Social Sciences for an Other Politics: Women Theorizing Without Parachutes

161 Pages·2016·3.301 MB·English

by  Ana Cecilia Dinerstein (eds.)

Social Sciences for an Other Politics
AnaCeciliaDinerstein
Editor
Social Sciences
for an Other Politics
Women Theorizing Without Parachutes
ForewordbyJ.K.Gibson-Graham
Editor
AnaCeciliaDinerstein
DepartmentofSocialandPolicySciences
UniversityofBath
Bath,UnitedKingdom
ISBN978-3-319-47775-6 ISBN978-3-319-47776-3(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-47776-3
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016956659
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Thisbookis dedicatedto Berta Cáceresand Jo Cox,two greatwomen
brutallysilencedfortheirresistancetopowerandtheirhopeinaworld
that cancontain manyworldsin it.
‘Unrayo partióla blancurade latierra enmil pedazos’, (María
AliciaGutiérrez Punto que simulafijo, 2014,p. 41)
’
E P
DITOR S REFACE
Every book has a story behind it. The story of this book begins with an
intuition.IhadanideathatmademehappyandIhadtopursueit.AsIwas
walkinghomefromworkthatday,Iwassmilingalone,duetothejoybrought
aboutbythesimplethoughtthatotherswouldfeelthesameandwouldjoin
in.Ithoughtofseveralfemaleacademic-activistswhoIadmire,readandcite
inmyownwork,whoIknowinpersonorwhoseworkIfollow,andwhoIfeel
closeto.Ibelievedthatwewerealldoingsomethingverysimilar,despitethe
obviousdifferencesinthetopicsorareasofstudy.Whatwasit?Iconsidered
severalideas.Clearlywewereallcritical,committed,responsible,interesting.
Wewerealldiscussingnewformsofcriticalthinking,prefiguration,etc.Allof
whichwastrue.ButIwasnotconvinced.Afterawhile,nowhavingdinneron
myown,Ithoughttomyself:whatwearedoingis‘venturingbeyond’.Ilove
thisexpressionthatBlochusesinhisThePrincipleofHope,thatis,‘thinkingis
venturingbeyond’.Ihaveusedthisexpressionbefore.Venturingbeyondthe
given.Másallá...and‘venturingbeyondthewire’asametaphordrawnfrom
theMovementofRuralLandlessWorkerswhentheytrespassbycuttingthe
wire of a fertile but unoccupied land, to then occupy and plant their seeds.
Andyet,Ithought,aswomen,wearenotsimplyventuringbeyondbutour
venturingbeyondisalwaysedgy,becauseourtheorisinghappensinaworld
that is not completely ours. Venturing beyond means verging, as mothers,
writers,activists,lovers,workers...‘Womenontheverge’!Asthereadercan
guess, this name comes from the title of the hilarious film Women on the
VergeofaNervousBreakdown.Unlikethosewomen,wewerecategorically
notonthe‘vergeofanervousbreakdown’but...WhatdidImeanthenby
‘Womenontheverge’?
vii
viii EDITOR’SPREFACE
Toputmyintuitionintowordswasnoteasy(itisstillnoteasy).Thisis
not surprising: words can hardly express and translate emotions and
hunches. I had a brief conversation with Palgrave Macmillan’s female
staffataconferencestandbeforesendingthee-mailandtheyseemed to
understand and like the idea. I went ahead and tried my best to com-
municatemyideasinane-mailsenttothewonderfulwomen,allscholar-
activists,whobecamecontributorstothiseditedcollection.Wouldthey
embrace the idea of being ‘women on the verge’ and write for this
collection? My electronic message began with the usual ‘Dear all:
Apologies for contacting you out of the blue like this’. This polite
introduction swiftly triggered an enjoyable process of communication,
sharing,thinkingandwriting.Yes.Ourworkaddressesdifferentareasof
thesocialsciences,butreflectsadeterminationtocritiquetheknowledge
produced by such social science, for it constantly restricts and oppresses
us,andisunabletoaccountfortheemergingstrugglefortheprefigura-
tion of alternatives realities, new sociabilities, relations, identities, orga-
nisations, politics and policy from below, by a myriad of collective
subjectivities worldwide. Social science but also critical theory are over-
looking them, misunderstanding them, subjugating them under old
ideas and old tools. We understand. Yes. Fantastic! And that we should
write freely indicating the path we think theory should take. Yes.
Thatallcontributorsarefemalescholar-activistsisthennotanaccident.Ina
patriarchalsociety,theorisingisamale-dominatedactivity,whichalsorepro-
ducescolonialpatternsofdomination.Thisdoesnotmeanthatwomendonot
theorise.Butwithexceptionsitisabigdealforustogetthroughthenetof
deterrents – adverse or amicable – that are in place. Women’s theorising is
constantlyinvisibilisedordiminished.Lookatyourbookshelves.Whatdoyou
see?Doesitmatter?Theoryistheory,right?Well.No.
At atime when the conditions forthe socialreproduction of life in the
planet are deteriorating at unimaginable speed and levels, the ‘warm
stream’ of critical theory that women can provide (I am paraphrasing
Bloch when he distinguishes the cold and the warm streams of Marxism
(1959/1986, pp. 209–210)) seems essential in order to renew the dry,
cold,rational,negativeexistingtheoryproducedinboththeacademicand
activist worlds. The warm stream of critical theory is in no way naïve or
weak,romanticorsuperficial.Rather,itprovidesanembodiedcritiqueof
capital, coloniality and patriarchy. This theorising is attuned with life,
affect, commonality, nature, utopia, possibility. This is not then a book
on feminism, or feminist theory, although we are feminists and we use
EDITOR’SPREFACE ix
feminist theory. We are women thinking and writing. The collection is a
vindication of critical theory written by women. This book aims to con-
tributetotheexistingprocessofdevelopinganticipatory,engaged,critical,
open,ecological,decolonial,anti-oppressiveformsof‘theorising’asatool
