Class Cancelled Today
Due to the bad weather today, class is cancelled. Since we can't meet, I thought we could discuss the texts a little on this blog. Please post at least one entry in response to my questions and/or the readings.
The topic for this week was: Critical Agency and the Claiming of the Selfhood. I saw many common themes in the Moya, Panjabi and Wekker readings. Here are three:
1. Bodies/Embodiment as essential for resistance and critical agency.
2. Agency as not experienced by an autonomous individual but by selves-in-community.
3. Agency/Subjectivity framed in opposition to postmodern theories about the self and her ability to resist.
-How do you see these different themes functioning within the texts?
-Any other common themes? What kinds of connections do you make between the experiences of these different women?
-What are the differences between these readings? How do they describe agency differently? What are their definitions of agency?
-How do these texts describe resistance and agency explicitly in terms of women?
-What are the specific oppressive institutions that each group of women (Chicana women, imprisoned women in India/Argentina, and Suriname creole working class women) is resisting? How do these institutions shape their agency/subjectivity?