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Critical Interdisciplinarity, Women's Studies, and Cross-Cultural InsightAuthor(s): Marjorie PryseReviewed work(s):Source: NWSA Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1998), pp. 1-22Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4316551 .

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Critical

Interdisciplinarity,

Women's

Studies,

and Cross-Cultural Insight

MARJORIE

PRYSE

University

at

Albany,

State

University

of New York

Abstract

In this essay

I

examine

the

relationship

between

interdisciplinary

meth-

ods and cross-cultural analysis in Women'sStudies. I arguethat interdis-

ciplinary

methods

produce

an

intellectual

flexibility

that can

be

conducive to cross-cultural

insight,

and

that

therefore

become

a

way of

enhancing receptivity

to

difference

in

members

of

dominant

groups,

but

that

it

is only

analysis

that

works at

the

same

time

across

lines

of

race,

class, gender,

and

sexuality

that

creates

a

critical

interdisciplinarity.

Analysis by

Gloria

Anzalduta,Maria Lugones, and Uma

Narayan

suggest

that

mestizaje

can enhance

feminist

understandings of interdisciplin-

arity;

Sandra

Harding's

work on

standpoint theory

helps

articulate

knowl-

edge

claims

for a cross-cultural critical and

interdisciplinary

Women's

Studies. Maria Mies

offers

a

specific example of

research that

moves

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity

into

feminist practice,

with

implica-

tions

for pedagogy

in

Women's Studies as

well.

Feminists often use the word

interdisciplinary

o

distinguish

Women's

Studies from other

academic

fields,

to describe the

structure of women's

studies

programs

and

curricula,

to

identify

a

research

methodology, to

claim outsider status in the academy, and to imply a site of dialogic

knowledge production.

At

the same

time, as second-wave feminist

theory

has embraced difference and

a

plurality

of

feminisms, responding

to

critiques

from

women of color

and,

in

the

1

990s,

moving

towards a

global

or

international

perspective

on women's

lives, the word

cross-cultural

has taken

on

its own value

as both a

description

of

objectives

in

Women's

Studies and a

site

of

conflicts within

feminism.'

Thus,

to

describeWomen's

Studies

as either

interdisciplinary

or

cross-cultural has become

some-

thing

of a

cliche.

However,

we have not

yet

moved in

the direction of

setting these two terms in collocation with each other or of theorizing

their intersection.

Indeed,

the two

terms do not

readily modify each other.

In

some

ways,

focusing

on

concerns of

interdisciplinarity in

Women's

Studies, therebyappearing

o

locate

feminism strictly within an

academic

sphere, may appearto work

against a

cross-cultural construction of

femi-

nism that

takes into

account the lives

and

struggles of non-academic

women.

Similarly,

because the

cross-cultural dimensions of

Women's



2

MARJORIE

PRYSE

Studies often

inscribe differences within

feminism,

even

occupying a

separate or

partially separate

ideological

space,2

cross-cultural

approaches

to

feminism might

appear

o resist the

way

interdisciplinarity

assumes

an

apparently

arbitraryright

to cross

epistemological

borders.

When

I

was

studying

for

my

M.S.W.

degree, my peers

traded

variations

on a

joke meant

to generate serious reflection:

How

many

social workers

does it take

to change

a

client? The answer:

Only

one,

but the client

has

got

to

want to

change.

The

joke

reminded us that

although

we

considered

ourselves, and

found ourselves referred

to

in

social work

textbooks,

as

change agents, our

powers

were

limited. The

strongest

formula

for

creating

a climate for

change,

according

to social work

practice

theory,

was to increase the level of discomfort in a client so that the client would

want to

change

in order

to reduce the

discomfort.

In

its

feminist

varia-

tions, the

question has remained

unanswered and no

longer

sounds like

a

joke:

How much

Women's Studies does it

take

to

produce

feminist

con-

sciousness in a

student? How

many women's studies

majors does it take

to

change

an

institution's

budgetarypriorities?How much

feminist schol-

arship

does it take to

move closer to

Adrienne Rich's

woman-centered

university

?

In

exploring the

theoretical

relationship between

interdisciplinary

and

cross-cultural, I have been trying to discover whether, as feminist teach-

ers

and

scholars,

there is

any

particular

methodology

that

might

increase

our

effectiveness as

change agents.

In

other

words, is there

anyway

we

can

proceed

that

can answer

the

question,

How

many

feminists

does it take

to

change the world in

some other

way

than that

the

people who

own

the

world, govern

it, and

dominate it

have got to

want

to change.

Starting

with the

modest

goal

of

wanting

to

produce

feminist

thinking in the

students

who enroll in

women's

studies

courses

and in the

colleagues and

other readerswho arewilling to explore feminist scholarship and theory,

can

we

determine

sufficient

theoretical

grounding

for a

feminist

method-

ology that

might

increase our

chances of

achieving

this goal?

Or, to put

the

question

another way,

can

we locate

theoretical grounds

for

inter-

disciplinarity

in

addition to

its

practical

ability to

bring into

program

or

departmental

federation

feminist

colleagues

trained in

diverse

disci-

plines?

Does

interdisciplinarity have the

potential

to

produce

cross-cul-

tural

insight,

an

actively

anti-racist,

anti-classist,

anti-homophobic,

and

anti-imperialist form

of

feminist

thinking? To

what extent

does

the cross-

cultural component of Women's Studies raise interdisciplinarity to a

critical

edge?

It

seemed

to me

when I

started

thinking

about these

questions that

interdisciplinarity

is

a

much more

theoretically

significant

feature of

Women's Studies

than

we have

recognized,

and that

the kind of

analytical

flexibility

interdisciplinarity

offers

might

help

students from

apparently

privileged

groups

(white

and

middle-class;

heterosexual,

able-bodied, and



CRITICAL

INTERDISCIPLINARITY,

WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND CROSS-CULTURAL INSIGHT

3

male) develop

at least a

cognitive understanding

of what a writer like

Gloria Anzaldua means by mestiza consciousness.

Furthermore,

it

seemed that

Anzalduia's

construction

of

theory

out of her

experience

of

this

mestiza

consciousness has

implications

for

interdisciplinarity;

in

fact, when Anzalduia

1993)

writes that the

coming together

of two

self-

consistent

but

habitually incompatible

frames

of

reference

causes un

choque,

a cultural collision

(p.

428),

she seems

to be

suggesting

that

students who claim

a certain

knowledge

of

oppression-what standpoint

theorists refer to as epistemic privilege -by virtue

of

their association

with particular identity groups while

also

participating

actively

in a

mainstream

culture

in

which

they may

feel

a

sense of

cultural erasure

(what W. E. B. Du Bois called double consciousness ) may choose, on

[their]

way

to

a

new consciousness

(p. 428),

a more flexible

way

of

seeing.

Anzaldua

writes, La mestiza constantly

has

to

shift out of habitual

formations;

from

convergent thinking, analytical reasoning

that

tends

to

use

rationality

to move

towards a

single goal

(a

Western

mode),

to diver-

gent thinking,

characterized

by

movement

away

from set

patterns

and

goals and toward

a more whole

perspective,

one that includes rather than

excludes

(p. 429). Working

out from this

mestiza consciousness,

Anzal-

duia

s

also

describing interdisciplinary methodology

at its best.

