Rethinking Besiegement: Understanding boundaries and conflict in Women’s and Gender Studies

• In Event: 4211 - Feminist Theory and Institutions

Abstract

In 2012, Ann Braithwaite, Diane Lichtenstein, and Catherine Orr included in their edited volume, Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, a chapter by the late feminist theorist Alison Piepmeier. The experience of directing two different women’s and gender studies programs (WGS) provided the framework for her chapter, which she wrote on besiegement narrative, a mindset that she argues feminists within academia overuse to the detriment of feminist work. Piepmeier points out that this narrative achieves three major outcomes within WGS communities, which can be beneficial or useful to certain parties – emphasizing marginality and activism, staking intellectual or even generational claims, and absolving individuals within WGS of certain acts of discrimination or scholarly critiques. Piepmeier emphasizes that these outcomes can be quite negative, both for particular individuals within WGS and for the broader field. Because of these negatives, she claims the overuse of the besiegement narrative has severe ramifications which threaten the very future of WGS. In this paper, I investigate her claims and turn to established theoretical work to test if it explains some of her assumptions. My purpose is to understand if indeed Piepmeier’s claims are valid, for if they are, feminist scholarship broadly, and I as a feminist scholar, must respond.

Author

• Abigail Jorgensen, University of Notre Dame