wom en o f color, we do not enter into discussions on the

Holocaust with Je w s or on slavery with Afro-Am ericans

because our theory, applied to their experience, might well be

misunderstood and cause offense. In fact, they will not affirm

the agentic dimensions o f their ow n historical experience,

which, we agree, is essentially an oppressive one. They

denounce and declaim, and we support them in those efforts.

But, as we find transcending affirmative values in wom en’s

experience under patriarchy, so too we can find concrete

examples o f the same dynamic in both Afro-American and

Jew ish experience. Ghetto Jew s from Eastern Europe did,

after all, learn to do physical labor in the concentration

camps— these are skills that have value, especially for those

essentially alien to working-class experience—intellectuals,

scholars, and so on. Jew ish elitism was transformed into a new

physicality, however base and tortured; one can see a foreshadowing o f the new Jew ish state— the shovels and picks o f the stone quarries transposed to the desert. O f course, one

must have some analytical objectivity. Afro-Americans sang

as a creative response to the suffering o f slavery such that

suffering may not be the defining characteristic o f the A fro-

American experience. The creation o f a major and original

musical genre, the blues, came directly out o f the slave

experience. It is absurd to suggest that slavery had no

mitigating or redemptive or agentic dimension to it, that the

oppression per se was merely oppressive. These tautologies

demonstrate how the dogma o f victimization has supplanted

the academic endeavor to valorize theory, which, in a sense,

does not descend to the rather low level o f direct human

experience, especially o f suffering or pain, which are too

subjective and also, frankly, too depressing to consider as

simple subjects in themselves or, frankly, as objects o f

inquiry. We apply our principles on agency, ambiguity, and

nuance exclusively to the experience o f women as women.

There is no outrage in the academy when we develop an

intellectually nuanced approach to rape as there would be, o f

course, if we applied these principles to Jew ish or A fro-

American experience. It is inappropriate for white women to

approach those issues anyway and thus we are insulated from

what I can only presume would be an intellectual backlash

while we support the so-called victims in a political atmosphere that Ronald Reagan created and that is anathema to

us— the cutbacks in civil rights and so on, funding for A fro-

American groups and so on. Then, when we mount our fight

for abortion, which rests firm ly in the affirmative context o f a

w om an’s right to choose, we have the support o f other groups

and so on. Outside w om en’s studies departments our theoretical principles are not used, not understood, and not paid attention to, for which we are, in fact, grateful. T o be held

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