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