CFP: Feminism and Failure (3/15/04; MLA =9204)
A proposed special section for the 2004 MLA convention in Philadelphia,=20=
27-30 December.
What does feminism have to teach us about the standards and forms of=20
appearance by which =93success=94 and =93failure=94 are recognized, =
affirmed,=20
reevaluated? Often complicit with a rhetoric of immediacy that=20
measures success in terms of =93real world=94 effects (successful=20
interventions, successful translations of theory into practice,=20
successful future-historical outcomes, etc.), is feminist criticism, by=20=
the terms of its own desire to succeed, set up to fail? When success=20
is defined as acting upon a world beyond language, do denegations of=20
failure only and always point to the acute non-arrival and ongoing=20
impossibility of success? Similarly, if success is calculated in terms=20=
of worldly change, how is feminist theory bound to remain enthralled to=20=
oppositions between power and powerlessness, action and irrelevance,=20
importance and insignificance?
In order to examine the terms by which feminist theory has designated=20
the values of success and failure, this panel invites papers that take=20=
up questions such as: How have feminist affirmations of the =93new=94=20=
(broadly defined as the possibility of change, whether revolutionary or=20=
incremental), insofar as they have sought to critique and displace=20
prior and current modes of oppression, set out to delineate the marks=20
of successful scholarship and the standards of feminist intellectual=20
work? How does feminist criticism redefine the standards by which the=20=
success and failure of a work (a literary text, the work of art, acts=20
of reading, activist interventions, scholarly prose, etc.) are=20
evaluated? What =93counts=94 (and fails to be counted) as activism? Is=20=
there a feminist theory of change? of a call for change and of an=20
account for change? Rather than simply reversing the terms such that=20
failure becomes the measure of success, the panel hopes to investigate=20=
issues including:
--debates about critical opacity and the =93values of difficulty=94 (per=20=
Judith Butler=92s recent essay and Martha Nussbaum=92s criticism of the=20=
=93failures=94 of obscurantism)
--feminism and futurity (utopian, dystopian, etc.)
--narrative and inconclusiveness
--feminism and affirmative teleology
--feminism, globalization, and the wages of success (who claims=20
successful =93feminist=94 work? at what price? according to what=20
standards?)
--feminism and the ethics of "help" (help as alibi for coercion; the=20
language of beneficence; feminism and the discourses of development)
--the (gendered) pathos of failure; failure and mourning; failure and=20=
melancholia; the languages of loss
--gender and performance, speech act theory, the measures of successful=20=
and/or failed performatives
--the rhetoric of blame, exoneration, and indifference
Please email abstracts (within body of email; no attachments, please)=20=
by 15 March to: lecia.rosenthal@tufts.edu
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