first PhD in Women's Studies in Canada) concerns human lives, as much as their evils derive from women's friendships with women. Katherine Side's interdependence" (86). It seems rather that the place dissertation, combining theory and empirical work, assigned to conflict in the process of community celebrates the power and value of women's building depends on how we define community, or friendships with women, and also is clear-sighted more specifically, what we mean by community in about the social and economic realities that shape the institutional, disciplinary, ideological, social, expectations about what these relationships can and and political contexts of Women's Studies. Instead should offer us. of a totalizing narrative of compulsory sisterhood, The three papers in the cluster on "Conflict our sense of community may stem from various, and Community Building in Women's Studies" sometimes conflicting, positionings and alliances as reflect something of the range of interests and feminists in the academy, practitioners of a specific "situations" of students in our programme. They feminist methodology, members of the same were presented first in June 1997 at the annual association, students in a particular programme, or Canadian Women's Studies Association meeting in even participants in a given seminar. In other St. John's, Newfoundland, as a student-generated words, joining Women's Studies, we encounter panel. Later, in November 1997, they were multiple possibilities of community building, and delivered at York University as part of the this precisely is the main reason why most of us Programme Seminar Series organized for students come to the programme. in our programme. A fourth paper presented at both One possible sense of community in sessions was not available for publication at this Women's Studies is that of an epistemic community time. As current Director (Jane Couchman) and bound by an overriding commitment to challenge former Director (Rusty Shteir) of the Graduate dominant paradigms of knowledge from the Programme in Women's Studies at York University, perspective of embodied subjectivities. This, to me, we applaud the three very thoughtful and means that a decision to enter Women's Studies provocative essays that follow for the contributions translates into a conscious choice of location from they make to feminist knowledge-production and which to practice knowledge-production. It is a our on-going conversations. chosen bond, and therefore, in my argument, I want to shift emphasis from the question of the Ann B. Shteir and Jane Couchman institutional need and viability of community in Women's Studies to the problem of individual and collective will for community. Since epistemic choices are informed by ethical considerations, I look at community COMMUNICATION ACROSS building from the vantage point of ethics. I would DIFFERENCE: CONFLICT AND like to retain maximum flexibility for the concept COMMUNITY BUILDING IN WOMEN'S of community, so as to allow for constant crossing STUDIES PROGRAMMES and redrawing of the boundaries different communities draw around themselves. Actually, it Considering the place of conflict and the is better to speak of "provisional boundaries" and possibility of community building in the context of "imagined communities" since, in my Women's Studies, 1 felt compelled to rethink the understanding, community is more effectively very terms foregrounded by my title: "conflict" and viewed as a process rather than a product. It is a "community building." They do not have to be put form of relationality that has to be constantly in oppositional relationship, as conflict is inevitably negotiated and renegotiated. Like feminism itself, part of community building. Neither does community is a discursive construct shaped by our "community" always have to be valorized in a different experiences of gender, race, sex, class, positive way, for - as the philosopher Lorraine culture, and consciousness. I think that in order to Code reminds us - "the good and helpful aspects of foster communitarian relationships in Women's Studies, we must tap models of relationality rather that communitarian, privileging the rule of supplied by contemporary feminist ethics, such as law and justice at the expense of solidarity and Seyla Benhabib's model of communicative friendship. According to Benhabib, a community of interaction, or various constructions of relatedness people practicing communicative ethics rather than based on the concept of "second personhood" or legalistic discourses of rights would be able to friendship (Annette Baier; Janice Raymond; develop the capacity for mutual understanding and Lorraine Code). for reversing perspectives that would make the Seyla Benhabib situates the epistemic and continuation of open-ended moral conversations ethical gendered subject in the context of possible. community, while insisting upon "the discursive Similarly, Lorraine Code, working through power of individuals to challenge such situatedness Baier's "second persons" (a concept through which in the name of universalist principles, future Baier recognizes the communal interdependence of identities and as yet undiscovered communities" any individual activity), arrives at a dialogic model (1992:8). Unlike most postmodernist critics, she of relationality that acknowledges the importance of does not reject generality and universality while affective ties and cooperation. The possibilities of stressing the importance of situatedness. Rather, she such dialogue exist particularly in Women's suggests a post-Enlightenment model of Studies, where the practice of "second person" "interactive universalism" that is contextually discourse has "the emancipatory potential to open sensitive, not legislative, and cognizant of gender up freer discursive spaces than those constructed differences. Influenced by Jurgen Habermas, she and constrained by the objective, impersonal forms attempts to forge a link between the Enlightenment of address...[in] late capitalist societies" (87). Code and feminism. She substitutes the "ethical embraces the concept of friendship as opposed to orientation of justice and rights," characteristic of "natural," "found" sisterhood, concluding that the the Enlightenment, by "the ethical orientation of epistemic potential of friendship can offer creative care and responsibility," inherent in feminist possibilities for forming "sound, morally and philosophy (1992:149). To that effect, she offers a politically informed alliances, in which sisterhood- modified version of communicative or discourse is achieved, not assumed" (102). ethics which de-emphasizes "the standpoint of the Lorraine Code's helpful critique of liberal generalized other" while reinforcing "the standpoint humanism's ethical shortcomings supplements the of the concrete other" (1986:340). Derived from views expressed earlier by Seyla Benhabib. The Kantian moral theory, the standpoint of the proponents of liberalism tend to speak in favour of generalized other requires us to view "each and "individual" freedoms and rights, refusing to every individual as a rational being entitled to the recognize the need for social interdependence and same rights and duties we would want to ascribe to cooperation. Code warns that this autonomy- ourselves" (ibid.). By contrast, the standpoint of the obsession threatens to deny the importance of any concrete other refers to "an individual with a affective ties in relationships. The prototype of an concrete history, identity, and affective-emotional autonomous, self-righteous human subject can be constitution" (1986:341). found in Kant, whose categorical imperative These two standpoints correspond to two privileges abstract morality over "special" personal different versions of community: a community of relationships, and universal laws over particular rights and entitlements versus a community of human needs. This kind of ethics concentrates on needs and solidarity. Benhabib's model of ethics "self and insists on severing the ties with "others." involves "the Utopian projection of a way of life in Thus it appears to be a major task of feminist which respect and reciprocity reign" (1992:38). She oriented ethics to propose alternative models of also proposes to "shift the burden of the moral test moral philosophy which would promote in communicative ethics from consensus to the idea "responsible, worthy alliances and relationships" of an ongoing moral conversation" (ibid.). Liberal (Code 83). principles of "neutrality" are seen as individualist The ethical models proposed by Benhabib and Code delineate strategies that can be of community - a community of rights and incorporated as part of "the micropractices of entitlements versus a community of needs and restructuring personal, social, and political solidarity - is also interesting for Women's Studies institutions and relations" (Code 87). In addition to in that it can be used to illustrate two possible kinds the danger of reproducing in Women's Studies the of excess. If based solely on the liberal concept of heterosexist and racist patterns of oppression of rights and duties, Women's Studies would simply society at large, a serious threat to communitarian duplicate the masculinist, bourgeois, universalistic ethos is reflected by two extremist stances: on the models of community. Conversely, the community one hand, autonomy-oriented, self-promoting, and of needs and solidarity, in its extreme version, can self-serving individualism; on the other hand, degenerate