December Debates Feminist Academia

Great Debates
81

Truth Seeker (I like that name) – a couple of quibbles.

[ul][li]That “bumper sticker” quote came from a cite. I used it to demonstrate that feminists tended to support the idea of recovered memory. Your cite also supports that POV.[]I’m glad that Elaine Showalter recognized the harm done by certain incorrect traditional feminist beliefs and moved away from them. (I had heard of her; IIRC she was mentioned in the book I cited earlier, or perhaps one of the articles.) []Your cite doesn’t quite contradict the existance of a “taboo.” Rather, it implies that a taboo does exist, but Showalter has broken it.[/ul][/li][quote]
This…book illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of what has recently become a lonely rump of feminism… She bravely points out…(underline added)
[/quote]
The description of Ms. Showalter’s group as a “lonely rump” and the adverb, “bravely,.” seem to imply that she is violating normal, accepted feminist behavior.

These are quibbles. We basically agree.

82

Care to answer my questions, december, or shall I post them again in a larger font?

83

I cannot name names. I have a vague memory that Loftus’s book did identify some leading feminist texts that argued in favor of repressed memory, but it’s been several years since I read it.

However, at this point 3 independent cites have been supplied on this thread indicating that feminists have tended to support recoverd memory. Earlier, I was accused of providing an unsupported cite. With 3 separate cites, the support is now adequate. As they say in baseball, Three cites, yer out!. (Sorry)

Anyhow, Mandelstam, I’m glad that you have never shared this false belief. And, I’m glad that you strive for the utmost in accuracy.

84

Truth Seeker, we simulposted so I missed your last. I’ll try to return for a reply tonight. In the meantime, briefly:

The description of Ms. Showalter’s group as a “lonely rump” and the adverb, “bravely,.” seem to imply that she is violating normal, accepted feminist behavior.

december, FTR, Elaine Showalter is probably the most famous academic feminist in the United States. Several years ago she was the president of the Modern Language Association (roughly speaking, the equivalent of the AMA or the Bar Association for professors of language and literature). I had forgotten Showalter’s work on hysteria which was–to be more fair to you than you deserve–controversial. But the criticism of Showalter’s position (as well as the support for it) was complicated: not at all reducible to the supposed unwritten law.

There is no “normal, accepted feminist” behavior: there is rather a wide and rich multidisciplinary field within which there is much debate (not to mention all kinds of feminisms that have nothing to do with the academy).

As Maeglin said way back, there are legitimate arguments to make against this or that feminist position–as there are in philosophy or economics or what have you. Unfortunately you’re not making any.

85

Mandelstam : "*Now if your point is that such an understanding can be added simply by having researchers interested in gender working within various disciplines, I don’t disagree. The great majority of feminist research is being conducted in precisely that way: outside of Women Studies departments and within more traditional disciplines, as well other kinds of cross-disciplinary programs (e.g., area studies, development studies).

Now it’s quite possible that you’re actually saying what I just said–I can’t really tell. Because some of what you’re saying sounds as though your suspicious of the importance of considering gender, while some of what you’re saying sounds as though you simply feel as though it’s best done outside of Women Studies departments.
"*

I’m sort of saying both. A gender centric approach or perspective is simply that, a perspective, and it’s power, or lack thereof, as a useful lens to illuminate some aspect of historical or socio-economic etc. behavior will be determined over time. As social science “lenses” go I have to admit do keep thinking of tomndebb’s straw, though. I’m still not completely persuaded of the utility or desirability of creating a separate department or school for it, but crankyasanoldman (and others) outlined the academic and administrative logic behind that decision (where such schools and departments exist) . Again, if it works and produces good and useful social science research more power to the separate school/ department concept.

Possibly I’m not appreciating the degree to which female academics of the 70’s felt disenfranchised or oppressed by the mainly, male dominated departments of the 50’s and 60’s and felt they needed their own administrative space and context to do productive research relating to gender centric topics.

86

Yep, I’m aware of the MLA. My image of it comes from a mystery novel called Murder at the MLA, by D. J. H. Jones. It presents a funny, satiric picture of an MLA convention. The plot revolves around a hiring committee for Wellesley College, my wife’s alma mater. If you had to go through the kind of job-hunting stress that the characters in this book did, my hat is off to you.