Might

we

be able to make the theoretical connections between the interdisciplinary

and cross-cultural that would

strengthen

Women's Studies' claims to

knowledge

in

a

way

that would also

produce

new

insight

for social

change?

Might

we be able to build on

the kind

of academic

flexibility

women's

studies students

gain

when

they

are

majoring

in

one

discipline

and must

read from

others

widely disparate

from their own as a

strategy

to

increase

students'

ability

to make the other kinds

of

crossings

that

can

produce

cross-cultural

insight?

These are the

questions

I started with

and have

tried to answer by bringing together the concepts of the interdisciplinary

and

cross-cultural.

In

the

essay

that

follows,

I

will

begin by exploring the theoretical

implications

of

interdisciplinarity

for Women's

Studies and will

suggest

that a critical

interdisciplinarity may be understood as a

postcolonial

strategy

that is

conducive to cross-cultural

border-crossing.

I

will then

explore

the

assumptions

of

cross-cultural

feminism from the perspective

of

standpoint theory

and

suggest

that whether we view it in

postcolonial

or

transnational terms or

as coalition politics within the United

States,

cross-culturalfeminism is already necessarily interdisciplinary.Iam ulti-

mately

interested in

considering a hybrid or mestiza methodology of

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity

as a

theorized reflection on

what we do

in

women's studies

teaching and scholarship. While both

cross-cultural

and

interdisciplinary might

in

themselves seem necessary theoretical

grounding

for

women's

studies practice, the mestiza concept,

cross-cul-

tural

interdisciplinarity, offers a methodology that is both necessary and



4

MARJORIE

PRYSE

sufficient to

produce

transformative

knowledge.

In other

words,

I

will

suggest that the theoretical

power

of

bringing

these

concepts

together

both strengthens feminist knowledge claims and creates a foundation for

a

more

effective women's studies

pedagogy.

I will end

by

illustrating,

with

an

example from

Maria

Mies's

work,

how

cross-cultural

interdisciplin-

arity works to enhance the

power

of

feminist

research

as well as

how

it

might affect the

way

we

structure the

presentation

of

content

in

women's

studies courses.

Interdisciplinarity

nd

Women's

Studies

Several

characteristics of

interdisciplinarity

make it of

significant

in-

terest to

many women's studies

teachers and

scholars.

First,

interdis-

ciplinarity

conceptualizes a

space between the

disciplines

which

femi-

nist

scholars have

figured as a

gap between the

perspectives

of women

and

nondominant men

and

the

assumptions,

models,

theories,

canons,

and

questions that the traditional

disciplines

have

developed

and

taught.3

Feminist

scholarship has

more than

adequately

demonstrated

the exist-

ence

of this

gap

during

the

past

25

years

of

research and

teaching

in

Women's

Studies,

and

certain

disciplines,

notably

anthropology,

history,

English, and

psychology have

expanded

their

borders to

include

previ-

ously excluded

research

questions,4 while

others,

such

as

sociology, have

challenged

research

methodology

to

make

room for

the

presence

of

researchers

whom

Patricia Hill

Collins (1986)

describes as

outsiders

within

for the

legitimacy

of

qualitative

research,

and for

the

recognition

of

gender

as

a

research

variable, if

not

a

category of

analysis.

Interdisciplinarity

also

combines the

insights of

two

or more

fields

of

study to produce new fields and may also producenew knowledge, or, in

the

case of

much

feminist

scholarship,

bring to

visibility

previously

suppressed

knowledge.

Indeed,

such

knowledge may

be

unassimilable

by

the

disciplines; both

in

content

and in

form,

and by

virtue

of its

very

production,

such

knowledge

stands

as an

implicit

critique of

disciplinary

organization.

The

increasing

volume of

scholarship

exploring

questions

of

feminist

epistemology and

feminist

methodology

provides

particularly

salient

examples of

such

unassimilable

knowledge by

the

disciplines.5

Further,while

interdisciplinarity

incorporates

disciplinary

approaches

to knowledge when they are useful, while it borrows and incorpo-

rates, it

does

not

feel

constrained by

disciplinary

methods

and

rules

for the

uses

of such

approaches.

Therefore,

from

the

perspective

of

disciplines,

interdisciplinary

research

can

appear

unfounded,

illegitimate,

transgressive,

disturbing, and

fundamentally

challenging.

Ruth

Salvaggio

(1992)

has

described

Women's

Studies

as

crossing

(out)

the

disciplines.

This

phrase

characterizes the

formal

critique

that is

inherent in

inter-



CRITICAL


WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND

CROSS-CULTURAL INSIGHT

5

disciplinarity, namely,

that in

crossing,

it will

cross

out

the

disciplines.

Additionally, there is

a

fundamental

epistemic

challenge that,

in

produc-

ing new knowledge that does not fit the disciplinarystructure,feminist

interdisciplinarity will somehow undermine the

very

legitimacy

of the

disciplines

themselves.

If

we examine the historical

origins

of

the

disciplines

in the

19th

century,

we find a connection worth

exploring

between the

organization

of the modern

political

world and the

organization

of Western

knowledge

into academic units.

In

her

book-length study

of

interdisciplinarity, Julie

Thompson Klein

(1990)

explains

that the modern

concept

of

disciplin-

arity

is

a

product

of the nineteenth

century

and is

linked

with

several

forces: the evolution of the modern natural sciences, the general 'scien-

tification' of

knowledge,

the industrial

revolution, technological

advance-

ments, and agrarianagitation

that combined to influence the

design

of

the

modern

university

(p.

21;

see also

Flexner,

1979, pp.

105-106).

Further-

more,

to the extent that it

provided

a

means for

capitalist

expansion,

the

organization

of

knowledge

into

disciplines historically

coincided with

and

may

be viewed as

implicated

in

colonialism. Wolfram Swoboda

(1

9

79)

traces the

growth

of

disciplinarity

in

the second half of

the

19th century

to German

and Continental

challenges

to

British

economic

prominence

and a

resulting

deliberate

specialization

of

knowledge

that was not

intended to serve the

purposes

of

some

abstract 'truth' or the

demands

of

'pure'

knowledge,

but rather was

expressed

in

terms of the

applicability

(however

remote)

of this

knowledge

(p.

73).

Andrew D.

White, the first

President

of Cornell, harboredno

illusion but

that the duty of his insti-

tution was to train

the

'captains

in

the

army

of

industry '

(Swoboda,

1979,

pp. 73-74;

Rudolph, 1962, p. 266).

Indeed,

as

Andrew Abbott

(1988)

notes,

corporatecapitalism

bankrolled

(especially)

the

private,

prestigious

uni-

versities, and the greatmagnates originally saw them asprivatepreserves.

Ezra Cornell

wandered around 'his

campus,'

and

the

Stanfordsrefused to

allow 'their

university'

to be tainted

by money

from

other donors

(pp.

210-211).

