Week 9--Expanding the Frontiers of Reading

Spivak's essay was somewhat confusing but one line that struck me was "Rhys suggests that so intimate a thing as personal and human identity might be determined by the politics of imperialism." The thought of government having so much control over its people is scary. This made me think of our discussion about home. Some said that home was a place that they thought somewhat identified them, and home is a personal thing. Putting our discussion of home in the context of the quoted statement adds a new perspective to our discussion. There are some parts of the world that are controlled by government like China or places where there is war or was war. For example, in Persepolis, in Iran there were so many rules created by the government about the people and how they should live their lives. Satrapi thought of her home as her identity, and for a good amount of her life it was controlled by the government.  

I was very interested in Moya's discussion of Malinche because she is a figure that I have discussed earlier this semester in the context of my Historical Imagination course. Something that was discussed in both courses was the idea of Malinche as a betrayer of "her people."

I certainly agree with Moya's statement that "Haraway's reading of the Malinche myth ignores the complexity of the situation" (Moya 131). However, I think that Haraway's most crutial mistake is viewing Malinche's betrayal (if we can even consider it one) as that of a sexual nature rather than as one based in language. The sexual "transgression" (if you can call it that) of having a child with a Spanish conquistador is something that became common, though I think that a discussion about rape (which I do not have enough information to accurately explain) is necessary to fully understand the sexual relationships between the male conquerers and the female conquered. I think that Malinche's more important "transgression" is that of language and if she can be viewed as a betrayer of "her people" I think that the linguistic nature of her involvement with the Spainards was more of a detriment to the people of ancient Mexico than any personal or sexual involvement with the Spainards could ever have been.

Further, I think that in claiming she is a betrayer, we need to be very careful in placing her in a context that was not present in her time and place. I cannot be certain how Malinche would have defined her "home," but I think that assuming that she did (or should have) felt an alliance with all of the people living on the same peninsula as her is quite a stretch. I think that in doing so, perhaps we are applying a sense of community that is present within the Latina community today (maybe because of a common language?) but was not the case for Malinche. It is also important to remember that, as far as "her people" were concerned, Malinche was a slave. I am not sure that anyone would feel a great deal of loyalty to "a people" (though I really do believe that considering the people of ancient Mexico as one people, the matter is being oversimplified) who enslaved them. I think that we really need to re-evaluate our conception of Malinche as a betrayer by considering how Malinche herself would have defined her "home" and whether or not this would have been based upon the people, the land, or many of the other factors we have discussed in class. I think that in general we (as a society) need to be more careful about our comfort with retrospectively defining who someone is and applying our conception of "home" to their actions and experiences.

            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).

A thought that came to mind during discussion last class was the idea that a biracial person sometimes feels as though she has to choose which race she identifies as, and when she doesn't, the world still asks, "what race are you REALLY?" And the idea that people self-edit and airbrush in their minds to really observe the race of another person. I made this connection to our discussion of transgendered people, and the idea that the world self-edits in its observation of gender. So, then, I asked myself, is being mixed race but considering oneself black essentially the same as a transgendered person considering themselves one sex they don't necessarily have the genes of? And is "passing" as a black person essentially the same as "passing" as a man or woman? More importantly, what are the differences between these two categories, race and gender, that might make "passing" in each category a distinct endeavor?

Moraga talks of being seen as a different color by people of different colors. From her writing, it almost seems as though people want her to fit in with their race. White people see her as white, latina people see her as darker. For a man transitioning to woman, the women might not be so quick to welcome him into their community, because of certain bodily appearances that might make it impossible for him to "pass" as a woman. This goes back to the theory of socially constructed gender. So, then, if gender transitions are in fact harder to make than racial transitions, is the body a more important statement than a home?

“And as long as injustice prevails, we do not have the luxury of calling ourselves either.” 

      I was thinking about the in class discussion of this quote. As was mentioned, it is difficult to form a racial/ethnic/national identity if there is not equal representation and respect of cultures. In forming an identity, one feels torn over placing priority of one racial/ethnic/national identity over another. Most of the discussion of identity was centered on doing justice to the minority culture.  

