What the hell am I doing here?

No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question, but an an attempt at an introduction of sorts for this blog.

Namely, this blog was inspired by a fight that’s going on right now in that progressive of all states, New York, for the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act (RHPPA) that was announced in Spring 2007 following the Supreme Court’s egregious decision to uphold the Federal Abortion Act (which banned “partial birth abortions” and was the first time a law regulating abortion has been passed without a health exception since Roe v. Wade). I will get further into RHPPA in my next post, but here is some reading material from NOW-NYC to get you going.

I approach this blog foremost as an activist and an historian. Not only am I committed to having a law passed in New York that would actively ensure our pro-choice rights while they are being chipped away at on the national level, but I am deeply invested in these issues, in all their complexities, having viewed them through the historical lens. I hope to use this historical knowledge in this blog to bring us beyond the usual rote arguments. It is only in looking at such an issue historically that one is able to understand how deeply our conceptions are embedded in our own contemporary prejudices and situated positions. It is only through history that we are able to look beyond our situatedness and, by understanding past perspectives, consequences, and rationales, imagine the full spectrum of repercussions that our legal and social actions may have.

When looking at this issue, both on a political and scholarly level, I have two rules of thumb:

1. Never be so singular in your (or your subject’s) perspective as to discount other possible (potentially unfathomed) outlooks.

2. Never attempt to universalize your (or your subject’s) own experience so that it results in essentialization.

History, being the most pluralistic of endeavors, is an excellent master to teach us these approaches. As the (eminent) intellectual historian, Quentin Skinner, writes:

“An understanding of the past can help us to appreciate how the values embodied in our present way of life, and our present ways of thinking about these values, reflect a series of choices made at different times between different possible worlds. This awareness can help to liberate us from the grip of any one hegemonal account of those values and how they should be interpreted and understood. Equipped with a broader sense of possibility, we can stand back from the intellectual commitments we have inherited and ask ourselves in a new spirit of enquiry what we should think of them.” (Quentin Skinner. Visions of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method. Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 6.)

Skinner was addressing the particular relevance of a intellectual history (i.e. studying philosophy in the historical without intent to apply Plato’s concept of freedom to our contemporary worldview, seeing as Plato’s concept was informed by a number of normatives that no longer hold true today), and this can just as easily be applied to notions of freedom as to notions of bodily sovereignty, religious creed, and even the concept of pregnancy itself.

Ok, so on with the show! You can expect updates and data on RHPPA here as well as tidbits pulled and culled from my own research. And it’s all about dialogue, in the end, so please comment away.