Thinking Through: Essays on Feminism, Marxism, and Anti-Racism

by Himani Bannerji

Himani Bannerji transforms the theorizing of race, gender and class in these essays illuminating the politics of differenceas they affect non-white women in the post-colonial world.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Theory, History

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

About the author

Himani Bannerji is a Bengali–Canadian writer, sociologist, and philosopher from Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She teaches in the Department of Sociology, the Graduate Programme in Social and Political Thought, and the Graduate Programme in Women's Studies at York University, Canada. She is also known for her activist work and poetry. She received her B.A. and M.A. in English from Visva-Bharati University and Jadavpur University respectively, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Bannerji works in the areas of Marxist, feminist and anti-racist theory. She is especially focused on reading colonial discourse through Karl Marx's concept of ideology, and putting together a reflexive analysis of gender, race and class. Bannerji also does much lecturing about the Gaze and othering and silencing of women who are marginalized.

Reviews

[Kab · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 I glazed over on the more academic chapters, which in general by my definition are too diffuse. When Bannerji writes of the personal, it's harrowing and electric, to read about the everyday trailblazing of the author and of X.

[Brad Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I would have enjoyed this book much more if I started at a lower level of theory. The same phenomenon happened while reading this as it did with Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil", that I could go an entire paragraph and not understand its meaning. But as I continued with the book that feeling started to dissipate as I was further able to understand the story being told alongside the theory. One of the main lessons that I drew from reading this book is that simply stating beliefs or claiming to be something is almost meaningless, "words are wind" as put in GoT. Bannerji describes self proclaimed Marxists or Feminist professors that jump at the chance to speak over her, or how an institution that holds classes on Racism is still markedly below the mark on diversity. Just as in Outlaw Culture, this book brings together different essays, which I believe culminate in the court case that Bannerji was brought in to act as an expert witness in. As I mentioned I struggled with some of the discussions regarding theory, but the application of that theory onto the real life examples, helped me to understand the intersectionality of race and gender within the workplace. And how groups claiming to protect women or be anti-racist are missing the mark when it comes to looking at an issue holistically.
I think this book was a good introspective into an area that I had very little exposure to before, the world of academia regarding the three topics of the title, not just the perversions that we hear about on the news, but how professors are thinking about these topics and how they perceive the reception of their teachings as well. And the potential power and impact that they wield when it comes to the next generation of thinkers.
Sadly I should have reviewed this immediately after reading, but I procrastinated about 10 reviews so those will all be shorter alongside this one.

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.