Dynamics of Dissent: Theorizing Movements for Inclusive Futures 9781138603967, 9780367273224, 9780429290473

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Notes on contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: the dynamics of dissent: theorizing movements for inclusive futures
2 Conversations across abstractions: a silent movement by the poet-wayfarers
3 “What knowledge is this that an old woman understands better than a learned man?”: Hacking special knowledge in late medieval Europe, a provocation
4 Feministic theory and practice in Sweden and its impact on families, the labour market and legislation
5 Kabir Suman: the child and father of movements
6 Lotus and labrys: the role and legacy of a Buddhist young women’s movement and the young lesbian feminist movement in Wellington, New Zealand at the end of the millennium
7 Perspectives on Japan’s anti-nuclear movements: the effectiveness of social movements?
8 Ressentiment as false transcendence: how transformative dissenting political and social movements can create inclusivity
9 Song of the sawngs: transformation of a cultural protest and the role of nationalist politics
10 ‘We shall rise’: intimate theory and embodied dissent
11 Women in Black: a women’s peace movement
12 Afterword: inclusive futures and dissenting visions
Index

Citation preview

DYNAMICS OF DISSENT

This book analyses dissent and its manifestations in movements of social and political transformation across communities and cultures. It shows how these movements create ruptures in the structures of power, and social hierarchy; expressed through songs, slogans, poetry and performances. The chapters in the book explore these sites of transgression and the imprint they leave on culture, politics, beliefs and the collective society – via music and poetry as in the Bhakti movement or through feministic theories born in post–World War Europe. It also explores how these dynamic movements generate alternate spaces within which the self, identity and collective purpose take new forms and find new meanings as they travel. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the humanities, literature, history, sociology, politics and culture studies. John Clammer is Professor of Sociology, O.P. Jindal Global University. He was

formerly Professor of Development Sociology, Adviser to the Rector and Director of International Courses at the United Nations University, Tokyo. His most recent book is the volume Cultural Rights and Justice (2019). Meera Chakravorty is Research Faculty in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore. She has translated some award-winning literary works of renowned authors published by the Sahitya Akademi. Her most recent translated work Vachana is about the poetry of the marginalised and Other. Marcus Bussey is a cultural theorist and futurist at the University of Sunshine

Coast, Australia. He has co-edited and co-authored Alternative Educational Futures (2008) and Futures Thinking for Social Foresight (2005), among others. His book of poetry, Clare and Francis (2012) was translated into Bengali by Meera Chakravorty. His latest poetry book The Next Big Thing (2019) has now been released. Tanmayee Banerjee is an independent researcher and the youngest editor of this

volume. She is an artist and performer trained in Indian Classical Music.

DYNAMICS OF DISSENT Theorizing Movements for Inclusive Futures

Edited by John Clammer, Meera Chakravorty, Marcus Bussey and Tanmayee Banerjee

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter John Clammer, Meera Chakravorty, Marcus Bussey and Tanmayee Banerjee; individual chapters, the contributors The right of John Clammer, Meera Chakravorty, Marcus Bussey and Tanmayee Banerjee to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-60396-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-27322-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-29047-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To those who have laid down their lives for justice and those who continue to struggle against injustice

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors ix Prefacexi Acknowledgementsxiii 1 Introduction: the dynamics of dissent: theorizing movements for inclusive futures John Clammer, Meera Chakravorty, Marcus Bussey and Tanmayee Banerjee

1

2 Conversations across abstractions: a silent movement by the poet-wayfarers11 Meera Chakravorty 3 “What knowledge is this that an old woman understands better than a learned man?”: Hacking special knowledge in late medieval Europe, a provocation Francesca Bussey 4 Feministic theory and practice in Sweden and its impact on families, the labour market and legislation Christina Zaar 5 Kabir Suman: the child and father of movements Tanmayee Banerjee

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viii Contents

  6 Lotus and labrys: the role and legacy of a Buddhist young women’s movement and the young lesbian feminist movement in Wellington, New Zealand at the end of the millennium Penny Ehrhardt   7 Perspectives on Japan’s anti-nuclear movements: the effectiveness of social movements? Naoko Kumagai and John Clammer

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88

 8 Ressentiment as false transcendence: how transformative dissenting political and social movements can create inclusivity Nikolai Blaskow

105

  9 Song of the sawngs: transformation of a cultural protest and the role of nationalist politics Rajat Kanti Sur

125

10 ‘We shall rise’: intimate theory and embodied dissent Marcus Bussey

137

11 Women in Black: a women’s peace movement Susan Finch

154

12 Afterword: inclusive futures and dissenting visions Meera Chakravorty

169

Index172

CONTRIBUTORS

Tanmayee Banerjee taught English in Christ College, Bangalore. She is an artist

and performer trained in Indian Classical Music. Currently, she is an independent researcher and the youngest editor of this volume. Nikolai Blaskow is currently halfway through his PhD with Bangor University Wales, UK. The title of his thesis is ‘The Fall Guy or A Stillborn Prophet? Dionysus and the Crucified Girard contra Nietzsche on ressentiment: towards a Christology without enemies’. Francesca Bussey is a lecturer in teaching and learning in higher education at

Deakin University. She specializes in digital technology and learning. Her background in medieval history, and particularly women’s religious history, have dovetailed with a focus on transformational moments and movements and the intersection of these with epistemologies of learning. Marcus Bussey is a cultural theorist and futurist at the University of Sunshine

Coast. Marcus has co-edited Alternative Educational Futures (2008); Neohumanist Educational Futures (2008) and Tantric Women Tell their Tales (2007). He co-authored Futures Thinking for Social Foresight (2005) with Richard Slaughter. His book of poetry Clare and Francis appeared in 2012 and was translated into Bengali by Meera Chakravorty in 2017. His book of poetry The Next Big Thing (2019) has just been released. Meera Chakravorty is a Research Faculty in the Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University, Bangalore. She has been a member of the Karnataka State Women’s Commission, Bangalore and of the Tagore Chair Committee chaired by Dr U.R.

x Contributors

Ananthamurthy. She has translated some award-winning literary works of renowned authors published by the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters, India). John Clammer is a Professor of Sociology, O.P. Jindal Global University. He was

formerly Professor of Development Sociology, Adviser to the Rector and Director of International Courses at the United Nations University,Tokyo. He has held titular positions and been a visiting professor at universities around the world, including Oxford and Kent. His most recent book is the volume Cultural Rights and Justice (2019). Penny Ehrhardt is a DPhil candidate in Law at Oxford University; Senior Associate at the Institute for Policy and Governance Studies in the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington; and Principal of Ehrhardt Advisors, a public policy consultancy. She has published in the areas of family violence intervention, community development, gender and indigenous rights. She continues to be an active member of the LGTBQI+ and Soka Gakkai Buddhist communities. Susan Finch has been working in the early years sector for the last 40 years, and

has worked as a mentor at the Early Years Teaching Centres. Her career began with developing a community nursery in a London Borough, then opening and managing a children’s centre for the same borough. Sue worked for Department of Education as an adviser during the development of the children’s centre programme. Rajat Kanti Sur is a Research Scholar at the Department of South and South-East

Asian Studies, University of Calcutta. His PhD research was focused on the evolution of Urban Popular Culture. Naoko Kumagai is an Associate Professor at the International University of Japan, working on the issue of comfort women. Her most recent publication was ‘Gender Equality in Japan: Internal Policy Processes and Impacts, and Foreign Implications under Prime Minister Abe’s Womenomics’ (co-authored with Joyce Gelb) in the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Foreign Policy, 2018. Christina Zaar is a journalist and was employed by the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) in Stockholm for more than 30 years. A freelancer since 2006, she has written interview books and books on working life in collaboration with experts. She trained as a journalist at the School of Journalism in Stockholm and at Stockholm University.

PREFACE

Dissent and the movements it spawns are sites in which transgression and transformation take place. Such sites hold the creative potential to ground and unground the dynamic of nomadic sensibility. Hence the space occupied by dissent is precarious and to be measured through scrupulous reflections such as those gathered in this edited volume. Here the contributors seek to engage with ideas, people, cultural resistance and historical events which are far from unambiguous vis-à-vis individual and collective expressions of liberty, aesthetic expression and transformation. Quite often there is a proliferation of artistic production with definite social/political agendas that contribute significantly not only to the dissemination of the ideas but also to the extension of cultural horizons and the shaping of collective consciousness. Sometimes there are artistic miracles, graceful expressions of dissent having the potency to resist, for instance, via music and poetry as in the Bhakti movement. Such dynamic movements of dissent generate alternate spaces within which self, identity and collective purpose take new forms and find new meaning. Such modes of resistance serve as a response to the humiliations that people meet in life. The creative diversity inherent to such forms of dissent serve as effective tools to resist and transfigure the prosaic alienation of modern and post-modern life. In the Dynamics of Dissent the contributors look at a range of movements including the medieval Bhakti movement of India and the Beguine movement of 14th-century Europe, the feminist movements of New Zealand and Sweden, the Black Women’s peace movement of the US, cultural resistance in 19th-century Bengal, Kabir Suman’s ‘songs of experience’ and Japan’s anti-nuclear movement. In addition, two chapters focus on the theoretical dimensions of resistance, the first with reference to Friedrich Nietzsche and Renée Girard’s work on ressentiment and

xii Preface

the second by turning to an intimate theorisation in which the body itself acts as a powerful site for dissent. Taking into account the present situation all around the globe when deterritorialisation is becoming a constant factor, the aim of this edited book is to explore the quality of dynamic dissent in the context of movements that aim at transformations which foster re-territorialisation and generate positive futures.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We want to acknowledge those who have made rich contributions to dissent and those who continue to do so.We sincerely thank Routledge publishers for skillfully seeing through the entire process of editing and giving the book a nice shape.

1 INTRODUCTION The dynamics of dissent: theorizing movements for inclusive futures John Clammer, Meera Chakravorty, Marcus Bussey and Tanmayee Banerjee

The subject of social movements has long been a major sociological (and indeed historical) specialism. Intensive debate has engaged with issues such as the origins of social movements, their social composition, their relationship to utopian movements and literature, to intentional communities such as communes, to development patterns in the global South, to resistance and revolutionary activities and to internal factors in the success or failure of social movements, such as their ability to mobilize resources, to communicate their message to a mass audience and to fend off challenges to their legitimacy. A bibliography of social movements would now stretch to many thousands of volumes and articles. So, one might assume by now that the subject was somewhat exhausted, and that all the major theoretical questions had been answered. But a quick glance at the social landscapes around us shows that this is far from the case, and for a number of significant reasons. New movements constantly arise in response to new situations, environmental, social and political; old movements may fade away or revitalize themselves; new patterns of protest emerge as technology enables new forms of communication and mobilization. Even fifty years ago it would have been hard to image a global environmental movement emerging in the way in which it has in response to the massive ecological damage, pollution, species loss and habitat destruction that has been the result of the practices of both extractive forms of capitalism and socialism. The anti-nuclear movement could hardly exist were it not for both the development (and deployment) of nuclear weapons and of the increasing use of nuclear energy for “peaceful” purposes (despite its enormous costs and risks). Trades unions, once a major feature of the social and political life of most industrial societies have almost universally faded in significance, political clout and membership. Religion, which was in the not such distant past assumed by secularization theorists to be on the way out, has proved to have immense staying power and re-emerges constantly as a social force whether in the form of Islamic, Hindu, Christian or Jewish fundamentalism: in the

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numerous and flourishing “guru” cults of contemporary India, as revivalist movements as with Christian Pentecostalism or “Mega-churches”, or simply in the popularity of many forms of “spirituality”, even or especially among those who do not regard themselves as “religious” in any conventional sense. At the same time, the “enabling environment” has also changed, suggesting new theoretical challenges for social movement scholars. The Internet has enabled forms of mass communication and mobilization un-thought of a generation ago, as has the mobile phone. Such now largely extinct forms of technology as the fax machine have played a major role in earlier mobilizations. Similarly, the larger political environment has changed radically, and the age of revolutions seems to have at least temporarily passed. Cuba,Vietnam, China and even the Soviet Union may still provide models for some, but realistically in a world now dominated by the forces of globalization unleashed by neo-liberal capitalism (into which even societies like China have bought in a big way), those old classically socialist models have little if any mileage left in them. Indeed, it has become protests against globalization itself that now shape the landscape of social movements (Starr 2000), while older forms of social movements such as feminism have found that their targets are moving ones: whereas at one time struggle may have been for the vote or for equal pay and working conditions, increasingly now the feminist movement is engaged with ecology, with issues of social exclusion based on race or sexuality, and with access to education and the social and political resources that should be in principle accessible by everyone. Yet for all its extensiveness, social movement theory has its weaknesses and blind spots. In mainstream social movement, scholarship religion for example is pushed to the margins (it becomes instead the specialism of such fields as the sociology of religion). To a large extent, so have art movements, whether more formally recognized ones (in art historical terms) such as Surrealism or Expressionism, or in popular forms such as the many indigenous theatre groups of historical and contemporary India. Yet in practice such cultural movements have often been at the forefront of social transformation, political struggles or the maintaining of revolutionary enthusiasm in the periods of routinization that typically follow periods of enthusiastic social and political upheaval: for example, the Ägitprop theatre and dance troupes of post-revolutionary Russia, or the activist Left in Weimar Republic Germany, or the remarkable poster art of post-revolutionary and contemporary Cuba (Cushing 2003). Furthermore, much conventional social movements analysis has focused more on the internal dynamics and resource mobilization capacities of such movements, rather than on their transformative potential itself. This is disappointing, not least because virtually every social movement, by definition, sees itself as transformative and as re-shaping the future, usually along positive lines (although there can obviously also be reactionary movements as well). The distinctiveness of this book is that, while it also examines the dynamics of social movements, it draws attention equally to their potential as ones that are openly devoted to what we have here called inclusive futures – ones that specifically orientate themselves to cultural,

Introduction  3

social and gender inclusion and equally avoid the forces of exclusion that can be so characteristic of even “progressive” movements.

Framing social movements Social movements, while they may be geographically separated and addressing separate issues, nevertheless communicate with one another, not only through members who may be associated with more than one movement, but also by learning from one another, comparing strategies and recognizing “mistakes” or strategic missteps made by others which can then be avoided in future scenarios. For this reason, while it is essential that we study individual movements across space and time with respect to their specific contexts and goals, it is also imperative that we gather a comprehensive idea of movements in more general terms – studying them not as separate unconnected agitations mobilized in different corners of the world at different times and instigated by disparate issues, but also as an interconnected chain, each affecting and nourishing the others, and in turn influencing the situation in which they collectively operate. For example, current movements that have an obvious “futuristic” quotient are those which deal with environmental concerns, not only because of the seriousness of such problems, but equally because, despite the severity of the environmental crisis and its long-term and negative impact on every individual on the planet, such movements still mobilize only a small population across the globe. Despite a vibrant presence in social media and via other publicity outlets and an active presence in academia in terms of research and publications, they have yet to mobilize a mass movement against the forces that cause warming and climate change. Here is a key situation in which inclusivity is urgently needed, especially in terms of drawing a much larger range of people into awareness and activism. Movements are by their very nature future oriented, and have often been more than allies in the pursuit of positive social change, but actually the cutting edge of such change – cultural, social or political. At the very least, they have stimulated and embodied aspirations towards a more just and equal future, and while there have no doubt been apparent “failures”, in historical terms, it is often difficult to judge any particular movement in these terms. For example the Indian independence movement led by Mahatma Gandhi was not simply a movement against colonialism, but was, and still is in many respects, a continuing movement challenging discrimination based on caste, gender and work practices, was committed, as are many other social movements to non-violence, something that has had a profound influence on other social movements in India and beyond (Zunes, Kurtz and Asher 1999).While it is not directly an environmental movement, it has had effects on both environmentalism and ideas of alternative and sustainable economies through the work of Gandhian economists such as the neglected J.C. Kumarappa. As a movement for inclusivity, it can hardly be matched, both historically and in its longer-term impact: it is still a force far from spent. Similar comments could be made about the

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anti-apartheid movement so associated with Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or that led by Martin Luther King against racial discrimination in the United States, both of which have had profound influence far beyond their points of origin. Collectively, movements can be thought of as praxis – the unity of theory and practice, oriented towards the future, and as both experiments in actually creating social change, and as sources of inspiration and aspiration to plant and concretize the idea of the possibility of change in the minds of people. And there is an important feedback loop or learning mechanism built into the history of social and emancipatory movements, illustrated, for example, by the Gandhian emphasis on nonviolence. Experience has shown that violence is indeed counter-productive – a cause of existential anxiety, the uprooting of settled habitats and ways of life and livelihood – and, this being the case, for movements to be effective, they must aim for inclusivity, the bringing together of diverse people and opinions without imposing any one culture or lifestyle. In other words, that they should be both lifeenhancing and facilitators of positive interactions that themselves generate yet further synergies. Indeed, history shows clearly that effective movements may not only serve a limited space, time and situation, but can resonate across much wider contexts, even when a movement does begin as a local one, addressing a local and concrete social situation. For example, Dr. Denis Mukwege was almost single-handedly responsible for initiating a “silent movement” in Kivu (Democratic Republic of Congo) against the epidemic of rape by members of rival tribes fighting each other for control of the extensive mineral resources of the region. This “local” issue has now become an international one. In the Congo situation (and parallels can be found elsewhere in Africa and beyond), rape is used as a weapon of war, by attacking rival villages, sexually assaulting women and mutilating their genitals in order to prevent them from having children, thus destroying the social fabric of the villages, upsetting normal demographic patterns and introducing violent trauma into the lives of those targeted. Mukwege’s report to the UN Human Rights Commission (issued in March 2015 by the then Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon) has both universalized a local site of atrocity and become the basis for the mobilization of a women’s struggle as it is recognized that they must be the harbingers of change in a deeply patriarchal and violent social situation. In an entirely different social, cultural and historical context, the Bhakti movement in India – a spiritual/cultural and strongly egalitarian and non-hierarchical movement of saints, poets and musicians that flourished from around the 7th century AD to the 17th century (Ramanujan 1973) and which still exists in the form of both reform movements within Hinduism and Sufi expressions of Islam and in local musical and performative traditions, particularly in north and west India (Hess 2016) – provides a very contrasting model. The movement historically brought together anti-caste and non-Brahmin Hindus, Sufis, Bauls and Vachana wayfarers to critique and influence society, and who continue to do so through non-textual, non-academic, primarily spiritual means to promote equality, gender-justice and free access to religious sites and resources on the part of all in a deeply stratified society. The Bhakti movement still resonates in contemporary India and beyond

Introduction  5

through its poetry, music and critique of the hegemony of the religious and political ruling elites of its time. Indeed, the leading Indian public intellectual Shiv Visvanathan has argued that “Let us face it, the great reform movements in India were not the modernist, communist, socialist or liberal democratic ones. The great reform movement was the bhakti tradition. Nanak, Kabir and Mirabai did more to dent caste than The Communist Manifesto” (Visvanathan 2016: 31). The notion of hegemony and its critique is important here, since, as any social constructivist knows, society is something that we have created, and so can change. The world of human actions and sense making (meaning construction) only functions insofar as we all agree to its terms. We are all of necessity complicit in this in one way or another because our identities are invested in a certain sense of order – a particular culture, social structure or world view. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, the social is ultimately a cooperative space. Consent is the key to this arena of human sociality. Yet dissent is an important element in the maintenance of our world(s) too, because it is the lever through which change is manifest. We hence find two kinds of energy at work here: the centripetal and consensual which draws us to the centre of a civilizational project, and the centrifugal and dissident which throws us against the walls of consent in an attempt to move beyond current practices, norms and values.This “throwness” is dynamic and subversive. It draws on the same energy as the social and consensual, yet puts its dynamism at the service of freedom. In this book, the contributors explore the nature of change and of movements that inspire change by probing dissent and its dynamic properties in the cultural, social and personal spheres of human experience. Here, and this is a distinctive characteristic of the volume, song, poetry, dance and spirit intersect with political movements seeking to enact change for women, the environment and the subaltern. How dissent functions to generate change and how it struggles with the abiding power of consent, and the ability of those with power to manufacture consent, is at the heart of these inquiries. Change is a constant in life, yet most people feel that it is simply happening to them, and is largely out of their control. We must never forget, however, that it is always people who initiate change and unleash its creative possibilities in and on the world. Given the systemic crisis that our planet now finds itself in (because of human actions), hope for the future must lie in our power of dissent, to cast off habitual readings of the everyday and to renew ourselves through creative interventions in the world.The tools for change are everywhere about us, waiting in the heterotopic coagulations that we inhabit as individuals and collectivities. As Harald Dehne once noted “By means of a creative activity of appropriation in their daily lives, individuals generate those prerequisites that enhance the potential to change everyday life – and ultimately society as well” (Dehne 1995: 137). Such movements towards change in the individual sphere hinge on having a language and consciousness to recognize and stimulate to action the creative possibilities inherent in almost any social context. In fact, it is often the context itself that presents itself to us in such a way as to expose its own “madness” and demand of us that we change it.

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Thus, consciousness is not itself something that simply arises from within, but, as all the major critical theorists have argued, springs from dialogue with the world we inhabit. Consciousness, in other words, is praxis based. Timothy Morton makes this point when he argues that “one doesn’t act awareness, it happens to one. It seems to have its own kind of existence, from its own side. It is not something you manufacture” (Morton 2017: 186). Elise Boulding, that great exponent of peace building processes, actually sees this engagement as a craft, and that our capacity for dissent – the process of rejecting a given narrative, inequity or definition – is based on the reflective ability of people to redefine their own personhood through reflective action in the world. Hence: “Reflection is the key to the development of personhood. It is a tool in the crafting of a life.The crafting of human beings to become what they already are is fundamental to all other tasks – to education, to peace making, to the creation of a civic culture, to being able to love other human beings” (Boulding 1988: 163–4).The fascinating nexus of consent and dissent is the ground upon which consciousness of human potential and of the great richness available to us through our struggles, and through the relational joys of stepping beyond our cultural safe-havens, is based. Morton (2017) for instance argues for solidarity with “non-human peoples” as a pressing issue of our time.This solidarity, and its imaginative possibilities, is one that cannot be theorized in a vacuum. It emerges from our struggles, and from the creative principle that generates hope and empowers the human imagination to see beyond the given. This explains why it is the dissident that sits at the heart of the chapters of this book. This is also why the experience of dissent, as an embodied process of resistance, is a repeated motif. In another context, one of us has argued that: “the Universe is a Reality which is a purely Experiencing Principle, and as there being no other ingredient whatsoever, which does or can enter into the composition of the Universe, the process of the production or reproduction in the part of an Experiencing Principle by itself is incapable of having any other meaning than the multiplication of thoughts, ideas, feelings and the like” (Chakravorty 2007: 54). Experience and the multiplication of effects are here abstractions of the visceral and erotic experience of being embodied. This, to borrow from the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1993), is a “folded space” in which the abstract and the embodied are principles of coming to know the world, to inhabit it, in a way that is fully human. This space challenges current socio-theoretic assumptions about the object of our inquiry. Human beings are not one dimensional (Marcuse 1991). Another of the editors of this text makes this case as follows: The problem with a great deal of social theory is that it operates with an inadequate or even false model of what human beings are like, a problem that is bound to lead to sterility in outcomes – a shallow sociology as opposed to a deep one. If this is the case, as can certainly be argued, that human beings are more emotional than rational, more erotic than logical, the it is the imagination that is the primary faculty, but one that has been devalue or marginalized

Introduction  7

at the expense of the desire by the managers of society for order, planning and system. (Clammer 2014: 42) When social systems stifle creativity with order, the dissident arises. The dissident imagination as an anticipatory tool can destabilize current assumptions and set new socio-cultural horizons that have the power to mobilize powerful movements of dissent and renewal. Thus, Clammer continues by observing: “The imagination of possible futures, of utopias and anti-utopias, of new forms of social arrangements, of new ways of quite literally seeing the world, new techniques of awareness, the promotion of humour, love, enchantment, leisure, beauty, are all left to the arts” (Clammer 2014: 42). Chief amongst these arts is the art of dissent which energizes the visual and aesthetic processes Clammer is focusing on in that statement (see also Lederach 2005; Jasper 1997). It is this art that sets the parameters for the chapters in this text. Some are decidedly historical in nature, yet all describe anticipatory possibilities that point to the future as a hopeful field of human action. The cultural resources available to us multiply as cultures are exposed to one another in intimate and creative ways as a positive result of globalization. While this convergence of traditions and values is certainly generating considerable disruption of life-ways and values, the local and the global are simultaneously engaged in new creative dialogues about human possibilities and modes of expression. The anticipatory imagination is at work in this context exploring powerful new ways to harness the creative possibilities available to us (Bussey, Song and Hsieh 2017). Two important ideas emerge from this. One is the application of the idea of creativity not only to the arts or other expressive forms (which include new technologies), but to society and social formations and their animating cultures. The other is the close link between what Bussey et al. (2017) calls “anticipatory imagination” and what the Canadian social movements theorists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish call “pre-figurative” research: research that is directed not at the past or only at uncovering structures and processes in the present, but also conceive of as “a form of research borrowed from a postrevolutionary future. We wanted to imagine a form of ‘common’ research, beyond enclosure” (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014: 17). This project is intimately linked to what they call “the radical imagination”, a notion that deeply informs the work represented in this book. For them, the radical imagination, while hard to define, is “the notion to think critically, reflexively and innovatively about the social world” (2014: 2). In more detail, and of considerable relevance to this book, On the surface level, the radical imagination is the ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be. It is the courage and the intelligence to recognize that the world can and should be changed. But the radical imagination is not just about dreaming of different futures. It is about bringing those possible futures “back” to work

8  John Clammer et al.

on the present, to inspire action and new forms of solidarity today. Likewise, the radical imagination is about drawing on the past, telling different stories about how the world came to be the way it is, and remembering the power and importance of past struggles and the way their spirits live on in the present. The radical imagination is also about imagining the present differently too. It represents our capacity to imagine and make common cause with the experiences of other people; it undergirds our capacity to build solidarity across boundaries and borders, real or imagined. Without the radical imagination, we are left only with the residual dreams of the powerful, and for the vast majority they are not experienced as dreams but as nightmares of insecurity, precarity, violence and hopelessness. (Haiven and Khasnabish 2014: 3–4) The chapters in this book, to which we will now turn, attempt in their various ways and geographical spread to embody such ideals and to show empirically they have been worked out in a variety of social and cultural situations.

The structure of the book The chapters of the book fall into three broad categories that address these issues from various subject and geographical perspectives. Three, the essays by Meera Chakravorty (Chapters 2), Tanmayee Banerjee (Chapter 5) and Rajat Kanti Sur (Chapter 9) specifically address the issue of the role of the arts, in this case varieties of performance, in representing and channelling dissent. These three chapters illustrate the ways in which, outside of the formally political sphere, dissent can flow through poetry, song, drama and other performative expressions. Performance theory, now a burgeoning field of inquiry (e.g. Schechner 2015), is increasingly being linked to unconventional (in classical sociological terms) means of intervention in social transformation (Goodman and de Gay 2000), including ecological issues, human rights, development, awareness raising about social issues, HIV/Aids and many other questions (Clammer 2015: 63–82).These three contributions move beyond a purely theoretical approach to show, through largely South Asian case studies, the actual manifestations of artistic forms of dissent. The second category consists of four chapters, those by Francesca Bussey (Chapter 3), Christina Zaar (Chapter 4), Penny Ehrhardt (Chapter 6) and Susan Finch (Chapter 11). Here all authors address issues of feminist, or in the case of Francesca Bussey female, movements from four very different but complementary directions. Francesca Bussey takes us back to the European middle ages to look at how a number of women challenged the epistemic hegemony of the day. She offers the category of ‘special knowledge’ and explores how this might inform our understanding of societies in transformation. Christina Zaar provides a historical perspective on the women’s movement in Scandinavia, a region noted for its socialized public services and democratic governance, but in which, nevertheless, gender justice is still something which must be struggled for, and which has a history that helps uncover

Introduction  9

the forces that have both helped and hindered the movement. A historical approach is also taken in Penny Ehrhardt’s essay ‘Lotus and labrys’, which weaves together the story of two very different young women’s movements on the other side of the world from Scandinavia – notably New Zealand. The two interwoven cases deal significantly with a new religious movement on the one hand, and the struggle for identity among lesbian identified women on the other, thus opening up two large areas of concern for social movement theory in general. The fourth chapter in this category is by Susan Finch. Finch deals with the important question of women and peace, illustrating through a detailed case study how such a movement has come into being and functions. The third category of chapters relate to social movement theory, but in innovative ways that expand the boundaries in fresh directions. The chapter by Naoko Kumagai and John Clammer (Chapter 7) addresses the question, through a case study of contemporary Japan, of the dynamics of success and failure in social ­movements. The chapter by Nikolai Blaskow (Chapter 8) opens up very unusual dimensions of approaching both movements of dissent and the issue of inclusivity which is one of the central concerns of the book. Finally, the chapter by Marcus Bussey (Chapter 10) links, again in innovative ways, theories of embodiment with dissent, via the concept of embodied dissent that he introduces.

Moving forwards In her profoundly important book on climate change (a book also about social movements), Naomi Klein makes the following highly pertinent statement: But if there is a reason for social movements to exist, it is not to accept dominant values as fixed and unchangeable, but to offer other ways to live – to wage, and win, a battle of cultural worldviews.That means laying out a vision of the world that competes directly with the one at harrowing display at the Heartland conference [of climate change deniers] and in so many other parts of our culture, one that resonates with the majority of people on the planet because it is true:That we are not apart from nature but of it.That acting collectively for the greater good is not suspect, and that such common projects of mutual aid are responsible for our species’ greatest accomplishments. (Klein 2015: 61) This statement in many ways sums up the project of this book – of not simply documenting dissent, but also exposing some at least of its dynamics, the unconventional forms that it can take, the unfinished tasks ahead and the ways in which fresh thinking (“theory”) can address the collective issues that we do indeed face as a species in new and illuminating ways. These include shifting the perspectives through which we have conventionally viewed social movements, drawing on and being constantly informed by history, the lessons of which can be creative and inform our view of the future, re-visiting major social movements of the past and present to

10  John Clammer et al.

re-think the lessons that they convey, and to keep alive hope, not in a purely subjective or individual way, but as the recognition that society is a human invention and so is in our hands. What has been created can be changed when it does not work, and that change is the vital role of dissent and the social movements that embody it.

References Boulding, Elise (1988) Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World. New York and London: Teachers College Press. Bussey, Marcus, Song Mei Mei and Hsieh Shang-Hsien (2017) “Änticipatory Imagination as a Tool for Rethinking Engineering Education”. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 143 (4), 1–5. Chakravorty, Meera (2007) Consciousness, Time and Praxis. Delhi: New Bharatiya Book Corporation. Clammer, John (2014) Vision and Society:Towards a Sociology and Anthropology from Art. London and New York: Routledge. Clammer, John (2015) Art, Culture and International Development: Humanizing Social Transformation. London and New York: Routledge. Cushing, Lincoln (2003) Revolution! Cuban Poster Art. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Dehne, Harald (1995) “Have We Come Any Closer to Alltag? Everyday Reality and Workers’ Lives as an Object of Historical Research I the German Democratic Republic”.Trans.W. Templer. In A. Ludtke (Ed.) The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experience and Ways of Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 116–148. Deleuze, Gilles (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Trans. T. Conley. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Goodman, Lizbeth and Jane de Gay (Eds.) (2000) The Routledge Reader in Politics and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Haiven, Max and Alex Khasnabish (2014) The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity. London: Zed Books. Hess, Linda (2016) Bodies of Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. Jaspers, James M. (1997) The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography and Social Movements. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Klein, Naomi (2015) This Changes Everything. London: Penguin Books. Lederach, John Paul (2005) The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. New York: Oxford University Press. Marcuse, H. (1991) One Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press. Morton, Tim (2017) Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People. London and New York: Verso. Ramanujan, A.K. (Trans. and Ed.) (1973) Speaking of Shiva. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Schechner, Richard (2015) Performed Imaginaries. London and New York: Routledge. Starr, Amory (2000) Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization. London: Zed Books. Visvanathan, Shiv (2016) Theatres of Democracy: Between the Epic and the Everyday. Noida: HarperCollins Publishers India. Zunes, Stephen, Lester R. Kurtz and Sarah Beth Asher (Eds.) (1999) Nonviolent Social Movements: A Geographical Perspective. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.