Amen to that! And, the shrinks are even more at fault, because they have a professional obligation. The wife of a friend of mine was seeing one of these awful shrinks. It did terrible things to him, her, and their children.

A few shrinks have been sued successfully on this issue.

Gadarene, sorry to have missed. Yes, I do pretty much think that the feminists just kinda came around after all the “good” or “legitimate” modes of thinking were already taken, and just kind of fashioned an ersatz one of their own. Of course, I mean self-described “feminist” academicians, not real feminists --women like my wife and her colleagues who do meaningful research in medicine, biochemistry, etc. Not to mention all the true feminist lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and computer professionals, who I work with every day.

Several reasons: [ul][]It looks at the world through the lens of gender and feminism, even when that POV is not helpful.[]Much of it is in unverifiable areas. People just made it up.[]This has encouraged less respect for truth than I would prefer.[]In some cases,* novelty* is given more weight than I would preferIt often tends to be political.[/ul]Why should feminism be singled out? I’d say, because of all the power wielded as a group by postmodernists, feminsts, Black studies people, communists, deconstructionists, etc. in many university departments. They have had a broadly corrupting influence in the humanities. As the Sokal article showed, this group would even spread their nonsense into the sciences if they could.

87

And that is the worst sort of mendacity. The “single anecdote” is your source. The fact that he claims many (while providing none) does not make it many–it remains at one.

I see that you have now dragged up two more “sources.” That’s fine–or it would have been if either had actually been a feminist making the claims that you put in their mouths. Quoting book reviews of hostile remarks about someone hardly provides evidence.

But then, we always knew that Sharon was simply a power-mad terrorist and that Israel cannot possibly conduct itself in an honorable manner:

See! I have the cites:
http://www.editorialcartoons.net/latuff-mideastmain.html
http://www.thepornographyofpower.com/tom72.html
http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/12/editorial.shtml
http://www.derechos.net/bbs/messages/152.html

Obviously, if so many independent sources consider Sharon and Israel to be dishonest, power mad, terrorists, it must be true. I see no reason to quote an actual Israeli source, since these claims prove my point. You found three cites. I found four (with plenty more where they came from).

Ultimately, we are left with your vague notions that some undefinable “bad” accompanies feminist thought and Women’s Studies with no clear view as to what you even consider either of those two (separate) things to be. Why you hung your hat on such an unsupported claim, I am not sure. As noted, even if you actually found some feminist who continued to push RMOSA after the medical and psychological communities threw it out (as opposed to finding anti-feminists who claim that feminists do that) you have still not demonstrated that there was anything inherent in feminism or Women’s Studies that led to that error, as opposed to simply being a belief held by a few people who were, coincidentally, feminists or guided by Women’s Studies.

88

So december, which is it? Is Elaine Showalter a beset member of a “lonely rump,” castigated for violating feminist orthodoxy, or she is the privileged leader of that evil bastion of tenured radicalism, the Modern Language Association? Interestingly, your contradictory position on Showalter suggests an entrenched anti-academic and anti-feminist agenda rather than a judicious respect for, um, factual accuracy.

Truth Seeker, As I thought I’d made clear in my first post, there is a big difference between the formal right to attend law schol, which was not controversial for women in 1963, and equal access to law schools which was. Equal access, equal pay, etc. remain goals that, I repeat, can’t be abandoned to some polyanna-ish notion of inevitable progress. More female lawyers will not necessarily translate into more female judges: certainly not with any kind of proportionality. Several prestigious universities, including MIT, I believe, have done studies on faculties and have found that both in hiring and in tenuring and promoting significant inequalities and disproportions still exist between men and women despite the much larger pool of women who hold the doctorate.

But, in any case, I want to stress that neither women studies nor gender studies nor feminist theory and criticism is in any sense reducible to the quest for equality.

“As for the value of the study of, say, medieval poetry, I’d first point out as an historical aside that the entire field of English Literature was derided as “the novel-reading degree” when first introduced at Oxford and Cambridge around the turn of the last century.”

Indeed. And in fact English literature study was first introduced as a colonial enterprise: as a means to converting Indians into self-identified British subjects without treading on volatile religious terrain. Eventually it was used in British popular education for the working classes. For both reasons it was derided as a subject unfit for Oxbridge where the British elite had always studied the classics.

On the first subject see noted postcolonial and feminist scholar Gauri Viswanthan’s Masks of Conquest. On the second subject see Terry Eagleton, a well-known Marxist literary critic. You might find his introduction to Literary Theory an interesting work, in any case.

