Theory/Class Debates at NWSA

This year's National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) Conference was a step up from last year's (see "Need to dig into revolutionary theory," Aug.-Sept. 2007 N&L) where depoliticalization was stark and the emphasis was on "performance." Last year there was no political plenary; this year Black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins gave the keynote speech. Several of the "Presidential Sessions" also revealed a political content, including "Feminist Theories of Globalization and Empire," and "Conversation with Paula Giddings about Ida: A Sword Among Lions, facilitated by Beverly Guy-Sheftall."

ABSTRACT THEORY REIGNS

What surprised me was the abstract nature of Patricia Hill Collins' talk. Collins, known for her Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, tried to link racism, sexism, and empire. She did so by establishing new categories of "erasing race" and "racelessness." They are a part of what she sees as the "new racism," where so-called "colorblindness" is actually used to maintain racial hierarchy and "racelessness" is used to savage affirmative action. "Colorblindness" sounds like a good thing--not to let race determine one's judgment--but is actually a way to avoid seeing social inequalities.

She tried to link these ideas to feminist analysis and world politics by introducing feminist theory notions of the opposition between the private and public sphere. Women traditionally occupy the private sphere, the home, family. Here racism can flourish unchallenged because it is a private domain and nobody's business. The public sphere, traditionally occupied by men, is where business and government reign. The link she made, which took the form of an assertion, was that the public sphere appears, but is not, "colorblind" and decisions are supposedly made for "objective" reasons; unlike the private sphere, where unchallenged racism can run rampant. The public sphere is advanced capitalism and its supposedly raceless markets, and the domestic or private sphere is nation states whose "family" is its citizenship. All this and more was bookended by looking at the Miss America and Miss World beauty pageants!

And although she did talk about "capitalism" and "global capitalism," and is clearly opposed to both, Collins did not project any concept of an alternative, no socialism, no revolution.

The abstract nature of her talk was starkly revealed by a question from a Palestinian professor/activist. She questioned Collins' theoretical edifice of public and private by telling of how so-called private space, the home, becomes a public political space of struggle--a "site of resistance"--as the Israeli army routinely demolishes the homes of Palestinians. She also spoke of how governments work to spread fear. But Collins just didn't get it. Not only didn't she address the question of private spheres becoming contested public space, as is revealed in the unconscionable and illegal demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army, she talked about fear only as it impacted intellectuals in the U.S. But what the Palestinian woman was speaking of was the deliberate brutalization of ordinary citizens in order to make it impossible for them to live their lives in either public or so-called private spaces.

CLASS CHALLENGE

What always makes NWSA worthwhile is the constant tension within the organization between those who want it to be an academic professional organization, and those who work to make it more activist oriented, to be what it claims to be in its constitution: The academic arm of the women's liberation movement. This was seen at our workshop on "The Relationship of Marxist-Humanism to Struggles Against Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, and Globalized Capitalism," where 30 came to be part of the discussion. The only workshop to have the word Marx as part of the title, women came because they wanted to learn about Marxist-Humanism, and as one Black woman told me later, we were one of the few workshops explicitly on class.

Class took center stage at the "Tribute to Black Feminist Thought" Friday night. There Emi Koyama, a genderqueer community activist, told us all that though she is broke and her organization is not a 501(c)(3), and even though she was invited by NWSA to be on the panel, they refused her any funding whatsoever. She had to fundraise in order to get there and give NWSA a working class and genderqueer face. Her audience was outraged, and some stepped up to help her right then and there.

There is a large rank-and-file NWSA membership that wants NWSA to really be the intellectual link between activism and academia. These women are looking for radical answers and a way to revitalize the women's movement and avoid the mistakes of the past. The question is: Is NWSA up to meeting the challenge?

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