2 CONVERSATIONS ACROSS ABSTRACTIONS A silent movement by the poet-wayfarers1 Meera Chakravorty

The poet-wayfarers of non-English sources like the oral traditions, the tradition of Vachana literature of Karnataka, the Sufi tradition of the mystic poetry and similar other sources from the Baul tradition of Bengal all have their silent movements, their utopias. They have proved time and again that their views spurred major demands for change and also that these traditions have not been the alternatives which have been absorbed by globalizing techno-political systems. In fact, it may be observed that failure to respond to such strong, perplexing exemplars in itself should be considered as a sign of a culture in retreat. The believers in these traditions are not only the leaders of movements but also believe that they are duty bound to reject the idiosyncrasy and worldliness of those who build and stick to mundane institutions, and by doing so speak for the central concerns and assumptions of the nation (much like the agents of the modern globalized nations). The mystics in all these streams hold this in common that there is an ideal world of peace and joy unlike the mundane one, that neither priests, nor prophets nor any one ritual of any organized religion will help an individual to find that ideal except his/her own journey. Their core belief is that this effort has power to offend any type of hegemony as it happened with the vachana poets in Karnataka. Though it may sound bizarre, these poet-wayfarers of oral traditions think that, in a culture saturated by false equivalents, shortcuts to knowledge and pseudo-relationships, the truth of a resistance-proposal has to derive from the proposal’s overtness, its factuality. Their ideas regarding human perfectibility lies in the restlessness which is rather spiritual/mystical in the sense that it wants to infuse the temporal with the eternal represented symbolically as the avowal of an immaterial presence in a material life. The mystic’s journey takes him/her from the world of complex materiality to the arena of the transcendental, which grows more and more impenetrable and eludes him/her. While this also is a kind of self-mystification that he/she chooses to keep at bay, it is the mundane which refuses to acknowledge transcendence proposing

12  Meera Chakravorty

dissent.This chapter refers to the vachana movement in particular and other similar attempts in general and wishes to explore that dissent which can pave the way for justice and therefore can be suggested as a non-dogmatic universal. In Karnataka in the southern part of India, there occurred a rebel movement against the oppressive regime of king Bijjala, led by Basaveswara,2 a poet and the finance minister of the said king. He had solid support from the marginalized section of the society who struggled to resist the cruel, hegemonic and hypocritical rule of the regime and supported the cause of freedom. This resistance also aspired to provide space for peasants, women and similar others known at present as the subalterns. Their resistance was expressed through words or poetry and hence vachana or ‘sayings’, not through writing. Firstly, the vachana narrative presents us with many challenges like the question of the inevitability of the collapse of the regime, secondly, it tried to interrupt the practice of caste, class and gender, plunging the hierarchical system into disarray. Thirdly, for the regime, it was tormenting to see how Basaveswara, an upper-caste, upper-class individual, could garner the support of ordinary people, most of them basically illiterate, generally the street people, without any kind of social and economic support whatsoever as evident from the Vachanas themselves. The mystics’ protests against the revival of reactionary traditions geared by fear seem to be wholly convincing when they speak of human vulnerability and brutality from the vantage point of their unique mission while revealing the elusive way with which many of the traditional texts, juxtaposed with artfulness, emphasize such revivals. Akka Mahadevi’s vachana instills a spiritual and physical wound made of this artfulness, which intends nevertheless to change us in subtle ways: “What is the use of knowing all/know yourself first/when you really know/why ask others/O Chennamallikarjuna/you led me to knowledge/I reached you through you”.3 Such assertions were decisive when at a difficult juncture powerful forces were imperiling the cultural, economical and social wisdom of people. It was the time of political and social unrest. People were exploited and oppressed yet their pain had not still overlaid their oral memory and songs.The communities were torn down by caste-class feud, but the mystics put forward a bold vision that transformed many lives. In fact, they set in motion an intellectual and cultural movement that changed the way we think about ourselves and much more. Basava, the leader of the movement, also welcomed women poets having similar approach to participate in the movement, some thirty of the women gets mentioned in the vachana poetry (Rice 1982).4 One of the important aspects of this movement is to bring out the way people go from being seen only as victims of caste to reach at least an utopian phase for some part of their lives. In this utopian phase, they are different once they are freed from their existing conditions; they experience a transformation through love for God. Though one should not assume that the caste antagonism, the ultimate source of ideological deviance, has been eradicated, nevertheless it has been seen as a possibility for many to not to take this as a serious reason to divide society. It is true that many of the mystic poets, being themselves dissidents too, drew universal

Conversations across abstractions  13

moral imperatives from their own journey of indignity at the hands of the forces that were counter-productive. Petitioning to people to solve their own grievances, to condemning a despot for his oppressive rule and further to a coordinated and organized socio-cultural movement for systemic reform, these poets (both mystics and non-mystics) had an unshakable faith in their redeemer God Shiva and in the historical progress of their movement that was going to be shockingly transformative. The increasing official apathy, its pomposity and victimization turned these poets to their own appraisal of the ruling despot by showing dissent through public gathering, petitioning through their songs. These songs caught the people in the ruling power off guard; they were reluctant to contemplate the possibility that these devotees of Shiva would publicly criticize the royal administration and its way of governance. Poetry in this context is lucid, broad in scope and subtle in interpretive detail if one wants to reduce in writing with remarkable mastery of culture that goes beyond national identity. The poets inevitably depict a utopian ‘Promised Land’, reminding people that it is their fate to be on the far side, looking out on this root of the land till they are prepared to inhabit it finally. Contrary to the popular conception of these poets as simple devotees begging for their living, scholarship has long recognized that their poetry/songs are in fact a sprawling, disorderly anthology spanning many centuries and incorporating views of a utopian world. The map of the traditional territory that most religions recall is the one proposed by the so-called ecclesiastical writers who are responsible for a code of perfection emphasizing purity and elaborate ritual distinctions. The codes in this map firmly demarcate the specific borders of the land that an ideal human being is supposed to stay within. The separation of traditional land from the spiritual territory by a body of codes goes well with the ritual pre-occupation with purity and concomitant creation of barriers between the sacred and the profane.The notion of barriers also draws on cosmological ideas to depict how the world comes into being by the drawing of a dividing line between the terrestrial and non-terrestrial, which has a mythological character that enhances its appeal and that does not inevitably correspond to fixed topographical features. The vachana writing is no doubt the most influencing evidence of the monarchy’s abiding malevolence. It is expressed both in mystic and common language and later assumed a key position as the source material for analyzing social and ideological deviance, contributing to a public manifestation of dissent that finally took the form of a movement. This was almost similar to the trajectory of the Bhakti (devotional love to God) movement5 that had gripped almost all parts of India. The poets’ sense of alienation from the sordid reality, the ethos of a ‘pure life’ requiring the application of moral principle to every aspect of life and the belief in the love of Shiva enabled them to offer resistance providing a model of protest narrative, the influence of which could only be felt in the future time to come. The mysticism in the vachanas, therefore, provokes discussions and debates about the issues we should be reflecting about. It gives a very broad canvas on the impact that shortness of perspective has had on humanity across history, using the symbols to tease out

14  Meera Chakravorty

the complex nature of how we perceive us in natural and contrived situations. The mystics contribute to our thinking about the ultimate goal in life by drawing on the best available knowledge in mythology, religion, history and culture and elaborating with a cultivated meditation on the question of how we are to understand our life’s mission in our existential context. It would, however, be difficult to overstate the wonders of the poets of the oral tradition, masterpiece of radical humanism that connects us to nature and traces our greed to its root in the rise of the mass consumption which is an antidote to cultural and spiritual progress. The mystic confesses to a weariness with such behaviour and as a corrective he turns her gaze to love and to exploration of the Self resulting into a loss of his own identity. He says:“Dazed was I/thinking of you/I mistook the rustle of wind/for your foot-steps O Lord/I was lost”.6 The mundane does not interest him/her.The urge to theorize every object of inquiry is in fact driven by the desire to endow everything with distinct and unalterable attributes of it’s own. It is a universal desire to particularize, to differentiate, to break up, and dismantle, and to assign to every object it’s own space or domain. When brought to the level of human beings the message it sends out is too unambiguous to be missed.There are no shared experiences or shared histories, no common hopes and dreams, no common destinies either, no possibilities of realization, transformation, forgiveness, or redemption. It affirms and celebrates a life of self-assertion and chauvinism that nurtures indifference – if not intolerance and hatred – for the rest of the world.7 Contrary to this position, and after the capitalists rendered themselves ‘soul-less’, causing a melt-down some time ago, it was time to call a spade a spade. The suggestion of the soul’s evolutionary path is important here. What is it that caused the exploiters chase the category of ‘us’ and ‘them’? Obviously, at one point of time, the Economy-Tzars might have thought that the routes to be taken to widen the gulf was an economic form of violence to keep the categories inter-connected. And that all dissents and ‘resistance’ by ‘them’ can be rigorously suppressed through physical violence, as is evident in the Occupy movement.8 Not heeding the voices of the Occupy movement, they thought that, to keep this binary of ‘us’ and ‘them’, they can make them homeless. Thus, those who were initially already the natural citizens, and others who were from ethnic communities from other countries and whose labour was exploited by these victimizers, became homeless at one and the same time, both became hostages in the country they thought was their home. A similar situation occurred which can be referred to in the context of the movement in the North-East India. Many students, who during the period of struggle came away from their home to pursue education in the cities, reported that despite being a part of the movement they still were suspects. A conversation with these people provided an important insight into their journey, which is sadly dubious and needing yet another journey of reterritorializing, according to them, as they found themselves refugees now, not having anywhere to go. In the same context, it can be pointed out how indigenous people, when treated aggressively by the mainstream culture, feel the same way, and take their journey through ritual ceremonies to understand their root. Whereas, for others who call themselves mainstream, this

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journey may appear bizarre and rhetorical.This arrogance of dismissal has generally been related to judgments about the social standing of the non-indigenous, often didactic in their approach. Ignoring this, the Cree people, one of the indigenous communities, for instance, have made their resistance clear by considering their ritualistic journey not only as a socio-political dissent, but also as an effective means of communicating their resistance against the colonial power. In her struggle for self-determination, Janice Alison Makokis writes: “The Cree spiritual name that has been given to me is ‘Wahpimaskwasis’ (Little White Bear), and I am a Cree woman from the Sandle Lake Cree Nation. The significance of having a Spiritual name, knowing what it means and knowing where you came from are all connected to how ‘nehiyawak’ (Cree People) understand self-determination within a nehiyaw paradigm . . . an expression of my own ceremonial journey to understand what selfdetermination is”.9 The Cree communities’ emphasis on anthropomorphism and their collective participation in spiritual and ritual activities is an important decision by the people themselves, as they think that for any journey to be undertaken the collective approach is a means of persuasion. Makokis explains further, “First and foremost our actions should be gained by our own epistemological frameworks if we are seeking true vindication from a philosophical colonial construct that has held us to be social, political, cultural and economic prisoners within the very spaces we seek redress. In doing so, we have to return to our teachings found in the languages we speak, the songs we sing in ceremony, the teachings found in the ceremonial structures that have been passed on to us from our ancestors”.10 It is a journey to find their identities, their wisdom and their deep roots. It is possible, they know, that sometimes one of their journeys may overlap with another, yet this would demonstrate that they do not want to walk through a journey largely suppressed by the elitist mainstream in the name of refined culture. That is why it is all the more significant to take their own journey, “To understand the Cree worldview in it’s entirety, we are engaged to seek out ceremony to help us learn about the connectedness we share with our non-human relations in order to fully grasp the Creator has given us to on Mother Earth. It is in this phase of questioning in our lives that Elders tell us to seek out our ‘Truth’, and to find the meaning of who we are and what our purpose on this earth-life is. In ‘truth-seeking’ we are exposed to a broader interpretation of what is encompassed within a Cree world-view”.11 When the practice is a journey, many versions of rituals catering to the roots of different sub-groups in communities are found, consequently many versions of the rituals lead to many versions of story-telling, and poetry of time past and time present.The world of story-telling and poetry, therefore, is itself a journey regardless of the context in which it is told, and these journeys do not necessarily produce a documented account or recorded histories. Whether it is Aesop’s fables or stories of Panchatantra or the stories from the Jataka, oral poetry or any other, the travel of these stories have taken many paths from that of a literary league to the lives of common people who could not be lucky to have been educated. Apparently, it may appear that these stories are associated with children’s understanding, but we can see that the Greeks and Romans in the 6thcentury were as much impressed by these

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stories as the people in the contemporary time. While it may be possible to discern a map of political ontology through these stories which motivated a particular journey reflecting simultaneously on the ethical and cultural aspects, story-telling itself has become a space for human action. The story-teller of Panchatantra, who combined poetry and stories, is believed to have been invited by the king to narrate stories to motivate the king’s otherwise idle sons to take up governance. Hence, far from remaining a passive tradition, the stories have evoked the cultural and political aspects of governance and power-structure. Contrary to the trend that suggests that story-telling was for the unwise and fools, there may be, as it appears, stories take the route described as the journey to the world of ‘anti-wisdom' the term used by Tim Whitmarsh, a British classicist and professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge refers to the Greek tradition which mentions one Menippus, who was believed to be a pupil of Apollonius of Tyana, who said that Aesop’s stories have no value, just “frogs and donkeys and rubbish for old women and children”.12 Against this arrogance of wisdom, the stories from Aesop, Panchatantra etc. may emerge as a rallying point for resistance and dissent. We may, in this context, reflect on Socrates story-telling journey. Like the Bauls of Bengal, Socrates was a wayfarer, asking people to explore the path of knowledge by themselves. However, talking to people on streets and confronting them with stories was not considered a proper behaviour by the scholars, for them it was an undignified act. But this act of Socrates is an example of a sparkling display of repudiating the wisdom of those who believed in their superior wisdom and is a perfect way of dissent. Unfortunately, this journey of story-telling got interrupted as the Delphians, endorsed by the Oracle and with a desire to condemn Socrates, put him to death. Aesop too, is said to have been condemned to death by the Delphians, as he had opposed their hostility to considering story-telling a ‘low ’variety of wisdom. Rebelling against this arrogance of wisdom, both Socrates and Aesop retorted through stories, though at the cost of their lives. These stories, which have had many translations, have been an inspirational force, and in turn have pursued many sub-routes engendering literary tensions, like the poetry tradition, mentioned earlier in the chapter. This is in contrast to the other kind of tension which is brought by violence because of ethnic confrontation, and which characterizes some violent and degenerating journeys. On the other hand, the mention of journey as non-violent and reterritorializing, if the term can be used, will show how a journey can be a foundation of a regenerative process. In our journey with music, the harvest is rich, enriching the soul’s reflection in a myriad of contexts other than allowing one to remain at the level of mere theories. Both in folk or people’s song and in classical music the demeanor of the musical journey belies a readiness to innovations, new creations are generated in the path of the journey each time it is undertaken since its coded language has the effect of validating the mystical and the sublime. It is a territory in which all ethnic groups can participate, using any language, not used as rhetoric but to defuse disastrous consequences. For instance, the intention of this historic song which says “We shall overcome someday/ O deep in my heart/ I do believe/ we shall overcome someday”13 is not flattery or emptiness but expresses a deep conviction of a

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journey which was, as we know, a journey towards a non-violent society, capable of resistance claims. In fact the reality which happened in not in the very recent past. This song, crossing the boundaries of class, ethnicity, gender, language and culture has remained not merely as slogans but a journey to faith, to a belief system, to conviction, to action and to resistance movements revealed in many contexts of violence and exploitation. A musical journey in the classical system is equally openended. The musician for instance, in the Indian Raga system, creates a new vista, though remaining within the ‘rule-box’, each time a particular raga is performed by her/him. It appears this is because the ‘soul’ of the music is ‘unbound’, hence it takes myriad journeys. In this context, the idea about the journey of soul, culture and society can offer an image behind which there could be many more, though it may look paradoxical to have many routes associated with a single journey, the line between one and the other appears to be so thinly drawn. While one may find the idea strange since it is difficult to imagine as it appears like a chaotic swirl, and because it is so different and takes time to register in mind. However, for argument’s sake, one may ask this question: is it not only possible to reflect on the journey of soul only after you reflect on the structure of journey yet to be explored? I would, on the other hand like the idea of the journey of soul to be the journey itself as it is a continuous process while gathering fruits on my way, as the Sanskrit verse confirms: Charannaimadhuvindati, charaiveti, charaiveti (keep the journey on, the journey brings fruits). Oral tradition in India offers a far more expansionist map, assembling the large historical narratives from the antiquarian till the present age in which borders are marked also by time and space as against the ‘counter-phobic’ expression of geographical anxiety. This non-geographical construction lays claim to a utopian area, but seems to admit to the inevitability of blending with other geographical areas and to fluctuate with many more, though it may appear antithetical. However, this variant which refigures the border between the worldly and the non-worldly imagines the border as a place of crossing rather than division aiming at the spiritual transformation. The point that this utopian land is not an object or really a place that can be fixed in time makes it an act of narration with the desire to determine where it belongs. Since the poet is addressing her identity and belongingness to this land invested with divine authority, no geographical separation of the person from the main body of the land is involved and remains only a matter of religious etiquette. The mystical vachana tradition encompasses a wide range of religious opinion traceable to several schools of thought, including Sufi Islam, and much that is traceable to the individual’s own view is how she relates to God. The mystics hold this in common: God is hidden in the heart of man/woman and that neither priest nor prophet not the ritual of any organized religion will help him/ her to find the truth, and institutions of religion stand across the route, blocking the search. The search for God is one which everyone must carry out for himself/ herself. The vachana poets appear to us as the apostles of mysticism, offering to bridge the gap between the life here and beyond, speculating that this is just what the world needs from them. Neither decorous nor nuanced in their appearances,

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they remain a carefree people, a kind of selfless wanderers in search of an answer to the eternal question, ‘who we are’. Not owning any permanent home, they wander endlessly and rootlessly without bothering for life’s traditions and customs. Desire for an overwhelming freedom may appear an act of anachronism or it may seem that the mystic is at the wrong end of the philosophical stick, but she/he does not pretend to be an academician to express her/his theory behind symbols which she/ he profusely gathers from various sources to use in her/his songs.We are aware that the symbolic is a prominent category which Lacan proposes. For Lacan, “the Other must first of all be considered a locus in which speech is constituted, so that the Other as another subject is secondary to the Other as symbolic order”.14 However, there is no effort on the part of the mystics to dispel the mystery expressed through them. For the scriptures and the related discourses are, for them, impotent and trivial in comparison to the ever-expanding non textual/non spiritual approach, which ultimately expresses nothing less than the inner quest for truth. Most of the mystics are illiterate and belong mainly to lower-class Hindu and Muslim communities. Interestingly, in this journey as the Hindus have both teachers and students from the Muslim community so also do their Muslim counterparts. Though there are many divisions among them, there are also those who cut across these divisions to deny them vehemently and to travel the path which is comfortably non-mundane. This latter class does not pursue a theological approach in its sense of a binding belief or the performance of a creed; instead, their radical interests are in the idea of a relationship between appearance and essence. The divine in human and in every life has to be related. There is no redundancy in this. The intellectual discourses do not understand this connection and therefore this is redundant for them. That is why the mystic considers the text-less voice as the most authentic voice that does not belong to the domain of rhetoric and ideology. He claims that the spirit of love for truth allows him to keep the mundane at bay and agrees that this process is evolutionary. Steering a path between the mystical and the empirical, he explores the root for a paradigm that does not intend to be conventional; instead, it will offer a freedom which would extend into the world beyond the conventional and towards self-realization. This experience, he says, is ineffable while it can only be partially represented through a symbolic language. It may be of interest to note how this experience is expressed by singers from the mystical Baul tradition of Bengal. One of the Prominent Baul (mystic) singer and social reformer, Lalon Fakir had much influence on poets like Tagore, Nazrul Islam and even Allen Ginsberg.15 A Baul poet like Lalon says: ‘the goldsmith entered the flower garden and used his touchstone to test the flowers’. A person’s body for them is the edifice for her soul which becomes more and more impenetrable if the spirit of beauty and love do not dwell in it. In this context, we may note how the discussion on the relationship between beauty and morality in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (sec. 59) was provocative enough to encourage a whole generation of Romantics to assume a ‘beautiful soul’. Some critiques, however, are of the opinion that Kant really did not mean this; instead, what he said is that the ‘symbol’ does suggest some unknown (unbekannte)

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connection between the theoretical and the practical spheres and that such connection is implicit in the common language. For Kant, there is a realm that is unbounded, but that is also inaccessible to our entire cognitive power: the realm of the supersensible. In this realm we cannot find ourselves a territory on which to set up a domain of theoretical cognition, whether for the concepts of understanding or for those of reason.16 The contrast between the world described by theoretical reflection and the world experienced through the senses generate the essentially split world embodied in Kant’s distinction between noumenon and phenomenon. However, the route to the supersensible becomes experientially possible when the mystic poets take to the alternate mode of spiritual being that frustrates the rational when their experience stands revealed to itself and confronted by the absolute otherness of the world. The mystic’s travel to the state of the supersensible may be comparable to the position of Ernst Cassirer who wants to adapt the symbol to an epistemology which is unlike Kant’s standpoint. Cassirer is interested in clarifying the sense of an unknown but substantial connection that comes along with the symbol. He wants to put some empirical flesh on Kant’s ascetic subjectivism, transforming Kant’s merely analyzing symbol into a tool of understanding: man/ can realize only in the world, a world that is ‘pure expression of the human spirit expressing itself in symbols. In a lecture at the Warburg Library in1921, Cassirer clarifies saying: “By ‘symbolic’ form I mean that energy of the spirit through which a mental meaning-content is attached to a sensual sign and inwardly dedicated to this sign. In this sense language, the mythical religious world, and the arts each present us with a particular symbolic form. For in them all we see is the mark of the basic phenomenon, that our consciousness is not satisfied to simply receive impressions from outside, but rather that it permeates each impression with a free activity of expression. In what we call the objective reality of things we are thus confronted with a world of self-created signs and images”.17 It is interesting to see how with piercing boldness the symbols convey the thought that one must live constantly mindful of the presence of an inquisitive human spirit. This human spirit is the one thing with many subsets whose variance is not absolute but apparent, ultimately there is a ‘totality’ holding together the natural and the cultural.18 The bouncy vitalism of the mystic’s songs brings a sense of interconnected wonderfulness of everything that inspires life and its cosmic journey. Allamaprabhu’s vachana says: “Look here/the legs are two wheels/ the body is wagon/full of things,/five men drive the wagon/and one is not/like another./Unless you ride it/in full knowledge of it’s ways/the axle will break /O lord of caves”.19 The interconnectedness further explores the mystic’s rootedness with his spiritual being, which ensures that for all his life he would confess discipleship. For the success of the image of one’s pride in defeat, as evident in this vachana represented by the apparently redundant ‘wagon’, he says, one cannot be unprepared before riding it. Discovering it for oneself, he also speculates how it possesses a spiritual dissent. His achievement is not to give us a clearer idea of what he means by poetic beauty, but to demonstrate how symbols could be narrative enough to provide various stages in understanding the world that he wants

20  Meera Chakravorty

to communicate. The undaunted ego gets things wrong more viciously the more it tries to be authoritarian. Its failures might be comical because, however hard it tries, it does not see the world as it is. Or it might be unendingly painful because it always tries to see the world as it is even when it knows it cannot. There is no end of irony and brilliance and no end of a sense that an infinity of different egos lie out there beyond our grasp. Akka Mahadevi says: “Men and women/feel ashamed/ when a piece of cloth/defining their modesty/become loose./ When the Lord of Beings/remains drowned without a face/how can you be modest?/ The world is His eyes/looking everywhere/what can you possibly conceal?”20 The only solution out of this is love, the non-dogmatic universal before which one is not bothered by modesty but can only expect a reciprocated love. It’s just that such love is not likely to be entirely likable, except perhaps by people who are like these mystics who combine aspirations to God’s universal love with doubts regarding their own identities and a fascinated sense of their own singularity. This singularity may be an advantage as it leaves no room at all for religiosity and hostility to liberty. The mystics appear to have worked out their way of insistence on the universality of perfection and solidarity in the human world. This may be comparable with the 19th-century French mathematician and philosopher August Comte, the inventor of Positivism and Altruism and the ‘religion of humanity’, the influence of which in later years reflected in the emphasis on social science as human welfare rather than mere set of rules. Many will be skeptical about the mystics’ proposition of transcendental knowledge, but their influence could clearly be discovered in the humanistic and immanentist stands in other religious thoughts. This perspective of the mystic vachana poets is important in tracing the subsequent development of social change from mere charity and beneficence to the subtly altered ways in which these were reflected to be the means of social justice. Mere words may be the ‘engines’ of social change, as pointed out by Quentin Skinner, but the mystics will say that words may remould the concepts to which they refer.21 The reasons why some people later objected the language of altruism may be seen as evidence of how anew, wider dimension of intellectual and social change.This concept of social justice is more revealing in the context of the Darwinistic principle of the ‘Survival of the fittest’, but now the emphasis is changed to the survival for one and all and for the collective good, which is permeating to different disciplines and institutions to public policy making. Many disciplines have turned away from mere philanthropic attitude to focus on identity, recognition and representation.Yet the names of these mystic vachana poets are unknown to many whose lives and thoughts are impinged on by their perspectives. The mystic does not allow the creation of the basis for a conceptual system that is the very opposite of the emotional and metaphorical ones in every sense of the word. Thus, sometimes the distinction of the synthetic and the analytic of Kant appear to collapse in this poetry. However, the relationship between the mystic and the truth he seeks may not be always based on complete incorporation of one within the other. Gabriel Motzkin argues that the symbolic forms are not finally unified – there is no ‘collapsing into one world’, and human knowledge is not

Conversations across abstractions  21

finally integrated into the natural world – but the energy that works through history does seem to suggest greater and greater complexity in what Cassirer calls a ‘close fusion’ of history and system. The cognitive and the imaginative are brought together as symbols whose convergence it is the task of philosophy to demonstrate. In Language and Myth, he writes that symbols must be understood not in the sense of mere figures which refer to some given reality by means of suggestion and allegorical renderings, but in the sense of forces of each of which produces and posits a world of its own.22 The mystics speculate this through ‘space’ and ‘time’ in their journey. Exploring the concept of space, the mystic poets use different arguments that are executed with different degrees of success. If space appears as an original, formative power that energizes both the natural and the mythical, it also suggests a whole world/one world theory and also resistance. The terms used in different contexts are shunya/void, bayalu, akasha/space and kala/time. Chennabasavanna says: “The void assumed the form of a devotee/Brahma was born of his knowledge and wisdom/Vishnu, of his peace and patience/Rudra, of his ire. Let alone these three/ knowing that devotee/I say ‘Hail’ to him/O LordKudalachennabasavanna”.23 This void, an originally structured ‘spiritual reality’ assuming forms of ‘Brahma’, ‘Vishnu’ and ‘Rudra’ (each having an individual assignment to resist non-cooperation and carry out co-operatively for the odyssey of mind, which can operate only by ‘way of devoted work’), is significant.The devotee is hailed at the point of an enlightened development suggesting a continuing belief in the positive power of his devotion. She/he feels, she/he is given access to the intimate presence of God as she/he travels through a naturalistic world while simultaneously encountering this structure of space which is not just a geometry and which appears to function in this context as her/his transcendental habitat. Since objects cannot be inhabited, unlike the neutral space, it becomes the new hallway for the devotee to resort to without bothering about the symmetry and rhythm that an enclosed object possesses, nor getting disturbed by the smell, sound and colours of the landscapes, an understanding of what renders space meaningful through acts of losing his/her identity/subjectivity. It should be apparent how the idea of resistance is potentially present in the subjectivity when in a given social situation, the poet’s sayings can awaken in an individual something universal like social justice. In a similar way through a collective struggle which emerges from a collective subjectivity, there can be an affirmation of a collective action to express universal humanitarian concerns. It becomes an act of resistance through which a protest against people’s exclusion by the hegemony becomes not only possible but it also renders to create space for resistance against displacement as it happened with Gandhi in 1907. During his South African struggle, ultimately, the government had to repeal the law which required that the government registration certificates by the Indians had to be carried with them all times. Interestingly, Kant’s views on space is his ‘metaphysical exposition’ that appears to resonate tacitly the intellectual allegiance to some of the vachana mystics. Space, as he views is not a discursive or, as we say, universal concept of things as such; rather it is pure intuition. For, first, we can present only one space; and when we speak of

22  Meera Chakravorty

many spaces, we mean by that only parts of one and the same unique space. Nor, second, can these parts precede the one all-encompassing space as its constituents, as it were (from which it can be assembled); rather, they can be thought only as ‘in it’. Space is essentially one; the manifold in it, and hence also the universal concept of spaces as such, rests solely on (our bringing in) limitations.24 “You are the form of boundless space”25 says the vachana poet (Basavanna), where the affirmative and emancipatory moment is the ‘space’. In yet another description, the apparent givenness of spatial divisions – buildings, nations, continents etc. – are pure construct but can be open to deconstruction. When the concept of space favours identity over difference, the difference is engendered through a desire to participate in a primary mode of interaction, but when it sets forth into the realm of the unknown, the ‘contradictory other’ is no more there and the realm of space is transcendental The concept of void is symbolic in yet another dimension, which the mystic explores by re-inventing him/herself. One is supposed to' immolate' him/herself to generate him/herself anew and to realize that, through violent appetites of mortality, he/she may be led to the abstract beauty of the universe. The mystic believes that it represents the unity of consciousness, in other words, Lord Shiva himself, whom the mystic takes as ‘being there’ in its un-negotiable factuality while encouraging human creativity and spontaneity endlessly. He is engagingly open in his admission that God is deliverance, an instance of an exemplary achievement, however impossible it might appear as an ideal. This void is acceptable to the mystic as long as it passes through and does not go around the ‘logicist mill’ and is willing to make a space for silence. For him/her, the inherited ritualistic tradition seem like an encumbrance, as does the whole practice of rituals and other irrational behaviour. Hence, purging his/her way of life of all such baggage, he/she desires to embrace the void, the silence never to be apprehended in the empirical world – creating his/ her own narrative by listening to the same silence. In the poet’s words, it is like the wordlessness in word, which functions as a mechanism of both sensing a word and snatching moments from their contents, creating a framework for both the world’s temporary arrest and also for reflection It also emphasizes on individual spiritual development, “Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers/ things standing shall fall/ but the moving ever shall stay”.26 This silence is the real object of all mediation, it is thought/word itself and interestingly finds a parallel in Jean-Philippe Toussaint (2009) through the symbol of water/rain: “Rain seemed to me to represent the course of thought, transfixed for a second in the light and disappearing the very next second to give way to itself. For, what is the act of thinking – if it is not the act of thinking about something? It’s the flow of thought that is so beautiful, yes, the flow, and its murmur that travels beyond the world’s clamour. Word and silence go hand in hand like the water that falls on a still point and drops fall past it (like a strategy that does not convey any idea of finality), then following each drop as it moves ineluctably towards the ground (which demonstrates that motion, however, swift it may seem, tends essentially towards immobility and thus, however slowly it may sometimes appear to do so, to stop, towards restlessness. Life is a Heraclitan flow that thought/word constantly negotiating terms with time, tries to freeze-frame, however briefly, before releasing it once more to run its course into oblivion”.27

Conversations across abstractions  23

The mystics’ discourse on the pleasure of silence while going through their spiritual journey may well provide a cultural history of silence. Their discovery of silence as experience and timely is unique because silence is healing and is essential for the time in which we live. It is an imperative for our existential mode of being, an idea of perfectibility. The enlightened way-farer poet-humanists have questioned the hostile attitude of the society to people, maintaining the right to dissent and justifying the defence of freedom for all humans going against the conformist behaviour from across different strata of the society. It may not be inappropriate to use a modern terminology like the ‘enlightened humanism’ to attribute to the expressions of these poets considering their role in their respective movements and their attempt to construct a just society based on love. From the hermeneutics of conjecture to the belief in universal love, these poets appear to have changed the Cartesian claim of ‘I think, therefore I exist’ to ‘I love freedom therefore, I exist’.

Notes 1 The chapter is a modified version of the previously published article in Social Alternatives, Vol. 36:1:2017. 2 Basavanna, Basaveshwara (1134–1196), the prime minister of Kalachuri king Bijjala. 3 Bhusnoormath, S.R. 2005. Trans. (Hindi) 108, selected Vachanas of Akkamahadevi. B’lore, Basava Samiti. 4 Rice, E.P. 1921. Kannada Literature. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services. 1982. p. 56. 5 Bhakti Movement: The Bhakti movement refers to the theistic devotional trend practiced by devotees who are wayfarers and many of them are also poets. It is said to have emerged in the medieval Hinduism in the southern India and then spread in other parts. From 12th to 18th century it was a prominent but silent struggle by many such poets who raised their voice against injustice in their own time and place. In their sayings, poetry and songs, they have repeatedly advocated for universal humanism. Some of the most prominent among them are Kabir, Meerabai, Tulsi, Akkamahadevi, Basaveshwara, Siddharama and so on. (See A.K. Ramanujan. 1973. Speaking of Shiva. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Classics. J.P. Schouten. 1991. The Revolution of Mystics on the social aspects of Virasaivism. Kampen: KOk Pharos Publishing House.) 6 M.M. Kalburgi. Ed. 2012. Vachanas.Trans. Meera Chakravorty. Bangalore: Basava Samithi. p. 263. 7 Devadevan, Manu V. 2016. A Prehistory of Hinduism. Karnataka: Prasaranga, Hampi University. p. 8. Also Cf. Ayyappa K. Panikar. 2003. Studying the Narrative Literature of India.Vol iii (May-June), Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA). 8 Occupy Movement: Occupy Wall Street movement was a protest movement (September 17, 2011) in Zuccotti Park, located in New York city’s Wall Street financial district against the wealth inequality, political corruption and corporate influence on government (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org). 9 Makokis Janice Alison (2008). ‘Learning Self-Determination Through The Sacred’, Canada. Canadian Women Studies, vol. 26. No. 3, 4,York University Publication. 10 Ibid., p. 41. 11 Ibid., p. 44. 12 See Tim Whitmarsh 2016. Battling the Gods: Atheism in Ancient World. UK: Faber & Faber. 13 “We shall Overcome” is a gospel song which became a protest song of the Civil rights Movement. Lynskey, Dorian. 2011. 33 Revolutions per Minute. London, UK: Faber and Faber. p. 33. 14 Lacan, J. 1955–56. The Seminar. Book iii.The Psychoses, 1955–1956.Trns. by Russell Grigg. New York: W.W. Norton and Company (1997).

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15 Urban, Hugh B. 2001. Songs of Ecstasy, Tantric and Devotional Songs from Colonial Bengal. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 18. 16 Immanuel Kant. 1892. Kant’ Critique of Judgment, Trns. by J.H. Bernard (1914) (2nd ed.). London: McMillon. Critique of Judgment 14. 17 See Verene, Donald Phillip. Ed. 1981. Symbol, Myth and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer. 1935–1945.Yale University Press. 18 Simpson, David. 2009. A Positive Future. UK: London Review of Books. March. 19 Ramanujan, A.K. 1973. Speaking of Shiva India: Penguin Classics. p. 149. 20 Chaitanya, Vinaya. 2005. Vachanas of Akka Mahadevi. Trns. Songs for Shiva.UK: AltaMitra Press. p. 34. 21 Dixon, Thomas, M. 2008. The Invention of Altruism: Making Moral Meanings in Victorian Britain. British Academy, Oxford University Press. 22 Simpson 2009. 23 Vachanas, p. 165. 24 Scruton, Roger. 2001. Kant: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 42. 25 Virupakshappa, B. 2005. Selected Vachanas of Basavanna. Bangalore: Basava Samiti. 26 Ramanujan, p. 19. 27 Toussaint, Jean-Philippe. 2009. Camera, Trns. by Matthew B. Smith. Illinois. Dalkey Archive Press. p. 82–83.

3 “WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS THIS THAT AN OLD WOMAN UNDERSTANDS BETTER THAN A LEARNED MAN?”1 Hacking special knowledge in late medieval Europe, a provocation Francesca Bussey The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space, that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enable me to see myself there where I am absent. That is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back towards myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am.The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through the virtual point which is over there. (Foucault, 1986, p. 24) In Paris around 1250 CE the poet Lamprecht of Regensburg was alarmed by news of women who were able to discuss religious ideas with a better grasp of the subtleties than professional male ecclesiastics: “Knowledge” he wrote “has in our days sprung up among women in Brabant and Bavaria. Lord God, what knowledge is this that an old woman understands better than a learned man?” (Newman, 1997, p. 137). Lamprecht explained that this skill, which he called kunst (meaning knowledge or art), was the result of women’s “soft hearts and simple senses” along with their natural affinity for Fin Amour or Love Mysticism which they embodied in their religious expressions (Newman, 1997). Whatever comfort Lamprecht may have derived from this casual misogyny, it is clear that he was not alone in his concern

26  Francesca Bussey

about this assault on the male ownership of knowledge. By the early fourteenth century, proponents had been reviled as dangerous to the faith, excommunicated and in one case at least, burned at the stake. The present chapter considers the role of ‘special knowledge’ in moments of broad social change by exploring the history of religious women in the later Middle Ages. It describes how medieval women were responsible for a rupture in the ownership of knowledge and considers the context and origins of this in the vibrant urban environments of the Low Countries. It explores how the environment in which this took place supported a new confidence in the interpretation and transformation of religious discourse and traces the way this knowledge ‘went viral’ – resulting in the violent corrections of 1310. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the significance of ‘special knowledge’ in this context – not in terms of a textual reading of the often highly esoteric work of the women writers it presents, but in terms of how this heterotopic moment might speak to us in our contemporary sphere, emboldened, enriched and enveloped by an abundance of knowledge as never before. In a sense then, this chapter explores a period in history in which women ‘hacked’ into the knowledge mainframe of male ecclesiastics and how that hacking resulted in special knowledge ‘going viral’. It is a provocation of sorts in that it explores one rupture in the hegemonic ‘ownership’ of knowledge, and asks how this might inform our understanding of societies in transformation. What happens when hitherto secret knowledge goes viral? What do societies do with the discomfort of liminality? What insights can it provide us as we transition more deeply into the digital age?