“Nonetheless, there is value in such studies. For example, it made possible Seamus Heaney’s recent translation of Beowulf. What has the women’s studies movement done for me lately?”

Exactly how many works published by women studies scholars have you read in order to find out? But, since you ask, a number of long-forgotten female literary works have been resurrected thanks to feminist attention to literature: a favorite of mine is Mary Elizabeth Braddon, author of the wonderful sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret. Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm, if you haven’t read it, is a groundbreaking modernist masterpiece (as well as the first important English-language work in South African literature). I could name many more.

“With respect to Sokol’s article, I’m afraid you just don’t get it. Sokol did nothing but mimic the turgid style of cultural studies scholarship by throwing in a series of random, disconnected quotations. Social Text could not have “understood” what he was saying because he was saying precisely nothing. The argument that “we aren’t physicists so we didn’t understand it” is simply pathetic. First, it wasn’t a physics article. It was nothing but a hodge-podge of physics buzz words and cultural studies buzz words. The Social Text editors actually thought, presumably, that the cultural studies buzz words actually made some sort of sense.”

No, I really do get it, and FTR I’ve looked at the article in question: the “buzz words” amount to a banal and, doubtless, not very good argument about the invalidity of physical reality. The editors are on record as having published the article in order to include a highly respected physicist in a special issue on science studies: something that no physicist had ever wanted to do. IIRC they claimed that they didn’t know of any appropriate reader or “peer”–both physicist and cultural studies scholar–who could review the article.

Without a doubt, they erred in publishishing something they would not have published had it been written by someone else; and in publishing something that had not been properly refereed. That was a serious error in judgment that they have publicly regretted. But I simply don’t see how it stands as proof that the rest of the journal–even the rest of that issue on science studies–or the editors, and still less “cultural studies” as a whole, is intellectually invalid.

I’ve named four works above that I highly commend all of which can be designated as cultural studies and none of which is either “crap” or particularly hard to understand. I can name literally hundreds more: including some of the “crap” that I’ve devoted my own blood, sweat and tears to :wink: .
Do you seriously expect me to accept that the isolated Sokol set-up and blunder “proves” that thousands of books and articles, including the respected works I’ve described, most of which aren’t even to do with science studies (as it happens), are crap? Are you in any kind of position to pronounce on their value? Perhaps you know more than you let on; but in this regard at least you are waxing more decemberesque than you may realize.

astro, don’t knock the gender “perspective” until you’ve tried it. Contrary to the impression promulgated by anti-feminists, the gender studies approach is not in the least reducible to bromides about sex bias, and sexual abuse, or to new forms of “victomology”. Neither is it, as Truth Seeker suggests, a case of radicalizing in order to have something new to say. Sure, I come across lots of stuff I don’t like, or think much of. But that’s true of most things: from the economics and non-feminist histories I read, to the movies I see.

You’d be surprised how thinking about gender might illuminate your own self-understanding. In my experience men are even more interested in learning about the gender process than women: probably because they expect to hear that their sexist victimizers and instead they learn instead, that they are themselves subject to all kinds of normalizing contraints. Today’s men are expected to be consumer clones who buy up masculine stereotypes on command with every sip of soda pop, every video game, movie, magazine, etc. Men deserve a little more autonomy than that and a gender studies perspective helps them to realize it.

89

Google led to this interesting-looking article from Lingua Franca, but the son of a gun won’t open. All I have is the few words included in google:

The phrase “disapproving feminists,” seems to support my POV.

No, Mandlestam, I’m afraid you don’t get it. The Sokal article should have hit like a nuclear explosion.:smack: I’ve published papers in refereed journals and I’ve been on the Committee on Review of Papers. I’ve never encountered an article that was literally complete nonsense. Intentionally totally worthless.

Don’t forget that post-modernist, deconstructionist articles are typically filled with confusing jargon. They tend to be difficult or impossible to understand. There’s every chance that many other articles and books in this field are also nonsense. Clearly the review committee cannot be trusted to weed out the garbage.

BTW aside from the physical science howlers, Sokal’s article had nothing reasonable to say. Even if the committee didn’t know basic physics, it appears that they were also unable to notice the lack of content.

