Login

Publications  •  Project Statistics

Glossary  •  Schools  •  Disciplines
People Search: 
   
Title/Abstract Search: 

Dissertation Information for Danielle Bouchard

NAME:
- Danielle Bouchard

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (USA) (2006)

ADVISORS:
- Jigna Desai

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Inspected

Title: "Warped deductions and mixed identities": Politics, globalism, and interdisciplinarity in women's studies

Abstract: This dissertation offers a reading of the politics of academic argument on the state of the contemporary US university. I propose that "interdisciplinarity" and "globalism" are the two concepts through which the university today defines its social mission and engages in self-evaluation. While interdisciplinarity and globalism have been widely regarded as positive developments which offer the promise of more comprehensive inclusion, I treat them as philosophical objects, insisting that their work for the university be opened to question. The mission of the university is guided by an understanding of difference as a problem to be eliminated; in the name of interdisciplinarity and globalism, the university calls for an ultimate consensus on what it takes to be the "issue" of difference. This is symptomatically evident in Women's Studies, and in particular in its reliance on the figure of the "most oppressed woman"---a figure of utmost racial and sexual difference---in order to define its own disciplinary project as well as to support interdisciplinarity as an institutional demand. I place Women's Studies in deconstruction, acknowledging that as an object of my ongoing commitment Women's Studies is important and useful in the most risky of ways---and yet, such risk is necessary. The dissertation offers readings of key debates in Women's Studies regarding the status of theory, the politics of representation, and the racialization of disciplinarity, tracing the figure of the "most oppressed woman" throughout its appearance in a wide variety of texts in order to argue that there is a foundational complicity between seemingly disparate arguments over the status of difference in language, in disciplines, and in the institution of the university. In turn, I propose an understanding of difference as neither opposed to identity nor as a problem requiring solution, but rather as the violent foundation of meaning. This allows us to think of interdisciplinarity in a way that is distinct from that called for by the university: rather than being a means to an end, it can keep the problem of disciplinarity open to question.

MPACT Scores for Danielle Bouchard

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-24 11:37:16

Advisors and Advisees Graph