[lbo-talk] more AD

[Catherine Driscoll]

Something that interests me reading this thread on Dworkin's death is the place
she has on the outside of contemporary feminist politics. Now it may be because
I am not American, so I'd be happy to hear others' opinions on this, but the
only way contemporary Australian feminists refer to Dworkin in my experience is
as an historical footnote. Mackinnon is perhaps a longer footnote about the
residue of a certain kind of feminist polemic, but the only people I've heard
refer to Dworkin in any other way in like forever are people opposed to
feminism.

For reasons known best to himself, my 19yr old son likes to spend time on
U.S.-centred online political forums, and he claims to repeatedly come across
people quoting Dworkin and even supporting Dworkin as a still significant
feminist perspective. I find this totally puzzling. I teach gender studies, in
part, and I would definitely have to explain who Dworkin is to any of my
students if her name ever came up, which would be unlikely unless we were
talking about the history of debates about porn. And in fact I would have be
likely, as would any of my colleagues, to talk about her as in the past long
before her death.

So, while it's the nature of obituaries to talk about past impact in the present
tense and that's okay by me, she did have a period of being important, is anyone
really using or following Dworkin now? Was her importance really that great,
except as a handy media example of feminist extremism which thus allowed her
more airtime than most feminists would have given her?

I have been interested in the obituaries, and I thought Bright's particularly
good, but I don't feel like that question has been answered for me.

Catherine

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