The

rapid development

of

academic and

scientific societies in the

United States

in

the

1880S6

and the

proliferation

of

journals

and

university

presses

in

the first decade of

the 20th

century that served to

legitimize and

professionalize

disciplinary knowledge both

paralleled the

division of

labor

that

characterized more and

more of the

productive

process

in

industry and served to maintain old or establish new hierarchies within

disciplinary

structures and

organizations

(Swoboda,

1979,

pp.

78-79).

However

inadvertently,

and

despite

their success in

generating new re-

search,

the

disciplines nevertheless

represented an

administration of

knowledge

in

which

control over

academic

borders

contributed to weak-

ening

concepts

of

interconnectedness

and interdependence

between or

across

those

borders. The

disciplinary model thus reflects

an academic



6

MARJORIE

PRYSE

variation on the

division of

the

geographical

world into nations with their

establishment of bureaucratic

administrative units. As

Carolyn

Porter

(1994) describes

them now, academic departments are

much like

mod-

ern

nation-states, imagined

communities from

which

both

imagination

and

community

are

long gone

(p.

521).

If

the disciplines have indeed

compartmentalized,

administered,

and

in

effect colonized

knowledge,

then to the extent that Women's Studies

constitutes a

challenge

to such

a

disciplinary model,

we

may

consider

such a

challenge

a

postcolonial

strategy.

In

order,

however,

to

approach

the

respect

for

autonomy

and self-determination that

emerges

from cross-

cultural feminist

theory,

such a

strategy

needs

to be

much

more

fully

articulated as a methodology for crossing epistemological borders that

will not be

appropriative,

exploitative,

or

imperialist.

A

critical inter-

disciplinarity-an

interdisciplinarity guided

by analysis

of

the intersec-

tions of

race, class,

gender, sexuality,

and the structures and

policies

of

nation-states

in

women's lives-can undermine the

disciplinary

bound-

aries established

by

an

administrative

organization.7

In

Klein's

(1990)

view,

interdisciplinarity

has

already

reflected

attempts

to

produce

a broad-

ening

effect on

disciplinarity

and to

reorganizeknowledge

along

new lines

(p.

21). The question becomes not whether

knowledge

will be restructured

but according to what principles, and whether Women's Studies can

articulate

a

theoretical

justification

for

restructuring-whether episte-

mologically or

administratively-that

will

preserve

the

possibility of

feminist vision.

To the extent that

a

critical

interdisciplinarity attempts

to

dismantle

the

organization

of

knowledge

in the modern

university

that

emerged

at

the end of the

19th

century,

it

positions

Women's Studies on the

borders

of

disciplines

in

such a

way

as to

challenge

their

partitioning

effects.

However,

Women's

Studies

is

also

deeply implicated

in the

structure of

disciplines-a structure Andrew

Abbott (1988) calls the equivalent of a

system of

professions in the

academic world. While

the departmental

and

curricular structures within

most

women's studies

programs that

combine

core

courses and

faculty

with

cross-listed

courses

(and

faculty)

from

the

disciplines seem to

promise an opportunity

for developing

interdisciplinarity,

in

actuality it often produces a

tension between core

and

cross-listed,

in

which feminist

knowledge remains dialogically con-

nected to

traditional

disciplines even though the

perspective students

bringback into the disciplines from their core courses involves critique of

those

disciplines.

Critique becomes a de facto

methodology for the core

curriculum,

which

produces a

necessary but not sufficient

approach o the

development

of

feminist

epistemology. Women's Studies

thus appearsto

occupy

the

space

of

critique-by virtue of its

organizational position

outside

the traditional

disciplines-as the primary form and content of

its

knowledge production. The problem

for a women's

studies scholarship



CRITICAL INTERDISCIPLINARITY,

WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND CROSS-CULTURAL

INSIGHT

7

caught

between

core and cross-listed

involves

trying

to locate where

an

interdisciplinary

feminist

knowledge

could situate

itself,

both

theo-

retically and institutionally. Theoretically, as Sneja Gunew (1990) ob-

serves,

it is clear that

the

feminist

as

sceptical

reader or receiver

of

traditional

knowledge

is

the

basis

for a feminist

critique,

but where

the

authority or basis for

this

scepticism

comes from is not

always

clear. From

what position of institutional

knowledge

and

theory

not

permeated by

patriarchy

can feminists

construct

a

new

body

of both

knowledge

and

theory?

(pp. 23-24). Theorizing

interdisciplinarity

involves

taking

Gunew's

question

seriously:

from what

position

do feminists

construct

a new

body

of both

knowledge

and

theory ?

Critical

Interdisciplinarity

and

Cross-Cultural

Approaches

to Women's

Lives

The cross-cultural component of Women's

Studies identifies the

posi-

tion-or

standpoint-from

which we

construct our new

interdisciplinary

epistemology.

For

critical

interdisciplinarity provides

a

necessary

but not

sufficient condition for

grounding

feminist

knowledge;

what makes it a

sufficient condition as well is the extent to

which feminist

scholarship

also works across cultural

lines, as feminists

of

color have

repeatedly

demonstrated. The

concept

of

interlocking

(or

what Maria

Lugones

[1994]

calls interwoven

or intermeshed

oppressions [p. 159,

n.1])

has

become foundational

to Women's

Studies

in

the

1990s. Lugones's

word

for a

foundational

intermeshing

is

curdling

or

mestizaje. She writes

of

mestizaje:

And I

think of

something

in

the middle

of

either/or, something impure,

somethingor someonemestizo,asbothseparated, urdled, ndresisting n its

curdled tate.

Mestizaje

defies

controlthrough imultaneously

asserting he

impure,

curdled

multiple

state and

rejecting

ragmention

nto

pure

parts.In

this

play

of

assertionand

rejection,

he

mestiza

is

unclassifiable,

nmanage-

able. She has no

pureparts

o be

had, ontrolled. p.

160)

In a

pursuit

recalling

Anzaldu'a'snew

conciencia,

Lugones

invokes cur-

dling

for

the

production

of

a

cross-cultural feminism, a

feminism that

interweaves

not only an understanding of

oppressions but also the

numer-

ous theoretical perspectives we know as standpoint epistemologies into

very

mixed, very mestiza theory. If by

cross-cultural we mean to

invoke

an

anti-racist

and

anti-imperialist methodology for feminist

scholarship

and

pedagogy-or

at

least to

establish

anti-racism and anti-imperialism as

attributes

without which

such a

methodology does not become femi-

nist-then

the

very

concept

of

cross-cultural establishes the

epistemo-

logical

ground

for a

feminist

interdisciplinarity. In effect, a

cross-cultural



8

MARJORIE PRYSE

interdisciplinarity becomes both

necessary and sufficient for

feminist

critical

methodology,

epistemology, and

pedagogy;the

knowledge claims

that Women's Studies makes to generating knowledge at the sites of the

intersection of gender,

race,

class, sexuality,

region, age,

ability, and

nationality make

interdisciplinarity

feminist

by

establishing

its

episte-

mology as

a

political rather

than

merely administrative and academic

location.

Cross-cultural critical

interdisciplinarity

thus

provides

one an-

swer to Gunew's

question.