           While the discussion of identity was worthwhile, I felt we neglected the people who have started to lose the connection with their heritage.  Personally, I feel detached from my Bolivian heritage. When my father came to the States, he faced discrimination because he was viewed as a foreigner. He hoped his children wouldn’t face the same situation. Because he felt his accent caused people to treat him differently, he didn’t teach his children how to speak Spanish. In high school, I became curious about this “lost” half of my heritage. As I visited my family in La Paz and struggled to learn Spanish, I started to feel that I would not be able to fit in either Bolivian or American culture completely. I felt guilty about losing the connection with this heritage and ashamed of way I would pass with heritage that was easier. It can be difficult to define views on Latino/a culture because I don’t feel worthy critiquing the culture I lost a connection with. Forming an ethnic/racial/national identity is complicated by this mystery space which is usually filled by guilt.

      This “empty” space complicates my views on what feminism is and what it means to me. I find myself using broad terms and avoiding specifics. As I considered a potential universal feminism, its definition is similar to my metamorphosing definition of feminism. It would be openness to varying sexual/gender/ethnic/racial/national/political/religious identities. There would be the freedom to develop and express this identity without fear of persecution. Of course this accepting environment wouldn’t happen over night, so feminism would work to create and support these communities.

I am currently taking a Political Psychology course in which we focus on inter-group conflict and the causes of genocide and terrorism. In class the other day, my professor, Rick McCauley, presented the concept of feminism and asked the class to consider why there has never been violent group conflict surrounding feminism/gender. I have been thinking about this question the past couple of days and have come up with a few ideas.

1. Most groups that move towards violent conflict feel threatened due to an awareness of their mortality. A group will attempt to defeat other groups in an effort to outlast them and establish a kind of immortality. Women, like men, will never be immortal. As long as humans exist, approximately half of them will be female. Thus neither gender experiences a sense of immortality.
2. You cannot have a self-perpetuating, self-reproducing gender group. The two sexes exhibit a mutual dependence in terms of reproduction. This inability to isolate the group limits the cohesiveness and thus the saliency of an individual's gender identity.
3. I would argue that the current feminist agenda is about breaking down boundaries; thus, essentializing the outgroup and acting negatively towards it would be counterproductive.The feminist mission is one of inclusion not exclusion. The inclusive nature of feminism is also significant in that it pulls individuals from all sorts of different groups together...men, women, black, whites, latinos, etc.... making it difficult to essentialize the ingroup or the outgroup. I'm not even sure if feminists have an essence.

My professor then asked why women's sports have not been an arena for feminists to rally behind. Are they upset that male sports get more attention and money?

My feeling is that sports are a difficult topic for feminists because professional athletics depend upon a gender binary. Perhaps feminists would argue that all genders should compete together, but many people would disagree, saying that this is not a fair competition because men are naturally stronger, faster, etc. At this point, feminists would then have to confront the issue of whether there is a biological difference between genders. Are men really stronger? More athletically capable? This is a very messy topic.

Finally, and this is totally separate, I was interested in Ingrid's comment on Tuesday that feminism should fight to celebrate gender, not erase it. I entirely agree. I think that it might be easier to work towards an acceptance of all genders than an elimination of gender. I think that the problem is not gender but gender roles and the gender binary.

In Moya's article, she discusses different views of "difference", and how these views relate to feminism and identity.  Towards the beginning of the article, she discusses the fact that postmodern theorists want to shows that " 'difference' is merely a discursive illusion'" (126).  What does this mean for the feminist movement.  It seems that historically, one of the key points of the feminist movement has been that women occupy a different place from men in society.  Would a postmodern theory erase this difference?  In another one of the classes, we have been talking about postmodernism and poststructuralism, and the ways in which these theorists deal with words, groups or categories.  From my understanding, postmodernists believe that categories, and reality in general, is constructed.  If we are to say that the idea of male or female is constructed, and that in reality, everyone is the same, is there a need for feminism?  As a point of clarification, I would like to discuss what exactly postmodern feminist theory is.  

I am also interested in the claim that Moya makes that "the feminist scholar who persists in using categories such as "race" or "gender" can be presumably charged with essentialism..." (126).  Can feminism be called essentialist?  This makes me think back to Three Guineas, when Wolf questions her ability to even respond to the man's letter because she is a woman.  It seems to me, though, that by fighting for equal rights, women are combating this essentialist notions by saying that there is nothing that is completely male or completely female.   

Moving on through Moya's article, I found the section on Chicana history most interesting.  In order to consider anyone's identity, it is essential to consider where that person came from.  To me, it should be these different identities, these different backgrounds, that form a modern feminist movement and make is special and unique.