X. Stresses and contradictions of trying to ‘do feminisms’ within the (neo)liberal academy

Abstract

hooks (1994, p. 59) ‘came to theory because [she] was hurting’. As a child, she found comfort in theorising the world around her. Whilst frustrating and often uncomfortable, school for me was just what I had to do. I found the work easy enough and if I kept my mouth shut and head down, I could get along. At home putting the world to rights (‘doing critical theory’) was all around me. I came to understand the conversations, arguments and anger that I was allowed at home, but not at school, ‘as theory’ because I was born into a family where going to university was possible and considered ‘a good idea’. So, I went to university and through some particularly important pedagogical relationships, worked out that ‘theory’ meant trying to make some ‘sense out of what was happening’ (hooks, 1994, p. 61) in the world. It was a revelation that unlike at school, at university critical questioning was not only allowed but praised! I write this now with the conviction that we all do theory yet, as I will come onto, only some of us are rendered powerful enough to call it ‘theory’, speak it and be heard. Gibson-Graham (1999) uses the term queer(y)ing to describe questioning to seek out possibility and change. The disability and queer theory that I found at university was different from the class politics we talked about at home, and a world away from anything I was introduced to at school. This shook up the way I thought about things. I began to understand my own sexuality as queer, and recognise the disablist and homophobic violence in the lives of my family and friends as resulting from ableist and heteronormative systems. The relative privilege I was in receipt of,