A feminist

body

of

knowledge

and

theory

not

permeated by

patriarchy emerges

from a

mestiza


an

interdisciplinarity

that

views standpoints on

oppression

as also

interwo-

ven and

incapable

of

being separated,

what

Lugones

calls curdled.

SandraHarding's (1995) work on standpoint theory and on what she

calls an

epistemology

from/for

Rainbow

Coalition

politics

(p.

125)

can

help

us

articulate

knowledge

claims for a

cross-cultural critical and inter-

disciplinary

Women's Studies that

respects

borders

while

crossing them,

that works

to

prevent

appropriation

and

exploitation. For

Harding,

seem-

ingly diverse

liberatory movements have

generated

epistemology projects

that

their

proponents

can learn to view

as

similarly

constructed,

even

though

the

subjects/agents

of

subjugated knowledge often

experience

multiple

and

frequently

contradictory

standpoints

and

may

be

commit-

ted to two agendasthat are themselves at least partially in conflict-the

liberal

feminist,

socialist

feminist, Nicaraguan

feminist,

Jewish

femi-

nist

(p.125).

Yet

Harding

writes:

[l]t

is

thinking from a

contradictory

ocial

position that

generates

eminist

knowledge.

So the logic of the

directive o

'start hought rom

women's ives'

requires hat we

start our

thought from

multiple

lives

that in many ways

conflict

with

each other andhave

multiple

and

contradictory ommitments.

(p.

125)

Thus,

she

argues,

in an

important

if

controversial

sense, the subject

of

feminist

knowledge must know what

every

other

liberatory project

knows

because not

only

are

gender, race, class,

sexuality,

ethnicity,

and

nationality

intertwined in

the social

construction of

identity

but also

because

the

subjects/agents

of

every

other

liberatory movement must

also

learn how

gender,

race, class, and

sexuality are

used to construct each

other in

order to

accomplish

their

goals

(p.

126).

Since for Harding and

other

standpoint

theorists,

liberatory knowledge is

not essential, tran-

scendental, or transhistorical but rather achieved through combined po-

litical and

conceptual

struggle-as

Harding (1995) writes,

all women

have

women's

experiences

but

only

at certain

historical

moments does

anyone

ever

produce

eminist

knowledge

(p.

130)-the

even greater

truggle

to

understand

liberatory

knowledges across

the

different standpoints that

have

generated

these

knowledges requires

a

particular kind of

interdisci-

plinary approach. Such a

border-crossing

requires the

subjects/agents of



CRITICAL


WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND

CROSS-CULTURAL

INSIGHT

9

one

particular

standpoint

epistemology

to

learn,

through

what

Harding

calls

a

competency-based

anti-racism, anti-sexism,

and

anti-imperial-

ism, to see their lives from the standpoint of others, not in order to

speak

as

or

for these

others,

but to

be

able to contribute

distinctive

forms

of liberatory

knowledge

from their own

perspective,

informed

by

other

liberatory

epistemologies (1991,

p. 293;

1995, pp. 123-124,

126).

Viewing

a feminist cross-cultural critical

interdisciplinarity

as a stand-

point

methodology

for Women's

Studies thus raises the caution

that

border-crossing

not be used to

legitimate

the

exploitative

and

imperialist

behaviors of

the

new

global

social

order.

Such

a

methodology

for Women's Studies is

grounded

in

critical

mate-

rialist analysis, but unlike Rosemary Hennessy's critique of standpoint

theory, which would

push

interdisciplinarity

only

in the direction of

historical materialist

analysis,

the kind of

standpoint

interdisciplin-

arity

I am

theorizing

in this

essay

does not

produce

epistemological

hegemony.

In her

critique

of

Harding,

Hennessy

(1

993) argues

that neither

standpoint

theory

nor

identity

politics

can be effective as the basis for

a

global

social

analytic.

Viewing standpoint

theory

as a local or re-

gional

reading

of

culture, as a logic which

to

varying degrees disclaims

that social

arrangements are

systematically

interrelated (p. 73),

Hen-

nessy argues that a

theory

based on a coalition of

identity politics

works

against

the

possibility

of

a

collective

global

standpoint (p. 136). Hen-

nessy claims that the

very concept of

collective global

standpoint is

not

the

same as

writing

a

historical

master

narrative

(p. 138):

[Oince

we

understand he

narratives

irculating

n

culture

as

ideologies,

all

texts of

culturecan be readas

havinga claim on

history, and

'historical'

narrativescan

be

unhinged

from

the

disciplinary

boundariesset around

them.

'Historyproper' an then

be seen as a

particularmode of

reading

and

writingwhichsupportsa specificregimeof truth anddiscipliningof knowl-

edge. (p.

118)

Becoming

unhinged from

disciplinary

boundaries is

invoked here as

a

transformative

effect, a kind of

historical materialist

interdisciplin-

arity.5

Although

Hennessy's argument for

a global

social

analytic reminds

feminist

scholars of the

importance

of

contextualizing their

understand-

ing

of

categories

of

analysis as much

as

possible within a

materialist

frame,what MariaMies (1986)identifies as patriarchyandaccumulation

on

a world

scale,

unhinging

historical-materialist

narratives

from

their

disciplinary

boundaries does not

offer an

alternative

methodology

for

a viable

feminist

interdisciplinarity

but rather

suggests an

attempt to

rediscipline

feminist

thinking into a

counterhegemonic coherence

(p.

137).

Such an

argument

arrives

at what Jane

Roland

Martin (1994) de-

scribes as

the

pitfall of

compulsory

historicism, by which

ironically



10

MARJORIE PRYSE

feminist theorists have fallen into the

very

ahistorical

trap they have

been

telling

us to avoid

(p. 641).

As Martin

observes,

to insist that

there

can

be

no understanding

without historical research-whether

we

under-

stand

history

as

Hennessy

uses

it or not-is to embrace another

form

of essentialism, where

at the

very

moment

in

history

when

feminist

theorists

are

reminding

feminist scholars to broaden

the

scope

of

their

research so as to include

people

unlike

themselves,

these same

feminist

theorists are becoming

exclusionary

in

regard

to

methodology

(p. 643).

To

suggest

that an

unhinged

historicity,

a

quasi-historical-materialist


is

the

only

route

to

the

counterhegemonic

coher-

ence that determines the radical effectiveness of

any

feminist

project-

or even that counterhegemonic coherence is a desirablegoal-buys into

the

kind

of

methodological essentialism

Martin

suggests

is itself

hege-

monic

and

counterproductive

to the collaborative

enterprise

of feminist

scholarship.

Thus a cross-cultural critical

interdisciplinarity

must also

honor

diversity

in

the

methodological

realm as we

already

honor it

in

other

areas

(p.

649),

must construct an

epistemological coalition,

not

a

methodological

monolith.

Uma

Narayan (1989), writing

as a

self-proclaimed

nonwestern

femi-

nist

and a native of

Bombay,

describes

epistemological

border-cross-

ing in away that canhelp us envision such across-culturalepistemologi-

cal coalition. She is

specifically

interested

in

questions

of

understanding

and

cooperation

between western and

nonwestern feminists

(p.

