In The Alchemy of Race and Rights, Patricia Williams begins with subject position (herself, her body, her thoughts, and spirit), and then weaves a work around civil rights, law, and commerce within fractures of her own life and hystery. For this text, I learned and connected it to so much we have been thinking through in class about epistemology and the academy (post-modernism, post-post-modernism, humanism, Enlightenment, positivism) as methods of research inquiry.
However, for this text, what I found myself reflecting on was how much I was drawn to William's writing style. For example, as she explains her work to her sister, she practices, within her writing, both dialogue and pedagogy. This is critical and mindful of traditional law text / academic text, which is generally "explanation" -- not a critical pedagogy / praxis (bell hooks, "Teaching to Trangress") and also usually has a "fourth wall" which it's audience. As Williams branches on her theoretical framework, her writing embodies what she is talking about. For example, William's writes, "legal language flattens and confines in absolutes the complexity of meaning inherent in any given problem", and then offers anecdotes to complicate even what a "given problem" could mean or how it could be interpreted.
I connected it with why I was initially drawn to "Pedagogies of Crossing", by Jacqui M Alexander as well. It was, in part, politic. But also, an intentionality around the writing form itself, so that the text was both "peer-reviewed work" but also prose-like. Other writers I admire are: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis...
However, for this text, what I found myself reflecting on was how much I was drawn to William's writing style. For example, as she explains her work to her sister, she practices, within her writing, both dialogue and pedagogy. This is critical and mindful of traditional law text / academic text, which is generally "explanation" -- not a critical pedagogy / praxis (bell hooks, "Teaching to Trangress") and also usually has a "fourth wall" which it's audience. As Williams branches on her theoretical framework, her writing embodies what she is talking about. For example, William's writes, "legal language flattens and confines in absolutes the complexity of meaning inherent in any given problem", and then offers anecdotes to complicate even what a "given problem" could mean or how it could be interpreted.
I connected it with why I was initially drawn to "Pedagogies of Crossing", by Jacqui M Alexander as well. It was, in part, politic. But also, an intentionality around the writing form itself, so that the text was both "peer-reviewed work" but also prose-like. Other writers I admire are: Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis...
Hardeep,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your fascination with Patricia Williams’ writing style. The way she incorporates her personal struggles in dialogue and pedagogy. I am actually using a lot of her work as a guide for my project that focuses on the injustices created through laws that are supposed to be color-blind, yet as Williams claims it is obvious that we do not live in a colorblind society. I am intrigued to know how you will incorporate "Pedagogies of Crossing", by Jacqui M Alexander into your research project seeing as how it is apparent your influenced by writers like Ruth Wilson Gilman, bell hooks, and Angela Davis all strong will women with similar yet different tactics.
-Evelyn
thank you, thank you -- i think i'm going to try to attempt to work with jacqui alexander to talk about how ruptures/dislocations/traumas from land loss are never fully "crossed" - there's a psychic violence and a material one.
Deletealso, alexander writes about confluence, which is sharing similar stories but not having them be the same. an example of this would be slavery / indentured servitude that parts of british colonies all faced, but slavery is not the same as indentured servitude. claiming that would be reductive. similar with kashmir, i want to argue that the loss is similar to indigenous struggles globally, but at the same time each struggle is specific to its own history. they all are confluent in one another.