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...