So, after shouting for months that we should talk about the essays in Radical Teacher, I finally found the time, betwixt semesters, to spend a morning reading through them. Sad, heartening, discouraging, inspirational….I want to include some of my reading notes here, and also some thoughts about next steps. And I want to invite y’all to think w/ me about what our “course” of action might be this spring. I’m ready to be more ambitious!

Do y'all remember reading, in our course on "The Rhetorics of Silence," Doris Sommer's analysis of Rigoberta Menchu? And her argument that we should be respectful of others' silences, others' secrets, not presume that we have 'the right to know'? I've just found out that, 10 years ago, she published two books about code-switching. Here's a description of the first:

When I first stepped onto Bryn Mawr’s campus in August I knew that at that moment I stepped into a different world than the one I left behind ten hours ago in North Carolina. The conversations I participated in this class certainly demonstrated this fact. I considered myself a feminist in high school because I was one of the only ones to stand up to people who said sexist comments. But, in the discussions in this class I found myself woefully uneducated on feminism in general. I found that many of my classmates seemed to have more knowledge about this subject and I think that is why I stayed silent in the beginning. I did not know what to say to some of your questions because I had never encountered or had to ask myself those questions before. I think that I was able to answer some of your questions for you, and for myself, more fully on Serendip, which after we talked, became a way for me to figure out my thoughts that I had not been able to articulate in class. As the class continued, however, I think that I did talk in class more. I certainly was not one of the most talkative people in class, but I felt like I was able to contribute. I also thought that I was able to articulate myself better in small groups than in the big group. Because we sometimes just worked in small groups I think that my voice came out more and I was able to think through my thoughts more.

Sports and Gender: Separate and Unequal

September 20, 1973 Billy Jean King took on Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes”. Riggs believed that he could beat King in tennis because even though she was the best woman tennis player, she was “just a woman.” That day in Houston, King came out on a gold litter carried by four brawny men while Riggs came out in a rickshaw pulled by scantily clad models whom he called “Bobby’s Bosom Buddies” (Schwartz). This visual display demonstrated the importance of this match not only for King to prove herself, but to prove that female athletes’ athletic ability rivaled males. She acknowledged how much pressure was on this game, "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match," she said. "It would ruin the women's tour and affect all women's self esteem" (Schwartz). King played for all women and she beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, and 6-3. He did not stand a chance. By proving women’s competitiveness in a male arena, the match set the tone for other women in the future.

When I first started posting, I felt inadequate in my knowledge of queer theory and I felt that my voice could not be validated but I grew to realize that I based a lot of my work on personal experiences and that was my theory. I was studying and reading things that I was living, so while I may not have been acquainted with the academic references to things, I definitely felt and lived them every day. This gave me the confidence to find and be secure in myself. I stopped being so timid and apprehensive about my work, and instead felt confident in my thoughts and ideas since the evidence came from my life. So, I feel that this class acted as the medium through which I gained access to my own voice and harbored confidence in it.

There are honestly no words to explain how much this class has changed my life.  Although learning the feminist academic "cannon" was "productive" and "useful", I think I have grown so much as a person, academic, and listener both in and outside of the classroom.  I have become more confident in speaking in MY VOICE--understanding that it is okay if other's do not "get" me and/or have experienced my journey through time/temporality.  Of course this has always been preached in the environments I have learned/worked in, but there has been NO TEACHER/PROFESSOR that actually embraces this theory through their own practice/pedagogy as Anne has.  

For me, this course chartered some serious unexpected territory, in doing so it broke some normative structures. As structures such as class and time were queered and cripped, so was I. As a result in many ways I excelled (explored) myself in many ways floundered (everything was late).  It is extraordinarily frustrating to see that the exceptional amount of reflection-- written and unwritten-- did not translate onto this virtual space throughout the semester. I recognize that this forum has been (en)abling for so many of my classmates who struggled in the classroom to share but for me Serendip was profoundly disabling. 

Cosmopolitan Canopy of Mawrters

I think I was honestly sad to write this paper because I knew that I would be addressing a harsh reality: Bryn Mawr, as an entire entity, is no longer my home.  Throughout the semester I have engaged in course materials, personal conversations, made observations, and MOST importantly met Anne—all of these things have led me to the conclusion that Bryn Mawr is not the cohesive community we advertise ourselves to be.  This is not to be confused with the idea that community does not exist in this space, and that there is the possibility for a more collective coalition to build—however Bryn Mawr as an institution has not been structured to facilitate an actual community where the needs of students are addressed in full.  Of course we have Access Services for academic accommodations, counseling center, dean’s office, the Pensby center, and various other systems of protocol in which standards are somewhat flexible in order to address the “most pressing” or “urgent” needs for students.  However many of these issues are considered to be individualistic, or micro-level, thus stifling communal solidarity amongst students, faculty, staff, and administrators due to student’s respective stigmas, shame, and silence about our ACTUAL discourse. 

I do not want to critique whether or not Beyoncé Knowles-Carter is a feminist or not.  As we have discussed in class “Feminism/Feminist” is a self-identifying term that too subjective due to the varied lived experiences and temporalities, in which women are stratified.  I wanted to write this paper given the exponential emergence of dialogues and opinions ((un-) expressed) within multiple spheres of feminist discourse, specifically between white feminists and black feminists, as well as intraracial dialogues within the black feminist community.  When I began to do my research I knew that I wanted to focus on the song “***Flawless”, IT IS MY FAVORITE SONG/VIDEO, but I also wanted to explore Beyoncé’s using Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TEDxEuston talk: “We Should All Be Feminists” on the track.  My favorite part about the song is the juxtaposition of the three different narratives: child/adolescent Beyoncé~ feminist mantra-festo~ Queen B, and her use of “criping time” by way of her somewhat cyclical, fragmented, segregated way of story telling: “I Woke Up Like This… Flawless”. 

I have throughout my education questioned the productivity of inserting the personal, the narrative, the emotion in classrooms and academia as a whole.  In a world populated by so many social ills it seems extraordinarily selfish to be obsessed with the self. In “The Long Goodbye: Against Personal Testimony, or An Infant Grifter Grows Up” Linda S Kauffman echoes this thought and asserts, “writing about yourself does not liberate you, it just shows how ingrained the ideology of freedom through self-expression is in our thinking” (269).  This is the same issue that Wendy Brown explores in her essay “Freedom’s Silences” in her analysis of “compulsory discursivity” as it relates to the current cultural obsession with persona testimonies. This “compulsory discursivity” has an amazing ability to co-opt and appropriate narratives of victimization. Brown wisely warns against casting silence as the opposite of speech, and uses Foucault’s insight into the paradoxical and ambiguous workings of silence to show how silence can be a barrier against power and a vehicle of power. The vehicle of power is potentially making the political personal, which is what Kauffman concludes when she writes,