Feminist Pedagogy: Building Community Accountability

© 2018 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois As antiviolence activists and university professors teaching and learning about violence prevention and feminist movements, we are inspired by the collaborative visioning of Critical Resistance and Incite! Women of Color Against Violence with regard to ending violence without reproducing it: “We seek to build movements that not only end violence, but that create a society based on radical freedom, mutual accountability, and passionate reciprocity. In this society, safety and security will not be premised on violence or the threat of violence; it will be based on a collective commitment to guaranteeing the survival and care of all peoples” (226). We have committed to taking this vision into our women’s and gender studies classrooms, where we strive to create feminist community that practices building reciprocal and accountable relationships across the power lines produced by interlocking systems of racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and heteronormativity. We seek to develop and enhance our skills and imagination for collective responses to everyday oppression and violence that do not rely on policing or punishment. Our goal is to build our capacity to support “the survival and care of all peoples” that is not “premised on violence or the threat of violence.” In this essay, we share stories from our classrooms where using these teaching and learning skills demonstrates the possibilities and difficulties inherent in practicing collective responses to everyday oppression and violence. We are drawing from the work of small and large feminist groups across the country, inspired by the visionary work of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, that strive to shift antiviolence efforts from relying on police and punishment systems toward community-based engagement for accountability and transformative justice (Incite; Rojas, Bierria, and Kim). This shift toward transformative justice is important in women’s and gender studies, as it remains a significant point of entry for students into feminist engagement and activism. Feminist projects, including antiviolence projects, on college campuses often use a default logic that relies on punishment and shaming in response to everyday oppression. This includes increased reporting, stronger investigatory mechanisms, and a carceral framework of punishment as the methods to address Feminist Pedagogy: Building Community Accountability