Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

in the consciousness-raising groups did not lead to organisation and politicalaction. Besides, the therapeutic element in the groups could function in such away as to directly hamper political action. Nevertheless, in April 1979, a radicalfeminist workshop was held at the White Lion Free School. Here, as in manyother feminist spaces during this epoch, the notion of consciousness-raisingwas brought up for discussion. On this occasion, the speakers commentedupon the problem that consciousness-raising so easily resulted in what wasa merely “confidence-raising exercise”. 23 Still the agreement was, nonetheless,that consciousness-raising should continue to be the base for the movementand the speakers emphasized the importance of consciousness-raising groups.They urged that “all members of Women’s Liberation should be in an initialCR [consciousness-raising] group and should continue with it as long as theycontinue to identify with the Women’s Liberation Movement.” 24 Alreadyduring its hey-day, consciousness-raising was thus strongly connected with itstherapeutical function, and this was a function that was difficult to exceed.Indeed, I do believe that the (mis)conceptions that occurred during ourintensive program, where the memory work exercise was taken for a therapeuticsession, reveals the deep embeddedness of the idea that experience-basedwork has a therapeutic function that can liberate us from oppression. Buteven though this might be valid for the way experiences were handled in theconsciousness-raising sessions, this must not be true for all experience-basedwork. The resistance to the method (“This is not therapy!”) was a complexresistance, however, as first of all it can be seen, by way of association, as areconstruction of a connection between experience-based work and therapy.The division between theory and experience-based work, in return,is a well-known division among academic feminists, in which theoreticalwork is seen as “abstract and rational and male” and experience is representedas “practical and emotional and female”. 25 Here, experience-based work isidentified with the working methods of the women’s movement in the 1960sand 1970s, i.e. to consciousness-raising. Defenders of this division oftenmourn the loss of those working methods, and, in a nostalgic vein, express23Amanda Sebastien, “Tendencies in the movement.Then and now. (Paper prepared for the Radical Feminist DayWorkshop at White Lion Free School, April 8, 1979).24Gail Chester, “I Call Myself a Radical Feminist”, (paper prepared for the Radical Feminist Day Workshop atWhite Lion Free School, April 8, 1979).25Diana Mulinari, “Learning to teach feminism(s)”, in Undervisning i kvinno- och könsforskning i Norden. (rapportfrån symposium i Stockholm, Forum för kvinnoforskning, Stockholms universitet, 28-29 September 1998, Stockholm),42, 46.84