Open Forum Feminist Theory in Intergenerational Perspective

Open Forum Feminist Theory in Intergenerational Perspective renée c. hoogland UNIVERSITY OF NIJMEGEN with Petra de Vries UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM and Iris van der Tuin UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT The three texts collected here were first presented in a session at the conference ‘Passing on Feminism’, held in Amsterdam 23 January 2004; an event jointly organized by the Dutch Women’s Studies Association, the Belle van Zuylen Institute and The European Journal of Women’s Studies, to celebrate the journal’s 10th anniversary. As convenor of the panel, and one of its participants, I, renée c. hoogland, gladly accepted the task to edit and briefly introduce the papers for them to appear as a single contri- bution in this special issue of the journal. What follows, then, are the statements in the order in which they were presented by the three panelists – Petra de Vries (b. 1947), myself (b. 1960) and Iris van der Tuin (b. 1978) – preceded by a few details about our past and present academic affiliations and (research) interests. Since this was the first panel discussion during the afternoon sessions, the topic was, not surprisingly, one that took the overall focus of the conference quite literally. That is to say, we set ourselves the task of exploring the possibilities for, and difficulties with, passing on feminism from generation to generation. While the three of us perhaps do not European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), 1350-5068 Vol. 11(4): 461–472; DOI: 10.1177/1350506804046817 462 European Journal of Women’s Studies 11(4) exactly represent successive generations of feminists, we discovered, in our preliminary discussions, that the fact that we entered into the history of feminist scholarship at different historical and sociopolitical moments had had substantial consequences for the ways in which we each theorize and practise its teachings. However problematic the concept of generations itself might be, we therefore still felt it might offer a useful starting point for discussing issues concerning shifting trends in feminist thinking, teaching and, no less importantly, communicating ideas that have some- times lost their immediate bearings in social realities, while still being part of what one might call our common heritage. As will be clear from our various reflections, our respective partici- pation in this panel cannot be considered representative in any other sense than perhaps in terms of age: we all share, after all, a Dutch cultural and academic context, and all speak from a white position. Still, both while we were preparing our papers, and during our presentations, we turned out to have had both very different reasons for turning to feminism when we did, and have had very different experiences of it since. What we share in common, however, is the feeling that feminism, and perhaps especially feminist theory, had, when we first became involved in it, opened up a space for thought that we had, consciously or unconsciously, previously been missing, both personally and in our schol- arly work. Coming to feminism therefore not merely constituted a moment of intellectual enlightenment, it also entailed a dramatic change in our ways of viewing and dealing with the world, as women, as scholars, as teachers. In the discussion that ensued from the paper presentations, it was especially the last-mentioned aspect that gave rise to further debate and critical reflection. Concerns shared by many members of the audience focused on questions of power – both the power relationship between teachers and students, and the power of academic institutions in enabling or disabling the dissemination and further development of feminist scholarship. Another common concern proved to be the shifting composition of the student body in recent years, both in terms of age and in terms of ethnic background. Today, unlike the 1970s, there are fewer women who (re)turn to higher education after several years of work experience, so we are faced with the task of teaching feminism to increasingly younger, often politically more innocent, if not ignorant student audiences. The growing ethnic diversity among students has posed its own problems and difficulties, at least in the Netherlands, where universities have, until very recently, remained largely white and middle class. At the same time, the growth in both internationally and ethnically diverse students can be seen to benefit women’s studies classes, in that all students, regardless of their background, are necessarily confronted with the fact that they are part of a world in which ethnic complexity (and potential conflict) are inevitable realities. hoogland et al.: Open Forum 463 Another question that has been besetting feminist scholarship from the start, and that therefore could not but arise in the context of this discussion as well, concerned the relation between theory and practice. Practice, both in the sense of actual teaching practices and practicalities, and in the employment of theoretical insights aimed at the world of concrete social realities, one participant observed, simply cannot be sepa- rated off from the theorizing done by all of us within and through women’s studies. Practice and theory are not the fixed terms of a binary opposition, as long as we bear in mind that practice and practicalities are not necessarily the same thing. While most participants appeared to be in agreement on at least this point, it was on a note of relative consensus that the discussion had to be brought to a provisional end. However, that not even the distinction between the practicalities of feminist teaching, on the one hand, and feminist theorizing, on the other, should be thought of in terms of a binary difference became clear to me when I reread the successive statements that had given rise to these discussions in the first place. As to the validity of this suggestion, I can only invite you to read on, and judge for yourself. ◆◆◆ The first to speak was dr Petra A. de Vries, lecturer in women’s history and gender theory within the Women’s Studies Programme of the Depart- ment of Political Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. In 1970, de Vries joined the famous action group Dolle Mina, whose foundation, in 1969, marked the onset of the radical wing of second-wave feminism in the Netherlands. In 1977, she became one of the first two officially appointed lecturers in women’s studies with the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. De Vries’s publications gener- ally concern feminist history and social politics, and include a study of prostitution regulation in the Netherlands in the 19th century (e.g. de Vries, 1997). OLDER GENERATION In preparation for this session, the three of us discussed what made us become interested in feminist theory in the first place. I, personally, was not really able to answer this question. When I was a student, there simply was no feminist theory to be interested in. There was not even something called feminism, and I was fortunate enough to live and become one of the people to invent it; or so it seemed, back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I did not know at the time that we – a group of loud, disorderly women, united in the now legendary action group Dolle 464 European Journal of Women’s Studies 11(4) Mina – were reinventing many of the feminist ideas and analyses that had not been passed on to us from previous generations. I remember that there were only two books on the history of Dutch feminism: one, a more popular account, the other a more or less academic study, albeit not very accurate. When I became a feminist, it felt like a coming-out: I can still remember the moment when I became, in my own experience, a feminist. Quite suddenly, my view of the world had changed. I realized that, when I looked at it from the perspective of ‘women’, everything changed – and at this point, I would like to draw your attention to something Juliet Mitchell has suggested, i.e. that in the 1960s, the category ‘women’ did not exist as such. Thus, it was not as if we were putting ‘women’ in a social context, or in a cultural context, or in whatever context, ‘women’ were the context. Everything looked different, from my own love life to my university exist- ence; all the existing pieces were reshuffled into a new pattern, as in a kaleidoscope. Feminism definitely provided me with a new paradigm, allowing me to look from new and exciting angles to academic theory, and to discover that thing we now call gender. Along with my conversion to feminism, came a not particularly well- informed critique of late 19th-, early 20th-century feminists, whom, I felt, had merely fought a limited battle for women’s access to university education. Was it not crystal clear, I asked myself, that it was science itself that ‘had to be put under the microscope’, to borrow a phrase from Kathy Davis (1988)? I, for one, was happy to become an agent of theoretical change, as one of the first two officially appointed lecturers in women’s studies at the University of Amsterdam, assigned to ‘integrate’ women’s studies into the regular curriculum. If you start from zero, it is fascinating to realize what has happened in gender/women’s studies all over the world since then, just as it is fascinating to see how we have been passing on feminist theory. However, what exactly do you pass on when you pass on feminist theory? It is not as if you have a box full of ideas, theories and literature stored inside your head, that has to be put into the heads of students – jumping from one internal space to another.

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