Epistemologically Privileging Anger: Living with Cracked Containers in Feminist Scholarship

Abstract

Epistemologically Privileging AngerLiving with Cracked Containers in Feminist Scholarship Sarojini Nadar (bio) I started writing this response to the question of systemic racism within the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) around the same time that I made a decision to lay a formal complaint of academic harassment and bullying against a senior white male professor who has consistently directed several microaggressions toward my scholarly authority since I joined the institution in 2016. These microaggressions range from asking me to just be the “face of a conference” to harassing me to such an extent that I eventually withdrew my keynote lecture from the conference. The straw that broke the camel’s back was his unilateral decision that another colleague (presumably he himself or the junior male colleague he was copying in) should offer me their expertise in guiding a doctoral candidate who made an application to register for a PhD in the area of queer ecclesiology. Apparently, I needed academic hand-holding, despite the fact that I hold a prestigious research chair in religion and social justice, and my résumé contains ample evidence of two decades of transdisciplinary expertise including publications, teaching, and graduate supervision directly in this area. When I objected, he flexed his hegemonic disciplinary muscle through repeated email correspondence, and when I candidly called upon him to own up to his prejudice, he resorted to gaslighting and pretended that he did not understand where my questions were coming from. He cloaked his prejudice in terms of acting “in the best interests of the student.” After a few exasperating exchanges, I eventually notified him that I would be laying a formal complaint against him and copied in the dean. He quite quickly changed his mind and approved me as a supervisor of the project, while also inserting into the email how “deeply saddened” my allegations made him. I still insisted on the intervention because I believe that in calling out the white and male supremacy that hides behind the “best interests” claim, I will make visible the ways in which regulatory disciplinary [End Page 59] power is exercised in the everyday lived experiences of women of color in the academy. Calling attention to the material effects of multiple unhealthy operations of power on Black women’s bodies is important Black feminist work, as my colleague Megan Robertson and I noted in a recent special issue of essays honoring the late Katie Geneva Cannon.1 And so, I come to this piece still reeling from the effects of this epistemic and emotional violence, while preparing for a mediation meeting in the next week. The insomnia-generating, ulcer-inducing effects of my interactions were viscerally present in my body as I read Judith Plaskow’s many reflective questions posed in this roundtable. The confines of a response paper do not permit an expanded discussion, so I want to offer just one key reflection on the subject of Black women’s anger, with the hope that the reflections will galvanize larger conversations. Referring to an incident where she publicly called out a Black colleague whom she “perceived as guilty of Christian hegemony,” and to the subsequent collective anger of Black women in that space, Plaskow raises a question: “[How is it] possible to be a Black person in this country and not be in a continual rage[?]” (7). Transfer this question to South Africa, with our history of institutionalized and sustained systemic racism, and the answer is simple: it is virtually impossible. Despite acknowledging the validity of rage as a response, Plaskow still makes the following disclaimer: “I do not think it is an abdication of my own responsibility, however, to say that the anger directed at me was larger than my transgression” (6). Reading from my body in this moment, I do actually think it is an abdication of responsibility to make such a disclaimer. There is a well-documented concern expressed repeatedly by women of color about how they are driven to moments of rage which kill their spirits and sometimes even their bodies. When Black women find their voices in academia, only for them to be silenced or killed by a white and patriarchal academy...