ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author draws forward in her odyssey by her own experiences and observations of marginalization and of privilege, trying but not always nor often succeeding at recognizing how much her experiences as a white woman are limited and part of the problem. The momentous theoretical insights of feminist scholars from other disciplines had not found their way into communication studies much by the early 1980s, despite the battles of women in the field for acknowledging women as communication professionals and for recognizing women as important topics of research. Representation had been identified by feminists as the means by which hierarchies of gender and race are displayed as if natural rather than authorized by particular motivations. Feminist pragmatism looks to the place of experience in creating knowledge, in the plasticity of human nature and behavior infused by culture, and in the value of community over individualism.
