Reading Race and Gender

Overall, I found Cheng’s analysis thoroughly provocative, especially concerning the limits of both theory and politics as divided.  Through her reading of extravagance (or theorization of race) and necessity (political activism and representation), Cheng presents the contemporary problem facing those engage with race theory and activism: “how to proceed once we acknowledge, as we must, that ‘identity’ is the very ground upon which both progress and discrimination are made” (24)?  That being said, the space in-between is perhaps where my interest in this week’s reading draws upon.  I was particularly drawn to the relation, for Cheng, between reading race and reading gender. Beginning with the theorization of melancholia in the racialized subject, such a theorization draws from readings of melancholia previously reserved for readings of gender. Cheng also suggests that “reading race is a prerequisite to reading femininity” (19).  I think Cheng’s reading of the dolls used in Clark’s experiment draw upon these issues although I would also like to think about “reading race” in terms of contemporary feminist discourse and activism. Being that today (Tuesday) is International Women’s Day,  a friend of mine guided me to a book published by racially minority women in academia, entitled Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism. While many of the points made in the book could be discussed and argued at length, what the voices in the book agree upon are the separations or marginalizations felt from indigenous and minority feminists from “dominant” or white feminism in America particularly. How can we think of this not only in terms of contemporary politics (or the tension Cheng brings up between theory and politics), and more broadly the use of psychoanalysis, a framework that has been mobilized by many feminist writers in academia?