well then, i am second
I am going to comment on Musisi's article. I really liked the way she stated or made points about how she was transformed while doing her field work for her doctorate using the "standard prescribed recipes of socialscience methodology" and how she discovered that the people she needed to interview to completer her doctorate were "human beings." And further, that the perscribed interviewing practices were not only "morally indefensible and wrong, but exploitive and anti-woman." Now if all social sciences in using their cultural essentialist and gender essentialist methodologies of study would only realize this and change their methods of study. Also, supposedly 'scientific' and what is considered to be intelligent studies and writing about "Other" cultures, like the "National Geographic" magazine would realize this as well.
I also appreciated how she spoke of herself as a women with "multiple and cumulative identities" and she uses the term post-modern, to characterize African people in Canada whose "multiple identities" are "embedded in multiple sites of oppression (as woman, as Blacks, as Africans, as immigrants or refugees, as employed, unemployed or underemployed.)" Which of course is disrupting the univeralized woman's experience that feminists have been criticized for in trying to always find commonalities. But further in disrupting this narritive and by pointing out that maybe we shouln't seek these commonalities because each womean "has a unique way of evaluating and making sense if her situation. Within this plurality of experiences, nevertheless, there existed a remarkable cmmonality of vision ands an understanding as to why it may be difficult to achieve collective political strategies for transforming oppressive power realtions." (P. 140) What I appreciated most about her analysis or critique of the feminist movement is she didn't just point out its hegemonic, essentialist aspects, and how can we overcome this "identity politics" to create collective strategies, she presented ideas on how to do this. On page 45 Musisi writes,
"Foucult argued that power is never won once and for all; neither is it ever possessed entirely by
one individual or group. It is diffused and perpetually contested. The implicaiton is that there
will always be possiblilites of resistance....Differences can help us multiply the sorces and fronts of
resistance to the relations of domination that circulate in the society or communtiy in which we live."
To see and to use these differences as strengths and not as a threat to the "feminist" movement.
As far as labeling goes I know we have discussed this over and over in class, but language is very powerful, and there has to be something of which to identify yourself other wise there would just be chaos, no way of understanding yourself. But that doesn't mean those labels cannot change as one becomes more an more aware of perhaps the negative aspects of these labels and then seeks new ones that represent a broader persepctive.