Women as knowledge hackers and knowledge makers in late medieval Europe It is not so very strange that Lamprecht was concerned by women’s outspokenness in religious discourse – men had traditionally been positioned as the primary ‘owners’ of such knowledge, with substantial careers built around patriarchal expertise in matters of religion. Indeed, power and religion are inextricable in the medieval context. The economy of salvation was more than just a theological notion, it was what medieval people aspired to – the alternative being so richly drawn as to terrorise even the most stout-hearted. But, from the eleventh century, increasing numbers of men and women, disillusioned with the exclusivity of the church and attracted by alternative religious ideas, began to retreat from the traditional church (Lerner, 1972; Moore, 1977; Cohn, 2005). This retreat culminated after 1250 with increasing attempts by the ecclesiastical hierarchy at widespread suppression (Wakefield and Evans, 1991; Lerner, 1972; Moore, 1977). Heretical groups, such as the Cathars, were suppressed viciously by the crusaders in Languedoc and hounded almost out of existence by persistent persecution. The Albigensians were ‘clearly doomed’ and the Waldenses survived extinction not so much through lack of inquisitorial attention, as through

“What knowledge is this?”  27

anonymity and quiet perseverance (Wakefield and Evans, 1991). The mendicant orders had obtained public favour, preaching in open arenas and in familiar tongues, only to be forced to deal with controversy from both within the orders themselves and in the form of criticism from the church. Similarly, semi-regular associations of men and women became linked with the spread of heresy and drew increasing disfavour and suspicion. Despite these threats to extra-clerical religious expression, women become increasingly visible, at times in the most sensationalistic of ways: Christina Mirabilis (1150–1254) hunched in a tree, suckling from her own virginal breasts; Marie d’Oignes (1177–1213) sliced off portions of her body and buried them; Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) drank leper water, gagged on a scab and claimed it sweet as communion (Bynum, 2010, 2012). Mediated through the pens of their male amanuenses (respectively, Jacques de Vitry, Thomas de Cantimpre and Brother Arnaldo) these highly somatic displays of religiosity are shadowed by elements of the kunst that Lamprecht was so alarmed by and which their hagiographers were unable to grasp. For example, in composing Angela’s biography, Brother A notes that: In truth, I could grasp so little which I could then write regarding [Angela’s divine secrets] that I considered and perceived myself to be like a sieve or sifter which does not retain the fine and precious flour, but only the most coarse. . . . And this will show the extent to which I was incapable of grasping her divine words except in the roughest manner: once, when I was writing the words just as I understood them straight from her own mouth, and I was reading back to her the words I had written so that she could continue her dictation, she told me in amazement that she did not recognise them. And another time when I was reading back to her so that she could see if I had written correctly, she replied that my expression was dry and insipid; it astonished her. Another time she put it this way: “Your words remind me of what I said to you, but the writing is quite obscure because the words you read to me do not convey the intended meaning; for that reason your writing is obscure”. Similarly, another time she said: “What is inconsequential and meaningless you have written, while concerning the precious experience of my soul, you have written nothing”. (Cited in Mooney, pp. 40–41) Fashioned as pin-up girls for an enhanced vita apostolica, any hint of kunst remained absent in their respective vitae. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the presence of miraculous women became part of the religious landscape of the later Middle Ages, giving rise to what McGinn has dubbed the flowering of female religiosity (2011). In contrast to these male-mediated stories of female religiosity, the period marks the growth of self-authored works by women who, in the tradition of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) and Beatrice of Nazareth (1200–1268), wrote of an intense relationship with God mediated through specific modes of understanding. Hadewijch of Antwerp (mid-thirteenth century), Mechthild of Magdeburg (1209–1282)

28  Francesca Bussey

and Marguerite Porete (–1310), composed very dense and subtle texts that were widely disseminated and discussed. Hadewijch wrote in the tradition of Brautmystik or Bride Mysticism, but with her own particular approach to the Cistercian turn, weaving in and out of French, German and Latin and drawing on the Song of Songs: And when she was led thus to the high seat . . . the eagle . . . said: “Now see through the Countenance, and become the veritable bride of the great Bridegroom, and behold yourself in this state!” And in that very instance I saw myself received in union by the One who sat there in the abyss upon the circling disc, and there I became one with him in the certainty of unity. Then the eagle said, when I was received: “Now behold, all-powerful one, whom I previously called the loved one, that you did not know all you should become, and what your highest ways was, and what the great kingdom was that you as bride should receive from your Bridegroom. When previously you fell down before the Countenance, you, like an ordinary soul, confessed it as frightening. When you stood up and contemplated it, you saw yourself perfect, together with us, a veritable bride, sealed with love”. . . . In that abyss I saw myself swallowed up.Then I received the certainty of being received, in this form, in my Beloved, and my Beloved also in me. (Hadewijch and Columba Hart, 1981, p. 296) Using a similar form of bridal mysticism, Mechthild wrote in low German – she was the first mystic to do so – her The Flowing Light of the Godhead moving across several stages of spiritual development, using poetry, drama and courtly prose to communicate the ineffable and a return to origins that was to echo in Marguerite’s work: The sweet dew of the eternal trinity gushed forth from the fountain of the everlasting Godhead into the flower of the chosen maid . . . under this immense force she loses herself/ In this most dazzling light she becomes blind in herself/ And in this utter blindness she sees most clearly. . . . “What are you made of, Soul, that you ascend so high above all creatures, mingle with the Holy Trinity, and yet remain whole in yourself?”/ “You have brought up the question of my origin. I shall tell you honestly: I was made by love in that very place. For that reason no creature is able to give comfort to my noble nature or to open it up except love alone. (Mechthild and Tobin, 1998, p. 49–50) Together they constitute the foundational works of what Newman calls, La mystique courtoise “a distinctive creation of the thirteenth century beguines, not just a pretty new bottle for the same old wine” (Newman, 1997, p. 137). To enrich this already evocative blend, Marguerite broke new ground with her Mirror of Simple Souls, embellishing the mystique courtoise with a highly complex,

“What knowledge is this?”  29

sometimes inscrutable, rendering of ineffability expressed as an annihilation of the human experience of the divine – which many believe Eckhart drew from ­(Hollywood, 1995; McGinn, 2001). Called ‘a happening’ by Lerner (1972, p. 1) and ‘a wonder and an inspiration’ (Lerner, 1972, p. 1) by Peter Dronke, The Mirror of Simple Souls is one of the most important vernacular religious works of the period. The Mirror describes seven stages of individual transformation in which Marguerite’s central protagonist, Soul, embarks upon a journey fraught with dispute (between Love and Reason, for example), with despair brought by self-knowledge and with the agony of attempting to express the inexpressible. The interior suffering of Marguerite’s protagonist is validated by a growing recognition of an inner relationship between humanity and God that culminates in Soul ascending from the ‘abyss’ of despair and self-knowledge (in the fifth stage) to utter freedom and absorption in God (in the sixth). God sees Himself in her by His divine majesty, who clarifies this Soul with Himself, so that she sees only that there is nothing except God Himself Who is, from whom all things are. . . . And so the soul is at the sixth stage, freed, and pure and clarified from all things – but not at all glorified. For the glorification is at the seventh stage, which we will have in glory, of which none know how to speak. But this Soul, thus pure and clarified, sees neither God nor herself. . . . God shows to her that that there is nothing except Him. And thus this Soul understands nothing except Him, and so loves nothing except Him, praises nothing except Him, for there is nothing except Him. (Porete trans Babinsky,The Mirror, p. 193) This divine knowledge is achieved only momentarily, however; what glimpses of divinity have been achieved can never be sustained until the moment of death. Despite this disappointment, the soul has experienced divinity at close hand and is transformed: Marguerite’s protagonist has merged with God; the temporal and the spiritual have met and so humanity has been shown to experience God in this life. There are a number of commonalities linking Hadewijch, Mechthild and Marguerite.The first is their use of the vernacular, highly unusual for a period in which the liturgy and the sermon were delivered in Latin. The second is their articulation of the mystique courtoise and the motifs and literary applications associated with this – dialogues, poetry, dreamscapes, liturgical phrasing and the aforementioned annihilation (Newman, 1997; Beer, 1992). The third commonality lies in the use of negative theology: namely, the annihilation of the soul in the divine, which Southern has identified as that aspect of medieval humanism defined by the belief that humans could go a long way on this earth towards union with God (1970, p. 30–60). Taken together, these commonalities suggest not only a reflection on their personal experiences and philosophies, but also a desire to transform others – to teach of the possibility of a privileged relationship with God. More, these works were intended for a broad audience, not just the spiritual elite. This is significant

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because the act of writing is in itself a desire not only to document, or to meditate and reflect, but also to share special knowledge, knowledge that had hitherto been held firmly in the hands of the male religious elite. This unauthorised hacking into the mainframe of salvation cannot be underestimated in the context of a society steeped in the desire for a reprieve from damnation, and it serves as the overarching link between the women writers we explore here. Key to this is the fourth commonality: all three were labelled beguines at a time when beguines were viewed by the clergy with consternation. Beguines, along with their male equivalents, beghards, undertook lives of contemplation and religious discourse without taking any formal vows.2 McGinn explains that: beguines constituted a strange transitional form between the ecclesiastical orders of the day, never belonging to the monastic community of religiosi, since it was not an approved order. . . [nor] . . . the lay world of sæculares, since beguines had left the sæculum, sworn chastity and led a vita religiosa. (2011, 78) Beguines worked in the ‘world’ as labourers, traders and teachers, and moved between roles with ease: whether quietly living a life devoted to chastity, prayer, and service in their own homes; actively and publicly seeking to convert others to live a more “perfect” Christian life; or taking up residency in a beguine community. (Miller, 2014, p. 1) This ambiguity meant that beguines were, and are, difficult to pin down, defying, as Miller points out, the binary categories of religious or lay, active or contemplative (Miller, 2014, p. 1). Indeed, they seem at pains to reinforce this ambiguity, distinguishing themselves from their ecclesiastical counterparts quite deliberately and with the sting of critique. In the Compilatio singularis exemplorum (1279–1297) for example, most likely the work of a Dominican friar, we read a beguines response to a grilling she received from a Parisian Master of theology: You talk, we act. You learn, we seize. You inspect, we choose.You chew, we swallow.You bargain, we buy. You glow, we take fire.You assume, we know.You ask, we take. You search, we find.You love, we languish.You languish, we die.You sow, we reap. You work, we rest. You grow thin, we grow fat.You ring, we sing. You sing, we dance.You dance, we jump. You blossom, we bear fruit.You taste, we savour. (Simons, 2003, p. 131)

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This deliberate differentiation, with all the sublimity of a drink of water in a desert, is interesting because it helps to explain the ‘spread’ of beguines across Europe (Grundmann, 2005) – it sets in concrete the growing dissatisfaction and frustration with the clergy and appeals to the possibility of ‘savouring’ the divine in this life. Indeed, the ability to experience a ‘taste’ of God in this life, to be annihilated in God, is a compelling motif in Marguerite’s work and finds company in the works of Hadewijch, Mechthild and Eckhart amongst others (McGinn, 2011; Watson, 1996, 1991). With possible links to negative theology and the Heresy of the Free Spirit, this is especially significant because it offers something profound to the living: more than the priests could offer, and more than purgatorial payments could deliver. Given that it required considerable dedication and, as Marguerite warned, little chance of success, it nevertheless disrupted the narrative of the Church as the primary conduit to God. This was extremely attractive to the medieval audience and, as with the tradition of the vita apostolica, was to spread rapidly through western Europe. In this way, it is suggestive of something akin to the modern notion of ‘going viral’ – without, of course, the benefit of modern transmission services, yet akin to the notion of an idea or ideas that are spread organically outside of formal channels (we will come back to this later). Lambrecht’s anxiety about kunst is inextricably linked to a more generalized anxiety about shifts in the loci of religious power, with women central to this unease. By the late twelfth century, this anxiety had turned to outright hostility – particularly towards beguines whose affiliates in Paris were increasingly the objects of suspicion in the tumultuous politics of the period. In 1274 Guibert of Tournai warned Pope Gregory XI that: There are among us women who are called beguines and certain of them strive in subtlety and rejoice in novelty. They have interpreted the mysteries of the scriptures and publicly in the French idiom, which yet men expert in Holy Scripture can scarce penetrate. They read them together, irreverently, boldly, in groups, in gangs, in the squares. I myself have seen, read and have a French bible, an example of which is placed publicly at the stationers in Paris for copying. The heresies and errors, the dubious and absurd interpretations, which are contained in these, the smallness of this paper cannot cover, rather the large capacity of the ears scarce hears these filthy things with sobriety. If the disease takes hold, as many scandals will arise as there are listeners, as many blasphemies as there are streets. (Miller, 2014, p. 138) Shortly thereafter, Marguerite, whilst explicitly distinguishing herself from beguines,3 was named a beguine clergesse and burned for heresy in the Place de la Greve on June 1, 1310. Then, at the 1311–1312 Council of Vienne, the decrees Ad nostrum and Cum de quisbusdam mulieribus excommunicated the beguine movement, marking the culmination of a half a century of institutional attempts to “curb . . . the baneful influence of semireligious societies” (McDonnell, 1969, p. 521).

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The overt visibility of women who actively disrupted not only the entrenched theocratic protocols of the period, but also the ownership of divine knowledge, constituted a rupture in the authority of religious knowledge in the period. Whilst it is tempting to explain the hostility directed at women in the period as being the result of your garden variety misogyny, the extremity of the responses suggests it was more than this. One key to this lies in the widespread commentary against lay preaching, which also took in, it seems, generalised public discourse on matters of the faith. If we cast our minds back to Guibert’s report, and his reference to public and open engagement with religious texts and ideas, we will remember that he specifically singled out the discussion of religious knowledge “irreverently, boldly, in groups, in gangs, in the squares” (Miller, 2014, p. 138). Guibert’s hyperbole and his tone of admonition brings to mind here roving subversives marauding through the streets reeking of danger and madness. Indeed, the Cum de quisbusdam tells of: certain women. . . as if having been led into insanity, dispute and preach about the highest Trinity and the divine essence and introduce opinions contrary to the Catholic faith concerning the articles of the faith and the sacraments of the church.They lead many simple people who are deceived in such things into various errors, and they do and commit much else under the veil of sanctity that occasions danger to souls. (McDonnell, 1969, p. 524, my emphasis) The accusation of unsanctioned preaching here was very serious, particularly when women were the ones doing the preaching. Somewhere between 1179 and 1202, Alan of Lille linked lay preaching to heresy, saying that, “If it is a dangerous thing for wise and holy men to preach, it is most dangerous for the uneducated who do not know what should be preached”(Wakefield and Evans, 1991, p. 219). Accordingly, for women (who were for the most part excluded from the medieval academy), Lille cites scripture, saying this: ‘Let women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted them to speak . . . If they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home’ [first epistle to the Corinthians] . . . ‘I suffer not a woman to teach nor to use authority over the man’ [first epistle to Timothy]. (Wakefield and Evans, 1991, p. 219) In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council had cast anathema on anyone who attempted to preach without the authority of the church, a concern consistently reiterated by a variety of synods and councils (Trier 1277 and Eichstatt 1284, for example). In 1234 Gregory IX withheld the privilege of preaching from abbesses and Johannes Teutonicas’ Decreta proclaimed that women could neither preach nor exercise any public functions (Ward and Bussey, 1997, p. 201). The long slow burn of female religious engagement, with apologies to Marguerite for the pun, that culminated in her burning and the decrees of the 1311–1312

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Council of Vienne can thus be seen as a final, decisive and violent correction to the viral nature of special knowledge particular to the period. But what was the genesis of this? How did kunst disperse beyond the monastery and the university? How was it that these women, including their associates the beguines, come to engage in public discourse about special knowledge? One key to this may well lie in the Low Countries, where Hadewijch was based, where Marguerite (who was from Hainault) is likely to have been most active and with whom Mechthild’s city of Magdeburg frequently traded. Which brings us to the final commonality between our three women writers – their connection to a society where trade and the rise of the merchant classes combined to create vibrant urban centres in which the emergence of new ways of engaging with knowledge, including special knowledge, flourished.

The low countries The medieval Low Countries spanned an area roughly encompassing the presentday Netherlands and Belgium. In the late medieval period, the area experienced both strong population growth and an increase in urbanisation – so much so that, as that Bevel reports, it was “the most densely populated and urban region of Europe, equalling or even overtaking the north of Italy in these respects” (2016, p. 5).These thriving urban environments spawned a new class that possessed wealth and unprecedented levels of literacy, both in the vernacular languages and in rudimentary Latin. Emerging concurrently with what Chenu has called an evangelical awakening (1968, p. 203) the tradition of the vita apostolica (life of the apostles) gained ascendancy. Women were not excluded from this tradition; rather, women constituted an important nexus of this new religious fervour (Bynum, 2010, 2012; Beer, 1992; Hollywood, 1995). Along with this increased lay and strongly female religiosity came an increased engagement with urban life, which was partly a result of the changing structure and the level of economic contribution of the family unit. As Howell explains, the roles women embraced in the medieval period were extremely diverse and dependent on “the function of the family production unit during the development of the market economy” (Howell, 1986, p. 654).There was a marked difference between women’s roles in different parts of Europe. Whilst Southern European families tended to be large, sprawling, multi-generational units, a typical Low Countries’ family consisted of a married couple with two or three children (Simons, 2003, p. 8). Thirteenthcentury women also married later than their counterparts in the South. The average age of marriage in the Low Countries was about twenty-seven for both men and women (Simons, 2003, p. 1–34). Whilst southern European men also married in their late twenties, it was to women some ten or more years younger. This picture of the young wife married off to an older husband has become the popular stereotype of the household in the Middle Ages, as has the notion of highly restricted educational and vocational opportunities for women. However, within smaller domestic units, such as those that were predominant in the Low Countries,

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the opportunities for independence and cultural expression were greater. Importantly, the sprawling family units such as those in the south had numerous dependents under the one roof, resulting in a greater financial and domestic burden. For women, this profoundly impacted leisure, hierarchy within the family structure (power) and access to the wider urban environment. In the Low Countries, the demands on women shifted away from servicing the needs of multiple dependents and negotiating hierarchies towards shared engagement with the community and with customers, suppliers and traders so as to contribute to the economy of the family. Women were not restricted only to household duties, but became active ‘stakeholders’ in the urban environment at both an economic and social level through learning and participation in the production of goods and services Ellen Kittell and Mary Suydam point out that the commonly understood notion that medieval society was structured around a public/private dichotomy in which women were relegated to the private sphere is not a useful method for assessing all areas (2004, p. xi–xxiv). In the Low Countries, women appear to have been both integrated “at almost all levels” (Kittell and Suydam, 2004, p. xix) and better off financially. A more progressive approach to property rights meant that women had greater recourse to finance and, with this, independence. As Howell explains: Husbands and wives belonging to northern European family economies pooled their property, and in northern European cities frequently did so following some version of community property law. Accordingly, assets acquired after the marriage were treated as the joint property of both spouses; the survivor of the marriage inherited at least half of the property, and could use it as he or she wished, and often had lifetime rights to the usufruct of any communal property they did not inherit. (Howell, 1986, p. 14) This must have been particularly significant for women, especially widows, and for those interested in pursuing religious activities and recording and transmitting religious ideas, even more so (Kittell and Suydam, 2004, p. 79–108). In part, women’s freedom in the urban environments of the Low Countries was brought about both by economic precocity and weak feudal and episcopal government. The textile industry, for example, was extremely prosperous and exported as far afield as Russia. The Peruzzi and the Bardi, major Italian banking houses, had branches in Bruges, and Ypres and Ghent were renowned as major centres of trade and commerce (Kittell and Suydam, 2004, p. xii). This helps to explain the high level of traffic in the region, with trade and tourism representing important features of the social strata. Magdeberg, Mechthild’s last residence, is listed as an important trading partner. In addition to this, the divisions of principalities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant that allegiances were theoretically neither French nor German, and this created both contest from external powers and moves towards independence from cities (Kittell and Suydam, 2004, p. xii). Further, Simons has

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shown that episcopal governance in the area was fractured by a lack of supervision brought about by geographic dislocation and this was furthered by shifting feudal allegiances which resisted elements of religious reform (2003, p. 12). Educational opportunities for women in the Middle Ages were not as limited as once thought. Rather, there were diverse opportunities that were both formal and informal and, in some cases, encouraged. Recognition of this has taken time because whilst we have a plethora of texts that inform us of the institutional education of men, of instructional manuals for cloistered women and behavioural instruction for elite women, informal education has left little textual residue. Instead, scholars have tended to rely on the notion that education can only be apprehended in terms of formal and credentialed outcomes, chiefly achieved in an institutional setting. However, as Anneke Mulder-Bakker (2000) and O’Sullivan (2006) have pointed out, this definition does not account for the many informal ways in which women acquired knowledge in the later Middle Ages. Mulder-Bakker points to the importance of spiritual guidance grounded in a form of female ‘mentorship’, developed through access and transmission of texts, and she explores the importance of anchoresses and nuns to the spiritual education of women in the period. Similarly, O’Sullivan argues that educational opportunities for women were “typically gained in informal settings under the tutelage of someone more experienced” (2006, p. 4), and she emphasises that these settings were frequently the domain of beguine communities. This does not mean, however, that public education was not provided in the period. Simons points out that, starting in the twelfth century, wealthy merchants of the Low Countries made a successful challenge to the Church monopoly of education and introduced secular schools (2003, p. 8). The result was the provision of literacy for boys and girls4 across the classes and “it was not uncommon for the city to provide [education] for free to those . . . who were unable otherwise to afford it” (Simons, 2003, p. 8). Writing featured in the curricula of all merchant-established educational environments including reading and writing in both basic Latin and the vernaculars, which generally in this region encompassed nascent Dutch and French (Simons, 2003, p. 5 and 8). As with later responses to economic change, such as the Industrial Revolution, this can be considered largely as a response to new demands for reasonable levels of literacy and numeracy from the populace. An “intense traffic of people, goods and ideas” (Simons, 2003, p. 4) made the Low Countries incredibly energetic urban environments in which extra-regular religious activity and high levels of public interest in religious notions were rife (Kittell, 2004, p. 11). Travellers to the area noted in the mid-sixteenth century that “everyone could read and write” (Simons, 2003, p. 7), and some were alarmed that there were women in the area who were “able to discuss intellectual subtleties, like wise doctors” (Kittell, 2004, p. xii). This environment meant that norms governing “distinctions between male and female, religious and lay, did not so much define as describe” (Kittell, 2004, p. xiii). Instead, public and private were fluidly engaged with and the public realm became the centre of urban life in which both the

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business of living and the business of religious engagement were played out. This signals a further heterogeneity between literacy and orality, a blurring of boundaries that mark the region as particularly precocious. Kittell and Suydam believe that this combination of features affected community norms to the extent that “neither gender nor religious affiliation strictly limited anyone to a particular sphere of action” and that “life was played out in an oral-aural space, routinely accessible to the community at large. By the thirteenth century, custom had come to enshrine a clear distrust of anything smacking of the hidden” (2004, p. xiii). In particular, it created an environment in which people (men and women) were able to experiment with religious ideas and were likely to bring those ideas into the public realm. Indeed, what appears to mark out the Low Countries, and in particular Liège, is that by about 1177, lay men and women of Liège formed communities of readers who . . . acquired instruments to re-evaluate the basis of Christian religion, and to practice [sic] it without much regard for current ecclesiastical legislation. (Simons, 2003, p. 30. My emphasis) The case of Lambert La Begue (1120/1135–1177), for example, is evidence of the early and intense interest lay men and women had in the Scriptures and the Acts of the Apostles. Lambert was active in Liège and was imprisoned around 1175 under suspicion of heresy. He escaped prison after numerous written appeals to anti-Pope Calixtus III and applied in person to Calixtus’ court.The defence he mounted there is detailed and reveals much about his followers, whom Lambert describes as an ordered and devoted phalanx who spend the Holy days “reflecting upon what they heard in church and urging one another to practice it” (Lambert, cited in Simons, 2003, p. 30). Lambert’s detailed responses to his accusers function, Simons argues, as proof of the reformist precocity of the Low Countries, demonstrating a tradition of interest and engagement in religious matters that was intensely social (Simons, 2003, p. 30). We can see clearly here evidence of a particularly social religious literacy, as well as tension between ecclesiastical rule and religious reform. This was to develop further as subsequent centuries ensued, and, by the early fourteenth century, it had become a defining aspect of the region (Dor, 1999). By the time Marguerite was writing her Mirror, therefore, she was most likely doing so in a community that had a long tradition of engagement with religious themes going far beyond acceptance of clerical governance and one that saw reform, critique and challenge as accepted modes of religious activity. Moreover, she was doing so in an environment that allowed women increased participation in both community and religiosity and a measure of financial independence, and she was in an accepted environment for vigorous discussion of religious themes expressed “irreverently, boldly, in groups, in gangs, in the squares”.Was it any wonder then that kunst flourished in this environment? And the more cynical amongst us might add, was it any wonder that those in power responded with such force and such hostility?

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Conclusions The history we have charted here marks a period of possibility in which multiple voices emerged in contradistinction to church authority. The condemnation of Marguerite and the excommunication of the beguines represents that moment in which those multiple possibilities were violently silenced. Foucault would call this a heterotopic moment in which possibility erupted and disturbed the trajectory of social life: his point being that the present is just one possible arrangement that results from the victory of one discourse over another – such victories are inevitably violent and inevitably ephemeral or unstable. As a heterotopic moment, then, the history we have canvassed represents the point at which the contest over special knowledge resulted in a violent correction to the threat of disruption. Somewhere between the spaces and the places Foucault speaks of, the special knowledge enacted and articulated by Marguerite, Mechthild, Hadewijch and the beguines, as well as that embodied in the vitae of their sisters, came to occupy that ambiguous realm between space and place, between body and word. This is what Lamprecht was so unsettled by – kunst, the knowledge of women, unshackled from the performance of desire, resistance and authority, yet reflecting much of the utopia of the theological dream. As such, kunst reflects Foucault’s mirror, which Cenzatti explains stands between: the non-place of utopias where society forms perfected images of itself and heterotopias that are counter-spaces, or scenes where otherwise disconnected elements coexist . . . a space of comparison between the virtual image in the mirror and the image of the self, comparison between an image of utopia and dystopia, the past and the present, the outline over there and the details up close . . . this ‘other’ space reflected in the mirror, is a relationship of power that determines, shapes or moulds the subject as it folds back on itself to form itself in a perceived likeness. (Cenzatti, 2008) In kunst, therefore, in the special knowledge of women, we are betwixt and between in more ways than one. Between space and place, male and female, ease and dis-ease, oppressor and oppressed, the old feudal world and the new emergent one. And we are also between the hacker and the hacked. And in the layering of the present across the past, in disturbing history with the classifications of contemporary meanings, we too create a heterotopia. A space wherein the distant mirror (with a nod to Tuchman) speaks tantalisingly to our own preoccupations.This disturbs the “the historian’s usual empirical reserve to consider phenomena common to ‘every culture, every civilization’ ” (Cenzatti, 2008, p. 749), as Foucault was more than aware. But perhaps this is not to be resisted. Perhaps there is something productive to be found in this counter-space, which Foucault explains is: well recognised by children. Certainly, it’s the bottom of the garden; it’s the Indian tent erected in the middle of the attic; or still, it’s . . . on their parent’s

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bed where they discover the ocean, as they can swim between the covers, and the bed is also the sky, or they can bounce on the springs; it’s the forest as they can hide there; or still, it’s night as they can become ghosts between the sheets and, finally, it’s the fear and delight of their parents coming home. (trans. Johnson, 2016) It allows an opportunity to ‘play’ – to harness the historical imagination in unusual ways. Hence, we see hacking where before we saw influence, viral knowledge where before we see movements. And this perhaps is fruitful when we consider what this might tell us about heterotopic moments arising in the context of present-day anxiety around information, knowledge and the enveloping digital world (Floridi, 2014). Like Christine de Pizan, who filched “scraps and flakes, small coins and bits of change, that have fallen from the great wealth my father had” in order to build her knowledge (Mulder-Bakker, 2000, p. 654), Hadewijch, Mechthild and Marguerite engaged with religious knowledge in the context of communities actively engaged with what was then highly charged, significant religious knowledge – akin to the significance of politics in the present day. We know with some certainty that these communities were based in the Low Countries. In making sense of this knowledge and in the context of their own experiences, each woman imbued their take on special knowledge with cultural touchstones that resonated with the search for ‘truth’ in the context of the temporal – the struggle to express the inexpressible and communicate their understanding of divine knowledge. This bricolage was to result in a totally new form of mysticism as Newman has shown us, assembled from the scraps and flakes of the knowledge they hacked. Emboldened by the communities of the Low Countries, and indeed developed and nurtured in this strikingly new prototype of the urban mercantile society, kunst went viral – morphing and altering in its progression as traditions of cultural expression are want to do. From Hadewijch’s more leaden treatment with all its biblical undertones through to Beatrice of Nazareth’s effusive and celebrated sobs and ultimately to Marguerite’s artful and maddening complexities, this special knowledge was at its core an expression of power – power to wield and make knowledge that carried with it the peak currency of its time: salvation and more, a glimpse of the afterlife in this life. Presented in different ways, through self-authored texts and hagiographical vitae, this new version of the old bottle of wine (pace Newman) allowed for hope and possibility in a language that spoke to all – not through the feudal motif of exchange for services, but through an enhanced inclusivity reflecting the flattening social structure of the Low Countries. In as much then as this chapter charts the role of knowledge in the medieval women’s religious movement, it reinforces the notion that the present, and by extension the future, is just one possible arrangement that results from the victory of one discourse over another. But it is also perhaps illuminating as, like the medieval societies we explored, our own societies are undergoing transitions – the digital world is rapidly enveloping us, as Floridi would say, and the distributed learning that we find at the core of special knowledge comes to us now through

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the virtual spaces of the internet. Knowledge is, in our days, springing forth from unexpected areas. It remains to be seen what knowledge this is and which discourse will triumph.

Notes 1 Parts of this chapter are drawn from Francesca Bussey’s 2007 thesis ‘The World on the End of a Reed’: Marguerite Porete and the annihilation of an identity in medieval and modern representations – a reassessment. 2 Beghards did not achieve the same popularity as beguines and did not form distinct communities, such as beguinages which were developed by beguines in the second quarter of the thirteenth century 3 Marguerite distinguishes herself from beguines in the introduction to her Mirror saying “O my lover, what will beguines say/ and religious types, /When they hear the excellence of your divine song?/ Beguines say I err,/ priests, clerics, and Preachers,/ Augustinians, Carmelites,/ and the Friars Minor” (Porete, p. 200). 4 Simons notes that “The real gender gap became apparent at the higher educational level. Although there are notable cases of ‘higher schools’ that girls could attend or that were specifically intended for them” (2003, Cities of Ladies, p. 7).

Bibliography Bavel, Bas J.P. Van. Manors and Markets: Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500–1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Print. Beer, Frances. Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell, 1992. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast:The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, CA: University of California, 2010. Print. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone, 2012. Print. Cantimpré, Tomás De, and Margot H. King. “The Life Of” Christina Mirabilis. Toronto: Peregrina, 1997. Print. Cenzatti, “Heterotopias of Difference”, in Heterotopia and the City – Urban Theory and the Transformations of Public Space, 1st edition, M. Dehaene and L. De Cauter, eds. London: Routledge, 2008. pp. 75–85. Chenu, Marie-Dominique. Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Print. Cohn, Norman. Europe’s Inner Demons: The Demonization of Christians in Medieval Christendom. London: Pimlico, 2005. Print. Dehaene, Michiel, and Lieven De Cauter. Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. London: Routledge, 2008. Print. Devos, Isabelle, Ariadne Schmidt, and Julie De Groot. “Introduction. Unmarried and Unknown”. Journal of Urban History 42.1 (2016): 3–20. Print. Dor, Juliette, Lesley Johnson, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. New Trends in Feminine Spirituality: The Holy Women of Liège and Their Impact. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Print. Dronke, Peter. Women Writers of the Middle Ages; A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete/Peter Dronke. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Print. Floridi, Luciano. The Philosophy of Information. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print. Foucault, Michel, and Jay Miskowiec. “Of Other Spaces”. Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22. Print. Grundmann, Herbert, Steven Rowan, and Robert E. Lerner. Religious Movements in the Middle Ages: The Historical Links between Heresy, the Mendicant Orders, and the Women’s Religious

40  Francesca Bussey

Movement in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Century, with the Historical Foundations of German Mysticism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2005. Print. Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society. Abbingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2015. Print. Hadewijch, and Columba Hart. Hadewijch:The Complete Works. London: SPCK, 1981. Print. Hollywood, Amy M. The Soul as Virgin Wife: Mechthild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1995. Print. Howell, Martha C. Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1986. Print. Johnson, P. (2016) ‘Brief History of the Concept of Heterotopia’ (revised) Heterotopian Studies (www.heterotopiastudies.com), accessed August, 2017. Kittell, Ellen E., and Mary A. Suydam. The Texture of Society: Medieval Women in the Southern Low Countries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Print. Lerner, Robert E. The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages. Berkeley: University of California, 1972. Print. Magdeburg, Mechthild Von, and Frank Tobin. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. New York: Paulist, 1998. Print. McDonnell, Ernest William. The Beguines and Beghards in Medieval Culture, with Special Emphasis on the Belgian Scene. New York: Octagon, 1969. Print. McGinn, Bernard. Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete. New York: Continuum, 2001. Print. McGinn, Bernard. The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200– 1350). New York: Crossroad, 2011. Print. Mechthild, and Frank J. Tobin. The Flowing Light of the Godhead. New York: Paulist, 1998. Print. Miller, Tanya Stabler. The Beguines of Medieval Paris Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014. Print. Moore, R.I. Origins of European Dissent. 1977. Print. Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. “The Metamorphosis of Woman: Transmission of Knowledge and the Problems of Gender”. Gender History 12.3 (2000): 642–64. Print. Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1997. Print. O’Sullivan, Robin Anne. “The School of Love: Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls”. Journal of Medieval History 32.2 (2006): 4, 143–62. Petroff, Elizabeth. Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print. Porete, Marguerite, Edmund Colledge, and Kent Emery. The Mirror of Simple Souls. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2010. Print. Porette, Margaret, and Ellen L. Babinsky. The Mirror of Simple Souls. New York: Paulist, 1993. Print. Southern, Richard W., “Medieval humanism”, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970. pp. 30–60. Simons, Walter. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200– 1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2003. Print. Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. A Distant Mirror. London: Macmillan, 1980. Print. Wakefield, Walter L., and Austin P. Evans. “Alan of Lille: A Scholars attack on heretics”, in Heresies of the High Middle Ages: Selected Sources, Translated and Annotated. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Ward, John O. and Francesca C. Bussey. Worshipping Women: Misogyny and Mysticism in the Middle Ages: Six Essays with an Introduction and a Note on the Ruthwell Cross. Sydney: University of Sydney, 1997. Print.

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Watson, Nicholas. “Melting into God the English Way: Deification in the Middle English Version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples amesanienties”, In Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996, pp. 20–49. Watson, Nicholas. “Misrepresenting the Untranslatable: Marguerite Porete and the Mirouer des Simples Ames”. New Comparison: A Journal of Comparative and General Literary Studies 2 (Autumn 1991): 124–37.

4 FEMINISTIC THEORY AND PRACTICE IN SWEDEN AND ITS IMPACT ON FAMILIES, THE LABOUR MARKET AND LEGISLATION1 Christina Zaar

Feminism has been a strong force in the Swedish society at least since the beginning of the 20th century. Even the present administration calls itself feminist. Does this mean that equality between women and men has been achieved? No. As is the case with democracy, equality demands continuous effort. The moment these efforts cease, the progress which has been made is lost. When Swedish women were given the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1921 and when five women had been elected to sit in parliament the following year, the active suffragettes had achieved their aim. They had worked long and hard and met great resistance. Perhaps the feminist movement had lost its impetus for a while, but there still remained much to be done. Women’s right to education for example. It wasn’t until 1927 that the state upper secondary schools admitted young women and, in this way, made it possible for women to acquire qualified academic training. This education was not free, so it was not available to anyone who wished to study. These schools were in urban areas and most people still lived in the countryside. Students had to live in accommodation, colloquially called 'digs' and parents had to cover the cost of boarding as well as books and other costs.Wage earners were mainly men. There were few men who were prepared to pay for their daughters’ education. The generation I myself belong to, we who were born in the 1940s soon after the Second World War, are the first generation where anyone who wanted to study could. Education was free up to the student matriculation, even if students had to pay for their own books during the years which followed upon the end of compulsory education, i.e. year eight. University studies were also free. Students only had to pay for their books and all students could get a fairly cheap government grant if a student’s parents could not afford to pay. Education was no longer a class issue as regards the economy.Young women and men flocked to the universities.Young women took it for granted that they, just like young men, would find work in the area they had trained for at university.

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While large areas of Europe were in ruins after the war, Sweden’s industries and infrastructure were intact. The demand for anything that could be produced was great. The standard of living grew from year to year. In the half century from 1900 onwards, Sweden, once a poor nation, became one of Europe’s richest and most modern. In the whole of Western Europe young people were better off, and when the USA in the 1960s attacked North Vietnam with poison and bombs, there was a strong reaction. Left-wing opinion became stronger and stronger and more and more people took a stance for North Vietnam and against the USA. We demonstrated, printed flyers and collected money. During this work, we emancipated young women noticed that our male comrades had suddenly taken it upon themselves to write newspaper articles and speeches and to formulate our points of view. Women collected money and sold the newspapers which the men had written. Men formulated the programmes and the women served the men. This was irritating, to put it mildly. The well-educated women who now entered the labour market and in particular those who had children early on soon found out that work was something quite different to studies. The workplace was the world of men and was not designed for women. Men did the talking and decided what was what. They were not prepared to let young women in and they wanted to retain their influence.Women were paid less than men. For women with young children, there was no child care. Women who had unintentionally become pregnant did not have the right to have an abortion without certain reasons and procedure.

Group 8 is formed At the end of the 1960s, a whole new series of seminars was held at the University of Uppsala. It was about sex roles in literature, a topic which was seen as so unacademic and unscientific that it was held outside the regular teaching time. Eight of the women who participated in the seminars continued to meet after the end of the course and they discussed the special situation for women. These women were tired of their second-place position, tired of injustice in the labour market and the situation of women in general.They wanted to formulate their own demands, their own points of view and arguments. These eight intellectual women channelled a sense of injustice which existed everywhere in society. They were continually being asked questions by women who wanted to join their group. In April 1970 they had decided to allow more members to join the group and they called for a meeting by putting up posters around Stockholm. Women flocked to the venue and it soon became overcrowded. Group 8 was formed, a feminist left-wing organization without party affiliations (Janke, 2017). There was no clear consensus as to how this large involvement should be governed, but no-one wanted a hierarchic organization of the old type. Women were to organize themselves differently than the political parties and trade-unions. Here, everyone had a voice. In the space of only a few months, local Group 8 groups were formed in most of the inner-city areas in Stockholm and during the years

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that followed in many other cities as well. Slogans could vary from group to group, but some main issues applied to everyone: Child care centres for all children, free abortions, pain-free births. In the groups, new ways to hold meetings gradually developed. Of course there was no money available and there were no meeting places.The group members met at each other’s homes. The hostess offered participants a cup of tea perhaps, and on special occasions something to nibble on. At the meetings people sat in a ring and told the group what had happened to them since the last meeting. Everyone had a turn and no-one needed to ask for the floor. One slogan was this: The personal is political! So people were free to talk about what was most important, whether about the situation at work, the relationship with the boyfriend or something completely different (Elgán, 2015). When groups grew too big for sitting rooms, new groups were formed. My first group was called Group 17. And now I cannot remember if it was the 17th group or if we were 17 members at the start. The number increased and we split up and formed new local groups based on where we lived. Group 8 formulated its own questions and points of view.

New demands As soon as we young women in the 1960s and 1970s had finished our studies and joined the workforce, we met resistance. It was clear to us that workplaces were for men and that men preferred to work with other men. Furthermore, men assumed that their women looked after the home and the children and that they did not compete with men at work. Professional women had no-one to look after their homes and their children. Like the slogan said: Women are subject to a double oppression. Soon the women’s movement started making demands on the men. Housework and children are a common task, according to the women’s movement.When both wife and husband work equally hard, why should the woman still have all the responsibility for the children and the housework? This was a sensitive issue. Women were told they were not real women if they did not want to be responsible for the housework. Men did not want to lose their privileges. The women’s movement needed a platform of its own to propagate their arguments. Group 8 started a newspaper. Some women were responsible for writing and getting the newspaper printed. Among the active young feminists there were artists, musicians, writers and creative women with many talents and they all contributed to the newspaper Kvinnobulletinen. Selling the paper was the responsibility of the whole movement. On Saturdays we stood in local shopping malls and sold the paper. The proceeds went to the production of the following issue. Kvinnobulletinen had a motto which was also shouted out at our many demonstrations: “Don’t cry! Resist!” – “Be happy! Attack!” (Thorgren, 2011). Demonstrations were how we normally spread our message. Local politicians could be confronted at their meetings by female activists who had their children with them and disrupted the meetings by shouting out their demands

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for day-care places for their children. Shops which sold pornographic magazines and cinemas which showed porn movies could also be targeted. Our aim was that all actions should be powerful with an admixture of raucous humor. In such countries as France and the USA, there were strong forces in the women’s movement which were hostile towards men. There were few such tendencies in Sweden. Group 8 wanted good relations with men and argued for gender equality. This did not prevent the members from being called aggressive man-haters, unattractive and ugly, badly dressed, sexually frustrated and much else besides. We responded by throwing away our bras and maintaining that our bodies were not there to please other people. No, we wished for ourselves to choose how we looked. The new feminist movement grew incredibly quickly and soon we could see the left-wing movements’ political splintering also among women. The ever-present question was what was it that first and foremost decided how we lived: Class or gender? Left-wing men insisted that class was the decisive issue and many women who were of the same opinion left the women’s movement and joined more partypolitical left-wing organizations.

