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            I am reconsidering the phrase “politics of intimacy” in the face of our discussion on home, and what several people have posted about: that feminism is supposed to be about inclusion, not exclusion. On the one hand, I agree – feminism should be about inclusion. But, like the safety of homes, at what cost does this inclusion come? When Alex visited us, he claimed our classroom as a safe space. When Katie visited us, she talked about her brother’s worry that she would be hurt by going public. Both Katie and Alex have chosen to live their lives publicly in one way or another, but that’s not the only option. What has occasionally made me uncomfortable in this class is the level of personal sharing sometimes required by class discussions – name your categories, circle your gender stereo, give a metaphor for your home, etc. I recognize that opting out would no doubt be allowed, or that lying is always an option… but these moments paradoxically create both a public space (by forcing formerly private facts out in the open), and a politics of intimacy. As Anne mentioned once in class, we are able to list each others’ names, but these moments of required personal sharing perhaps move us towards ‘knowing’ each other…inasmuch as that is ever possible.

But must a politics of intimacy always involve making privacy public? I think it might, in that politics involves communication, and that is what Katie, Alex, Tamarinda, and Ingrid engaged in when they visited our class and told us their personal stories. But I also wonder about a politics that depends on disclosing your personal story. This hesitation is related to our discussion of whether or not it is appropriate to link experience with knowledge (I know about the X experience, because I am X. My own experience is what gives me the authority to speak about the experience of all of those who are like me), but it is also related to a point Takagi makes in her discussion of “coming out”. She writes: “To be out is really to be in – inside the realm of the visible, the speakable, the culturally intelligible” (27). I think this is more than just an issue of privacy, or of protecting yourself from other people’s assumptions. I think sometimes engaging in a politics of intimacy, or engaging in dialogue about “personal” or “private” aspects of yourself (however you define those aspects), can make you TOO easy to understand. Sometimes maintaining the liminal or mysterious position, while perhaps exclusive, means that you do not become “culturally intelligible”. You can’t be mainstreamed; your deviance cannot be absorbed into the dominant discourse. I guess what I am getting at with this is that inclusive is not always better than exclusive, that dialogue is not always better than silence… As Spivak suggests, there is existence “outside” the text. It may be marginal subjects who are outside and remain outside – women and monsters – but they are not necessarily excluded or oppressed. Rather, they “cannot be contained” (162).