixties. Feminism in Germany (working title), forthcoming. Millet, K. 1971. Sexus und Herrschaft. Die Tyrannei des Mannes in unserer Gesellschaft. München: Verlag Kurt Desch. Notz, G. 2008. Den “Beiträgen” ist die Bewegung abhanden gekommen. Nach 30 Jahren wurde die älteste Zeitschrift der Frauenbewegung eingestellt. [Online] Available at: entdinglichung.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/beitrage-zur-feministischen-theorie-und-praxis1978-2008/ [accessed 21 February 2010]. Paley, G. 1985. Ungeheure Veränderungen in letzter Minute. Geschichten. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Schultz, D. 1983. Macht & Sinnlichkeit. Ausgewählte Texte von Audre Lorde und Adrienne Rich. Berlin: Sub-Rosa/Orlanda. Teubner, U. 1993. Geschlecht und Wissenschaft, Geschlechterhierarchie und/oder Geschlechterdifferenz, in Informatik und Gesellschaft 3, pp. 19–22. Werner, M. and Zimmermann, B. 2006. Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity, in History and Theory. Band 45, 2006, S. 30–50. Wetterer, A. 1992. Profession und Geschlecht. Über die Marginalität von Frauen in hochqualifizierten Berufen. Frankfurt a.M./New York (Campus).

1 Providing a bibliography for this text turned out to be a challenge which sheds a particular light on the complexities connected to the “trans”-dimension of Transatlatic Conversations. Assuming that the readers of this book will be primarily Anglophone readers who do not read German, it seemed to make no sense to include a long list of German references with little informational value for this audience. Yet, the frame of memory, of experience and of scholarly reference underlying my reflections is primarily constituted by a Germanophone discourse and I discuss the travelling theories from the USA against this background that should not be invisibilized. It also seemed somehow inadequate to list the English originals of publications that I myself have come across first in their German translation without ever reading the Anglophone version. The mere existence of German translations of Anglophone feminists works constitutes relevant information regarding the transnational transfer of theory. In our case, this is true particularly for some of the early feminist contributions, e.g. Friedan, Millet, Daly, Chodorow. Should I include them in the bibliography in both languages? This would make an even longer list. This “Kuddelmuddel” (muddle, confusion) reached its highpoint in my problems referencing Derrida’s little essay, “Some Statements and Truisms about Nelogisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitims, and Other Small Seismisms”, a text which I first encountered in 1997 in its German translation. This German translation by Merve Publishers in Berlin refers, without any further specifications, to an English version from 1986, which I was unable to trace for citation. What I did find was a 1990 publication of the essay in David Carroll (ed.): The States of Theory. History, Art, and Critical Discourse, New York: Columbia University Press. Since I could not get hold of a copy of this publication while writing this paper, the few quotations from Derrida are indeed my own re-translations from the German translation, which might not be identical to the English “original”, which itself is not an original in the first place but a translation from the French by Anne Tomiche! So, when I asked Kathy Davis and Mary Evans for criteria on how to organize a “trans-referential” bibliography, they suggested I write this note as part of the thematic of this collection and follow my own preferences regarding the bibliography. Voilà!

Epilogue

Talking has long been advocated as a form of “cure”, but when we set out to collect the papers that now constitute this volume, we did not have in mind that explicitly curative interpretation of “conversation” in mind. Our sense of the word “conversation” was one in which various women, friends and colleagues from throughout the USA and the new, “enlarged” Europe, would exchange ideas about the ways in which they came to feminism. Yet in reading this collection now there is also a sense in which the idea of a “cure” is not entirely irrelevant. It is not, it should be immediately said, that there was any particular condition that we wished to heal, but as the explicit binary of the title of this collection suggests, there was a sense of the division between the two sides of the Atlantic. That description emphasized the Atlantic gap between two different areas of the world, albeit areas of the world that have now come to form a substantial part of what we describe as the “global north”. It would not have been unexpected if many of the papers had emphasized this difference and pointed out the distinctions between feminism in the USA and feminism in Europe. We recognized when we were planning the book that the very concept of “Europe” diminished political and cultural differences between various nation states and cultures in Europe. Well within living memory nation states of Europe have fought each other and embraced (with varying degrees of warmth) political systems of considerable difference. As we received the papers, however, we could to see that the differences between women on both sides of the Atlantic (and from different countries in Europe) were not as significant as we had supposed. It is true that most of our contributors belonged to a generation that had seen, as adults, the collapse of the Soviet empire and the emergence of the market economy as the only basis for a political system (an idea that had never been contested in the USA). Most of us had also escaped the hardships and deprivations of our parents’ (or our grandparents’) generation and most of us had also grown up – and this is particularly significant for women – with the expectation that women should be educated and have access to contraception. Inevitably, there were exceptions to this pattern, and some parts of Europe came to these views rather later than other countries. However, generally, we grew up, and the papers demonstrate this communality of experience, within a world in which women had access to certain basic determinants of autonomy. Thus the nature of the experience of growing up in the post Second World War “West” (or the global north) comes across as one which had much in common for many women. To previous generations of women, this new “habitus” may have looked almost paradisiacal, but what these papers also demonstrate, apart from the apparent prosperity and calm of the “new” Europe, are the fault lines that lay within it. Those fault lines, in which race and class were of central importance, demonstrated the paradoxical conditions of tension and consensus in which women came to live their adult lives. We were given, by societies that knew relatively long periods of prosperity and a degree of generosity towards public spending, those “master’s tools” of which Audre Lorde (1984) once wrote. Yet many of us, as these papers suggest, did

