Consciousness raising
Consciousness raising is a form of political activism, pioneered by United States feminists in the late 1960s. It often takes the form of a group of people attempting to focus the attention of a wider group of people on some cause or condition. It is the first half of the adage "Admitting the problem is half the battle".
Process[edit]
Early feminists argued that women were isolated from each other, and that as a result many problems in women's lives were misunderstood as "personal," or as the results of conflicts between the personalities of individual men and women, rather than systematic forms of oppression. Raising consciousness meant helping oneself and helping others to become politically conscious. Consciousness raising groups aimed to get a better understanding of women's oppression by bringing women together to discuss and analyze their lives, without interference from the presence of men.
While explaining the theory behind consciousness raising in a 1973 talk, Kathie Sarachild remarked that "From the beginning of consciousness-raising ... there has been no one method of raising consciousness. What really counts in consciousness-raising are not methods, but results. The only 'methods' of consciousness raising are essentially principles. They are the basic radical political principles of going to the original sources, both historic and personal, going to people—women themselves, and going to experience for theory and strategy".[1] However, most c.r. groups did follow a similar pattern for meeting and discussion. Meetings would usually be held about once a week, with a small group of women, often in the living room of one of the members. Meetings were women-only, and usually involved going around the room for each woman to "rap" about a predetermined subject — for example, "When you think about having a child, would you rather have a boy or a girl?" — speaking from her own experience, with no formal leader for the discussion and few rules for directing or limiting discussion. (Some c.r. groups did implement rules designed to give every woman a chance to speak, to prevent interruptions, etc.) Rapping from personal experience was used as a basis for further discussion and analysis based on the first-hand knowledge that was shared.
Some feminist advocates of c.r. argued that the process allowed women to analyze the conditions of their own lives, and to discover ways in which what had seemed like isolated, individual problems (such as needing an abortion, surviving rape, conflicts between husbands and wives over housework, etc.) actually reflected common conditions faced by all women. As Sarachild wrote in 1969, "We assume that our feelings are telling us something from which we can learn... that our feelings mean something worth analyzing... that our feelings are saying something political, something reflecting fear that something bad will happen to us or hope, desire, knowledge that something good will happen to us. [...] In our groups, let's share our feelings and pool them. Let's let ourselves go and see where our feelings lead us. Our feelings will lead us to ideas and then to actions". [2]
Ellen Willis wrote in 1984 that c.r. has often been "misunderstood and disparaged as a form of therapy", but that it was, in fact, in its time and context, "the primary method of understanding women's condition" and constituted "the movement's most successful organizing tool." At the same time, she saw the lack of theory and emphasis on personal experience as concealing "prior political and philosophical assumptions."[3]
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- Brownmiller, Susan (1999). In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (ISBN 0-385-31486-8).
- Chicago Women's Liberation Union (1971), How to start your own consciousness-raising group
- Freeman, Jo. Tyranny of Structurelessness.
- Redstockings (1975/1978). Feminist Revolution: an abridged edition with additional writings (ISBN 0-394-73240-5).
- Sarachild, Kathie (1973): Consciousness-Raising: A Radical Weapon. Also reprinted in Feminist Revolution, pp. 144–150.
- Willis, Ellen, "Radical Feminism and Feminist Radicalism", 1984, collected in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays, Wesleyan University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8195-5250-X, p. 117–150.