It’s good that you hold yourself to the highest standards of accuracy, but it’s sad to see you excuse the implications of the misfeasance with respect to Sokal’s article.

No, but it proves that they might be crap, because the guardians of quality in your field cannot be relied upon to know the difference.

I’m afraid that your attitude may be common, and that’s really telling. Sokal’s article should have been a wake-up call to the entire movement to winnow out the crap. Maybe there wouldn’t be much left… :eek:

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december, you are such a dunce! The “disapproving” feminists in that article would be the ones that disagreed with Showalter. The ones who approved would be the other feminists who support Showalter who is, of course, herself a feminist. You can’t open Lingua Franca because it went belly up a while back. I read that article years ago (while getting my hair done actually); the biggest controversy while Showalter was prez was to do with her reponse to the hiring crisis in academia. It had nothing to do with feminist issues, though some feminists disapproved of her work on hysteria.

“It’s good that you hold yourself to the highest standards of accuracy, but it’s sad to see you excuse the implications of the misfeasance with respect to Sokal’s article.”

I made no excuses whatsoever; I simply pointed out the illogic of impugning a wide-ranging and multarious category such as “cultural studies” on the basis of one gaffe with a very particular provenance.

Let me add that I imagine that most editors and board members of refereed journals have never come across articles that were intentionally worthless. The idea of wishing to propagate such a hoax is, one can only presume, relatively rare.

" I’m afraid that your attitude may be common, and that’s really telling. Sokal’s article should have been a wake-up call to the entire movement to winnow out the crap. Maybe there wouldn’t be much left…"

Well what’s entirely clear from this thread is that, with exactly 0 such articles under your belt, you’d be the very last one to know!

Sorry, december, but lame though it was, Sokal’s hoax article made a lot more sense than your last post.

BTW: I just took a look at the editors’ response to Sokal and my memory of the response was a tad off. My opinion on the matter, thought, remains unchanged; a peer review from a physicist would have been best.

http://www.astro.queensu.ca/~bworth/Reason/Sokal/Response/soctext_on_sokal.html

91

sigh

Mandelstam
Would you care to simply stipulate that a great deal of the material published in feminist journals comes across as both awfully written and, at best, silly? If you’d like I’m sure I could find any number feminist articles discussing phallocentrism in “Star Trek: Voyager” or something equally enlightening. That would really distract from the main point, however.

The point of Sokol’s article is that he demonstrated that not even the high priests of cultural studies can tell “good” scholarship from pointless drivel. It’s all very well to say that this doesn’t “prove” that all cultural studies are nothing but rampant silliness. Nonetheless, it’s pretty good evidence that at least some of it is. What’s worse, even cultural studies “experts” can’t easily tell the difference.

Anyway, rather than bring up examples of bad scholarship, I’d like to offer this thought provoking essay on what motivates bad scholarship. One of the highlights,

**

Some of your other points.

**
You say that the right to study law was well established 100 years ago. The point is, however, that until at least 1972, denying women admission to a law school was considered perfectly acceptable. Nowadays, however, the idea of a law school refusing to admit women would be considered completely beyond the pale. You say that feminist scholars don’t write papers on basic women’s rights. You’re perfectly correct. However, they would if American women were being denied those rights. This is precisely the point I was trying to make. That’s passe now. The revolution is over and it succeeded. Feminist scholars are, therefore, forced to find other things to write about.

Though this is a bit of a hijack, the idea that time will address many of the remaining difficulties regarding women’s rights is not “polyanna-ish.” It’s a quite reasonable view that fits with what we observe. Unlike racism, the victims of sexism have a direct line right to the top of the power structure. In fact, you would want your son to marry one. One of the staunchest feminists you’ll ever find (in the liberal tradition, of course) is a father with a daughter in college.

Women entering college today live in a completely different world than women who grew up in the 1950s. They simply don’t face the same barriers either internal or external. Moreover, their children will be even less interested in revolutionary feminism. When mom is a doctor and grandma is a lawyer, you sort of take it for granted that women ought to be able to do whatever they want. You also will probably look at people funny who talk about how women are rendered powerless by America’s patriarchal society.

** I wasn’t aware that feminists were taking credit for “re-discovering” one of the most prolific authors in Victorian England. Even assuming that they did, is simply tracking down books by female authors really “feminist attention to literature?” Or is it simply “attention to literature?” Is, say, a Marxist feminist perspective really an advantage in this kind of scholarship?

