Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

of capitalist exploitation, we need to foreground issues of knowledge and power(what is knowledge and who can be a knower?), that is we need to highlightfeminist epistemological issues, as the new loci of social and political struggleand subversion. In our postmodern neoliberal world, politics can happen inthose contexts where intellectual labor is being standardized and controlled,that is in the universities. 42 In this sense, academic feminism (theory)/feministactivism (politics) binary proves to be deeply problematic and for this reasonit needs to be deconstructed and reconstructed from a Third-Wave feministperspective.In my opinion, this deconstructive and reconstructive move can resignifythe ‘political’ and help us move beyond nostalgia or pessimism concerningthe lost political force of Women’s/Gender Studies. 43 In order to help academicfeminism detach itself from stories of betrayal or elitism and acquire newpolitical meanings, I suggest that we, in the 3 rd Millennium, start theorizingacademic feminism and our work as teachers in Women’s/ Gender Studies as asort of feminist academic politics which take place within the critical epistemicproject of Women’s/Gender Studies. Feminist academic politics deal with issuesof feminist epistemology (knowledge and power, women’s discrimination andexclusion through science, women’s self-representation and self-determination)as well as with questions about the role and the future of higher education.In this sense, Braidotti’s questions in her article “Key Terms and Issues in theMaking of European Women’s Studies” are considered to be highly relevant:“what vision of the university do we espouse from within Women’s Studies?”,“what kind of education values do we uphold?”, “do we consider Women’s/Gender Studies to be a laboratory for the reworking of the scope and functionof higher education?” and “what view of the human subject do we defend in acontext of increasing Macdonaldization of culture?”. 44Feminist academic politics can start answering these questions throughthe symbolic re-appropriation of the ‘magical’ signs-concepts which circulatein neoliberal and feminist discourses and which we teach in Womens’/Gender Studies courses. Interdisciplinarity, flexibility, and European-nessneed to be re-appropriated and re-signified from a feminist perspective.42In no way, do I mean to reduce the significance of other forms of political action which take place outside theacademia. My aim is to show how blurred the boundaries have become between academic feminism and feministactivism in our postmodern era.43Robyn Wiegman, “Feminism’s Apocalyptic Futures,” New Literary History 31 (2000): 805-825.44Braidotti, “Key Terms and Issues in the Making of European Women’s Studies”, 24-25.51