Zeitschrift für Hochschuldidaktik Nr. 2/1995
Feminist Contexts
Pages: 58-65, Paper in German
Renate Retschnig (Vienna, Austria)
Who's Afraid of the Ghetto
or Why are Peripheries as Important as the Center?
Summary
The ongoing shift from women´s studies toward gender studies - at least in terms of proportion, accceptance and resources - endangers the socalled "ghetto", those approaches of women´s studies, which put the category woman in the first place. This does not intend to limit the research scope to women, but demands places where they can discuss and develop their own kind of ideas, theories and actions. Because of the danger of cooption by the "male-stream", a powerful "ghetto" is crucial to gender studies on their way to the academic center. Without a feminist approach positioned at the margin of academia the whole field of women´s studies will get less radical, political and absorbed by "male-stream". It takes more than lip-service to support those groups which work at the periphery and already are affected by general backlash. To quote Barbara Christian: What I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally.
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