advisory council

[Chris Beckwith]

I understand the desire to bridge the disagreements here, but this whole
discussion is sounding more and more disagreeable, at best.  I think the
reason is that the problematic parts are purely political in nature.  I do
not see how the two positions could be moved closer to a compromise
without compromising the principles underlying them.

The original proposal is to assign representatives for each of the
selected identity categories, so that the
person representing the category belongs to the category, presumably by
self-definition.  (Is anyone really going to challenge a
candidate's proclamation of a given identity, or is GALA going to set up
'litmus tests' for membership in the category?  Doesn't sound very savory
to me.)  The other proposal is to have a representative--theoretically
anyone--for the 'interests' of each of these categories of people.
Merging them will simply increase the pressure for litmus testing, since
not only would the rep have to BE someone, the rep would have to support
some (stated?  unstated?) VIEWS ABOUT BEING someone.  I know that some
organizations have representatives nowadays for such things, but in every
case I am personally familiar with, the result has been to politicize and
polarize the membership more than before.  The real problem
here is one of categorization.  Certainly it is a problem in society,
wherein people frequently miscategorize, overcategorize, and so on,
causing the people who are the objects of the categorizing to suffer.  The
tack taken by several major social movements of this century in the
English-speaking world has been to promote UNDERcategorization--treating
members of two or more categories as one (woman and men in the suffrage
movement and subsequent movements; African-Americans and other Americans
in the civil rights movement; and so on).  Difficult as this has been,
there does not seem to be a better way.  Apartheit does not work, and I
think few good people would want it to.  I thought the goal of GALA was to
foster the study of the many kinds of categorizations--especially ones
based on gender--that are connected with language.  The discussion of
GALA's philosophy included the question of whether the organization should
be a social movement organization or not, and the consensus, as I recall
it, was that we should be a scholarly organization and leave the politics
to the existing social movement organizations.  I have been supporting the
foundation of GALA, and participating in the discussions, because I
believed this to be true: that for once there could be an organization of
people devoted to research and intellectual exchange on all the topics
involving gender and language.  I think that as long as this remains
GALA's goal, we will be a successful intellectual organization.  But the
people who've written in on the current topic seem (not surprisingly) to
have a very strong sense of self-identity, and have accordingly
reacted to the original proposal and counter-proposals very strongly-- to
some extent emotionally-- because this kind of thing, whatever the
intention, is inevitably going to call up many (all?) members' personal
feelings about self-identity.  I do not see this as leading anywhere but
deeper into the cesspool of politics.  I hope this idea is dropped.

Chris

On Tue, 10 Aug 1999, Mary Bucholtz wrote:

> Sara's proposal, coupled with Ingrid's additions, moves us closer to a
> compromise between the two positions that have been presented so far. I
> very much like the idea of focusing on what we do rather than who we are
> (or are perceived to be). However, I think the potential for inadequate
> representation is more likely at the level not of scholarship but of
> identity, however we want to understand that notion. Since we can't assume
> that people with certain identities will do certain kinds of scholarship,
> there's a danger that in focusing on scholarship we won't be addressing the
> problems that are most likely to arise: namely, overlooking the needs of
> particular scholars who may not be adequately represented in the
> organizational structure.
>
> Several people have already given a very clear explanation for why the
> facilitators and others have seen a need for constituency representation. I
> can't add anything to their very eloquent arguments, so I just want to
> underscore the point that most organizations do end up having some such
> representation, but often as an outside, after-the-fact group (e.g., a
> caucus) rather than as part of the basic structure. The original proposal
> aims for explicit inclusivity from the very beginning of the organization.
>
> Some people have argued strenuously, and on very persuasive theoretical
> grounds, against constituency representation, and they're absolutely right
> that identity categories are deeply problematic. However, as long as
> sexuality, race, nationality, gender, and other fictive categories matter
> in the world around us--a condition which is the very premise of our
> scholarship, after all--they will matter in our organization. It would be
> nice to think that if we don't acknowledge those categories, they won't
> matter, but I fear that such a hope, though well-intentioned, isn't very
> realistic.
>
> Mary
>