feministmethodologies

In this brief this essay, I intend to describe how Emma Alice Jane’s article, ‘Back to the kitchen, cunt’: speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny, provides a detailed account of how to unfold, illustrate, and articulate a phenomenon through narrative as a part of methodology. First, I will describe the way in which Jane structures each narrative. Then, I will remark on places Jane could have expanded or explained in more detail, critiques of which I will consider for my own research.

The purpose of Jane’s article is to describe the proliferation of hostile and misogynist rhetoric on online commentary. As a result of widespread media coverage that has debated what methods or interventions could be effective in assuaging online harassment, Jane argues that ‘e-bile,’ a combination of expletives, profanity, and explicit imagery of sexual violence, “must be spoken of in its unexpurgated entirety” despite being sexually explicit or offensive to convey its true hostility and hyperbolic misogyny. Indeed, misogynist trolling messages are often calculated and precise in how they offend. Additionally, Jane suggests that talking about this commentary in a polite way produces the unintended consequence hiding the social and political existence of the behaviour’s proliferation.

Although definitions are efficient tools for readers, the severity and intensity of phenomenon are sometimes not captured by polite explanations. To draw connections between old and new sexualising misogyny, Jane exposes her 15 year archive of sexualised vitriol to fully convey how e-bile targets their hostile imagery toward women. For example, Jane offers messages she received as a journalist to illustrate recurring characteristics of comments that target visible public sphere women anonymously:

“Then there was: You should have good arse fuck lasting two hours every day. That would set you right! You look like a tart desperate for cock or maybe you thing you’re cool or funky?…their authors are anonymous or otherwise difficult to identify; their sexually explicit rhetoric includes homophobic and misogynist epithets; they prescribe all purpose correctives.”

Rather than simply defining e-bile, Jane hides nothing in her examples to build up the conceptual framework of a phenomenon. Jane’s analysis names characteristics in detail. Indeed, the body of Jane’s article is structured in such a way that each section is titled with an excerpt of messages that Jane or one of Jane’s subjects has received. I find  Jane conceptual frame work technique effective in helping the reader piece together the characteristics on their own. Jane’s point was driven home when even I felt tempted to not include the worst of the above excerpt. In fact, I cut the last line. The instinctual response to hide intense misogyny and explicit violent sexual imagery of these messages is Jane’s reason and purpose in writing this article. Although I agree that in order to really name the issues with e-bile behaviours and understand how new misogyny is just an adaptation of the old, how can researchers critically look at explicit behaviour while being conscious of not making subjects spectacles and trigger warnings?

As said before, Jane labels each paragraph or section with an excerpt of a of a message received that Jane claims is structured by escalating intensity and severity. For example, Jane provides a comment listed under the Youtube profiles of one her cheer leader subjects of which she calls a “winning entry in shockability stakes: “She gave great blowjobs before her fall, now imagine the pleasure she will bring with out her front teeth”(561). The message seems just as rooted in desire and misogyny as the last messages. Jane could possibly provide a criterion for which she delineates the increasing intensity or escalation of these remarks. In other words, how does Jane decide which are worse? In this context, quantifying the violence of these messages can be problematic. For my own research, I do not intend to quantify violence but perhaps rather than structuring the article around increasing intensity, I can use this narrative method and organize them to focus on key characteristics that are present in all the messages but particularly explicit in specific examples.

Lastly, Jane suggests that that the authors of these anonymous messages get off on having the worst of their messages hidden: “the anonymous or quasi anonymous producers of such discourse are likely to benefit from the fact that their utterances and actions are considered too abhorrent to repeat or discuss in mainstream contexts”(558). However, an argument can be made that the authors also get off on wide exposure. It is not the power in the message we have to hide but the identity of author we must unearth in order to hold authors accountable. Although Jane’s narrative tool in helping readers building a conceptual framework for key terms and concepts is visually innovative, I question the structure of Jane’s narrative building.

In short, what I take from Emma Jane’s article is how to let the reader formulate their own constructions of  a term with guidance. Repeated clear examples of a a concept or a phenomenon allow the reader to see  repeated traits and characteristics. Further analysis from the writer helps guide the reader to a clearer understanding of what the concept is but the technique does not necessarily persuade to agree. In my own work, I hope to not only use this technique but entertain opposing views within the article to formulate a more dialectic approach.

In the timely article, Love No Limit: Towards a Black Feminist Future (in Theory), Brittney Cooper uses Black feminist theorizing to suggest that Black feminism or rather the Black feminist project has remained static and fallen into the academic habit trap of conforming  to western hegemonic standards by steadily trying to prove its rigor and legitimacy, which results in the under-theorization of race, gender, and the metaphysical. Similarly, my research questions the double binded usage western canonical texts to put forth new theories of race, gender, or something new where in which I wish to use new accounts of race gender rooted in studies of blackness. However, one cannot use what simply hasn’t been produced. Cooper’s exploration of of Black feminist theorizing is significant in that it challenges black feminist methods of theorizing as well as questioning  if it is bold enough to ask and explore what lies in the dark, a problem which I, too struggle with in my navigation of the Ivory tower. Barriers continued to be set up not only by western philosophical theorists, but also more frustratingly, other Black feminist theorists.  This short essay will seek to evaluate Cooper’s interrogation of the state of black feminist theorizing, by examining structure and significance of arguments.

