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NEWS & LETTERS, JULY 2003
Woman as Reason
Contradictions at NWSA
by Terry Moon New Orleans--In contrast to 1990, when Black women and
other women of color walked out of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)
Conference over an entrenched racism, women of color now dominate the NWSA staff
and many are in important decision-making positions. Nevertheless, this year’s
conference, held June 19-22, remained overwhelmingly white and, as before,
students were markedly missing from the workshops. This was especially serious
given that the theme was “Southern Discomforts,” and there were many
sessions on the unique struggles of Southern women, taking up racism, poverty,
and cultural and political marginalization. What was new was that Marxism and class were words that,
while certainly not on everyone’s lips, were discussed at many panels
throughout the conference, as well as mentioned by different plenary speakers. One high point was the plenary talks by the one youth
speaker, a founder of the Southern Girls Convention, Robin Jacks, who spoke of
what it means to be young and working class in Mississippi; and Black woman
community health worker and trainer Barbara Majors, who spoke of “Problems and
Possibilities,” emphasizing the often difficult relationships between Black
and white Southern women. Here we only have space to discuss a few workshops and
the keynote address by Minnie Bruce Pratt, Southern writer, poet and activist. HUSSEIN’S BRUTALITIES IGNORED Given Pratt’s distinguished history in the women’s
movement, I was shocked when, in her condemnation of Bush’s war on Iraq, she
had not one word to say against Saddam Hussein. She described the condition of
women under his brutal, murderous dictatorship as heaven: paid maternity leave,
daycare at work, participation in professional jobs and in all aspects of Iraqi
culture. She never mentioned Hussein’s genocide against the Marsh
Arabs--women, children, and men--or the murder of every revolutionary element in
Iraqi society. This selective memory continued in her discussion of Afghanistan,
where she had not one word to say about the USSR’s invasion and occupation,
implying that the puppet government continued the reforms begun in the 1970s. When I discussed this with women later, each seemed
unconcerned by Pratt’s omissions, as if there were no need to discuss any evil
in the world except the U.S. How long women have suffered from the Left’s
“lesser evilism,” being told we must work against U.S. imperialism rather
than for a thoroughgoing revolution that would free everyone! And how right the
early Women’s Liberation Movement was to reject that idea, for everywhere
women and men remain unfree. Some of the same thinking was evident at the
well-attended panel on “‘Third World’ Women and Globalization: The Case
Against Postmodern/Postcolonial Western Feminist Theory.” Three presenters put
forth a sharply critical view of postmodernism’s reduction of “agency."
But panelist Delia D. Aguilar kept counterposing women’s genuine agency to
class. While it was refreshing to hear a critique of postmodernism for ignoring
class, Aguilar was pushing the same old tired leftist dogma that first we must
have a “socialist revolution”--and she reduced socialism to nothing but
class--and only after the revolution can we consider problems of sexism, racism,
homophobia, and so on. MARX VS. POSTMODERNISM This truncated concept of socialism was accompanied by
Aguilar’s mangling of Marx. Agency, she claimed, exists within Marxism, but
“it’s not individual, it’s collective.” That it’s Marx’s humanism,
not Aguilar’s neo-Stalinism, that can successfully combat postmodernism was
seen in how she was answered from the floor by a young gender activist Filipina
scholar who passionately insisted that “Marx was definitely for individual
progress, and for the full potentiality of human agency. We need to see how the
Marxist-feminist label can expand.” We found at our two workshops, one on Raya
Dunayevskaya’s Marxist-Humanism and the other on the philosophic base of our
work with prisoners, a keen interest in Dunayevskaya and how her ideas could
help us today. Women wanted to know about the Hegelian concepts of first and
second negativity. One asked how she could get NEWS & LETTERS in her
hometown in Florida. A young Black woman whose father taught prisoners, related
how many of the students he had taught in high school were now in prison. There
was interest in the way N&L sees prisoners’ contribution to the idea of
freedom. We invite participants at the NWSA Conference to write us their thoughts on this column and on the conference as a whole. |
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