Gender and communication: problematizations, methodologies, intersections

Resumo

Gender/ Feminist/ Women’s Studies, as well as Gay, Lesbian and Queer Studies, in addition to some already well-established scientific areas in academic curricula – of which Cultural Studies and the Communication Sciences themselves are excellent examples – all have emerged from the classic domains of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. This emergence does not amount, however, to mere disciplinary specialization compelled by the real specificity of its objects that have gradually grown more differentiated and clear-cut. The disciplinary fragmentation at stake is a thematic and methodological one, as it constructs news forms of questioning rather than well-defined objects, and emphasizes intersections rather than separatisms. It therefore acquires an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary character, in such a sense that interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are not boiled down to mere mechanical cooperation between established disciplines; rather, they have forged critical categories that, notwithstanding, provide for a decisive – yet unacknowledged – contribution to their renovation, whilst their gatekeeping practices cannot but simplistically and wrongfully detect disciplinary transgression. Nonetheless, the new inter- and trans-disciplines relentlessly strive for the invention of persuasive contexts that aim to apply their own situated knowledges beyond their original settings, thus facing a slightly understandable resistance also arising from the Communication Sciences themselves that frequently commits them to a precarious status of disparagement, if not outright dismissal. The latter, moreover, is not always avowed, but to a large extent provides an explanation for their still fragile formal establishment at national level, despite their already solid development in respect of practitioners, publications, theses, research projects and courses. In a way, both the hardships that they face and the horizons that open up to them are not different from the ones that were already presented to Communication Sciences at their inception – and that ultimately allowed for the particular status that furthered their development, more than hampered it.