Academic attainment and feminism?

[suwoo]

I have wanted to start this thread all day but have been scared that it is stupid or I will be flamed. I want to ask if people feel there is a correlation between academic attainment and feminist principles. Is that a valid question?
I had no idea that I was a feminist. I knew I had these thoughts and principles but didn't know what they were or the significance of them until we did feminist literary theory this semester- it was like an epiphany and my whole world made sense

Had I not gone to uni at the grand old age of 35, maybe I would never had these revelations.

What do you think? Those of you that identify as a feminist, what level of education do you have?

Of course, SdB is the grandmother of much of it all, and hence she's there at the beginning of the course. I was just - pedantically, sorry - addressing your remark that Millett and Dworkin pre-date postmodernism.

However, such a comment (mine, I mean), is largely irrelevant, since dating - as we've already discussed!) - is not really the issue.

It can be fun to spend a week attacking something - not sure in this case if that's the idea, but sometimes it works. I gave my lot recently a very old introduction to one of our texts, which was (basically), erm, racist. It was good, because it really got them talking about why that was unacceptable, even though it had been influential criticism in its day. I think lots of students find it hard to challenge secondary criticism, but when they've done it with something very obviously unacceptable, they seem to find it easier to do when the unacceptable features are more insidious. It's a good skill.

The blessed Wikipedia on Theorem.

Ah, cross-posted. Sounds as if that kind of is the idea - or response, if not attacking (I imagine a fair bit of it is attacking).

Dittany, yes I read Dworkin and Millet at the same time as I was is introduced to post modern and post colonial theory. I am really not suggesting that feminist theory did not critique grand narratives, I am just saying they are not automatically oppositional schools of thought.

As I said many years ago now....it appeared to me then that there were a lot of synergies between the schools of thought which could be used to develop further, which did not seem to be a particularly problematic viewpoint.

In all honesty, I still believe it to be a valid viewpoint and wish I had the time re-read the texts.

Sorry just realised I xposted with a whole discussion between Penthe and LRD that covers what I was trying to say much more clearly!

it is aggravating. THere are quite a few people here who cannot even see the sexism behind their words. Penthe, it's obvious you're trying unlike LRD, but please: devoting a week analyzing that old fraud Freud, instead of concentrating on the fascinating intellectual genius who defined what a patriarchy was and went on to critiqued it.. Kate Millet.

Why not both?

sakura, I am trying. I simply replied, rather clumsily, to a question about why it might be important for feminists to teach/learn lit.crit. I think the response to that has been disproportionate, especially since I have said repeatedly that it was a poorly-phrased comment that cannot bear the weight of all the frankly odd accusations that have been thrown at it.

sakura - what on earth is wrong with an informed discussion of Freud? Living in France where psychoanalysis still holds a huge sway over psychology, not understanding Freud would make it all but impossible to critique much literature and analytical treatment. It's important to know where the erroneous views originate, and why...

I agree, bonsoir, but if you go up the thread you will find a number of dispiriting postings asserting that there is no need to read Freud if you have read the apparently vibrant and intellectually superior Kate Millett or - cough - Andrea Dworkin. By showing an interest in any male theorist or indeed anyone outside this magic circle of about five women who mostly wrote int eh late seventies, you banish yourself to an outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. :)

Just to cheer up the anti-Freudians:

I've managed to come through an undergrad degree in psychology, and a Ph.D. in it, and work in psych departments for many years, without having ever read or discussed Freud. Nor have any of my feminist reading groups etc gone near him. This is a bit embarrassing out in the "real world", where people assume a psychologist will know about Freud. As Bonsoir says, he's actually pretty influential and it's good (or I imagine it would be) to have a response to that. But he's so very much out of favour in many psychology departments that we psychologists can end up in total ignorance of him.

I remember during my psychology degree. We were looking at Freud, as part of the discussion of the development of psychology. Halfway through one of the lectures, the lecturer turned around from writing on the board and said "I hope none of you actually believe any of this".

