10/10/07

Reading Annette Kolodny's essayI felt a little bewildered in reading her statement that (as a feminist) "our task is to initiate nothing less then playful pluralism, responsive to the possibilities of multiple schools and methods, but captive of none, recognizing that the tools needed for our analysis will necessarily be largely inherited and only partly of our own making."
(p165) I believe what she is trying to say that as a woman, as a feminist we are able to adapt to different ideas and philosophy's, but never becoming one minded in one specific train of thoughts, and we are able to make reason pulling from the different ideas and thoughts utilizing our God given abilites. When she discusses the the tools being inherited, I can only gather that as a woman, let alone a human being, we all have this innate sense that we are all born with . It is with our "intuition" that we are able make careful and accurate analysis', however, when she says that, " partly of our own making", it leads me to believe that she means only as a woman are we able to truly understand the point wholeheartedly and we fashion ideas, just as Mabel fashions her dress that she looks horrible in, that only we, as woman, will be able to grasp at.

Ms. Kolodny also says, " All the feminist is asserting, then is her own idea equivalent right to liberate new (and perhaps different) signifigances from these same texts; and at the same time, her right to choose which features of a text she takes as relevant because she is, after all, asking new and different questions of it." (p164) To me, this basically means that everything is based on perception, and obviously a woman, let alone every individual, has different views and opinions. I agree with there being a femininst movement in the idea of being treated fairly and equal as a man, but the idea of a movement and a specific way of trying to critique literature in a feminists voice baffles me because just a s Ms. Kolodny says basically as a feminist we are using our own ideas and thoughts and reflecting on what we think is important. Doesn't everybody do that already in some form or another?