Intercultural dialogues on gender, marginality and higher education

Abstract

Many scholars ask today whether there is a need for a common political frontier especially in its insistence on such prerequisites as gender. There is the feeling of political amnesia and individual inability to challenge the pervasive and continuously patriarchal power structures of governments, international corporations, and therefore also educational practices. Education is power, beyond doubt, but what kind of education, whose knowledge and whose interests are being represented, we still need to ask. Gender for that matter is not the only variable affecting educational experiences around the world. Now, that the ‘Western’ notion of global sisterhood, based on the belief that all women share an experience of oppression, has been abandoned, there is little basis for gender solidarity. In the light of such reflection, we attempt to address the feminist pedagogy of location with respect to the meaning of a ‘common ground’ in feminist knowledge, and how it affects the educational tactics of self-positioning, the very requirement for autonomous subject. Although volumes have been researched on the topic of gender, the power relations constructing the many categories that intersect with gender continue to trouble feminist inquiry: race, ethnicity, age, physical ability, dialect, citizenship, geographical location, religion, class, sexual preferences... One thing to admit is that no matter how much inclusiveness is at stake, the list of marginalities remains unexhausted. Judith Butler has referred to this once in terms of “the embarrassing etc. at the end of the list” (1991), and this position is relevant to our intercultural discussion. In this vein, to encompass multiple marginalities is indeed an impossible mission, invariably failing to be complete, but we do not believe to stop at this exhaustion.