Feminist reforms Young women taking their place in society was something new. This hadn’t happened since the days of suffrage at the beginning of the century. We didn’t follow the rules, we didn’t obey and we made demands. We had gained an education and happily accepted the offer, but the labour market placed barriers in our path. We felt cheated. The system of taxation in Sweden was such that in a family the wife’s income was added to the husband’s and they were both taxed together. There was still a great difference between men’s and women’s wages. Basically, men earned more than women. The taxation scale was progressive so that for every increase in income, a larger sum went to taxation. This meant that a great deal of the woman’s salary was lost to taxation. She earned less and kept even less after taxation. This meant that young women hesitated to get married. We began to be live-in partners without getting married. In this way women owned the right to dispose of their salary. It was not only the young feminists who fought for a fairer tax system but also the established parties’ women’s organizations. In 1971 the old system was scrapped and each adult was taxed individually. Money of your own is, despite everything, the basis for an independent existence. Even if the old dual tax system did not figure greatly in the social debates of the time, from the point of view of women’s suffrage it was important. That dual taxation was abolished was above all the result of the work of women’s organizations within the political parties, but they were given great support by the new women’s organizations’ young and vocal women. In 1975 women gained the right to have an abortion up until the 18th week of pregnancy, and this reform came about mainly as a result of the young women’s raised voices, but also with the support of already established women.

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Group 8 set the tone which other women’s organizations had to measure themselves against (Elgán, 2015). The political parties’ women’s organizations became more active, the old left-wing movements were also allured to enliven the discussion. The local political committees and parliament also had to reckon with the active young women who refused to be quiet, who were seen everywhere and who demonstrated loudly and called for change. As early as 1969, the national curriculum for schools stated that schools should work towards equality, from 1971 everyone was taxed individually and in 1974 parents were entitled to share the responsibility of staying at home with the birth of a child. Fathers got children! During the 1970s, organized child care grew quickly but still, at the end of the decade, there was a shortage of day-care places. When I became a mother in 1979, single mothers had priority as regards queuing for a place, but one had to keep a close eye on the queue so as not to miss a vacant place. In that year parents of young children also had the right to a six-hour working day instead of the normal eight, of course with less salary. The women’s movement fought also for the right to work full time. Many workplaces, for example hospital and health care jobs, shop assistants and various service jobs were organized so that women were employed part time. This meant that the employer saved money when it came to benefits such as holiday pay and overtime pay. Group 8 was a grass-roots movement with no hierarchy and even if most of the really active feminists were students and middle class women, the movement had an effect on society as a whole. This questioning of the traditional and deeply rooted separation of work between women and men both in the home and at work meant that many women became more self-confident and active in their daily lives. Women who had been housewives got a job with a salary of their own even if it was low; women who had been subjected to sexual attacks in the home got divorced and began to live their own lives. The mood of the period was feisty and funny, new lifestyles were tried out, not just living together without being married but also, for example, living in collectives with or without sexual relationships. The hope for the future was freedom, equality and “siblinghood”. Middle-class women who were already established in society were infected by the feminist spirit. Liberal academics started an ideas movement for equality between women and men. In 1982 they started the foundation Women Can, whose greatest contribution was to arrange fairs in different Swedish cities in the period 1984 to 2002. During these fairs, which lasted several days, women entrepreneurs could display and sell their products. Seminars and lectures, as well as entertainment from well-known artists, were arranged. The fairs drew large crowds and women travelled from all over the country to the city which arranged the fair. Like Group 8, Women Can was politically independent, but just as no-one hesitated to place Group 8 to the left politically, no-one doubted that Women Can belonged to the middle-class politically. But everyone met up at the Women Can fairs and enjoyed the companionship, the sisterhood and the fun (Westlund, 2017). The generations of women who were young adults at the end of the 1960s and during the 1970s became more comfortable in their professional status and

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took the opportunities which were on offer. Several of them became successful in for example the academic world and in the realm of culture. Gender research was introduced in universities and women’s activities were highlighted by female researchers. Women moved forward their positions in all areas. At the same time, we should not forget how bad the starting point was for women. The first and sole woman who found a place in a new area increased the representation of women by 100 per cent. The political actions in streets and squares slowed down as the women in Group 8 devoted more energy to their jobs, politics in another form and their growing children. Feminist consciousness however continued to grow. Everywhere in Sweden women’s safe houses were organized: These were temporary homes where women and children who had been subjected to violence in the home could seek shelter. At the universities, forums for female researchers were formed (women professors, however, were still rare). Women no longer voted as their husbands did. The established political parties in parliament gradually came to realize that they had to care about women’s issues to gain their votes. This led to some improvements, for example demands for equality programmes in workplaces and a ban on sexual discrimination, but also female succession to the throne in the kingdom of Sweden. During the 1980s, more day-care homes were built and the insurance scheme for parents was extended. Not only the feminist mothers but also other social organs exhorted young fathers to stay at home and look after their small children for part of the time during which the parent insurance provided an economic incentive. Society put increasing pressure on fathers to take responsibility for meeting with their children even if the parents had separated. Men were now to be counted on in the family context.There were even attempts made to attract men to jobs in health-care and kindergartens, not least in the former factory towns where the predominant factory had closed down (Hirdman, 2014). Women in Germany, Austria and Southern Europe were giving birth to fewer children, the opposite was the case in Sweden. The birth rate in Sweden increased because of better child-care, parent insurance and good conditions in the workplace, especially in state and municipal workplaces which employed many women.

Feminist initiative In the run up to the general election in 1994, a few of the previously very active feminists felt that things were going too slowly. Too little was happening. They reawakened the old ideas and took the name Support stockings, stockings that old women use to increase blood circulation and to support tired legs. Immediately they got a lot of media coverage and they spoke of how slowly society was changing in favour of women. Men still had higher salaries even when women did similar or the same jobs. “The whole salary, half the power” was their slogan. They also took up the fight against men’s violence in the home. They formed a loose network, but threatened to start a political party if the established parties continued to ignore issues relating to women. They also urged the parties to place more women higher up on the ballot papers.The parties listened

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and after the election of 1994, gender equality was deemed to be even; 40 per cent of members of parliament were women. The Social Democratic women’s union persuaded its party that every other name on the ballot paper should be a woman. And not only that: All working groups formed by the Social Democrats should consist equally of women and men. Gudrun Schyman, who until recently, was one of the two leaders of the political party Feminist Initiative, was active in politics already in the 1970s, first in a small Marxist-Leninist movement and later in the Left-Wing Communist party. As one of the first woman party leaders, she led the Left-Wing party for several years; the party by then had dropped the word “Communist”. In the beginning of 2000, she became a political maverick in parliament, that is to say that she remained an MP but did not belong to a particular party. The reason for this was that she had been found guilty of a minor tax evasion and could no longer be party leader. On the other hand, the party had again elected her as leader even though she openly talked about her alcoholism. During her years as an MP without party leader responsibility and later as a maverick politician, Gudrun Schyman worked mainly with feminist issues. In the spring of 2005, she launched her newly formed party Feminist Initiative together with a number of other women, two of them well-known academics who had also been members of Group 8 and then The Support Stockings. Unfortunately, after a few months, deep disagreement among the leading members became a fact and several of them left the new party. When the party was launched and the media spotlighted it, new members flocked to the party. For a number of years, the feminist struggle had kept a low profile. Both those who had previously been more active and a new, younger generation were anxious to make a fresh start. The conflicts within the leadership, however, made a poor impression on potential members. At the 2006 election, the party made a poor showing and was far from getting any MPs in parliament.This was despite the fact that they had received support from international organizations and that the American actress Jane Fonda had donated 400,000 crowns to the party. The Swedish electoral system requires a party to have at least four per cent of the electorate to be given a mandate in parliament. This target was not even close after the election, and Feminist Initiative decided it would be a movement which highlights feminist issues and not a party which was looking for a mandate in political groupings. But when the elections to the European Parliament in 2009 and the general election in 2010 began to grow closer, Feminist Initiative had second thoughts. The ABBA musician Benny Andersson donated one million crowns and, later, several hundred thousands more. Just one month before the general election, at the political high point for all parties, organizations and social institutions, the Almedal week on the island of Gotland, Gudrun Schyman publically set fire to 100 thousand crowns of donated money. Her message was that women every minute lose so much money because they are unfairly paid less than men. Her action became the most talked about

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event during this week of intensive debates. All the media covered the event and Gudrun Schyman was happy. It was just like old times. No one else in the women’s movement has even been as close to spotlighting feminist issues as Gudrun Schyman. Despite this, Feminist Initiative did not succeed in getting anyone elected to parliament in the 2010 election, but, on the other hand, it did become the third largest party in Gudrun Schyman’s local municipality in Skåne, winning almost ten per cent of the votes there. Prior to the 2014 election, Feminist Initiative had come up with a new idea, home parties. The party was of course short of money because it was too small to be entitled to parliamentary funding. The members had little in the way of assets and any donations had already been used in previous elections. Renting office space costs money as does advertising meetings in the press. Furthermore, arranging meetings requires a lot of work. The party came up with the idea of doing the opposite, i.e. placing the work in the hands of the would-be voters. Feminist Initiative offered to come to the homes of anyone who arranged a home party for at least fifteen people. I was myself at one of these meetings where Gudrun Schyman spoke. The daughter of a friend invited her friends, work colleagues and also her mother and her mother’s friends, as many as there was room for, perhaps thirty people, mainly women, but also some men. Everyone was given something to drink and eat, and the only thing the hostess had to provide apart from that was a large flip chart on which Gudrun Schyman could illustrate her ideas on political issues. She is an excellent speaker, funny, pedagogical and persuasive. I can guarantee that afterwards support grew for Feminist Initiative. Women have been used to voting for men ever since universal suffrage, but men find it more difficult to vote for women, and even more difficult to vote for a party which primarily focuses on women’s issues. The potential electoral basis is thus less for Feminist Initiative than for other parties. No-one was elected in the 2014 general election despite the fact that the party had its best election ever and gained three per cent of the votes. In thirteen local political elections, the party gained twenty-six mandates. There was greater success in the election to the European parliament, which on this occasion coincided with the general election, and one MP from Feminist Initiative was elected. Soraya Post headed the list of party candidates and became the first Rome representative ever in Sweden to be elected to a position of political responsibility. Once more, Feminist Initiative failed to gain representation in parliament, but all women were the losers at the 2014 election.Women’s representation took a step backwards in the second consecutive election. At the previous general election, women members had received one less seat, and at the 2014 election there were five fewer female members of parliament. In this year, 2017, the Swedish parliament consists of 152 women and 197 men, i.e. forty-four per cent of the members are women. In the government, however, half of the ministers are women. The Prime Minister is a man, but the Minister of Finance is a woman. Of the eight parliamentary parties, three have a female leader; one of the parties, the Green Party, has both

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a woman and a man as joint leaders. Next year, 2018, there will be a new general election and the parties are already getting in gear prior to the election which will be held in September. This year, 2017, Feminist Initiative has nominated new party leaders at its party congress. Gudrun Schyman was re-elected together with the as yet inexperienced Victoria Kawesa. With the election of Kawesa, the party is breaking new ground since she is the country’s first black party leader. She was born in Uganda but came to Sweden as a refugee with her family. Until now,Victoria Kawesa has worked as a university teacher. In the newly elected party executive, there are also some men. In recent years the party has had a low profile. Gudrun Schyman will be 70 a few months before the general election. No-one else in the party has had anything like the prestige she has had. If the party gains no representation in parliament after the next election the question is what will happen to the party. Feminism as a concept still flourishes in many public contexts:Women and men must have the same power to form society and their own lives. This is the aim for the Swedish society’s policy of equality.

Progress in figures Every other year gender-divided statistics are published within the majority of social fields.This happened for the first time in 1984 when the women’s movement demanded to know what the situation in the country was.When the new women’s movement blossomed, approximately half a century had passed since the struggle for equal suffrage had achieved its goal in the 1920s. Now another half century has passed. All children are now entitled to a place in a kindergarten. Parents can stay at home with newborn children for a period of one year and four months. To get the whole sum of money parents are entitled to, the leave of absence must be shared by both parents so that the parent who stays at home for the shortest period must be at home with the child for at least three months. If only one parent, i.e. the mother, stays at home with the child the whole time, the family will lose the sum the father would have received if he had stayed at home for three months. It is still the case that mothers take the longest leave of absence with small children, but it is becoming more and more common for fathers to stay at home. As long as the child is under one year of age and is still breast feeding, women take out more than 90 per cent of the time available to the family. Subsequently fathers have increased their share, and, when children reach the age of three, parents share the time at home equally. They take turns staying at home with sick children or when a child for one reason or another needs to have a parent at home. Swedish parents are becoming older and older when they have their first child. In 2015 the average age for women to have their first child was 29. For fathers it was 32. Thus, although the parents are relatively old, infant mortality is very low as is mortality among mothers. In 2014 four women in Sweden died because of complications during pregnancy and giving birth. In the same year 114,907 children

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were born. In 2015 five infants in a thousand died while being born or during their first year (På tal om kvinnor och män, 2016). Equality has been on the political agenda for more than fifty years and there have been improvements. Women’s salaries are still lower than men’s, but the gap is decreasing. It is now the case that women are more highly paid than men in some jobs dominated by women, e.g. child minders. Girls have made great progress in many education programmes at most levels and in many areas. At the university level, girls predominate in all sectors except science and technology. Considerably more young women than men take a degree in the fields of health-care, pedagogics, social studies and law. Girls have much better grades than boys already when they leave compulsory school. They are making progress in many fields, for example the number of women head teachers has increased from 19 per cent in the middle of the 1980s to 67 per cent in the middle of the 2010s (På tal om kvinnor och män, 2016).

Women stress There is, however, one factor which gives rise to concern – girls and young women are affected by stress and mental ill-health to a greater extent and more frequently than boys and young men of the same age. Body ideals are at least as powerful today as they were fifty years ago. Obesity and being overweight are more common today. At the same time there is a growing trend towards working out. Girls train because it is healthy but also to shape their body so that it will be perfect in accordance with today’s ideal. A great many girls are worried about their weight and think they are too fat.“Too fat for what?” An article written by a young woman in the largest daily morning newspaper Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) of April 23, 2017 has the heading “Women’s bodies aren’t there to please others”. She claims that there is a risk that young women judge each other on the basis of looks, reduce each other to bodies instead of reacting against the very idea that there can be a correct way for women to look. “What is gender oppression? Simply the idea that women exist only to please others” is the conclusion of the article. Essentially the same as a half century previously. There are other areas where feminist activity has left no traces, namely the boards of directors and the CEOs of companies listed on the stock exchange. Of the 252 CEOs in companies listed in the Swedish stock market, there are sixteen women, i.e. six per cent. Regarding boards of directors, the situation is equally dire if we look at chairpersons. Five per cent are women, 13 out of 252. The government has on several occasions threatened stock companies with legislation to increase the number of women in the boards of directors. So far that has not happened, but companies have tried to recruit more women to avoid legislation. This has led to results: Twenty nine per cent of boards of directors are now women (Magnusson, 2018). The effects of feminist activity can be seen in unexpected ways, which makes Sweden different to other countries. Men push prams: Stay-at-home fathers are out walking with their toddlers in prams despite the fact that they perhaps normally are

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factory workers, or work in lawyers’ offices, are computer engineers, chefs, doctors etc. They are all fathers and take care of their small children. It isn’t as I remember it in the 1980s when you might see an occasional man outdoors pushing a pram. At the time, as a journalist, I wanted to write about the unusual thing I had seen in the city streets – two men, each with a pram, and with no women in sight. Nowadays this is such a common scene that no-one reacts. I have a clear view of a park from my kitchen window; daily I can see fathers and prams, as well as fathers playing with their kids and training their little ones, both boys and girls, to kick a football. Girls growing up today with fathers who share responsibility for the home and children will grow up to be a new kind of woman for whom gender equality is completely normal. The women in Group 8 educated their sons to be equalityminded men and that is perhaps the greatest success story.

Note 1 Translation by Eric Kinrade.

References Elgán, Elisabeth. “Att ge sig själv makt: Grupp 8 Oct 1970-talets feminism”. Göteborg: Makadam förlag, 2015. Feministiskt initiativ. “Election Platform: Feminist Initiative Sweden”, in Brueske, M. and Weiss, Penny A. (Eds.), Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader. Beaverton: Ringgold Inc, 2018. pp. 597–604. Hirdman,Yvonne. “Vad bör göras? Jämställdhet och politik under femtio år”. Stockholm: Ordfront, 2014. Janke, Emma. “Grupp 8”. Produktionsbolaget Ljudbang. P3 Dokumentär Sveriges Radio, 12 Nov. 2015. Web. 4 April 2017. Magnusson, N. (2018). The Number of Female Executives in Sweden Is Rising. Bloomberg, October 16. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/the-number-offemale-executives-rises-in-sweden-in-new-report (Accessed 18 May 2019). “På tal om kvinnor och män. Lathund om jämställdhet 2016”. Örebro: Statistics Sweden. Official statistics can be found at www.scb.se. Thorgren, Gunilla. “Grupp 8 och jag”. Stockholm: Norstedts, 2011. Westlund, Marita. “Så här startade Kvinnor Kan”. Kvinnor Kan, 2017.

5 KABIR SUMAN The child and father of movements Tanmayee Banerjee

After decades of ‘songs of innocence’, which primarily celebrated romantic love between a man and a woman set in an illusory world and the beauty of nature, with limited exceptions of course, Kabir Suman came up with ‘songs of experience’ which were lyrical, yet highly cerebral, respectful to traditions yet subversive, rooted in the harsh realities of life, yet romantic to the core and with which Bengali music gained relevance and maturity in keeping with the changing time. His songs came as a shock to a large number of audiences because of its prosaic approach towards life in contrast with the hyperbolic romanticism of the songs of the previous era. Its originality of theme and style evoked an aesthetic and intellectual curiosity while his well-trained baritone voice and dramatic presentation on stage made his performance one of a kind and drew people to his concerts. The fundamental aspect which set Suman apart from his predecessors was the definite purpose for his music, a raison d’etre, which was to create expression, to reflect the spirit of the times and to make statements, as he claimed in Free to Sing?, a documentary made on him by Sudipto Chatterjee in 1997. This chapter will throw light on two aspects, that is, the cause and effect of Suman’s music – the cause of his music being the socialist political movements such as the Naxalite Movement, the freedom movement of Nicaragua and the anti-Left movements in Bengal that shaped his political consciousness and inspired him to make music which would reflect the spirit of the times. The effect was a musical movement in Bengal which transformed Bengali music altogether.The blending of his political and musical consciousness produced, what I prefer to call, ‘the songs of experience’, which included a large number of songs of protest, the purpose of which was to inform and motivate the audience. In this chapter, I will also discuss how performativity is crucial in mobilizing a political movement and how cult following is essential in the initiation of an art movement by using Kabir Suman’s music as a case study. While reciprocation and collective performance of songs

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of movement build the foundation of inclusivity thereby substantiating a political movement, propagation of an art movement requires followers with talent in the same field of art to appreciate the originality and carry the trend forward by constantly modifying it with individual approach. I will try to discuss the two facets of Suman’s music in two sections of the chapter. In the first section I will analyse the political quotient of Suman’s music and justify the drawbacks inherent in the songs of protest which were responsible for their failure in becoming songs of movement. This will also lead us to the discussion on the difference between a protest song and a movement song. I will explain how all songs of movement are songs of protest but not all songs of protest achieve the status of songs of movement. In the second section of the chapter I will discuss how Suman’s music has been successful in initiating a movement in Bengali music by bringing about an overall change in its lyrics as well as melody. It is interesting to observe how one particular body of artistic creations can affect social, political and artistic movements in different ways. Kabir Suman, who has been the single most influential figure in the postmodernisation of Bengali music has also been one of the most politically active artists that Bengal, even India, has had in the recent decades. The basic difference between Suman and other musicians lies in his urge to make his music a weapon of protest. In Mukta Nicaragua (2012), he has mentioned an art teacher in Nicaragua who instructed his students to avoid painting pictures of the revolution just because the revolution at that moment had the greatest currency. He believed that a picture of a rose drawn with perfection will qualify as a more successful piece of art in the long run than an ordinary piece of work portraying the revolution (Suman, 2012: 45). The idea is that though art can be used as a medium of protest, its artistic quality is not to be compromised for the social or political message that it is intended to communicate. This holds true for major part of Suman’s music. Except for some of the songs he created in the last few years in response to different political situations, the aesthetic richness of tone and expression in Suman’s songs, including those on the theme of protest, has transcended the situational immediacy and has made his music timeless. With the release of the album Tomake Chai (I want you) by Kabir Suman (then Suman Chattopadhyay, as he was known before he converted to Islam) in 1992, the then young generation of Bengal got its cultural icon and the history of Bengali music took a new course. Although a number of songs from the album became instant hits, the song eponymous with the title of the album became Suman’s signature creation. Appearing no different from a love song at the first instance, it had much more to offer – it was the consciousness of an educated middle-class Bengali finding expression in a song thereby constructing a new rhetoric of love. Simple repetitive words set to an even simpler tune, the song appealed to the Bengali audience bored with clichéd imageries and similar music arrangements for almost two decades at a stretch. The “you” in the song “Tomake Chai” (“I want you”) can be interpreted in various ways. Suman himself has said in an interview that when he began to write this song he addressed his beloved in the second person, but

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gradually as the song took its shape he realized that the city of Kolkata was gradually becoming the “you” in the song (Suman, 2017). To the listener this “you” is open to interpretation and can imply anything and anyone someone is passionately in love with – it can be an expression of love for his beloved, his favourite city, his mother tongue and so on. This unprecedented aesthetic expression of the uncompromising love for his city was probably the result of his long absence from Kolkata, his home city and a life abroad within a cultural landscape in which his own language had no currency.The overwhelming popularity of the song can be attributed to probably the simplest opening stanza one has ever heard in the entire gamut of Bengali songs in terms of lyrics and composition. For a better understanding of readers who are unfamiliar with Bengali I will provide a literal translation of the opening lines so that it is easier for them to appreciate the apparently non-poetic language in which Suman composed the iconic Bengali song of this era.1 Prathamata, ami tomake chai Dwitiyoto, ami tomake chai Tritiyoto, ami tomake chai Sheshporjonto tomake chai (Firstly, I want you Secondly, I want you Thirdly, I want you Till the end I want you) As we can see, the same words have been repeated in all the four lines except for the beginning word in the first three lines and the phrase in the last line. The linear progression of notes and the simplest construction of verse appealed to the audience instantly and made it hummable. The song progresses with the snippets of experiences in- and outdoors enmeshed in the seasonal changes, day-to-day experiences and cultural matrices, and finally takes a powerful stance in the last stanza. The “you” whose company was being sought in the banal enterprises of life is now wanted in the existentialist assertion of rights, in socialist dreams, in the demand of a revolution and in the achievement of the impossible. Revolution is the highest form of love in which one is passionately and selflessly in love with an ideology. This seamless blending of romantic and revolutionary spirit in “Tomake Chai” is the hallmark of Suman’s virtuosity. Since 1992 it has been an eventful journey for Suman as well as for the history of Bengali music. Suman’s music was contemporary to the core but very different from what was and still is termed as “Bangla Adhunik Gan” (Modern Bengali Songs). It will not be wrong to call him an iconoclast who broke away from the age-old tradition of Bengali music to create something new, yet keeping the essence of Bengali culture, especially musical culture, intact. In the context of contemporary Bengali music Suman is the only songwriter-composer-singer who has both tradition and his individual talent blended to perfection in his music.

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The child of political movements Suman entered the cultural field amidst the growing disillusionment of the people of West Bengal with the ruling government of the state. His songs were historicist critiques of the time. Lockouts in factories and mills became an everyday affair owing to the lack of sincere and conscientious intervention on part of the government. This threw a significant section of the population out of job, adding to the number of unemployed people, which was already alarmingly high. The gradual advent of computers which promised reduction of manpower leading to higher profit margins for employers posed a threat to a major section of employees in the private sector. Moreover, the Gulf War (1990–91) had just ended, which affected the Indian economy adversely. There was a sudden hike in the price of petroleum, which led to rise in inflation. Thus, mere sustenance of people, especially those belonging to lower income groups, became a challenge almost insurmountable in many cases. Capitalism had people all up in arms globally, and locally the socialist government was constantly failing to show a human face. Suman entered the cultural field in such circumstances, and through his music he began to talk about the day-to-day struggle of the middle- and lower-middle-class people, of their helplessness, being pitted against political and economic issues over which they had no control but were the worst victims. With the chances of consolidation of oppositional voices getting slimmer, discontent of common people on various social and political issues that was brewing increasingly remained mostly unheard. The time was in need of a strong and powerful voice which would give expression to the growing discontent of the common man – strong enough to make the government act and address the issues. This is exactly what Suman needed – a reason to sing, a proper justification of his music which would bear his political statements and would have a social value. Suman produced songs one after the other, addressing various social and political issues criticising the government, which were boldly satirical in tone. During performances, in various interviews as well as in his own autobiographical writings, Suman has admitted his indebtedness to the musical stalwarts of his previous generations. Apart from the vast repository of Rabindranath Tagore’s songs, folk music of Bengal and North Indian Classical music in which he was thoroughly trained he has always acknowledged the music of his predecessors, particularly Salil Chowdhury who, apart from immensely popular film and non-film romantic songs, created a significant number of songs of protest which have passed the test of time. Even though the influence of all these forms of music cast a strong impression on Suman’s work, he has confessed time and again of his dissatisfaction regarding the disconnectedness of the existing corpus of Bengali music with the social and political tension directly affecting the lives of ordinary people.The political environment in West Bengal while he was in his twenties was in doldrums due to the Naxalite Movement gaining leverage. A major section of the student population was being drawn to the movement inspired by communism. The threats posed by the everburgeoning anti-establishment movement resulted in the fiercest retaliation of the

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state in the form of indiscriminate imprisonment, torture and murder. It was as if invisible eyes were spying on the actions of each and every subject of the state, especially students and those who seemed to have even the slightest affiliation to the leftist ideology. Corpses of young men flowing down the river, sound of gunshots in the middle of the night and police vans patrolling through an apparently peaceful neighbourhood became part of normal day-to-day existence. Within such circumstances, the collective consciousness of the people of Bengal was undergoing a significant change. This got reflected in art, literature and cinema. Contemporary musicians and lyricists experimented with content and form bringing about a difference in terms of lyrics and arrangements which was original enough to create the desired impact. One of the music groups worth mentioning is Moheener Ghoraguli established in 1975. This group drew inspiration from a wide range of music, indigenous as well as foreign, and created a significant impact on its audience. However, these songs appealed only to a select audience among the urban educated people while songs by Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, D.L. Roy, Rajanikanta Sen, Atulprasad Sen along with film and non-film modern Bengali songs formed the major corpus of musical preference of the Bengali population. With the deterioration of the quality of Bengali film music through a couple of decades and non-film music becoming repetitive in form and content, Suman took the entire urban Bengali population by surprise by introducing a totally different form of music. Suman’s musical consciousness was shaped not only by the kind of music to which he was exposed but also his political and social consciousness. His sense of aesthetics and his notion of music evolved in tandem with the changing political and social environment. The freshness of Suman’s music owes largely to the importation of certain western styles of music, especially western folk and music of protest as popularised by artists such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, John Lennon and others. It was not until the early eighties when Suman went to France and heard Dylan for the first time in his life that he had any idea of such kind of music. He was influenced by the simplicity and directness of lyrics as well as melody in this particular style of music and deployed it in his songs. He was inspired by Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and created “Kawtota pawth perole tawbe pothik bawla jaay”. Offering a close translation of the song in Bengali, Suman deviates from Dylan in the composition. While the latter has used the same tune repeatedly in all the stanzas, he has maintained the convention of Indian music and used the notes in the higher octave from the second stanza onwards, just as the antara (the second section of a song which is founded on the first section) is set apart from sthayi (the opening section of the song) in Indian classical and semi-classical music. However, Suman can be considered an Indian equivalent of Dylan because of the literary richness in both their songs. Pete Seeger also inspired him not only with his music of protest but also with his social activism. It is with Seeger’s help that Suman went to Nicaragua to witness the revolution as Seeger had recommended him to Father Ernesto Cardenal who was the then Minister of Culture of the Government of Reconstruction in Nicaragua. After Suman returned to India from the

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United States and already became a celebrated artist, he invited Seeger to Kolkata to perform with him. They remained friends until the latter’s death in 2014. While in Germany Suman was highly influenced by Wolf Biermann’s way of communicating to the audience through his performance on stage. In Free to Sing? he mentions how he was astounded by Biermann, especially by the way he communicated to the audience in between his songs, read out from books and recited poems as he performed. Suman consciously adopted this style of communication when he began to perform in Kolkata a decade later. This clearly showed the purpose that his music was intended to serve – to make a statement, to inform and argue. To use Tom Paxton’s expression Suman’s music was ‘musical editorials’ (Glenn, 1989: 30), the first of its kind in Bengali music, which impressed and motivated the urban educated audience in no time. Although Suman's music won over the urban audience instantly, these ‘musical editorials’ of a socialist intellectual proved detrimental to a wider appreciation by preventing the non-urban non-literate population from identifying themselves with his music. One of the prerequisites for the dissemination of a song of movement is the scope of direct reciprocation which ensures the participation of the audience without which the performance remains incomplete. We may cite the example of the popularisation of Sankirtan, that is, the collective performance of Kirtan, which is a musical genre that is based on a call-and-response form of narration. It is interesting to note that this form of Sankirtan was popularised by Sri Chaitanya during the Bhakti movement in the sixteenth century. The spontaneous participation of people across the society was symbolic of the inclusive philosophy of Vaishnavism. Since then, it has become an iconic form of Bengali music which appeals uniformly to the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, the literate and the non-literate population. The spirit of protest, although undeniable in Suman’s music, the rhetoric was considerably rich for the masses to appreciate and reciprocate. There are two aspects of songs of movement – how the artist motivates a wide range of population through music and on the audience’s interpretation of the music, while the entire process depends largely on the social relations in which culture is embedded (William G. Roy, 2010: 85). If the cultural affiliation of the artist and the audience does not match, the songs of movement fail to fulfil the purpose; therefore, when it comes to cutting across different classes of the society, the difference of class position between the artist and the audience becomes a crucial factor in determining the appreciation of the song by the audience.The onus is on the artist to bridge the gap in order to involve the audience into the process of musical performance. What is important here is the plurality involved in the entire process of creation, consumption and performance, as opposed to the singularity of Suman’s performance which was more individualistic than any run-of-the-mill solo performance of his contemporary singers and musicians. Suman’s was an iconoclastic stage performance as he sang and played two to three instruments all by himself without any other artist accompanying him on stage. From the time of entry to and exit from the stage, he clearly expressed the purpose of his performance to the audience, which was to critique the hypocrisy of the

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ruling government and the right-wing political leaders. He referred to the burning issues of the time and used the stage as a platform to express his political views and convey the message of discontent; and this expression of his disappointments with the inefficiency and nonchalance of the government was more dramatically charged than any leading political leader of the time. His anti-establishment propagandistic zeal was as evident as it could be. His statements made and his messages borne clearly to the audience and also the targeted administrators of the state, it succeeded in stoking the discontent among the audience just as a reader gets enthused to read an editorial which is informative and whose political view is not unfounded. While this was a positive aspect of his performance, the centredness of his sole agency in this mechanism of protest failed to instil in the minds of the audience an overall sense of belongingness with his music and could not transcend the barrier between the artist who speaks and the audience who is spoken for by the artist. In this context it is important to understand the distinction between songs of protest and songs of movement. Songs of protest constitute a broader category which includes songs of movement. In other words, a song of protest may become a song of movement if it fulfils certain conditions in terms of lyrics and melody. Apart from that, there is also an undefinable factor which decides the becoming of a song of movement just as there is no sacrosanct formula for producing a ‘hit’ song. A song of protest, is usually written in a simple, straightforward style using common words and phrases easily understood by the common man. A song of movement, which is primarily a song of protest, has the same criteria as mentioned along with certain other features – one of the major features being the repetition of a phrase or a verse upon which the lyrics of the entire song rests and which is marked by its brevity and directness of approach as that of a slogan. The most relatable example of such a refrain is evident in We shall overcome. While a song of protest may or may not be meant to be sung in chorus, collective participation is the fundamental requirement of a song of movement as it is of any movement in general.While a composer may experiment with the melody and rhythm of a song of protest, one has to be highly judicious while composing a song of movement. Since the primary objective of a song of movement is to motivate as many people across the society as possible, it is composed in a simple melody, with strong and regular rhythm and a bold approach, as is prevalent in marching songs. It is absolutely necessary that the lyrics are set in a simple, uniform progression of notes, devoid of complex combinations, often bordering on predictability of the tune. A tune that is similar to an already popular song, quite often a popular folk song, is sometimes successful in creating the desired magic as people can relate to it instantly. This instantaneous appreciation of a song is important as the time-lag between the performance and its appreciation may be detrimental to its dissemination and also because it aids in the immediate participation of the audience which is the primary requirement for a song to qualify as a song of movement. It is also important to maintain the same tune through all the stanzas of the song so that the audience is not taken by surprise owing to variations while listening to the song for the first time and is spontaneously carried along with it.

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One is bound to notice the predominance of songs of protest if one goes through the discography of Suman’s music. Though Suman started singing quite early in his career as a radio artist and formed a band of his own called Nagarik (The Citizen), he came to the limelight in 1992 with the release of Tomake Chai which was the harbinger of a series of songs of protest that were to follow. Songs of protest composed by Suman on various crises situations include his songs on Graham Stuart Staines, an Australian missionary, and his two sons who were burnt to death by Bajrang Dal activists in Odisha in 1999; on Anita Dewan, the rape victim of the ghastly Bantala rape case in West Bengal in 1990; on the arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato, the political activist from Lalgarh in West Bengal and convener of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities; on Tapasi Malik, a sixteen-year-old girl who played a leading role in the Land Movement of Singur and was therefore raped and burned alive in 2007; on the staged “encounter killing” of Ishrat Jahan in Gujarat in 2004; on the unreasonable arrest of Binayak Sen, a paediatrician, an activist and the national Vice-President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties in 2007 on charges of having connection with the Naxalites and therefore considered a threat to the security of the state; on the unjustified arrest of Shiladitya, a farmer from Belpahari for posing a question to the chief minister of Bengal on the policies of the state government towards farmers in 2012; also on the aggressive capitalistic ventures of the United States of America in the song titled America Probasi Bangalir Gan (The song of the Bengali immigrants in America), to mention just a few. Songs bearing political message and intended to initiate political propaganda was not new so far as the history of Bengali music is concerned. A large number of patriotic and nationalist songs, popularly referred to as swadeshi songs, which were written and sung during the freedom movement of India through the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, are popular even today. During the 1930s and 1940s, the Communist Cultural Movement gained prominence owing to the historical situation which witnessed a political turmoil all around the globe – the Second World War, the rise of fascism in the west, the Bengal famine and the Quit India Movement leading to the independence and partition of India. The communists played an active role in countering the threats of fascism, providing relief during the famine and resisting communal violence. A number of cultural wings were formed during this time, the primary objective of which was the dissemination of anti-fascist and socialist ideology through art and literature. All India Progressive Writers’ Association, Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association and Indian People’s Theatre Association were the three major wings of the Communist Cultural Movement. Apart from these, a few students of the University of Calcutta formed an organisation called the Youth Cultural Institute which, despite its premature death, has secured an important position in the history of Bengali music as it formed the ‘people’s song movement’ for the first time. However, the YCI did not produce new songs for the movement, they used nationalist songs and songs of protest written by Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. One must keep in mind that Tagore’s songs had not become a part of mass culture as it is today, until almost two decades later during his birth centenary, and since then it has become

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synonymous with Bengali culture. In all political meetings held after the legalisation of the communist party in 1942, performance of political songs became almost mandatory. This brought a number of music composers and singers from the city as well as suburbs into prominence – Hemanga Biswas, Sachin Dev Burman, Jnanprakash Ghosh, Debabrata Biswas, Khaled Chaudhury, Nirmalendu Chowdhury, Hemanta Mukherjee and Salil Chowdhury, to name a few. The aforementioned artists along with many others contributed action songs and songs of protest to the repository of Bengali songs. Though Suman tried his best to break away from tradition by creating original music, and his music did affect the social, political and aesthetic consciousness of a major section of the literate urban population, especially college and university students, it was flawed with the same drawbacks as the songs of protest which were produced during the Communist Cultural Movement and also in the later years by individual music composers. He succeeded in making political statements through his music which only a small part of the population could genuinely appreciate. In her essay “The Music of Politics and the Politics of Music” Anuradha Roy discusses the reason for the failure of the IPTA song movement drawing upon the analysis of Khaled Chaudhury who “identifie[d] an ‘ideology-culture-dichotomy’ in the song movement” (Roy, 2006: 78). As stated earlier, Suman’s music is urban, intellectual, cerebral and sophisticated to the core, and he himself is aware of it. In Free to Sing? Suman himself expresses his concern about his music not being able to reach out to the rural population. He admits his ignorance of the rhetoric of the people situated outside the city and its suburbs. Moreover, the wide range of dialects and sublanguages used in different parts of Bengal makes it impossible for a poet/writer to determine a common linguistic medium which a larger section of the population will be able to appreciate. Even the concerns which gain expression in his songs are mostly city-centric. Environmental concerns, hollowness of the present education system, degeneration of mass culture, abject poverty of the pavement-dwellers and homeless beggars of the city, unethical and unprofessional demeanour of doctors, sexual abuse of women, capitalistic consumerism disturbing the equilibrium of the society and homophobia are some of the concerns dealt with in his songs. He has composed his songs in keeping with the content and has probably consciously avoided conspicuous folk elements in his compositions as well as music arrangements. However, maintaining an overall urban tone, Suman’s music is not fraught with contradictions that are set in the music of some of the musicians and music groups in the following years. His subversive lyrics and caustic satire got him out of favour with the political parties and groups he targeted from the very beginning and his active involvement with the workers of the Kanoria Jute Mill, which was locked out in 1993, brought him in direct opposition with the government of West Bengal (Chatterjee, 1998). His relentless accusation of the government against its having turned a blind eye to the illegal enterprises and crimes involving its party workers, and in certain cases actively supporting the capitalist ventures of industrialists which involved dire

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exploitation of the peasants and the poor made him one of the most prominent faces of opposition outside the political field. However, Suman did not associate himself directly with any political party until the illegal confiscation of agricultural land in Singur and Nandigram by the government of West Bengal in 2007. This event which proved to be the final nail in the coffin for the Left Front government, resulting in its deposition in 2011 after thirty-four years of indomitable rule, witnessed the emergence of Kabir Suman, the chansonnier, as an active politician. He contested the parliamentary election in 2009 for All India Trinamool Congress and was elected Member of the Parliament. In a few years, disillusionment crept in once again with the new government as they failed to deliver what they had promised, instigating Suman’s anti-establishment disposition once again and leading to a rift between him and his party and putting him in a politically ambivalent position. While Suman could not reach out to the rural population through his music because of the intellectual and aesthetic refinement inherent in it, he did succeed in making his music known to a certain extent to people of some of the rural parts of Bengal by empathizing with them and taking part in their movement.Thus they discovered the musician in the political activist rather than the other way round, as the city had known him for so long.

