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The struggle of an academic feminist: Elitism versus excellence
Women’s Studies hr. Forum, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 8345, Printed in Great Britain.
0277-5395/82/01oo8343S33.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
1982.
THE STRUGGLE OF AN ACADEMIC FEMINIST: ELITISM VERSUS EXCELLENCE* GAIL PHETEKWN Instituut voor Klinische Psychologie en Persoonlijkheidsle-er,Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, Trans 4, 3512 Utrecht, The Netherlands
I have been struggling for ten years to come to terms with myself as an academic feminist. When I was a graduate student in California, I tried to justify the seeming inconsistencies between academia and grass roots feminism by making my academic work as invisible as possible and my feminist work as visible as possible. In practice, this meant working at a community centre and free health clinic to set up good health facilities for women and working on a task force for better abortion care in the Los Angeles area in addition to studying full time at the university. Perhaps, I thought, nobody, including myself, will notice my university work; I certainly did not want to be labelled as an academic. I wanted to be involved at a grass roots level in real life. If I used my activities in the women’s movement as an inspiration or information source for school projects, I would feel guilty, unethical, and ashamed. How dare I pass a course or get a professional credential (and all the privileges that come with it) on the basis of feminist activities when so many other women who know more than me do not have those privileges and are in situations which deny them my easy access! Needless to say, the attempt to ignore my academic life was unsuccessful. Besides being overworked to the point of exhaustion and discouragement, my academic shame was basically in bad faith because I secretly loved studying at the university. And, privileges aside, the university work did seem relevant and applicable to feminist activities. After I graduated the university with a PhD, I decided to deal with academia by leaving it. I remember saying, ‘I’ll put this degree in my back pocket and I’ll try not to let it get in my way.’ But I had a recurrent nightmare of applying for a job on a farm and being rejected: ‘You’re overqualified,’ they’d say. And I would think, ‘It’s happened: I’ve become overqualified for life.’ And so, in order to avoid exclusion, I would not tell people that I had a PhD and I decided to write at home, facilitate feminist therapy groups, and get odd jobs to pay my bills. Perhaps you could say not that I came to terms with being an academic feminist but that I chose the values of feminism above those of academia, and proclaimed the two to be necessarily incompatible. My choice for feminism has become more and more confirmed over the last ten years but I have retracted my proclamation against academia. I found myself again longing for and finally submitting to university work. I have learned to trust myself enough in that if I have a longing for something that is incompatible with my politics, then my politics and me and that something are worth analysing. The remainder of this paper is an attempt at such an analysis. It has become clear to me that I cannot politically justify my work in academia by also * This article is an adaptation of a talk presented at a Dutch national psychology women’s studies day at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht in The Netherlands, October 1979. 83
84
GAIL PHETERSON
doing other work that I consider politically legitimate. Either the academic work has potential to be in itself politically worthwhile or not. In order to explore this question, I shall examine elitism, oppression and excellence in relation to women and men at the university. Elitism is an arrogant attitude of ‘knowing better than others’ which is based more upon position and access to resources, i.e. privilege, than upon experience or information. It is a distortion of an academic process which takes place at an institution more impressed with tradition than inspired with ideas. Male conditioning towards hierarchical competition and accumulation of assets has accommodated and reinforced this distortion. The result is likely to be mediocre work since a true spirit of inquiry fostered by a desire for knowledge has been overshadowed by a competitive display of power. Elitists tend to ask academic questions to which they think they already know the answers, and the answers are necessarily affirming of both traditional ideas and successful careers. Authentic questions, meaning those which truly question life as we know it, either do not emerge or are too threatening to ask. Women are traditionally raised not to be arrogant, but rather to be ashamed. Shame grows not in privilege but in oppression. Whereas one flaunts in arrogance, one hides in shame. And whereas arrogance covers mediocrity with the presumption of knowing everything already, shame hides in the illusion of knowing nothing ever. Women’s invisibility has often been less an aware rejection of elitism than an ashamed cowering in oppression. Such invisibility is of course encouraged and enforced by female role expectations and by concrete political discriminations against women. Women have internalized these restrictions and learned all too well not only to mistrust our own opinions but also to silence them. And men have learned all too well not only to trust only their own opinions but to hear no others. Of course, women at the university as well as men are confronted with and seduced by elitism, and, men who belong to minority groups as well as women are confronted with and silenced by oppression. Both the distortions of elitism and the denials of oppression are in contradiction with the ideals of women’s liberation. But, is there not also a true curiosity and integrity to academics? I think so and for the purpose of this analysis I shall call it excellence. Whereas elitism is characterized by arrogance and oppression by shame, excellence is characterized by inspiration. And whereas elitists shout from the podium and the oppressed whisper near the toilet, excellence is nurtured by openly sharing one’s thoughts and listening to the thoughts of others. Elitism and oppression are both incompatible with excellence. Excellence emerges neither from already knowing everything nor from not knowing anything but rather from a trust in the possibility of finding out. Excellence results from an inquiry process in which genuine questions derived from an independent mind and an honest, capable quest for answers are primary. In such a process, one’s identity and security must be grounded in one’s own humanity, not in one’s position nor in one’s dependency upon the position of others. Position is by definition tied to the established thoughts and structures which are being questioned. Excellence could be defined as clearly communicated discoveries which have consequences for thought, feeling, behavior and society. As such, excellent academic work is a productive process yielding real services and products. As productive workers, we university employees must produce, not for the sake of growth or production per se, but for the satisfaction of basic human needs. Our services and products include such things as information (perhaps through research), analyses providing understanding (perhaps through written or verbal or visual media), transference of skills (through training or teaching), and so forth. Our labor is a socially legitimate concrete contribution to well-being.
The Struggle of an Academic Feminist: Elitism versus Excellence.
85
I need no longer face inherent contradictions between academia and feminism. If I naively and appropriately assume that people work at the university to learn and to communicate their knowledge as truthfully and eloquently as possible, then I begin with the conditions for both excellence in academia and service to feminism. My original dilemma felt like a choice between becoming an ‘elitist feminist’ (a most ghastly contradiction) by collecting pretences and privileges at the university or by becoming an ‘ashamed feminist’ (also a contradiction) by discounting an authentic part of my training and desire to study. In the last few years I have begun to believe that a viable alternative may be to be an ‘inspired feminist’ within academia, someone indeed more tied to the values of feminism than to the established structures of the university although appreciative of the structures in so far as they offer resources for study and communication. In case it is not already clear, it is perhaps useful to say that academia for me refers both to the inquiry process per se and to the established university. Academia is an organized system of methods and structures with the potential to nurture human qualities essential to excellence, to teach knowledge, to transfer skills, and to foster a self-inspired curiosity and discipline. Whenever the maintenance of the establishment becomes more important than the stimulation of inquiry, the system is on its way to perpetuating elitism on the one side and oppression on the other. Of course, to avoid this tendency within the university as well as outside of it requires not only good intentions but also a struggle against inequality and oppression in the society as a whole. The university is a real part of that society; the notion that the university constitutes an ivory tower from which people neither see nor confront social issues is a reflection of the distortions and denials which exist in the university, not a reflection of the true purpose or potential of systematic inquiry. Furthermore, universities are critically affected by the overall political system in matters of research topics, educational resources, and most essentially, governmental financial support. Confronting that system is therefore not only an academic choice but also a determinant of academic freedom. Where am I in this analysis of elitism, oppression and excellence? As a white, middle class, and now professional person, I could not possibly pretend to be outside the grip of elitism. I am, however, aware that elitist functioning and aspirations are alienating, isolating, unsatisfying, and basically non-creative. Nor do I pretend to be outside the grip of oppression. As a Jewish lesbian woman, I am well aware of the external pressures which silence, invalidate and discriminate against me. I am also becoming more aware of my own accommodation of that oppression by, for instance, shying away from positions of influence, discounting my thinking and ability to write, and isolating myself from potential allies. Resisting and interrupting my own elitism and oppression and the systematic reinforcement of elitism and oppression around me has become the central focus of my struggle as an academic feminist. My intention is neither to leave academia nor to ignore it. I am committed to bringing my political and emotional consciousness into the university as much as possible in order to force the study and education process I love into more relevance and humanity. At the same time I am committed to making the privileges for study that I have at the university as available as possible to grass roots political initiatives in order to help increase the visibility and potency of liberation work. One could define liberation work as the breakdown of elitism and oppression in the world between all peoples. And excellence could be measured by the authenticity of that work in terms of both human sincerity and reliable knowledge. I genuinely believe that liberation and knowledge are not only compatible but interdependent. And I genuinely believe that the university can offer relevant resources for the liberation of women and that the liberation of women is essential to humanizing our knowledge.
