Is academic
feminism dead? How has the university
changed since the first women’s studies department was formed in 1970? And if
the purpose of women’s studies programs was to give rise to new ways of
understanding the world by unsettling tradition, how can such programs continue
this task now that they have had time to settle into traditions of their own?
The writers in this volume do not answer these questions directly so much as demonstrate possibilities in response to
these questions by continuing to open new lines of thought through unsettling
the “traditions” of academic feminism. 
In this way, these writers critically carry on the spirit of academic feminist
thought.

The book is
divided into three parts and contains essays by a diverse group of women. Most, but not all, work from within the
academy. Their disciplines include
history, literature, anthropology, political economics, philosophy, American
studies, justice studies, and Native American studies. All three sections offer
much for the reader to consider and there is by no means one agreed upon
solution offered to the many problems the authors address.

The first
part, entitled “Theory Binds: The Perils of Retrofit”, explores possibilities
for reimagining and transforming ways of thinking through feminist
problems. It both looks to the binds in
which feminist theory has been entangled and suggests that there is something
about theory that is binding in itself. 
Vèvè Clark begins the section by defining her use of the word
“retrofit”. “Retrofit”, as used by
Clark, is a metaphor for two processes in American education: the tendency to
assimilate new areas of knowledge into the old and the counter tendency to
reject inclusion and set up new institutions of one’s own, for example Afrocentric
or women-centered study. The dilemma between these two choices has been a
traditional “bind” for feminist theorists: should we attempt to access old
institutions that have previously excluded many or set up new institutions of
our own? Both strategies have problems
and, Clark argues, both strategies are connected by a single logic. It is this logic that she tries to disrupt
and she contends that the current generation of students represents a type of
consciousness that is capable of escaping the perils of this bind. Marilyn Frye’s article challenges the way
feminists have explained the historical exclusion of many of women’s voices
from mainstream feminist thinking. She
does this in part by taking those voices seriously as individual voices rather
than via the generic category of “the excluded”. What makes her essay particularly remarkable is her ability to
demonstrate the method she advocates while making an argument for it. Alice Adams and Peggy Pascoe take on
specific feminist concerns (abortion and gay marriage respectively) and argue
that new strategies need to be imagined if we are to move forward with these
concerns. In both cases, the authors
argue that it is the traditional language of “rights” that is the culprit that
leads many of these debates to a stalemate. Throughout all four essays, it is
demonstrated that certain theoretical approaches to our concerns may prevent us
from seeing and understanding precisely what we need in order to make progress.

Part II,
“Storytelling: Sites of Empowerment, Sites of Exploitation”, looks at the
relationship between identity and the (hi)stories told about those
identities. What is the relationship
between the intellectual as storyteller and the communities about whom she
tells stories (or theorizes) in the academy? 
Do stories empower or disempower those about whom they are told? And does it matter who tells the
stories? Kath Weston recounts the
problems she faced in anthropology in attempting to write about the gay and
lesbian community, a community of which she is a part. Among the assumptions her essay thoughtfully
unpacks are those hidden in the notion that one must be a disinterested
“outsider” in order to do “real” anthropological work. Mrinalini Sinha, Kathryn Shanley, and Edén
Torres analyze various ways stories have been misused in the academy and suggest
a number of remedies for the problems they uncover. Cheri Register artfully recounts her own story as a meat packinghouse
worker’s daughter who sought to escape the fate of women from her town by
entering academia. In grappling with
the difficulties of how to tell her story, Register both learns to appreciate
the women of her hometown and questions the power of academic theory to make
the lives of those women better.

The final
section, “Starting Here, Starting Now: Challenges to Academic Practices”, takes
on specific problems for feminists in the academy and suggests possible
solutions for dealing with these problems. 
Rhonda Williams, who seeks to challenge students’ stereotypes about
Black sexuality and African American families, uses her identity as an African
American lesbian as a starting point for showing students how heterosexism,
racism, and sexism interact. Mary
Romero investigates the effects that depoliticizing study in sociology graduate
programs has on women of color who enter these programs precisely in order to
theorize about the political. The last
three essays critique the academic environment itself, notorious for its
clashes of egos and elitism. Diana
Vélez suggests that such an environment is stifling for those who want to
imagine change. Drawing on her practice
of Buddhism, she recommends personal transformation through resisting anger as
the first step toward changing that environment. Joanna Kadi examines the systematic classism that confronted her
as a working class student who refused to adopt the social codes of the “academic
class”. She argues that the academic
environment is centered upon a disassociation from and ignorance of the lower
classes, who are unjustly labeled “stupid”. 
Finally, Sharon Doherty examines both positive and negative meanings of
individualism to argue that there is a kind of individualism in the academic
environment that prevents integration of social justice concerns. Her essay resists the pessimism of other
critiques of individualism in the academy by offering a number of practical
strategies for creating a new academic environment conducive to concerns for
social justice.

    Is Academic Feminism Dead? is a
volume that takes on some of the most pressing issues facing academic feminists
today. Because the problems feminists seek to address are quite difficult and
complicated, they require long and serious thought. However, if the aim of this
long and serious thought is to change society, the results of their thinking
must be accessible to the general public. One of the major issues facing
academic feminists, then, is how to make their debates accessible to a widened
audience. This question runs through a
number of the essays and most of the authors are successful in writing in a
clear and engaging manner. Still, while
most of the essays in this volume should prove accessible to and interesting
for the general reader, how they all fit together and the contexts that
motivate them are not always apparent. A
few of the essays will be unclear to those unfamiliar with the history and
debates within which they are embedded and the connections between the essays
may sometimes seem tenuous. At times it
may not even be clear what a particular essay (say, on abortion) has to do with
the academy at all. These problems
might have been remedied by a general introduction detailing the historical
context within which the essays are written and more detailed openings to the
three parts of the book tying the concerns of each essay back to that context
and the general theme of the book. However,
both the general introduction and the individual introductions to its three
parts are extremely brief and only vaguely suggestive. Ironically, the volume
may be most suited for academic feminists aware of the contexts within which
the essays are written, who are already well aware that academic feminism is
far from dead.

© 2002 Gaile Pohlhaus

Gaile Pohlhaus is a graduate student in
philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

Categories: Philosophical