I chose the image of the shell to suggest not only the redefintion of our conception of time, but also as a ironical reminder of a women's delicate association with the smooth, pink shell.
Time is a fluid motion without point A and point B. It is capable of shifting. Time is not circular and like power it does not work on a hierarchical scale. Time is a spiral, turning in on itself, creating a overlapping complex movement without a solid beginning or a clear end. The spiral is how we should invision Feminist Pedagogy working. If we think of the work Feminist Pedagogy can do in relation to the movement of a spiral nothing is complete, but instead the student will be positioned within a force of redefinition.

spiral shell

 

On November 12, Laura Bush addressed the Lady's Home Journal Awards Ceremony with the following words, "Since September 11 more people are buying engagement rings and planning weddings". She was given a standing salute to her heroic deed, that is, as a woman she satisfactorily made the connection between patriotism and a white, middle class woman's purity and faithfulness. What is the relationship between our desire to "protect our country from attacks on civilization" and racism, classism, sexism, and heterosexism in both a national and multinational context? Is Laura Bush building a national identity (something which has disappeared in our mega corporate power structure)? What are the roots of American Nationalism? While our country acknowledges the injustices done to women under the Taliban (a struggle which has been ignored until this September) in order to gain sympathetic support for a bloody attack on an already devastated land, Laura Bush preaches for stability, economic support (a woman's mission is to shop), and the return of the nuclear patriarchal family. A gold ring and a white dress are the images she evokes to the largely white, middle class audience who feel that September 11 is an attack committed against the fundamental pillars of American society. The pillar of "freedom" cloaked in cake with pink icing, the pillar of "justice" drapped in tissue paper, roses, and diamonds and of course the pillar of "love" gilded by money, service the foundation of our Nation. What veils to we wear; ones made of lace and satin?

 

Our shells are not pink. As feminists we cannot critique the position of women in Afghanistan without situating ourselfs in the architecture of power. The construction of "whiteness" needs to be examined along side the burqua. Laura Bush is embedded in the etiquettes of "whiteness". The women of Afghanistan become victims; "brown, Muslim, uneducated, poor" victims. Words such as liberation, freedom, and egual rights are defined in relation to a distinct solid foundation of "whiteness". This is not to say that we (as American Feminist) should not fight for peace. Quite the contrary, we instead must take hammers to the consensual fiction of "white womanhood".

 

 

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