Blog Five Instructions
Week Five
Blog Assignment
This week, we started our new unit and Part II of our class. If we were to sum up what we have been doing these past four weeks, we might say that Unit One was an attempt to understand, on a very basic level, the generic functions of gender and power in everyday life. In contrast, we are now interested in naming how gender is “getting done,� what subjects are made in process, in what context is gender and power being analyzed, and what does it tell us about everyday life? We are now much more concerned with “specifics,� that include naming formations and operations of power, describing the precise context in which gender emerges, and analyzing how that gender performance might play out differently in other subject’s lives.
To recap, Marilyn Frye’s “Oppression� demonstrated how we can transform our discussion around the “limits� of gender performance into a dialogue around the politics of oppression; to talk about how limits impact different subjects differently is to talk about the way in which power situates us in uneven relationships with one another. Allan G. Johnson’s “Patriarchy, the System� located Frye’s more general observations about oppression in a systematic framework. He described how the politics of naming oppression- especially gender oppression- don’t have to be about blaming those who are privileged; instead, taking accountability for one’s unearned advantages enables subjects to consider how everyone is impacted by patriarchy. Lorde’s “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference� elaborates the importance of recognizing difference- not as a stumbling block to liberation, but as a realization of power differentials in lived experience that provide an even richer analysis of the inner-workings of power systems.
I want us to consider Lorde’s essay for a moment. She, like Frye, is concerned with politicizing the notion of “limits,� and like Johnson, is very interested in analyzing how such impediments stem from power systems, like patriarchy. How do things like age, race, class, and sexuality “limit� the ways in which Lorde, and the subjects she discusses, can perform gender? In other words, how is Lorde’s gender identification always an indication of her position as an oppressed woman? Does Lorde think that patriarchy is the primary form of oppression? If not, how does she propose we think about oppression? And finally, how is Lorde’s analysis of gender and power specific to her subject position as a lesbian of color?