Signs Encounters the Global South

Abstract

Freedom of ideas is a central tenet of liberal ideology not only in the sense that government ought not regulate the beliefs or thoughts within a democratic polity, but also in the metaphysical sense that ideas are unfettered. Both the anticensorship strand and the autonomy of ideas strand of intellectual freedom have shaped understandings of feminist scholarship. Whether traced to religious precepts, German idealism, nineteenth-century Romanticism, Freudian stream of consciousness, or scientific claims about the logic of discovery, claims concerning the autonomy of ideas permeate liberal and feminist discourse. Arthur O. Lovejoy’s (1940) conceptualization of the history of ideas fits squarely within this tradition; he insists that ideas never move in a predetermined fashion or direction. Rejecting Hegelian claims about an inherent dialectical movement of ideas, Lovejoy argued that ideas move in a more oscillating manner.²

What is insurrectionary consciousness in one instance becomes tragic vision in another.

—Edward Said 1983

There is a sense of lack of alternative to the liberal ideology.

—Shirin M. Rai 2002

I appreciate the openness of your response to my suggestion for co-operation between SIGNS and A.I.D. Let me recapitulate it.

—Catharine Stimpson, August 29, 1978¹