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Like many of us expressed on Tuesday, I also had a somewhat oppositional reaction to Linda Kauffman's ideas about personal testimony, as well as to her notion of striving for justice rather than happiness. After reading Jessy's (very well written) post, I can see that perhaps we took her ideas a little out of context, since it does seem that she's largely talking about academic writing and not necessarily feminism as a whole, or even just daily interactions. I do find it interesting how we all jumped to that conclusion, though.

I was actually thinking a lot about the notion that claiming authority through personal testimony is a conversation stopper, and whether that really is a bad thing in different contexts. For the feminist movement itself, I do not think it's been a bad thing at all. Looking at Sojourner Truth's speech, "Arn't I A Woman?"... the whole thing is personal testimony, isn't it? In a sense, I suppose it did succeed in "stopping the conversation." After all, no one can really say her feelings are invalid... instead, they have to stop and listen and accept that she knows what she's talking about since she's lived it. But that doesn't have to be the end of the discussion, either... and it wasn't, then or now. We used it as a starting point of discussion in this very class, didn't we?

Different people see problems from very diverse perspectives; as readers, writers, speakers, and classmates, we need to remember that there is not one right answer to, or one absolute authority on, any given matter. If we can listen to those with more experience and not be tempted to clam up, or to automatically agree, then I don't see the issue with personal testimony, in literature or everyday conversation. In fact, to a certain extent, I think that personal testimony can even serve to further a conversation. I could sit around and discuss life in the rural southern US with someone from New York, but I probably wouldn't learn as much as I would if someone from the south were involved in that conversation as well. Instead of drawing on my minimal knowledge of the south in that conversation, though, I would probably be asking that person questions and trying to learn from his/her experience. Isn't that still considered a dialogue... asking questions of someone who has experiences to share? Does having a dialogue necessarily mean that everyone has to be coming from the very same place... have the very same level of knowledge (or lack thereof)? If that more experienced person were to sit back and listen to us talk about the world he/she is so familiar with, but not claim her relative authority on the subject, we would be missing out on a great learning experience. Not only that, but she would be missing out on the chance to take the discussion in directions the other participants couldn't have imagined.

As readers, we cannot look at the text and ask it questions. It (or rather, the writer of it) has to find a way to present its topic in a way that is both informative and unpretentious. I can see how personal testimony can be unprofessional in the context of academic writing, but I also think that it, once again, can serve to stimulate dialogue rather than "limiting the possibilities for dialog and inquiry" (as Jessy put it in her above posting). Used primarily as a means of portraying authority and expertise, I can see personal testimony as stopping the dialogue in a bad way. Used as a way to bring another point of view into the arena, I can see it as being a way to add to the reader's knowledge rather than make the reader feel hesitant to form his/her own view on the topic at hand. I think it depends on how the reader chooses to take the writer's assertions just as much as it depends on whether the writer makes those assertions in the first place.

... well, now that I've gone on about that for such a long time, I just wanted to close with my thoughts about Kauffman's statement that she "never thought feminism was about happiness... [but] thought it was about justice" (274). I think that this idea is useful, even if it's not taken 100% literally. To me, feminism is about both: it has a personal aspect as well as a more public aspect. We sort of decided in class that justice can be considered the happiness of all, which is how civil rights ties into it... and I agree with that. But I also think that feminism operates on the level of the individual woman and her own choices and feelings towards being a woman in addition to the impact on women as a whole. I think it's good to remember that, as feminists, our ultimate goal is to achieve happiness and justice for everyone involved... but I do not think that we have to necessarily abandon our own personal journeys in order to effect large-scale change.