![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've been turning thoughts over in my head about the integration of chromatic feminist theory/writing into other work, and I wanted to hear all your thoughts, o people of the interwebs, for verily y'all are smart.
In writing about an Old Book by a white woman, I wouldn't hesitate methodologically to bring up some contemporary feminist theory. I mean, if it were very contemporary, primarily concerned with our current world, I'd maybe have to tapdance a little - but I would still do it. Right? We've all been swanning around applying Judith Butler to George Eliot for a while now. But what if the theory that I want to nudge up against Old Books by white women is Black feminist work? Is it sound to apply Cherrie Moraga to the critique of education in Jane Eyre? Or does it disrespect chromatic feminism to appropriate it for the tales of the travails of white girls?
On the one hand, I love seeing Audre Lorde get play, because I seriously worship her brain, and part of me doesn't want her stuck in a feminist ghetto. Part of me feels like the flexibility and play involved in porting theory about is a good thing. But I also have no desire to steal away from chromatic feminism what isn't mine to take - or my cultural heritage's. Both Eliot and Brontë have some racism going on; would using minority feminism to talk about the other aspects of their novels be deeply inappropriate, or kind of a cool re-valuation?
Right now I'm working up a prospectus for looking at double-voiced irony in women's rhetoric. When I actually write the paper, it'll probably focus on white women in the nineteenth century, because I did sign on for this Victorian thing and I've been trying to make myself stick to it, no matter how much I want to write about Cherrie Moraga and Sor Juana. But in limiting my scope, I'm wondering, do I have to give up all the unspeakably brilliant things feminists of color have said about silence and double meaning? Or can I port them in the same way I'm intending to do with LeGuin and Adrienne Rich and Virginia Woolf?
Thoughts?
In writing about an Old Book by a white woman, I wouldn't hesitate methodologically to bring up some contemporary feminist theory. I mean, if it were very contemporary, primarily concerned with our current world, I'd maybe have to tapdance a little - but I would still do it. Right? We've all been swanning around applying Judith Butler to George Eliot for a while now. But what if the theory that I want to nudge up against Old Books by white women is Black feminist work? Is it sound to apply Cherrie Moraga to the critique of education in Jane Eyre? Or does it disrespect chromatic feminism to appropriate it for the tales of the travails of white girls?
On the one hand, I love seeing Audre Lorde get play, because I seriously worship her brain, and part of me doesn't want her stuck in a feminist ghetto. Part of me feels like the flexibility and play involved in porting theory about is a good thing. But I also have no desire to steal away from chromatic feminism what isn't mine to take - or my cultural heritage's. Both Eliot and Brontë have some racism going on; would using minority feminism to talk about the other aspects of their novels be deeply inappropriate, or kind of a cool re-valuation?
Right now I'm working up a prospectus for looking at double-voiced irony in women's rhetoric. When I actually write the paper, it'll probably focus on white women in the nineteenth century, because I did sign on for this Victorian thing and I've been trying to make myself stick to it, no matter how much I want to write about Cherrie Moraga and Sor Juana. But in limiting my scope, I'm wondering, do I have to give up all the unspeakably brilliant things feminists of color have said about silence and double meaning? Or can I port them in the same way I'm intending to do with LeGuin and Adrienne Rich and Virginia Woolf?
Thoughts?