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16 Being“the subjected subject of Discourse”(1990) Questions 1, 2, and 5:1 To cast the history of a feminist presence in the academy as a generational one immediately reminds me of my marginal position as a feminist academic of color born outside of the U.S. For much of my academic life, from 1967 to the present, I was not certain of my status as “sister” either in the feminist or African American academic family. Often I felt myself to be more of a step-sister to my white sisters and black brothers, who were respectively themselves step-daughters and sons in the academy. I wondered then, not about the nature of relationships I might have with academic daughters or sons, but whether I would have any children at all. Would there be any young women (men were even more unlikely), whether black, colored, or white, who would freely choose a low-status mother and focus on intersections of race, class, gender inAfro-American women’s literature, in fact in any literature written by people of color? My position as a potential mother had more to do with the difficulty of getting pregnant, of gaining access to the academy for children, particularly my beleaguered younger sisters of color. In another familial turf, I knew I had potential daughters and sons, those who read my work inside and outside the academy and those who took my undergraduate classes, but who of those had the luxury of becoming feminist scholars of my ilk? Recently, however, that situation has changed considerably. During the last five years, partially as a result of the academy’s growing interest inAfroAmerican women’s literature, in theoretical inquiries into the relationship First published as part of “Conference Call” in Differences 2, no. 3 (1990): 52–108. The editors “thought it a timely project to set up an ‘intergenerational polylogue’” between graduate students interested in feminist theory and distinguished scholars in women’s studies.The graduate students collaborated in writing questions directed to the scholars (see endnote 1). In Differences, these questions are on pp. 54–56 followed by Professor Christian’s response on pp. 57–65. of race, class, and gender (the new Trinity), and institutionally because of the establishment of an Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program here at Berkeley, I findmyselfanacademicmothertomorechildrenthanIcouldhavepossibly imagined, and to types of children beyond my conjuring.This is so because scholars in my version of feminist thought are scarce at my university as well as anywhere else in the country. I have spent some twenty years in the academic feminist andAfro-American family; yet I have become a mother overwhelmed by children at a time when many of my white counterparts are already academic grandmothers. Perhaps because my “sisterhood” was so precarious, perhaps because I have come so late to the role of academic mentor to graduate students, perhaps because I am a single mother in my other life, I question the familial metaphor as an accurate metaphor for feminist scholars.True we nurture, approve or disapprove of, desire (no matter what we say) to reproduce students much like ourselves; but our love is not nearly as unconditional as a mother’s is supposed to be nor is our tenure with our students long enough to entitle us to call ourselves parents. Like other faculty, our relationships with students vary according to our and their needs, temperaments, desires , and are finally concerned with a relatively narrow range as to who we are or they are. Most important, our relationships with students are not necessarily free because students have needs they must have fulfilled by us, such as letters of recommendations, grades, etc.; moreover, we are aware that the students associated with us are in some ways a reflection of colleagues’ assessment of our academic excellence. There are limits then, especially institutional ones, built into the relationship between teachers and students in the university. Being a feminist scholar does not eliminate them; it might at times even heighten the necessity for such limits since our area of inquiry is so beset by stereotypical caricatures of “mothering.” Yet, there is a special urgency we feminist scholars do feel towards those students with whom we work. What I wish to communicate to my students, on the one hand, is the knowledge I have acquired in my field as a result of many years of study, and on the other hand, my history in and reflections on the academy.What I find I gain from...

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