Review of the Field

I found Palczewski's article laying the groundwork to be a particularly helpful overview of feminist approaches to argumentation, and really appreciated the historical presentation. As a side note, it was cool to see names that I remember from my first go-around in school 20 years ago! I heard Dolores Williams present at Re-imagining (a feminist theology conference) in 1993, and she was very provocative (and argumentative, in the popular sense of the word, come to think of it)! I have long been intrigued by the idea of women, and other traditionally marginalized groups, coming to "voice" - in fact, that will enter into my semester project on animal perspectives in animal rights discourse. When it comes to the history of the "voice" of women, clearly there are issues with whose voice exactly we are talking about. When I was working on my MDiv (1988-1991), we were reading a lot of theology by women of color/Third World women as an attempt to widen the perspectives with which we approached our understanding of religion. It was fascinating!

Throughout the work I was doing at that time, it was clear that one thing feminist theologians were claiming was the authority of women's experience as a normative source for theological truth. This was (and I think, is) a radical claim! If traditional texts were all written from a patriarchal perspective, then women's voices need to be reclaimed in order to have a full understanding of religious truth. Taking experience seriously is one way to do that. However, as Palczewski notes, sometimes this broader emphasis on women's experience has devolved into a narrower focus on "personal testimony" as "feminine," which in the end is essentializing and unhelpful.

This brings up for me a caution about our reading of these articles, and our discussion this evening. In particular in the Bruner article, I saw a tendency to be less than clear about distinguishing between "patriarchy" and "male" on the one hand, and "feminist" and "female" on the other. To me, it is not automatically essentializing to construe patriarchal argumentation as power-over, attempting to control/change, etc and feminist argumentation as pursuing a different path based on "equality, immanent value, and self-determination." It only becomes essentializing if we assume patriarchy = male/masculine and feminist = female/feminine. Some of the biggest fights I have had with people over feminist issues have been with those who make this conflation! Patriarchy demeans/limits everyone - male and female alike. Ideally, feminist critique of patriarchy aims at a liberation that is for everyone. It is about a system, not sex/gender at the biological level.

That being said, of course Crenshaw's article brings up very interesting biological issues! I think her consideration of the "male norm" is very helpful, although I found myself wondering at a couple of points if she was trying to have it both ways regarding the "difference" issue. This will be worth more discussion in class...

Feminist Argumentation Theory: Limit Work

First of all, thanks to RevCat for bringing up this reading topic. I'm enjoying the way feminist argumentation is applied to these different topics. The readings have been very interesting so far, and give good examples of the variety of ways a particular area of inquiry (like Feminism) can be applied. It's this kind of interdisciplinary approach that can raise questions which a single focus might leave behind.
I started with the Intro and "Producing Identites". Both of these articles are good in their own right but I found the idea of limit work to be especially thought-provoking (troublesome, complicated, intriguing, etc). At first I was a bit thrown off by Bruner's use of the term. He introduces this theory by calling it a 'feminist argumentation strategy' that can be used to 'distinguish enabling constraints from constraining limitations.' It wasn't until the end of the "constraining features" section that Bruner addressed limit work in much detail (at first I was confused by this, but as I read on I started to see how he revealed the argument slowly to the reader: a very nice strategy). To me, limit work is a means for creating identity by testing the limits of what currently constrains it. There can be enabling constraints, but for the most part, this is a transgressive act which helps the user of this theory understand and work to extend those limits. For example, it's not wrong to address the fact that patriarchal and feminist arguing styles are different (see KKC 1973), but that understanding must only be a starting point to greater inquiry. This greater inquiry, in my opinion, is the standard by which effective argumentation should be measured. Rather than violent, aggressive, agonistic forms of arguing, I prefer a theory like this that emphasizes reflection, identity, and transgression. There were some parts of this theory that I didn't understand fully (essentialism and deconstruction, how one might actually use this in practice, etc), but on the whole it was a good piece of theory-building scholarship.

I'll close with a question. Feel free to comment with answers, ideas, complaints. Seeing how Limit Work operates with a transgressive, liberatory, emancipating ethic, how might Paolo Friere's voice might add to this discussion?