not feel inclined either to use those tools to maintain our master’s house or to accept those tools as the only ones we needed. Lorde spoke of the ways in which the “master’s tools cannot demolish the master’s house”. The way in which that idea was recognized is made explicit in these papers: we had been given the skills of argument and debate, but we chose to use them for rather different purposes. Two of the ways in which we chose to use those tools stand out in these papers, as does one other factor about the perception of women across the West about themselves. That latter factor is the self-recognition of women as different from those women of a previous generation: we acquired a sense of solidarity through a sense of separation from our mothers. That often difficult form of emotional separation was both encouraged and made more complex given that, for different generations of women, there seemed to be different factors that distinguished us from our mothers. For some of us, born just after the Second World War, the ways in which we differentiated ourselves from our mothers was through, for example, the refusal of a primarily domestic role. For women born later (by which time the assumption that women were an essential part of the work force had been generalized outside the West), distinctions were marked in terms, for example, of a re-thinking of sexual identity. It is possible, given the present possibilities of the new reproductive technology, that future generations of women will have to re-think and re-negotiate, the very titles of “mother” and “father”. So generation, these papers make clear, matters. Further, it matters in terms of the debates in which women choose to take part. It is thus that we come to the two ways in which women have come to use the tools provided for them by the circumstances of the post 1945 West. The first is that women (and those represented in this collection have been a vibrant part of this contribution) have been energetic critics of the taken-for-granted, normative order. The many flaws of that order, its sexism and its often violent and determined racism, have been the subject of passionate feminist critiques, critiques that have been made all the more powerful by their ability to represent (as the famous slogan put it) the personal as the political. It is often remarked that feminism is something of a marginal political movement, yet what these papers suggest is that, on the contrary, feminism has been central to critical political engagement in the latter part of the twentieth century. Across boundaries of nation and culture, women have demonstrated (both literally and on paper) that the male is not the sum total of human experience. To have systematically fractured that assumption is one of the great triumphs of feminism and prepared the way for the second context in which feminism has used, and re-made, the tools of the master. It is in the context of the academy (where all the contributors to this volume have spent much of their lives) that women have demanded that academic disciplines recognize the particularity and specificity of human experience. This has led, as some critiques of feminism have argued, to a politics where privileged women make demands for and about the extension of their privilege, but what has also been achieved by feminist demands is that difference has become an acknowledged part of our social understanding: it has become far more difficult for either abstract thought or practical engagements with the social world to assume that there is one form of human existence or that the binary of male/female is the greatest extent of human difference. The implications of this idea across all academic disciplines have been transformative, but

as all the papers collected here suggest, that process of transformation has not been always welcome and there have been many bitter battles between those who wish to extend, and those who wish to defend, academic boundaries. Every contributor here, without “speaking bitterness”, has tales to tell of various forms of sometimes determined resistance to the concept of human plurality. At the same time it is also apparent from these contributions that there has been elation in taking part in academic work in which innovation has been possible, and has been made possible because of contacts with others across national and cultural divides. It is that sense both of achievement and determination that marks the essays here. Yet this collection would not be complete if we did not also acknowledge that, while we can now recognize the paradox of the unity of the recognition of difference, there remains the reality of difference. As feminists we have come together and built on shared ideas and traditions. We have gendered the human, but with that comes the question of the limits of humanism; in demonstrating, as this collection has done, the limitations of identities of generation and geography, we now have to ask how we begin to work on the politics (be they academic or otherwise) of that humanism which feminism has made possible. To what extent, we have to ask, are we prepared to accept the possible disruptions and discontinuities that an extended conversation on difference might encounter.

References Lorde, A. 1984. The Master’s Tools Can Never Demolish the Master’s House, in Sister Outsider. Berkeley, CA: The Crossing Press, pp. 110–114.

Index

All index entries shown here correspond to the page numbers within the printed edition only. Within this digital format these page numbers allow for cross referencing only. Abasindi (black women’s cooperative) 58–9 abortion 18, 20, 35, 56, 82 Abortion Law Reform Society 5 abuse, sexual 117, 148, 193 academia 26, 38, 49–50, 86, 88, 98, 116, 137, 183, 209 academics, feminist 15–16 accountability 87, 193 Acklesburg, Martha 16 activism: anti-imperialist 168; battered women 193; environmental 167; feminist 15, 35; hate crime 135; homonationalist 137; left-wing political 83; political 7, 37, 70, 172; professionalised 128; white gay 134 activity, political 56, 60 adolescence 34, 69 Adoption Papers, The 161 adulthood, early 33 Africa 23 African American: homophobia 135; and Latina community 132, 184, 188 African-American: theorists 37; writers 161 African-American, culture 73 agency 18, 96, 98 Ahmed, Sara 149 AIDS crisis 74 Albany University 110 Ali, Monica 163 Allen, Woody 103 Alliance Francaise 16 alliances 8–9, 59, 138, 171 Althusser, Louis Pierre 36, 102, 172 Amara, Fadela 133 America, North see North American American Studies 71, 73, 159, 204 American Studies Quarterly 31 Amin, Idi 162

Amnesty International 70 amniocentesis 18–19 Amorós, Celia 104, 110 Amorrortu (Argentina) 105 Amos, Valerie 61, 189 Amsterdam 69–70, 74 analyses: academic 160; cross-cultural 151; film 98; gendered 87; intersectional 62, 148, 186, 191; layered 38; materialist 193; multisited 191; political economic 193; postcolonial 188; radical critical 20 Anderson, Benedict 56, 100, 202 androcentrism 201 Angelou, Maya 161 anger 6, 30, 55–6, 148, 151 anglo-centrism 106 Ankara 33, 36 anorexics 152 Anthias, Floya 187 Anti-Apartheid Movement 70 anti-colonialism 168, 177 anti-technologism, knee-jerk 19 Anzaldúa, Gloria 136, 187–8 Aranda, Josefina 190 Ariadne (female crime series) 211 Arizpe, Lourdes 190 Arnot, Madeleine 84 Asian Women 61, 162 Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal 33, 35 ATHENA (European Thematic Network of Womens Studies) 47 Auschwitz 213 Australia 23, 94, 142, 190, 192, 195 Australian Feminist Law Journal 142 Austria 24 Axeli-Knapp, Gudrun 9 Ayim, May 137 Baca-Zinn, Maxine 187–8 Baer, Elizabeth 15 Baez, Joan 35 Bakhtin, Mikhail 71 Balázs, Eva 42, 44, 50

Balotelli, Mario Barwuah (footballer) 99 Bangladesh 23, 134 Barnard Conference 188, 190 Barrett, Michèle 62, 190–191, 211 beauty, feminine 147 Bell, Diane 190 Benítez-Rojo 177, 180 Benjamin, Jessica 211 Berkeley 21, 25 Berlin 117, 132, 135, 208 Berlin Wall 204 Bernal, Desmond 19 Bhavnani, Kum-Kum 60 Bhopal 18 Bhuddism 16 Bildungsroman, female 161 bio-enhancement 21 bio-innovation 19 biofuturism, British 19 biographies; intellectual 3, 8, 48; women’s 103–4, 108–9 biological control 19–20 biomedicine 19, 21 biopolitics 21, 137 biosciences 19, 21 biotechnology 19 Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 18; School of Cultural studies 36 Birriel, Margarita 47 bisexuality 26, 122, 127 Bishkek 45 black: consciousness 59; female subject 172; girl praying 159, 161; hair 59, 170; jazz 170; lesbianism 61; liberation 59; womanhood 56, 170; women 10, 55, 57–63, 66, 159–62, 169–70, 174, 177–9, 188–9, 209 Black Liberator (journal) 172 Black Power 58–9 Black Queer Studies 58, 60–61 blackness 60, 62 Bock, Gisela 190 bodies: non-white 150; women’s 7, 99 body image 148 books, feminist 16, 195

