Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred

Perverse Modernities

by M. Jacqui Alexander

M. Jacqui Alexander is one of the most important theorists of transnational feminism working today. Pedagogies of Crossing brings together essays she has written over the past decade, uniting her incisive critiques, which have had such a profound impact on feminist, queer, and critical race theories, with some of her more recent work. In this landmark interdisciplinary volume, Alexander points to a number of critical imperatives made all the more urgent by contemporary manifestations of neoimperialism and neocolonialism. Among these are the need for North American feminism and queer studies to take up transnational frameworks that foreground questions of colonialism, political economy, and racial formation; for a thorough re-conceptualization of modernity to account for the heteronormative regulatory practices of modern state formations; and for feminists to wrestle with the spiritual dimensions of experience and the meaning of sacred subjectivity. In these meditations, Alexander deftly unites large, often contradictory, historical processes across time and space. She focuses on the criminalization of queer communities in both the United States and the Caribbean in ways that prompt us to rethink how modernity invents its own traditions; she juxtaposes the political organizing and consciousness of women workers in global factories in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Canada with the pressing need for those in the academic factory to teach for social justice; she reflects on the limits and failures of liberal pluralism; and she presents original and compelling arguments that show how and why transgenerational memory is an indispensable spiritual practice within differently constituted women-of-color communities as it operates as a powerful antidote to oppression. In this multifaceted, visionary book, Alexander maps the terrain of alternative histories and offers new forms of knowledge with which to mold alternative futures.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Theory, Gender, Academic, Queer, Philosophy

424 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Hafsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent work on transnational feminist theory. Chapters 3, 5, 7 are critical theory-wise. I liked how she called for an engagement for the sacred/spiritual for feminist theorists. In chapter 5, especially Alexander counters the claims of cultural relativism and the traditions that mark the itineraries of modernity by offering a new way to theorize violence that does not fix violence in tradition alone. She discusses the regulatory practices of heterosexualization within three social formations: the colonial, the neocolonial and the neoimperial. She breaks down the boundaries between the three to make it possible to see that there can be no good heterosexual democratic tradition over and against a bad heterosexual primitive tradition and that the state and corporate interests play a role in the manufacture of citizenship through the prism of heterosexuality and the violent ways in which they engage homosexuality. Here, she breaks down the modernity/tradition divide which posits modernity as “better” or “superior”.

One of the strengths of this work is thatAlexander makes use of a wide variety of examples in this section to support her thesis including:
1) the Feminist Majority and their role in the Afghan War
2) the war on terror
3) Structural Adjustment Policies
4) Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act of the Bahamas
5) Welfare politics
6) Same-sex marriage
7) Military Working Group and gays in the military

Definitely should be read by anyone interested in transnational feminism.

[Tim Haslett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not since the early 1980s has there been a book that literally takes one's breath away. Prof. Alexander's new volume is profoundly spiritual at the same time it's grounded in a unique materialist feminism.

Its significance also lies in the book's manifestations of a real, 'material' hope. Being alive and politically conscious in the first decade of the 21st century is to be easily seduced by despair, it is also to be absolutely at odds with terrible, counter revolutionary, antifeminist cultures.

Not for Alexander glib, soggy liberalism but a spirit that is courageous and awe-inspiring. In the book's third section, Alexander writes of 'returning' to the magnificent anthology, 'This Bridge Called My Back' and, following this essay, the book's most thrilling chapter, in which the writer conjures a new life force, one thoroughly rooted in both spiritual and secular lifeworlds.

As if this adjectival 'heap' of praise were not enough, Alexander's book render obsolete the common periodization of feminisms by 'wave'. It would not be inaccurate to say that 'Pedagogies of Crossing' is a epistemic rupture, demanding its readers to again grapple with feminist legacies from an entirely new standpoint. If you've not heard Prof. Alexander speak, I suggest you do so as soon as possible. The impact of her spoken word 'appearances' is incredibly powerful, almost mesmerizing. Her lectures too constitute an epistemological rupture, filling one with true hope.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

the 5 stars are for chapter 6, which might be my most favorite thing read in 2007. mindblowing. the other chapters have some gems but it's so covered in theory jargon that you'll have to dig a bit.

[Brianna Herndon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is trying to do some tremendous theoretical work, but honestly what you get out of this book is not worth trying to have to dig through the numerous long, convoluted sentences such as:

"As I demonstrate below, a fundamentalist secularism can be based in a “free market” capitalism that requires neoliberal privatization to discipline a recalcitrant heterosexuality that refuses conjugal privatization, as in the case of women on welfare, or to promote structural adjustment of the economy in which privatization works to shift the fiscal responsibility from the public patriarch to the private patriarch, except that in the absence of the latter, provoked in no small degree by those very structural adjustments, it is women who assume the disproportionate fiscal burden."

I feel that the author gets bogged down in jargon so much that this text essentially becomes inaccessible to anyone outside the field.

[Minosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't super into the first couple of chapters personally (the policy-heavy critiques of sexuality and nation) but the last two chapters make this book worth the price of purchase alone.

[readorables · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful reading on transnational feminism, deconstructing modernity, colonialism/imperialism, religion and politics. The author assumes that the readers understand feminist philosophy and jargons, so it will be difficult for readers who are not familiar with them. Wordings can be too sophisticated (for me personally), it takes longer time for me to decipher what she intends to convey. Did this for a class and I personally enjoyed the class discussions!

[Vero]

I MISS YOU JACQUI!

[Dr. Breeze Harper]

And it is truly challenging and pushing me to the next level of my understanding and implementation of feminist theory and research!

[Asali · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work of genius. To be read and re-read for all time.

[AJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

this b00k rulez!

[Crystal]

Read Introduction and Chapter 7- Pedagogies of the Sacred: Making the Invisible Tangible for AFR345F Sex & Power

"The purpose of the body is to act not simply as an encasement of the Soul, but also as a medium of Spirit, the repository of a consciousness that derives from a source residing elsewhere."

Thoughts:
Really reframed how I think about ideas I previously viewed as secular, such as time, voice, and memory. The term the personal is political is frequently heard in feminist thought, but how about the personal is spiritual? Why in the name of rejecting religious (let's be honest, Christian) fundamentalism have we abandoned our Spirits as a whole? Because, as Alexander says best, "taking the Sacred seriously would propel us to take the lives of primarily working-class women and men seriously." The global majority is women, and the majority of women are spiritual; therefore, most of the people in the world are one with the Sacred.

This is critical feminist theory, but it is also precisely that, theory. I.e, torturous to go through, filled with (IMO) unnecessary jargon and filler, and at least 100 pages longer than needed. It's like cold medicine, hard to swallow, but alas, necessary.

More Quotes:
"It's not only that (post)modernity's secularism renders the Sacred as tradition, but it is also that tradition, understood as an extreme alterity, is always made to reside elsewhere and denied entry into the modern."

"'We want to know God, and that's why we carved all these figures, not because we worshiped idols.'"

"The central understanding within an epistemology of the Sacred is that of a core/Spirit that is immortal, at once linked to the pulse and energy of creation. It is that living matter that links us to each other, making that which is individual simultaneously collective."

[Constance Siobhán · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly indispensable feminist text that expands horizons and makes room for a truly intersectional and transversal praxis. The final chapter is not simply “icing on the cake” but rather a revelatory approach to understanding the whole in terms of the sacred and transnational feminism’s relation to it beyond the negatively defined borders of patriarchal Western hegemonies.

If you are a fan of Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Audre Lorde, then you simply must read this work if you haven’t already.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A spectacular premise—to remember and practice the ontoepisemologies of the Crossing (the trans Atlantic slave crossing). Strong intro and conclusion. Body seemed very assorted, kind of lost the thread of the thesis.

[Jade Metzger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I refer to it often in my teaching and in my studies. She's poetic and in depth. Something worth reading and re reading

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boo. A few ok chapters, but felt too pretentious overall. Trying to hard to be outside the box in my opinion.