Celebrating Feminist Birthdays: Bringing Filiative and Affiliative Together

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's insightful essay reframes the meaning of celebrating feminist birthdays by showing how such celebration is in effect a feminist practice that is based on the conviction that personal is political, for "personal" is deeply historical, as it is formed and shaped within communities. In this brief response to her call for celebrating feminist lifework publicly by honoring feminist birthdays, I would like to share a few observations and some thoughts on acknowledging feminist birthdays that are beyond the valorization of the singular self.

First, Schüssler Fiorenza's call for celebrating the lifework of a feminist on her birthday invokes a question of what is called a filiative and affiliative dynamic, providing an opportunity to rethink such a dynamic in feminist work.¹ Celebrating feminist birthdays may allow us to wonder about both a filiative relationship between feminists and their mothers/foremothers,² who may or may not be feminist, and an affiliative relationship between multigenerations of feminists who gather together to celebrate a feminist's lifework on her birthday. Celebrating feminist birthdays can shed light on different ways of understanding the relationship between filiative and affiliative dimensions in feminist lifework.

Honoring feminist lifework through the celebration of feminist birthdays certainly compels us to think about the filiative aspect of feminist lifework, whether positive or negative, especially about the mother-daughter relationship and its impact on feminist work. For instance, both Chung Hyun Kyung and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid, notable feminist theologians from Korea and Argentina, respectively, reflect on their mothers and foremothers in relation to the feminist work they do. While Chung expressed her desire to write a theology that can be understood by women like her mother, who are marginalized by their gender, class status, religion, and lack of education, Althaus-Reid said she would be "suspicious" if her mother understood her reflections.³ Althaus-Reid states, "I should prefer to write a theology which could not be understood by women of the past, but which would be helpful in making sure that women in the future did not have to suffer as they did."⁴ Although their expectations for women of previous generations seem quite different, both Chung and Althaus-Reid nonetheless recognize the filiative aspect of feminist work. However, their reflections are more than just about their relationship with their own mothers and foremothers and how they would perceive or take their daughters' work. Rather, through such reflections, both Chung and Althaus-Reid raise broader questions of the audience/readership of feminist work, the accessibility of feminist work, the impact of feminist work, and the task of feminist work.

The affiliative aspect of feminist birthdays is enhanced by its public and collective acknowledgment. Affiliative effort for forming the multigenerational feminist connections across boundaries is seen in the public celebration of feminist lifework. In other words, celebrating feminist birthdays in public confirms that making feminist alliances is not confined by one's filiative connections or dependability, but rather moves beyond them. Yet public celebration of feminist birthdays can help us see that one's filiative commitment can become the basis for making alliances with wo/men within and beyond one's racial, ethnic, class, national, and religious communities, as, for instance, a feminist's understanding of the interlocking structures of oppression is often closely tied to her position as a racialized gendered person.⁵ This indicates that it is not necessary to set the rigid dichotomy between filiative and affiliative relations and/or allegiance; nor is it possible to sever one's filiative connections. Filiative and affiliative aspects of feminist birthdays can bring feminists together transgenerationally, transracially, and transnationally beyond the confines of identity politics without necessarily undermining or overstressing the particularity of feminist lifework that is uplifted as part of a feminist history of struggle.

Second, Schüssler Fiorenza's reflection on the public celebration of feminist birthdays signals the significance of feminist collaboration, as "collaborative" entails the dual meaning of "working together" and "working subversively against."⁶ Without quickly dismissing the "suspicious" eyes that view such celebration as individualistic or elitist, Schüssler Fiorenza shows...