borders: European 24; national 8–9, 130 Bordo, Susan 147–8, 150 Boston 10, 77, 139–40, 147, 154, 197, 199 Boston Women’s Health Book Collective 56 Bottomore, Tom 105 boundaries: academic 221; cultural 76; social 58; western 171 Boundaries of Sisterhood 61 Bourdieu, Pierre 104–6 Bourque, Susan 16 Bowen, Elizabeth 71–2 Boyce Davies, Carole 168–80 Brah, Avtar 60, 62, 64, 149 Braidotti, Rosi 28, 47, 79 Brando, Marlon 4 Brazil 23 Bremen 212 Brighton 29–30 Britain: early-1990s 175; post-imperial 170–171 British Columbia 132 British Sociological Association 82 British State 189 Britishness 179 Brixton Black Women’s Group 171–2, 174 Brixton Defence Campaign 172 Brixton riots 172 Brownmiller, Susan 56 Brückner, Peter 213–14 Budapest 41–2, 44 Buenos Aires 105 burka 129 Burke, Carolyn 190 Bush, George W. 151 Butler, Judith 1, 9, 23–4, 27, 30, 46, 59, 72, 95, 97–8, 115, 118–20, 123, 145, 205 campaigning: against rape 56; feminist 56, 58; political 59 camps, feminist 212 campus novels 157 Canada 9, 23, 145–6, 149, 151, 176, 195 Canadian universities 193 capital: corporate 179; cultural 129; emotional 104; global 175; symbolic 104

capitalism 97, 136, 153, 186, 191, 193, 201 Carby, Hazel V. 61, 163, 189 Card, Claudia 15 careers 42, 45, 69, 98, 104, 146: academic 20, 193; high-powered 34; professional 104 Caribbean, the 168–9, 171, 174–5, 177, 179 Carnival, Notting Hill 168, 171, 177, 179 Carroll, David 216 cartographies 24 caste systems 57 Castoriadis, Cornelius 87, 89 Catholic University in Nijmegen 74 Catholicism 133 Cavarero, Adriana 93 CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) 18 Central Europe 41, 45 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) 18 Centre for Research on Education and Gender (CREG) 85–8 CEU (Central European University) 44–9 change: constructive 189; cultural 175; curriculum 163 changeability 208 Chicago 212–14 Chicago Women’s Liberation Union 56 childcare 5, 16, 56 childhood 29, 56, 69, 133, 158 Chodorow, Nancy 211, 216 Chow, Rey 135, 149 Christian activities 80 chronoscopic time 82 Chughtai, Ismat 163 Church and State 132–3 cinema 97, 99 circulation 134: cultural production 134; transnational 132 citizenship: and conditionality 179; consumer 131; political 33; sexual 135, 190; social relations 175 civilisation, and modernity 130–131 civilizations, clash of 150, 154 Cixous, Hélène 72, 160 claims: constituted political 59; existentialist 36; social 173; social justice 175 class: analysis 24; consciousness 84; differences 185; dimension 194; ethnicity and nationality 37; hierarchies 21; inequalities 189; managerial 94; marginality 129; new 135;

oppression 159; and politics 173; postcolonial 49; privileges 128–9; race and sex 83; and sexual orientation 9; and sexuality 19, 83; social 83–4, 105; working 76, 105–6, 178, 184, 212 class struggle 172 class system, British 146 classics: feminist 1, 209; sociology 213 classism 148, 153 Clinton, Hilary 57 Club Voltaire 213 Coetzee, John Maxwell 25, 28 Cold War 45, 47, 175, 204 collective actions 18 collective subjugation 178 collectivity 169 College Women’s Studies Research Centre, Massachusetts 26 Collins 196 Collins, Merle 161 colonialism 131, 188, 194, 208 Color Purple, The 159–62, 165 colour: access 136; activism 127; coalitions 135; critiques 131, 137, 140; issues of 164; line 208; people of 132–3; and privilege 164; queers of 133; scholars of 9; skin 7; theorisings 137; trans of 128, 136; visibility 135; women of 6, 8–9, 61, 73, 128, 132–3, 136–9, 142, 164, 183, 188, 194, 196 Combahee River Collective 59, 62, 188 Combessie, Jean Claude 4, 105 coming-of-age 33 communism 41–5, 48–9 Communist Party 42, 48–9, 168, 178 community 19, 28, 48–9, 80, 161, 163, 185: activism 184; cohesion 137; ethnic 162, 164; highpowered 15; imagined 56, 100, 202; intellectual 46; international 49, 151; local 184; non-hegemonic language 9; oppressive 135; poor urban 194; racialised 136; wider 169 comparative literature 74 comparativism 152 comparisons: cross-cultural 150, 152–3; racialised 63 complicities 36, 127–8, 131 computerization 97, 212 conditions: historical 175; housing 174; linguistic 207; phantasmiclibidinous 203; societal 207; sociocultural 203 connections: constitutive 203; genealogical 174; transatlantic feminist 185 connectivities 128, 130, 134, 137; subaltern 130

consciousness: black female 172; collective 75; developing critical 72; feminist 79, 84, 96, 186; political 71, 185 consciousness-raising 6, 37, 56, 59–60, 65, 184 constellations, complex 204, 213–14 constitution, multi-ethnic 203 constructions 2, 60, 121, 189, 205 contemporary biopolitics 20 contestation 55–6, 63, 176, 187 context: cultural 35, 73, 117–18; disciplinary 204; global 2; institutional 20; intellectual 38, 185; local 132; political 73; present 128; race-less 99; social 55, 185; theoretical 116; transatlantic 8, 13 contextualising 60, 187 continuities 48, 109, 137, 170, 174, 213–14 contradictions: cultural 147; fundamental 35; patriarchal 34 controversies 3, 21, 115, 205, 208 convergences 97, 127, 131, 178 Cook, Pam 98 core readings 6 Corea, Gena 18 cosmetic labiaplasty 150 cosmetic surgery 153 cosmetics industry 179 counter-culture 5 counter-discourses 176 counter-geographies 175 countries: immigration 208; industrialized 110; poor 101 courage 62, 109, 172 Courtney, Emma 158 creation 89, 176, 184 CREG (Centre for Research on Education and Gender) 85 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 60–61, 136, 210 crime fiction 49, 163 criminal justice 193 Critical Ethnic Studies Conference 127 critical prison studies 137 critical reflections 118 critical studies 213 critical theory tradition 201 critical thinkers 121 critical whiteness studies 117

