MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In recent decades, academics of color have shifted from being objects to thinking subjects, which in the words of Gloria Anzaldúa: “means being concerned about the ways knowledges are invented. It means continually challenging institutionalized discourses. It means being suspicious of the dominant culture’s interpretation of ‘our’ experiences, of the way they ‘read’ us” (Haciendo xxv). After This Bridge Called My Back, the expectation to write became the directive among academics of color, who began to write to self-define and self-represent. Their work continues to support Moraga’s “theory in the flesh,” which underscores the import of everyday life rather than mere abstractions. By speaking truth to power, this presentation shows how Latinas and African Americans fight back by publishing their experiences while simultaneously subverting the dominant culture’s power to label them as inferior. Examples from Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (2012) are examined to demonstrate how common mistreatment is for academics of color, and second, how these academics reject oppression (and its manifestation in the university) through writing *herstories *to represent a politics of inclusion and solidarity. In explicit terms, this presentation contributes to the current body of knowledge that highlights the status quo of our universities by exposing the racist and sexist treatment that is commonplace in the United States. The objective is to change not only whom the university chooses as faculty members in the future, but also to shine a condemning light onto the broader society which has inculcated the institutionalized prejudice that is exemplified in this paper. Specifically, I point out that globalization forces us to reconsider knowledge and to open the academy towards incorporating a much broader definition of the term than the existing one based on hierarchical exclusivity.