Comments on: Where are the ladies, Didier Fassin? #EASA2016 Keynote

By: Markus Meier

Markus Meier — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:56:58 +0000

In reply to Julie. Great reply, Julie! I also like your style! It is time to stand up and speak up against feminism if anthropology wants to remain a science, rather then a round of elderly ladies having a cup of coffee reasoning about insufficient men! A first step would be to reach out to sociobiology and the concept of "corporal evolutionary memory" they elaborate to understand "anthropos".

By: Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:48:42 +0000

In reply to Lorraine Nencel. Well, she is the Godmother of feminism, that should do ?!

By: Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 16:48:08 +0000

Chapeau, you did not surrender to (male nor female) feminists and their claim to be cited “for being female”, Didier! Every author is free to cite males, muslims, blonds, leftists, bus-users, hobby-beer-tap-collectors or whatever it is that separates or unites people in order to support ones argumentation. People critical of w h a t y o u s a i d (something that interestingly is not covered in M. H.-T.´s article … ) should point out this to the reader based on arguments. Fight feminist mafias in the academia, especially in the humanities! Stop people claiming ridiculous privileges (such as being cited in a keynote address) based on gender! Stop feminist sexism! Resist!

By: Miia Halme-Tuomisaari

Miia Halme-Tuomisaari — Mon, 25 Jul 2016 14:05:52 +0000

Dear all, warm thanks for your insightful comments! I will be responding very soon in detail via a follow-up post, for which I will also summarise general reactions that this post has received. I am very pleased at how vivid this important debate has already become, and I look forward to continuing soon!

By: Lorraine Nencel

Lorraine Nencel — Sun, 24 Jul 2016 10:35:16 +0000

I think it is quite interesting that the only woman mentioned is NOT an anthropologist.

By: David

David — Sun, 24 Jul 2016 10:23:49 +0000

Well put! This last comment drives the point even further (that we need to cite more diverse people, because they are out there and doing the work). To go ahead and cite women for the sake of them being female scholars, is as political as just citing according to your bias (and what you know) and leaving them out in a color/gender blind approach.
Also, on another note, I resent the use of the phrase “slaving away”.

Cheers,

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 24 Jul 2016 05:59:46 +0000

Where is the content, ladies?
How could it come to this? Since when is it enough of a comment or rather a whole article to just count female authors (not) quoted? Is that where our discipline is heading to? Why couldn’t you make a more substantial claim, Miia, about important women having been left out by Fassin? And I am sure you read them all, right? You know what Hannah Arendt thought about Kant’s Critique of Judgement, or in which way Gayatri Spivak thinks that postmodern critique is ethnocentric, how Donna Haraway refines Marx’ ideas on biocapital. Why then don’t you engage with Fassin in a serious scientific debate about their ideas being relevant in his history of critical thought? Because of course one could argue that unfortunately Arendt, Spivak or Haraway were missing in his lecture. But instead of making their importance explicit you just rant about women being missing. Well, my guess is none of these women would like to be quoted just for the mere reason of being female. Content is what matters.
Butler not female enough, and Said not black enough? Are you out of your mind? Is this some kind of witch hunt? Where is this heading to? Certainly not to a form of critical thinking in our discipline that I look forward to or want to be part of.
And you celebrate yourself for a brave, courageous and vanguard comment? Be assured that a lot of our colleagues felt embarrassed but did not dare to speak out against its hollowness.

By: Carla Freeman

Carla Freeman — Sat, 23 Jul 2016 13:20:13 +0000

See Catherine Lutz’s ‘The Gender of Theory’ and my own essay ‘Is Local: Global as Feminine: Masculine? Rethinking the Gender of Globalization’ — early efforts to challenge precisely this tradition of elevating the work of male anthropologists and other scholars, and work that appears ‘ungendered’ to the status of high ‘theory’ while consigning the work of women and the scholarship about gender to that of ethnographic description, and thus somehow not theoretical.

By: emariehelene sam bourcier

emariehelene sam bourcier — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 09:57:07 +0000

thanks for this ! Didier Fassin is less clever at it compared with his brother Eric Fassin in France who is very good at stealing the voices of women and gender, sexual and ethnic minorities…

By: Pablo Wright

Pablo Wright — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 17:09:29 +0000

Muy interesante tu columna. Coincido plenamente en que esta conferencia fue pobre. No sería mejor invitar gente menos superstar y más trabajadora de la antropología y listo? Asi, no se emularían colegas que están de moda, y se apoyarían colegas, como por ejemplo Rita Segato, cuya crítica antropológica y cultural a las categorías occidentales patriarcales es devastadora pero, al mismo tiempo constructiva. Buenísimo tu trabajo!
Saludos cordiales.
Pablo Wright, Universidad de Buenos Aires