Women’s and Gender Studies
988:582:01
Professor Hawkesworth
Room 8A, Vorhees Chapel
(732) 932-9577
mhawkes@rci.rutgers.edu
Office Hours: W 9-11 a.m.
and by appointment
Feminist Genealogies
Genealogy has been described as a diagnostic “history of the present, ” traced in order to
undermine the self-evidences of the present and to open possibilities for the enhancement of life.
Unlike traditional techniques of historical analysis, genealogy rejects any search for origins,
notions of progress or unilinear development, and assumptions concerning definitive causes and
unbroken continuity. Genealogy’s ‘unit of analysis’ is not ‘the past’ as it was lived (which is
taken to be unknowable), but the historical record, the documents and narratives with which
people have explained their past. Following Nietzsche, genealogists problematize such
established discourses, insisting that historical narratives are framed by questions that reflect the
preoccupations and concerns of the writers. Thus the genealogist attempts to identify the
conditions under which particular discourses arise, illuminate multiplicity and randomness at the
point of emergence; interrogate the interests that inform the narrative, and question the values
that sustain the discursive formation. In an effort to trace complexity and disparity, genealogists
begin their analysis with particularity, chance, disjuncture, accidents, dredging up forgotten
documents and apparently insignificant details in order to recreate forgotten historical and
practical conditions for contemporary existence.
Genealogy is a unique form of critique premised on the assumption that what is taken for
granted--objects, ideas, values, events, and institutions--have been constituted contingently,
discursively, practically. The genealogist attempts to lay bare that constitution and to probe its
consequences. In seeking to reveal the arbitrariness of what appears ‘natural’ and ‘necessary’,
the genealogist aspires to open possibilities, by stimulating reflection on and resistance against
what is taken for granted about world and about ourselves. In this sense, genealogical narratives
are oriented toward the enhancement of life.
In keeping with the presuppositions of genealogy, the starting point for any course
entitled ‘feminist genealogies’ is quite arbitrary. While historians tend to construct a narrative of
Anglo-American feminism beginning with anti-slavery activism in the 1830s, and etymologists
trace the emergence of the term, ‘feminism,’ to derogatory depictions of women’s rights activists
advanced by male journalists in late 19th century France, this course will have a different point of
departure. In order to trace particular discursive formations in contemporary feminist theory,
this course will begin with an interrogation of the ‘Self/Other’ dialectic in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Mind and explore how that frame has been deployed by feminist and
postcolonial theorists. Taking up another strain of feminist theorizing, we will then consider
materialist trajectories that run from Marx through socialist feminist theory and radical feminist
1
theory. The final section of the course will engage a range of contestations constitutive of
contemporary feminist theory.
Course Requirements
The quality of any seminar is a direct result of the level of preparation and degree of
participation of class members. In this seminar, each student will be expected to:
1) complete all reading assignments by the dates specified below;
2) use this reading as the basis for informed class participation;
3) write and present one seminar paper;
4) complete two additional analytic papers; and
5) complete one final examination.
Seminar Papers
One objective of the course is to help students to develop their analytical abilities and
writing skills. The seminar papers are means to this end. A good seminar paper involves
exposition, analysis, and critique of a central theme in the assigned reading. A great seminar
paper involves exposition, analysis, critique, consideration of the author's possible responses to
the critique, and the development of rejoinders.
Each student will be expected to write one seminar paper (7-10 pages). Each student will
also be expected to present and defend this paper in class. The seminar paper is due on the day
of class when it will be presented. Students will be given the opportunity to revise the seminar
paper on the basis of class discussion and faculty assessment. Revised seminar papers must be
submitted with the original essay attached and are due on December 7.
Analytic Papers
While the seminar papers focus exclusively on a theme within one text by a particular
author, the analytic papers deploy the same techniques, explication, analysis and critique of an
issue or theme in the context of multiple authors. Thus the goal is to compare the authors’
varying accounts, interrogating their assumptions, examining the way they frame the issue,
identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the varying accounts.
The topic for the first analytic paper is fixed, “The Self/Other Dialectic in Hegel, Fanon,
and Beauvoir.” The deadline for the first analytic paper is September 28.
