Spaces for counter-narratives: The phenomenology of reclamation

Frontiers

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 111-133

  Godrej, Farah ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CONSCIOUSNESS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; FEMINISM; GROUP DYNAMICS; HISTORY; IDENTITY; PERSONAL AUTONOMY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SELF CONCEPT; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

CONSCIOUSNESS; FEMINISM; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; IDENTIFICATION (PSYCHOLOGY); PERSONAL AUTONOMY; PERSONAL SPACE; SELF CONCEPT; WOMEN; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

EID: 84858402913     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: 15360334     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/fro.2011.0027     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. Reclamation is of course a composite of multiple movements and projects
2. For various treatments of reclamation see Iris Marion Young, "Social Movements and the Politics of Difference," in Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)
3. Lynne Tirrell, "Definition and Power: Toward Authority without Privilege," Hypatia 8, no. 4 (1993): 1-34.
4. Maria C. Lugones and Elizabeth V. Spelman, "Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for 'The Woman's Voice,'" Hypatia 6, no. 6 (1983): 573-81.
5. Tirrell, "Definition and Power," 2
6. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 213
7. Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), xi
8. Charles Taylor, "The Person," in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrothers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 276.
9. Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 1-2
10. See also Linda Fisher and Lester Embree, eds., Feminist Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 20.
11. Iris Marion Young, Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
12. Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 84
13. Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 86
14. See also Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 222.
15. Richard Wollheim, Thread of Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 71
16. George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self and Society, ed. C. W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).
17. Hubert J. M. Hermans, "The Dialogical Self: Toward a Theory of Personal and Cultural Positioning," Culture and Psychology 7, no. 3 (2000): 250.
18. Ian Burkitt, "Dialogues with Self and Others: Communication, Miscommunication, and the Dialogical Unconscious," Theory and Psychology 20, no. 3 (2010): 306.
19. Erica Burman et al., Challenging Women: Psychology's Exclusions, Feminist Possibilities (Buckingham, UK, and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1996), 3.
20. See Steve Bearman, Neill Korobov, and Avril Thorne, "The Fabric of Internalized Sexism," Journal of Integrated Social Sciences 1, no. 1 (2009): 14.
21. Exceptions are Bearman, Korobov, and Thorne (cited here) and Barbara L. Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts, "Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks," Psychology of Women Quarterly 21 (1997): 173-206.
22. Hermans, "Dialogical Self," 262-65
23. See Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1986)
24. Mary Gergen, Feminist Reconstructions in Psychology: Narrative, Gender and Performance (Thousand Oaks, London, and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001), chap. 5.
25. Hubert J. M. Hermans, "The Dialogical Self as a Society of Mind: Introduction," Theory and Psychology 12, no. 2 (2002): 140
26. Hermans, "Dialogical Self," 259-61
27. A culture of domination, bell hooks claims, demands of all its citizens self-negation
28. See bell hooks, Black Looks (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 19. Meanwhile, Fredrickson and Roberts's "Objectification Theory" traces the psychological phenomenon of self-objectification by women under patriarchy.
29. Burkitt, "Dialogues with Self and Others," 307
30. Diana Tietjens Meyers, "Intersectional Identity and the Authentic Self? Opposites Attract!" in Relational Autonomy: Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Self, ed. Catriona MacKenzie and Natalie Stoljar (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 151-80.
31. Hermans, "Dialogical Self," 249-53
32. See also Burkitt, "Dialogues with Self and Others."
33. Hermans, "Dialogical Self," 251
34. An oppressed self-conception need not always be entirely weak or morally defective; as Catriona MacKenzie reminds us, self-worth is rarely an all-or-nothing matter
35. See Catriona MacKenzie, "Imagining Oneself Otherwise," in MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy, 140
36. See also Robin S. Dillon, "Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect," in Dignity, Character and Self-Respect, ed. Robin S. Dillon (New York: Routledge, 1995), 299.
37. Nelson, Damaged Identities, 70
38. But uptake is, of course, a tricky concept. In some cases the reclaiming subject may need to draw on the tools and narrative forms developed within her community of choice and modify them in ways that might seem unintelligible to her current community, such that they may only find an audience with a future community. Like an artist who looks beyond the present and "flirts with" unintelligibility, imagining a future work of art that is yet to make its way into existence, lack of uptake could be accepted by someone with her eyes on the future, working with the hope of ease of uptake by a future community she not only imagines but helps to develop through her self-reconstructing narratives.
39. See Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (Berkeley: Crossing, 1983), 154
40. Nelson, Damaged Identities, 99-105
41. Here we might recall Audre Lorde's emphasis on anger: our affirmations of one another may need to be accompanied by a naming of each others' flaws, excesses, and unconscious privileges
42. See Audre Lorde, "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism," in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984). Conversely, we also need to distinguish this "tough-love" kind of correction from misinterpretation, manipulation through power, or distortion of one's experience and self-expression.
43. See Sue Campbell, Interpreting the Personal: Expression and the Formation of Feelings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). 160.
44. Paul Benson, "Feeling Crazy: Self-Worth and the Social Character of Responsibility," in MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy, 81-83
45. R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).
46. Benson, "Feeling Crazy," 75
47. Notice that there is a sequential aspect to the five procedures I outline here; one's capacity to perform each skill may depend to a large extent on the practiced performance of previous ones
48. See Diana Meyers, Self, Society and Personal Choice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)
49. See MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy, 3-26
50. Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992)
51. Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
52. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
53. Jennifer Nedelsky, "Reconceiving Autonomy: Sources, Thoughts and Possibilities," Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1 (1989): 7-36
54. Jennifer Nedelsky, "Law, Boundaries and the Bounded Self," Representations 30 (1990): 162-89
55. Marilyn Friedman, "Autonomy and Social Relationships: Rethinking the Feminist Critique," in Feminists Rethink the Self, ed. Diana Teitjens Meyers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), 40-61.
56. MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy, 10-11
57. Burkitt, "Dialogues with Self and Others," 306
58. Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 20
59. Meyers, "Intersectional Identity," 171-72
60. See also Hermans, "Dialogical Self," 252-53
61. Bell Hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 210
62. Linda Barclay, "Autonomy and the Social Self," in MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy, 57-58
63. Quoted in MacKenzie and Stoljar, Relational Autonomy 7
64. Bartky, Femininity and Domination, 23, 30-31
65. Frye, Politics of Reality, 2-4
66. Dillon, "Toward a Feminist Conception," 299, 301-2
67. See Marilyn Frye's conception of the "loving eye," in Politics of Reality, 74-76
68. Campbell, Interpreting the Personal
69. See, among others, John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)
70. Amy Gutman and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1996)
71. Jean Hampton, "Should Political Philosophy Be Done without Metaphysics?" Ethics 99 (July 1989): 791-814
72. Tirrell, "Definition and Power," 5