ABSTRACT
In contrast to Western binary thinking, within which reason and rationality are opposed and superior to feeling and the somatic, a holistic perspective eschews hierarchical and totalizing theory or ‘solutions’, emphasizing instead relational process and multiplicity as continuous, dynamic and creative: the loop or spiral of living process. Renewal, maintenance and breakdown are not in linear or polarized relation, but weave a web of connections/meanings. Structures and processes are not dichotomized and put in opposition to each other as explanatory devices, but can be considered together and in their connections, avoiding ‘the production of universals as normative, and difference therefore as pathological’ (Walkerdine, 1990, p. 193). Holistic practice undermines ‘Reason’s Dream’ (Rotman, cited in Walkerdine, 1990, p. 188), which Valerie Walkerdine describes as ‘a fantasy of equality, an attempt to create “normal subjects” while failing to tackle fundamental oppressions and exploitations’. In this chapter I advocate a holistic perspective in relation to women’s contradictory presence and position in the academy, as students and tutors; an epistemology of connection as opposed to separation (Collins, 1991, p. 217). This involves dialogue across boundaries and demarcations of power: disciplines, discourses, identities, social locations, roles. This practice is seen as foundational to the creation of ‘knowledge that fosters resistance’ (ibid. p. 207), in an increasingly competitive, individualistic culture, which actively encourages us to cancel each other out. Dialogue involves disclosure / exposure, and the attendant risks of conflict, hostility, even abuse. Yet without dialogue there can be no identification or alliance, for example between women from different class, ethnic, religious, or cultural backgrounds; between disabled women and non-disabled women; between younger women and older women; between lesbians, bisexual and heterosexual women; between child-free women and mothers. And without alliance women remain dispersed, strangers to each other: potential enemies.
