Page 41 - Šolsko polje, XXXI, 2020, 5-6: Teaching Feminism, ed. Valerija Vendramin
P. 41
b. kašić ■ feminism as epistemic disobedience ...
Throughout all these years, by creating a feminist classroom, differ-
ent generations of students with their feminist teachers have demonstrat-
ed an almost impossible task: bringing together a rapidly changing student
body and the more inclusive knowledge of feminist scholarship. Despite
all the ongoing concerns around education and obstacles the Centre for
Women’s Studies has faced, there is still increasing student interest in at-
tending the Centre’s informal comprehensive 1-year programme. From
the very beginning, the Centre’s students have had an opportunity to lis-
ten to feminist scholars and first-hand “activist” experiences of women
from various women’s groups and organisations, as well as from artists
who have cooperated with the Centre on numerous occasions. During ed-
ucational learning, students are encouraged to articulate their own voice
and become aware of their own affinities, while witnessing how feminism
can ensure another perspective for analysing different subjects as well as a
space for dialogue. Along with the desire to gain feminist knowledge and
its critical engaged drive, one of the motivations today is certainly their
wish to contribute to the fight against endangering women’s rights, injus-
tice, discrimination as well as neoconservative, retrograde trends of mi-
sogyny and sexism.
The majority of the Centre’s students have also seen this education as
an opportunity to (de)construct subjectivities or create new ones based on
feminist insights. In order to clarify the construction and deconstruction
of gender in terms of understanding their meanings in the modern con-
struction of the mind/nature frame and opening up to alternative subjec-
tivities, Evelyn Fox Keller reminds us how “this method of feminist analy-
sis is unquestionably powerful, but it is not always unproblematic” (Keller
in de Lauretis,1986, p. 67).
Two difficulties spring to mind here: one is connected with the stub-
born picture that relies on designed polarities (female/male images of gen-
ders and their archetypical myths), and the second one arises from the
problem of acceptance gender variations or, as translated in contempo-
rary discourse, “queering gender”. Teaching “queering gender”, for exam-
ple, requires a fresh methodological approach for which the Centre, in-
stead of being pedagogically well-prepared, offers a good theoretical and
cultural analysis.
However, many students emphasised how this type of education was
a way of enabling their personal transformation and growth. The follow-
ing accounts of female students illustrate this:
I don’t have a clear recollection of everything I listened to in the cours-
es, but I know a transformation happened. I gradually became aware of
39
Throughout all these years, by creating a feminist classroom, differ-
ent generations of students with their feminist teachers have demonstrat-
ed an almost impossible task: bringing together a rapidly changing student
body and the more inclusive knowledge of feminist scholarship. Despite
all the ongoing concerns around education and obstacles the Centre for
Women’s Studies has faced, there is still increasing student interest in at-
tending the Centre’s informal comprehensive 1-year programme. From
the very beginning, the Centre’s students have had an opportunity to lis-
ten to feminist scholars and first-hand “activist” experiences of women
from various women’s groups and organisations, as well as from artists
who have cooperated with the Centre on numerous occasions. During ed-
ucational learning, students are encouraged to articulate their own voice
and become aware of their own affinities, while witnessing how feminism
can ensure another perspective for analysing different subjects as well as a
space for dialogue. Along with the desire to gain feminist knowledge and
its critical engaged drive, one of the motivations today is certainly their
wish to contribute to the fight against endangering women’s rights, injus-
tice, discrimination as well as neoconservative, retrograde trends of mi-
sogyny and sexism.
The majority of the Centre’s students have also seen this education as
an opportunity to (de)construct subjectivities or create new ones based on
feminist insights. In order to clarify the construction and deconstruction
of gender in terms of understanding their meanings in the modern con-
struction of the mind/nature frame and opening up to alternative subjec-
tivities, Evelyn Fox Keller reminds us how “this method of feminist analy-
sis is unquestionably powerful, but it is not always unproblematic” (Keller
in de Lauretis,1986, p. 67).
Two difficulties spring to mind here: one is connected with the stub-
born picture that relies on designed polarities (female/male images of gen-
ders and their archetypical myths), and the second one arises from the
problem of acceptance gender variations or, as translated in contempo-
rary discourse, “queering gender”. Teaching “queering gender”, for exam-
ple, requires a fresh methodological approach for which the Centre, in-
stead of being pedagogically well-prepared, offers a good theoretical and
cultural analysis.
However, many students emphasised how this type of education was
a way of enabling their personal transformation and growth. The follow-
ing accounts of female students illustrate this:
I don’t have a clear recollection of everything I listened to in the cours-
es, but I know a transformation happened. I gradually became aware of
39
