Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change

by AnaLouise Keating

Overview

In this lively, thought-provoking study, AnaLouise Keating writes in the traditions of radical U.S. women-of-color feminist/womanist thought and queer studies, inviting us to transform how we think about identity, difference, social justice and social change, metaphysics, reading, and teaching. Through detailed investigations of women of color theories and writings, indigenous thought, and her own personal and pedagogical experiences, Keating develops transformative modes of engagement that move through oppositional approaches to embrace interconnectivity as a framework for identity formation, theorizing, social change, and the possibility of planetary citizenship. Speaking to many dimensions of contemporary scholarship, activism, and social justice work, Transformation Now! calls for and enacts innovative, radically inclusionary ways of reading, teaching, and communicating.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252037849
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	11/04/2013
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

AnaLouise Keating is a professor of women's studies at Texas Woman's University and the author of Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues and other books.

Table of Contents

Giving Thanks xiii

Introduction. Post-Oppositional Resistance? Threshold Theories Defined and Enacted 1

But what's so bad about oppositional consciousness? 5

Threshold theorizing … defined and enacted 10

Becoming nepantleras: forging complex commonalities, making new connections 18

Tying up a few loose ends: chapter overviews and text selection 20

Postscript and invitation: A few words about my writing style, methods, and aspirations 25

1 Beyond Intersectionality: Theorizing Interconnectivity with/in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 29

This Bridge Called My Back's challenge to status-quo stories 31

Intersectionality and status-quo thinking 37

Bridge Lesson 1 Making connections through differences, seeking commonalities 38

Bridge Lesson 2 Positing our radical interrelatedness 46

Bridge Lesson 3 The importance of listening with raw openness 52

Listening with raw openness, diving into nepantla? 56

2 "American" individualism, Variations on a Theme; or, Self-Reliance, Transformed! 60

Multiculturalisms (re) defined 63

Individualism (re) defined 67

Dialogic readings, Luxocratic visions 71

Transformed thresholds 87

3 "I am your other I": Transformational Identity Politics 89

Conventional identity politics: definitions and limitations 92

Tactical (re)naming, creating commonalities 98

Differential subject formation… becoming you, becoming myself 106

4 "There is no arcane place for return": Revisionist Mythmaking with a Difference 111

Back to the mother? Post- structuralist critiques of revisionist mythmaking 113

Language matters, poet-shaman aesthetics 118

Mythic women and redefined selves 128

Transcultural universals 136

A redemptive myth 142

5 From Self-Help to Womanist Self-Recovery; or, How Paula Gunn Allen Changed My Mind 145

Womanist self-recovery, defined 150

Six attributes of womanist self-recovery texts 152

Womanist self-recovery and (as) visionary pragmatism 165

6 Pedagogies of Invitation: From Status-Quo Stories to Cosmic Connections 167

Self-enclosed individualism and the status quo 171

New stories for transformation: planetary citizenship 175

Pedagogies of invitation… three premises 182

Open invitation to readers 187

Appendixes

1 Abridged Syllabus for a U.S. Women of Colors Course Reanae McNeal 189

2 Guidelines for a Workshop on Our Spoken Word: Poetry for Self and Community Erica Granados De La Rosa 203

Notes 207

Works Cited and Consulted 233

Index 253

What People are Saying About This

National Women's Studies Association (NWSA)

Honorable Mention, Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award, National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), 2014.

Editorial Reviews

Honorable Mention, Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award, National Women's Studies Association (NWSA), 2014.

"This truly unique and exciting study uses the writings of U.S. women of color to transform the ways in which we do academic and political work, positing a model of interconnectivity between the individual and the community as an alternative to identity politics. The book will appeal to intellectuals interested in social justice of any kind."
—Suzanne Bost, author of Encarnación: Illness and Body Politics in Chicana Feminist Literature


"Offers a thoughtful and provocative theoretical framework for moving through and beyond binary thinking and identity politics. . . . Those interested in social justice work will benefit from Keating's post-oppositional framework for bringing about social change. Highly Recommended."—Choice


"Transformation Now! is an important addition to the body of visionary literature by feminists and womanists of color."—Women's Review of Books
 

"Keating's text simultaneously offers a sense of urgency and hope, a utopian view paired with a sense of possibility and sometime even inevitability if her stance is adopted, considered, or even pushed against. Her desire for igniting a new conversation about making change is inspiring to practitioners looking for a new way to approach the challenges they face in and out of the classroom."—Journal of American Culture

"AnaLouise Keating has presented us with what is perhaps the biggest innovation in critical theory in decades: a roadmap for moving beyond oppositional frameworks and the conflict/resistance-based models of social change and identity that they invariably produce. New vistas for deep and sustainable change open up on the heels of Transformation Now!"—Layli Maparyan, author of The Womanist Idea

From the Publisher