Storytelling Tactics: Resisting the Presumed in Western Feminist Theory

Dr. Clare Hemmings

In this talk Dr. Hemmings will reflect on some methodological issues arising from her recently completed project 'Telling Feminist Stories'. The book examines the discursive range and formation of the stories Western feminist theorists tell about the recent past, and links these to broader intellectual and political debates concerning social theory and global gender discourse. The primary argument is that the techniques used to secure these stories make Western feminist discourse particularly amenable to co-optation. The solutions she offers are both to critically map the techniques that secure these stories, and offer methodological alternatives at that technical level that have the capacity to transform the way feminist stories are told.

Dr. Hemmings reflects on the difficulty of narrating stories and their techniques without either directly reproducing their logic or taking a simply oppositional stance. What kind of feminist mode might be necessary for telling the story of feminist stories with respect, but also 'otherwise'? What critical feminist strategies are available for engaging stories and spaces one has a stake in? In feminist tradition, one would be likely to answer: reflexivity, of course! But what does that mean in a historiographic project such as this one? How does one practice rather than invoke textual reflexivity? Might 'reflexive irony' work as an alternative to the rather self-aggrandissing gestures of empathy?

Bio

Clare Hemmings is Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies and Gender Theory at the London School of Economics. She works across the intersections of sexuality studies and gender studies in a transnational frame.

Contact email: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk