On power and privilege at Clark University

Clark is a classic liberal arts college community in New England. There is a faculty listserv for discussions. But few discussions happen online and when they do, it is usually the same three or four male faculty who talk to each other. Every once in a while something comes up -- like a discussion in 2007 about marriage (gay and straight), and something led me to think about power and privklege. And so I posted what I share below on that listserv. I used to lament the absence of dialogues and discussions online. But having seen and experienced the ones that occur, I'm disgusted and silent as I trying to find what lies beyond the binaries of silent complicity and pointless babble, between the personal and the political. My favorite social theorist and the one I consider my mentor would say "aporias"...

----- Original Message -----
From: Kiran Asher
Sent: 4/14/2007 9:04:18 AM
Subject: A message with ...

Dear xxxxx:

Thank you so very much for both your contributions. I was going to thank you in a private email. But since the early exchanges around this discussion of “marriage” sounded very much like a private conversation being had in public, I thank you in public/private. The ambiguous boundaries between those categories serves to remind me of my conversations with feminist mothers and sisters. What I do hope unambiguously is that these exchanges generated a good audience for the panel that NK organized, especially among those of us who were deeply invested in the conversations.

PARAGRAPH DELETED

xxxx’s message below also helps me establish another partial connection with the previous thread. Power and privilege do not disappear √ not in the world and not at Clark. They take different forms and often become “invisibilized.” I am glad that folks at Clark are not called “*%&^” to their faces for their race, gender, sexual orientation, political beliefs, nationality, or religion (or lack thereof). But the question is how many people think it and more importantly WHY? As a daughter of Marx and Freud, I would ask how those thoughts and fears get manifested and are part of structured inequalities? As a daughter of Foucault and Spivak, I would ask what doesn’t get noticed and what are the effects of that invisibility? [Yes, I have been reading Haraway recently-- the Companion Species Manifesto --which has much to teach us about love and compassion]. So my contribution to the conversation is to ask those ≥meta questions≈ (I≠m not sure that that is the correct analytical term but I am sure that one of you will correct me). Let us not delude ourselves into believing the myths of liberal equality or denying that masculinist, heterosexist, white, liberal logic prevails in our hallowed halls. Or rather I cannot delude myself into believing the myths of liberal equality.

I end with ... more ≥appendages≈ - a poem by Audre Lorde you≠ll see how it fits with the discussion of privilege, and the other poem ...(omitted here).

Saludos

Kiran
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WHO SAID IT WAS SIMPLE
Audre Lorde (1970)

There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.

But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see cause in color
as well as sex.

and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.