Militz-Frielink blog #2

Indigenous Articulations introduced me to articulation theory and raised a profound question about the blurry lines, spaces, and places both academic and nonacademic, native and non-native research authorities reside/position themselves.  I want to interrogate the term articulation and how it rests in temporary/contingent formations—thus providing a terrain for two competing groups or individuals to struggle, forge alliances, or find a middle ground.  The temporary, shifting, yet grounding nature of articulation theory makes room for the creation of new alliances and is relevant to my future research. As a White woman who is studying Black Feminist Spirituality, I have to think critically about my position in this research, how I arrived here, what alliances I can forge across color lines.

Although, I draw upon my working class roots and lived experiences growing up in government housing, I recognize my experiences were still privileged by skin color.  Class issues are easier to hide than race.  Growing up, my friends of color could never escape prejudice, discrimination, racial slurs, but I could escape the stigma of my working class background and blend in more easily.  Hence, I come to Black Feminist Thought and Black Feminist Spirituality with humility, knowing I am an outsider who is forming alliances.  I am using critical perspectives to constantly critique my intentions and constantly question whether my White privilege seeps into my writing/research.

 

I felt the articulation theory is useful to me particularly because I have not encountered it in my previous studies—although it resonates with the post-structuralist methodologies I have learned from Foucault and other scholars. Cultural studies as a methodology has not been a part of my work, so the discourse is a bit challenging for me to grasp—kind of like the first time I read Judith Butler and other post-colonial feminists. 

Articulation theory is forcing me to stop and question how I could mine its strengths for a more nuanced approach to my positionality statement.  

I believe articulation theory can empower scholars to dismantle the “us versus them” paradigm and its subsequent effects on research and positionality. Articulation theory can inform and shape how we struggle to form better alliances across gender, race, and class lines, how we conceptualize the fluidity of cultural, historical, and social constructs, and how we theorize border formations and identities. It gives space for temporary/shifting theories to arise out of specific historical periods while rejecting essentialism. Hopefully, this theory will deepen my studies of Black Feminist Spirituality and give me a contested space to form multiple alliances across the blurry lines of researcher/researched, Black/White, self/other without romanticizing or essentializing my subject of study.