criticism, biographical 157 critics, cultural 95 critique: African-American 6; antifoundationalist 207; identity-logics 210; ideology 72; of modernity 201; philosophical 213; radical 129; social 207 critique of modernity 201 critiques, feminist 16–17, 185, 191, 220 Croatia 24 cross-cultural relevance 150 cultural essentialism, gendered 151 culture: academic 83; British 4; contemporary post-feminist 148; deficient 134; epistemic 202; everyday 210; general 35; honour 162; male-dominated 20; middle classes 103; Muslim 151; non-Western 35, 39; political 203; popular 19, 73, 194; traditional 7; white gay 128; working class 4 CUNY (City University of New York) 184–5 currency, cultural 159 curriculum 17, 83, 85–6 curriculum innovation 157 Cyberspace 195 Cyborg Manifesto 19 see also Haraway, Donna Dalla Costa, Mariarosa 185–6, 191 Daly, Mary 15, 209, 212, 216 daughters 33–5, 104, 163, 170 Davis, Angela 167, 187 Davis, Kathy 2, 5, 9, 203, 216 Dayley, Grace 162 de Beauvoir, Simone 21, 24, 36, 72 Dean, James 4 decolonisation 10, 128, 198 deconstruction 75–6, 167, 205–7, 210 Delphy, Christine 191 democracy 41, 139, 184 demographic techniques 135 denial 7, 26, 208 dependency, female 34 Derrida, Jacques 72, 77, 100, 203–4, 207, 216–17 development, professional 38 Dickens, Charles 80–81 Dickinson, Emily 158 Dickinson House 26

dictatorship 105 Dietze, Gabriele 117 differences: cultural 117, 148–50, 152, 219; essentialized 164; ethnic 73, 75; exploited 215; fundamental 85; generational 93; human 221; key 79; racial 76, 117; regional 18; woman’s 74 differentiations, categorical 205 dignity 50 dilemmas, representational 30, 202 Dill, Bonnie Thornton 188 Dinnerstein, Dorothy 211 Diotima 93 dis-identification 124, 129 disciplines: academic 15, 84, 107, 213, 221; new scientific 101; traditional 16 discourses: counter contemporary 150; dominant 148–9, 179; doxographic 203, 207; economic 215; globalising 129; hegemonic 175; homonationalist 132; modernist 177; protofeminist 151; queerphobic 134; women’s rights 127 disidentification 120–121, 142 disillusionment 59 disputes: positivism 213; women’s trade union 83 dissenting voices 2, 8 diversity 151, 170, 192, 195 division, social 58 division of labour, gendered 83, 102, 205 domesticity 35–6, 101–2 dominance 117, 122, 189, 195, 212; white feminist 20 drama, European 93 Drucker, Wilhelmina 70 dual systems 83 Dubois, Ellen 190 Duggan, Lisa 131 Dutch culture 69, 74–5 Dutch youth 135 Dworkin, Andrea 15, 82 Dyketactics! 129 Dylan, Bob 35 Ealing, London 172 Eastern Europe 8, 45, 48, 74 eating disorders 148 echo-sciences 215

eco-activism 19 economic activities 158 economic crises 50 economic development 190 economists 41, 101 economy 3: global 194; political 191 education: college 15; graduate 184; higher 3, 20, 29, 80–81, 85, 87, 89; identifying 36; international 39; research, higher 85, 87, 89; women’s 16 education policy, higher 87 education systems, higher 84–5, 163 educational space, European 47 ego ideals 97–8 Egypt 134 Egyptology 41–2 Ehrenreich, Barbara 191 Einhorn, Barbara 2 Eisenstein, Zillah 191 elites: academic 110; discriminated 103; female 107–10; mass media 103; professional 101, 103, 110; successful professional 103 elitism 38, 59 ELTE 42–3 emancipation, female 5 embodied experiences 151 embodied practices 150, 152–3, 155 embodiment 56–7, 170, 195 embryology 18, 21 Emecheta, Buchi 160, 162 Emma (German feminist magazine) 117 emotions 17, 59, 178 empire 129, 151, 173 empirical studies 203, 208–9 empirical work 43, 47 engagement, political 58–9, 64, 168, 220 engineers, female 34 English Literature 157–9 English Studies 71 English utopian movement 42 Englishness 26 enlightenment history 43 enthusiasm 5, 25, 29, 44, 116

Epstein, Cynthia F. 109, 185 Epstein, Debbie 84 Erel, Umut 118 essentialism 38, 63, 75, 100, 107, 150–153, 163–4, 205–8 ethics 89 ethnic backgrounds 159, 164 ethnic categories 73 ethnic groups 162–4, 210 ethnic range 163 ethnicity 9, 37, 49, 62, 64, 73, 75, 117, 164, 194, 202, 215 ethnocentrism 62, 110 European Union 46, 64, 134 EUI 46: Gender Studies programme 46 eurocentrism 191 European focus 48 European Institute for Gender Studies 76 European Journal of Women’s Studies 1–2 European Network of Women 46 European Thematic Network of Women see ATHENA European University Institute 46 European women’s studies courses 6 Europeanization 215 Europeanness 46 Evans, Mary 3, 17, 21, 117, 119, 216 exclusion 6–7, 25, 57, 115, 123, 176 exile 129 experiment 25, 29, 103, 192 Exploring Female Sexuality 190 failure 162, 191, 203 family: concept 189; demographic features 104; demography 104; ideology 36; inadequacy of 189; institution 191; nuclear 189; patriarchy 96; and reproduction 186; security 194; structures 162; support 104; traditional 96; wage, the 190 family law clinics 193 Family Research Institute 35 fanaticism, religious 152 Fanon, Franz 25, 129 father: absence 34; behaviour 96; input 104; objection 33; support 104 Fawcett Society, The 5 Female Eunuch, The 81