263)

and

argues that even

though

a commitment

to

the

contextual

nature of

knowl-

edge

does

permit

us to

argue

that it is

easier

and

more

likely

for the

oppressed

to have critical

insights

into

the conditions of their own

oppres-

sion than it is for those who live outside

these structures, such an

argument

does not

require

us

to

claim

that those who

do not inhabit

particularsocial and cultural contexts can never have any knowledge of

them

(p. 264).

There must

be,

in

Narayan's words,

the

possibility

of

understanding

and

political

cooperation

between

oppressed groups

and

sympathetic

members of a dominant

group-say, between white people

and

people of color over issues of race or

between men and women

over

issues of

gender

(p.

263).

Indeed,

for

Narayan, the possibility of

cross-

cultural critical

insight

on

the

part

of members of

dominant

groups

allows us the

space

to criticize dominant

groupsfor their blindness to

the

facts of

oppression while

retaining the need for dominated groups

to

control the means of discourse about their own situations (p. 265). As

Narayan

reminds

us,

colonized

people

had

to learn

the language

and

culture of their

colonizers

but the

colonizers seldom

found it necessary

to have more

than

a

sketchy acquaintance

with the

language and culture

of

the 'natives '

(p.

265).

Creating

the

conditions

within which it

becomes

necessary

for

potential colonizers to

learn their blindness to the

facts

of

oppression

becomes a challenge for any

anti-imperialist work, espe-



CRITICAL


WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND CROSS-CULTURAL

INSIGHT

11

cially

such work

attempted

in Women's

Studies

(Narayan

p.

265).

A

femi-

nist critical

interdisciplinarity

must be based on

Narayan's argument

for

the possibility of understanding and political cooperation between op-

pressed

groups and

sympathetic

members of a

dominant

group. Creating

the conditions

within which

it

becomes

necessary

for

potential

colonizers

to learn

their

blindness

to the facts of

oppression

is

one of

the

objectives

of women's studies education

and

suggests

a use for

interdisciplinary

methodology. What

Narayan

reminds

us about the attitude of colonizers

towards colonized

peoples

may

be

argued

analogously

about

the

historical

relation

between

the

disciplines

and

interdisciplinarity

as well: interdis-

ciplinary

researchers have had to learn the

language

and culture of

the

disciplines, but disciplinaryresearchershave seldom foundit necessaryto

have more than a

sketchy acquaintance

with the

language

and

culture of

interdisciplinary

work.

Although

it

would be

pointless

and

politically

suspect

to

equate

academic

feminists

working

as

core

interdisciplinary

teachers

and

scholars with colonized

persons

in

terms either of their

actual oppression or

their ability

to

generate

critical insights into the

specific

material structures of

their

diversity

of

oppression,

nevertheless

the

analogy

has

some relevance within an

academic

context

in

which

Women's Studies, strugglingfor two decadesfor legitimacy, faculty lines,

and in

some

institutions, departmental status,

now

in

the

1990s finds

even

modest

gains threatened by new

institutional

economic priorities.

But whether

we view

interdisciplinarity as a

bridge to cross-cultural

understanding

for

members

of

privileged and

potentially imperialist

groups,

understand

the

knowledge

of

cross-cultural experience

and theory

as

correctives to the

transgressive

and

appropriative

moves of

inter-

disciplinarity itself,

or view the

epistemic

privilege

of

oppressed stand-

points as

inherently

interdisciplinary,

both

cross-cultural and

interdisci-

plinary methods work together to promote women's survival in a new

global

order which

has learned to

exploit

women's labor in the

name of

their

housewifization

(Mies,

1986).

As

MaryWilkins

Freeman, writing

her

short

story

A

Church Mouse in

New

England in 1889,

expressed

very early

and

very

well in a

statement

about what standpoint

theorists

would

call her

homeless, unemployed,

unmarried,

and old characterHetty

Fifield's

epistemic

privilege, When one is hard

pressed, one,

however

simple, gets wisdom as to

vantage-points (p.

329).

To the

extent that

feminist

scholarship

reflects

the

necessity

for

women

to learn the ways of

patriarchalsocieties embedded in a global economy in order to survive in

them

materially and

transform their

structure, it has

emerged from a

position

of

epistemic

privilege,

of

structuraland

material vantage-points,

and has

struggled

mightily

for the

small niche

Women's Studies

currently

occupies

in

the

United States and

increasingly in

the rest of the world.9To

the extent

that

interdisciplinary work crosses over

into the

disciplines,

but

many disciplines

still do

not feel

constrained to move

beyond their



12

MARJORIE

PRYSE

own definitions of what

can be

known,

feminist

scholarship

has

learned

the

omissions, gaps,

weaknesses,

and contradictions

in

the

traditional

disciplines in order to construct a more critical knowledge or what

Sandra

Harding

(1991)

terms a

knowledge

that

emerges

from

strong

objectivity.

However, Narayan

(1989) explores

the limitations of

double vision

that

accompany epistemic privilege,

and she offers her

analysis

of

what

she calls the dark side

of

epistemic

privilege

in

order to warn

against

idealizing

or

romanticizing oppression or

blindness to its

real

material

and

psychic deprivations (p.

268).

As

she

observes,

the

double vision

that

accompanies epistemic

privilege

does not

necessarily produce

a

criti-

cal perspective-whether that double vision emerges from cultural

oppression or,

I

would

add,

from

the

attempt

to

write, teach,

and

do

research out of the

gaps

between

disciplines.

She notes that mere access

to

two different and incompatible contexts is

not

a

guarantee

that

a

critical stance on

the

part

of an

individual will result. Such an

individual,

she writes,

may

be

tempted

to

dichotomize her life and

reserve the

framework of a

different

context for

each part, and

she cites

a

range

of

examples

for

strategies

women can use to

achieve such

dichotomy:

middle

class

persons

in

nonwestern countries who

may

choose to be western-

ized in public life but traditional in the realm of

the family,

or

con-

versely,

who

may reject

the

practices

of

[their]

own

context and

try

to be

as much as

possible

like members

of the dominant

group ;

Western

intellectuals

in

nonwestern contexts who

appear to lose knowledge of

their

own cultures and

practices ;

and

women

in

various

cultures who

choose male-identification as

a

way

to

expunge

stereotypically

female

characteristics

or who

alternatively

reject entirely

the framework of

the dominant

group

and seek a

certain sort of

security

in

traditionally

defined roles (p. 266). Not all nonwestern persons adopt a critical ap-

proach

to

Westernization; not

all

women

acquire

a

feminist perspective;

and

indeed,

not all

attempts

at

interdisciplinary

work

produce critical

and

anti-imperialist research.

