(Not for citation without permission of the author.)
Another Sex 06
Sixth Israeli Annual Conference for Lesbian & Gay Studies and Queer Theory
4-6 June 2006
Opening remarks
Welcome to you all.
The Women Studies Forum with NCJW is proud to continue our partnership, begun in 2001, in sponsoring the sixth conference for Lesbian & Gay Studies and Queer Theory. This conference is among the few that consciously combine voices from inside and outside the academy. In doing so, the participants claim the authority of the university setting as a source of knowledge, while at the same time questioning its hegemony by including among the participants and sponsors, individuals and organizations whose authority has sources other than academic titles and positions.
One of the aims and responsibilities of universities is to push forward the grand project of human discovery, creating knowledge. Societies by and large agree that this is a good thing, worth paying for with large sums. Yet the past 10-20 years have witnessed a trend to commodify knowledge, with universities demanding that products not only be cutting edge but also financially profitable, or at least have that potential. [Can we point to the Reagan-Thatcher years in the post-60s and 70s era as the starting point for this?]
This trend has not been good for many fields, in particular not for the humanities, arts and social sciences. As we know too well in this university, but elsewhere, too, in Israel and abroad, we are accused of being not profitable and, what is worse in a market economy, loss-making and even parasitic. This is a mind-set that has almost entirely abandoned the notion that those disciplines “in the red” are equally valuable to humanity with those that can turn a profit.
Now, it is certainly legitimate for a university administration to examine the separate parts of the whole in order to understand how costs and revenues are distributed. Yet it is a betrayal of the idea of the university to disassemble its constituent parts and condemn any one of them which cannot be self-sustaining. The university is a project that demands continual reaffirmation, financial and otherwise, by the society in which it lives. It is the job of university leaders to articulate this message to the broader community and to ensure that it remains compelling, even in the worst of times.
Societies, or rather, the people who lead them, must consciously assign value to the challenge of new ideas, the provocation to rethink assumptions, the amplification of unheard voices and the revelation of unnoticed people, places, events, phenomena, and ideas. This conference is part of a project that is as cutting edge as nanotechnology or stem cell research, and no less vital to humanity. No less than cures for diseases, stronger materials, and cleaner fuels, the generation of new ideas and ways of thinking and speaking strengthen our culture by giving voice and value to more people, by ensuring that creative and insightful individuals all feel they have a way to participate. A society engaged in this project is not weaker due to the uncertainty and dislocation prompted by new ideas, but stronger for remaining dynamic, disconnecting and reconnecting the dots in an ongoing series of paradigm shifts.
Universities do not only create knowledge in existing fields; they also define what is to be considered knowledge, delineating new fields or the amalgamating of disciplines within which knowledge is constructed. Lesbian and Gay Studies and Queer Theory could hardly be said to have existed twenty years ago. This conference is a testimony to the free evolution of intellectual life that is supposed to be the hallmark of a university. It is also evidence of the fertile mixing of intellectual and activist undertakings.
Look at the list of sponsors for this conference. One could read its multiplicity as a sign of the tenuous position of Lesbian and Gay Studies and Queer Theory, begging funds from so many different sources. Conversely, the list reveals the interdisciplinary and multi-textured character of the field, and with it the strength of ideas that touch such a broad spectrum. You come from 14 different fields within universities and five activist organizations.
No less important than creating knowledge is making it available to a wide audience -- fellow scholars, students, activists, and the general public alike. This is not a static one-way serving up of neatly packaged results. Rather, your conference constitutes another chapter in an ongoing conversation, exploiting scholarly, activist and personal perspectives to articulate more complex and sensitive understandings of sexuality, its relationship to gender, and how these are constructed in our societies.
I wish you a lively and productive meeting.
Amy Singer
Dept. of Middle Eastern & African History
Chair
Women Studies Forum
Tel Aviv University