Oaths

Well Franz Kafk a must not have thought much of children, and neither do many educators. But let’s talk about our oaths of service.1

I.

Women’s Studies began because of omissions, distortions, secrets, silences, and lies in the academy and in society, bringing critical analyses to challenge pedagogical stasis. I and others helped start programs in the excitement of creating new educational territory. At the time, the struggle against not only bureaucracy and the old boy network, but against coercive consensus; the eff orts to take what was dismissed as nonsense and construct against-the-grain meaning; the excitement of discovering erased women, of developing theoretical new bases; all this and more made our academic lives relevant, intense, dangerous, vibrant, and meaningful. For example, cunning linguist Julia Penelope exposed the overt celebration of male supremacy of English syntax and semantics. Academic activists fl ocking to conferences such as the National Women’s Studies Association or the Society for Women in Philosophy were also community activists in some form or another, and we found that our practice informed our theory which then came back to our practice.