Return to
Inscriptions Volume 7 | Return to Inscriptions
Introduction
During the academic year 1992-93, a group of UC Santa Cruz women of color faculty and
graduate students came together in order to create a space wherein we might find/develop
support for each other's research and activism. In addition to the publication of this special
issue of Inscriptions, we also sponsored a colloquium featuring women of color
scholars and activists such as Haunani-Kay Trask, Elizabeth Martínez, and Angela
Y. Davis. We share with you here the statement which guided us in our work:
"This research group comes together for the express purposes of studying, writing, and
sharing ideas regarding some of the concepts and conditions of women of color in the U.S.
Beginning with the construct of the term women of color, this group's mission is the study
of the shifting identities and coalitions which simultaneously exist within. We seek to
explore the multiple interpretations and expressions of identity which emerge from women
of color. We believe that it is important to discuss the ways in which women of color are
purposefully and consciously enriching social and cultural processes by creating complex
forms of resistance, reclamation, and reinvention of their collective selves. We say that
these acts are important because we believe that to look at them is to uncover the ways in
which women of color reclaim their right to self-definition; to uncover these different ways
of knowing is to understand the ways in which women of color reject the cultural
hegemony which forces objectification and fragmentation as a means of control; to discuss
the ways in which women of color work with each other is to reveal some of the many
ways in which they survive a white supremacist society."
+++
Enunciating Our Terms: Women of Color in Collaboration and
Conflict
Once upon a time enunciating the term women of color was an invitation to take up
critical positionalities within feminist and cultural nationalist discourses. Once upon a time
enunciating the term women of color was a celebration of a "particular but
heterogeneous" community, (to borrow a phrase from Michelle Habell-Pallan and Jennifer
A. González).
Collaboration and Conflict? Neither term sounds particularly inviting, neither
sounds celebratory. Although we may remember successful past collaborative projects
among women of color in labor, politics, or the arts, the word faintly echoes histories of
betrayal and treason. (He was a collaborator. She was in collaboration with the
enemy.) Nonetheless, with this collection we have attempted to transform the term,
claim it for those projects which we consider profoundly loyal (insofar as innovation and
criticism emerge from loyalty) to our communities, whether feminist, cultural nationalist,
something in between, or something other. So when we enunciate the term collaboration,
we evoke histories of coalition, alliance, and most of all, friendship.
Within this project, we want to simultaneously reflect on historical and current, celebratory
and critical moments of collaborative work among women of color. Our desire to outline
the contours of this terrain is shaped by a series of questions: What does it mean for us to
share that which Chandra Mohanty calls "a common context of struggle"? Where
does our heterogeneity work? Where does it conflict? What are the conflicting
terms of our enunciation?
These questions are initially taken up in the tradition of "storytelling," as we open this
special issue of Inscriptions with a dialogue, an interview, and a collection of oral
histories. Some illuminating responses are found in the conversation contributed to this
collection by Angela Y. Davis and Elizabeth Martínez. By critically embracing and
defining "a common context of struggle," Davis and Martínez speak to a wide range
of issues and strategies, and to the importance of acknowledging (but not indulging in the
nostalgic replication of) important historical struggles. In an interview with Linda
Burnham, Julia Curry, and Miriam Louie of the Women of Color Resource Center, we
read their testimonies to contemporary instances of collaboration. Adding to these
frequently invisible stories of everyday struggles, the cultural and economic empowerment
of Northern New Mexican villagers is articulated here through a set of oral histories
presented by María Ochoa. All of these works powerfully demonstrate the tandem
endurance of coalition politics with friendship in the context of the struggle for social
justice.
While the articles in this collection tend to emphasize the collaborative, there is also
willingness to both acknowledge and learn from conflict. This is exemplified by the
contribution from former smell this editors Rhacel Parreñas, Ruxana Meer,
and Catherine Ramírez. Reflecting on their experiences with the first journal by and
about women of color at UC Berkeley, Parreas, Meer, and Ramírez document its
dramatic rise and fall, and their continuing search for a "homeplace." But, how does one
make a homeplace in the academy? (For indeed, the academy is the site of our
enunications.) joannemariebarker and Teresia Teaiwa contribute a provocative essay within
which they strategically situate their institutionally assigned, but not assumed, roles as
"native informants" within the academy.
We find in this collection that INFORMATION and HIERARCHIES are some of the most
contested issues for women of color. This collection as a whole attempts to "put stuff out
there" and "deal with what's out there." Alma Sifuentes's and Kim D. Hester Williams's
contribution to this issue poignantly illustrates some of our central dilemmas. Women of
color, whether in critical mass or isolated, in the "real world" or in a "city on a hill," in
private or in public, are no less immune to structures of hierarchy/violence than any other
subject. And yet, women of color have and continue to negotiate and make space for each
other. Jennifer González and Michelle Habell-Pallan write eloquently of the ways in
which two Chicana artists--Amalia Mesa-Bains and Marisela Norte--are marking new
terrain within the social spaces of the museum and the cityscape, territory generally defined
by the dominant culture.
With this collection we attempt to enunciate clearly our commitment to cultural production,
political activism, and scholarship which are either based in, or which help to foster,
community. Perhaps that commitment is most obvious in the contribution of Judy Yung
and Martha Ramiacute;rez who developed a germinal annotated bibliography regarding
worksÑbooks, films, videos, articlesÑdeveloped through the process of, or about,
collaboration among women of color.
This publication is not intended to foreclose discussions and debates regarding the possible
ideological implications of the category women of color. Rather, we hope that the material
found in this issue contribute to the on-going collaborations among women of color, be
they in the form of joint research, coalition work, cross-cultural alliances, or activist
networks--at UCSC and out there, in the world beyond Santa Cruz. For we believe that
enunciating the term women of color is still an invitation to take up critical
positionalities within feminist and cultural nationalist discourses; and that enunicating the
term women of color is still a celebration of a "particular but heterogeneous"
community.
+++
COLLABORATION
conversation + collage + altar + weaving
co-authorship + cooperative + collective + comadre + cluster
CONFLICT
street + church + classroom + museum + border + hotel
reservation + island + village + home + dorm + bus + city
factory + prison + office + library
HIERARCHIES
racial + spatial + cultural + sexual + color
class + generational + national
INFORMATION
is never neutral, it either reproduces or transforms
INFORMATION ABOUT...
Women of Color Resource Center + Heterotopias
Tierra Wools + Native InFormation + smell this
Coalition Building + Private Parts + Bibliographic Resources
María Ochoa
Teresia Teaiwa
Editors
Overview -
Programs -
Sites of Interest -
Events -
CS Archives -
Home
Last modified: Dec 7, 1998 by Megan O'Patry.
Please send your comments to the Center for Cultural Studies, cult@hum.ucsc.edu.