0277-5395/82/01oo8343S33.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd.
1982.
THE STRUGGLE OF AN ACADEMIC FEMINIST: ELITISM VERSUS EXCELLENCE* GAIL PHETEKWN Instituut voor Klinische Psychologie en Persoonlijkheidsle-er,Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht, Trans 4, 3512 Utrecht, The Netherlands
I have been struggling for ten years to come to terms with myself as an academic feminist. When I was a graduate student in California, I tried to justify the seeming inconsistencies between academia and grass roots feminism by making my academic work as invisible as possible and my feminist work as visible as possible. In practice, this meant working at a community centre and free health clinic to set up good health facilities for women and working on a task force for better abortion care in the Los Angeles area in addition to studying full time at the university. Perhaps, I thought, nobody, including myself, will notice my university work; I certainly did not want to be labelled as an academic. I wanted to be involved at a grass roots level in real life. If I used my activities in the women’s movement as an inspiration or information source for school projects, I would feel guilty, unethical, and ashamed. How dare I pass a course or get a professional credential (and all the privileges that come with it) on the basis of feminist activities when so many other women who know more than me do not have those privileges and are in situations which deny them my easy access! Needless to say, the attempt to ignore my academic life was unsuccessful. Besides being overworked to the point of exhaustion and discouragement, my academic shame was basically in bad faith because I secretly loved studying at the university. And, privileges aside, the university work did seem relevant and applicable to feminist activities. After I graduated the university with a PhD, I decided to deal with academia by leaving it. I remember saying, ‘I’ll put this degree in my back pocket and I’ll try not to let it get in my way.’ But I had a recurrent nightmare of applying for a job on a farm and being rejected: ‘You’re overqualified,’ they’d say. And I would think, ‘It’s happened: I’ve become overqualified for life.’ And so, in order to avoid exclusion, I would not tell people that I had a PhD and I decided to write at home, facilitate feminist therapy groups, and get odd jobs to pay my bills. Perhaps you could say not that I came to terms with being an academic feminist but that I chose the values of feminism above those of academia, and proclaimed the two to be necessarily incompatible. My choice for feminism has become more and more confirmed over the last ten years but I have retracted my proclamation against academia. I found myself again longing for and finally submitting to university work. I have learned to trust myself enough in that if I have a longing for something that is incompatible with my politics, then my politics and me and that something are worth analysing. The remainder of this paper is an attempt at such an analysis. It has become clear to me that I cannot politically justify my work in academia by also * This article is an adaptation of a talk presented at a Dutch national psychology women’s studies day at the Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht in The Netherlands, October 1979. 83
84
GAIL PHETERSON
doing other work that I consider politically legitimate. Either the academic work has potential to be in itself politically worthwhile or not. In order to explore this question, I shall examine elitism, oppression and excellence in relation to women and men at the university. Elitism is an arrogant attitude of ‘knowing better than others’ which is based more upon position and access to resources, i.e. privilege, than upon experience or information. It is a distortion of an academic process which takes place at an institution more impressed with tradition than inspired with ideas. Male conditioning towards hierarchical competition and accumulation of assets has accommodated and reinforced this distortion. The result is likely to be mediocre work since a true spirit of inquiry fostered by a desire for knowledge has been overshadowed by a competitive display of power. Elitists tend to ask academic questions to which they think they already know the answers, and the answers are necessarily affirming of both traditional ideas and successful careers. Authentic questions, meaning those which truly question life as we know it, either do not emerge or are too threatening to ask. Women are traditionally raised not to be arrogant, but rather to be ashamed. Shame grows not in privilege but in oppression. Whereas one flaunts in arrogance, one hides in shame. And whereas arrogance covers mediocrity with the presumption of knowing everything already, shame hides in the illusion of knowing nothing ever. Women’s invisibility has often been less an aware rejection of elitism than an ashamed cowering in oppression. Such invisibility is of course encouraged and enforced by female role expectations and by concrete political discriminations against women. Women have internalized these restrictions and learned all too well not only to mistrust our own opinions but also to silence them. And men have learned all too well not only to trust only their own opinions but to hear no others. Of course, women at the university as well as men are confronted with and seduced by elitism, and, men who belong to minority groups as well as women are confronted with and silenced by oppression. Both the distortions of elitism and the denials of oppression are in contradiction with the ideals of women’s liberation. But, is there not also a true curiosity and integrity to academics? I think so and for the purpose of this analysis I shall call it excellence. Whereas elitism is characterized by arrogance and oppression by shame, excellence is characterized by inspiration. And whereas elitists shout from the podium and the oppressed whisper near the toilet, excellence is nurtured by openly sharing one’s thoughts and listening to the thoughts of others. Elitism and oppression are both incompatible with excellence. Excellence emerges neither from already knowing everything nor from not knowing anything but rather from a trust in the possibility of finding out. Excellence results from an inquiry process in which genuine questions derived from an independent mind and an honest, capable quest for answers are primary. In such a process, one’s identity and security must be grounded in one’s own humanity, not in one’s position nor in one’s dependency upon the position of others. Position is by definition tied to the established thoughts and structures which are being questioned. Excellence could be defined as clearly communicated discoveries which have consequences for thought, feeling, behavior and society. As such, excellent academic work is a productive process yielding real services and products. As productive workers, we university employees must produce, not for the sake of growth or production per se, but for the satisfaction of basic human needs. Our services and products include such things as information (perhaps through research), analyses providing understanding (perhaps through written or verbal or visual media), transference of skills (through training or teaching), and so forth. Our labor is a socially legitimate concrete contribution to well-being.
