Transformation Now!: Toward a Post-Oppositional Politics of Change

Contents

Contents Giving Thanks xiii Introduction. Post-Oppositional Resistance? Threshold Theories Defined and Enacted 1 But what’s so bad about oppositional consciousness? 5 Threshold theorizing . . . defined and enacted 10 Becoming nepantleras: forging complex commonalities, making new connections 18 Tying up a few loose ends: chapter overviews and text selection 20 Postscript and invitation: A few words about my writing style, methods, and aspirations 25 1. Beyond Intersectionality: Theorizing Interconnectivity with/in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color 29 ThisBridgeCalledMyBack’s challenge to status-quo stories 31 Intersectionality and status-quo thinking 37 Bridge Lesson 1: Making connections through differences, seeking commonalities 38 Bridge Lesson 2: Positing our radical interrelatedness 46 Bridge Lesson 3: The importance of listening with raw openness 52 Listening with raw openness, diving into nepantla? 56 2. “American” Individualism, Variations on a Theme; or, Self-Reliance, Transformed! 60 Multiculturalisms (re)defined 63 Individualism (re)defined 67 Dialogic readings, Luxocratic visions 71 Transformed thresholds 87 3. “I am your other I”: Transformational Identity Politics 89 Conventional identity politics: definitions and limitations 92 Tactical (re)naming, creating commonalities 98 Differential subject formation . . . becoming you, becoming myself 106 4. “There is no arcane place for return”: Revisionist Mythmaking with a Difference 111 Back to the mother? Post-structuralist critiques of revisionist mythmaking 113 Language matters, poet-shaman aesthetics 118 Mythic women and redefined selves 128 Transcultural universals 136 A redemptive myth 142 5. From Self-Help to Womanist Self-Recovery; or, How Paula Gunn Allen Changed My Mind 145 Womanist self-recovery, defined 150 Six attributes of womanist self-recovery texts 152 Womanist self-recovery and (as) visionary pragmatism 165 6. Pedagogies of Invitation: From Status-Quo Stories to Cosmic Connections 167 Self-enclosed individualism and the status quo 171 New stories for transformation: planetary citizenship 175 Pedagogies of invitation . . . three premises 182 Open invitation to readers 187 Appendixes 1. Abridged Syllabus for a U.S. Women of Colors Course, by Reanae McNeal 189 2. Guidelines for a Workshop on Our Spoken Word: Poetry for Self and Community, by Erica Granados De La Rosa 203 Notes 207 Works Cited and Consulted 233 Index 253 ...