Tuesday, 7 October – The F-word? Steps to taking Action
• Read Reed, Ch 3 & 4
• Have you chosen your 5th book with your Thursday seminar yet? Make sure this week that your EVENT planning is up and running!
• what else do you need to consider for Ass. #2?
These readings with Reed are the beginning of the experience that culminates in Assignment #2: your group’s event, flyer, and collective definition of feminism. What do we learn about Women’s Studies as we go about deciding on a fifth book? Why is feminism defined collectively, in our project and in the world? Each feminist speaks from several collective locations. What are yours? Which collective locations might matter the most to you? To people you care about? To people you don’t know? What does taking action mean in Women’s Studies?
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http://www.onbeing.org/program/words-shimmer/feature/poetry-not-luxury-audre-lorde/318
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From Reed 2005: xiii (type shape is mine): "This book hopes to prove useful to three main types of readers.
= For students and general readers new to the subject, it presents an introduction to social movements through the rich, kaleidoscopic lens of artistic and cultural expression.
= For scholars of social movements, it offers intriguing observations on particular movements and useful insights into various ways to think about the relations between culture and social change.= For activists, it seeks to offer inspiration and a tool kit of ideas about how art and culture can further social movement goals.
These three sets of readers overlap, of course, in the form of scholar activists or activist students, but to the extent that they sometimes speak different languages, or have different interests, I hope that each type of reader will be patient when encountering portions of chapters that may speak more clearly to another of these audiences. Finding a style equally appropriate to all has been my goal, but no doubt I have not always succeeded."
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Movement Sites Links:
NEW: Occupy Wall Street
Abolition of Slavery
American Indian / Native American Activism
Anarchist Movements
Anti-AIDs Activism
Anti-Nuclear Movements
Art Activism
Asian American / Pacific Islander Movements
Black Nationalism & Black Arts
Chicano/a Latino/a Movimientos
Civil Rights Movements
Disability Rights Movements
Environmental Movements
Gay / Lesbian / Bi / Trans / Queer Movements
Global Justice Networks
Labor Movements
Media Activism
Socialist Movements
Women's Movements & Feminist Sites
Multi-Issue Movement Sites
What ARE these "social movements? Reed calls them (xiii) "the unauthorized, unofficial, anti-institutional, collective action of ordinary citizens trying to change their world...." (xiv): "...'progressive' social movements like the ones at the heart of this book have been crucial in taking the important but vague and unfulfilled promises of 'freedom' and 'democracy' announced in the [American] revolution's best known manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, and given them more reality, more substance, and wider applicability to the majority of people -- women, people of color, the poor -- who were initially excluded from those promises.... Movements, in contrast to their tamer, more institutionalized cousins, political parties and lobbyists, seek to bring about social change primarily through the medium of 'repeated public displays,' or, as I would put it, through dramatic action." (xvi-xv): "...as centrally important as dramatic, public action has been to social movements, it is by no means the totality of their activity, or the sole source of their impact...dramatic actions are themselves the products of usually rather undramatic, mundane daily acts of preparation...the impact of dramatic moments is only as great as the follow-up forms of daily organizing that accompany them...dramatic movement events happen in other, less celebrated spaces, including apartment living rooms, academic offices, and classrooms."
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Reed, Chaps 3 & 4:
Take a moment to look through these chapters and refresh your memory of reading them and preparing for today's class. As you do this, take note of three things in the chapters that were surprising. Write them down.
In threes, share what you found surprising, and pick 3 of them to share with the class: each person will briefly discuss one. What was the surprise? Were any challenged assumptions involved? If so, what were they and where do you think they came from? If not, what about the surprise is important do you think?
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Welcome to Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art & Voices, a global online exhibition from the International Museum of Women (IMOW).
Muslima presents a groundbreaking collection of thought pieces and artwork from contemporary Muslim women who are defining their own identities and, in the process, shattering pervasive stereotypes. Explore work from artists, activists, and thought-leaders around the world, representing a broad spectrum of Muslim realities and identities, addressing such topics as Power, Leadership, Appearance, Myths, Generations, Faith and Connection.
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Here are some terms we want to add to our word-hoard! Notice that words are alive! defining them is fixing their meaning, holding it still. There can be good reasons for this, but it still flies in the face of how words actually work in the world. Better to notice how words are USED rather than defined!
Building on our exercises and experiences so far with assumptions we can add these terms for our on-going use. We will need them, or perhaps better, the IDEAS they help us think about, for thinking throughout the semester.
= ideology: a word that helps us think about the common sense assumptions we use without reflection. Or, in a different meaning, helps us locate our own or others' "prescriptive" visions: how things "ought" to be. Wikipedia.
= hegemony: this word refers to how ideologies can be so taken for granted that we literally cannot think without them, cannot imagine something else. Someone might say "I cannot imagine how someone could do that." "Grades just ARE the way to motivate students to learn!" Wikipedia.
= structural oppression: ways in which power is so embedded in everyday life and the institutions we are required to live inside of that getting outside of this is extremely difficult, sometimes hard to even imagine. Oppression on Wikipedia.
= internalized oppression: ways in which structural oppression has actually become part of the person we are, the powers over us something we defend, consciously or unconsciously.
= complex personhood: how we are never entirely taken over by oppression or the hegemony of various ideologies (even good ones), but always a bundle of being, experiences, hopes, ideas, misunderstandings (including of ourselves), and interactions with the world. Gordon's coinage.
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