As for reading feminist works, I’ve found some of it readable, much of it painful but none of it enjoyable. If you know of any works by women’s studies scholars that rival Heaney’s Beowulf please let me know immediately! I’ll get a copy forthwith.

Anyway, I’d be quite interested on your thoughts on the essay I linked to above. While it does discuss feminist scholarship, it’s really aimed at scholarship in the humanities in general. It’s food for thought even if you don’t find it particularly digestible.

BTW

** Did anyone else get chills reading this?

92

Thanks to astro and Truth Seeker and others for the information, links.

Maeglin, just so we’re clear, I wasn’t seeking an education from you, and I certainly wasn’t trying to parrot december’s demand for “evidence”. My exasperated tone came directly from my ignorance on the subject, and not from any opinion I’ve staked out.

I was just looking for some good starting points, from someone who represents to know what they’re talking about.

From a layperson’s perspective, anyway, the pursuit of gender studies seems awfully important from a sociological perspective in a world where gender roles are being redefined and influenced at a rapid rate. I’m a tabula rasa, folks, just looking for some crumbs from this “debate”.

93

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Insulting a CSICOP member like that. And I got an entire Pit thread just for calling another poster “dear.” :frowning:

Anyhow I fully agree with everything else in your post TS. I had followed the Sokal scandal closely, but had forgotten just how terrible the editors’ response was. It’s like a compendium of rhetorical fallicies.

Mandelstam, here’s a suggested exercise: Go through the editors’ response and critique it. Here, I’ll start it off. Quotes are from the response.

In other words, this editor still thought it possible that the article was intended to have merit. More evidence of inability to discern merit.

Ad hominem, and also backwards. The less Sokal knew about his subject, the more embarassing the editors’ mistake.

A glint of humor. “He didn’t just assume that our worthless.”

Duh!
[/quote]
and thereby perpetuate the climate in which science studies and cultural studies have been subject recently to so much derision from conservatives…
[/quote]
Ad hominem.

Like the mortgage companies are distressed by racism testers, when the mortgage applicants aren’t really buying houses. Anyhow, this quote is another ad hominem attack.

More ad hominem

Isn’t it possible that they need to come under suspicion? Isn’t it likely that more “suspicious” reviews will lead to higher qulaity journals? The editors seem to be arguing that inattentive reviews of articles serve their community better than careful ones.

Pointless, unhelpful analogy.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Enough for now. The remainder is left as an exercise.

In Watergate, they said, “It wasn’t the break-in, it was the cover-up.” Here, the editors’ explanation adds to our understanding of where they’re coming from. They convict themselves.

94

Truth Seeker: “Would you care to simply stipulate that a great deal of the material published in feminist journals comes across as both awfully written and, at best, silly? If you’d like I’m sure I could find any number feminist articles discussing phallocentrism in “Star Trek: Voyager” or something equally enlightening. That would really distract from the main point, however.”

I will go as far as to say two things 1) I don’t expect that “a great deal of the material published in feminist journals” will be meaningfully accessible to general readers (nor is it intended to be); and 2) I sometimes have bones to pick with the style and/or content of work published by feminist theorists.

Proviso: I could say the same about many non-feminist writers. For example, the style of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism lulls me into a trance but he is neither a feminist, nor a radical (he is a very influential Harvard political philosopher).

At the moment I am reading a recent exchange between two feminist political theorists in the Yale Journal of Criticism and I find them both well-written and compelling. I can provide you with bibliographic info if you are curious. I am also reading Kabeer’s book (see above) and I find it clear and authoritative.

As to articles on “Star Trek.” You seem to suggest that the entire, um, enterprise is, perforce, intellectually nugatory. I disagree. I think writing on popular culture is, or can be, both illuminating and important. See Hebdige’s book for a stellar example and let me know what you think.

"The point of Sokol’s article is that he demonstrated that not even the high priests of cultural studies can tell “good” scholarship from pointless drivel. "

And for reasons I’ve made fully clear I think this highly particular case proves very little. (See the link I provided for comments by others more luminous than myself.) As to the “high priests of cultural studies” what does that mean? Above I asked you to define cultural studies and you never did. Even if I were to concede–which I never would–that the two ST editors were incapable scholars, what would that prove about everyone else who might claim a connection to cultural studies? Against a small group of individuals and institutions potentially tarnished by such a concession I could–as I have already suggested–argue the merits of volumes of work that I know and believe to be superlative. So why return again and again to Sokal, each time attributing even more mythical status to the editors involved in the hoax?
What other specific strings, if any, do you have to your polemical bow?

