I think a big theme both of Women Who Rock and of Sandoval's dissident globalization is the value of unconventional or non-dominant perspectives and knowledge. More specifically, dissident globalization requires the ability to access and make use of multiple kinds of knowledge, to move "across worlds of meaning" (Sandoval 24, quoting Lugones). To emancipate oneself, one must reach across social borders and inhabit a mental terrain that contains a wide array of histories, backgrounds, cultures, genders, etc. (In that way, it kind of reminded me of Samuel R. Delany's description of simplex, complex, and multiplex minds in Empire Star, which of course also spent a lot of time questioning and reworking language, but that's all beside the point.) The similarity between Sandoval and Women Who Rock was most clear to me when they described their aims as promoting "new models of community-based, politically-engaged knowledge production" ("Notes on Women Who Rock"). They also both put as much emphasis on the methods as on the aims, in recognition of the fact that the two are inseparable. Make it democratic, deconstruct and redefine what needs redefining, recognize the world and move between perceptions of it. That at least was what I understood.
- Haleh Mawson
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