1
And middle-class women, although taught to value established forms, are in the same position as the working class: neither can use established forms to express what the forms were never intended to express (and may very well operate to conceal).Joanna Russ
2
I know you're competent and your thesis advisor knows you're competent. The question in our minds is are you really serious about what you're doing?" This was said to a young woman who had already spent five years and over $10, 000 getting to that point in her Ph.D. program.Joanna Russ
3
It's not that the authors are unskilled, but we must frequently venture outside our areas of original training. Either the work lies outside anybody's area of original training, or orthodox criticism (in Ellen Moers' words) averts its refined and weary eyes from what only feminists consider important or see as problematic. Much anti-feminist criticism of feminist writing can best be answered with, 'Yeah? And where were you at the time, twinkletoes? Writing your ten-thousandth essay on King Lear? .Joanna Russ
4
I had planned to consult with a Black colleague, but when I approached her in the hall she had a crowd of students about, all of them talking, a stack of books in one arm, a mass of student papers in the other, seven committee reports wedged in between, as well as her small daughter in a backpack, and she was looking surreptitiously at her watch. So I went on reading and taking notes.Joanna Russ
5
Privileged groups, like everyone else, want to think well of themselves and to believe that they are acting generously and justly.Joanna Russ
6
The re-evaluation and rediscovery of minority art (including the cultural minority of women) is often conceived as a matter of remedying injustice and exclusiveness through doing justice to individual artists by allowing their work into the canon, which will thereby be more complete, but fundamentally unchanged.Joanna Russ
7
Ignorance is not bad faith. But persistence in ignorance is.Joanna Russ
8
The idea that any art is achieved 'intuitively' is a dehumanization of the brains, effort, and the traditions of the artist, and a classification of said artist as subhuman. It is those supposed incapable of intelligence, training, or connection with a tradition who are described as working by instinct or intuition.Joanna Russ