Please Note: I never denied that women’s access to law schools–and many other kinds of opportunities–dramatically improved in the 70s; nor that many improvements have been made since that time. Rather I made two points: 1) we can’t count on progress continuing as a matter of course; and 2) women’s improved situation in the West does not provide, as you suggested, some kind of simplistic explanation for allegedly bad feminist scholarship.

“The revolution is over and it succeeded. Feminist scholars are, therefore, forced to find other things to write about.”

The word “revolution” is loaded and I will avoid it.
Take a look at the third world and tell me that there is nothing for feminists to write about. Take a look at MTV and tell me that there is nothing for femnists to write about. Take a look at the state of women’s reproductive rights in this country and tell me that there is nothing for feminists to write about.

All of this is on top of the fact that many feminists do work that isn’t directly related to present-day conditions: they do work with, for example, historical, psychological, or philosophical bearing on questions of gender and identity; and–for the hundredth time–they also do work that has as much to do with the gender (and material condition) of men as it does with that of women.

I have tried very hard to emphasize that, as an intellectual enterprise, gender studies is very different than women studies with its, (at least originally) identitarian focus on highlighting and empowering women qua women. I’d appreciate it if you’d acknowledge that distinction.

"[T]he idea that time will address many of the remaining difficulties regarding women’s rights is not “polyanna-ish.” It’s a quite reasonable view that fits with what we observe. Unlike racism, the victims of sexism have a direct line right to the top of the power structure. In fact, you would want your son to marry one. One of the staunchest feminists you’ll ever find (in the liberal tradition, of course) is a father with a daughter in college.

I’m sorry Truth Seeker, but this is incredibly polyannish and also logically warped. You argue that full equality for women is a biological sure thing since human reproduction depends on conjugal relationships between men and women. Well, gee whiz.

High ranking members of the Taliban are also fathers and husbands; and so, for that matter is, George Bush, who while no friend to feminism, has two daughters. (Conversely John Stuart Mill, one of the most “feminist” men in the nineteenth century, disliked his mother and fathered no children) This is biological reductionism at is most bizarre.

Study the history of political progress along any axis (class-based, sex-based, disability-based, religious-based, etc.): nothing happens without concerted struggle. Note my emphasis on collective human agency.

Let me add once again, “sexism” is not the exclusive focus of gender studies. I don’t know what feminist scholars, if any, you know personally, but none of the feminists I know is clamoring for revolutionary overthrow. At its best, the feminist view of the world is large and complex: it includes economic forces, racial relations, the impact of religion and the mass media. Studying how sex/gender works in relation to this complex world is fascinating: nothing reductive or predictable about it.

Speaking purely about politics: What you are doing is to artificially limit the terrain of what you perceive as the appropriate feminist mission to goals that you see as having been satisfied decades ago. Of course things are different than in the 1950s. But why does that mean that we in 2002 must go on auto-pilot waiting passively for our biological destiny to work itself out?

“You also will probably look at people funny who talk about how women are rendered powerless by America’s patriarchal society.”

Case in point: today’s feminists tend not to use the term “patriarchal,” or use it very cautiously. Early in Kabeer’s book, for example, she describes problems with the “patriarchal” framework when, in the early 80s, it was applied to the third world. Kabeer’s book was published in 1994–almost ten years ago.

You are shadowboxing with your own groundless stereotype of what a feminist scholar is.

“I wasn’t aware that feminists were taking credit for “re-discovering” one of the most prolific authors in Victorian England.”

What a disingenuous question!

Who, if not feminist literary critics of that ilk, should take credit for helping authors such as Braddon or, for that matter Elizabeth Gaskell, enter the so-called canon of English literature? Who should take credit for publishing long out-of-print and forgotten works by Braddon and others? Have you ever heard of the Virago Press?

How about the editors who produced that list of the so-called greatest 100 novels of the 20th century, including hardly any female authors. Should they get credit for making it possible for you to hear about and read Braddon?

“Is, say, a Marxist feminist perspective really an advantage in this kind of scholarship?”

I think that depends on the critic in question: some prefer to analyze the canon.