female/male, change 107 female modesty 35 Female Quixote, The 158 Feminine Mystique, The 209 femininity 60, 103, 119–20, 123, 147–8, 164, 214 feminism: academic 93, 188; Anglo-American 116, 208; anti-racist 137; articulated 123; association 115; black 26, 55–6, 58–65, 83, 137, 139, 162–3, 165, 168–9, 174–5, 178–9, 186–9, 196, 209–10; British 5, 61; claimed 115, 118–20, 123; defining 119; diversity of 194–5; early 194, 207; European 82; German-speaking 117; Germanophone 201, 204–8, 216; imperial 61, 64, 195; Italian 94, 98, 100, 212 liberal 62, 206; literary 160; materialist 83, 186, 190–191, 196–7; non-Western 38; popular 82; portrayal of 121; post-1968 94; post-colonial 61; radical 17; rejections of 118–19; second-wave 93; socialist 17, 185–6, 191, 197, 200; traditional 205; white 56 feminist academia, German-speaking 117 feminist activity 55 feminist agenda, late twentieth-century 55 feminist anthropology 16–17 feminist approaches 91, 190, 193, 201, 210 feminist authors 4, 108 feminist awareness 123 feminist biopolitics 19, 21 feminist collectives 209 feminist concepts 215 feminist courses 81 feminist criticism, cultural 72 feminist perspectives: contemporary 195; European 1 feminist scholarship: British 84; European 1–2, 7 feminist theory: German-speaking 201; Germany 210 feminists: British 56, 189–90; European 6, 73, 195; third world 6, 9 feminists of colour 188 Fenstermaker, Sarah 109 Ferguson, Ann 186 Fernandez-Kelly, Maria Patricia 191 Finland 24 FINRRAGE 18–19 Fischer, George 184 Folbre, Nancy 186 Foucault, Michel 23, 31, 190–191 Fourest, Caroline 134 Fowlkes, Martha 16

Fox-Keller, Evelyn 190, 211 France 17, 44, 98, 129–31, 133–4, 136–9, 142, 190, 202 Franco 101 Frankenberg, Ruth 7, 60 Frankenstein 158 Frankfurt School, the 207 Franklin, Sarah 15 Fraser, Nancy 61 Freud 97 Friedan, Betty 111, 209, 216–17 friendship, female 96, 103 friendships 56, 63, 103, 192, 212–14 Fuchs Epstein, Cynthia 110, 185 Fuss, Diana 26, 95–6 futures 180 Gates, Bill 97 gay: activism 132: approaches to being 74; communities 26; couples 75; equality 145; fear 131; fear of 74; and lesbian rights 75; liberation 23, 76; male 24, 71; north south divides 127; persecution 134; rights 75–6, 128; struggles 189; studies 74–5, 99; victim groups 132; victims 131; violence against 135; white 131 gay academics 76 Gay Federation Germany 131 gay gene 75 gay marriage 128 gay movement 75 gays: in the military 128; prejudice against 74 GDP 21 gender: battles 111; as a category 208; epistemology 109; equality 33, 145–6, 150; grammatical 210; history 45, 49; identity 94, 119–20; inequalities 186, 195; issues 99, 118; memorialism 107; metaphor 107; mixing 108; oppression 185; paradigms 94; policies 64; politics 18; privileging 57; question 214; racialised 173; relations 191; scholars, European 46; studies 1, 45–7, 76, 94, 99–101, 107–8, 148, 151, 205, 208, 212, 215; subordination 176; theory 96, 98; Trans-ing 139 Gender & Society 185 gender-binarism, heteronormative 205 Gender Trouble 17, 27, 46, 72, 208 see also Butler, Judith gendered subjects 95 genealogy 96, 110, 129–30, 133, 157–9, 177, 210 generations: empowering 50; interesting 101; new 108; of women 219–20; younger 89 genital cutting 153, 155

genocide 129–31 gentrification 134, 137 genus-groups 202 geographies: bi-national 176; of domination 175; and generations 174; limitations 221; of race 7; trans-Atlantic 176 German: discourse reconstructions 208; translations 209–10 German Sociological Association 211 German-speaking context 116, 201–2, 210 Germany: context 118, 206–7; feminist activist 117; Old West and East 204; scholars 45; sociology 201; states 117; translations of anglophone feminists 216 GM foods 20 Goetting, Ann 109 Gordon, Linda 190 Gramsci, Antonio 36 Gravenhorst, Lerke 210 Greece 24 Greenblatt, Stephan 44 Greene, Gayle 72 Greer, Germaine 5, 36, 81, 117–18 Gregory, Jeanne 2 Greyson, John 142 Greenland 134 Grosz, Elizabeth 46 groups; Muslim 145; political 37 Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación 137 Gutzmore, Cecil 172 Hadj Nasser, Badia 133 Hall, Stuart 174 Hanmer, Jalna 18 Haraway, Donna 1–2, 19–20, 61, 205 Harding, Sandra 63, 187 Hartmann, Heidi 186 Hartsock, Nancy 186, 191, 211 hate 120, 134 hate crimes 128, 132, 134, 136, 140 Haug, Frigga 211 Havelkova, Hana 45 Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies 193 Hays, Mary 158

health care reform 64 health issues 174 health system 97 Hegel 213 hegemony 1, 94, 98, 116, 128, 133, 135, 176, 204 heritage 111, 177 heroine 93, 159, 167 Hertz, Rosanna 109 heterogeneity, cultural 202 heteronormativity 118, 120, 123, 205 heteronorms 120–121 heterosexism 75, 115, 120–121, 148, 153, 158 heterosexuality 23, 70, 119–22: normative 120 hierarchy 38, 42, 49, 148, 153 Hispanicization 73 historical materialism 191, 193 historicity 207–8 history: aboriginal 146; comparative 47; contemporary 42; cultural 46; geopolitical 76; global 47; hidden 157–8; neglected 117; oral 50; personal 3, 8; political 41; racial 99; social 47, 213–14; women’s 16, 42–5 Hobsbawm, Erik 44 holocaust, the 48 homo-laicité 132 homo-nationalism 127, 131–6, 142 homo-neocolonialism 131, 135 homo-neoliberalism 131, 135 homo-republicanism 132 homonormative 131 homophobia 62, 115, 132, 135 homosexuality 71, 75–6, 120–121 homostudies 74 homotransnationalism 132, 134, 137 honour killers 131 hooks, bell 1, 60, 148, 188, 209 Horkheimer, Max 203 Horton-in-Ribblesdale 28, 102 hostility 33, 123, 137 household: labour 185; separatist 28; working class 183 housework: sociology of 36, 185; wages for 6, 185 Hull 7, 60, 136

