Cynthia Enloe: My fantasizing about Adrienne Rich in a bookstore didn’t immediately change my writing or my research. But soon after that I was being pushed by the wonderful students at Clark to start teaching a comparative politics of women course. I think that the embarrassment I felt as I imagined Adrienne Rich’s curiosity and her dismay at my lack of awareness made me a little more open to students’ suggestions. Soon I began to let my teaching—and I love to teach—really begin to affect my research more. So sometimes embarrassment is really fruitful! Then there are also friends. It was feminist friends’ encouragement that led me to start reading things I hadn’t been reading, far from political science though deeply political.
Carol Cohn: I love the idea of “fruitful embarrassment.” What do you think are the social contexts that make that possible?
CE: I’ve thought about this a lot, and I know you have, too. It’s about this thing called a “career.” How to not position oneself holding a Plexiglass shield in front of you. How to gain confidence from expressing surprise, how to gain confidence from admitting, “I should have thought of that, and I didn’t!” From very early on in this thing called a career, I’ve tried very hard not to act out of defensiveness. It’s so demobilizing, draining of energy, and privatizing; it doesn’t let one listen well enough, or reach out, or be part of a community. Defensiveness plays right into the narrowest, least fruitful form of careerism. Careers are okay, in the sense that one wants to grow, to have the sense that you are moving forward in your own thinking— even having a bit more influence along the way, if it’s a good kind of influence—in one’s own little pool. But careerism— that is about, “Oh, I better not let anybody see what I don’t know.” Or, “I better pretend that I know more than I do”— and we all have those feelings. But I really try not to let that be what I express. Once I try to express the curiosity, and the, “Gee, I never thought of that, tell me more, I need to rethink that”; once I express it, even if it is not what is going up and down my spinal cord, it’s easier to actually do it.
A Conversation Between Cynthia Enloe and Carol Cohn (PDF)