Well, of course, Fennel. Freud doesn't really get 'plenty of airtime' because he's quite difficult. :) Much more difficult than chere Millett and his other opponents, who produce cod-versions of his theories and proceed to refute these.

sakura - As I have stated, the week reading some Freud and psychoanalysis is not all about Freud, but also about responses to Freud, and psychoanalysis more generally. So that week we are also reading some Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, both of whom are important feminists (although you may not think so of course).

We will also discuss where psychoanalysis fails for feminism. What Freud got wrong. Everything.

I will, however, adjust the title of that week to omit Freud, so that students do not draw the impression that he is the sole focus of that week, rather than psychoanalysis more generally. dittany and you are right to draw attention to this as a glaring anomaly. Thanks.

Sadly, as I have said at least twice already, owing to time constraints, and since we want to tell some kind of story about 20thC/21stC feminism as a whole, we are not able to devote any week to a single thinker. We shall discuss Millett, with Greer, in the early weeks of the course. She is not ignored here.

The course will undoubtedly change in the future, depending on how the students feed back. I fully anticipate that they will respond better to some weeks than to others, and I can look at adjusting the course accordingly.

Please, if you want to debate the content of my course, could you do so constructively, without being patronising?

You wrote: "it is aggravating. THere are quite a few people here who cannot even see the sexism behind their words. Penthe, it's obvious you're trying unlike LRD..."

Quite apart from how unfair I think that is to LRD, I'd like to say the following: You may feel that some people cannot recognise how sexist they are. But equally, perhaps you do not see how patronising you were there, which is, in my experience, typically an attitude I encounter in male colleagues and peers.

Good luck with your course, Penthe. I like Rose's responses too; also Mitchell's book on siblings, which is fascinating. But why no Irigaray? I use Speculum de l'autre femme and indeed 'And the one doesn't stir [bouge] without the other' all the time. I also like Kristeva, Tales of Love.

Interesting that 'troll' is a gender-neutral word at sakura.

dittany - no problem. You and sakura are right about that title. Thanks for all your input. There are so many blogs, etc., of which I know nothing, so it's invaluable to have them pointed out (here and on other threads which I've been looking over).

sieglinde - we are reading Irigaray, Cixous, and Kristeva together one week, under "French" feminism. I always think it funny that they are called French feminists, being Belgian, Algerian, and Bulgarian...

Dittany: you did say this. 'Freud was an example of patriarchy for feminists to refute'. Thus we see the problem. Presumably you could insert any male name here? 'Marx was an example of patriarchy for...' or 'Foucault was...' or 'Darwin was..' but none of this constitutes an engagement with any of these theorists on any appropriate level for university.

What, exactly, has 'dated' Freud?

Penthe, I SO agree about Algerianness etc. I tend to sprinkle them over the course rather than doing them as a lump; implies a homogeneity I don't think I find in their work.

sieglinde - yes, lumping them together (just as putting Greer and Millett together, etc.) is unfortunate; one can never do justice to a thinker in one week. But we've only got 11 weeks to cover a lot of material.

I'm hoping that it if takes off and is popular (and if - as I anticipate - we get a lot of "not enough time" feedback), I might be able to argue for the course to be extended to 2 semesters. Trouble is, because of course-loads and student timetables, and student anxiety about not putting all their eggs in one basket (a 2 semester course would be 1/3 of their taught material at that stage of their academic careers), it is unlikely to be approved. So many administrative, etc., hoops. Always a compromise.

I don't really see what's wrong with setting students to 'refute [insert name here] as an example of the patriarchy'. It could be a good question, and if you didn't explore theorists from the perspective of trying to see to what extent they are examples of the patriarchy, wouldn't you be missing something?

I may be biased because of my own very limited teaching experience, but it seems students sometimes find it hard to argue against what they perceive to be 'authorities', even when in everyday conversation they would have little hesitation in saying they found the same views to be simplistic, or sexist, or whatever.