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 18 humanism 221 humanities 74, 215 Humm, Maggie 84 Hungary 24, 41–4, 47–9 Hunt, Lynn 44 Huntley, Eric 172 Huxley, Julian 19 hybridity: cultural 152; radical 177 hyper-sexism 133 ideals: cultural 148; embedded 147; national neoliberal 136; new 33 identification 98, 118–21, 124, 169, 214; Caribbean 169; gay gene 75; national 23; racialized 208; subject’s 194; unconscious 95 identities: hybrid 79; in/visible 179; multiple 7; national 98, 177; political 179; scholarly 84; sexual 28, 75, 96, 191, 220; traditional female 150; universal 207; white european 131; women’s 35 identity: categories 74, 76, 135; demarcated 75; discourse 210 identity politics 24, 63, 95 ideology 36, 102, 105, 121, 167–8, 176, 191 Illinois 188–9 illusions 34, 97–8 images: complex 35; pervasive 38 imaginary, the 34, 89, 168, 173, 176–7 imagination: political 186; sociological 105; uncontainable 24 IMF 174 immanence 36 immigration 33, 99, 128, 162, 203, 212 incest 162 inclusion 7, 33, 163 independence, female 147 India 129, 131, 133, 149, 162–3 individuality 36, 96 industrialized world 69 inequality 27, 37, 118, 147, 173, 193, 212, 214–15 infant abandonment 162 informality, male 4 inheritance: generational 167; intergenerational 172; political 167; scientific 110 inner city 134, 137 innocence, female 93

innovation: academic 221; stylistic 160; technological 21; theoretical 43, 46 insights: critical 72; feminist 187, 191; theoretical 116, 187 Inspired Black Women 59, 169–70 Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, Leibniz 212 institutionalisation 47, 94, 128, 159, 177, 179, 211 institutions: central 80; new 44; private 107; progressive 74 intellectual enquiry 56, 58 intellectuals 4, 43, 48, 105–7 intelligibility 175–6 inter-generational issues 175 interconnectivities 130, 174 interdisciplinarity 16–17, 20, 25, 43, 46, 71–2, 74, 185, 201 internationalism 8–9, 106, 180 ‘Interpreting Women’ 113, 141 intersectionality 9, 19, 57, 60–63, 83, 89, 109, 116–17, 135, 137, 186–8, 202, 205, 210, 214–15 invisibility 60, 108 Iran 134 Iraq 151 Irigaray, Luce 28, 36, 72, 96, 202 Iron Curtain 41, 50, 204 irony, psychoanalytic 28 islam 7, 73, 117, 132–3, 150, 164 islamophobia 128, 137, 151 Israel 48, 70, 128, 135 Italy 23–4, 73, 93, 96, 98–9, 105, 129 IVF 18–20 Jaggar, Alison 174 Jamaica 73, 132, 174 James, Selma 185–6, 191 Jandl, Ernst 208 Jane Eyre 158 Jeffreys 150, 154, 171, 180 Jewish acquaintances 213 Jewish scholars 203 Jewish scientists 202 Jewish tradition 48 Johnson, Amryl 161 Johnson, Buzz 168

Johnston, Claire 98 Jones, Claudia 167–80 Joseph, Gloria 186, 189 journeys: geographical 118; intellectual 115–16; physical 79, 115; reflexive 118; women’s 104 Kabeer, Naila 62 Kahn, Coppélia 72 Kaplan, Temma 190 Kay, Jackie 161 Kelly, Joan 185 Kenway, Joan 87 Ker Conway, Jill 16 KFPA 127 kinship structures 19, 158 Kitchen Table Women 62 Klein, Melanie 83 Klein, Renate 18 knowledge: produced 101; raw material 95; scientific 21; sociology of 107, 109, 202, 207 knowledge gaps 109 knowledge production 71, 74, 94, 97, 178 Kolodny, Annette 160 Kristeva, Julia 36, 71–2, 95, 160 Krüger, Marlis 211 Kuhn, Annette 186 Kyrgyzstan 45 labour: enforced 70; exploitation 130; history 44; market 191; participation 160; shortages 173 Lacan, Jacques 71–2, 84 Lacquer, Thomas 44 Lagarde, Marcela 110 Lamas, Marta 110 language difference 64, 116 languages: global 38; native 45, 116; privileged 38 Laslett, Barbara 109 Latin America 23, 27, 47, 112 Latina Women 66, 129, 155, 184 law: anti-veil 133; enforcement policies 193; national 134 Leacock, Eleanor 185 leadership 49; female 108; intellectual 45 Lecointe, Eddie 172

Lees, Sue 84 legislatures 19 legitimacy: academic 86; intellectual 38 Lennox, Charlotte 158 Leon, Magdalena 190 Leonard, Diana 84 lesbian: mixed 129; veiled 133 lesbians: and gay issues 71, 74, 141; international movement 127; movements 209; relationship 159; rights 75; writers 159 Lesbianville 26 Lessing, Doris 158 Lewis, Gail 8, 60–62, 64 Lewis, Jill 189 LGBT movements 127–8 LGBTQ: people 133; studies 75; subjects 132 liberation: agenda 5; movements 59; struggles 157 liberty, political 43 life: everyday 112, 192, 213; family 94; personal 35; political 37; professional 42, 49, 214 life: goal 102; histories 80, 109; journeys 103 life-stories 48, 118 lifestyles 75, 98–9; non-heterosexual 76 lineages, psychic 167 literary: criticism 69, 71; studies 210; theories 81 literature: postcolonial 157, 163; social-movement 48; sociological 109 London 23, 25, 61, 82–4, 86, 88, 117, 148, 150–151, 168–9, 175, 178; contemporary 169 London School of Economics 193 Lorca, Federico Garcia 104 Lorde, Audre 20, 209, 220 Los Angeles 50 LSVD (Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany) 131 luxury 85–6 Macedonia 23 Malawi 128, 132 male-dominated ethos 86 male irreverence 4 male superiority, attitudes of 178 male to female 128 Malson, Helen 148 man-hating, associations with 115, 119

managerialism 83, 87 Manchester, UK 56 Mandela, Winnie 167 manipulations, domestic 34 Marglin, Frederique 16 market, the 134, 136, 211 market economy 87, 89, 219 marriage: arranged 39; and motherhood 35; same-sex 75; valorizing 189 Marshall, Paule 161 Martinez, Elizabeth 57 Marx, Karl 21, 168, 191, 213 marxism 36–7, 83, 93, 102, 105–6, 184–6, 191–2, 211 marxist feminism 27, 185, 191 masculinity: hegemonic 44; policed 4; power 104 Massad, Joseph 128 materialism 186 materiality 95, 167 matrix, heterosexual 27, 115, 119–20 McIntosh, Mary 190 McLaren, Anne 18 McNay, Lois 61 McRobbie, Angela 118, 148 Mecca, Avicolli 136, 138 media: mainstream 73: national 99 media coverage 70 media ideals 152 medicalization 7, 75 Meinhof, Ulrike 213 melting pot 149 memoirs 101, 109, 158 memorialisation 170, 179 memory literature 48 Merchant, Carolyn 211 meta-sociology 107 methodology 16, 25, 38, 48, 116–17, 191–3, 195 Mexico 105 middle-class: unemployed 29; background 27; feminism 3, 38; subject 148; women 147, 184; world 5 Mies, Maria 18, 191 migration 8, 26, 73, 128, 131, 135–7, 203

