Page 44 - Šolsko polje, XXXI, 2020, 5-6: Teaching Feminism, ed. Valerija Vendramin
P. 44
šolsko polje, letnik xxxi, številka 5–6
Performing Feminism, Troubling Questions, Engaged Feminism
What is an epistemologically reachable horizon when talking about the
liberating of knowledge today? And, going back to Sternfeld’s article and
the timeless question: How can we radically change the circumstances
from the inside? (Sternfeld, 2010, p. 5) These questions are somehow al-
ways on the feminist agenda, demanding very clear tasks from women’s
studies education. Education as a feminist (activist) project (Kašić, 2010)
in the above-mentioned sense is the constant production of space(s) based
on the principle of transversality that is created through the production of
intersubjectivity, meetings, acts of experimenting, crossing over, new posi-
tioning and, on the other hand, seeking direct social engagement.
Before further elaborating on these issues, it is important to men-
tion several obstacles that nowadays tend to block the politics of femi-
nism as a liberating epistemology and/or engaged/activist theory. On one
side, the politics of overgenderisation upon the feminist agenda that goes
with the politics of gender mainstreaming as a rule exposed through “the
politics of gender equality” holds the tendency for completely absorbing
feminist content and disciplining and neutralising feminist critical de-
mands. And yet a study presented in the article “Discursive Dynamics
Gender Equality in Politics: What about ‘Feminist Taboos’?” (Lombardo
et al., 2010, pp. 105–124) shows how the application of the political con-
cept of gender equality for more than a decade affects the process of de-
politicising discourse on sex/gender issues and the scope of feminist en-
gagement, and which has a direct impact on the production of feminist
knowledge. Slovenian theorist Vlasta Jalušič significantly calls the impli-
cations of gender mainstreaming a process which, despite the initial in-
tention, has directly produced “degendering” (Jalušič, 2009, p. 60). In ac-
ademic institutions, it is obvious how the absence of the politicality of
knowledge goes together with affirmation of the neutral categorical ap-
paratus within the gender studies domain, and social sciences in particu-
lar. On the other side, there is the global commodification of knowledge
which in a neo-global economy is encompassed in the “conflation of epis-
temic efficacy with pecuniary profitability” (Mirowski & Sent, 2008), and
for which neo-liberal narratives simultaneously produce competitive and
expert-pragmatic knowledge often in the function of capitalist exploita-
tion and financialisation. As a consequence, the problematic topoi of mod-
ern slavery, taking this as an example, marked by sex/gender and migrants
of various kinds, human humiliation or the feminisation of poverty, en-
ters into the array of educational interest only as an articulation of differ-
ence which, instead of a critical insight, is merely exoticised or trivialised.
42
Performing Feminism, Troubling Questions, Engaged Feminism
What is an epistemologically reachable horizon when talking about the
liberating of knowledge today? And, going back to Sternfeld’s article and
the timeless question: How can we radically change the circumstances
from the inside? (Sternfeld, 2010, p. 5) These questions are somehow al-
ways on the feminist agenda, demanding very clear tasks from women’s
studies education. Education as a feminist (activist) project (Kašić, 2010)
in the above-mentioned sense is the constant production of space(s) based
on the principle of transversality that is created through the production of
intersubjectivity, meetings, acts of experimenting, crossing over, new posi-
tioning and, on the other hand, seeking direct social engagement.
Before further elaborating on these issues, it is important to men-
tion several obstacles that nowadays tend to block the politics of femi-
nism as a liberating epistemology and/or engaged/activist theory. On one
side, the politics of overgenderisation upon the feminist agenda that goes
with the politics of gender mainstreaming as a rule exposed through “the
politics of gender equality” holds the tendency for completely absorbing
feminist content and disciplining and neutralising feminist critical de-
mands. And yet a study presented in the article “Discursive Dynamics
Gender Equality in Politics: What about ‘Feminist Taboos’?” (Lombardo
et al., 2010, pp. 105–124) shows how the application of the political con-
cept of gender equality for more than a decade affects the process of de-
politicising discourse on sex/gender issues and the scope of feminist en-
gagement, and which has a direct impact on the production of feminist
knowledge. Slovenian theorist Vlasta Jalušič significantly calls the impli-
cations of gender mainstreaming a process which, despite the initial in-
tention, has directly produced “degendering” (Jalušič, 2009, p. 60). In ac-
ademic institutions, it is obvious how the absence of the politicality of
knowledge goes together with affirmation of the neutral categorical ap-
paratus within the gender studies domain, and social sciences in particu-
lar. On the other side, there is the global commodification of knowledge
which in a neo-global economy is encompassed in the “conflation of epis-
temic efficacy with pecuniary profitability” (Mirowski & Sent, 2008), and
for which neo-liberal narratives simultaneously produce competitive and
expert-pragmatic knowledge often in the function of capitalist exploita-
tion and financialisation. As a consequence, the problematic topoi of mod-
ern slavery, taking this as an example, marked by sex/gender and migrants
of various kinds, human humiliation or the feminisation of poverty, en-
ters into the array of educational interest only as an articulation of differ-
ence which, instead of a critical insight, is merely exoticised or trivialised.
42