Border-crossing

among vectors of

oppression- epistemology from/for

Rainbow Coalition

politics -combines with feminist

efforts to curdle

the

disciplines

to

produce

a

critical

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity that,

unlike

other

interdisciplinary and

cultural studies fields, continues to

insist on

thinking from women's

lives (Harding,

1991). However, as

Judith Stacey and Barrie Thorne (1996) have recently noted, the very

analytical centrality

of

gender in

feminist theory has

been decentered

within

feminism

(p. 2), leading

them to

view as

too

optimistic their

1985 assessment of

the

revolutionary potential of feminism taken by

itself, because

some strands of feminist thought

have begun to dis-

solve into a

theory

revolution, a nexus

of postcolonial discourse, queer



14

MARJORIE

PRYSE

interdisciplinary

approaches

to

knowledge

both emerge from and

enhance

such identification.

I

will use

the

following

discussion

of her research as

an example of the way cross-cultural and interdisciplinary become both

necessary

and sufficient parameters

forproducing

transformative

knowl-

edge.

Mies (1991)

developed

a fieldwork

course for nonwestern women who

came

to

Holland to

study

women

and

development

at the Institute

of

Social Studies (ISS)

in the

Hague.

The

purpose

of this course was

to

confront

the women

from the

Third

World

with the

problems

of women

in

so-called

developed countries,

to make the

theoretical

knowledge

which

they

had

gained

from

their

studies refer

to 'real

life,'

for them

to

enter into reciprocallearningand researchprocesseswith Dutch women's

groups,

for all

of

them

to reflect as

a

group on

these new

experiences,

and,

if

possible,

to conceptualize brief,

communal plans

of action

(p.

74).

For

two

years

she

supervised

the students from the ISS as

they

worked with

numerous

Dutch women's groups.

Mies

designed

this course because

she

believes that feminist

research must

be

linked

to

emancipatory

and

liberatory

goals

for

women,

and

therefore

she

finds

laboratory-empiricist

methods too narrow

and too biased

for her use. Mies

thereby

reminds

women's studies scholars and academics that activism, oraction-oriented

research,

is also a necessary component

of feminist work

and a

significant

form of

interdisciplinarity.

Among

the

numerous

conclusions

Mies

draws from the Fieldwork

course

as well as from

interdisciplinary

action-oriented field

research

in

India,

two

are particularly

relevant

to this

discussion.

First, she

character-

izes cross-cultural

research

as implicitly interdisciplinary:

[I]n

ontrast o the dominant cientific

paradigm,

arious ormsof knowledge

weresuited to the Fieldwork nd not just oneform(so-called cientific).

These ncluded

practical, veryday

nowledge,political

knowledge ndpoliti-

cal skills,

self-recognition

insight

into one's own strengths and

weak-

nesses),

critical knowledge

the

ability

to critique deologies,to demystify),

theoretical

knowledge the ability

to

relate empirical

indings o theoretical

statements),social knowledge(the

ability

to

relate

to others, to recognize

social conditions

and

develop ocial relationshipswith

others ;o recognize

that individuals ive

in

certainrelationships

with each

other and with their

material, ocial, andhistorical

environment).

p. 77)

In

short,

the emancipatory

and liberatory goals of Mies's

research

produce

numerous forms of knowledge, not just

one which,

once set, then claims

primacy

over

all

the others as the 'scientific'

knowledge.

In 'Fieldwork'

the

artificially constructed

barrierswhich usually exist

among the

differ-

ent

forms

of

knowledge

(usually erected

along the lines delimiting

the

academic

disciplines)

were broken through and there

arose something



CRITICAL INTERDISCIPLINARITY, WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND

CROSS-CULTURAL INSIGHT 15

akin to a total

view of

reality

(p. 77).

This total view of

reality ap-

proaches critical

interdisciplinarity

in the service of cross-cultural

in-

sight.

Second,

she

implies

that feminist

interdisciplinarity

must involve

an

intersubjectivity

based

in

part

on double

consciousness and

in

part

on

partial

identification.

Partial dentification

involves a

dialectical

process which consists

of one

being

able to observe oneself from

out-

side, where

the outside is not some

imaginary

reality,

but rather

the

real,

living

other woman who is

looking

at

me, trying

to understand

me,

posing unusual

questions.

The

outside, therefore,

consists of another

'ensemble

of

social

relations' and that also means that

a total

identifica-

tion, even if it were to be attempted, is not possible. Fordespite all the

empathy,

all

the

understanding,

the others remain

'others '; partial

iden-

tification makes

possible

the

necessary

closeness to the others as well as

the

necessary

distance from

myself

(pp. 79-80).

I

read Mies as

suggesting

here that interdisciplinarity

broadly

and

critically

defined also

requires

partial

dentification,

a

border-crossing

n which it

becomes

possible

to

work

conceptually

outside

the

disciplines

in

order to ask

questions

starting

from women's lives. At the

same time we

recognize

both that

the

real, living

other woman from whose life we

theoretically

wish to

start our research and the ensemble of

social relations that

constitute

structures of academic

knowledge

and

economic

power

are each

con-

structs enabled

by,

but also limited

by,

the

very terms cross-cultural and

interdisciplinary.

We can

invoke Sandra

Harding's concept

of

strong

objectivity to rein-

force Mies's

concept

of

partial

identification in the

context of a feminist

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity. Harding (1991)

writes

that to enact or

operationalize

the directive of

strong objectivity

is to

value the Other's

perspective and to pass over in thought into the social condition that

creates it-not

in

order to

stay there,

to

'go

native' or

merge

the

self with

the

Other,

but in

order to look back at

the self

in

all its

cultural particu-

larity

from a

more

distant, critical, objectifying

location

(p.

151). And

Harding

adds that

strong

objectivity leads to a concept of strong reflex-

ivity

as

well-a

concept that

would require that the objects of inquiry

in

any research

project be

conceptualized as gazing back in all their

cultural

particularity

and that

the researcher, through theory and meth-

ods,

stand behind

them, gazing back at his [or her] own

socially situated

research project in all its cultural particularity and its relationships to

other

projects

of his

culture

(p. 163). The practice of

a cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity thus requires

the feminist

researcher to develop com-

petency

in

partial identification that

recognizes

objects of inquiry as

subjects

with

their own

critical perspective. Feminist

researchers cannot,

as

many

scientists

do, construct a

laboratorywhich controls for contex-



16

MARJORIE

PRYSE

tual

variables.

As

Harding argues,

we must work

towards a

strong

objectivity

that includes the

perspective

on

research from the

standpoint

of the researchsubject.

Such

an

objectivity necessarily

becomes

interdisciplinary

and critical.

And until feminist education achieves

a

wider

influence,

an

insistence

on

strong objectivity probably

means continued

difficulty identifying

funding sources

for Women's

Studies,

because

bringing

to

bear

on re-

search the

multiple gaze

of cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity pulls

the

university

of the

21 st

century away

from its

early

20th

century

reliance

on

corporate capitalism

in an era in

which

universities are

increasingly

valuing grantsmanship among

faculty

over the

production

of

knowledge

and research unencumbered by the constraints of funding sources. The

pedagogical

burdens on Women's

Studies therefore

become

global

in

scope

and of

ongoing urgency.

