Scholarship can advance feminist knowledge without claiming a feminist identity.
Evidence
In her essay, “Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness,” Sandra Bartky makes the point that “to be a feminist, one has first to become one.” She reminds us that just thinking about gender or lamenting the female condition “need not be an expression of feminist consciousness.” Indeed, many black women academics chose to focus attention on gender even as they very deliberately disavowed engagement with feminist thinking. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 225 (
#expands, via linked claim)
A good example of such a work is Deborah White’s Ain’t I a Woman. Published after Ain’t I a Woman, this work, whether intentionally or not, mirrored my work’s concern with rethinking the position of black women in slavery. (White makes no reference to my work—a fact which is only important because it coincides with the absence of any mention of feminist politics.) Indeed, one can read White’s work as a corrective to interdisciplinary nontraditional academic work that frames the study of women within a feminist context. She presents her work as politically neutral scholarship. Yet, the absence of feminist standpoint or references pointedly acts to delegitimize and invalidate such work even as it appropriates the issues and the audience feminist movement and feminist scholarship creates. Given that so little solid academic factual work is done to document our history, White’s work is a crucial contribution even though it exposes the ambiguous relationship many black women scholars have to feminist thought. — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 230 (
#contradicts, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Gender scholarship that omits feminist framing undermines the very movement it depends on — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 230; Black women scholars avoided declaring feminism for fear of losing black male patronage — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 226; Scholars can reject received difference-categories without standing apart from the politics they study. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 291 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Studying gender does not require or imply feminist consciousness
#expands(0.90) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 225 - Gender scholarship that omits feminist framing undermines the very movement it depends on
#contradicts(0.88) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 230 - A feminist classroom is distinguished by perspective, not course listing
#exemplifies(0.83) - Black women scholars avoided declaring feminism for fear of losing black male patronage
#exemplifies(0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 226 - Precolonial women leaders act feminist without the concept existing.
#exemplifies(0.80) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 983 - Scholars can reject received difference-categories without standing apart from the politics they study.
#expands(0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 291 - Superior scholarship can displace hegemonic frameworks without direct polemic against them
#expands(0.76) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 544 - Scholarship cannot be politically neutral
#complicates(0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 825 - A scholar’s ideological agenda does not invalidate the findings of their research
#qualifies(0.74) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 536 - Scholarly criticism can refine a field without changing its structural function.
#complicates(0.73) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 341