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Millsom S Henry-Waring
Sociology, University of Melbourne
'Moving Beyond Otherness: Exploring the Polyvocal Subjectivities of African
Caribbean Women Across the United Kingdom'
By focusing on the experiences of one group of Black women, this paper pulls out some of the key issues of my doctoral study on the ethnic, gendered and national subjectivities of African Caribbean women in Britain. This paper will argue that despite the negative legacy of Anglo/Eurocentric meta-discourses, African Caribbean women have developed a positive sense of self and consequently, our positioning in academic discourses can no longer be ignored or merely analysed in simplistic binary formulations. Instead, a critical, radical and new framework, which enables the shifting and multiple nature of African Caribbean women's lives in Britain to be validated, is required. In this regard, this paper draws upon the findings of this unique doctoral study through the relatively recent but nonetheless, highly penetrative and politically charged space of Black British feminism to fundamentally disrupt the meta-discourse of Black women as the negative Other, to (re)veal our herstories, to (re)centre our agency and to (re)inscribe the polyvocality of our simultaneously multiple, diasporic subjectivities. As a result, the findings of this study also have profound implications for the ways in which other Black and White men's and women's subjectivities should be understood.
Bio: Dr Millsom Henry-Waring is a lecturer in the Sociology Program in the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne. His research and Teaching Interests are: Critical Black/Gender/Women's Studies and Post-colonial studies, especially in the areas of identity, intimacy, popular culture, nationalism and multi-culturalism; The social and political implications of new technologies for society. Current research projects include: Black feminisms; Whiteness; Mixed and multiple identities; Notions of otherness and intimacy.
Publications:
Multiple publications, including; IT in the Social Sciences: A student's guide to the Information and Communications Technologies, Editor 1999; Using IT Effectively: A guide to technology in the Social Sciences, Editor, 1998; Desperately Seeking Sisterhood: Still Challenging and Building, Co-editor with M Ang-Lygate and C Corrin 1997; 'The Role of Computers in Social Policy', Chapter 48, edited book by P Alcock, A Erskine and M May The Student's Companion to Social Policy, 1997; 'Using Computers in Sociology', Chapter 40, edited book by J Gubbay and C Middleton and C Ballard - Blackwell's Student's Companion to Sociology, 1997; 'Ivory Towers and Ebony Women: The Experiences of Black Women in Higher Education' in Changing the Subject, edited by C Davies, C Lubelska and J Quinn, 1995.;'Equality and CAL in Higher Education' with Jackie Rafferty, in The Journal of Computer-Assisted-Learning Journal, May 1995.Vol.11: Published widely in other areas and editor of a number of academic publications from 1991-9 and member of the Editorial Board of the Social Science Computer Review, 1996-9.
<m.henry-waring@unimelb.edu.au>