The father of the musical movement In the songs of Suman, the city of Kolkata emerged as a living character. Filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen had used stories and scripts for their films in which the city played a character around which the narratives evolved. However, the Calcutta trilogies of both Ray and Sen were set in the 1970s during the Naxalite movement in which the city and the movement were projected as two sides of a coin. In no other form of art did the city of Kolkata gain such prominence until it almost became the soul of Suman’s music.Though songs about the city were not totally absent in the corpus of Bengali music, no musician before Suman had thrown light upon the crude realities of the city using expressions which were prosaically poetical. “Tin shataker shahar” (Three centuries of the city), which became an iconic song while the city of Kolkata was celebrating its three-hundred-year anniversary, offered a vivid picture of the city upholding the unique contradictions of civilisation. The song begins with a graphic description of the filth and pollution consuming the city – “Dekhchhi Shahar Toliye Jachhe” (I see the city sinking in garbage). Despite the unsightly environment, which is at times even offensive to the senses, one cannot ignore the magnetic attraction one feels towards the city. This Rabelaisian description of the city is boldly natural with the minutest details portrayed as in a series of cinematic frames documenting life and action on the city streets. With streets reeking of urine and flooded with sewage, a hellish smell emanating from the dumping grounds, the reckless movement of traffic through broken roads, street-urchins bathing in filthy water, a bull finding its way in the middle of the road and bringing traffic to a halt, the city celebrates myriads of life and activities. In spite of its grotesqueness and ugliness, one cannot

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deny the magnetic attraction one feels towards the city. Simply speaking, it is a song of unconditional love for Kolkata. Even in the song “Amader Janya” (For our sake) Suman offers snippets of the common man’s day-to-day existence within the heterogeneously variegated cultural landscape of the city. Similar to “Tin Shataker Shahar” this song is also an extremely postmodern representation of the city’s culture in which he breaks the grand narrative of hagiography that was being attributed to Kolkata in the wake of the celebration of its three-hundred-year anniversary. In this song we find him mentioning the wide range of cultural preferences borne by the people of the city which defies any strict pattern. The general insouciance of people is also reflected in their disinterested partaking of various cultural activities and performances defying any kind of aesthetic standard. In the city fraught with such unpleasantness, contradictions and ambiguity, he still finds solace and the songs bear the promise of life. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Suman’s songs offered a historical documentation of the reality of the city of Kolkata and the ordinary life that it supports. No other singer/songwriter before or after Suman has been able to present such a realistic picture of the city inspiring different moods of human life – love, monotony, rage, nonchalance, desperation, submission and so on. Even if the picture changes over time, these songs will be kept alive by the nostalgia that is woven through the verses and the melody. Though the effect of Suman’s music in shaping the political consciousness of the Bengali audience is open to debate, there is no denying the fact that Suman’s music succeeded in introducing a new form and content of Bengali music; and more importantly, in inspiring the younger generation of musicians to follow his footsteps. The music company HMV, which produced and marketed Suman’s records, considered it necessary to draw attention of the prospective buyers by highlighting the originality of his music and therefore came up with a catchy term for its branding. Suman’s music, as well as that of his immediate contemporaries became popular as Jibonmukhi Gan (Life-affirming Songs). Though Suman himself never agreed with this nomenclature of his music, the brand stuck to the genre and every other singer or group of musicians whether or not inspired by Suman to write and sing their own songs and experiment with newer forms was identified as a Jibonmukhi singer. The guitar became the symbol of smart and contemporary Bengali music by replacing the harmonium, traditionally used by singers for decades. Songwriting and composing became a favourite exercise of the younger generation as the beguiling simplicity of Suman’s songs made an impression that song-writing, composing and singing did not require any formal training and was the easiest way to gain popularity. This led to the production of a new kind of music which included what became popular as ‘band music’. Music enthusiasts formed groups and shared the labour of music production among the members. They experimented with various forms of music ranging from Bengali folk, kirtan, western popular music, rap and so on. Inspired by Suman they created a music which in certain cases was aesthetically compromised and lacking in terms of musical and literary richness, which in turn helped in its permeability across the masses and resulted in a wider appreciation than Suman’s music as the appreciation of this kind

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of music required limited literary and musical sensibility. However, the fact remains that Suman is still considered as the trendsetter for the new kind of music in Bengal. Among popular musicians who trailed along with Suman was Nachiketa Chakraborty, a well-trained musician, who became popular with his first album that was released just a year after Suman’s Tomake Chai. Following Suman’s trend, he wrote his own songs which were equally charged with subversive statements, the only difference lying in the language and the approach of his songs which was more direct, less refined and in certain cases somewhat offensive, which was probably unprecedented in the history of Bengali music. Anjan Dutta, who also followed this trend, was more occupied with the adaptation of popular English songs into Bengali but his music had no political intent as such. Bhumi, Chandrabindu, Cactus and Parashpathor were the major bands which appeared gradually on the Bengali stage. Bhumi mainly experimented with the folk forms while Chandrabindu gained popularity owing to the sharp, intelligent and satirical verses which they sang. Cactus and Parashpathor experimented with a number of forms but failed to create a signature for their productions. One common factor among all the bands was that they targeted the young generation, especially students, as their audience. A few years later the folk group Dohar became quite popular. They revived folk songs of Bengal and shunned the use of western instruments in their performance. They have succeeded in retaining the aesthetics of Bengali folk and will be remembered for their contribution to the genre of Bengali folk music. Though the artists and bands mentioned above have secured their individual positions in the trajectory, one cannot deny that it was Suman who set the ball rolling. In conclusion I would like to sum up by referring to the title of the chapter in which I have identified Kabir Suman as the child and father of movements. His political consciousness formed a part of his musical consciousness and therefore political movements which inspired him, which he witnessed and in which he actively participated, nurtured his political sensibilities; this in turn affected his musical sensibilities to a great extent and gave him the raison d’etre for his music. In The Necessity of Art, Ernst Fischer writes, “Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it” (Fischer, 2010: 23). An artwork that is produced as a response to a social or political crisis is likely to lose its relevance with the changing time and situation unless it has “the magic” that Fischer talks about. This magic, like magic itself, apparently seeming unexplainable, has a science behind it which is undecipherable to the common man. Similarly, referring to Salil Chowdhury, the virtuoso who gifted the Bengali audience with timeless melodies, Suman believes that the composition of a song involves a certain kind of mathematics in terms of combinations of notes and rhythms. However, the formula needs to be deduced by the composer him/herself which in turn adds the desired magical element to the music. Suman has been successful in creating that magic. Suman’s music was inspired and conditioned by time, representing the crises and needs of a particular historical situation. Though tethered to time, his music transcended these limitations and, within the historical moment, created “a moment of humanity promising constant

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development”, borrowing the words of Fischer (2010: 21). It will not be wrong to claim that Kabir Suman, the artist, was a child of the political movements. Born of the political movements, the chansonnier eventually changed the form of Bengali music and taught the Bengali audience to appreciate music with a fresh perspective, thereby fathering a movement in Bengali music In spite of the drawbacks which the artist himself believes his music to be fraught with, there is no denying the fact that without Kabir Suman, Bengali music would not have become what it is today.

Note 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z37EFqNg6Q4. Accessed on 16/05/19.

References Chatterjee, Sudipto. Free to Sing? 1997 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCpRaiVhUCs&t= 1109s) (last accessed on 07/02/2019). Chatterjee, Sudipto. “Staging Street, Streeting Stage: Suman Chatterjee and the New Bengali Song”. In Jan Cohen-Cruz (Ed.), Radical Street Performance. London: Routledge, 1998. p. 103–10. Fischer, Ernst. The Necessity of Art. London:Verso, 2010. Glenn, Robert W. “Form as Political Expression in Social Action Songs”. Studies in Popular Culture 12.2 (1989): 30–44. Roy, Anuradha. “The Music of Politics and the Politics of Music”. India International Centre Quarterly 32.4 (2006): 71–84. Roy, William. “How Social Movements Do Culture”. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society (2010): 85–98. Suman, Kabir. Mukta Nicaragua. Kolkata: Saptarshi Prakashan, 2012. Suman, Kabir. Suman Na Holey ‘Tomake Chai’ Gaantai Banate Partam Na Anindya Jana. Aajkaal, May 2017 (www.eaajkaal.in/epaperdetails/index/fa76e550-9393287a-7ba53f9e) (last accessed on 01/07/2017).

6 LOTUS AND LABRYS The role and legacy of a Buddhist young women’s movement and the young lesbian feminist movement in Wellington, New Zealand at the end of the millennium Penny Ehrhardt

When we theorise movements, it is helpful to start at the grassroots, where small groups come together through fragile networks and form social waves of change. In this chapter, I explore two movements for change from the inside. Both involved young women in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1990s. One, the Wellington Young Women’s Division of Soka Gakkai International New Zealand, is the young women’s arm of a socially connected lay Buddhist movement. It is avowedly apolitical, but committed to values of ‘peace, culture, and education’ within the framework of Buddhist humanism (Soka Gakkai International UK, n.d.). Organisationally, it is embedded within a large, highly organised international structure. The other, the Wellington lesbian feminist movement, had no institutional organisation, was fluid, and revolved around participants’ sexual and political identities. Both movements attracted participants with a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic goals.While very different, both had goals of social change towards a just and peaceful world, non-violence, respect for human rights and non-discrimination, and ecological awareness. Snow, Soule, and Kriesi (2007, pp. 4–5) define social movements as the ‘fifth estate’ in the modern world. They are organised around grievances and concerns, particularly the ‘hotly contested issues of our time’ (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007, p. 4). Snow, Soule, and Kriesi give movements for gay and lesbian rights as a classic example of a social movement. They also include the Soka Gakkai International USA as a social movement, despite being a ‘culturally imported religious movement’ because it offers ‘challenges to institutions, organizational, or cultural authority or systems of authority’ (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007, p. 11). In this chapter, I look at these two movements in the New Zealand context, with a focus on young women in 1990s Wellington. My task is to describe their key characteristics and assess what their members gained from participation at the time,

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as well as the strengths, limits, and legacies of each movement in terms of impact on the lives of those involved and the surrounding community. I write about the movements from the point of view of a ‘complete member researcher’, acknowledging, validating, and utilising subjective experience as a component of research (Anderson, 2006, p. 378). I am someone who is considered a legitimate participant in the group’s conversations (and activities) through which (potentially multiple and contradictory) first-order constructs are developed, contested, and sustained. (Anderson, 2006, pp. 381–382) As the author, I have the following: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

complete member researcher (CMR) status, analytic reflexivity, narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, dialogue with informants beyond the self, and commitment to theoretical analysis. (Anderson, 2006, p. 378)

In this respect, I perform the role of an autoethnographer: someone who ‘helps to form and reform the constructs that she or he studies’ and has a stake in the ‘beliefs, values and actions’ of the movements described (Anderson, 2006, pp. 382– 383). I rely on memories, literature about the time, and the diverse discussions I have had over the years with others who were involved (too many to list here, apart from those whom I cite directly). It is, nevertheless, helpful to remember Anderson’s warning: Group members seldom exhibit a uniform set of beliefs, values, and levels of commitment. As a result, even complete membership confers only a partial vantage point for observation of the social world under study. (Anderson, 2006, p. 381) Thus, my analysis represents a starting point for discussion of these movements: one I hope will be added to over time. Although large-scale movements frequently capture the most media interest, and therefore become well-known, Snow, Soule and Kriesi argue that local movements probably occur much more frequently. It is, therefore, instructive to analyse their characteristics. Social movements are in ‘in the business of promoting or resisting change, with respect to some aspect of the world in which we live’ (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007, p. 8). A movement must be directed toward a common goal with participants pursing joint action, usually outside of institutional channels (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007).

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The two local movements I analyse here that fit this definition. Both movements aimed to support members of their communities to grow and develop. Moreover, membership of the two movements overlapped (I was not the only one to be involved in both movements). They are, however, based on very different organisational dynamics, reasons for existence, and world views.

The setting New Zealand in the 1990s was going through a period of radical economic, social, and political change. In 1991, the unemployment rate rose 4 percentage points to over 11 percent across New Zealand as a whole (Trading Economics, 2015). Unemployment among young women peaked at 18.2 percent for 20–24 year-olds in June 1992, and at 24.2 percent for those age 15–19 in December 1994 (Statistics New Zealand, n.d.). Economic libertarians had come into power under the cover of the 1984 Labour Government. Their growing unpopularity and internal conflict led to them being unseated in the elections of 1990 to be replaced by the conservative National government, which set about quickening the pace of neoliberal reform. Wellington was a small capital city. In 1991, 136, 911 people lived in the city itself, while greater Wellington had a population of 343,054 (McLean, 2015b). Most inhabitants were of New Zealand European background (known as Pākeha), however 12.5 percent were Māori, 7.4 percent Pacific Islands people, and 5.9 percent people of various Asian ethnicities (Statistics New Zealand, 1999). The restructuring of the previous decade had reduced Wellington’s importance with companies no longer needing to be close to the seat of government, and therefore moving head offices to the country’s commercial hub of Auckland (McLean, 2015a).

The lotus The Wellington Young Women’s Division of Soka Gakkai International New Zealand (SGINZ) provides a model of social movement directed at the peaceful transformation of society through inner change and socially committed action, in a process known as ‘human revolution’ which is based on the belief that: A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind. (Ikeda, 2004, p. viii) The Young Women’s Division is part of the Soka Gakkai International New Zealand Buddhist lay movement, which operates in Wellington from Buddhist community centres (known as kaikan) based in a succession of inner city locations, as well as from members’ homes. I became involved through my girlfriend at the time, who had herself been introduced to the movement by her close friend and flatmate.

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It was, and is, one small strand of a large international lay Buddhist organisation, based on the teachings of thirteenth-century Japanese monk Nichiren Daishonin, as interpreted by the three founding presidents of Soka Gakkai,Tsunesaburō Makaguchi, Josei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda.Viewing the Lotus Sutra, one of the later teachings of Shakyamuni (also known as Gautama Buddha) as the heart of the Buddhist teaching, the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) practices a socially engaged form of Buddhism, in which people are said to be able to elevate their life condition and manifest their innate Buddha nature by striving to create value for oneself and others, and chanting the mantra ‘Nam Myoho Renge Kyo’ (which is known as daimoku). The philosophy was pioneered in New Zealand in the 1960s by a Japanese woman,Yuki Johnston, who had immigrated to Wellington upon her marriage to a New Zealander (Soka Gakkai International New Zealand – Aotearoa, n.d.). Yuki had been introduced to the Buddhist practice by her mother who encouraged her to chant and do Buddhist activities as a means to overcome her massive health problems (including cancer and paralysis). She was challenged by her mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, to have absolute belief and determination to surmount her difficulties. In later years, she spoke of how her experiences regaining her health, coupled with firm encouragement from Ikeda and her mother cemented her steely determination to establish Nichiren Buddhism in her new land. Settling in an alien country, without friends or knowledge of the language and culture made progress difficult as she strove to talk to others about her philosophy. She looked to the guidance of Ikeda for how to establish an organisation which would support the practitioners. Like other newly established SGI groups, Yuki followed the model established in Japan of small local discussion groups organised into local districts. These, in turn, were organised into chapters, headquarters areas, and territories. The first New Zealand district was formed in 1975 at the official establishment of SGI at a conference in Guam. Initially, there were seven members (Soka Gakkai International New Zealand – Aotearoa, n.d.). The organisation was also based on cross-cutting age-gender ‘divisions’, creating a matrix structure. Thus, a new member of the organisation would be geographically located in a group and district, as well as situated in one of four divisions: Young Women, Young Men, Women, or Men. There was also ‘Future Group’ which was the division for children. Members of the Wellington Young Women’s Division ranged in age from teens to 30s. They formed an exceptionally close bond with the woman they referred to as ‘Yuki-san’. Contrary to the image of Buddhism held by many Westerns, the SGI did not urge participants to relinquish attachments to earthly desires: rather the philosophy taught that ‘earthly desires are enlightenment’ (Nichiren Daishonin, 1999b). This philosophical focus has caused some to liken the movement to a prosperity church or cargo cult.Taking the view that desires (both in the positive sense, and the desire to avoid suffering) are an essential aspect of existence, Nichiren Buddhism talks of their transformation, rather than elimination. Encouraging people to chant and take action for themselves and others is seen as both a cause and effect for increasing people’s self-mastery and happiness, in a process of inner transformation which Toda termed ‘human revolution’ (Soka Gakkai Office of Information and Public Relations, 2005). Based on a fundamental belief in the interconnectedness of life

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and its environment, the movement is also outwardly focused, stressing the importance of creating social value in the domains of ‘peace, culture and education’ (Soka Gakkai International UK, n.d.). The SGI had made a decision to look to the past for lessons for the future. Many of those lessons reflected the danger of movements for change being crushed by persecution, or falling away due to the simple passage of time. The Soka Gakkai’s foundational narrative emphasised Makaguchi and Toda’s resistance to the Japanese military government’s efforts to crush the fledgling organisation. They refused to accept State Shinto-ism and were consequently arrested as thought criminals in 1943. In 1944, Makaguchi died in prison (Soka Gakkai International, 2015). On Toda’s release, he pondered why others in the movement had abandoned their faith when facing persecution. The organisation that he rebuilt from scratch incorporated his insights. Ikeda studied these principles under him, and built on them to create the modern organisation. Both looked to Nichiren’s writings, to the teachings of Shakyamuni, and their interpretations by classical Chinese and Japanese Buddhist scholars to develop a blueprint for the Soka Gakkai. The young women the movement attracted were extraordinarily diverse in terms of ethnicity, class, and personality. Métraux, who has studied the SGI in several Western countries, writes, since the early 1980s SGI chapters in these areas have attracted many more non-ethnic Japanese young adult members in their late twenties and early thirties. Although they represent all socio-economic classes, they are now generally well educated and are split evenly between males and females. (Métraux, 2012, p. 12) The Wellington Young Women’s Division included beneficiaries, office and retail workers, teachers, nurses, other professionals, visitors on work visas, students (attending university, technical institutes, and secondary schools), artists, and activists. Among the Division were young Japanese immigrant women, immigrants of Chinese ethnic background from countries such as Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, and New Zealanders (mostly Pākeha, but also of Māori, Pacific Islands, and Chinese ethnicity). There were also members from other backgrounds. No ethnic or language group claimed a majority of the membership. To create a movement from such a diverse group, the Wellington Young Women’s Division stressed unity, exorting its members to become ‘as in seperable as fish and the water in which they swim’ (Nichiren Daishonin, 1999a, p. 217). While Japan in the second half of the twentieth century was a homogenous society, it was obvious that the SGI’s message could not spread more widely without the ability to adapt to different cultural norms. Métraux writes: The Soka Gakkai is very unusual in that of the many new forms of Buddhism now found in the West, it alone breaks the ‘Two Buddhisms’ paradigm – the idea that there are two distinct groups who join Buddhist groups or become

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Buddhists – ethnic Asians living in the West and Westerners who are attracted for a variety of reasons. (Métraux, 2012, p. 13) In the Wellington Young Women’s Division, particular emphasis was put on unity within diversity. Nichiren’s words (2004, p. 200) ‘each thing – the cherry, the plum, the peach, the damson – in its own entity, without undergoing any change, possesses the eternally endowed three bodies’ became a key metaphor for the respect that was to be shown to diversity. Flower images are often used to represent young women in many cultures, and this quotation became a favourite of many Wellington Young Women’s Division members. Cultural adaptation included changing the assumptions around membership of the Young Women’s Division. In Japan, when the Young Women’s Division had been established, members were expected to move on to the Women’s Division upon marriage. In New Zealand, however, marriage was not the most significant transition point in young women’s lives. De facto relationships were common and same-sex relationships (which were denied the mantel of legal marriage) were becoming more accepted. Instead, Young Women’s Division members could choose when to move into the Women’s Division as they felt fit. In theory, the same applied to young women who were mothers (in New Zealand the cultural requirement to postpone childbearing until after marriage was relatively weak), although in practice there were some reports of young mothers being guided towards joining one or other of the divisions. As Métraux (2012, p. 14) writes, ‘Much of the Soka Gakkai’s success in foreign cultures is due to its ability to find a balanced method of adaptation’. By abandoning the strictly Japanese cultural aspects of the parent organisation, appointing local leadership, devolving control to local countries and conducting activities in the local vernacular, while at the same time maintaining strict adherence to the central tenets of its Buddhist philosophy SGI models a respect for diversity (Métraux, 2012). In Wellington, it did it very successfully. Divisional meetings were held once a month, but active members also attended discussion meetings at the district and group level, as well as lectures on the writings of Nichiren Daishonin, and monthly Kosenrufu Gongyo meetings where members from around the region met to chant for world peace based on the principles of Buddhist humanism. As SGI members, young women were part of an organisation with a highly developed leadership structure. There were appointed leaders and vice-leaders at each level of the organisation. At one point the formal leadership positions equated to roughly one third of active SGINZ members. Moreover, even those without formal leadership positions were encouraged to think of themselves as leaders for Buddhist humanism.

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On coming into contact with the SGI, I found the focus on leadership incongruous for a movement that stressed personal responsibility, but I eventually came consider it in terms of the training and development opportunities: the bestowal of a leadership position was intended to provide the member with opportunities to extend themself by taking responsibility for others. Although there was also a natural tendency to view the leaders as more authoritative than ordinary members, this was discouraged. At times, when leaders failed to live up to members’ expectations, individual members became angry or disillusioned.The SGI, however, was developing an organisational philosophy that confronted these issues through the prism of Buddhist practice. This included looking deeply at the way in which human interactions have the potential to either create or destroy value. Difficulties with leaders, or between members were therefore seen as central to the practice: it was through overcoming difficulties such as these that human revolution was said to occur. Métraux argues that, The human problems addressed by SGI and its solutions are universal in their scope and are not attached to any one culture or nationality. SGI is also very adept at bringing people together in small distinct groups that work together on a frequent basis. A large number of SGI members I have interviewed in Canada, SE Asia and elsewhere state that the social bonds made possible through SGI are an important factor in their joining and staying in SGI. (Métraux, 2012, p. 14) This holds true for the Young Women’s Division members in 1990s Wellington. Those Young Women’s Division members who wished to develop and support SGINZ in greater depth could join the Kōwhai Group.The kōwhai is often referred to as New Zealand’s tree, and usually features a bright yellow flower. The Kōwhai Group was, however, named for a rarer plant, known as the kōwhai ngutukākā in Māori (known in English as the kakabeak). The name, which was suggested by a Māori member of the Young Women’s Division, acknowledged the importance of kowhai ngutukākā in traditional Māori society (Department of Conservation, n.d.). The Kōwhai Group was modelled on similar groups in Japan and elsewhere (for example, in SGI-UK the analogous group is called the Lilacs). The uniform was a red skirt or trousers, white blouse, and black jacket, again reflecting the kowhai ngutukākā. The Kōwhai Group’s main functions were receiving members and guests at SGINZ events, and ensuring all were well care for, but the underlying purpose was to train the members in applying Buddhist principles to their interactions with others. In Wellington, the Kōwhai Group was under the constant and direct tutelage of Yuki. Vicky Yiannoutsos, who made a documentary about Yuki and was herself a Kōwhai Group member in the Auckland Young Women’s Division, remembers: Yuki was its heart. She was always surrounded by the young women: Camilla Browne, Luk Tamai, Janet [Heneti] Hammond. Anne Heynes would come

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from Auckland.Yuki was very compassionate, but a very hard taskmaster. She didn’t suffer fools gladly. It was amazing training. (Yiannoutsos, 2017) I did not join the Kōwhai Group, as I was not comfortable with the gendered nature of the tasks they performed, but because I was a member of the film crew videoing many of their training sessions with Yuki, I benefited from the training anyway. It taught me invaluable lessons in teamwork, the importance of detail and careful planning, and the spirit of caring for each individual. Young women who were members of the Kōwhai have gone on to effortlessly apply such lessons in many aspects of life. In the early 1990s, events concentrated the attention of the SGI internationally on the nature of religious authority, organisation and leadership. Prior to 1991, the SGI had been affiliated with the Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood, a priestly group that also proclaimed adherence to the philosophy of Nichiren Daishonin and that pre-existed the Soka Gakkai. Maintaining the relationship was seen as displaying respect for the lineage of the Buddhist law, but had not always been easy. In 1991, the Priesthood moved to squash the SGI’s independence, excommunicating SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, in a move that forced SGI members around the world to consider the basis of their Buddhist practice. SGINZ was highly united under Yuki’s leadership, and there was never any question of the Wellington Young Women’s Division following the Priesthood rather than the SGI.The country’s egalitarian and anti-authoritarian traditions may also have contributed to the reluctance to accept the hierarchical demands of the priests. Nevertheless, the incident was deeply upsetting for many. Members of the Young Women’s Division had been on pilgrimages to Buddhist temples run by priests in Japan. The images of priests in robes had given the movement a gravitas and a recognisable appearance of Buddhist practice. Some also questioned why, if the Priesthood was wrong, SGINZ leaders had for so long encouraged Young Women’s Division members to respect it. I was new to the movement at the time (and did not formally join until several years later). As a feminist, I looked at the pictures of the various personalities involved and asked, ‘Why should we even care about a between a bunch of old men arguing overseas?’ For those who had practiced longer, however, the transition to an independent lay organisation meant a rethinking of existing beliefs. It required them to rely on the ‘stand-alone spirit’ that they had been trained in, whereby each individual was encouraged to take responsibility for their choices. The split has since been characterised by Ikeda as the Buddhist Reformation. It led to the SGI developing as a movement of ordinary people independent of clerical oversight. Since then, the SGI has increased its emphasis on freedom of thought and religion even further.While the spiritual mission of the movement is central, and Ikeda is held in highest respect as the President of the SGI and the mentor of practitioners, the tendency of all organisations to risk formalism and authoritarianism, and the need to guard against this, is stressed.

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Locally, other key moments for the development of the Young Women’s Division within the SGI movement included staging exhibitions of local artists, international children’s art, and Daisaku Ikeda’s photographs, as well as large Cultural Shows in which members performed. One of the ways in which self-development was encouraged was through seeing difficulties both as an opportunity to challenge oneself and to develop the movement. Again,Yuki’s example was pivotal: The young women were trained by Yuki’s example. She used her life: her health problems . . . as an opportunity to model the life state for getting over them. Things like a brain tumour, or whatever: she would always use it as an opportunity to set goals and take action. This is what she had been taught and this is what she modelled. Getting registration [of SGINZ as a charitable organisation in 1994], going to an overseas conference, or to Japan to report back to Sensei [Ikeda], or the culture shows. (Yiannoutsos, 2017) In 1994, SGINZ became a registered charitable trust (Soka Gakkai International New Zealand – Aotearoa, n.d.). This was a goal Yuki had long worked for and it signified a starting point for the movement to become more active in supporting peace activities in New Zealand society: It was a social movement. Those young women have gone on to be the heart of the Gakkai, and all the things it has accomplished in society. It has now created strong links with the Peace Foundation, the UN Association, and significantly, with Parihaka [a village which was home to a nineteenth century indigenous movement of peaceful resistance to colonial rule, whose leaders Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi inspired Gandhi]. When we did the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Exhibition [in 2003] we took Arun Gandhi and Lawrence Carter to Parihaka. Now the Government has presented a package, which the people of Parihaka have accepted, that includes an apology for the Government’s historic actions there. (Yiannoutsos, 2017)

The labrys The second movement is the lesbian feminist movement in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1990s. The labrys (double-headed axe) was adopted as an international symbol of the lesbian feminist movement and symbolises strength, independence, and a willingness to fight for the right to exist.These staunch attributes are expressed up in the words of the immensely popular Topp Twins duo in Untouchable Girls: We’re untouchable, untouchable, untouchable girls We’re stroppy, we’re aggressive, we’ll take over the world. . . We don’t let anybody touch our brains

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We won’t ever, ever plug into the mains And we are overtaking on a single lane We’re untouchable, untouchable girls We live in a world that doesn’t care too much You’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to have guts Yeah, we are untouchable but we touch We’re untouchable, untouchable girls (Topp and Topp, 1987) In this section, I look at three initiatives organised over a short period of time by a sub-community of young lesbian feminists centred around Owen St, and adjoining streets in the inner-city suburb of Newtown, before mentioning two initiatives of the wider Wellington lesbian-feminist movement. Together, these illustrate the community and political outlook of the movement, and its achievements and limitations. The New Zealand lesbian feminist movement was an organic fluid creation of women who shared a common identity as ‘lesbian’ and a commitment to the broad tenets of feminism. Despite a typical feminist commitment to non-hierarchical structures, it became a movement due to the informal leadership of activists of varying backgrounds, personalities, and organisational abilities who stood up with a determination to confront prejudice and break boundaries. In the 1990s, feminism in New Zealand, as in much of the Western world, was fracturing. The lesbian community in Wellington had taken early steps towards political organisation in 1963 when a newspaper ad was placed calling for interested women to join the Radclyffe Hall Memorial Society (Hird and Germon, 1999). By the 1970s the lesbian feminists started to assert themselves within the broader New Zealand feminist movement demanding, for example, that lesbians be included in the speaking line-up at 1977 United Women’s Conference (Hird and Germon, 1999). Lesbians also took a leading role in the formation of New Zealand’s gay liberation movement, supported gay men when the HIV/AIDS epidemic arrived, and marched in support the struggle to have homosexual male sex decriminalised. Over time, however, many lesbian feminists became frustrated with the women’s movement’s inability to break away from the concerns of heterosexual women who were struggling to balance their political demands with their commitment to domestic and romantic relationships with men. There was also frustration with the individualist agendas prominent in the gay men’s movement (Hird and Germon, 1999). As a result, lesbian separatism was increasingly favoured as a way of ensuring that lesbians’ energies were focused on lesbian goals. Lesbian feminist newsletters, theory groups, and other initiatives flourished, heavily influenced by US developments in lesbian organising and by Australian and British influences (Hird and Germon, 1999). By the 1990s the radical lesbian feminist had become a familiar trope in New Zealand’s popular and political culture. Typically, she was imagined to be butch, strident, and humourless, with short-cropped hair, a flannel shirt, and Doc Martens

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boots. Many lesbians did adopt this style of dress, which served as a signifier of identity to other lesbians, deflected male sexual attention, and had the advantage of being highly practical. Labrys pendants, earrings, and tattoos were popular. Young women exploring their lesbian identity in the 1990s were drawn to such symbols of community and belonging. Frequently facing disapproval from their families of origin and wider society, including at times being shunned by the groups to which they had previously belonged (family, church, cultural, or community), the lesbian feminist, and wider gay community used the term ‘family’ to represent a new ‘home’. But the welcome was not without complications: there was a new set of behaviours and social language to learn. Some lesbians came out with little pre-existing feminist consciousness, while other members of the movement saw themselves as ‘political lesbians’, i.e. women who rejected the patriarchal constraints of intimate relationships with men, and believed that true feminism lay in forming exclusively female relationships and communities. In her eulogy to Kathryn Henare, lesbian comedian and organiser Val Little remembers the time: I first met Kath . . . when we were part of the same ‘coming out’ group. We were both in our early 20s and new to this whole lesbian community thing. It was a mix of nerve wracking and liberating. We came out at a time when the lesbian movement was embracing both New Age philosophy and radical separatist politics. We were healing our inner child with crystals and positive affirmations while denouncing all men and straight people and declaring war on the patriarchy. We were claiming our place in the world, not as women but as lesbians. We were loving, hating, born-again, challenging, creating, healing, hurting and building new friends, lovers, families and communities. There were unwritten rules about how we ‘should’ look, what we ‘should’ wear and who we ‘should’ associate with. Kath and I flatted together off and on over the years in the '90s. (Little, 2013) The earliest of these flats (rented houses shared by a group of housemates) was in Owen St, Newtown. I moved into another young lesbian feminist household around the corner in 1991. Together, these flats and others in close proximity formed a tight-knit community which organised a variety of initiatives. The three initiatives I describe here are a week-long Lesbian Activities and Recreation Festival (LARF), a community self-help initiative (LOPs), and a small-scale high impact protest against government cuts to social welfare benefits. There was no over-arching structure. They were run with almost no money or external validation. The approach was organic and post-modernist; no attempts were made to build on-going or lasting structures. LARF was the largest of the three initiatives. Unlike the others, it had a central driver: Val Little, who was undertaking a Master’s Degree in Applied Recreation Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, was the catalyst for organising it in fulfilment of one of her course requirements. The idea quickly grew into a

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multi-event, week-long festival. Most events were outdoors: a beach day (which was family friendly, allowing those lesbians with children to be involved), a softball match (softball had been the iconic game of lesbian communities for many years), touch rugby, and a wild coastal hike. Other activities included indoor kayak instruction at the Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre, a board and card games evening, and a drama workshop. LARF ran harmoniously, creating community and solidarity. At least one romantic relationship grew out of a meeting – and falling in love – at LARF. The couple have lived together for a number of years and helped raise children from their extended family. Some years later, they married in their eyes of their family and friends (the law at the time pronounced them to be ‘civil partners’ as legal marriage was not yet available to same-sex couples). LARF itself did not continue as an institution. It stands as a one-off festival that brought together members of a marginalised community in a celebration of health, wellbeing, and friendship. Two other initiatives organised from the young lesbian feminist households around Owen St were sparked by socio-political events. Whereas the pioneers of the lesbian-feminist movement in New Zealand were early baby boomers, raised in a period of economic growth and full employment after the Second World War, and operating within the framework of the youth counter-culture movement that swept the Western world from the late 1960s, the young lesbian feminists of the 1990s were predominantly members of ‘Generation X’ (Coupland 1989) who had been raised during periods of recession, restructuring, and rising unemployment. We were hit hard by the high rates of female youth unemployment, combined with the introduction of fees for tertiary education. Many of us were students or recent graduates. Others were workers in, for example, clerical, sales, trades, or service jobs. Young Māori and Pacific Islands women faced extra discrimination in the labour market. Jobs were hard to come by, and noone was financially well-off. Moreover, ‘out’ lesbian identity, or failure to conform to expected gender norms led to increased discrimination in the workplace and labour market for many, with no legal protection. It is not surprising, therefore, that the decision announced in Finance Minister Ruth Richardson’s ‘Mother of All Budgets’ to cut most social welfare benefits by 5 to 27 percent from 1 April 1991, raise the age for youth unemployment benefit rates to 25, and make student allowances for those under 25 conditional on parental income (Baker, 2015; St John, 2001) generated widespread anger among members of the movement. The budget had long-lasting repercussions, nearly costing the National Party the next election and irreversibly changing New Zealand’s sociopolitical landscape (St John 2001; James, 2016). As young women reliant on student allowances, unemployment benefits, or low-paid work, we were not only politically outraged; we were directly affected and concerned about meeting our living costs. In response, we created the Lesbian Opportunities self-help initiative (LOPs) involving a wider group of radical lesbian feminists, including some older lesbians, and lesbian separatists. It was a conscious effort to support the self-sufficiency of lesbians as protection against economic insecurity. Time was spent agreeing on visions and political stand-points.The main event organised by LOPS was a Lesbian

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gala (a ‘Gayla’) held in an inner-city community hall. It provided stalls for lesbians to sell their produce, crafts, and other items, musical and comedy performances, and a large bring and swap area. The author remembers, being relatively new to the movement, that she almost burst into laughter when a lesbian separatist LOPS member raised concerns that clothes in the swap area might include skirts or dresses, which would be offensive. A quick look around group made the author realise that not only was the comment made in deadly seriousness, but also, that it would be unwise to challenge it with a discourse on the cultural relativities of different clothing styles! The Gayla was successful, attracting lesbians from throughout the region. Clothes were swapped, items were bought and sold, and entertainment of varying standards was provided. But the questions of who was ‘in’ the movement was ignited when two women arrived who were known to be what we would now call ‘allies’ of the movement. LOPS was intended to be lesbian only, meaning women who identified as bisexual or heterosexual, as well as transgender women, men and children were not welcome.Thus, the question had to be confronted: were these women lesbians? Human curiosity added other questions: if so, when had they come out? were they together? A dominant belief in the movement was in ‘political lesbianism’ which held that all women could decide to reject relationships with men and be lesbian. Just as many heterosexuals have never contemplated what it was like not to be sexually attracted to the opposite sex, political lesbians did not tend to consider that some women might simply not have any feelings of attraction to other women (or in any case, political lesbians thought that ceasing intimate interactions with men was a small price to pay for escaping the patriarchy).Thus, no-one wanted to accuse these women of not being lesbian. After a hurried discussion, someone was delegated to approach the women to clarify their situation. The pair were extremely surprised. Having come to support lesbian enterprise, they had no idea that their presence was unwanted. Amid great social awkwardness, they retreated. There was no such thing as a lesbian identity card to prove membership of the group. Rather, inclusion was based on knowing someone who vouched for one. Some of those who were involved in these movements have since come out as bisexual or transgender. Although LOPs was established to be an on-going collective, I do not remember it organising subsequent events. The personal and political outlooks of the members were too diverse to hang together, so this initiative fizzled. Collective organising took time, and the need for consensus could distort goals. Therefore, two of us decided to take out our incipient anger at the benefit cuts in a more direct way via a small-scale, high-impact protest. In what could be seen to foreshadow the Occupy movement, we decided to camp on Parliament Grounds. Both of us had completed higher tertiary degrees with excellent academic results in the previous six months and had been unsuccessfully searching for jobs related to our skills ever since. I pasted 100 rejection letters to a board to prop against our tent. Supported by our then partners and a few friends, we headed to Parliament with the board, sleeping bags, and tent.

