Open Boundaries: A Canadian Women's Studies Reader

Abstract

Crow and Gotell state that their reader is a product of the feminist critique of the enlightenment view from nowhere gaze. As such, their reader is not aimed at framing a feminist truth but rather promoting a community that accommodates critique, questioning, dissent, and disagreement; or in Eva Karpinski's words, a community that is specific, situated andselfcritical. The editors are immensely successful in presenting us with an introductory women's studies reader that meets these challenges with teaching in mind, as it iswonderfully laid out for both the teacher and the student. The book is divided into six chapters each of which includes a thoughtful introduction. Chapter One gives the student a broad understanding of Canadian contributions to the tapestry of feminist theory. Hamilton's classic analysis of Marxist and feminist theories along with O'Brien's thought on reproduction provide two superb glimpses of feminist thought from a generation ago, while setting the stage for discussions of the individual and the collectivity. The presentation ofsmith's contribution to standpoint theory and Weir's critique of Judi th Butler's postmodern anti-foundationalism without a clear defence of postmodern theory from a writer committed to the perspective, highlights the pragmatism of the questions that inform Canadian women's studies. The remainder of the first chapter contains three outstanding representatives of the challenges to traditional Canadian feminist theory by Miles, Bannerji, and Ng. Chapter Two on Canadian women's movements ranges from the . list ofrecommendations ofthe Royal Commission on Women to Vickers' etaf. workon ~ ~ c ; A d a m s o n , Brisken and McPhail on organization and process, and LEAF'S advocacy work before the supreme court. Articles by Agnew on race, class and feminist practice and Ross on the diversity of lesbian perspectives are important highlights in this chapter. Chapter Three brings together classic (Benston, Fox, Armstrong) and more recent (Kline, Das Gupta, Amup) statements on the gendered division of labour and the complex interrelation ofthe private, the public, race, ethnicity, sexuality and the laws and practices which structure daily life. Chapter Four on sexuality highlights the ways in which violence is associatedwith pornography (Cole, Burstyn), and with heterosexuality and homophobia (Rule, Valverde, Overall, Maracle). Thoughtprovoking articles by Bell on women who ejaculate and MacDonald on transgender politics round out this core chapter of the text which illustrates the social construction of sexuality and gender. Chapter Five takes us through the politics of abortion, reproductive technologies, choice, and judicial intervention in pregnancy. This important chapter, which keeps these fundamental issues front and centre in Canadian feminist activity, is rightly sandwiched between two chapters which highlight violence. Chapter Six, Engendering Violence, which includes Clark and Lewis on rape, and MacLeod on battering, highlights the state's toleration ofviolence against women. Work from the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women and the Aboriginal Panel appear alongside Gotell's thoughtful analysis of the state discourse on violence. In these six chapters we find gender relations understood as inseparable from issues of race, class, sexuality and ability. The efforts ofwriters like Valverde, Ng and Bannerji to move Canadianwomen'sstudies away from earlier essentialism are not only included but find acertain fulfilment in this text. For example, I was delighted not to find a separate chapter on race, but articles on race in each of the six chapters. Prior efforts to gloss over differences among feminists (certainly, a survival tactic in the hostile university environment) are abandoned in this text which itself tells us that women's studies departments and programmes have made spaces for the articulation of feminist differences. Looking back over the forty-one articles that comprise this reader we find that Canadian women's studies