Reading Across Borders

IWhile social movements from workers' rights campaigns to environmental justice coalitions publicize their struggles by narrating people's experiences, recent critiques of "experience" and "identity" challenge the authority of such texts. How can we acknowledge the dangers of appeals to experience and identity, and yet still use the powerful tools of storytelling to counter ideological narratives? Bringing together the work of Hannah Arendt and transnational feminist theory, Shari Stone-Mediatore investigates the role that narration can play in resistant knowledge and politics. She argues that "storytelling," although not objective truth, is nonetheless crucial to responsible public debate, and identifies the specific narrative practices that impede, and those that facilitate, feminist and democratic struggles.

Though academic critics have become wary of narratives of marginalized people's lives, Stone-Mediatore (philosophy, Ohio Wesleyan U.) argues that many social struggles continue to rely on stories of experience to bring public attention to their concerns. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Shari Stone-Mediatore is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University.