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Once there, we were stopped by a security guard who advised that it was illegal to erect a structure (in the form of the tent) on Parliament Grounds. Thwarted in our intended visual representation of struggle, we negotiated an agreement that we would pitch the tent across the road on the lawn of the new Bowen State Building which housed some Members of Parliament including the Minister of Social Welfare. At night, we would put our tent down and return to the main Parliament Grounds, where they said they would not interfere with us sleeping on the porch of the Parliamentary Library. While neither the Minister of Finance nor the Minister of Social Welfare replied to our demand that they come out to speak to us, the protest was one of the numerous expressions of dissent to the cuts (which set New Zealand on a pathway to entrenched inequality and increased poverty) (St John, 2001). We did interviews with radio stations and the TV news in front of our tent. The print media turned up later when we were on the Parliamentary Library steps. In the dying light, the gothic columns framed our sleeping bagged figures to great effect, making for a dramatic photo which ran on the front page of a national morning newspaper. The protest only involved two activists overnight, but it required a team to pull it off. One of our partners drove us to Parliament in my car (the sleeping bags, rejection letter board, and tent being too bulky to take on the bus). They brought us supplies of orange juice, sandwiches and bananas, and stayed with us until it was late evening. They had no interest, however, in fronting the campaign to the media, or spending the night sleeping outside on a hard floor. It was a case of participants finding their own level of activism and area of contribution in a social movement. Our initiative also entered New Zealand school resources, as the national newspaper organisation used it as an exemplar in their educational resources on citizens’ organising. It affirmed for those involved in the public part of the protest that strategic pop-up activism could gain traction, and we could get our voices heard, and we have both continued to be involved in peace and feminist activism. Oddly, the protest also led to an informal invitation for a job interview with a policy manager at the New Zealand Treasury, which had overseen the budget cuts. I had already been rejected for a job at Treasury through the graduate recruitment process and was wary about this new approach. Although the New Zealand civil service is ostensibly non-partisan, I could not see how my values would find a place in the policy work Treasury was doing at the time, so did not take up the invitation. Wellington’s young lesbian feminists had benefited from the strides made by older lesbian feminist political and community activists in the previous two decades, and many were mentored by them through involvement in existing community institutions such as coming out groups, women’s dances, lesbian newsletters, lesbian summer camps, Dykes on Bikes, and the lesbian radio programme. Small separatist communities existed outside of Wellington, for example at the seaside village of Tangimoana in the Manawatu region. Women’s rights activities such as Women’s Refuge, Rape Crisis, and Women Against Pornography also provided a focus for and benefitted from the work of young lesbian feminists. In addition, gay liberation

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and the struggle against HIV/AIDs absorbed young lesbian feminists’ attention, with many contributing to Wellington’s gay pride event, Devotion. At times, however, the younger women were frustrated by power structures and belief systems of our elders. Like many of the 1960s counter-culture, it seemed that these established lesbians saw themselves as the arbiters of radical culture, including the acceptable boundaries of lesbian feminism. Coming from the generation that created ‘youth culture’, they were not ready to yield to the tangential musing of the smaller Gen-X that came after. A workshop organised to confront the issue of domestic violence in lesbian relationships provides an illustration of attempts by the Wellington lesbian feminist movement to grapple with new issues, and the difficulties in finding a constructive way to do so. Although lesbians had been at the forefront of setting up Women’s Refuge and other supports for women to escape family violence, such violence had been seen through the framework of power and control used by men in heterosexual relationships (Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, n.d., Ehrhardt et al., 2013). For those affected by violence in lesbian relationships, there was nowhere to turn. The community did not have confidence that Police would treat us without discrimination. Moreover, we feared that acknowledgement that lesbian relationships could be violent might exacerbate anti-lesbian stigma, as if our right to exist depended on us maintaining perfect, non-violent relationships. The workshop split into two strands: Māori women caucused separately from the Pākeha (European) women, to ensure that their voice was not drowned out by the Pākeha majority. They invited the Pacific Island lesbian present to join them. The concept of separate caucuses was well acknowledged in the New Zealand lesbian feminist movement. Although the term ‘intersectionality’ (coined by American civil rights lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989) was not well known, a New Zealand version on the idea had been developed by the women of the Māori renaissance, such as Donna Awatere whose influential book Maori Sovereignty was first published as a series of articles in the feminist magazine Broadsheet (Crenshaw, 1989; Awatere, 1984; Philips, 2014). Members of the Māori renaissance had been critical of Pākeha feminists attempts to define Māori women’s issues and demanded their own space to discuss matters without interference. Notably, Māori lesbian feminist paradigms largely rejected the exclusivist definitions of the lesbian feminism imported from Anglo societies. Increasingly, Māori identified as takatāpui which is, according to Kerekere: a traditional term meaning ‘intimate companion of the same sex.’ It has been reclaimed to embrace all Māori who identify with diverse genders and sexualities such as whakawāhine, tangata ira tāne, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer. All of these and more are included within Rainbow communities. (Kerekere, 2015) The term takatāpui is thus more holistic, and less subject to analytical division than the English words. Racial justice, cultural retention, and caring for members of one’s whānau (wider family) were at least as important to many Māori lesbian feminists as

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organising for gender and sexuality rights. Reports of the Māori women’s caucus suggested that it was constructive, inclusive, and affirming. In contrast, the Pākeha caucus focused on sharing experiences of victimisation, and then moved on to listing every behaviour that could be defined as violence. Beyond the physical, this included destruction of religious objects, threats to family members and pets, yelling, intimidating, sarcasm, cold shouldering, and avoidant behaviours. This, and the lack of effective facilitation (in keeping with the theoretically non-hierarchical structure of the movement), meant that there was no space to explore the edges of violence or to self-reflect.Those I attended with were concerned about a particular abusive relationship we were aware of, but found ourselves without insight into how to address the situation.The Pākeha feminist movement against family violence, still in its adolescent phases of development, took a binary view of good and evil, identifying violence with patriarchal control, and victimhood with femaleness. While such models provide an evidence-based starting point from understanding family violence, they are challenged by the realities of same-sex partner violence (Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, n.d.; Ehrhardt et al., 2013). Anti-violence workers and researchers would later develop more nuanced definitions of intimatepartner violence, and some of those present in both caucuses would play a role in this. New Zealand’s first Lesbian Studies Conference provides another microcosm of the innovations and limits of the lesbian-feminist movement of the 1990s. Hird and Germon (1999) note that divisive issues within the New Zealand radical lesbian feminist movement included suspicion of feminine appearance, of sexual practices including S&M and the use of dildos, and of bisexuality.The conference was held at Victoria University of Wellington. The organising committee was again putatively non-hierarchical and collective. Nevertheless, lesbian academics with established places in the university had access to the facilities and resources and thus were accorded implicit authority. The conference itself attracted several hundred participants and featured international as well as local speakers. One up-and-coming Wellington writer was congratulated by the more naïve members of the audience on her bravery in writing about lesbian intimate partner violence. When it dawned on people that her account was actually of an S&M relationship there was outrage. Not long afterwards, this writer left the country to pursue her career elsewhere. There is no doubt that while the achievements of the lesbian feminist movement were huge, at times the costs were also high, and that in its drive for ideological purity, the radical core of lesbian feminism lost compassion for the fluid ambiguity of real lives. Yiannoutsos, who worked on radical feminist film projects in Auckland, recalls: It was an exceptionally creative time, full of energy, ideas, protests, and initiatives, but the anger that was unleashed was undisciplined and ill-directed. It was also very uraic [rebellious, electric, forward-looking, original] as women, who had suffered oppression for so long, realised their power and claimed their liberation: going all out there, breaking it into shards. We were always fighting. It was wonderful to have the freedom to be able to stand up for ourselves and demand things, to fight, and express our anger. (Yiannoutsos, 2017)

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Like many liberation movements, members did not always distinguish between attacking the enemy (essentially, the patriarchy) and cannibalising their own: It was as if, having achieved their liberation, they had this power and they didn’t know how to use it. There was a lot of anger. There was one very clear enemy: men. But that anger spilled out at all sorts of other targets who weren’t considered to be acceptable within the ‘club’. (Yiannoutsos, 2017) Schisms are commonplace within radical movements. In the lesbian feminist movement, there was little safety or space for self-reflection and attack was often a default mode. Hird and Germon (1999) write that the idea of authenticity was a defining feature of lesbian community in New Zealand; yet the very process of insisting on an authentic community contains ambiguities which create in-groups and outgroups, marginalising some and centring others. In my analysis, when the Wellington lesbian feminist movement insisted on the performance of authenticity, it destabilised the actual subjective authenticity of its members (both in-groups and out-groups). When explorations or expressions of fluid and diverse identities are disallowed, the subjective self cannot flourish. The absence of formal leaders and leadership positions allowed dominant personalities to prevail. In a hostile external climate, in-group membership was important, and its loss was to be feared. Young lesbians could not rely on understanding and support from mainstream society in the form of families of origin, school friends, workplaces or even social support services. In the lesbian and gay community, the movement became ‘family’, thus the potential suffering from ostracisation was also great. Nevertheless, proclamations of fidelity to lesbian feminist principles were no guarantee that an individual would maintain that lifestyle and ideology over time. In the years that followed, the anti-feminist backlash grew in New Zealand, as in other Anglo-countries. At the same time that gay and lesbian rights slowly inched towards acceptance, the radical feminist agenda of societal structural change to upend the patriarchy was sidelined. The kinds of lesbian feminist activism that had been such a powerful force in shattering the nations’ assumption about gender and sexuality in the 1970s to early 1990s were used as fuel for the backlash. Stories of those who had been hurt within the lesbian feminist movement gave support to stereotypes of an aggressive feminist agenda driven by politically correct radical lesbian separatists. Stereotypes of humourless militancy achieved greater narrative sway than tales of audacity, joy, and connection. There is a need to remember the other side. In Little’s eulogy to Kath Henare she recalled, [L]aughing with tears rolling down my face, my cheeks aching, gasping for breath and clutching my stomach . . . Kath didn’t ‘do’ rules. Kath didn’t ‘do’ boxes. . . . And Kath didn’t take many things too seriously. Especially herself. She had this way of cutting through the crap . . . with humour, hilarity, irreverence and sometimes just downright bad behaviour! . . .

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We celebrated birthdays, supported each other though break-ups, makeups, hook-ups, fall-outs. We went on road trips, day trips, drunken frenzies, impersonated Thunderbirds, Suzanne Paul, the Waltons, sang John Denver songs at the top of our lungs, shared the juiciest gossip and – did I mention the drunken frenzies?! She would get a twinkle in her eye and pull a trick out of nowhere that would leave you both shocked and weak at the knees with hysterical laughter. I remember shopping with Kath in Farmers [a department store] one day. It was in the days they used to have life-sized, cardboard cut-out Police officers dotted throughout the shop as a way, presumably, to subconsciously deter shoplifters. As we were leaving the shop I heard that irrepressible snorting chuckle of Kath’s and I turned to see her carting, not one, but two of these stern looking cops out through the door – one under each arm – and she plonked them in the middle of Cuba Mall facing the Bucket Fountain! Then she wiped her hands together as if it was a mission successfully completed and walked off. (Little, 2013) The testament to the 1990s Wellington young lesbian feminist movement is the glue it provided to a disparate and under-pressure community. It was a flotilla lashed temporarily together to explore and create landing spaces in barely charted waters. The subsequent loosening of ties, and even, at times, drifting apart represents an appropriate response to the increased acceptance on lesbians’ rights to exist with equality in New Zealand society. A large proportion of the organisers of the initiatives described in this chapter continued to work for social justice, feminist, and LGBTQI aims through the years of the reactionary backlash. We variously became professionals in NGO, private enterprise, and public service roles committed to social justice; campaigned for marriage equality (others resisted the cultural assimilation implied by ‘embracing the normative institution of heterosexuality’ [Hird and Germon, 1999, p. 106]); took prominent roles in transgender rights nationally and internationally (again, others became stalwarts of the trans-exclusive branch of radical feminism); wrote academic works on lesbian, feminist, and takatāpui issues; formed the renowned Drag Kings and toured internationally; sang in the Glamaphones choir; became parents and established Rainbow Families networks for LGBTQI people raising children; worked for mental health and against sexual and family violence; and sought election in national politics. Some who had been key members of the Wellington lesbian feminist movement later came out as bisexual, others came out as transmen (transitioning their identity from ‘lesbian’ to ‘male’) or as intersex. The connections that we created have endured, providing a loose network of support across Wellington and beyond. The bonds that were formed in the movement provided a counter-narrative to dominant discourse of anti-feminism. As activists, community members, mentors, and metaphorical aunties and elder sisters, those involved in the 1990s lesbian feminist movement nurtured a new wave of feminism as it emerged in the 2000s. The strength, popularism, vitality, and the directions taken by the twenty-first-century feminist movement took many by

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surprise. The tide has swung toward a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality. Rather than a ‘lesbian feminist movement’, there is a wider intersectional feminist movement in Wellington and elsewhere, and a vibrant LGBTQI movement that welcomes diverse sexualities and non-gender-conforming individuals.

Conclusions How, then, do we assess these two very different movements that attracted young women in Wellington who were seeking to create new paths in the 1990s? According to Snow, Soule, and Kriesi, SGI in the USA provides an example of a movement that has endured and grown since the 1960s: other movements, such as the women’s movement, ‘persist across generations, alternating between periods of heightened activism and dormancy’ (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007, p. 11).The same appears to be true in Wellington, New Zealand, where those joining the Young Women’s Division of the SGI in the 1990s were part of a steadily growing movement for transformation, whereas engagement in the young lesbian feminist movement involved an outpouring of transgressive and transformational energy, followed by a period of relative dormancy during which the movement metamorphosed and re-emerged as modern intersectional feminism and LGBTQI activism. Snow, Soule, and Kriesi write that although ‘[j]oint action of any kind implies some degree of coordination and thus organization’, movements and their analysts have rarely agreed on ‘the forms, functions, and consequences of organization’ (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007, p. 9).Within Marxism, Rosa Luxemburg argued that too much organisation was antithetical to effective mobilisation of the oppressed, whereas Vladimir Lenin put great store on it (Snow, Soule and Kriesi, 2007). Again, this holds true for the examples described in this chapter: the lesbian feminist movement generally followed Luxemburg’s dictum, giving primacy to organic dynamism; while the SGI adopted a tight organisational structure more akin to the Leninist model. Nevertheless, the approach of 1990s lesbian feminism also relied on some degree of organisation to foster larger activities. Both LARF and the Lesbian Studies Conference were stabilised through connections to a university. Moreover, on-going lesbian feminist initiatives often required some sort of formal structure to meet legal and financial requirements, and many of those involved in the movement went on to establish social justice organisations or take roles within existing formal initiatives. Meanwhile, the potential for rigidity of the SGI’s divisional and district structure was mitigated by the organisation’s insistence on freedom of expression and thought, and individual self-development. These threads, which became increasingly important after the split with the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, chimed with New Zealand sense of egalitarianism and the increasing individualism of the 1990s. Significantly, the SGINZ was able to meld millennia of Buddhist thinking about the nature of living beings and their social environments with a flexibility to incorporate diverse modern-day cultural and social dimensions. Like India, China, and Japan, New Zealand has ancient traditions of dragon-like beings (called taniwhā

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in Māori). Thus, the Buddhist parable of the dragon king’s eight-year-old daughter’s attainment of Buddhahood resonated with Wellington young women.This tale from the Lotus Sutra is referred to in a famous letter from by Nichiren Daishonin to his follower Nanjō Tokimitsu (Nichiren Daishonin, 2006). It emphasises the potential for enlightenment in one’s present form, regardless of one’s gender, age, or other attributes.

Epilogue As a movement matures, it will experience members’ sickness and deaths. Yuki Johnson, the founder of SGINZ eventually became extremely ill with motor neurone syndrome. Wellington Young Women’s Division members were at a National Training Course when we witnessed a fantail fly into the meeting hall. In Māori culture, the fantail is often seen as a traditional messenger of death (Keane, 2015). Thus, many young women present felt that the mystic Buddhist law of the universe had fused with the indigenous laws of the land. Knowing that we would soon lose our national founder allowed us to emotionally prepare. Young women who had been particularly close to Yuki were able to go to the hospice where she was staying, where they remained with her until death, and throughout the mourning period that followed. Sickness and deaths in the lesbian feminist movement brought into focus the need to create narratives and retain our history. In contrast with the SGI, the lesbian feminist movement does not yet have a cannon of traditional wisdom. The movement’s philosophical, academic, and historical writings are in their infancy. I quoted earlier from Little’s eulogy for Kath Henare who died in 2013. At Kath’s funeral, her family carried her into the hall, while her LGBTQI friends were given the honour of carrying her out. Her brother, a Christian pastor, spoke of how he had prayed with Kath in her last days. I mentioned her involvement in Buddhism (she was never an SGI member, but practiced and attended activities for a time) and her New Age beliefs. Fellow takatāpui farewelled her with traditional Māori keening. After cremation, I was tasked with placing her ashes in their final resting place. Kath, who loved Star Wars, had ordered a Jedi cloak online sometime in her final weeks. This I used to wrap her, quietly chanting Buddhist daimoku as I did so.Which of the ontological strands – lesbian feminist, takatāpui, LGBTQI, Māori, Pākeha, Christian, Buddhist, or Jedi – referenced in her send-off meant most to Kath, only she knows. For the living, her example continues to reverberate in the lives of her friends. But it also reverberated politically: Kath’s cousin, the National Party politician Tau Henare, attended the funeral, and afterwards chatted to Kath’s friends. Several weeks later he dedicated his speech in the Parliamentary debate in support of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill to Kath (New Zealand Parliament, 2013). Thus, the networks of social movement propelled an iconoclast known for ironic self-depreciation into the official record of legislative change giving lesbians and other same-sex couples the right to marry. Social movements work in mysterious ways.

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References Anderson, L. “Analytic Autoethnography”. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35.4 (2006): 373. Awatere, D. Maori Sovereignty. Broadsheet (1984). Baker, M. “Family Welfare – Family Policy, 1980–1999”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2015). Retrieved from https://teara.govt.nz/en/family-welfare, 11 July 2017. Coupland, D. “Generation X”. Vista (1989). Retrieved from https://joeclark.org/dossiers/ GenerationX.pdf, 23 May 2019. Crenshaw, K. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Legal Theory and Antiracist Politics”. The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989): 139. Department of Conservation. “Kakabeak/Köwhai Ngutukaka” (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kakabeak/, 10 July 2017. Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs. “What is the Duluth Model?” Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.theduluthmodel.org/whatis-the-duluth-model/, 12 July 2017. Ehrhardt, P., Little, G., Marsters, M., Morris Matthews, K., Nauer, G., Pentecost, M., StockdaleFrost, A., & Wivell, J. Report on the Effectiveness of Services Delivered by Dove Hawkes Bay Inc. Eastern Institute of Technology (2013). Retrieved from http://www.eit.ac.nz/wpcontent/uploads/2013/05/DOVE-Summary-Report-May-2013.pdf, 23 May 2019. Hird, M.J., & Germon, J. “Women on the Edge of a Dyke-Otomy”. Journal of Lesbian Studies 3.3 (1999): 103–11. Ikeda, D., The Human Revolution,Vol 1–6, abridged edition, World Tribune Press (2004). James, C. “National Party – Shifting Rightwards”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2016). Retrieved from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/national-party/sources, 12 July 2017. Keane, K. “Ngā Manu – Birds – Birds Associated with Death”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2015). Retrieved from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/nga-manu-birds, 13 July 2017. Kerekere, E. Takatāpui: Part of the Whānau. Tīwhanawhana Trust and Mental Health Foundation (2015).Retrieved from https://takatapui.nz/#home, 12 May 2019. Little,V. “Eulogy for Kath Henare” (2013). Unpublished speech. McLean, C. “Wellington Region – Economic Fall and Rise: 1976 to 21st Century”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2015a). Retrieved from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ wellington-region/page-11. McLean, C. “Wellington Region – Population”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2015b). Retrieved from https://teara.govt.nz/en/wellington-region/page-12. Métraux, D.A. “Soka Gakkai International: Japanese Buddhism on a Global Scale”. Virginia Review of Asian Studies (2012): 3. New Zealand Parliament. Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill – Second Reading. New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (13 March 2013), 688, 8523. Retrieved from https://www. parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/50HansD_20130313_00000036/ marriage-definition-of-marriage-amendment-bill-second. Nichiren Daishonin. “The Immeasurable Meanings Sutra”. The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings. Watson, Burton, Trans.: Soka Gakkai (2004). 199. Nichiren Daishonin. “The Four Virtues and the Four Debts of Gratitude”.The Gosho Translation Committee. Ed & Trans., The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin. Vol. 2:Soka Gakkai (2006). 636.

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Nichiren Daishonin. “The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life”. The Gosho Translation Committee. Ed., The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin: The Gosho Translation Committee. Trans. Soka Gakkai (1999a). 216. Nichiren Daishonin. “Earthly Desires Are Enlightenment”.The Gosho Translation Committee. Ed. & Trans., The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin: Soka Gakkai (1999b). 317. Philips, Jock. “Ideas in New Zealand – Identity Politics”. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand (2014). Retrieved from http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ideas-in-new-zealand/ page-8, 13 July 2017. Snow, D.A., Soule, S.A., & Kriesi, H. “Mapping the Terrain”. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Eds. Snow, David A, Sarah A Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi: Blackwell (2007). Soka Gakkai Office of Information and Public Relations. “Basics of Buddhism: Human Revolution”. SGI Quarterly (July 2005), p. 26. Soka Gakkai International (2015). “Tsunesaburo Makiguchi”. Retrieved from https://www. sgi.org/about-us/founding-presidents/tsunesaburo-makiguchi.html, 10 July 2017. Soka Gakkai International UK “Peace, culture and education” (n.d.). Retrieved from https:// sgi-uk.org/Peace-culture-and-education, 22 May 2019. Soka Gakkai International New Zealand – Aotearoa.“About” (n.d.). Retrieved from https:// sginz.org/about/, 29 June 2017. St John, S. “Redesigning the Welfare State in New Zealand”. Promoting Social Inclusion in the Commonwealth:The UK, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Brisbane. 4–5 October 2001. 2001. Statistics New Zealand. “Key Labour Force Measures by Qualification, Age and Sex”. Statistics New Zealand (n.d.). Retrieved from www.stats.govt.nz, 10 July 2017. Statistics New Zealand. Wellington. Statistics New Zealand (1999). Retrieved from www. stats.govt.nz, 10 July 2017. Topp, L, & Topp, J.“Untouchable Girls”. No War in My Heart.Vancouver, BC: Festival Records (1987). Trading Economics. “New Zealand Unemployment Rate” (2015). Retrieved from https:// tradingeconomics.com/new-zealand/unemployment-rate, 19 June 2017. Yiannoutsos,V. “Thoughts on Radical Feminism and SGI Buddhism in New Zealand in the 1990s”. Personal Interview (2017), June 18.

7 PERSPECTIVES ON JAPAN’S ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENTS The effectiveness of social movements? Naoko Kumagai and John Clammer

On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck offshore from the northeast coast of Honshu, Japan’s most populous island and the site of Tokyo, its capital city. The quake triggered a massive tsunami (along some parts of the coast, two in quick succession) that in some places swept kilometers inland, destroying villages and towns in its path, inundating large areas of farm land, surging up rivers and canals, and causing the known deaths or disappearance of approximately 20,000 people. Almost at the mid-point of the affected coast stands the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, protected from the Pacific Ocean by little more than a low sea wall, adequate for normal storm surges, but totally inadequate for a huge tsunami. The tsunami inundated the plant, knocking out power and destroying the emergency generators which had been placed on the ocean side of the power station, and strewing huge quantities of debris, which made it impossible for emergency services to reach the stricken plant. The reactors, having lost the power that circulated coolant, quickly began to enter meltdown. Unable to secure alternative power from the devastated areas around the plant which themselves had no electricity, fires and then explosions ensued, severely damaging the casing of three of the reactors, leading to the emission of large quantities of radioactivity that soon began to spread throughout the surrounding districts, out to sea over the Pacific, and to drift towards the huge metropolis of Tokyo to the south of the disaster site. This began the worst nuclear accident ever experienced in Japan, and globally second only to that of the Chernobyl meltdown in the Ukraine in 1986. The social, environmental and political fallout from it was immediate and catastrophic. Surviving residents of areas within 20 kilometers of the plant were evacuated, huge quantities of radioactive seawater that was used as an emergency coolant once some power was restored was dumped back into the ocean and spread rapidly up and down the coast and out into the Pacific, a plan to evacuate Tokyo with its over

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30 million inhabitants was about to be triggered and communications with the huge area devastated by the quake and the tsunami was almost impossible, terrestrial phone lines having been cut, mobile phone towers destroyed, train lines having been washed away or severely damaged and Sendai airport, the only commercial one in the disaster zone, was itself inundated and rendered inoperable.Thousands of residents of Tokyo and surrounding areas fled either to western Japan or abroad.The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company that owned and operated the Fukushima plant, was paralysed with indecision, and a whole series of mistakes, cover-ups, failure to release accurate data or actually releasing false data on such critical public matters as radiation levels and sea-water discharges ensued, and the government itself (despite having had to deal with previous earthquake-caused disasters, such as that which occurred in Kobe in 1995) reacted almost as badly – their promises about the safety of nuclear energy in earthquake-prone Japan were suddenly proved not only to be hollow, but with the obvious lack of any realistic emergency plan about what to do in the event of a nuclear disaster becoming immediately apparent (Funabashi and Kim, 2014). The huge social, environmental and political costs soon quickly became obvious too. These included the more or less permanent depopulating of all areas within the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, the evacuation of school children from an even wider zone when it became apparent that the soil in their school playgrounds was severely contaminated, the crippling of agriculture and fisheries in the affected areas and beyond (radiation and the winds that carry it being no respecters of bureaucratic boundaries), on top of the massive physical damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, and the incalculable trauma of survivors who had seen their homes swept away or collapsed, pets, relatives, friends and schoolmates vanished, loss of all possessions and facing the prospect of “temporary” emergency re-housing (some of it still there) with social ties broken and familiar neighborhoods vanished.Yet what has become known as the “triple disaster” (earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown) (Bacon and Hobson, 2014) triggered other reactions too, including a huge outpouring of public sympathy across Japan and beyond, large numbers of volunteers pouring into the devastated areas to help with clearing rubble, searching for survivors and providing medical and other professional assistance, the mobilization of the US forces in Japan to provide emergency relief and, not unnaturally, the triggering of a national debate on the whole and until then largely quiescent subject of nuclear energy in Japan, the Fukushima disaster having graphically proved the hollowness of government and industry’s claims as to its absolute safety and reliability in energy-hungry Japan.

Social movements and the nuclear issue There has long been an anti-nuclear lobby in Japan, an earthquake- and typhoonprone country, and the only one ever subject to atomic attack. The official decision to adopt nuclear energy was made in 1955 when the technology was still young, and the first plants started generation in 1966. As in other countries that began

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nuclear energy electricity generation around the same time, the public was assured that the process was entirely safe and that a solution would be found to the problem of disposal of radioactive waste. Many people in Japan, often those associated with the country’s active environmental movement, have never believed these promises, but had little leverage over the powerful political and industry forces favoring nuclear power generation. Until 3/11 that is. While one of the immediate effects of the Fukushima crisis was the shut-down of all nuclear power plants in Japan for stringent safety checks, including more thorough geological surveys of surrounding areas (they have subsequently one by one been coming back on-line), the disaster had a galvanizing effect on social movements in Japan, providing them with a highly visible cause in a country in which conspicuous social issues are largely missing or relatively invisible. But the question that this chapter will pose and attempt to answer is whether this tragic but fortuitous rallying point has proven to be an engine of growth for Japanese social movements, or whether the history of the response to the Fukushima disaster points to a larger model of the life-cycle of social movements in Japan, illustrating their weaknesses as well as strengths, and the larger social and political factors governing their effectiveness or even survival in a formally democratic, but in many respects very centralized state. The Fukushima crisis certainly re-kindled anti-nuclear power discourse (as opposed to anti-nuclear weapons, a strongly held and almost universal taboo in Japan), although such a discourse has existed in a low-key way for a considerable period of time. Beginning in the 1990s, there were a number of accidents at nuclear power plants, and attempted cover-ups of the same, that eroded public confidence and trust, resulting in protests and opposition to the construction of any new plants. In 1995 for example there was a leak of radioactive material from the Monju reactor, and in 1999 an incident at the Tokaimura plant killed two operatives. At least seventeen law suits were brought seeking the closure or ban on further construction of nuclear plants, but despite such sporadic efforts, the anti-nuclear lobby remained diffuse and ineffective in meeting its goals. After 3/11 the immediate situation changed dramatically. The Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes, founded in September 2011, orchestrated massive rallies against nuclear power in 2011 and 2012, with tens of thousands of protesters gathering in front of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the offices of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. In a demonstration in June 2012, it was estimated that more than 40,000 people flocked to the rally in front of the PMO. Prominent journalists, artists, writers, intellectuals and musicians also raised their voices, including such celebrities as the Nobel literature laureate Oe Kenzaburo, the internationally prominent musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and the best-selling author Murakami Haruki. But already by July 2014 the energy seemed to have abated. In December 2012 the long-standing and proindustry Liberal Democratic Party was returned to power in a general election and overturned the pledge of its short-lived predecessor Democratic Party government, which had promised to phase out all nuclear power within thirty years. The anti-nuclear arguments of the Democratic Party and its supporters somehow never seemed quite convincing enough to sway the whole of the Japanese public.

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Although approximately 160,000 evacuees had to be relocated as a result of the Fukushima accident, there was no direct evidence that any actual casualties were caused by the meltdown; radiation itself was somehow too amorphous as a threat (unseen, undetectable by normal human means) to create a sense of crisis; it was difficult to provide convincing arguments that Japan could meet its huge energy needs through renewables or other forms of alternative energy generation, and even harder to explain how restoring in the interim coal, wood or oil burning plants would allow Japan to meet its obligations under international climate change pacts if no electricity was derived from non-greenhouse gas emitting nuclear power stations. Japan at this moment then faces a situation in which, while the strong and nation-wide anti-nuclear sentiments arising right after 3/11 have abated, antinuclear discourse has certainly survived, perhaps in a more nuanced form, and is embodied in a range of social movements, the nature of which now needs to be explored.There are a substantial number of anti-nuclear social movements in existence in Japan. These include The Citizen’s Nuclear Information Center, Stop Rokkasho, Sayonara Nuclear Power Plants, Women from Fukushima Against Nukes, The Article Nine Group, Anti-Nuclear Funabashi, Goodbye Nukes 10 Million People Action, No nukes Plaza, Association of Fukushima’s Nuclear Power Owl and No Nukes Ibaraki. Additionally, many local NGOs include anti-nuclear elements in their broader agendas, such as the influential Tokyo-based NGO PARC – the Asia-Pacific Resource Center – which makes films and CDs on the issue and includes teaching about nuclear energy in its “Freedom School” classes. The precise nature of these organizations – other than their desire for a nuclear-free Japan – varies. Some are basically lobbying organizations – the “Goodbye Nukes 10 Million” group for example is part of the “Sayanora Nukes” movement (“Sayanora” meaning “goodbye” in Japanese), which has as its goal the collection of 10 million signatures on a petition demanding the abolition of nuclear energy. Others, such as the “Women from Fukushima” group are concerned not only with nuclear energy, but also about nuclear weapons – officially banned from Japanese soil, but almost certainly carried in the form of weaponry carried by US submarines, ships and aircraft operating from bases in Okinawa and on the Japanese mainland. The “Article Nine” group has a much more tangential relationship to the issue of nuclear energy, its focus being on opposition to the changing of Article Nine of the Japanese constitution, as proposed by the current LDP government: the Article that renounces war and forbids Japan from possessing other than defensive military capacity and which among other things disallows the use of those forces outside of Japan except in UN-mandated peacekeeping operations. While initially these groups were able to mobilize tens of thousands of protesters, this energy seems to have largely drained away. A clear sign of this was the 2014 Tokyo gubernatorial election in which a pro-nuclear candidate, stressing economic and welfare issues, trounced two anti-nuclear opponents, including the highly visible ex-prime minister Hosokawa Morihiro, who was supported by the charismatic Koizumi Junichiro, himself a former prime minister and a ranking member of the governing party.Yet closer examination of the situation shows that

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while visible public support for the anti-nuclear energy agenda was waning, other forms of movement and protest were far from moribund.

Social protest outside the fold One of these avenues has been art, a not insignificant factor in Japan’s highly visually literate popular culture. A number of mainly younger Japanese artists have responded to the Fukushima crisis by producing works directly critical of the reliance on nuclear energy in Japan, the unwillingness of government or industry to seriously discuss alternatives, and the lack of real information about safety that has been shared with the public. These artists include the anonymous graffiti artist “281_Antinuke” whose postings have appeared on public notice boards, walls and other very visible locations, the collective Chin! Pon, Kato Tsubasa whose “Lighthouse Project” has involved the symbolic rebuilding of one of the coastal lighthouses destroyed by the tsunami, such as Ishizuka Takanori and Tomiyama Takeo, among others. Popular musicians have also joined in protest, such as Maruyama Takeaki in his “New Epoch” album, and the female singing group Seifuku KojyoIinkai whose hit song “Da! Da! Datsugenpatsu” roughly translates as “Free from Nuclear Plants”. Likewise there has been an outpouring of academic and semiacademic books and articles on nuclear energy, energy alternatives, analyses of the Fukushima event itself, the social and political implications of the triple disaster and the debates swirling around the re-starting of the 54 nuclear power stations that were shut down after the disaster, and many of which are situated in densely populated areas, close to active fault lines or, as with the Fukushima Daiichi plant, right on the coast and are as potentially as vulnerable to future tsunamis as that plant indeed proved to be. International social science conferences held in Japan such as the May 2014 IUAES international anthropology congress had a number of panels devoted to the Fukushima crisis, as did the even larger World Congress of Sociology held in Yokohama in July 2014 which attracted over 5,000 Japanese and international scholars. All this artistic and academic interest (and the commentaries that they have stimulated in the press and media) has had multiple effects, including supplying sophisticated analyses of the disaster well beyond the level of those that have been supplied to the public by TEPCO and pro-nuclear apologists from industry, and very much keeping the issue in the public eye. In a society where both scholarship and the arts are highly respected, these factors are significant, and in turn provide a kind of legitimation of sometimes less theorized NGO activity. So even as the tired ranks of front line activists begins to thin, the issue is kept alive and insinuated into many other levels of Japanese society.There is of course a wider context for this situation of multiple “levels” of discourse and protest. All debates about nuclear issues take place against the huge and ever-present event in Japanese collective memory – the A bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 and the subsequent extreme sensitivity to anything pertaining to the nuclear in all its forms, the Japanese post-war Peace Constitution and its renouncing of the sovereign right to go to war, the awareness of many instances of private

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negligence leading to public disaster from which the guilty (corporate) parties then have tried to walk away (prior nuclear accidents and cover-ups, and the numerous food scandals that have swept Japan in recent years, for example) and the existence of a well-established environmental movement in Japan that has kept alive many issues that dovetail with the specific concerns of the anti-nuclear movement (Broadbent 1998).

