This week I am reflecting on bell hooks' discussion on WOC and transnational women's solidarity. What do this solidarity and sisterhood look like in the white tower academia, where WOC are placed in competitive positions with each other and there is always a "WOC quota" in department hiring. There is also this weird expectation of WOC that you need to be critical but not so critical that makes that administration and white colleagues uncomfortable. We want your lived experience for diversity but not for change. This often creates tensions within WOC groups, some want to climb the white tower ladder, while some are struggling to compromise. I am thinking about Peter Liang's piece and the fell out with #blackintheivory on Twitter.
Althusser makes a point that ISAs operate as "unified" under the ruling ideology. To what extent are certain ISAs unified if they are "the site of class struggle" playing out, holding the potential for "ruptures" (to use Hall's phrase) with dominant ideologies? Here, I am thinking about the University of Iowa's COVID policies and how its rules are practiced and applied in many different ways throughout campus, as administrative burdens and scale make it difficult to oversee large numbers of employees. More generally, as junior scholars, grad students, and/or individuals doing cultural studies work, does it make more sense for us to do deep and nuanced readings of theorists such as Marx and Althusser in our work, or to cite others who have expanded these traditions over the years?
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