Kathryn Sears – Ella Shohat,
Introduction to Talking Visions:
Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age
Ella
Shohat’s introduction to Talking Visions:
Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age is a hot bed of ten-cent
words and terms that are individually ripe for discussion, but in her greater
argument, offer a dense, yet seemingly more applicable methodology than any
others we have studied so far, this semester.
Most productive, with regards to her project, my project, and my life,
is the dichotomy between relation and isolation. She writes, that multicultural feminism “does
not exalt one political concern (feminism) over another (multiculturalism);
rather, it highlights and reinforces the mutual embeddedness between the two.”[1] Such a methodology seems to refuse to be tied
down by the constraints and borders placed upon one methodology—feminism or
multiculturalism—and allows for a more accurate analysis of the way the world
is shaped by such factors as gender, race, class, location, etc. and so
on. To reiterate, in a phrase that
characterizes the remainder of Shohat’s introduction in the range of case
studies she explores during her various subsections, “Multicultural feminism is
not an easy Muzak-like harmony but rather a polyrhythmic staging of a
full-throated counterpoint where tensions are left unresolved.”[2] In discussing such topics as the mobilization
of difference and the occupation of more than one position or the metanarrative
of liberation and the totalization and Eurocentrism of the women’s movement,
Shohat does not come to a conclusion on any of the preceding or ensuing
problems she acknowledges. Rather, she “shuttles
back and forth between concentric circles of affiliation riven by power
asymmetries.”[3]
I
so enjoyed Shohat’s essay because, while is gave me the familiar feeling of “then
what can we do?”, if offered a broad methodology that is not centered on
concrete answers and accountability of right and wrong notions. From a practical and reformist standpoint, I
want to read methodologies that give me a formula for writing and acting in the
real world. However, especially in my
field of art history, that is not a real possibility. I frequently struggle with writing about, for
example, Carolee Schneemann’s desire to remain childless and her multiple
experiences with abortions both before and after Roe v. Wade all the while
remembering that Schneemann was a white woman with a middle-class upbringing
and afforded an disproportionate amount of privilege during the 1960s and 1970s
that is still not seen by many women of color.
In this sense, then, my question for the class this week is: what can we take away from Shohat and
multicultural feminism that—in thinking of her changing the definition of
identity from what one has versus what one does (pg. 9)—is something we do both
in our work/what/how we write and in our lives?
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