While I'm bored with jason/kylie exchange, and admit that time constraints
(this is the first day of school here in Houston, I'm two syllabi short!)
forced me to skim the article Jason appended to his post, I do think a di
discussion of identity politics might be a useful way to 1. bring us back to
an exchange of feminist thought and 2. create some room to talk about _why_
feminism and environmentalism go (or can go) together.
If IP really is just a list of subject positions used as essentialisms to grant
or deny authority to speak, then of course, it has no use for any liberatory
movement. But my understanding of IP is closer to what Sandra Harding calls
for in her "strong objectivity." IShe uses the language of "standpoin" and
makes clear that a standpoint is not assumed/essential (I see this as the
objection to IP) but is _achieved_. Blending experience and analysis, we claim,
eventually and provisionally, a standpoint from which we examine the world.
Hrding's point is that feminist scholars begin from the standpoint o,
all the while recognizing the plurality of that category.
So this seems to me to be where feminist and environmentalism intersect: it's
a historically and materially based understanding of women's standpoints (our
parallel construction with "nature" etc) that makes ecofeminism viable and that
also makes room for women to critique science and rationality. (Just to Jason:
you asked for examples of your patronizing attitude, and here I see one. At
one point in your latest post, you made a rather blanket statement about f
feminism rejecting or dismissing sciene and rationality. You're speaking
from an assumed (male) position of authority to de-authorize a huge and diverse
body of feminist scholarship about science and rationality. A few months ago
I might have just read and processed your comment, thought vaguely thereafter
that feminism was anti-science or anti-rationality... you see the impact of
your language. But I've recently spend six weeks drenched in feminist epist-
emologies, from phil of science to embodied knowledges, and never did I read or
hear a rejection of science or rationality. It's a very comlicated field of
thought. One other thing, when you said that you'd been accused of sexism and
that the charge had never been detailed, you're right, it wasn't. But as a
reader of your post, perhaps as a woman, I didn't feel the details were needed.
The validity of the charge was self-evident. The same thing, I think, happens
in racism charges. The person who's made the racist blunder (even when well-
intentioned) indignantly waits for the charge to be explained, while the
offended group just shakes their heads and sighs. The point is not for us to
educate you about feminism any more than it is the responsibility of people of
color to educate white folks about our racisms. Take it upon yourself to listen
more than you talk in arenas in which your privilege works to limit your
awareness. Rather long ramble for one who has a syllabus to write!)
So my question is whether IP or standpoint theory is useful to ecofeminism or
does it (one more time) risk the _equation_ of women and nature that we seek
to dismantle?
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Aug 26 11:34:58 1996
Mon, 26 Aug 1996 13:27:48 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 13:27:48 -0400 (EDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susanne Romey)
Subject: Re: ECOFEM digest 480
Jason,
I am responding to the article you sent us by Daphne Patai.
An administrator at my university told me of a
>student activist who heatedly said: "Do you know who's teaching Spanish in
>the Spanish Department? Spaniards!" Nor do I take this merely as a joke; I
>have often wondered how soon it will be before someone suggests that my
>"identity" (North American) should cause me to cease teaching classes in one
>of my areas of research, Brazilian women.
As an ethnommusicologist, I have struggled with this myself. I can
understand why some people would think that it is "patronizing" to have an
occupation where one is considered an "expert" on a "third word" culture. I
believe it is necessary for scholars dealing with other cultures to continue
to examine their relationship to these cultures. I'm not suggesting that
the author has to give up teaching her classes, but I think she needs to
deal with this issue. I realize she probably is an "expert," but she needs
to understand why some people would have this question about what she is
doing.
Hope I'm not "jumping into the fray" here.
Suzanne
