Join us on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at noon for the second Brown Bag Lecture Series of the Fall semester featuring Dr. Merinda Simmons, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, as she presents “The Faux Pas of Feminist Phenomenology: Or, How I Learned to Think About the Personal and the Political in a Whole New Way.”

“The personal is political” has become a phrase used by feminists and identity theorists as a rallying cry for bringing personal narratives into the light of day, for making audible the “voices at the margins.”  Too often, however, the notion behind the phrase—that identities are never non-discursive, that they are themselves processes of endless social articulations and negotiations—gets lost.  Instead, what gets emphasized is a sort of identity apologetics that privileges voice for the mere sake of vocality rather than for serious analytical inquiry.  This response will look at what silences are present within this brand of feminist praxis and investigate the ways in which the margins are identified and regulated—or, perhaps more aptly, identified and thus regulated.