A

model

in

which

border-crossing

becomes

methodology

in

the service of

a

transformed

world

requires learning (and

teaching students)

how

to

bring

together concepts,

approaches,

and

ques-

tions

that cross

disciplinary

borders

in

order to

construct

critical knowl-

edge

from women's

lives. While

feminists

in

previous

decades

may

have

argued with some justification

that it is the

responsibility

of the

oppres-

sors

to

educate themselves,

the

urgency

of

changing

institutional

priori-

ties that threaten Women's Studies

requires

a new

strategy.

The central

objective of Women's Studies becomes one of

constructing

both knowl-

edge

and

pedagogy

that

will

make

it

possible

for

the colonizers

to

recog-

nize and

own their blindness to the facts ofoppression, so

that feminist

education will neither

replicate

the

colonialism

of

the past nor become

complicit

in the new

imperialism

of

the

global economy.

If

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity

becomes both

necessary and suffi-

cient to

generate knowledge

out

of

the

epistemic gaps

produced by

traditional disciplinary organizations of knowledge, then cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity belongs in the

women's studies curriculum core as

methodology,

not

in

order to

displace

either the

consciousness-raising

and

issues-orientation

of

many introductory courses or the

critique stu-

dents learn in

theory but rather

additionally to help them develop com-

petency

(in

Harding'sterms)

in

anti-sexist, anti-racist,

anti-homophobic,

and

anti-imperialist perspectives,

and

to be able to

explain how they

achieved such

competency.

Helping students locate what feminists have

usefully borrowed from

various disciplines at the

same time as they

learn to trace the constituent standpoints that have generated feminist

perspectives

creates a

model for an

interdisciplinarity towards which, and

by

means of

which,

Women's Studies

asks them

to work. In practical

terms, students need to learn to

recognize both the

extent to which any

specific

course, research project,

or discipline creates only a partial per-

spective

on

women's

lives

and

also how they can bring

together methods



CRITICAL


WOMEN'S

STUDIES,

AND CROSS-CULTURAL INSIGHT

17

both from the

disciplines

and from

the work of mestiza consciousness.

As

Anzalduia

(1993)

writes,

because the future

depends

on the

breaking

down of paradigms,it dependson the straddlingof two ormore cultures

(p.

429).

Feminist

scholars

and

teachers can contribute to

such

a

future-in

which the mestiza intellectual

works,

in

Adrienne Rich's

1975

vision,

toward

a

woman-centered

university, by

consciously

including/ incor-

porating

in our own

thinking

and

teaching

the work of feminist

scholars

that has

emerged

from other

disciplines.

This means

challenging

any

hierarchy

of

disciplinary

methods that

may

describe

the

structure

of

a

particular women's studies

program.

It means

including

narrative

and

poetry as integral to feminist theory (asAnzalduiadoes in Borderlands/La

Frontera);

urning

to

feminist social scientists in order

to

understand

the

relationship

between

methodology

and

research

questions; asking non-

Spanish-speaking

students to

struggle

with

the

language

borders

Anzal-

du'a,

Lugones,

and

Maria Luisa

Papusa

Molina

cross

in

their

work;

helping

students who

have

avoided science

since

high

school to

under-

stand what

Sandra

Harding (1991) means

when she

explains

Why 'Phys-

ics'

Is

a

Bad

Model for

Physics

(pp.

77-104)

and

to

be able to

read Bonnie

Spanier's(1995)critique of ideological foundations of molecular biology;

choosing

textbooks and

anthologies

that

highlight

interdisciplinarity;

and in

particular

challenging

students

to read writers

whose

work

crosses

cultural as well

as

disciplinary

difference, such

as

Patricia

Williams

(1991)12

and

Peggy

Sanday (1996).13

The

doubled

curdling

of a

cross-cultural and

interdisciplinary meth-

odology gives

students

and

researchersas

well as

feminist

professionals

in

the

community an

approach to

formulate

questions,

diagnose

problems,

conduct

qualitative

interviews, draw

social

inferences,

analyze

public

policy, proposeinterventions, write essays, fiction, andpoetry,and create

and

perform

art. It

also

characterizes

the

parameters

within which

we

generate

feminist

questions

and

thereby becomes

the

knowledge

claim

for

our

place

in

the

coalition of

standpoint

epistemologies

that

comprises

the

theory revolution as

well as in

the system

of

disciplines

feminist

scholars and

teachers have

been

trying to

transform for

a quarter of

a

century.

Thus

for the

moment, even

while

recognizing the

ultimately

undisciplined

mission

of

feminist

education, we

may even need

to

argue

for a

particular kind

of

status

for Women's

Studies,

not a field

of

study

parallel to the

disciplines

of

the

modern

university but

a mestiza

disci-

pline, one

with a

cross-cultural

and critical

interdisciplinarity

as its

par-

ticular

methodology.

Correspondence

should

be sent to

Marjorie

Pryse, Dept.

of English,

Uni-

versity

at

Albany-S

UNY,

Albany, NY

12222,

[email protected].



18

MARJORIE

PRYSE

Notes

1. Earlyexamples of critiques of academic feminism by women of color include

Moraga

and

Anzalduia

1983)

and hooks

(1984).

For

a broader sense

of

differ-

ence and

feminism,

see Hirsch

and Keller

(1

990).

For

an excellent

introduction

to

global

feminism,

see Basu

(1995).

2.

I

am

thinking here about the debates

concerning

the construction of Black

feminist thought and Patricia Hill Collins's

(1990)

questions

concerning

who can

produce

such

thought

(pp.

19-40).

3.

Klein

(1990)

refers to

Donald

Campbell's

(1969)

visual models

of

interdis-

ciplinarity, with disciplines typically conceived as clusters of specialties

leaving

interdisciplinary

gaps

but

ideally

constructed

according

to a fish-

scale model of omniscience with

more

overlap

between

disciplines

(pp.

82-

83;

Campbell, pp.

329-331).

4.

Stacey

and

Thorne

(1985)

have

noted, however,

that the

efforts

of

feminist

historians

and literary critics to influence

mainstream work in their disci-

plines have met with

considerable

indifference and

hostility (p.

304).

5. See for example Alcoff and Potter (1993);Fonow and Cook (1991);Harding

(1987

and

1991);

Herrmann and

Stewart

(1994);

Lennon and

Whitford

(1994);

and

Stanley

and Wise

(1993),

among others.

6.

The Modern

Language

Association

was

founded

in

1883, the

American

His-

torical

Association

in

1884,

the

American

Economic

Society

in

1885,and

both

the

American

Mathematical

Society

and

the

Geological

Society

of

America in

1888

(Swoboda,

1979, p. 72;

Rudolph, 1962, p.

406).

7.

However,

merely

bureaucratic

proposals from

administrators interested in

creating fewer units to manage in periods of academic downsizing are not

necessarily beneficial to

Women's

Studies;

such

proposalsmay

emerge from

arbitrarygroupingsof

faculty

and

curricula

that

may be termed

interdiscipli-

nary

but bear no

relation to

the critical

interdisciplinarity

I am

considering

here.

8.

According

to

Hennessy

(1

993),

New

Historicist

readings cordonoff

an

area of

inquiry

(p. 122);

Nancy

Armstrong's

argument in Desire

in Domestic

Fiction

(1987)

so

divorces

culture from

economic

change as to

dismiss it

altogether

(p. 123);and JoanScott's feminist history is ultimately a regional analytic

(p.