Social movements and society in Japan Anti-nuclear energy (and weapons) groups constitute of course only one category of social movements in Japan. To make more sense of their position and effectiveness (or lack of) they need to be placed in the wider context of the place of social movements generally in contemporary Japanese society. Historically there has been little in the way of a concept of “civil society” in Japan, in large part because the state has played a major role in shaping society since the Meiji era (1868–1912), and has always tended to act with a heavy bureaucratic and legalistic hand towards manifestations of interest groups whose intentions differ from or are in conflict with those of the state apparatus itself (Garon 2006). Even most religious groups, which one might have expected to play a major role in society, have been mostly quietistic when it comes to involvement in social and political issues, the major exception being perhaps the prominent ‘new religion’ Soka Gakkai, which is not only active in environmental and other contemporary issues, but which also fields a political party (the Komeito), which is currently a junior partner in the ruling coalition. But as Helen Hardacre has pointed out (Hardacre 2006), since the attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the rush hour Tokyo subway system in 1995 and the subsequent discovery of its other illegal activities and plans, religious groups have found it harder to maintain public credibility, particularly as several other religious organizations have also been discovered to be involved in frauds and other abuses. Nevertheless, and in the context of a less than friendly legal environment – it is complex and quite difficult to register a non-profit organization in Japan – various associational forms have emerged and even flourished. Among these are the active environmental movement, trades unions, consumer’s groups, a vigorous women’s movement and numerous local groups contesting issues or representing constituencies which often, despite their seemingly low-key approach, actually raise questions of national interest (LeBlanc 1998). Other movements have pursued specific limited but significant issues, such as those concerned with the notorious Minamata mercury poisoning case, or the existence of large US military bases in Okinawa and elsewhere in the country. Organizations of doctors, architects, artists, accountants and other professional groups are widespread, as are groups concerned with social welfare provision, the rights of the elderly, and often newly minted issues such as the plight of refugees or undocumented workers in Japan (for overviews, see Schwartz and Pharr 2006; Broadbent and Brockman 2011). A number of features of many of these groups stand out. With the exception of professional associations, they are often small and informal, often local in their

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membership base, and are marked by their tendency to dissolve or shrink when their immediate objectives have been met, or even more alarming from the point of view of their core activists, when they have not, and fatigue and loss of interest begins to set in. This illustrates the phenomenon that Robert Pekkanen calls the “political institutional hypothesis” which states that In general terms, that hypothesis predicts that social movements similar in scope will not take similar institutional forms because of the direct and indirect influence of state institutions. In Japan, large social movements do not tend to result in large civil society organizations that institutionalize their aims. This supports the interpretation that political-institutional barriers are higher in Japan than in other advanced industrial democracies, preventing the development of large, independent civil society organizations. (Pekkanen 2006: 129) This hypothesis is certainly consistent with the career of the anti-nuclear energy movement in Japan: a rapid rise and initial large scale public support, a f­ailure to institutionalize, and then a rapid fading away, even though the ­originating issue is still very much present, leaving a rump of activists and “hard core” ­supporters. This leaves the group in question too weak and unrepresentative to sway ­government policies or to deflect industry determination to pursue its own desired goals. When the state is keen to work with or transfer responsibility to civil society groups – in practice mainly those engaged in social welfare provision such as working with the aged or handicapped – the relationship is not surprisingly smooth. But where groups oppose or critique government policy or that of its closest corporate ­supporters and beneficiaries, then the situation is very different, with legal barriers to incorporation, intrusive bureaucratic “oversight”, problems and other administrative mechanisms being invoked to ensure tax ­ either compliance with state-led aims, or with effective marginalization. In this latter case, it often proves to be the academic community and sympathetic elements in the media which keep issues alive, or other segments of citizen’s groups ­(shimindantai) often dove-tail with the interests of social movements. Although there is little empirical evidence that their actual memberships overlap, issues of food safety are one category of interests that unite elements in the anti-nuclear movement and consumer groups. But these cross-sectoral links are weak, pointing to perhaps the greatest weakness of Japanese social movements – their unwillingness to form active coalitions across sectoral interests, even when those interests coincide or overlap to a significant extent. Evidently several factors are simultaneously at work here, including the powerful role of the state in Japanese society, even in the framework of a democratic society in which free association is in theory at least a foundational principle; the structural weakness of Japanese social movements in terms of their unwillingness to institutionalize, form coalitions or to sustain interest long enough to prevent or reduce the “melting away” phenomenon, and one very important factor – the

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huge role of the market and the highly developed capitalist system in Japan. This alone often overshadows such groups as consumer cooperatives, and where necessary to co-opt them. The media plays an important role here, for while Japan is an effectively totally literate society and has one of the world’s largest reading publics, there are few independent newspapers, no independent TV stations in the sense of, for example, PBS in the United States, and very little citizen’s radio, so the media has a certain power to sway public opinion in relatively moderate and conservative directions rather than more radical or alternative ones. Although as many as 3,000 citizen’s groups emerged in the 1970s to protest against the rising levels of pollution that were accompanying Japan’s rapid post-war re-industrialization, by the 1980s most had faded away. Similarly, while the top ten environmental lobbying groups in the United States in the late 1990s had an average membership of almost 70,000 and budgets of over US$40 million (the National Wildlife Federation having 4 million members and the Sierra Club a membership of 600,000 and a budget of over US$50 million), similar groups in Japan had an average membership of 19,000 and budgets of under US$2 million. Even allowing for the difference in population size, such figures show that while volunteerism is not and has not been absent in Japan, long-term commitments are much rarer than in the US, although they were temporarily boosted by the Triple Disaster. There are some sociological reasons for this, including long working hours that leave little time for associational activity, hostility on the part of many companies to staff having significant commitments or interests outside of the organization, and the feeling, widespread in the society, that working for an NGO or NPO is somehow not a “proper” job and is socially marginal and little respected when compared with corporate employment. The outcome is that the Japanese anti-nuclear movement, despite the huge “gift” given to it by the Fukushima meltdown, has neither been able to sustain its own momentum or to directly challenge, let alone substantially change, government and industry policy on the use and proliferation of nuclear power. This obviously looks like a substantial failure in the chequered history of Japanese social movements, but must in necessarily be read in this way? Or can we indeed discern elements of success beyond these institutional and sociological weaknesses? The answer, we suggest, is a qualified “yes”. For while a formal, effective and institutionalized anti-nuclear energy movement has not emerged, despite the unprecedented and hopefully un-repeated opportunity given it by the Fukushima disaster, many other initiatives have been brought into play which suggest a more subtle model of the ways in which social movements can continue to be effective even in the face of the apparent defeat of their primary objectives. The disaster led immediately to the engagement of very prominent political and cultural figures in opposition to the continuation of energy generation through nuclear technology. As noted earlier, the two losing candidates for the Tokyo governorship were a former Prime Minister (Hosokawa), who was supported by another former PM (Koizumi) who is both a member of the ruling party and is considered as quite charismatic by Japanese standards – a sort of ageing political pop star – and Utsunomiya Kenji, who was no light-weight either, having been formerly the head of

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the Japanese Federation of Bar Associations. Between them they polled 1,938,000 votes against the 2,112,000 of Masuzoe Yoichi, the winning candidate (ironically subsequently forced to resign from the position as the result of a corruption scandal). Virtually half the Tokyo electorate (Japan’s biggest city and biggest user of electricity – around 10% of total national consumption) voted for candidates with a strong anti-nuclear platform. This high-level and very visible support has dove-tailed with the continuing lack of trust by large sectors of the public in both the power companies and the bureaucrats. The early evidence of cover-ups and mis-information emerging from TEPCO and the government has been intensified by many subsequent revelations. In April 2014 local government officials in Hyogo prefecture, close to four nuclear plants in neighboring Fukui prefecture, initially refused to release the results of a simulation of what might happen in the event of an accident in one or more of those plants, despite strong pressure from the public and interested citizens’ groups to do so, eventually agreeing to do so, and Sasakawa City in the same prefecture distributed iodine tablets to residents (thought to offset the effects of radiation).The Nishinippon Shimbun (a major regional newspaper) reported on June 7, 2014, that the government had “failed” to report to the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) large amounts of enriched plutonium and uranium contained in nuclear waste in the country, despite its international obligations to do so. The list in fact is long – unreported leaks of radioactive material, other accidents not disclosed to the press or public, the late discovery of active faults beneath or close to nuclear power stations due to inadequate initial geological surveys, leaking nuclear waste dumps and others.The result has been to generate high levels of skepticism towards all pronouncements about the safety and necessity of nuclear energy coming from bureaucrats at both the local and national levels and of course from the nuclear power industry itself. This has not gone unnoticed by the more independently minded arms of the judiciary. In May 2014 the Fukui District Court ruled against the re-start of the Kansai Electric Power Company’s Oi nuclear plant in the prefecture in response to a lawsuit brought by concerned citizens from Fukui, Tokyo and twenty other prefectures, claiming that its safety was not guaranteed even under the new stricter regulations brought into effect as a result of Fukushima, and an appeal hearing still continues as of May 2017. While this high-level support is very significant, it must also be remembered that Japan is a society pervaded by its popular culture. In this respect the attempt by the current government to promote Japan internationally through the medium of its “soft power”, meaning its internationally well-known comics, video games and animated movies and the characters that populate them, may backfire, since it is also through this medium that protest is being expressed. Such visible popular artists as 281_Antinuke have actively kept the issue in the public eye, especially among younger people. Comics (manga in Japanese) are enormously popular in the country and are widely read by all age groups. One debut manga, Ichi Efu, which deals with the very neglected issue of the actual workers at the Fukushima plant,

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sold 170,000 copies in book form within two months of its release. While to date only one mass-market film (Homeland) has been made about the disaster, more than thirty manga titles have appeared, including Sobamon, which promotes the safety of produce from Fukushima prefecture (local farmers having been economically devastated by the unwillingness of people outside of the area to buy their produce); Fighting the Nuclear Demon and the controversial depiction of nose bleeding as a result of radiation exposure in Oishinbo (“The Gourmet”), which even attracted angry comments from the cabinet of the Abe-led government, which of course had the effect of propelling it to national visibility. Not only manga have joined the campaign: one circus troupe dubbing itself the “Circus on a Bicycle Cart” has been touring Japan since March 2014 under the slogan of Genpatsuhantai, or “No to Nuclear Power”, and similar themes have emerged in plays, television dramas and other performance media. These forms of engagement fit closely with the models developed by Japanese social movements theorists such as Hasegawa Koichi, who postulates that the antinuclear movement can be best understood in terms of what he calls a triangular model of social movement analysis (Hasegawa 2011: 65). This model consists of three elements – structures of political opportunity, mobilizing structures and cultural framing. The first relates to the existing political environment, which, as we have noted, is hostile to the anti-nuclear movement and takes the form of what is effectively a coalition between a conservative government committed to nuclear energy generation, and the large power utilities which have invested heavily in the technology. The second element in the model describes the sociological features that we have noted previously, and in particular the perennial problem of mobilizing and then sustaining support. The third “refers to the shared world-view of the participants that justifies collective action and engagement in social movements” (Hasegawa 2011: 65). The anti-nuclear movement in Japan, paradoxically given the almost universal hostility to nuclear weapons in the country, has faced an almost continuously unwelcoming political environment, with the brief exception of the short-lived government of the Democratic Party, whose pledge to discontinue nuclear energy was rapidly reversed when the LDP, the conservative party that has been in power with short interludes ever since normal political life was restored after the war, returned to power.The Left has been in decline now for two decades, and while it still retains a voice (particularly from the small but vocal Communist Party), it is currently an almost spent political force today. The powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has provided strong bureaucratic support for the expansion of nuclear power, and the large energy companies have a virtual monopoly on the supply of electricity to both industry and households; it is a virtual monopoly in that there is so little competition from the expansion of alternative sources, many of which are indeed simply coopted – for example by subsidizing domestic solar panels in exchange for buying back surplus electricity generated by that means. Before the Fukushima accident, Japan was the third largest generator of nuclear power in the world after the US and France, and actually

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started up twenty-three new reactors after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and has since been actively pushing the export of nuclear technology to developing countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, without adequate examination of the safety and political risks. These factors intersect with the sociological and cultural ones to create an environment in which the nature of “cultures of protest” differ substantially from those in other countries which have large movements opposing nuclear energy, such as Germany or the United States (on the latter, see Jaspers 1997).The result has been a movement that in formal institutional terms has not met with much obvious objective success, but yet which has had profound effects on subjectivities, the media, the artistic community and many strata of Japanese society, including the neglected but not politically negligible community of housewives and mothers, deeply concerned about food safety, the quality of the air, and the long-term health and safety of their families (LeBlanc 1998). There is at play here a model not only of what makes a “successful” social movement in more conventional terms, but also, and in more subtle terms, what constitutes a successful discourse. This latter issue is very significant, since it points to the ways in which thinking, ways of analyzing the world, the recognition of ideological dimensions of what seems at first sight to be unexceptional everyday talk, subjectivities and links to other dimensions of one’s cultural and social world (food, religious affiliation for example) can be transformed or seen in a new light. These effects can have long-term political consequences and form the basis of a great deal of “social change” – not only that driven by external and structural factors, but equally that driven by changes in perception and knowledge. Studies of both local and global social movements point to the elements of such a model. Through effective networking, and through the dissemination of ‘alternative’ discourses, public awareness can be raised, which in turn may mutate into transformations in government policy. Networking, not understood as being necessarily the same as the ability to create alliances, something at which, as we have noted, Japanese social movements are notoriously weak, creates the mechanism through which “proselytizing” can take place – the possibility of generating broad support for normative change within, across and outside government channels.This in principle allows for the collection and dissemination of information to target the desired audience effectively, to frame issues flexibly and to form strategic collaborations between NGOs and like-minded government officials, and between NGOs and sympathetic academics, media people and artists (Keck and Sikkink 1998). The normative function of networking can work as both pressure and persuasion (Checkel 1998). One of the tactics of pressure is shaming (a very important cultural mechanism in Japanese society; Hasegawa 1982). The involvement of highly visible individuals such as celebrities and pop stars can and does create a large impact on policy discourse. Examples of this were the late Princess Diana’s visits to the landmine fields of Angola and other mine-infested countries, which attracted so much media attention that the issue of banning anti-personnel landmines moved the British government from its hesitant policy towards a ban in 1997 (Rutherford 2000), or the active involvement of the pop star Bono in anti-poverty movements

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in Africa (One Campaign). The evidence suggests that while pressure can be effective and indeed necessary in some contexts, in others the teaching of norms has proved even more effective (Finnemore 1996). Social movement campaigns are not unnaturally likely to be effective when the normative agenda being recommended or introduced resonates with at least some major existing ones – where a “grafting” rather than an uprooting is suggested. Seen in these terms, social movement activists can be seen as “moral entrepreneurs” intentionally manipulating a discourse to connect the new norms with already existing ones. Richard Price for example (Price 1995) demonstrates that the repugnance to the use of chemical weapons emerged from the historical and genealogical understandings of related norms: that chemical weapons are ones against which there is no defense, that they violate notions of civilized conduct and that they are a weapon of the weak akin to the use of poison. In terms of discursive persuasion, Price also notes the importance of switching the burden of proof from activists to the government ( Price 1998). In the international campaign to ban anti-personnel landmines, this tactic proved very effective. They simply switched the burden by asking governments to prove that such mines, which cause extensive civilian and animal deaths and mutilation, have military utility. The inability to convincingly justify this successfully deconstructed the military discourse and greatly promoted the humanitarian one arguing for a universal ban on these weapons. The interesting issue here is the extent to which these considerations apply in the Japanese context. Certainly, a number of conclusions can be drawn. Given the institutional weakness of many Japanese social movements, the cases of chemical weapons and landmines suggest that an effective strategy would be to likewise to shift the burden of proof of the argument that nuclear energy generation is indispensable in Japan to the political and industrial sectors that promote it. By revealing the hollowness of the pro-nuclear necessity and safety arguments, the activist’s position on the immense risks involved would gain even more traction. The antinuclear energy lobby in Japan has indeed not been very successful in terms of its own objectives. After an extensive hiatus, the country’s nuclear power stations have been turned back on, one by one (although one of the earliest experimental ones has been permanently closed down), with the government and industry failing to provide comprehensive arguments from economic, technological or ethical perspectives, while continuing to hide behind the arguments of “necessity” (that Japan is an energy-intensive society and demand is not decreasing) and the now familiar one that Japan cannot meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets agreed in international conventions if it continues to rely on coal- or oil-fired conventional power plants. But we have also suggested that this is not the only way to measure the effectiveness of social movements. In the Japanese case we see that the movement has had significant success in mobilizing prominent literary, artistic and political figures, stimulating popular culture to concern itself with the nuclear issue, in internationalizing the question (the global significance of Fukushima could hardly be hidden from the world, especially those parts of it downwind from the disaster area such as the western United States and Hawaií), hugely heightening public awareness in

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Japan and stimulating linkages with anti-nuclear movements elsewhere, especially those in countries currently experiencing an increase in the number of nuclear power stations under construction or active consideration, such as India, and the creation of a nation-wide network of study groups, lectures, academic research and publications and media interest, broadening issues of food safety, educating people about the intractable problem of disposal of nuclear waste and many related issues. In other words, the discourse has been changed in a fundamental way. No longer can the issue of nuclear power be seen as a purely technical one, or as one in relation to which the words of bureaucrats and industry-funded scientists can be taken on trust. The issue will not go away, and many activists and regular citizens fear the day when another major accident occurs or when another major earthquake strikes, something all too possible in seismically active Japan. A more holistic view might lead to a balanced and multi-perspective view on the use of nuclear technology from economic, technological and moral viewpoints and debate beyond that generated by social movements, with the prospective that each of the actors in the debate might come to a more nuanced position in the context of such a larger and society-wide discourse on nuclear power in Japan.

In conclusion After Fukushima, Japan’s anti-nuclear power social movement has waxed and waned. This is partly due to the country’s rigid political structure, generally conservative media, extensive bureaucracy and weak political opposition, and also to the structural and organizational weaknesses of Japan’s social movements themselves. This sends messages to social movement activists and theorists in the country as to weaknesses that should be addressed. But it also draws attention to the cultural framing of protest and the fact that lack of obvious effectiveness may indeed conceal many other levels of impact, expressed as we have suggested in diverse academic, artistic and cultural styles. In fact, it can be argued that there have been substantial changes in practice and policy as a result of the anti-nuclear energy movement. A new Nuclear Regulatory Authority has been created in the light of the major failures of its predecessor that does not include any personnel from the government offices related to the promotion of nuclear power in Japan. The new NRA does not promote the use of the technology – it strictly focuses on the safety regulation of such technology. This approach can be seen for example in its very cautious approach to the request of the Kyushu Electric Power Company to restart two of the reactors at its Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in 2015. Its tentative approval was embodied in a more that 400-page report, following a month-long public discussion period, and the final approval requires the consent of communities in the neighborhood of the plant in Kagoshima prefecture. The Japanese government, well aware of public sentiment, has started making efforts to create effective evacuation plans in the event of future emergencies, and to do so through open public consultation with local people, even though such a process is not legally mandatory.

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This newly rethought stance of the government reflecting a much more cautious approach to nuclear power has been created and sustained through the patient social movements of local people. This has been fueled too by the memory of previous industrial disasters, and the linking of the nuclear issue in particular to that of Minamata disease since the 1950s, a severe neurological syndrome caused by mercury poisoning caused by the release of methylmercury in the industrial waste from a chemical factory over a long period of time and despite endless denials from the industrialists concerned until medical and scientific evidence proved conclusive: that birth defects, severe motor problems in people and animals who had consumed fish from the contaminated waters and many other physical and psychological problems were indeed due to this illegal industrial discharge.The fear that the same could well be true of nuclear power (especially for those living near or consuming produce from the area of nuclear power stations) and that the same delays and shifting of responsibility parallel that notorious case are very palpable. However, a major difference today is that people are aware of this possibility.The discourse has shifted and with it the possibility of a new Minamata being hidden greatly decreased. While the distance between those who argue for the retention and even expansion of nuclear power and those who oppose it is still great, the terms of the debate have changed in irreversible directions, and that is in large part due to the social movements that have fundamentally shifted the terms of the discourse within which this and other social issues that are now debated in contemporary Japan. In his work on peace movements, John Paul Lederach argues against the conventional idea that to create an effective movement a mass must be created. In a way, Japanese social movements have sought that goal, but because of structural weaknesses, failed to attain it. But this is not necessarily a weakness: In this framing of the change process there is an important dynamic that is often overlooked: Social change that depends heavily on the magnetic attraction of shared opposition creates social energy that can generate large numbers in discrete time frames but has difficulty in sustaining the longerterm change. Social movements rise and fall as visible moments rather than as sustained processes. (Lederach 2005: 88) This he links to two ideas about how change happens: First, social movements find that it is easier, and in many cases more popular, to articulate what they are opposed to rather than what they wish to build. Change is seen as linear: Raise awareness first, then promote action by increased numbers of people to stop something, and finally, once that thing is stopped, to build something different. . . . Second, framing the process as one that must create like-minded communities produces a narrow view of change wherein little thought or work is given to the broader nature of

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who and what will need to change and how they will be engaged in such a process. In other words the very way the issues and processes are framed undermines the fundamental web of understanding that change must strategically build linkages and coordination with and across not-like-minded and not-like-situated relational spaces. Unlike a linear change theory, the web approach suggests that multiple processes at different levels and social spaces take place at the same time. The web approach does not think in terms of us versus them, but rather about the nature of the change sought and how multiple sets of interdependent processes will link people and places to move the whole system towards those changes. (Lederach 2005: 88) These insights touch upon Japanese social movements in three very pertinent ways – firstly by acknowledging that the “mass” approach is certainly not the only one in assessing social movement’s effectiveness; secondly by recognizing that many less obvious processes may be in train that, while they may fall outside of conventional social movement theory, are actually major contributors to the achievement of the shared objectives and thirdly, although Lederach nowhere specifically relates his own theorization to Japan, that country has been analyzed in terms of its “relational” qualities – as being one in which the harmony (ideally) of social relationships is extremely important, and, where they are not, that mechanisms of re-establishment of peaceful relations be invoked as rapidly as possible (Clammer 1995). In the light of this, it is not surprising that Japan is socially a relatively nonconfrontational and certainly non-violent society. While there have been exceptions (perhaps the student movements of the 1960s, opposition to the creation and later expansion of Tokyo’s Narita airport or the movements against renewing the US-Japan security treaty), most Japanese social movements and activist NGOs fall into the category described by Zunes, Kurtz and Asher (1999) as “non-violent social movements”. Apparent “failure” in such a context may simply disguise the existence (and effectiveness) of other cultural, relational and subtle linkages that fall outside of the more standard models of social movement theory. In even broader theoretical terms, many Japanese social movements might be seen as what Wignaraja (1993) has termed “new social movements in the south” rather than as would-be clones of North American ones, not least because cultural factors weigh more heavily rather than sociological/structural ones in the “global south” (including for example, religion) and because culture is seen as the site of struggle every bit as much as politics. This shift in emphasis in social movement theory has not gone unnoticed – a decade ago in his major study of social movement theory, Alberto Melucci noted a shift from what he called more conventional sociological categories such as class and race, towards what he calls the “cultural ground” and concludes that, “in the last thirty years, emerging social conflicts in complex societies have not expressed themselves through political action, but rather have raised cultural challenges to the dominant language, to the codes that organize information and shape social practices” (Melucci 1996: 8). While we would

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certainly not discount the continuing role of political opposition in Japan, the role of culture is certainly central, for as Amory Starr has rightly noted in her study of cultural movements against neo-liberal capitalism, “Social movement activists have long recognized the role of culture. A community’s shared values and visions provide a cultural lens for critical analysis” (Starr 2001: 35). In conclusion it must be remembered that social movements are not only reactive to what is, but also play a key role in imagining what might be. This is why the social movement theorist Max Haiven describes the study of such movements as critical in that they are the sources of new forms of social imagination (Haiven 2014), and, as such, are a source not only of opposition, but also of hope, reconstruction and creativity.

References Bacon, Paul and Christopher R. Hobson (Eds.) (2014) Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster. London and New York: Routledge. Broadbent, Jeffrey (1998) Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broadbent, Jeffrey and Vicky Brockman (Eds.) (2011) East Asian Social Movements: Power, Protest and Change in a Dynamic Region. New York, Dordrecht and London: Springer. Checkel, Jeffrey T. (1998) “The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory”. World Politics, 50 (2), 324–348. Clammer, John (1995) Difference and Modernity: Social Theory and Contemporary Japanese Society. London and New York: Kegan Paul International. Finnemore, Martha (1996) National Interests in International Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Funabashi, Harutoshi and Kyungnam Kim (Eds.) (2014) Genshiryoku Sougou Nenpyou: Fukushima Genpatsu Shinsai in Itaru Michi, A General a Chronology of Nuclear Power: the Road That Led to the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. Tokyo: Suirensha. Garon, Sheldon (2006) “From Meiji to Heisei: The State and Civil Society in Japan”. In Schwartz and Pharr 2006, 42–62. Hardacre, Helen (2006) “After Aum: Religion and Civil Society in Japan”. In Schwartz and Pharr, 2006, 135–153. Hasegawa, Nyozekan (1982) The Japanese Character: A Cultural Profile. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International. Hasegawa, Koichi (2011) “A Comparative Study of Social Movements for a Post-Nuclear Energy Era in Japan and the USA”. In Broadbent and Brockman, 2011, 63–79. Haiven, Max (2014) Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power: Capitalism, Creativity and the Commons. London and New York: Zed Books, Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing. Jaspers, James M. (1997) The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press. Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. LeBlanc, Robin (1998) Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Lederach, John Paul (2005) The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melucci, Alberto (1996) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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One Campaign. “About One”. https://www.one.org/international/about/ (Accessed May 16, 2019) Pekkanen, Robert (2006) “Moulding Civil Society: State-Structured Initiatives and the Patterning of Civil Society”. In Schwartz and Pharr, 2006: 135–154. Price, Richard M. (1995) “A Genealogy of the Chemical Weapons Taboo”. International Organization, 49 (1), 73–104. Price, Richard M. (1998) “Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Landmines”. International Organization, 52 (3), 613–644. Rutherford, Kenneth R. (2000) “The Evolving Arms Control Agenda: Implications of the Role of NGOs in Banning Antipersonnel Landmines”. World Politics, 53 (1), 74–114. Schwartz, Frank J. and Susan J. Pharr (Eds.) (2006) The State of Civil Society in Japan. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Starr, Amory (2001) Naming the Enemy: Anti-Corporate Movements Confront Globalization. London: Zed Books. Wignaraja, P. (Ed.) (1993) New Social Movements in the South: Empowering the People. London: Zed Books. Zunes, Stephen, Lester R. Kurtz and Sarah Beth Asher (Eds.) Nonviolent Social Movements. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell.

8 RESSENTIMENT AS FALSE TRANSCENDENCE How transformative dissenting political and social movements can create inclusivity Nikolai Blaskow

Introduction: the premise and the argument Drawing on the revolutionary concepts of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and René Girard (1923–2015), this chapter proposes that theorising movements can learn a great deal from the insights of these two great thinkers for the creation of inclusive futures. Frank Raj observes that Mahatma Gandhi ‘is perhaps the best example of someone who was discerning enough to reject Christianity not Christ. He was deeply hurt by his experiences with apartheid and “Christians” during his time in South Africa, and it obviously stymied his relationship with Christ.’1 Nietzsche too was disenchanted with Christianity (the Lutheran Church of his day) which went to bed with the ant-Semitism, nationalism, imperialism and the Realpolitik of Wilhelmine Germany and would have agreed entirely with Raj’s observation. His admiration of the ‘true’ Jesus was unqualified and resonates with Gandhi’s notion of ‘passive resistance’: This ‘bringer of glad tidings’ died as he had taught – not to ‘redeem men’ but to show how one must live. This practice is his legacy to mankind: his behavior before the judges . . . before the accusers and all kinds of slander and scorn – his behavior on the cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his right, he takes no step to ward off the worst; on the contrary, he provokes it. And he begs, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who do him evil. Not to resist, not to be angry, not to hold responsible but to resist not even the evil one – to love him.2 The present chapter argues the case for a Nietzsche who, knowing all too well the precarious space which transcendence must first ‘undergo’, pursues an anti-nihilist, life-affirming project whose theory and dynamic, I will posit, holds one of the keys that can produce a transformation that re-territorialises and generates positive

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futures – a process that Nietzsche identifies with ‘overcoming’ and ‘becoming’. He discovers it in the ancient Greek notion and practice of agon, a powerful means of creating not only healthy and strong individuals (leaders) but also harmonious communities as well, which, of course, goes against the grain of the popular view of Nietzsche’s übermensch as the paradigm for the incarnation of brute strength and the amoral application of force to subdue the weak. I will develop the argument that such a perception is erroneous – that in fact the übermensch, rightly understood, is the epitome of the beginnings of a kind of transformative thinking that is necessary to bring about change.3 I say ‘beginnings’, because overcoming, in and for itself, Nietzsche believed, will be finally defeated unless it presses on to ‘becoming’. Whatever that ‘becoming’ is, I will argue, it will include a state of mind and being – for individuals, for movements, for societies – that first produces a genuine ‘re-valuation of values’, i.e. the transformation of those values imposed by false enculturation. This ‘false enculturation’ is best expressed in Nietzsche’s diagnosis of modernity’s malaise, which Nidesh Lawtoo4 calls, ‘Nietzsche’s mimetic pathology’: Whatever they may think and say about their “egotism”, the great majority nonetheless do nothing for their ego their whole life long: what they do is done for the phantom of their ego, which has formed itself in the heads of those around them and has communicated to them – as a consequence they all of them dwell in a fog of impersonal, semi-personal opinions, and arbitrary, as it were poetical evaluations, the one forever in the head of someone else, and the head of this someone else again in the head of others: a strange world of phantasms.5 A healthy enculturation through re-valuation of values, by contrast, results in a person who rises above the imprisoning impact of mimetic pathology. That is to say, it releases the individual, a society, a movement to become what it truly is, which, through fear or laziness of mind, or rather through the impotence of ressentiment,6 it has hitherto failed to bring to realization. Girard’s Mimetic Theory7 also offers movements for inclusive futures a deeper understanding of the dynamics of false transformation through the scapegoat mechanism and how that cycle of violence can be transcended by a new dynamic which he calls pacific mimesis.8 He too holds yet another key to help us open the locked door behind which languishes a conflicted state of human desire that violates the human heart in its drive for fulfilment. In effect, Girard exposes a cycle of violence that is traditionally manipulated by regimes to produce a false peace – false in the sense that it is achieved at the expense of the weak in the name of the strong; false also because its resolution of conflict is short-lived and only ever serves as a mask for injustice and oppression to achieve a peace without justice. Girard’s insights thus work in tandem with Nietzsche’s in that they together unmask the ‘transgression’ in order to expose the paradox of power and violence. The simple fact is that there is nothing simple about the dynamics of the mimetic force field in which ipso facto any ‘theorising’ movement is immersed, governed as that force field is by ‘scandal’

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where ‘those ordinary obstacles that we avoid easily after we run into [them] the first time, [become] . . . a paradoxical obstacle that is almost impossible to avoid, [and] . . . the more this obstacle, or scandal repels us, the more it attracts us. Scandals are responsible for the false infinity of mimetic rivalry.’9 Mimetic rivalry, Girard argues, has driven humanity in times past and time present to tear itself apart, but it is also the very motivational force that brings communities back together again. As such it is a force creating a false peace, a stasis, if you will, that is wont to repeat its terrible cycle all over again. Girard’s notion of méconnaissance – a misrecognition of the ‘other,’ is central here. It explains why the scapegoat mechanism works so powerfully. Mainly, because unlike victimisation, this is a mechanism, like Nietzsche’s ressentiment, that plays itself out unconsciously. In effect, when we bring these two theories together, not only do they unmask and expose the dynamics that would impede the extension of cultural horizons and the shaping of a new collective consciousness, but they also furnish us with a mindset that has never better understood the reasons for the sense of alienation that is modern and post-modern life. Becoming what we truly are, as opposed to the phantasm which modernity holds up to us as the real thing, is not a luxury – it is a necessity. Put bluntly, not just our inclusive futures are at stake if we get it wrong, but the very survival of the species and the planet itself, hangs in the balance.

A deeper understanding of the dynamics at work To move freely in the precarious space which the emergent horizon opens up for us, we must do more than discover the creative potency which resists with intelligence and courage those inclinations that would have us descend into inaction and despair. There must come to us a deeper understanding of the dynamics which either facilitate or impede an effective compassionate action, whether accomplished through the agency of an individual or a community, and probably, and preferably, both. Nothing illustrates the complexity of those dynamics better than the episodes which regularly played themselves out in the most recent demonstrations in Melbourne, Australia. Heather Thomson describes the terrible paradox well: A few weeks ago, in Melbourne a small group of anti-Islamists staged a street demonstration to make their views known. At the same time, an anti-racist group staged a counter-demonstration nearby. The anti-racists, ostensibly standing for an open, tolerant and safe society, were so passionate about their cause that they chased some of the ‘racists’, as they called them, caught one man in a park, pushed him down and kicked him. So, the police found themselves protecting the racists against the anti-racists, who were busy making their own victims of intolerance and violence.10 So, what was going on in that moment and what can we learn from that transgression?

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Dr Thomson alludes, with strong justification I think, to Jesus’ parable of the weeds sown in a field of wheat.11 Solidarity with the afflicted is commendable, but it can also become a problem, if we don’t understand that from the same soil grow the fruit of goodness, compassion and mercy, and those emotions which foment intolerance, hatred and violence. She describes the whole terrifying process as ‘a tangled mess,’ a field, if you will, ‘in which compassion is seriously entangled by [a] more sinister and dangerous growth which threatens to choke it.You cannot separate the one without destroying the other.They live together in the world and in each of us.’ Thomson’s understanding is counterintuitive, and throws into relief the very dynamics of which both Nietzsche and Girard were aware. First and foremost, that the humiliation which people experience in life, while it must be borne, or ‘undergone,’ it must also be overcome if it is not to descend into a disenabling, impotent mindset of ressentiment that Dostoyevsky describes so well and from which Nietzsche and Girard drew their inspiration. In as far as Dostoyevsky’s evocation of ressentiment is central to my argument, it is worth citing in full. Ressentiment is personified by him and given a voice. More accurately, it is not so much a personification, as an ‘it’ – a typos of utter self-centredness, pure passive aggression – ultimately, of an unadulterated whimpering cowardice which Nietzsche despised so much in false Christianity: our offended, beaten down, and derided mouse at once immerses itself in cold, venomous, and above all, everlasting spite. For forty years on end it will recall its offence to the last most shameful details, each time adding even more shameful details of its own, spitefully taunting and chafing itself with fantasies. It will be ashamed of its fantasies, but all the same it will recall everything, go over everything, heap all sorts of figments on itself, under the pretext that they too have happened and forgive nothing. It may even begin to take to revenge, but somehow in snatches, with piddling things, from behind the stove, incognito, believing neither in its right to revenge itself nor in the success of its revenge, and knowing beforehand that it will suffer a hundred times more from all its attempts at revenge than will the object of its revenge, who will perhaps not even scratch at the bite. On its deathbed it will again recall everything, adding the interest accumulated over time.12 David Denby in his review of Dostoyevsky’s novella describes it as ‘an a­ ccusation of human insufficiency rendered without the slightest trace of self-­r ighteousness.’13 Denby goes on to note that, ‘If you begin by grieving for its hero, he upsets you with so much truth of our common nature that you wind up grieving for ­yourself – for your own insufficiency.’ Denby is mostly right, but he misses the point that this is not about our ‘common nature’s insufficiency’ before which we must cower, so much as an insufficiency that can and must be overcome if a nomadic sensibility (a spirit of freedom) is to be released.You can see how closely Nietzsche’s mimetic ­pathology (referred to earlier), which he attributes to modernity, resembles

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Dostoyevsky’s portrait of emerging modernity’s malaise. And when we splice Dr Thomson’s ­analysis of the Melbourne incident into the overall frame, we are confronted with the following sobering observations about the modern context in which transformative movements must work their magic: (1) that modernity through its mimetic pathology has somehow robbed us of our true identity, as a result of which we have lost the capacity to formulate our own thoughts, and to be our own person; (2) that having created its own unique environment, mimetic pathology promotes an instability, a precarious space which must be carefully navigated by those who seek inclusive futures; (3) that mimetic pathology has generated a deeply disturbing, ambiguous and paradoxical world in which compassion so easily turns into its opposite: intolerance, hatred and violence; and (4) that modernity’s malaise, even worse than taking revenge, leads to a terrible impotence and blindness (ressentiment) that is doomed to live out its days in a self-created world of delusion, self-delusion, filled with spiteful life-denying venom. The second dynamic of which any movement hoping to effect change must be cognizant – be it re-territorialisation, the extension of cultural horizons or inclusiveness in a world where the predominant paradigm is greed – is that it must engage with the human default position of a self-deluded self-justification. Here Phillip Adams, a keen observer of the human propensity for re-invention and moral self-justification, offers a timely reminder of what we (those who would effect positive changes in the world) are up against: how lenient we are on ourselves and how brutally dismissive we are of others when we catch them out doing the very same things we do:14 When we do it, it’s morally justifiable. When they do it, it’s madness. When we do it, it’s patriotism. When they do it, it’s fanaticism. For ‘we’ read our side, that kaleidoscope of ever-changing alliances. For ‘they’, read a constantly changing target forever morphing from enemy to ally.The West’s history with Russia is a dance of death from World War I to the Bolshevik revolution to World War II to the Cold War to now. To the Donald and Vladimir. Adam’s use of ‘morphing’ says it all: ducking and weaving, the ego forever changes itself from one guise to another in order to suit and justify its purposes.When ‘they’ do it, it’s a war crime, it’s ‘monstrous.’ When ‘we’ do it, it’s ‘blind eyes, deaf ears, hard hearts.’When ‘they’ and ‘we’ve’ got over ‘our’ falling out, suddenly – almost inexplicably – ‘orchestrated hatreds become the kisses and cuddles of convenience.’ How to subdue and sublimate such a slippery and slimy human nature? Or, more pertinently, what effective resistance is capable of dealing with the prosaic alienation of modern and post-modern life?

