Myths: good, bad, mixed, problematized....

As you come into class today, please sit with your class partner/s (not necessarily your workshop 1 team, although perhaps these are the same people). We will begin with an exercise with your class partner/s. 


POWER, MOVEMENTS, WORLDS: FEMINISMS IN THE PLURAL, FEMINISTS IN MOVEMENT



 – Feminist Myths: Davis Part II
 – Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Dill
 – Transnational Body: Davis Part III
 – Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Yuval-Davis [& Guidroz] 



Tuesday 23 Oct – WORKSHOP #1
Thursday 25 Oct – WORKSHOP #1 : LOGBOOK 2 DUE

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So you see here the shape of the next section of the course, and how it culminates in our first workshop. We have already finished Zandt (yes, you should have read all of it by now), and we will be finishing up Davis, while reading ahead in Berger for tools to use for projects for workshop 1. Remember what it is about?

•    Workshop 1: Power, Movements, Worlds

For our first workshop you will create either a paper or poster  in order to explore how feminists analyze how power structures our worlds. (Whether you are doing a paper or a poster has already been determined by lot; if you don't know which one you are doing, talk to Katie asap!) 

You will explore two class texts carefully, and chose EITHER 

• to analyze Zandt’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Davis’ The Making of Our Bodies, Our Selves; OR 
• to analyze Davis’ book through the analysis (eyes, lens) of Zandt’s Share This! 

Davis’ book explores power in transnational and transdisciplinary frames. NOTICE what it demonstrates and assumes about what counts as power, which social movements matter, and how worlds are connected across differences. 

Zandt’s book explores accessibility and the currency of social media today. NOTICE who is addressed in this book, and why? 

No matter which of these approaches you take, also NOTICE that you will need to do some additional research. 

You will need to find out more about the various editions of the book Our Bodies, Our Selves, and you will need to play around with social media yourself, and do some web research checking out both Our Bodies, Our Selves and also how feminists today are using social media, as well as how social media and marketing are interconnected. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.

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Tuesday 4 Oct – Feminist Myths in a Feminist Politics of Knowledge
•    Davis Part II, read all of it (chs 3, 4, 5)

Why does Davis connect “empowerment” and “bewitchment”? What’s her point here? And why might a “colonialist trope” be contrasted with something called a “critical epistemology?” What are feminist subjects and why do they need to be created? How does Davis make us aware of the time periods involved?

Davis, 85-6: the feminist myth in action:

• "make sense of their history"
• "an origin story"
• "become agents of historical change"
• "heroic tale with plucky female protagonists who bravely take on a series of powerful adversaries...and come out victorious."
•"a family saga about a group of women who created an enduring personal bond that enabled their political project to survive and thrive for more than three decades."
• "constructing a history that made sense in different and sometimes contradictory ways."
• "understand their individual and collective experiences at different periods"
• "provided the motor for the group's activism."
• "generated a powerful symbolic imagery" that allowed for global impact
•"a shadow side": "deny or gloss over events in the present that did not fit their collective sense of who they were or what their project was about"
• "an impediment to a more historically informed and self-reflexive understanding of themselves and their project"

From the Wikipedia on "myth":
"The term 'myth' is often used colloquially to refer to a false story, but academic use of the term does not pass judgment on truth or falsity. In the study of folklore, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form. Many scholars in other fields use the term 'myth' in somewhat different ways. In a
very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story."

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Thursday 6 Oct – Intersectionality’s Foundations
•    Berger Part I: Dill’s essay Why would Dill start off with the notion of sisterhood? “All-inclusive”? What does that mean? What can you learn about feminism in 1983 that will help you understand why she is approaching these issues the way she does? 

DOWNLOAD DAVIS ON INTERSECTIONALITY FOR NEXT CLASS! PDF HERE.

What IS a buzzword?
Wikipedia says (what do you think? compare to "myth" as Davis also uses?)

"A buzzword (also fashion word) is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon[1] that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context, often in an inaccurate manner, or for purposes other than the conveying of information.

"Buzzwords differ from jargon in that jargon is esoteric but precisely defined terminology used for ease of communication between specialists in a given field, whereas a buzzword (which often develops from the appropriation of technical jargon) is often used in a more general way, inaccurately or inappropriately. 

"A person who chooses to use buzzwords may have one or more of the following objectives:

• Intentional vagueness. In management or politics, opaque words of unclear meaning may be used: their positive connotations prevents questioning of intent. The most notable essay on this theme is George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" [2] (See newspeak)
• A desire to impress a judge, an examiner, an audience, or a readership, or to win an argument, through name-dropping of esoteric and poorly understood terms in an attempt to inflate trivial ideas to something of importance.

Therefore a phrase is not in itself a buzzword: it becomes one in the context of inappropriate usage or usage with an ulterior motive."
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problematize, criticize, critique, debunk 
socialist feminism   
bourgeois individualism 

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

• using privileges of class and race to get into public sphere despite the disadvantages of gender 

• calling into question the politics of personal experience as decentering experiential differences (of power by race and class) that are structural 

• "sisterhood" as feminist myth, usable by some more than others, with its shadow side. 

• women of color, inside, rejecting, along side, pushed outside, uninterested in, accomplishing other justice goals.... 

earning "sisterhood" -- not given, but part a shared struggle -- whose struggles shared with who else? standpoint and shared struggle -- what about anger and power?

salience and intersections: intersectionality   

oppositional consciousness and chicana theories and mythologies of malinche   

how many "intersections"? should any be "centered"? when about all women of color and when about particular groups of women of color? why might it be important to center particular women of color, when and for what reasons? can intersectionality itself be critiqued? what does that entail?

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history, memory, iconicity. 

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