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Stanford Conference Organizer Paula M. L. Moya STANFORD CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
9:30
a.m. Welcome
9:40 a.m. Introduction
10:15 a.m. Panel I
1:00 p.m. Lunch 2:45 p.m. Panel II
Saturday,
October 20, 2001
12:00
p.m. Lunch 1:15 p.m. Panel IV
4:00 p.m.
Coffee & Cake Break
5:30-7:00
p.m. Final Discussion Contact
MLA SPECIAL SESSIONThe Future of Minority Studies: Redefining Identity Politics Friday,
December 28, 2001 ******************************* Session
leader: “Disability
and Identity Politics” “‘Chicano
Experience’ and the Shifting Sands of Chicana/o Cultural Theory” “Realism
and African American Literary Critical Paradigms” Respondent: ******************************* The impetus for this special session grows out of a bicoastal research project (including a major conference, a follow-up conference, and several related symposia) on “The Future of Minority Studies: Redefining Identity Politics” that is taking place over the 2001-02 academic year at Stanford University, Binghamton University, and Cornell University. This project focuses on “identity” and “minority studies” in order to stimulate discussion about issues that are simultaneously theoretical and practical, ranging from ethics and epistemology to political theory and pedagogical practice. In a paper that interrogates the strains of contemporary political thought that associate minority discourses like disability studies with a defective self-consciousness, Tobin Siebers argues that identity politics have been inappropriately linked to psychological discourses of suffering and narcissism. Through a review of the literature of the culture wars, and psychological discussions of defective self-consciousness, Siebers highlights the common objections to identity politics: 1) that so-called “moi criticism” privileges the special needs of a small group; 2) that identity politics is a form of political advocacy and, as such, lacks intellectual substance; and 3) that forms of scholarship that engage in consciousness-raising activities dilute the intellectual content of American higher education. Such objections, he notes, depend on a reductive and, indeed, mistaken understanding of the concept of identity. Moreover, they belie the identificatory aspects inherent in all forms of political representation. What is needed, he suggests, is a more informed discussion of how identities contribute to the political as such. Michael Hames-Garcia traces the way in which, due largely to the influence of Chicana feminism, the politics denoted as “Chicano politics” have shifted over the past 20 years to include the issues of sexuality and gender as central to the formation of a Chicana/o experience. Such a shift, Hames-Garcia notes, has allowed critics to consider, and indeed center, literary works that were once considered marginal. Given the concomitant redescription of the term Chicano, Hames-Garcia suggests that one might now justifiably argue, for example, that although City of Night, the path-breaking novel by the gay Chicano author John Rechy, was not a Chicano novel in the year 1970, it is one today. Indeed, despite the marginality of “ethnicity” as a thematic issue in the novel, Rechy’s work is increasingly being viewed by critics as a central text for understanding Chicana/o experience. Implicit in this revising of Chicana/o critical space are a number of under-addressed theoretical questions, including the central one with which Hames-Garcia grapples: Is the redescription of Chicana/o experience and identity a move toward greater accuracy (with the attendant normative and epistemological claims), or is it simply a move toward greater inclusion on the model of a relativist pluralism? Johnnella Butler examines the usefulness for African American literary studies of the new postpositivist realist theoretical paradigm articulated by Satya Mohanty in Literary Theory and the Claims of History and developed in the volume Reclaiming Identity. The larger theme of her paper is an argument for reading some works of fiction or autobiography by minority writers as works of social criticism, as well as for seeing the authors who write them as social theorists whose insights are worth sustained consideration. Texts by minority writers, when they set forth alternative perspectives on the world, have the potential to broaden our picture of the world, to enlarge our moral and epistemic horizons. Drawing from a range of texts by James Baldwin, Butler explores his theorization of racial identity. Her paper concludes with a detailed analysis of Baldwin’s claims for the epistemic significance of African American racial identity. The three papers outlined above will be followed by a response from Paula M. L. Moya, who will tie the papers together and comment on their implications for the future of minority studies. |
