Feminism without borders

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Mohanty, C. T. (2003) Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Contents 1 8. Race, multiculturalism, and pedagogies of dissent 1.1 The personal 1.2 Theory in action 1.3 "Disinterested [feminist] scholarship" 1.4 Difference 1.5 Teaching 1.6 Knowledge and location in the U.S. academy 1.7 Critical pedagogy 1.8 Black/ethnic studies and women's studies: intersections and confluences 1.9 Pedagogies of Accommodation/ Pedagogies of dissent 1.10 Politicizing the classroom experience (201) 1.11 Pedagogy of normative pluralism 1.12 Consciousness of injustice 1.13 Disrupting business as usual 1.14 The race industry and prejudice-reduction workshops

8. Race, multiculturalism, and pedagogies of dissent

"As a woman of color[,] there are vast differences in how I engage in feminist praxis." (190)

• Theory, "political education" used to link "personal" story w/ "larger stories" (191)

The personal

• Not "immediate feelings expressed confessionally" (191)
• "Something that is deeply historical and collective"
• Not static
• Changing via experiences, and with knowledge (191)

Theory in action

• "Theory is a deepening of the political" (191)
• Understanding race/class/gender/nation/etc not just as categories but as "histories and experiences" that interconnect us (191)
  • Relational

"Disinterested [feminist] scholarship"

• Inadvertently produces Western women as the only legitimate subjects of struggle (193)
• Mahanty proposes: "Solidarity" instead of "Sisterhood" (193)

Difference

• What kinds of difference are acknowledged, engaged? (193)
• Difference (not diversity) as struggle, conflict, located in history + implicated by power (193)

Teaching

• "Scholarship" not the only site for "the production of knowledge" about different people (194)
• Classroom is a "political and cultural" site
  • Contested knowledge, different "social constituencies" (194)

Knowledge and location in the U.S. academy

• Education represents both a struggle for meaning, struggle over power (Freire) (194-5)
• Departments such as women's studies
  • Attempt to resist incorporation
  • Assert space for "historically silenced peoples to construct knowledge" (195)

Critical pedagogy

• Requires reformulation of knowledge-as-accumulation (duh) (195)

Black/ethnic studies and women's studies: intersections and confluences

• Ethnic / women's studies programs linked to social movements (197)
• Created by universities (initially) during 1960s, to enable uni biz to continue while meeting demands of students (198)
• Alliances among these programs required for their mutually assured survival (200)

Pedagogies of Accommodation/ Pedagogies of dissent

• Education as means of liberation (200)
• "Decolonizing pedagogical practices" require critical inquiry into
  • Relation between knowledge/learning
  • Student/teacher experience
• Not just processing received knowledge from teacher to student
  • But "actively transforming knowledges" (202)

Politicizing the classroom experience (201)

• Authorizing, making space for multiple voices and dissent (202)
• Problem: students' takeaway overemphasises individual experience
  • "I have to be more sensitive to [...]"
• Problem: white students contribute nothing, are responsible to contribute nothing
  • People of color are central, voices of authority (203)

Pedagogy of normative pluralism

Cultural pluralism

• Emphasis on individual experience
• Each is separate, each is equally valid/ valuable (204)
• Does not address hierarchies, asymmetrical power relations

Consciousness of injustice

• Alexander says that engaging the binary supports the injustice

Disrupting business as usual

• Yance's caged performance (205)
• No mundane response possible (205)

The race industry and prejudice-reduction workshops