A rejected answer to a position paper in Nora - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (Routledge/Taylor & Francis). The link to the paper I criticize is unfortunately only available by university-inlog: Helle Rydström, "Nordic Gender Studies Conferences: Windows to a Global and Postcolonial World?", Nora Vol. 22. No. 2, pp. 147-154, 2014.
What happens when the global negates the local by a promotion of English-speaking, well-established and world leading researchers as the only valid representative for postcolonial feminist and by blaming a local conference for being local?
What happens when the global negates the local by a promotion of English-speaking, well-established and world leading researchers as the only valid representative for postcolonial feminist and by blaming a local conference for being local?
There are many problematic assumptions and incorrect information in Rydström’s positon paper on two “Nordic Gender Studies conferences”. First, none of them were Nordic. And secondly, only one of them was a Gender Studies conference. The Ida Blom Conference was organized with and by the members of a major international research project, and hosted by the University of Bergen and Uni Rokkan Centre in Bergen (not the Centre for Women’s Studies as Rydström claims). It was part of the final stage of this project and hence the invited keynote speakers were to the most part involved in this project that focused explicitly on an international research perspective on gendered citizenship.
The National Gender Conference (G12) was, as is clear from its name, a national conference, hosted by The Swedish Association for Gender Researcher (Svenska Genusforskarförbundet) and the National Secretariat for Gender Research (Nationella sektretariatet för genusforskning). The invitation and call for papers were all in Swedish and the aim was to organize a meeting-point for gender researchers based in Sweden. The conference originated from a formulated need of a common meeting-point for researchers interested in feminist studies, since there had been no such conference for more than five years in Sweden. Hence, the aim was not to be either Nordic or international – it was a conference born out of a local need to meet other gender studies researchers and present on-going research in a smaller context than the international conferences, but also as a conference directed explicitly towards Gender Studies researchers, since there are no such conferences in Sweden (what you have are disciplinary conferences with a gender perspective, such as, e.g., Nordic Gender Historian conferences. The Ida Blom conference one year before, in 2012 – also in Bergen – is an example of such a conference).
It is for these basic reasons that a comparison is impossible. There are no similarities between the conferences, their aims are completely different and their settings in a local-global context could not be more obvious. It is therefore a very strange claim that they not only can be compared, but also that they should be compared and that the international conference, with a postcolonial, interdisciplinary theme and well-established international researchers somehow “wins out” against the local, explicitly Gender research-based, with open calls for all gender researchers in Sweden, little money and no wish to invite any well-established internationally leading researchers (neither from the North nor the South) is somehow a “bad example” of postcolonial feminism.
We would like to know why Rydström believes it is fruitful to make such a comparison. Like her, we attended both conferences, and G12 was not a “perfect” conference (if such a thing exists), one keynote was sick and had to be replaced (by Rönnblom and Holm), the second was indeed international (Vron Ware, Open University, UK) but did on the other hand talk about whiteness and citizenship (which Rydström must have missed out on) and the third one was a Swedish researcher who gave a performance speech at the theatre on race, gender, sexuality and vulnerability – where the postcolonial influence was more than obvious (which Rydström also must have missed out on).
Most importantly, the sessions were parallel in a manner that made it impossible for anyone to attend more than 3-4 workshops (out of over 50). Hence, we do not know what was brought up at all workshops, we do not know if and how much postcolonial feminism was discussed, and we have no possibility to know if any of the (arbitrary) examples that Rydström brought up as “good examples” of what a postcolonial feminist discussion should bring up to count as postcolonial feminism (a strange use of tragic events that we doubt any of the researchers in Bergen would think constitute an automatically postcolonial view in a research discussion). If we cannot know any of this, the same goes for Rydström.
We do know some things though: that most researchers that attended G12 were from Centres for Gender studies. That there was some discussion on why, e.g., there were few senior gender historians and other leading gender researchers from other disciplines. The answer was: because they do not define themselves as gender researchers (but rather as “historians”, etc.). We do know that all papers submitted were also admitted to the conference, no one was excluded. We also know that there were some language problems during the conference where we at one session had to change the planned presentation from Swedish to English because one person in the audience only understood English. We changed language (and then changed back again when this one person left the session in the middle of the presentation) because we are used to speak English and do think it is important to include everyone in our discussions. However, we also believe there ought to be possibilities to, now and then, talk, think and discuss our research in our first language (whatever that language may be). This is why local conferences are necessary and why they ought not to aspire to become “all-inclusive” – because including everyone in this specific context makes it, paradoxically, colonial since we all have to speak the colonialist’s language. There is a place for first language conferences and there is a place for English conferences – they do not compete and one is not better or worse than the other.
However, if we would adhere to the “criteria” set up by Rydström, any “good postcolonial feminist” can only discuss her research in English, and only with researchers from, or representative of, the global South. This is a very problematic idea of what constitutes both good research and postcolonial feminism. Additionally, the researchers Rydström mentions as preferred key notes are all well-established, globally touring, English-speaking researchers that belong to the top hierarchy of academia. We love listening to them, but they cannot possible be everywhere and their presence is not in itself a sign of neither good nor bad research meetings.
It is hence a quite anti-intellectual view on both research and postcolonial feminism that Rydström brings forward and the affect tone used in her text makes us even more wary: if Rydström wants to point out that Swedish gender research excludes discussions on postcolonialism, she should make a study on this, refer to studies and debates (or to the lack of studies and debates). Visiting a few sessions on a national research conference and comparing the quantity of certain “code issues” (not) being discussed there as compared to an international conference with an explicit postcolonial theme is just…bad research. Likewise, counting the amount of bodies that Rydström assumes “represent the South” present at each conference, makes an even stranger case. There are many different power relations involved in any meeting, race is one and it is an important one. But so is class, gender, and sexuality which are also part of the research field named Gender Studies. We cannot use one power relation (no matter which one) as measurement against the others. When a conference has a theme (such as “Gendered citizenship”) this will of course bring one or two power relations in focus, and just as there, now and then, is a need to speak one’s first language, there is now and then a need to be able to concentrate and focus on one theme. But this does not imply that this perspective always and everywhere is the only valid one.
The fear of exclusion, we suspect, is behind Ryström’s affect, paired with a misplaced will to be the hero that points out an assumed hidden anti-postcolonial agenda at G12. We would like to remind her that exclusion is always inevitable and the only way to make up for one exclusion is to make room for the excluded in another context – then inevitably excluding something else, and so forth. There is no need for a heroic intervention here. However, unfortunately, we are in great need to point out the problems with research and debates driven by ressentiment and careless insinuations. This is why we felt obliged to write this response, so as to make clear that her way of arguing is not a valid way to go.