The Benefits of Strategic Essentialism

Since my last blog, there's been a lot going on. I've moved house (again), I've finished my full time job and am about to start a part-time one for the summer, and I have been accepted to take on the challenge of a PhD project at the University of Sheffield from October. My project will be entitled 'Making space for curiosity and innovation: reshaping Sheffield museums' and I have been awarded AHRC funding for three years to work with Museums Sheffield to understand how spaces in museums can foster curiosity and innovation in the communities that they serve. Safe to say, I am super excited about this!

So with a little more free time to play with I have been reading around the subjects and started with some theory books that have been hanging around since I briefly referred to them during my MA two years ago. I picked up 'Feminism is Queer' by Mimi Marinucci and have read it cover to cover in the last couple of weeks (which is fast if you consider I also moved house etc etc - my reading speed and concentration span will pick up!). It was in the final chapter that this quote jumped out at me:

"Despite this apparent contradiction, I have chosen the problematic label 'queer feminism' intentionally, in full knowledge of the irony it exhibits. For one thing, I have learned enough from poststructuralism, and especially from Derrida, to understand that, while meaning cannot be fixed permanently, it can be, indeed it must be, constantly negotiated for reference in particular contexts. This is how sexism, racism and many other forms of oppression are able to function. Expectations and ideals are constantly revisited and revised, and this is part of what makes them so hard to achieve. Nevertheless, these expectations and ideals for the standards against which we are judged. In the response to sexism and racism, it is also necessary to recognise how the relevant meanings have been fixed to the oppressive contexts in which they are deployed. This is reminiscent of what Gayatri Spivak referred to in 1985 as 'strategic essentialism' (Spivak, 1996). Strategic essentialism is a strategy whereby groups with mutual goals and interests temporarily present themselves publicly as essentially the same for the sake of expediency and presenting a united front, while simultaneously engaging in ongoing and less public disagreement and debate."
- Mimi Marinucci, 2010, "Feminism is Queer".

Having blogged previously about diverse sexual orientations and gender identities and he recognition of these within development circles (particularly the UN), the concept of strategic essentialism made perfect sense as how I understand the process at the moment. By throwing the concept of a spectrum of gender identities into the mix, it could be possible to completely derail progress towards gender equality. Yes, ultimately in order to achieve true gender equality, I believe we will have to recognise identities beyond a binary system, but for now we need to sometimes play to the binary conception to take the next step. We need to stand united behind the concept of women's access to human rights and not get lost in the conversations and fragmentation that come with trying to extend these beyond the binary in the same breath.

I have yet to find a government official in UN negotiations or wider advocacy platforms that would tell me that girls and women do not exist - some might not yet accept that women should have equal rights, but nobody actually denies their very existence. That does happen with other gender identities. It's much harder to campaign for rights for a group that some people do not believe exist in society. It's much easier to say there are men, there are women, they are both human and so should have equal human rights. By logic if we can get to the point that we can say that women and men have equal rights because they are both human beings, we can begin to talk about recognising other groups of human beings who also should be granted those rights.

I will not be surprised when the Post 2015 development agenda appears without any concrete mentions of diverse gender identities. However, at this point in time, it is critical that it effectively mainstreams the notion of gender equality between men and women and highlights its importance as a goal in its own right. It is the steps forward that continue the journey, not the length of the stride.