The Struggle of an Academic Feminist: Elitism versus Excellence.
85
I need no longer face inherent contradictions between academia and feminism. If I naively and appropriately assume that people work at the university to learn and to communicate their knowledge as truthfully and eloquently as possible, then I begin with the conditions for both excellence in academia and service to feminism. My original dilemma felt like a choice between becoming an ‘elitist feminist’ (a most ghastly contradiction) by collecting pretences and privileges at the university or by becoming an ‘ashamed feminist’ (also a contradiction) by discounting an authentic part of my training and desire to study. In the last few years I have begun to believe that a viable alternative may be to be an ‘inspired feminist’ within academia, someone indeed more tied to the values of feminism than to the established structures of the university although appreciative of the structures in so far as they offer resources for study and communication. In case it is not already clear, it is perhaps useful to say that academia for me refers both to the inquiry process per se and to the established university. Academia is an organized system of methods and structures with the potential to nurture human qualities essential to excellence, to teach knowledge, to transfer skills, and to foster a self-inspired curiosity and discipline. Whenever the maintenance of the establishment becomes more important than the stimulation of inquiry, the system is on its way to perpetuating elitism on the one side and oppression on the other. Of course, to avoid this tendency within the university as well as outside of it requires not only good intentions but also a struggle against inequality and oppression in the society as a whole. The university is a real part of that society; the notion that the university constitutes an ivory tower from which people neither see nor confront social issues is a reflection of the distortions and denials which exist in the university, not a reflection of the true purpose or potential of systematic inquiry. Furthermore, universities are critically affected by the overall political system in matters of research topics, educational resources, and most essentially, governmental financial support. Confronting that system is therefore not only an academic choice but also a determinant of academic freedom. Where am I in this analysis of elitism, oppression and excellence? As a white, middle class, and now professional person, I could not possibly pretend to be outside the grip of elitism. I am, however, aware that elitist functioning and aspirations are alienating, isolating, unsatisfying, and basically non-creative. Nor do I pretend to be outside the grip of oppression. As a Jewish lesbian woman, I am well aware of the external pressures which silence, invalidate and discriminate against me. I am also becoming more aware of my own accommodation of that oppression by, for instance, shying away from positions of influence, discounting my thinking and ability to write, and isolating myself from potential allies. Resisting and interrupting my own elitism and oppression and the systematic reinforcement of elitism and oppression around me has become the central focus of my struggle as an academic feminist. My intention is neither to leave academia nor to ignore it. I am committed to bringing my political and emotional consciousness into the university as much as possible in order to force the study and education process I love into more relevance and humanity. At the same time I am committed to making the privileges for study that I have at the university as available as possible to grass roots political initiatives in order to help increase the visibility and potency of liberation work. One could define liberation work as the breakdown of elitism and oppression in the world between all peoples. And excellence could be measured by the authenticity of that work in terms of both human sincerity and reliable knowledge. I genuinely believe that liberation and knowledge are not only compatible but interdependent. And I genuinely believe that the university can offer relevant resources for the liberation of women and that the liberation of women is essential to humanizing our knowledge.