Structures

Perhaps the dilemma Judith points to so well—historically and currently—can best be summed up with what I think of as a truism: Feminist Studies in Religion (FSR) is still a white space because it is a white space, and it is a space that privileges the study of Christian traditions. These totally value-laden assertions are blunt assessments on my part. They are my admission that, for as much time and energy that many of us from across the spectrum of color, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, age, and more have poured into FSR and however many scholars whose work reflects a variety of religious traditions we have invited to sit on the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (JFSR) board, FSR remains at its core a space that is shaped by the values of whiteness and Christian traditions on a global scale. There is irony in this because JFSR and FSR were formed as a clear alternative voice to an academy that holds the values of whiteness and Christianity in high regard, to the point that what we judge as normative is glossed with the assumptions and attitudes of a value system that privileges the way that white people—their customs, cultures, and beliefs—and Christianity—with its seemingly ubiquitous presence in religious scholarship—both operate as the standards to which all other groups and religions are compared.

I am referring to a particular kind of whiteness that proves vexing not only in FSR but in most of our sociopolitical and intellectual endeavors—particularly those that are aimed at disrupting hegemonic norms that would rather disavow, minimize, and/or remain doggedly ignorant of the harm that uninterrogated whiteness wreaks in systematic ways. The whiteness I am referring to is the product of what I call the fantastic hegemonic imagination that delights in obscuring the deeply structural ways in which white-dominant culture is seen and responded to as the norm—so much so that despite our best attempts to create diverse and/or inclusive communities of accountability, they often stall on the altar of racism and ethnocentrism (along with a host of other “isms” and phobias). One base point of this form of whiteness was imported by the Spanish and Portuguese during early slavocracy, when whiteness became a way to define the enslavers as different from the enslaved. This form of whiteness carried with it hierarchy, privilege, and property. Someone had to be better—the logical candidate became those who defined the slave trade as progress rather than as tragedy and inhumanity. We continue to live in the backwash of this hierarchy.

Likewise, FSR faces a dilemma much like I find at my own university. Our Graduate Department of Religion is really a graduate department for the study of Christian traditions. Christianity is baked into its structure to the degree that colleagues in Jewish studies and Islamic studies are rightfully wary of any conversation about reimagining the study of religion on the graduate level because it is the structure itself that is problematic and the biggest hurdle to envisioning (let alone creating) an inclusive alternative—something utterly new.

I spend this time talking about a whiteness that codifies itself in our lives and leaks into our scholarship and the hegemonic blunt edge of the study of Christian traditions because I believe that this is an important backdrop for FSR’s best-faith efforts to undo the whiteness and Christian lean that is inherent in the scholarship we were taught and, in many cases, continue to espouse both intentionally and unintentionally. In sum, what FSR is seeking to face is a systemic worldview, not just inadequate and misguided scholarship, or imperfect attempts to debunk the exceedingly tensile threads that hold the matrices of domination in place despite our best efforts to eradicate them.

The important questions FSR must continue to trouble itself with are, Who sets the questions and why and how? Twined with this is an equally important question: Are there topics that we shy away from? These are power dynamic questions among committed people who do not traditionally hold a great deal of power. Its challenge to...