gothhabiba:

in some ways the recent-ish widespread replacement that some writers have undertaken of generic “he” with generic “she” is very nice to read (imagine? being automatically linguistically included within the realm of human actors? to have it acknowledged that you have a subjectivity? is this how men feel all the time?? WILD) but there are also moments when it’s irksome…. e.g. “A field specialist depends upon this field-Imaginary for the construction of her primal identity within the field” okay let us not…… for a moment pretend that “American studies” or probably ANY academic field has had the tacit ideology it relies on (assuming of course that we accept this construction as useful) primarily or even largely shaped by women, & let us not for a moment pretend that negative conceptions of womanhood & gender (i.e. ideas shaped about women largely in our absence) would not in fact form a decent part of the “field-Imaginary” for any field…… this generic liberal painting-over of gender has the ability to obscure gendered power just as much as it has the ability to challenge its (linguistic / revealed through language) assumptions