Notes from the (Non)Field: Teaching and Theorizing Women of Color

Origins and the Formation of "Woman of Color" Identity

Conceptual Emergence: The identity of "woman of color" is framed not as an innate biological category but as a social and political formation produced in specific geographical and institutional locations.
Alexander and Mohanty Framework: Rachel Lee references Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty’s introduction to Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures. They state, "We were not born women of color, but became women of color here," specifically referring to the United States North American racial context.
Domesticating Experience: For international scholars like Alexander (from Trinidad and Tobago) and Mohanty (from India), the U.S. category of "woman of color" served to domesticate their own experiences into a "peculiar brand" of U.S. racism.
Institutional Hiring: Lee echoes this sentiment, noting that she became a "woman of color" (as opposed to an Asian American woman or a literature professor) specifically when she was hired to teach the "women of color" core requirement (WS130) at UCLA.

The Symbolic and Institutional Function of WS130 at UCLA

The Racial Alibi: Lee argues that the course Women of Color in the U.S. (WS130) often carries the weight of a "racial alibi." The bodies of knowledge produced by these women are often less important to the institution than the "hailing" of the term as a synecdoche for the blindspots of Women's Studies.
Nominalism vs. Substance: Angela Davis notes that "woman of color" is often used in a nominalistic way without substantive meaning, acting as a theoretical gesture to mark spaces of compounded exclusion.
Course Genealogy and Function: * WS130 is one of three required core courses at UCLA, alongside WS10 (Introduction to Women's Studies) and WS110 (Feminist Theory). * It functions as a "feeder course" to attract students of color into the Women's Studies major.
Policy of Dispersion: Due to student and faculty dissatisfaction with a single umbrella course, UCLA adopted a policy allowing WS130 to be fulfilled by specific ethnic studies classes (e.g., "Asian American Women" or "Chicana History").
Conflation of Body and Content: The program often conflates the content of the course with the physical body of the instructor. There is an overinvestment in the requirement that the class be taught by a "woman of color" every year, which serves a diversifying function rather than focusing on a collaborative body of knowledge.
Off-Shore Manufacture: Lee describes the fulfillment of the WS130 requirement as a form of "off-shore manufacture" because the desired "colored bodies" are often situated outside the core Women's Studies faculty, requiring constant cross-listing and outsourcing.

The Theory of Non-Territoriality and Oppositional Consciousness

Differential Consciousness: Chela Sandoval articulates U.S. Third World feminism as a "differential consciousness" that moves between various oppositional ideologies.
The Vehicular Metaphor: Sandoval uses the metaphor of an automobile clutch to describe how women of color "select, engage, and disengage gears" (different programs of action) in a system for the transmission of power. * In this model, Third World feminism does not aim for a "separate gear" but acts as a locus that prevents any single ideology from becoming the sole "Truth." * Sandoval argues that this prevents the movement from repeating "oppressive authoritarianism."
Urban Guerrilla Tactics: Sandoval, paraphrasing Cherrie Moraga and Aida Hurtado, describes women of color as "urban guerrillas" whose fighting capabilities are mobile and un-codified, making them sporadically visible to traditional feminist reading codes.
The Problem of "No-Place": Lee is skeptical of this "everyplace and noplace" logic. While Sandoval views mobility as a strength, Lee suggests it leads to a "political nonrecognition" where the state/movement fails to see the intersection as a legitimate "place."
Fetishized Marginality: Women's Studies programs often fetishize this marginality, narrating their "progress" through the field's ability to eventually incorporate the "excluded" woman of color, who represents the field's "critical future."

The Crisis of the Field: Responses from Brown and Gubar

Wendy Brown's "The Impossibility of Women's Studies" (1997): * Brown questions the wisdom of degree-granting programs, suggesting feminist projects might be better pursued in mainstream disciplines. * She describes a "relentless, compensatory cycle of guilt and blame about race" in the Santa Cruz women of color classroom. * Brown critiques the "pre-Foucauldian" analysis of power (intersectionality) used by scholars like Crenshaw and Hurtado, arguing it focuses on hierarchical ranking rather than regulatory modalities that produce subjects.
Susan Gubar's "What Ails Feminist Criticism?" (1998): * Gubar characterizes the current state of feminist criticism as "cranky" and "censorious." * She contrasts "critical election" (the status of black and Third World women) with "critical abjection" (white women’s deference and silence). * She advocates for "merrymaking" and "mirthful scholarly lexicons" to replace "debilitating rhetorics."
Robyn Wiegman's Rebuttal: Wiegman argues that Gubar misdiagnoses the field's institutional fragility as a personal "illness" and fails to analyze race outside of white women's emotional centrality.
The Sentiment of Exhaustion: Lee identifies a shift toward "estrangement" and "hostility," where mainstream feminist scholarship expresses exhaustion with race charges, erroneously claiming that racial parity has been achieved because women of color are now perceived as "central."

Articulating Blindspots within Women of Color Scholarship

Exiting the Prisonhouse of Reactiveness: Lee suggests women of color scholarship must move beyond "negative definition" (reacting to white feminism) and establish its own "positive territorial contours" by identifying its own blindspots.
U.S.-Centrism and Civil Rights Discourse: Much of the scholarship is heavily dependent on U.S. legislative and judicial processes for remedy.
The Intersection Metaphor (Kimberle Crenshaw): * Crenshaw's "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex" (1989) uses the metaphor of an accident in a traffic intersection. * Injury can come from multiple directions (racism and sexism), but legal relief often requires identifying a single "driver." * Unlike Sandoval’s graceful mobility, Crenshaw’s intersection is a site of "trauma" and "collision."
Sovereignty vs. Inclusion: Haunani-Kay Trask (Native Hawaiian activist) critiques the focus on U.S. civil rights. For indigenous peoples, the U.S. court system is the very entity that seized their land. Trask focuses on "mana" (power) and land rights rather than inclusion in the Anglo-European state.
Possessive Individualism: Lee notes that a significant blindspot in Western women of color scholarship is its imbrication in capitalist individualism and the concept of justice as "rights."

Re-envisioning Pedagogical and Institutional Strategies

Collaborating on Disagreement: Lee proposes that Women's Studies should foster a slate of classes that collaborate on points of "disidentification" and struggle, rather than seeking a "new model for unity."
Against the "Magic Pill": Hiring a single person of color is often viewed by institutions as a "magic pill" to resolve the "void" of the program. Lee argues this is an individual solution to a collective problem.
Funding and Structural Support: * Programs should fund collaborative pedagogies and team-taught courses. * Instructors of these courses do not exclusively need to be women of color; the focus should be on the seriousness of the scholarship.
Seizing Territory: While guerrilla action is a necessary maneuver, Lee concludes it cannot be an endpoint. Scholarship must eventually "seize territory" and build a stable ground, rather than remaining in a state of "material and practical impoverishment" in the name of critical mobility.