militarism 128, 131, 134–5, 137 Miller, Pat 16 Millet, Kate 1, 5, 8, 94, 106, 190, 209, 216 Mitchell, Juliet 1, 83 mobilisations 7, 117, 172–3 modernity 131, 151, 201, 206, 215 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 61, 148, 188 Moi, Toril 72, 82 Moluccans 7 Moore, Gwen 110 Moraga, Cherríe 136, 188 moral panic 129 Morgan, Robin 5, 15, 28, 162 Morocco 7, 133 Morrison, Toni 161 motherhood 34–5, 56, 69, 162 movements: anti-neocolonialism 129; anti-right-wing 129; broad-based 184; geographical 178; hippie 213; political 2, 4, 83, 220; upper middle class 70; women’s liberation 31, 86, 189, 194 multi-ethnicity 175–6 multiculturalism 99, 145, 148–9, 179 Mulvey, Laura 94, 97–8 Muraro, Luisa 93 Muslim, queer 135 Muslims 73, 129, 131–2, 134–7, 164 mythology 5, 82, 192 Namjoshi, Suniti 163 Naples, Nancy 8 narratives, realist 160 Nash, June 185, 191 Nasreen, Taslima 134 Nasser, Mervat 150 nation-building 76 nation-states 176, 180, 219 National Organization for Women 184 National Women’s Studies Association 194 nationalism 127, 131, 148, 150, 153, 173: racialised 151; sexual 137, 210 nationality 37, 95, 202 necropolitics 137

neighbourhoods: heterogeneous 136; poor 184; racialised inner-city 134 neo-imperialism 151 neo-colonialism 127, 129–30, 134–7, 150 neo-liberalism 130, 134–7, 139–40, 153–5, 193 networks, of circulation 9 Newton, Judith 72 Nichols, Grace 161 Nobel Peace Prize 102 normalization 76 norms: cultural 124; heterosexual 119, 121–3; regulatory 119, 121; reinforced heterosexist 120; traditional gender 147 North, Global 128, 135, 219 North America: academic context 30, 94, 97, 116, 160, 202–3, 207; and British feminism 98; contemporary 73; crime fiction 49; and English Studies 204; feminism 20, 35, 37–8, 72, 82, 94, 147, 202–3, 205–6, 209, 212; imperialism 35; liberal arts education 16; life 57; Literature 163; Midwest 76; military bombing 151; scholarship 44, 94, 98; sociology 109; students 35, 76; women’s poetry 16 Northwestern University in Chicago 80 Notz, Gisela 203 novels 81, 133, 158–9, 161 Oakley, Ann 185, 192 Obama, Barack 57 obscurity, women’s 109 Ohio 80 online conversations 195 opportunism of opportunities 214 oppression 18, 36–7, 57, 61, 83, 107, 127, 150–2, 159, 161, 172, 174–9, 186, 191, 207 Oppression Olympics 57 Orbach, Susie 148 organisation: anti-immigration 135; collective 60; left-wing political 83, 86 orientalism 134 orientation, sexual 9, 71, 74, 122 orthodoxies, cultural 157 Ostrander, Susan A. 109 Our Bodies Ourselves 56 OWAAD (Organisation of Women of Africa and African Descent) 60, 162, 171, 174, 180 ownership 9, 179, 187 Ozyegin, Gul 8 Palestine 135

Paley, Grace 212 paradigms, dominant 173 Paris 16, 105, 129, 133 parochialism 20, 129, 131, 137, 201 participation 33, 37, 59, 135, 174 Passerini, Luisa 46 pathology: feminine 148; individual 152 patriarchy 35, 96, 103, 153, 157, 162, 191, 195 patterns, cultural 48 Peasant Party 43 pedagogy 24, 81, 107, 183 people of colour 132–3, 136 performance audits 21 performative acts 119 periphery 2, 59 Perkins Gillman, Charlotte 80 persona, female 5 personal is political, the 37, 84 perspectives: analytical 214; androcentic 191; biographical 212; comparative ethnographic 17; critical 147; global 195; historical 194; integrative 215; interspatial 79; national 201; shared 216; theoretical 116 Petchesky, Rosalind 18 Petzen, Jennifer 131 phenomena 75, 207 phenomenology 202 philo-marxism 106 philosophy 15, 49, 89, 211; continental 20, 72; social 207 Phoenix, Ann 8, 63 Pink Guitar, The 160 Plath, Sylvia 71 Playboy 15 plurality 37, 221 poetry 16, 71, 158–9 Poland 41 policing 135–7, 172, 193 political correctness 95 political ideas 171 political scientists 57 politics: affective 118; anti-racist 59, 189; coalition 128; collective 5; contemporary 45, 179, 202, 212; diasporic 9; emancipation 168; homonationalist 134; left-wing 16, 37; male

4; national 20; oppositional 3, 173; progressive 48; purity 19; queer 167, 174; reproductive 18, 21; separatist 96 power-relations, contemporary 2 practices, Muslim 150 pre-fab, cookie-cutter 29 pregnancy, teenage 162 project: hegemonic 127, 135; nationalist 131; political 94; theoretical 128 propaganda 15, 69 property 179, 187 prosperity 3, 219–20 prostitution 209 protest 35, 70, 131, 151, 213–14 psychoanalysis 16–17, 20, 72, 83–4, 96–7, 207, 209–10 psychologism 107 psychology, political 213–14 psychosocial, the 63 Purple September 70 queer: academic access 136; activists 76; analysis 131; bodies 136; changing parameters of 127; colour visibility 135; as criminals 132; critiques 131; migrant 137; movements 128–9; the notion 75; organising 127; political agendas 8; racialised 129; racism 136; sexuality 75; students 136; studies 99; theory 76; thinkers 9; unassimilable 133; vulnerability 136 queer: exile 129; feminism 205; of colour 136–7; theorists 75; theory 9, 23, 26, 74–6, 117, 131, 136, 205, 210 queerness 30, 128 queers: of colour 133, 136; muslim 134; violence against 136 race: books 64; caste 57; challenges of 49; and class 21; class and sexuality 19; and colonialism 38; complications of 37; courses 25; enfranchisement 57; and gender 60; geographies of 7; idea of 7; interlinking 60; intersection of 57, 137, 186; oppression 57; politics 161; and racialization 7; relations 56, 140; riots 158, 168; teaching 26; USA 7 racial constructs 73 racial-ethnic awareness 73 racism: black men 169; colonial 133; contemporary discourse 150; embededness 215; encounters 153; and essentialism 151; experience of 161; gay 136; and gender 137, 153; German history 204, 208; and inequality 214; and multiculturalism 149; and sexism 148; state 189; subordination 176; as a trauma 148; USA 161, 213–14; white women 178; womens movement 189; writing 161 Radio Free Europe 41

