Connecting across differences....

Tuesday 11 Oct – Transnational Body/Politics
•    Davis Part III, read all of it (ch 6, reread 7); also read Davis’ essay on intersectionality (link for pdf online)

How is Davis’ analysis of OBOS similar to her analysis of intersectionality? (Don’t get sidetracked by the term “buzzword” in her title for the intersectionality article, or at least not at first. Consider it AFTER you have made your comparisons, and think about what other terms might have been better? boundary object, buzzword, traveling theory) 


• acquiring new body understandings: Davis, p. 173: after translations of OBOS required inventing new words to express emotional care for one's body, one translator said: "I have developed a much greater love for my own body. It is not merely that I have to know it better but that I feel that I have learned new ways of experiencing the world differently."   

individualism from • POV Spanish translation (177, 180); • POV Bulgarian translation (189) :: different contexts, different oppositions; one expresses isolation from community resources & support, different from consumer health care commodified individually. the other expresses resistance to totalitarian structures, impersonal and collectivist in the worst sense, different from self-care and self-assertion needed both personally and socially. THINK NECKER CUBE: first one face, then another

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Thursday 13 Oct – Making Intersectionality Transnational?
•    Foundations Intersectionality, Berger Part I: Yuval-Davis’ essay Why does Yuval-Davis start off with a little history of intersectionality? “All-inclusive”? Transversal? What can you learn about feminism in 2006 that will help you understand why she is approaching these issues the way she does? What other kinds of articles were being published in the journal European Journal of Women’s Studies in 2006? In other feminist journals in countries other than the US? What other feminist journals were big internationally in 2006? 

sedentism from Wikipedia  
sedentarism in Nomadic Studies 

Wikipedia versions "intersectionality": 

2005; 2007; 2010; 2011 

By 2007: includes line: "Collins' theory is one of particular interest because it represents the sociological crossroads between modern and post-modern feminist thought."  

By 2010: added: "Theories of intersectionality increasingly also address the more than human. Examples of posthuman intersectionality include ecofeminism and are under development in the field of animal studies."

=another line of argument, some including critique of multiculturalism, others centered around legal issues, others around academic disciplinary and other methodologies:

Gordon and Newfield, 1996, Mapping Multiculturalism 
critical race theory from Wikipedia  
Crenshaw on intersectionality, google scholar  1989, 1991, 1994 
Dill essay in FS 1983
Yuval-Davis essay in EJWS 2006 (23 yrs later) 
Davis on intersectionality 2008, bk OBOS 2007
Berger book beginning with Dill, 2009 

=& non-centering critiques of white women's movement from postcolonial, postmodernisms, Chicana feminisms: 

Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, 2000
postcolonial feminism from Wikipedia  
oppositional consciousness in Sandoval 2000
differential consciousness in Sandoval 2000  


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Collins book first published 1991. Then it was substantially revised in 2000. 

Patricia Hill Collins: Black Feminist Thought (2000):

p. 228: putting black women at the center without privileging their consciousness

• transversal politics: both/and thinking: varying expressions of power, distinctive forms of participation in domination and resistance
• US black women could be both penalized and privileged. So could others be.

boundary object III: some use intersectionality for this "transversal politics"
or even matrix of domination

p. 247: groups only have partial perspective on their own experiences
• and thus need critical self-reflection (think: violated assumptions?)
• groups police each other, making coalition difficulty

p. 248: no absolute oppressors or victims
• groups find some oppression more salient than others

p. 268: Elsa Barkley Brown: everyone can learn to pivot their "center. 
• everyone can learn to center in another experience, and, in this case, to engage "black feminist thought"