It is only halfway through the semester and already it seems clear to me that much of what I thought I knew and/or understood about feminism can essentially be thrown out the window. It has been both refreshing and a bit unsettling at the same time to tread this new ground and think these new thoughts. In fact, all of the readings have really pushed me (as well as our sometimes intense class discussions) to examine my preconceptions and assumptions of the meaning of feminism on the one hand, and the meaning of being a feminist on the other. Whether or not these two things are necessarily incompatible is not something I am ready to deny or confirm-just that there certainly seems to be a fundamental

Hannah Slavitt

Professor Dalke

Critical Feminist Studies

9/25/07  

I find Cixous’s article to be the richest one that we’ve had to date, maybe because of its “free” style that other people have commented on, which allows it to make bold assertions about the future of feminine writing, academic and personal, and also because it seemed full of commentary on what we’ve read so far. 

Introduction

When I came to class on Tuesday after reading Spivak's essay, I was feeling terribly daunted. I hadn't read any of the books she used to illustrate her ideas (though I was pretty familiar with the plot of Frankenstein), and found it very difficult to get through her writing and extract anything useful, if only because I didn't know what she was trying to say most of the time. Our discussion & small group work in class were helpful, but I still didn't take very strongly to Spivak's ideas. I suppose, as I've said before on this forum and in class, feminism is something that I feel involves a connection on a personal level as well as on an academic/activist level... and I felt virtually no connection with her essay at all.

My surface is as Caucasian as my name: very white skin, reddish blonde hair, blue eyes.  I came to hate that surface!  I sometimes thought, "If one more person comments on my coloring, I'll have a screaming fit!"  Living in the tropics at high altitude my skin is now the color of sunburn on white and with age my hair has turned to a hideous yellow.  The 'white' community accepts as white only pure white.  As I said before, I am not pure white.  If the Caucasion genes were mixed with African, I would have had a large community in the U.S.  My genes include indigenous American ones --- that community rejects me as completely as the white.  I keep on my desk a black-and -white photograph of myself.  It shows a mixed-blood old woman who could be taken for Mexican.  Without

I came to my neighborhood Internet shop this morning to look at the class notes and found that someone had made a blog for me and that someone had asked what I meant by my races.  I had convinced myself that my situation was so peculiar that it was irrelevant.  But perhaps not.