Chapter 1 “what to do?”
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Abstract
Chapter 1: “what to do?” introduces the driving question of the book: how can a white middle-class female-identifying artist make art without reinforcing and reproducing their privilege? A chance encounter with the thinking of Goenpul (Australian) scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson offers a generous foundation for thinking through this question. As a possible approach to countering white privilege she says, “if you see yourself as part of me and I’m part of you, if we have that relationship then … we can move together.” While I return to this quote repeatedly throughout the book, in this chapter I consider the cautions and advice Sara Ahmed, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang offer to academics like myself wanting to understand what white feminist allyship might look like. Among other things, these scholars warn about how to conduct my research so that, whatever I do, I am not simply reinforcing my position. This leads to a deeper examination of “subject position” with reference to philosophers Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Donna Haraway, Moreton-Robinson and others. In the end I reflect on the double-bind white artists find themselves in when they seek to work through issues of race and privilege with their practice. Here I turn to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak for help understanding what that double-bind means and how it might be negotiated in this situation. All the voices in this chapter provide a kind of rule book for my project, mostly warning how not to behave as a white feminist.