Cartographies of Conflict & Collaboration

1. Cartographies of Conflict & Collaboration Trinh T. Minh-ha on the women's movement: "I see the women's movement as being necessarily heterogeneous in its origin, even though it may be claimed more readily by certain groups and remains largely white in its visibility. On the one hand, I readily acknowledge my debt to the movement in all the reflections advanced on the oppression of women of color. On the other hand I also feel that a critical space of differentiation needs to be maintained since issues specificially raised by Third World women have less to do with questions of cultural difference than with a different notion of feminism itself--how it is lived and how it is practiced. Naming yourself a feminist is not without problem, even among feminists. In a context of marginalizaion, at the same time as you feel the necessity to call yourself a feminist while fighting for the situation of women, you also have to keep a certain latitude and to refuse that label when feminism tends to become an occupied territory. Here, you refuse, not because you don't want to side with other feminists, but simply because it is crucial to keep open the space of naming in feminism." ("Between Theory and Poetry," in Framer Framed.)

2. What has changed since Reassemblage? • Anthropology: self-reflexive turn, reverse anthropology • Debate about how to get beyond the impossibility of representation • Diverse stories of empowerment: Woman is depicted as the one who possessed the fire/ Only she knew how to make fire. • Listening for differently inflected feminist voices • Feminist historiography: reading the historical archive against the grain to excavate the international linkages that forged feminism from the get-go

3. Diverse Foremothers • From whom we can learn new forms of praxis, deconstruct our own assimilation of “the master’s tools,” and draw connections between how certain forms of power articulate with one another.

4. Emmeline Pankhurst (1914)“Is there anything more marvelous in modern times than the kind of spontaneous outburst in every country of this women’s movement. Even in China--and I think it somewhat of a disgrace to Englishmen--even in China women have won the vote, as an outcome of a successful revolution.”

5. Qiu Jin (1875-1907)

6. Audre Lorde/Afrekete(1934-1992)[r]ecreating in words the women who helped give me substance: Ma-Liz, DeLois, Louise Briscoe, Aunt Anni, Linda, and Genevieve; MawuLisa,thunder, sky, sun, the great mother of us all; and Afrekete, her youngest daughter, the mischievous linguist, trickster, best-beloved, whom we must all become.

7. Jamila BouhereidAlgerian woman who played an instrumental role in the Algerian resistance against the colonial French forces.

8. Huda Sha’rawi meeting with women from various Arab Countries. Sha’rawi was the founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union, who called for the ban of the veil at the beginning of the twentieth century.

9. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House “Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance, and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of black and third world women to educate white women, in the face of tremendous resistance, as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought.” --Audre Lorde

10. Mohanty: “…it is not just Third World women who are or should be concerned about race, just as feminism is not just the purview of women.”

11. As Cynthia Enloe reminds us: “Silence has made us dumb.” Listening seriously to feminist voices that emerge from situations different for ours is essential to understanding how power works: “All of us, as a result, are likely to become much smarter, more realistic about what kinds of power have constructed the international political system as we know it.” “Paying serious attention to women can expose how much power it takes to maintain the international political system in its present form.” -Enloe

12. Feminism is something open and changing, that challenges the status quo, but also to be challenged when it produces hegemonic status quo understandings of gender that presume a singular, universal gendered experience. • Feminism is expressed in a broad range of rhetorical styles and modes, from outrage to outreach, from theory to testimonial. While we may be more comfortable in certain registers, this does not make one more authentic than others. Neither poetry nor theory is a luxury. Both require a commitment to learn to listen and to creatively explore difficult territory. • Feminism in the US is always already international, even though these roots may be erased or forgotten (Examples: “black is beautiful” and “the personal is political.”)

13. Cynthia Enloe’s questions: Where are the women? What does adding women into the picture do? How do powerful political actors on the world stage use certain women and certain ideas about women to pursue their goals? Feminism is not just an additive exercise. It requires more than just adding women in. Considering how gender (masculinity constructed in relation to femininity) organizes the world (how gender makes the world go round) fundamentally changes how we understand and analyze history, society, politics, and economics.

14. The Global Victim & The Problem of Essentialism

15. Gender is man-made, not essential. Women are not just acted upon; they also shape, resist, and reshape gender norms. Complexity of women in regimes of power that oppress other women, for example the “Victorian lady travelers” who gained independence through travel but reinforced European colonialism. World’s Fairs and racist models of hierarchical progress reinforced white feminine norms (female domesticity as “civilized”) in the U.S. Women in diverse situations are articulate about inequality and strategies for coping. Hope and potential: If the world has been made; therefore it can be remade. It can be taken apart and reassembled.

16. Terms & Debates International • Between • Highlighting the nation-state unit • Scholars focused on the continued, organizing power of national borders and the relations between women or feminisms defined by national definitions, rules, and regulations

17. Terms & Debates Transnational • Across • Highlighting movements that cross national borders • Scholars interested in analyzing women’s agency in a globalizing context; how women build alliances across national borders • As a corrective to idea of global sisterhood

18. Terms & Debates Third World • Mohanty: “geographical location and sociohistorical conjuncture: incorporates minority peoples or people of color in the U.S.” • She is arguing for it as a political not a purely descriptive term. • Link between feminist and political liberation movements. • First and Third is not just rhetorical, but recognizes material inequality based on a long history of slavery, enforced migration, plantation and indentured labor, colonialism, imperial conquest, and genocide.

19. Cartographies of Struggle • Think about Enloe’s example of tourism in “On the Beach: Sexism and Tourism” • How might we identify cartographies of struggle that emerge in tourism using configurations of power presented by Mohanty: • colonialism, class, and gender • the state, citizenship, and racial formation • multinational production and social agency