123).

9.

Discussions

among

international

feminists

from

Barbados,Brazil,

Bulgaria,

Russia,

and

South

Africa at

the recent

NWSA

conference held

at

Skidmore,

NY,

in

June

1996, as well as

the

recent

UN/NGO Fourth

World

Conference in

Beijing,

have

revealed

that Women's

Studies as a

disciplinary field

is emerging



CRITICAL


WOMEN'S

STUDIES, AND CROSS-CULTURAL

INSIGHT

19

from around

the

world,

not

just

from

within Western countries. See also

Basu

(1995).

10. To cite just one recent,

influential,

and

troubling

example,

see Simon

During,

ed.

(1993),

The

Cultural Studies Reader.

The

volume,

which claims

to

collect

representative

essays

in

cultural

studies

as an introduction to this

increas-

ingly popular field

of

study

(p.

1) includes

28

articles

by

contributors.

Fewer

than

a

third

of

these articles are written

by

feminists.

Furthermore,

while

the

opening

section

on

theory

includes

two

feminists,

Teresa de

Lauretis

and

Michele

Wallace,the contributions

by

Theodor Adorno and

Max

Horkheimer,

Roland

Barthes,James

Clifford,

Stuart

Hall,

and

Renato

Rosaldo are all

cited,

within

the editor's first

sentence

introducing

their

work,

as

classic, impor-

tant, brilliant, influential, and lucid, while the contribution by de

Lauretis contributes and

that

by

Wallace is

addressed to non-Eurocentric

readers.

The

collection's

editor

appears

entirely unselfconscious and un-

apologetic

about the sexism

inherent

in

the

volume;

indeed,

the

contributions

by

de

Lauretis and

Wallace

appear

n

the

familiar

pattern

of the addwomen

and stir

approach

o

curriculum

transformation,

the institutional

movement

that has tried, since

the

1980s, to alter the

traditional

disciplines

from

within.

11.

Most

standard

textbooks for

women's

studies

courses

present the field

as a

series of

issues (domestic violence, abortion rights), a series of theoretical

frameworks

(liberal,

radical,

psychoanalytic,

Marxist),

or

a collection

of auto-

biographical,

personal, and

fictional/poetic

statements. The only

text

I

have

found that

begins to

attempt the

doubled

crossing of

cultural

perspectives

and the

disciplines

is

Maggie

Humm's

Modern

Feminisms

(1992).

Although

Humm

unfortunately

includes brief

excerpts

ratherthan

complete

essays in

order

to

present

a

broader

view of the

field, her text

begins with a

chronology

that

includes

significant

dates

in

feminist politics

and feminist

writing

from

numerous

countries

(Britain,Russia,

Mexico,

Germany,

Japan,

Italy, India,

Egypt, the United

States,

the

Netherlands, South

Africa,

Spain,

Northern

Ireland,Chile, Canada,Australia, Turkey, and Palestine), thereby suggesting

from the

beginning

that

feminism

and Women's

Studies are not

just of

con-

cern

in the

United

States

(although

her

historical

essay focuses on

the His-

tory

of

Feminism

in Britain

and

America ).

She

then includes

significant early

feminist

theorists

(Olive

Schreiner,Virginia

Woolf,

Simone de

Beauvoir

and

others),thereby

suggesting that

feminism

emerged

first from

women and

only

later

becomes

complicated

by the

influence of male

social

theorists. The

body

of the

collection

includes

both

a

survey of

theoretical and

political

perspec-

tives

on feminism

(including

a

clear

explanation of

the

differences

between

first and second wave issues and extensive representation of what she calls

Asian,

Black,

and

Women

of

Colour

Lesbianisms/Feminisms (1)

and a

sur-

vey

of

perspectives from

a

variety of

disciplines

(psychology,

philosophy of

science, history,

cultural

studies,

language and

writing, and

education).

Other

collections of

interest

include

Anne

C.

Herrmannand

Abigail J.

Stewart's

Theorizing

Feminism

(1994)

and

Sneja

Gunew's A

Reader in Femi-

nist

Knowledge

(1990).

Herrmann and

Stewart subtitle

their

collection of



20

MARJORIE

PRYSE

essays Parallel Trends

in the Humanities and Social

Sciences,

and

they

begin with

a

preface

that

encourages

readers to collaborate

across

disci-

plines. The

collection

raises the

question

of

the

relationship among the

disciplines

in Women's Studies

by

including

two

essays

that discuss

the

mutual

influence

of the

humanities

and

social

sciences,

includes

explica-

tions

of

feminist

theory

by

the Combahee River Collective

and

Cherrie

Moraga

(thereby

suggesting

that

a

women

of color feminism is foundational

to

theory),

and

presents

perspectives

on various feminist

topics

from

art,

psy-

chology,

economics, law,

anthropology,

feminist

theory,

and cultural

studies,

although

the

individual

essays

in the

collection do not themselves

cross

differences. Gunew's collection

includes

several

essays

on

Women's

Studies,

women's history,

philosophy,

biology,

and

religion,

along

with

representa-

tions from some theoretical perspectives on feminism (psychoanalytic, radi-

cal,

and

socialist),

and

begins

with a

critique

of

white mainstream

feminism

from

the perspective of

Aboriginal

women in

Australia.

12.

Although

Williams's

The

Alchemy

of

Race

and

Rights

(1991)

does not include

other

disciplines

besides law, in its

mix of personal

narrative and

legal

analy-

sis

it provides a model

for

how

to make a

traditionally-inaccessible

discipline

available

to

readers not trained in

law.

13. Sanday's most recent book, A Woman Scorned:Acquaintance Rape on Trial

(1996),

is

also

her

most

interdisciplinary.

In

previous

work, such as

Fraternity

Gang

Rape: Sex,

Brotherhood,

and

Privilege

on

Campus,

Sandayhas used her

training as an

anthropologist

to focus

on a

single case studywithin

the

context

of

some

larger

psychoanalytic

and

cultural

analysis of fraternity

culture. In

A

Woman

Scorned,

she

begins

with

the St.

John'srape

case,

a case which

already

involves issues

of race because

the accused

perpetrators are

white and

the

victim is

African-Carribbean, nd

then turns

to anamalgam of

history, includ-

ing

legal history from

the colonial

period; literary

and

cultural analysis of

sexuality

and

rape

in

early New England, at

the

birth of the nation,

and in

the 19th century; sexology; feminism and the anti-rape movement; media

studies; and

contemporary

activism. Throughout

she

interweaves perspec-

tives from

anthropology and

sociology,

along with

narratives from

other

victims of

acquaintance

rape, and the

subtitle of

her book suggests to

the

reader

that a

feminist analysis

emerging

from a demonstrated

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarity brings

togetherthe

evidence to put

culturalattitudes

about

acquaintance

rape

on

trial -and

to convict them

convincingly for her read-

ers.

Sanday

writes A

Woman

Scorned not

only as an

anthropologist but

as a

feminist

critical

cross-cultural

interdisciplinarian.

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(1993).

Feminist

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New

York:

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