againstcapital,patriarchyandcoloniality.Arewe‘radicalhumanists’then?
Well.Shouldradicaltheorynotbeabouthumanity?Whatelsecoulditbe
about?
Theorising without parachutes means to engage with traditions and
existing radical thought such as anarchism, Marxism, Feminism, but
suchthatwearenotprotectedbytheirestablishedframeworksofanalysis.
By ‘critique’ we understand a constant opening towards the discovery of
possibilities that rejects the present state of affairs and navigates through
the conflicts that emerge out of the process. It is also the critique of
criticism for its permissiveness and resignation in contributing to the
naturalisationofanoppressivesociety.‘Withoutparachutes’meansuncer-
tainty and ambivalence in the practice of theorising (Gibson-Graham
2006, p. xxxi). We struggle with, against and beyond capital, the law,
the state. But to confront them we start from the space of nonbeing’
(Gibson-Graham 2006,p. xxxiii).
We explored the meaning of being ‘Women on the Verge’ (WOV)
collectively in several ways. Marina Sitrin said ‘we are not those women
pushed to the edge, overreacting, and caricatures of ourselves as in
Almodovar’s film, but we are on the edges of doing, of thinking, challen-
ging our own perceptions and stereotypes, tired of being constrained by
specific patterns and models required by academia’. As women, we are
always ‘verging’, claim Sarah Amsler. Besides, argued Sara Motta, ‘the
idea of us becoming “women on the verge” is not related to a particular
positionality, but rather to an epistemological embrace and practice of
becomingmultiple...“womenontheverge”suggestsatonceacommon-
ality that is troubled by our very real differences in praxis, experience,
cosmologies’. Raquel Gutiérrez envisaged what she understood by
‘womenontheverge’:‘wearejumpingoutofaplaneflownbymainstream
critical theorists and political figures. We jump with hope and determina-
tion, but hesitationandfeartoo.Oneofthe womenistryingtoget rid of
the parachute provided by the male crew. It is big, heavy and uncomfor-
table. It would be better to jump out of this plane than to continue
reproducing ideas driven by social science’s establishment and its critics.
Theirapproachesandconceptsareconstrainingourcapacitytothinkfreely,
toimagine,toprefigure.Astheyjumpoutoftheplanewithoutparachutes
x EDITOR’SPREFACE
somestartweavingacollectiveparachute.Othersrealisethattheycanfloat
intheairandthattheyarebecoming“flyingseeds”’.
Between 8th and 14th August 2016 some of the contributors to this
collection attended the workshop ‘The Ethics and Politics of Possibility:
Principles and Practices of Prefigurative Knowledge and Research’, spon-
sored by the Independent Social Research Foundation (2016 Residential
Research Groups) convened by Sarah Amsler at the University of
Cambridge, UK. As Sarah wrote, ‘the workshop aimed to be a space for
fruitfulandjoyfuldiscovery,andtooffertimeoutfromthefrenziedpace
ofknowledgeproductionthatoftengovernsbothintellectualandpolitical
work’. Sarah Amsler, Emily Brissette, Raquel Gutiérrez, Lucia Linsalata,
Mina Lorena Navarro, and myself attended the gathering at Girton
College (Emily Davis’ college). Keri Facer (Bristol University, UK) and
Kelly Teamey (Enlivened Learning) joined us. We talked, shared and
connected. We also discussed some aspects of this book, in particular the
introduction,forwhichIamgrateful.DuringthemeetingatCambridge,
theorisingaspraxis,andtheprospectiveofconstitutingtheWomenonthe
Verge(WOV) groupbecame areality.
Thebookfeaturestheworkofwonderfulwomen.Thefinalproductof
this amazing journey reflects, as I imagined, our efforts to push the
boundaries of critique beyond its demarcated limits by forcefully challen-
ging ourselves too, risking ideas in an uncertain terrain, experimenting,
contributing.Whetherwehaveachievedourambitionornotisuptothe
readersto decide.Enjoy.
Bristol,August30, 2016 AnaCecilia Dinerstein
F
OREWORD
What a joy it is to greet this inspirational book of engaged feminist
political theory. I love the image of our thinkers floating down from
on high, some free flying, some with parachutes entangled into webs
of collectivity, all, aiming to land on an earth that has been trans-
formed by their courageous work. J. K. Gibson-Graham applauds this
daring stunt! She recognises herself in the commitments that guide
this collection – to a realistic hopefulness, to performative concepts,
to prefigurative actions that will bring other worlds into being. And
she welcomes the company of so many others in that space ‘on the
verge’.
When I surveyed the chapters of this book, I was reminded of the
wonderful book-length collections that documented feminist research
methods that I had relied on so heavily when I was catapulted into
teaching Women’s Studies in the early 1990s. The similarity was with
thecommandingarrayoftopicsdisplayingthebreadthoffeministengage-
ment. At the same time, the differences were also striking. Importantly,
there was no mention of feminism in any of the chapter titles! This is a
collection of edgy political theory so saturated with a feminist sensibility
that has become unremarkable. And yet remarkable it surely is. The
feminist thinkers who have contributed to this book have the weight of
theworldontheirshouldersandthechallengeswefaceasinhabitantson
this precious planet squarely in focus. They are leading the way by com-
biningcriticalthinking,astuteappreciationofwhatwehavetoworkwith,
xi