NEWS & LETTERS, December 2009
NWSA Experiences
An unprecedented number of sessions at the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) Conference took up "intersectionality" and women of color. While approaches varied from religious veneration of "foremothers" like Audré Lorde to dialoguing between "the academy and the streets," to a recognition that "activism without dialogue cannot sustain us," women's passion to be multi-dimensional was unmistakable.
One presenter saw Black feminism as an alternative to the "either/or" gender categories reflected in hip-hop culture, and stressed that Black feminist musicians Erykah Badu, Goapele, India.Arie and Jill Scott all are linked to organizations which assist young Black women. But another, rather than developing the revolutionary social implications of Audré Lorde's writing, saw it leading to spiritual practice.
In contrast, Layali Eshqaidef explored how Muslim youth use social networking technologies to change the discourse: blogging as a social movement. In 2007 Egyptian women came together via their blogs to write about the same thing on a given day: "We are All Laila." Between Dec. 24-30 they are expanding this to the whole Arab world. Eshqaidef said the movement is calling for social justice and is anti-war, anti-capitalism and against patriarchy, is non-violent, inclusive, for democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Directors of Women's Studies programs "who are still committed to the liberatory work that brought us to feminism from different racial, ethnic and class locations" conducted a powerful session to share ways they "sustain this vision." Dr. Becky Thompson said we need to think about the radicalism that informed women's studies and use guerilla strategies to diversify our programs. She used "indigenous methods" to search for and hire a Native American professor, overcoming the mantra that there are no qualified candidates.
Dr. Diane Harriford related that her white, upper-middle-class students read Black feminist texts as somehing happening to others. She is developing methods to overcome that alienation.
Dr. Ruth Zambrana spoke of the relationship between Latina feminism and Black feminist thought and their needed collaboration. Latinas and Latina feminism are extremely heterogeneous; it is time to move beyond Borderlands (a groundbreaking book by Gloria Anzaldúa). Dr. Kesho Scott insisted, "Don't do any more diversity work unless it's about power-sharing!"
Several visitors to the News and Letters Committees literature table were glad of a Marxist presence, especially one that made explicit Marx's feminist dimension. Many women of color wanted to share the difficult dialogues that brought them there and to continue to develop them in a quest to end artificial borders and the limits of academia.
--Susan Van Gelder
|
