Building a home of many rooms

Written by Rebekah Willson

Academic life is so often filled with meetings and general bureaucratic frustrations that it was a great pleasure to sit in a room with other academics and hear about new scholarship and ideas. On 30 January 2019, Strathclyde University Feminist Research Network hosted Dr Vikki Turbine from the University of Glasgow, who give a talk entitled “First generation feminist? Autoethnographic reflections on politicisation and finding a home with feminism”.

At first glance, Vikki’s talk was personal – her memories and stories from different periods of her life, illustrated through song titles and personal photos. However, her talk went far beyond the personal, using systematic methodologies to reflect on her own memories and tell her own stories to more fully explore the place of feminism in the academy. I was lucky enough to be asked to be the discussant for the talk and looking at Vikki’s work, blog and then hearing the talk made me think more specifically about my own understanding of feminism within academia and what feminism can offer the academy.

I want to focus on the latter point. I see feminism as one of the forces that is making room in the academy – room for new voices, new people, new ways of understanding, new knowledges. It creates space to talk about people and their lives not in a self-indulgent way, but in a way that acknowledges people and their experiences, providing opportunities to learn from the process of self-reflexivity – all with the view to create change. Feminism has been an agent that has pushed for the inclusion of new research methods and theories. I think about my own positivist, quantitative training in my undergraduate degree in psychology. Discovering in my PhD that not only could I, as the researcher, be a part of the research but that I must be an acknowledged and considered part of the research process, was revolutionary. That the researcher is a key part of the research and that, rather than adding bias, the inclusion of the researcher makes the research stronger. Part of this strength is through the inclusion of both researcher and participant perspectives on and understandings of the world.

As discussant, when I got up to reflect on Vikki’s talk, I talked about feminist research methods and seeing feminist ideals being played out in the academy. However, the vast majority of audience members who asked questions after Vikki’s talk spoke about class – particularly about how academics from working-class backgrounds negotiate their class identity. As a Canadian (and, full disclosure, white, English speaking, middle class), my experience with and understanding of class is very different. Class in Canada is less entrenched and more fluid. However, because it is not as established, it is often ignored altogether. Growing up comfortably middle class (everyone I knew ate olives) I have not engaged with class in the same way I have with feminism. And there is my class privilege showing. The question period highlighted for me once again the need for me to listen to – and learn about – the experiences of others to expand my thinking. The voice of the individual – particularly those who are marginalised – is important to the feminism to which I subscribe. So, as these women spoke, I shut up and listened.

Recognising that I don’t know and that I need to educate myself about issues such as class is the gift and the burden of feminism. The push to be reflexive and to constantly stretch your understanding and thinking is challenging, but it is also spurs you on to be a better person, colleague, and academic. And it’s on this point this I want to end. When I started writing this blog, I thought I would concentrate more on feminist research methodologies and the ways in which engaging in feminist scholarship seeks to lay bare the processes behind research. I thought I would critique the treatment of research as a straightforward, clear-cut process, which fails to acknowledge the challenges – the false starts, the mess, the mistakes – that are a part of scholarship, a failure that reduces research to a set of steps and hampers the learning of young researchers. What I want to talk about is seeing feminism in action in the academy.

I see feminist academics pushing back against the idea that researchers must be objective and remove themselves from their research. I see feminist academics enacting their feminism through acknowledging and valuing the perspectives of others – by listening, by making visible others’ experiences, by being kind. I see feminist academics supporting and encouraging other women (though not just women) in their work. This is not feminist academics simply being “nice” or acting as helpful handmaidens. This is feminist academics addressing inequalities in practical and helpful ways. This is feminists living their feminism. And while there is kindness and helpfulness, there is also anger. As Vikki discussed, feminism provides a space to experience anger, as well as to legitimise it. Anger at injustice is logical and there is no need to “get over it.” Inequality in academia remains, particularly at a structural level. It reduces us to “less than”; it seeks to dismiss our work. And we should be angry about this. But I remind myself that whilst I am angry, I can use that anger for good purpose. Not only do I want to use it to seek out ways to change the system that replicates and sustains inequalities, but I also want to use it to help me keep perspective. I want to use anger to focus my attention on the kind of feminist academic I want to be and to act accordingly – by listening, by being kind, by giving voice, by remaining angry at persistent inequalities.