Academic attainment and feminism?

saf: 'victor, yep that makes sense. to me it's the, "examination of literature as a massive textual body that informs, creates AND REFLECTS socio-cultural attitudes" that is more interesting (personally) and has far more impact for feminism'.

I agree. What is moving, enriching, and illuminating for an individual may not bring about the greatest benefit for a political movement. While for me, personally, it is immensely powerful to read (or even produce) feminist analysis of literary texts, and it is something that has shaped my life and view of the world to a huge degree, there are much more powerful tools that can be deployed by feminism as a whole. It is much more powerful and politically astute to consider women's actions (and the production of a literary/theoretical/polemic/whatever text could be just one 'action' among many).

Oh, I see what you mean. That's probably true in terms of what people go away and write down, but I think lots of people who do English degrees go off and think through these things on their own, which is nice.

I don't think it's restricted as in it doesn't exist - I think that capable undergrads will always be drawn to examining power structures in literary texts (as in, literally between the covers), and drawn to reading texts that clarify and identify those structures. I quite like that analogy: that a paradigm of thinking can come inside or outside the literary covers. Or both!

But when it comes to a sustained examination of power structures in literature as whole textual body, well, undergrads just don't have the space or time, do they? Something like 'Between Women' (Sharon Marcus's vv good examination of Victorian women's 'lifewriting' ie diaries, letters, etc is really quite massive and took a v long time). Nothing to stop them considering it as a private project, or making notes, or simply even noticing patterns of silencing, etc. But when it comes to 'output', I think only postgrads and academics have the 'room' to do it.

I don't think it is restricted to postgrad level.

Please don't blame yourself for not explaining - I'm pretty new to all of this (both reading radical feminist theory and doing lit crit), so I am usually a bit slower to catch references and sometimes I'm just trying to work out my own position.

I think it's not easy to make a sharp distinction between the two things you're mentioning - examination of literature re. socio-cultural attitudes and literary analysis, though, and also the making of that distinction is something both lit. crit. people and feminists need to discuss. Not least because the canon often relegates women's writing to the first group, implies it's not 'literary' enough to analyse in the second way, and only appropriate as a textual artefact reflecting (often passively) culture.

Or maybe that's just my rather negative experience from a few teachers.

One day I'll actually clarify this properly, I think I'm getting there: the examination of literature as a massive textual body that informs, creates AND REFLECTS socio-cultural attitudes is significantly different to a literary analysis of literary texts (most commonly found at undergraduate level). The Holocaust omissions are of the first kind - it is more helpful, and illuminating, to analyse them as such.

LRD I think the problem is me not explaining myself properly. Take your example of the women's omission from Holocaust literatures. This should be fought, and rectified. But it's an analysis of authors, of curators and of readers - an archival issue. Women's voices need to be found in archives and storage, and brought to the fore. Women's authors have been reclaimed by academics physically going into archives, finding these texts, and using them in their work - but it requires an interdisciplinary effort to get them 'out there'. The Virago Press is a good example of publishing texts that no-one else will invest in - I'm currently reading Miles Franklin thanks to them.

While literary skills certainly help - once found, these texts can be subject to analysis - it's an issue that stands 'outside' of the words on the page, IYSWIM. Again, this doesn't relegate any one issue to 'less' important than another - they're all combined. Publishers need to find these texts, publish them - academics and readers need to not ignore them once they're out there.

Yes, exactly - feminism has to overspill into all of these areas, I think. It's necessary to push feminism up against ideologies in different subjects that maybe aren't hospitable, because otherwise we lose a voice in those subjects.

And I do think you're right that sometimes there's a period when people are digesting ideas and then they begin to make their way into criticism.

I haven't read anything like a complete selection of Radical Feminism: 'Pornography', 'Right Wing Women' and a section of 'Gyn/Ecology'. Millett's 'Sexual Politics' as well - but, as I said upthread, it was a while back. Recently, I am most familiar with Wittig's 'The Straight Mind' and the work of Adrienne Rich. I don't know where I picked up the 'witch' and 'hag' labels from - probably from radical feminist blogs or perhaps even this section.

Certainly, what I take from what I read is influenced by my own work patterns - so I remember stuff like 'witch' and 'hag', or Dworkin's identification of systematic violent repression, because they cause 'lightbulb' moments in me, moments in which I see very clearly those patterns in literary texts. I was very struck by an interview with Sheila Jeffreys in which she clarified the inescapable patriarchal structures that make heterosexual sex such an unequal transaction. Rich's 'compulsory heterosexuality', also, brought about a similar 'lightbulb' moment.

That's not to denigrate radical feminists' other work. To suggest that Millett or Dworkin analyse texts as 'avatars' of the patriarchal mind is not to imply that they're crap - just that their work stands outside of literature, and literary analysis, in many ways.

But, VG, take that article where Dworkin is talking about the way the Holocaust Museum selectively omits women's experiences from its record. That is surely both feminist theory and English lit. would approach in exactly the same way: it's a record that is attempting to be true to real life, but which - possibly for the ideological reasons Dworkin gives - distorts experience. Surely we're both interested in the way experience is distorted when its retold?

It seems to me that some people will find English Lit-type skills most necessary to help them think about this, and others will approach from politics, but if we're all feminists we will probably all feel the same way about it all.

If I'm missing something here, excuse me.