Doing the *: Performing the Radical in Antisexist and Antiracist Work

Abstract

The essay summarizes excerpts from the 6th Biennial Seneca Falls Dialogue’s (SFD) session, “Doing the *: Performing the Radical in Antisexist and Antiracist Work.” In this dialogue, students read, displayed, or performed excerpts from feminist manifestos that they authored in a feminist theory or women and gender studies course at The College at Brockport. The manifesto assignment asked students to select a contemporary feminist issue, and using text or text with performance, expose and analyze the issue drawing from “The Combahee River Collective” joined with “Trans *: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability.”” Prompted by the 6th Biennial SFD theme, “Race and Intersecting Feminist Futures, “we selected the Combahee River Collective and Trans * as our main theoretical frame because of ways these writings disrupt white heteronormativity and ways that they integrate an intersectional lens as means to critique gender and racial inequalities.