Let me put this question in a different way. In what sense is a Marxist feminist perspective a disadvantage to studying forgotten works? In what sense is it a disadvantage to the study of literary or cultural history tout court? What Marxist-influenced works have you read that have disappointed your expectations? Perhaps I can suggest better ones.

“If you know of any works by women’s studies scholars that rival Heaney’s Beowulf please let me know immediately! I’ll get a copy forthwith.”

Come now: scholarly works are not commensurable with literature as you must surely know. Heaney’s parallel might be a poet such as Adrienne Rich. Also, I’ve already suggested a work that, I think, will rock your world. Oliver Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm , written c. 1890, and published under pseudonym of Ralph Iron, is–I kid you not–like nothing else I’ve ever read.

"Anyway, I’d be quite interested on your thoughts on the essay I linked to above. "

I read your link, Truth Seeker, and, to quote one of my favorite 80s pop songs, “It says nothing to me about my life.” If it’s true of people in other areas–well that’s very depressing.

From your link: “A genuine inquirer aims to find out the truth of some question…”

I don’t actually know anyone who I come across in my professional life who doesn’t see his/her work as aiming to find out the truth of that question. Speaking for myself: If I did my research, as the link suggests, only to collect a paycheck or to get promoted, I’d have left academia years ago. I can make much more money editing software, or writing advertising copy.

I kind of like you Truth Seeker; weirdly I feel as though I know you somehow. I would be very happy to suggest works to you in areas that might be of special interest–by feminists, Marxists, postmodernists, postcolonialists–if you care to do me the honor of valuing my recommendation. :slight_smile:

december, I have no desire to discuss Sokal with you, not least because it’s a hijack. I’ve already said what is relevant to this thread; and I have no confidence in your knowledge of postmodern theory, science studies, or any other are that would help to make the debate substantive.

95

Sure, Truth Seeker.

I have been unfortunately hijacked by work, and I have little to add to Mandelstam’s magnificent posts on feminist scholarship. When I have a chance later today, I will try to discuss some of the tools of feminist literary criticism with which I have some knowledge.

You want works of literature by feminist scholars? Sure. I’m glad you mentioned Beowulf. Medieval literature happens to be my particular field.

I would highly recommend Sarah Roche-Mahdi’s translation of Le Roman de Silence, a truly magnificent 13th century romance in Old French. It’s a fascinating story about a women raised as a knight, trained as a minstrel, the ensuing deceptions, and the rather explosive revelation at the end. It incorporates many Arthurian elements, including the nearly ubiquitous Merlin. Definitely check it out. Roche-Mahdi’s translation is bilingual, with the French on facing pages.

It is because of feminist scholarship (which Roche-Mahdi excels at) that this masterpiece of old literature has received the critical attention it deserves in the last ten years. Now you would be hard pressed to find Silence absent from any serious survey of medieval literature. Roche-Mahdi’s articles on Silence are also very illuminating. I’d be happy to post a bibliography if you are interested.

And while you’re at it, check out the translation of the Lais of Marie de France, by Joan Ferrante (shameless plug – my former teacher of medieval literature). Just read a few of the lais. I believe their quality speaks for itself.

As always, bibliographies upon request. Enjoy.

MR

96

From that great, great musical, Gypsy, here are some new words to Gotta Have a Gimmick.

You can work on your papers, till you get the vapors,
Publish until you’re half dead.
But, you gotta get a gimmick if you want to get ahead.
You can keep asking when yer finally getting tenure,
Yet, you get stepped on instead,
Cause, you gotta get a gimmick, if you want to get ahead.

Apologies to Stephen Sondheim.

I suppose one way to look at feminism and women’s studies is that it’s a gimmick, useful for one’s academic career.

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TS: *The point of Sokol’s article is that he demonstrated that not even the high priests of cultural studies can tell “good” scholarship from pointless drivel. *

Not really. What he demonstrated is that those particular “high priests” of cultural studies can’t tell good scholarship on quantum theory and other mathematical and scientific concepts from pointless drivel. As Sokal said in the subsequent article in which he revealed the hoax,

So all he really proved is that the editors of Social Text don’t know as much about physics or mathematics as a competent undergraduate physics or math major. This is hardly surprising, nor is it per se an intellectual indictment of cultural studies in particular: lots of people in non-scientific fields understand very little about such concepts.