Students may choose the topic and the specific theorists to examine for their second
analytic papers, although they must submit a brief topic proposal no later than November 9. The
deadline for the second analytic paper is December 14.
Grading Policy
In calculating grades for the course, student performance will be assessed according to
the following weighting scheme:
Class participation
Seminar Paper
Analytic Paper I
Analytic Paper II
Final Examination
15%
25%
20%
20%
20%
2
Required Reading
The following books are required for the course. All but one are available for purchase at the
Douglass College Coop Bookstore. One text (Delphy) is out of print, but photocopies may be
purchased at Pequod Copy Center, 119 Somerset Avenue, adjacent to the College Avenue
Campus. Additional assigned articles will be made available in photocopy.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex
Toril Moi, What is A Woman?
Robert C. Tucker, ed. The Marx-Engels Reader
Christine Delphy, Close to Home
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
Robert Connell, Gender and Power
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Judith Grant, Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory
Shane Phelan, Sexual Strangers: Gays, Lesbians and Dilemmas of Citizenship
Chilla Bulbeck, Re-orienting Western Feminisms
Susan Stanford Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter
Semester Calendar
Sept. 7
On the Presuppositions of Genealogy: Hegelian Roots
Sept. 14
Dialectics of Self/Other
Reading: Hegel, “Self-Consciousness,” “Independence and Dependence of
Self Consciousness,” and “Freedom of Self-Consciousness” in
Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 218 – 267
Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Sept. 21
Feminism and the Politics of Othering
Reading: Beauvoir, The Second Sex,
Introduction
Part I, Destiny,
Chapter I, The Data of Biology
Part IV, The Formative Years
Chapter XII, Childhood
Chapter XIII, The Young Girl
Chapter XIV, Sexual Initiation
Chapter XV, The Lesbian
Sept. 28
Moi on Beauvoir and the Situation of Women
Reading: Toril Moi, “What is a Woman? Sex, Gender, and the Body in Feminist
Theory” and “I Am A Woman: The Personal and the Philosophical” in
What is a Woman?
Sept. 28
First Analytic Paper Due: The Self/Other Dialectic in Hegel, Fanon, Beauvoir
3
Oct. 5
Othering: the White, Western Imperial Gaze
Reading: Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Third World Women and the
Politics of Feminism,” and “Cartographies of Struggle: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial and Colonial Discourses”
Ofelia Schutte, “Cultural Alterity: Cross Cultural Communication and
Feminist Theory in North South Contexts”
Evelynn Hammonds, “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality:
The Problematic of Silence”
Rey Chow, “Violence in the Other Country: China as Crisis, Spectacle,
and Woman”
Oct. 12
Historical Materialism: Marx
Reading: Marx, The German Ideology,
Wage, Labor and Capital,
The Communist Manifesto
Oct. 19
Feminist Applications of Historical Materialism
Reading: Christine Delphy, Close to Home
Oct. 26
Feminist Appropriations of Historical Materialism
Reading: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
Catharine MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: An Agenda
for Theory," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7(3): 515-544 [1982].
Catharine MacKinnon, "Feminism, Marxism, Method and the State: Toward
Feminist Jurisprudence," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 8(4):
635-658 [1983].
Nov. 2
Contesting the Terms of Debate: From Women to Gender
Reading: Robert Connell, Gender and Power
Nov. 9
Contesting the Core Concepts
Reading, Judith Grant, Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of
Feminist Theory
Nov. 9
Topic Proposals for Second Analytical Paper
Nov. 16
Contesting Heteronormativity
Reading: Shane Phelan, Sexual Strangers
Nov. 22
Contesting Western Feminisms
Reading: Chilla Bulbeck, Re-Orienting Western Feminisms
NOTE: Class meets on Tuesday rather than Wednesday
Nov. 30
Trying Again: Migratory Feminism in the Borderlands
Reading: Susan Stanford Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural
4
Geographies of Encounter
Dec. 7
Reports on Second Analytic Papers
Dec. 14
Final Exam
Second Analytic Paper Due
5