Rather than necessarily posing new or less regulated questions for the Black feminist future, Cooper uses this article to comment on and trace Black feminist inquiry as it pertains to black feminist methods of theorization, how it negotiates space in the realm of feminist activism and theorization as in place in theory. I am reminded of Gabriel argument for uses of ethnographic poetry as a method of geographic research when Cooper criticises  the increasing popularity of western literary criticism as root for black feminist theorizing when “people of color have always theorized” using “ narrative forms, in the stories  we create, in riddles and proverbs, in the play with language, since dynamic rather than fixed ideas seem more to our liking”( Cooper 8). Cooper uses Barbara Christian’s work, A Race for Theory, to suggest that the preoccupation with finding a legitimate way to theorize displaces the already legitimate black epistemologies. On one hand, Cooper’s critiques is dizzying in that black feminist theory in this regard reifies that which it sought to resist. On the other hand, contextualizing and tangling with the realities that black women and black feminist theorists often have limited access to academic spaces. In addition, black feminist theorist are  vulnerable to internalized sexism, racism and additionally  often lacking administrative and faculty support in predominately white and western academic institutions. As Cooper admits “Black women become forced to participate in a discourse but always only to the extent that they exercise language and expression of often alien theorizations”(Cooper 10). Black feminist theorist are in a constant cycle of trying to prove themselves. The questions seemingly remain static in that they assert why black women belong in the university, why leaving black women or women of color out renders western political theories incomplete. Always in binary opposition to the western patriarchal theorists or white feminist theorists , black feminist criticism becomes co-opted  and transitions critically necessary lenses like intersectionality into the domain of buzzword, holding no real meaning. Likewise, rather than fight for new understandings of what we think we know, we become folded into the neoliberal project by striving for academic legitimization and focused moving away from being seemingly out of place. In other words, Black feminism theorizing is always on the defense.

My greatest criticism of the Cooper’s article, is the common mistake of making the place queerness and trans folk in black feminism and afterthought. I  suggest that rather than make space for a range desires and black performances of gender that queer black feminism be at the center. as we begin to create and develop a comprehensive black sexual politic  in addition to theorizing black interiority, I assert that nothing can be done with rendering even the thinking of black queer pleasure impossible. Despite the black feminism’s history with queerness, Combahee River collective, queerness, queer theory, and black feminist theorizing remain departed drawing two separate paths.

As Cooper interrogates the growth of Black feminist theorizing, Cooper frames BFT as a problem rather than a solution. In other words, BFT for the past two decades has served to be an interruption rather than a producer of new knowledge or uncovering the old. Cooper strongest example is looking at the over-production and obsession with “controlling images” research like Sapphire, Jezebel, and Mammy.  Without question, Black feminist attraction to race, gender, and representation is linked to it relevance and prominence in our daily lives–no doubt a critical pillar of BFT. However, Cooper asserts that the obsession with being an interruption rather than a producer serves to make BFT complicit  in the processes that place BFT on a pedestal, stalling the possibility for exciting new inquiries. For instance, Cooper introduces Patricia Hill Collins’ work, Black Feminist Thought, as something that could be considered a canonical black feminist text. What strengthens her argument is the insight that although this text is significant  and has been crucial for the development of black feminist theory  as a  critical social theory, Collins work  is taken as given and though heavily cited, never critiqued. Theorists use Collins books as perhaps a justification or contextualization of their own ideas but never challenging Collins’ ideas themselves or taking up the questions and gaps purposefully left in in Collins work. This particular example convinced me that the disconnect I have felt from the Black feminist project is not only real but indicative of  how black feminist theorizing must broaden as  questions the political landscape as well as the bridging gap the realm of black feminist  metaphysics.

In conclusion, Cooper has brought new questions for me about the state of Black feminist project. Particularly, how does or can the black feminist theorize the nation state and the twice displacement of diasporic peoples?  Will Black feminism always serve as a problem or site for contention if its very necessity constitutes its limitations? Who or what is controlling the black feminist project? Is and should the object of feminist theorizing be that black feminist theorizing be folded into the larger feminist project or perhaps toward a larger human ethical project or does that desire for particularity always/already hold it at odds?

Cooper, B. C. (2015). Love No Limit: Towards a Black Feminist Future (In Theory). The Black Scholar,45(4), 7-21. doi:10.1080/00064246.2015.1080912

BFT- Black feminst theorizing