The editors of Social Text were certainly irresponsible and dumb in undertaking to publish an article that they didn’t understand, without seeking peer review from someone who did understand it, simply taking it on trust that the paper must be good because the author is an eminent scientist, and because its conclusions flattered their own philosophical beliefs. They were also irresponsible and dumb not to acknowledge their mistake frankly and take the blame for it once the hoax was revealed.

But that doesn’t imply that cultural studies as a whole has no intellectual merit. Even Sokal himself in that same article acknowledges, “At its best, a journal like Social Text raises important questions that no scientist should ignore – questions, for example, about how corporate and government funding influence scientific work.” If his hoax is used as an excuse for people simply to dismiss the whole field of cultural studies or social studies of science or postmodernism in general as intellectually worthless, that’s not going to be a net gain in the struggle against ignorance.

december: *[Originally posted by Truth Seeker] “sigh BTW Did anyone else get chills reading this?”

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Insulting a CSICOP member like that.*

:confused: How is that an insult? I don’t get it.

98

So the revolution is over, eh? Not in my field. The Directors’ Guild is about 5% female. Sucessful female directors regularly get signifigantly less funding than male directors with equivelent sucess. Portrayals of women on screen are often completely absent, or else really really offensive (and always very different than portrayals of males on screen). My classmates (almost entirely male) keep making films about stalking, raping, and killing women, much to mine (and my proffesors) exasperation.Please bring the revolution to Santa Cruz because even in the most ungodly liberal town on earth it still hasn’t hit the film department.

Really, thanks for declaring the revolution over. Mom and grandma are doctors and lawyers? Thats nice. Mine was a welfare mother. I’m sure the legions of women stuck in poverty and abuse, as well as the pretty normal woman who just has a hard time being taken seriously because she has a hoo-ha, appreiciate you declaring that the world is hunky-dory.

What has Women’s studies done for you lately? In my school, at least, there is a strong community service aspect to women’s studies- the idea is to apply what you learn and keep hold of reality by being out there in the community. The UCSC women’s center, which holds events that range from AIDS tests to making mothers’ day cards, is largley staffed by women’s studies majors. Additionally, many volenteers at the Walnut Avenue Women’s center are women’s studies majors. These people provide shelter to battered women, act as advocates in court, provide affordable child care, and really do a great amount of service in the community.

And do I really have to tell you that there have been countless scientific hoaxes (not to mention dishonest fudgeing) as damning as the Sokal incident? Perhaps these are even worse, considering that unlike science, culural studies doesn’t tout itself as the “truth”, it’s more of a way of thinking.

And feminism is not monolithic. Ask fifteen feminists if promiscous sex is a good thing for women. I bet you will get fifteen different very impassioned answers. Disent is a sign of health in any academic dicipline, and feminism has plenty of disent.

One can’t really compare women’s studies texts to Beowulf because that is EXACTLY NOT THE POINT!!! One of the biggest ideas in cultural studies (and academia in general) is that the body of knowledge that is worth studying extends far beyond what a rather exclusive group of people a hundred and fifty years ago decided were “classics”. Of course there is value in the classics, but to consider them the only thing worth studying is to seriously limit one’s understanding of the world. A lot of feminist texts (feminist film especially) are somewhat unpleasent and disconcerting in order to purposefully challenge the ideas we have about litureature, art, etc. The idea is to make us think about what we like and why we like it- and the results are sometimes very powerful.

99

Is the revolution over? Well, last night I attended the graduation dinner for the OB-GYN department at NJ Medical School. Every single graduating resident was female. Most were African-American.

100

december: Well, last night I attended the graduation dinner for the OB-GYN department at NJ Medical School. Every single graduating resident was female. Most were African-American.

Great! By the way, I notice that the full title of this department is actually “Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health”. It’s no more surprising to me that such a specialty would have mostly female graduates than that a specialty like Women’s Studies would have mostly female graduates. I’m also not particularly surprised that a medical school based in heavily African-American Newark, NJ would have a significant number of African-American students.

Not that I mean to belittle the school’s achievement in this regard, of course, and I’m delighted to see such strong evidence of NJMS’s stated commitment to “Celebration of diversity in culture, ethnicity, religion, gender and individual goals” (although frankly, I would have thought that you would find that commitment too “PC”). However, I doubt that it really constitutes conclusive evidence that “the revolution is over” in general.