Translating for Social Change

Translating for Social Change

Frequently in "Feminist Political and Social Thought" taught at SUNY Albany, by Dr. J. Hobson, I found myself simultaneously inspired and frustrated by the theory we were assigned to read. Authors such as bell hooks, Uma Narayan, Ann Russo, Kimberly Crenshaw, Andy Smith, John Stoltenberg, and Judy Baca did such wonderful jobs of pointing out the problems of perspective that stymie the feminist movement from achieving its goal to facilitate the bonding of the oppressed across differences, in order to overcome all oppressions. Unfortunately when combing through these authors intricately written, often jargon-ridden words, it was difficult to make practical sense of their insights. I understood what many of them were saying and in many cases I couldn't agree more, only I could barley imagine how these theories might be applied to real life scenarios. Furthermore, it was difficult for me to see how much of this would come to any use-say the next time someone made a racist, homophobic, Western-centric, sexist comment at work, or at the Thanksgiving dinner table for that matter. How could I possibly communicate the things that had been discussed in the classroom, laced with words like paradigm, praxis, pedagogy, and a completely deconstructed concept of the word "culture"? All these things would need an introduction of their own-and that may work in a classroom-but rarely in a conversation!

In this essay I will approach the issue of communicating themes Women's Studies and other relatively obscured disciplines concerned with social change outside of academia, where jargon-laden talk will not work.

In her essay "Educating Women: A Feminist Agenda" bell hooks asserts that a feminist movement to end sexist oppression that ignores communication with the majority of women and men (i.e. those outside of academia) is a movement that has no hope of realizing its goals for social change. Hooks contends, "The ability to "translate" ideas to an audience that varies in age, sex, ethnicity, degree of literacy is a skill feminist educators need to develop . . . Difficulty of access has been a problem with much feminist theory" (111) One educator/activist who demonstrates hooks' idea in his teaching techniques is Glenn Omatsu. However as an educator Omatsu does not put the onus of translation solely on himself, he holds his students responsible for translating what they have learned in the classroom for people outside of the classroom and in the community beyond the university campus.