A time of thought

Feminism is the struggle to free women from obscure forces, said feminist speaker Elizabeth Grosz.
Grosz spoke Thursday in the Bovee University Center Rotunda about her theme “Feminist Futures: The Time of Thought.” She was the fifth speaker in the “Humanities at the Millennium: Transforming Conversations” year-long series, co-organized by English professors Mark Freed and Gray Kochhar-Lindgren.
“Feminism is, in part, the struggle to produce a future, to be seen and acknowledged for what they are,” Grosz said. “And feminism is a struggle to mobilize and transform action. It’s about the struggle to free the imperceptions and confines around us and in us.”
Grosz is a professor of comparative literature at State University of New York at Buffalo and author of the feminism-based books “Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism”, “Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction”, “Space, Time and Perversion: Essays in the Politics of Bodies”, and “Sexual Subversions: Three French Feminists”.
Grosz said the concept of sexual differences means there are at least two ways of doing anything, and at least two kinds of existence. These differences are some of the imperceptible forces women must deal with, she said.
The wonder involved between sexual differences creates confrontations, but can also create new ideas and new concepts, Grosz said. There is no way to judge or predict what sexual differences offer for the future but that they make and mark differences everywhere.
Grosz interpreted a theory which says that women’s perspective and input have historically been missing from many disciplines, hence, only half of the knowledge may have been produced in those disciplines.
“Add that perspective, and then in astronomy or whatever field we’re talking about will have the rich resources that women can give,” she said.
In the future, Grosz said, “I believe women’s studies will remain as complex as they are now.”
Amy Senese, Jackson senior, said she found Grosz’s speech very interesting.
“She gets you thinking about what feminism really is,” Senese said.
“I found it intriguing and thought-provoking,” Big Rapids resident Grace Poppen said of the speech. “And since I’m 59 years old I was very involved in the early evolution of feminist thought, when it involved action against rape and domestic violence and things of that nature.
“So I find it a very positive notion that women are continuing to participate in defining the world we live in.”
Grosz’s speech was sponsored by the College of Human and Social and Behavioral Sciences, CMU Park Library, the Office of Information Technology and the Office of Institutional Diversity.