Rajk, Júlia 48, 51 Ramazanoglŭ, Caroline 192 Rape Crisis Group 27, 56 re-appropriation 152 reagonomics 174 realism, naïve 205 rearticulations 3, 7, 9, 115, 120–121 rebellion 4, 69, 96, 104 reciprocity 21, 192 recuperation 172–3, 180 Red Army Fraction 213 redistribution 59, 61 reflexivity 106–7 refugees 47, 203 relationalities, interdependent 215 relations, gendered 83, 153 relationships: ambivalent 119; ethical 89; patron-client 135; personal 5, 89, 128–9; social 7, 189; vexed 148 relativisation 48 religion 7, 33, 129–30, 132–4, 149, 164, 192 representation 23, 25, 99, 133, 135, 171, 176, 206 reproduction 20–21, 35, 133, 186, 189, 191 research, feminist 108 revanchism, neoliberal 134 Rice, Condoleeza 171, 180 Rich, Adrienne 20, 190, 209, 217 Rock, Chris 170 Rosenfelt, Deborah 72 Rubin, Gayle 17, 96, 190 Sandavol, Chela 190, 195 scholars, female 94, 101 scholars of colour 183 scholasticism, old-fashioned 107 school system, British 159 Schramm, Gottfried 42 scientists, female 110 Scott, Joan 44–6, 210 self, German-speaking 116 sex workers 132

sexism, Muslim 134 Sexual Politics 1, 10, 28, 90, 190, 198 Shange, Ntozake 159 Shelley, Mary 158 slavery, legacy of 7, 73 slums, suburban 133 Smith, Dorothy 110, 186–7, 191–2 Snitow, Ann 190 SOAS, University of London 23 social change 16, 44, 72, 101, 188, 193, 204 social constructionism 72 social constructivism 202 social workers 184 societies, patriarchal 101–4 sociologists, female 109 Spare Rib 36, 82 Spender, Dale 192 Spivak, Gayatri 37, 149 students, female 34, 157, 163 students of colour 136 studies, cultural 36, 73, 83, 85, 94, 148, 193, 204 subalterns: female 131; gendered 128 subject, political 167, 169, 173–4 Subject Women 194 subjectivity 9, 27, 36–7, 94–5, 97, 116, 119, 147–8, 167, 169, 171–6, 178–80 subjects: agentic 175; collective 178–9; epistemic 206; imagined 153; knowing 206; social 173 suffocation 87 suffragettes 57, 117–18 Suleri, Sara 25 super-exploitation 177–8 Surinamese 7 survivability 98 Sweden 19, 24 Switzerland 158 Syal, Meera 163 Sylvia Rivera Law Project 136 syncreticism 177 Szabó, Miklós 43

TAI (Madrid Film School) 107 Taia, Abdellah 133 Taylor, Verta 109 teaching 6, 25–6, 33, 39, 43, 45–9, 64, 73–6, 84, 98–100, 159–60, 195, 212 team work 105 technology: contraceptive 21; genetic 18–19, 209; manipulative 20 teens, late 147 Teheran 134 teleology 167, 170 temporal index 215 temporality 41, 99 tensions: intra-racial 161; productive 23 terminology 80, 123, 186 territoriality 83, 130, 138, 176–7 terror, war against 127–8, 150 texts, classic 5, 46, 163 textual domains 163 Thatcher, Margaret 5 theorists, key 123 theory, psychoanalytic 81, 84 thinness: feminine 152; patriarchal culture of 148 Thompson, Charis 21 Thorne, Barrie 109, 210 Tillman, Jonnie 188 Tomiche, Anne 216 trans of colour 137 Tuchman, Gaye 185 Turkey 7, 9, 23, 33, 35–8, 129, 135 Turkish Republic 33 Turkish women 33 Twilight of Equality 139 Uganda 132, 162 Ugandan Asians 162 US-based feminist theory 122–3 USA 6–7, 20, 58, 60, 63, 75, 80, 85, 98, 117, 132, 137, 174, 202, 204: scientific sector 108; society 203; south 159 Valcárcel, Amelia 110 Vance, Carole 190

Veiling 150; Muslim 150 violence against women, legal work 60 vulnerability 98 Waddington, Conrad 19 Walker, Alice 159, 161 Walkerdine, Valerie 84 Wallace, Michele 160 Warnock, Mary 18 Weiner, Gaby 84 Weir, Angela 190 welfare state 173 Wellesley College 108 West, Guida 194 Wiesen Cook, Blanche 185 Wilmer, Val 170 Wilson, Elizabeth 189–90 Wittig 24 Wolf, Naomi 147–8, 150 Wollstonecraft, Mary 158 Wolpe, AnnMarie 186 woman: new modern 35; reading like a 95; role of a 214; unfeminine 119; the veiled 152 woman question 33 women, British 5 women, muslim 133–4, 150–152 women’s movement 6, 37, 47–8, 70, 81, 86, 119, 185, 189, 193–4, 201, 209, 214 women’s rights, groups 70 women’s situation 36, 57 women’s studies 1–2, 6–7, 10, 15–16, 20, 35, 46–7, 71, 74, 82–8, 90–91, 94, 107, 154, 211 Women’s Studies International Forum 188 Women’s Studies Network 82, 85–6 Women’s Studies Quarterly 188 women’s work 188 Woolf, Virginia 71, 80, 158 work, cultural 157, 162, 164 workers 44, 168, 193 working class 76, 105–6, 178, 184, 212 working women 59, 147 World Social Forum 195 World War I 71

writers 26, 161, 163–4 Yildiz, Yasemin 131 Yoruba Girl Dancing 161 Young, Iris Marion 36, 186 youth 105, 111 Yuval-Davis, Nira 62–3 Zemon Davis, Natalie 44 Zillah Eisenstein 191 zones, erogenous 160