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Nietzsche’s ‘overcoming’ and Girard’s méconnaissance When Nietzsche introduces the ‘will to power’ he does so as the will to overcome oneself. The German expresses itself much better as ‘Selbstüberwindung.’ If the Duden Bedeutungswörterbuch rendition is followed, then it is possible to understand this ‘overcoming’ as ‘mastery’ or ‘scaling’ and even ‘resolving.’15 Here we are in competition with not just ourselves, but also with others. In Dawn, he writes about a scale of degrees of excellence that arouse awe and envy, yes, but for the purpose not of crushing others so much as inciting them to achieve their highest and best. Before launching into Nietzsche’s treatment of the agon and how this paradigm might serve as a model for the transfiguring of ‘the prosaic alienation of modern and post-modern life,’ and so, the becoming of ‘an epic mode to deal with risks that life carries with it’, it is important to cover the third dynamic that opposes a transformative re-valuation of values. And that is the seductive role of méconnaissance in the mechanism of scapegoating the innocent victim. Méconnaissance in its French context, and in the way Girardian scholarship employs it, does not just mean ‘misunderstanding’ (which would be literally accurate), but brings to bear the more complex notions of ‘misrecognition’ and ‘misconception.’ The word draws attention not only to the idea that there is such a thing as ‘false knowledge’ (‘mé/connaissance’ = mis/knowledge/mis/knowing), but that such knowledge always begins with a ‘mis/conception.’ Thus, an idea which is presented to the mind mindlessly, gives birth (‘naissance’ = birth) to a perception, that, unknown to its recipient, is false. And when the idea stays lodged unchallenged, its assumptions never questioned, then the person will inevitably proceed to think, to say and to do things that fall far short of actions that are actually called for. And again, if that misunderstanding is uncritically accepted by others, the cultural misperception that eventuates is most likely to become entrenched, with catastrophic effects on a movement and a nation. We can confidently say that misperception leads to misrecognition, which in turn finally results in a terrible misapprehension. To ground the principle – here is a personal illustration. Early one morning in Alice Springs, Central Australia in April 2016, I heard a series of piercing, heart-rending screams. They were those of a woman in deep distress. As they continued in short bursts, they became more urgent. I thought a murder was in progress and after a deep silence descended, I had this terrible feeling in my gut that these were going to be tomorrow’s headlines. When no such headlines materialized, subsequent discussions with our hosts suggested the strong probability that it was a wild cat killing a rabbit, and that what I had heard was its death cries. However, after several more nights of this, we finally agreed it was the howls of either a wild dog or a dingo. As I reflected on this curious puzzle, it dawned on me that really none of us could be certain what the terrible sound was. Our theories could only be based on untested assumptions and interpretations. But that was not the only observation. There was something more troubling still. That whether we were right or wrong, our perceptions of what happened would end up being just as real as what might have actually happened. Basically, the mind is capable

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of building a reality of its own, and when we view what’s happening around us through self-manufactured lenses, the really unnerving thing is this: that the phantom projection of what we believe is there (for us) is there. And more troubling still, that this same unreality – that which does not actually exist – cannot only have a powerful real-time impact on us but more alarmingly (even if subsequently that reality is demonstrated to be false) – by which time it is too late for the actions that have been taken or the words which have been written or spoken to be reversed. Nietzsche understood well the struggle that ensues when we ask hard questions of our assumptions and our conclusions. He named it ‘the will to truth.’ It’s a struggle because oftentimes we are not interested in the truth as such, so much as what we can get away with when unchallenged. A case in point is the Myall Creek Massacre on June 10, 1838 in northern New South Wales, near Bingara, Australia, when a group of white settlers murdered 28 Aboriginal men, women and children. The incident received notoriety, not for the massacre (there were many more killed through hundreds, perhaps thousands of massacres around the country which were neither discovered nor reported), but because the seven white murderers were tried and hanged for the first time in Australian history for a crime against aborigines who were till then officially numbered among the fauna and flora and excluded from the census of peoples. One of the jurors in the initial trial was reported to have said in The Australian, December 18, 1838, p. 8, ‘I look on the blacks as a set of monkeys, and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better. . . . I would never see a white man hanged for killing a black.’16 That’s how brazen some people were, confident because these convictions had not, up to this time, been called into question. So, for those of us who spend a considerable amount of time theorising about how we will achieve reconciliation in this country of Australia, it is a timely warning to test our ideas long before they are ever translated into action and to acknowledge that globally those jihadists who misread the value of a human life (including their own because they mistakenly believe that they will be rewarded for their suicide) do so under the thrall of perceptions which have never been internally challenged. In the final paragraphs of this section, I would like now to identify the positive steps informed by the insights and practice suggested by Nietzsche and Girard that might be taken to deal with the present situation in which we find ourselves: of violence (jihadist sectarian, civil and regional wars), dislocation (65 million+ displaced people in the world, and rising) and indifference (the over-taxed planet which groans under exploitation). It will include a detailed account of Nietzsche’s general perspective on life, specifically his notion of agon prefaced by what he considered to be one of the main planks of his project: the ‘eternal return of the same.’ Then follows a short exposition of ‘vengeance in reverse’ based on an account of Mark R. Anspach who unravels the dynamics of reciprocity in pre-state societies and how an exit from the double-bind of psychopathology can be forged. In addition, three case studies centred on the troubles in Northern Ireland, the Charter 77 action in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s and the current Reconciliation movement in Australia will be canvassed to isolate some of the principles of effective resistance

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and transformative action. And, finally, transcendent ethics as a praxis (espoused by Nietzsche though he never called it that) will be touted inasmuch as it brings together so many disparate and sound principles under one banner.

Focus Nietzsche: eternal return of the same and the agon as models of the transfigurative mindset One of Nietzsche’s most famous dictums was that of amor fati, best expressed in his own words:17 let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation . . . someday, I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.18 In the context of today’s violence, its obsession with competitiveness, success of every kind at almost any cost, even its own well-being and health, as it groans under the weight of an overreaching sense of entitlement – Nietzsche’s are strange words. To strive above all things to love the hand that life and circumstance has dealt you (however crushing and debilitating); to refrain from recrimination and railing against those that wrongly incriminate you; to eschew negativity of all kinds; to not just make peace with the ugliness of hard experience, but to embrace it as a friend and thus have an epitaph on your grave that says, ‘here lies the man who was a Yes-sayer, and a life affirmer’: all these strivings seem strangely out of step with our epoch. But for me it strikes a very strong chord. Here is uncompromising realism with hope. Nietzsche tells us that the idea came to him in August 1881 whilst walking through the woods besides the lake of Silvaplana near Sils Maria, Switzerland, ‘6,000 feet beyond man and time.’ It came to him in the guise of a ‘what if?’ What if a ‘demon’ (actually daemon in the classical Greek sense) crept up to you one day, or perhaps one night when you were feeling completely isolated (‘your loneliest solitude’), and whispered in your ear, what if you were told that you would have to live your life all over again, times without number and that there would be nothing new in it, but that every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great things in your life would have to be re-lived exactly as it was, in the same series and sequence – would you then be prepared to do it all over again? Would that life (and no other), evoke ‘no greater desire’ in you than to live it all again?19 Nietzsche variously called this notion ‘eternal return of the same,’ or ‘eternal recurrence,’ powerfully dramatized in this poignant moment taken from Thus Spake Zarathustra: I shall come again with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this snake – not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: – I shall come back eternally to this selfsame life, in the greatest things and the smallest, to teach again the eternal recurrence of all things.20

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So powerful in fact, he claims, that if ‘this thought gained “possession” of us, it would either change us, or we would be crushed by it’ (my paraphrase).21 It is here that the discussion becomes interesting. The whole aphorism/story is featured under the title ‘The Greatest Heavyweight.’ The boxing analogy is intentional. The provocation is to imagine that we must enter an arena, an agon (from which our word ‘agony’ derives) – in this case a boxing ring – there to contend, like a boxer, with an opponent who waits to batter us senseless, unless we resist him. Nietzsche, by inference, bills it as the most significant trial of mental skill and strength that we will ever confront in our lives – involving nimbleness (lightness of being and spirit) and speed and strength. Ansell-Pearson’s citation of the translation reads ‘Whoever is not crushed by the proposition, “there redemption,” should [would] die out.’22 Meaning someone who is not crushed by the notion of eternal recurrence has no need of redemption, for they are fearless. What are we to make of such a strange challenge and provocation? Is it mere rhetoric designed to catch our attention, or is there more that lies beneath the surface? And further, what does it offer us who seek to make sense of a life that all too often stands menacingly over us? That is to say, can Nietzsche’s aphorism help us as theorists in dealing with such a world as this? I see it as a provocation, an encouragement if you will, to be active not passive in the following ways. Firstly, the lesson the ‘eternal recurrence’ metes out to us, is that if we cannot stand tall and affirm life, then ‘der’ (that person) ‘soll austerben’ (ought to/must/ will/ almost with the sense of ‘deserves’) to die out. Literally, ‘Wer zuvernichten, ist mit dem Satz “es gibt keine Erlösung” ’ – ‘whoever is crushed by, or destroyed . . . that person must/ought to die . . . for that person (understood) there is no escape, no resolution’ (“es gibt keine Erlösung”). In other words, all of the phrasing is a provocation designed to test how genuine our affirmation of life actually is. Thus, it’s not those who are not crushed, but those who are crushed by the prospect of having to live out their lives all over again – those people might as well die. Because, in choosing not to embrace life as it is, as opposed to the way they want life to be, or think it should be, they in fact expose themselves as frauds: as life deniers posing as life affirmers. Or to put it another way, life denial is anything that smacks of ­ressentiment – that passive-aggressive response to life that constantly capitulates to life’s trials of strength in toxic ways. A toxicity that poisons the mind and the spirit of the person infected by it, ultimately manifesting itself as a contagion that can affect whole societies and cultures. It is a poison, Nietzsche feared, that was seeping into the newly formed German-, Prussian-dominated nation state with such undesirable outcomes as nationalism, imperialism, anti-Semitism, passivity and a culture of obedience that was rendering it vulnerable to manipulation (through the new media) on a scale hitherto unknown. Secondly, far from the intention of making us passive, the ‘doctrine’ of the eternal return is designed to make us active, to provoke a mastery over our circumstances, to be proactive. In other words, Nietzsche uses the term to provoke us to resist it, so as not to surrender to a situation that presents itself against us. Or to put it in yet another way: to provoke us to actively overcome and to become who we

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really are through those circumstances.23 Here we are not asked to adopt an attitude of resignation and acceptance, rather one of active engagement with that opposing situation in order to transcend it, and, in the process, be transformed by the experience of the contest – a kind of ‘immanent transcendence’ (a transfiguration that happens in the ‘here and now.’)24 A magnificent natural image that for Nietzsche beautifully captures this strenuous, active ‘movement’ and the resultant transformation is the Sipo Matador, a kind of sun-seeking vine plant found in Java that takes hold of trees and climbs up them in order ‘to be able to unfold its crown in the open light and openly to display its happiness.’25 Happiness, it seems, is the highest goal of life – and a heart filled with joy for all to see and be inspired by is its wonder. Our understanding of the ‘eternal return’ is only complete, however, when we consider Nietzsche’s teaching on agonism, which, as Christa Davis Acampora notes, ‘ultimately aspires to be affirmative and creative.’26 I draw heavily on Acampora for this section.What drew Acampora is exactly what has exerted a pull on me: the profound sense of gratefulness that the agonistic lens bequeaths Nietzsche. At the end of his lonely, unrecognized life, accompanied by intense physical and mental suffering, he is still able to write in Ecce Homo (an unusual form of autobiography), that: On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked forward, I looked backward, and never saw so many good things at once.27 Nietzsche, in his ceaseless quest for a paradigm that addresses how we deal with the uncompromising rawness of life with its struggle for survival, and how we cope with our fragile and vulnerable selves (so often pulled this way and that by forces tending in opposite directions), seems to have found in the agon a model that not only speaks to us as individuals, but also points to how whole communities can find strength and wholeness through struggle and healthy competition. Indeed, in the agon he sees the individual and the community working as one in such a manner that ‘individual victories and distinction [strengthen] the bonds between a person and his community rather than further separating him from it.’28 Also, the agon features prominently in Nietzsche’s notion of self- overcoming. Fundamentally, the agon is based on three assumptions: firstly, that human existence is characterized by interminable struggle; secondly, that human beings seek meaning in the struggle of existence; and thirdly, that such a struggle is ‘tolerable, even potentially estimable and affirmable, insofar as it is meaningful.’29 The benefits that derive from these particular kinds of contests in their various forms (be they physical, spiritual, religious) are overwhelmingly positive.30 They include the following: • •

The test of specific qualities such as speed, endurance, creativity, mastery etc. The goal of playing well – not necessarily winning.

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• • • • •

The productivity of the outcome: a contest that ‘regulates without subjugating the interests of the individual.’ The exhibition of ‘abundance, maximizing value rather the conservation of finite resources.’ ‘A basic orientation toward gratitude, rather than guilt.’ The re-channeling of ‘aggression’ into ‘productive goals.’ The acknowledgement that an individual’s success reflects the whole community – a case in point being the victory of Hagesidamos, the boys’ boxing victor in 476 BCE.31

Acampora highlights the fact that: Hagesidamos’s accomplishment is inextricably bound to those who supported and trained him, those who gave him the opportunity to compete for his polis, those who founded the games and the poet himself [Pindar] who preserves the victory for others to remember.32 Thus, Nietzsche sees the agon’s great potential for what he later described as the ‘revaluation of values,’ and in its physical forms (like athletics and boxing) as an antidote, possibly even ‘a kind of redemption’ of war.33 And there is also a sense in which by tapping into past successes and the reasons for them, we are better able to contend with the present and so effectively prepare for the future. This contesting model, alongside the tragic vision which enabled the Greeks to confront the reality of their deepest fears by reconciling the wild forces of life with the highest aspirations of civilized society,34 formed the foundation of Nietzsche’s insights concerning how we might overcome ressentiment and nihilism – two attitudes which if left unchecked, he believed, would lead to a slow decline, followed by decadence and an eventual fall. Lawtoo in his final summation observes that ‘“Nietzsche . . . is warning his posthumous readers that we along with him, may still be implicated in that strange world of phantoms he so deftly dissects,” in an age Nietzsche called “the century of the masses” or “the century of enthusiasm.” ’35

Focus: Girard, mimesis, reciprocity and the double bind So, finally, before proceeding to three case studies, what has a Girardian analysis to tell us about ‘transgression and transformation’ in this century of the masses? R. Anspach,36 a proponent of Girard’s MT, exposes the tangled loops of violence, its myth and its madness – its hypocrisy, its predilection for vengeance, its seemingly unstoppable momentum, its instability (so easily shunting from negative/destructive to positive/creative emotions), its failure to see its ‘twin’37 – and so stop the cycle (in a word, its pathology) against a canvas of pre-state societies, examines among other things, a stunning series of myths from ancient India, which he describes as ‘a . . . moment of origin. . . [that witnesses] . . . something rarely seen with such clarity: the progressive, step-by-step emergence of transcendence through peacemaking rituals’. He like Nietzsche (though he might not see himself in the same league, might

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even disagree with him) is fascinated by how those pre-state societies also strained to shift out of a ‘horizontal reciprocity’ to ‘the change of levels that characterize self-transcendence’ – a vertical dimension.38 Anspach’s is too complex a work to deal with in detail here, so I will attempt to summarise several points he raises that, through the Girardian lens, provides us with some valuable reference points. Firstly, most of the work focuses on the principle of ‘reciprocity’ and exchange and how that principle, along with the scapegoat mechanism, has served humanity well in the prevention of tearing itself apart. But it has come at a price – that of deception and self-deception.39 Citing Caroline Gerschlager’s work, he makes much of how deception has played such a vital role in the preservation of peace. She draws attention to how the two German words tauschen (exchange) and täuschen (deceive) are played with in an old German saying: ‘He who has the desire to exchange has the desire to deceive.’40 And there too was sacrifice which, of course, was the principal means of appeasing an enemy or an angry god with a series of peaceful gift exchanges following hard upon. In other words, trickery was de rigeur. Secondly, beyond the ‘symmetry of reprisals’ and resentments was the barrier to be overcome of the antagonists (and even those not involved) succumbing to the notion of the inevitability of conflict.41 Anspach, tapping into Giraudoux’s La guerre de Troie, quotes Hector in the context of the Trojan War as remarking to Ulysses, that, despite the fact that he hated war, he became more obsessed with ‘an irrepressible desire to kill.’42 Anspach then draws this pertinent conclusion: When individuals are caught up in a process of interaction that runs out of control and produces a result they did not seek, it is easy to imagine that some powerful force has thwarted their will.43 Thirdly, in a fascinating survey of Indian myths and ritual, Anspach notes with some amazement the progressive emergence of ‘collective self-transcendence.’44 The import of this is that: ‘The metagod is born of unanimity.’ This is not just a divinity, I take it, in the traditional sense, but anything (the ideology of globalization, for example) that is powerful enough to arise out of ‘unanimity’, which, of course, is mimesis at work. It is as we have seen from the beginning of the chapter, a force that can work in two directions at once, both positive and negative. Mimetic theory he feels offers some hope for the future in as much as it ‘leaves an opening for the positive impact of voluntary human action on the historical process.’45 Fourthly, at the end of a marathon two-chapter analysis of ‘Madness in the Making’ and ‘Madness and the Divided Self,’ Anspach highlights the following: (1) the urgency of early intervention in a crisis, (2) that neither madness nor conflict is an ‘inescapable destiny,’ (3) that a double bind may contribute to blocking exit from psychosis – to which we could add, that such double binds could contribute to blocking exit from violence, (4) that the ‘irreducible loopiness of human existence,’ is ‘never a prison’ snf (5) that when ‘an individual stands up against the crowd . . .

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when at least one person treats [another’s] experience with respect, unanimity begins to fissure [and] . . . [a] crack is opened for the light to get in.’46

Three case studies and transcendent moral ethics: a theoretical transformative methodology By way of conclusion to reinforce the principles enunciated in this chapter, as stated, I want to make some comments on three case studies, and then draw together all the reflections (with Nietzsche and Girard as key focal points) by highlighting transcendent moral ethics as a pathway that offers real hope for future conflict resolution. First, there is the case of Northern Ireland. Duncan Morrow,47 after a brilliant analysis of the Irish scene and the conflict that defined it for so many years, sums things up this way: it has become clear that the recrimination over the past is the single biggest obstacle to a decisive break towards a future together . . . the [faith] community. . . [in our midst] . . . became a kind of refuge for people fleeing violence or the constraints of communities seeking to impose order in the midst of chaos. In Emmanuel Levinas’ work, Morrow found a constant reminder that it is through the face of the ‘other’ that the gateway of the infinite, the transcendent passes – ‘a face that is nakedness itself, defencelessness itself, utter vulnerability . . . in its wake [the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”] . . . we are held captive. We are its hostages, no more free to walk away from it, than we are free to have the other individual die in our place’.48 Second, the Charter 77 Movement – why did it succeed when other movements had failed? In an article entitled, ‘How a group of despondent people pushed back against a repressive regime’s lies – and changed history’, Emily Tamkin’s answer is deceptively simple:49 the enduring legacy of Charter 77 and those who wrote it [was this]: The ability to make something – whether reclaiming individual dignity, or winning national independence – from nothing. What Tamkin doesn’t say, and not many people realise, is that this almost forgotten dissident movement was made up of the most disparate and unlikely people: Catholics, Protestants, anarchists, former Communists, atheists and many more classifications besides, who were brought together with the one thing in mind. Martin Palous, one of the Charter’s original signatories and the former Czech ambassador to the United States and the United Nations defined it as ‘ “[resisting] falsification” by demanding their basic human rights – including the right to live and speak honestly and with dignity.’ Nevertheless, the most important insight of all does come

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from Tamkin. She recognizes that it was hope finally that inspired them, and it was when they brought that hope into view, it was then that they drafted, signed and promoted the Charter, and not the other way around, even when there was nothing on the horizon to encourage them. Third the most recent Reconciliation Movement amongst our first nations peoples. Just recently, a Peace Gathering or Summit with First Nations (Aboriginal) peoples, was called and convened in Alice Springs. The purpose was to give voice to the process of healing, of shared ceremony, of truthful history, of sorrow, apology and reparations. And obstructing them, the perception of the current political climate as the barricaded, pin-striped, hard-faced ‘corporate’ business-driven governance of today, on both sides of parliament: the purposeful erosion of oncedecent and diverse governmental agenda, to nothing more than sales-pitch, ledger-balancing and (overwhelmingly) profits; the mean spirit and punitive laws founded in suspicion, threat, greed, and prejudice. The flagrant hypocrisy of Australia’s waging illegal wars, in bare-faced disregard of our own high obligations as signatories under international law. The denial and public misinformation regarding Truth, both past and present. The shameful abuse of land and waters, and of desperate people, both indigenous and refugees.50 The vocal strength and expression of First Nations is a movement building throughout the world, as FN people's despair of the depredations and destructions upon their loved and once-beautiful lands and waters, and the suffocating of their cultures and voices. It is a powerful movement and becoming more powerful by the day as Clinton Pryor continues his walk. And why? The answer spelled out in his own words: I’m a man on a mission to stand for the people against the rich. To give hope and not to be a fear of standing for the truth. No one will ever bring me down unless I choose to give up. I am walking for the justice for the Australia people, I am walking for remote indigenous communities, I am walking against the government who removing sacred sites . . . for the land Australia to be giving back to the sovereign Australia people . . . for Australia to be free from the rich who choose to control us . . . for an end to homeless, . . . against the removal of children by the government . . . against deaths in custody . . . for the wild life to be look after . . . for sacred sites to be look after by us, . . . to end poverty in Australia. I am walking because I love Australia and the Australia people. I am walking because it is time for change in this country. But most of all I’m walking for the rights of all Australia that wanted to treat the same like everyone else who live here. The Australia people need to start waking up before it too late.This the time or there will never be a time again in the future. Change will come if we come together as one.

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Transcendent moral ethics: a potential synthesis for transfiguration I am indebted to Dr Sarah Bachelard for this praxis.51 The key to understanding this kind of moral imagination, according to Bachelard, is to visualise a horizon that you are walking towards and that the horizon, while still a mystery yet closed, is opening itself to you as you approach it without preconceptions. You walk humbly, vulnerably towards it and the horizon unveils its mystery – more jaggedly and incrementally than tidily – for there are no formulas here. So, the start of the journey of discovery is played out in vulnerability and self-confessed ignorance as the imagination allows itself, in Socratic style, to be questioned. Under the bombardment of probing questions, from under/within this voluntary ignorance, there gradually emerges the truth, the reality of the thing observed and wondered about: be it the inscrutability of a situation, an issue, a person or a problem. Indeed, this is the function of the probing question formation – not just to engender bewilderment (aporia), but to help align us with reality, truth, goodness, love and justice. This is more than just a subjective personal truth or reality, which, as we know, can easily turn out to be a self-delusion or a delusion. No, this is truth, a reality, a goodness which is discoverable to all who are attuned to it. Bachelard affirms that such ‘truthfulness’ and ‘reality’ are in fact the lynchpins of the transcendental moral responsive approach, and that they are experiential (lived out), not mere abstractions or theoretical principles. The stakes, moreover, are high: what is at issue is the possibility that one’s life might be lived in illusion, that one might fail to be properly oriented towards the real.When that is the case, then moral perception or vision is necessarily distorted, and deep responsiveness to the reality of other people is impossible.52 Here Bachelard makes the point that if we are not true to ourselves, to life, if we fail to live in the real world as opposed to living in a world of our own making, then the chances of discovering people as they truly are is nigh on impossible. That is to say, we will see people through a distorted lens – which approximates, I imagine, to what Jesus meant when he said that we can’t really take out the splinter from another’s eye, if our own is occluded by the timber pole of the self-delusion within which we live. And, finally, the moral transcendent approach invites us to see through the lens of a strong love in the guise of compassion and goodness, which, while never shirking responsibility for the consequences of its own or another’s actions, assesses the individual as being of much greater value than his or her own worst actions.

Conclusion In an article entitled ‘The Nation Reviewed, To walk in two worlds, Comment’ by Megan Davis,53 an analysis of the Reconciliation Movement in Australia concludes

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that the Uluru Statement, delivered at the heart of the nation, at the base of the Rock, at Mutitjulu, the home of the children of Uluru, ‘was the culmination of a Referendum Council-led process of deliberative dialogues across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities over six months.’54 Its findings encapsulate the praxis of the ethics of transcendence espoused earlier: (1) recognition which had been sought for was not enough (8); (2) the Uluru convention disrupted the recognition project for good reasons – recognition didn’t go far enough – ‘the capacity of law to oppress’ must be counterbalanced by ‘the capacity of the law to redeem’ (8); (3) the situation is now clear: ‘The Australian polity does not want to surrender parliamentary sovereignty. Aboriginal peoples don’t want to cede sovereignty’ (10); (4) the need for structural reform has now become glaringly obvious – ‘We are going backwards. . . . Proportionately, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. . . . And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be the hope for the future. These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the torment of our powerlessness’ (10); (5) the quiet contemplation in the regional dialogues is essentially about ‘truth’: the truth of ‘the wound caused by the silencing of the Aboriginal experience after arrival’; the truth of ‘Frontier wars, massacres and forced racial segregation . . . the “one way” commemoration of Australian history’ (10); and (6) the time for obfuscation is done; the time for action has come. Sigmund Freud was right when he noted in his Moses and Monotheism that ‘the distortion [der Enstellung] of a text is not unlike a murder.’55 Oppressed by the text of law and the lie (terra nullius), which can be just as brutal as any massacre, our First Nation Peoples have responded in a firm but conciliatory and constitutional way which serves as a model for all transformative movements as well as endorsing Nietzsche and Girard’s insights regarding the power of undergoing, overcoming and becoming and the praxis of pacific mimesis, not to mention the prime goal of this series of chapters regarding ‘re-territorialisation’: We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country. (11)

In the end The complexities of life which theories of inclusion attempt to resolve, come down to an exercise in imagination.We either view things from a two-dimensional frame,

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or a three-dimensional one.The former is dualist, the latter monist.The former sees itself and the problem as two distinct entities: you are the problem, I am the solution. The latter imagines something more beautiful: you and I are part of the problem, and you and I together are part of the solution. This is the imagination, the field of Jelaluddin Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi mystic poet: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase ‘each other’ doesn’t make any sense. As North Korea and the United States square up against each other, Michael Leunig’s words, too, come readily to mind. My prayer is that love prevails: There are only two feelings. Love and fear. There are only two languages. Love and fear. There are only two activities. Love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear. Love is born With a dark and troubled face When hope is dead And in the most unlikely place Love is born: Love is always born.

Notes 1 Washington Post on Wednesday, December 31, 2014: accessed June 3, 2017. There is some doubt that Ghandi actually said these words: ‘I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians.Your Christians are so unlike your Christ,’ but there is enough extraneous evidence to confirm that this statement cuts close to the mark of other sentiments he did incontrovertibly express. 2 Der Antichrist, 35. November 26, 1888, Nietzsche writes to Paul Deussen, ‘MeineUmwerthungallerWerthemitdemHauptitel ‘DerAntichrist’ istfertig.’ [‘My Revaluation of Values under the main title “The Antichrist” is finished’ (KSB 8, 492). In fact, this same Christ so much admired by Nietzsche was for him, ‘the only one true Christian, the Christ of the Evangel.’

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3 I say ‘beginnings’ because for Nietzsche the übermensch in ‘overcoming’ has still to go that stage further – which is the ‘becoming’ – and it is that process which in fact creates the conditions for the kind of ‘becoming’ that will generate the healthy ‘resistance’ from which the truly transformative movements will emerge. 4 In the Phantom of the Ego, Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious by Nidesh Lawtoo (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 27–28. 5 Friedrich Nietzsche, NachgelasseneFragmente, 1875–1879, vol 8 in SämtlicheWerke: KritischeStudienausgabe, 15 vols., ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, tr. Gary Handwerk (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967–1977), 32–38. 6 Ressentiment, from Nietzsche’s perspective, which, arising out of impotence, is the cause of the ‘mimetic pathology’ produces a disenabling culture. The term will be more fully explained further down the track. 7 The full title is ‘Mimetic and Scapegoat Theory’. 8 As opposed to acquisitive mimesis, a competitive and greedy mindset that treats everyone and everything as a rival to be overcome, an object to possess. 9 René Girard, cited in “René Girard and the New Testament Use of skandalon”, http:// girardianlectionary.net/res/skandalon.htm, accessed May 16, 2019. 10 Heather Thomson made these remarks to a contemplative community gathering at Holy Covenant Church, Canberra, July, 2016. 11 Matthew 13: 24–43. 12 Feodor Dostoyevsky’s, Notes from the Underground. 13 In an article entitled,‘Can Dostoevsky Still Kick You in the Gut?’ The NewYorker, June 11, 2012, accessed June 28, 2017. 14 ‘Who’s Them, Who’s Us’, The Australian, April 29, 2017, accessed June 28, 2017. 15 Duden, Das Bedeutungswörterbuch, 2010 – respectively: ‘mit einem Mountainbike kannst du praktisch jede Steigung überwinden’ (with a mountain bike you can practically master [“meistern”] every degree of elevation); ‘eine Mauer überwinden’ (scale a wall); ‘Schwierichkeiten, Probleme überwinden’ (resolving difficulties, problems), 961. 16 This first trial in November 1838 was based on thin evidence. No-one apart from the killers had witnessed the massacre and they had removed all bodies before they could be recovered as evidence. At this time, the accused pleaded not guilty. 17 Some of these thoughts are drawn from a previous article I wrote for Dialogue Australasia Network, entitled, ‘To be, to become, to overcome’, May 2016. 18 Walter Kaufmann, trans., The Gay Science (New York:Vintage, 1974), GS 276. 19 Lucy Huskinson, An Introduction to Nietzsche (Gosport, Hampshire: Ashford Colour Press, 2009), 67, paraphrased and inspired by the original German. 20 ‘Ich komme wieder, mit deiser Sonne, mit dieser Erde, mit diesem Adler, mit dieser Schlange – nicht zu einem neuen Leben oder besseren Leben oder ähnlichen Leben, im Grössten und auch im Kleinsten, das sich wieder alle Dinge ewige Wiederkunft lehre’ ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ III13 §2; KSA Friedrich Nietzsche, in SämtlicheWerke: Kritische Studienausgabe, eds. Giorgio Colli and MazzinoMontinari, 15 vols. (Berlin, New York and Munich: Walter de Gruyter, Deutschen Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967–1977 and 1988), 4, 276 [373–374]. 21 Keith Ansell-Pearson, “The Incorporation of Truth:Towards the Overhuman” in A Companion to Friedrich Nietzsche, Life and Works, ed. Paul Bishop (New York: Camden House, 2012), 184–188. 22 Ansell-Pearson, 185. 23 In Robert Miller, ‘Teaching Nietzsche, Dionysian Artist,’ Dialogue Australasia Journal, Issue 26, November 2011, 9–12, Dr Miller speaks of the transitions from camel, lion and child through which we must pass in order to become what we are. We must overcome the servitude mentality (camel) which seeks to squeeze us into its mould; acquire courage (that of a lion) which allows us to make a stand and finally, constantly take on the mindset of a child which receives things with simplicity and sees things unadorned, sees things as they are.

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24 I have no space to defend this reading, other than to say that, in a childlike way, Nietzsche so often plays hide and seek with us in a glen of paradoxes and other seeming contradictions, e.g. he rejects Plato’s metaphysics, but not his aesthetics – and as I have suggested here, he does believe in a transcendence, but in the ‘here and now’ (hence the ‘immanence’) and not ‘then,’ or ‘somewhere else,’ which for him would be a metaphysical reality to be discounted because it can’t be demonstrated. 25 R J Hollingdale, trans., Beyond Good and Evil (London: Penguin Classics, 2014), 239. 26 Christa Davis Acampora, Contesting Nietzsche (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 2013), 2. 27 Acampora, xi. 28 Acampora, 33. She goes on to say that, for Nietzsche, the Greek agon ‘gathered more than just a few men; it served as a site for the production of meaning, for making and remaking social order and cultural fabric and for articulating the range of individual possibilities’ (my emphasis) (36). She then notes how this notion even impacts on Nietzsche’s understanding of history, ‘a history that is effective, informing how we think about ourselves in the present and our possible goals for the future’ (38). 29 Acampora, 3. 30 As Campora rightly divines, those that are ‘most productive,’ those that do not ‘win simply by tearing down one’s opposition’ (201) where ‘simply struggling is not the point,’ (202). ‘[Nietzsche] is not merely suggesting that there are good contests and bad ones and that the good ones are those in which the truly superlative competitor emerges as the victor’ (19). 31 Acampora, 23–34. 32 Acampora, 27. 33 Acampora, 25–28. 34 Essentially, this is the tragic vision’s ability to reconcile the Apollonian and Dionysian opposites, which when harnessed produce mastery and a balanced society – requiring a whole chapter in itself. 35 Lawtoo, 83. Also Nietzsche’s Jahrhundert der Schwärmerei, and (Daybreak “Preface”; 3). 36 In his Vengeance in Reverse, The Tangled Loops of Violence, Myth and Madness (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2017). 37 A nuanced Girardian term for the person who is like us but we can’t see that or choose not to see that, it’s the kind of blindness that is encapsulated by the term ‘méconnaisance’ literally ‘misperception’, captured by the psychological term, ‘cognitive dissonance.’ 38 Mark R. Anspach. Vengeance in Reverse, The Tangled Loops of Violence, Myth and Madness, (Michigan State University Press, 2017), pp. x–xi. 39 Unnervingly similar to Nietzsche’s ressentiment, which also is sustained by deception and self-deception, as we have seen through the lens of Dostoyevsky. 40 Caroline Gerschlager’s Introduction to Expanding the Economic Concept of Exchange: Deception, Self-Deception and Illusion, ed. Caroline Gerschlager (Boston: Kluwer, 2001), 8. 41 Anspach, 29. 42 Giraudoux, 159: which sounds very much like Girard’s notion of ‘scandal’ – see foot note 9. 43 Anspach, 39. 44 Anspach, 48. 45 Anspach, 55. 46 Anspach, 99. 47 In Mimesis and Atonement, René Girard and the Doctrine of Salvation, ed. Michael Kirwan and Sheelah Treflé Hidden (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), under the chapter 8 title, ‘Violence Unveiled: Understanding Christianity and Politics in Northern Ireland after René Girard’s Rereading of Atonement’, 148–149. 48 S. Goodhart, ‘The Self and Other People: Reading Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation with René Girard and Creative Reconciliation, eds. V.N. Redekop and T. Ryba (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2014), 49–62.

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4 9 February 3, 2017 in Foreign Policy . . . accessed June 29, 2017 50 Email sent June 24, highlighting the 6,700 km walk of Clinton Pryor and the extraordinary convergence of peace-making missions. 51 Sarah Bachelard, Resurrection and Moral Imagination (London: Ashgate, 2014). 52 Bachelard, 12. 53 In ‘The Monthly’, July 2017 – www.the monthly.com au. 54 Davis, 8. 55 Cited by Ward Blanton in A Materialism for The Masses, St Paul and the Philosophy of Undying Life (New York: Columbia University Press), 1.

9 SONG OF THE SAWNGS Transformation of a cultural protest and the role of nationalist politics Rajat Kanti Sur

Āmi rājā bahadur Kōchubāgāner hujur. Jōmi nāi, jamā nāi, Nāiko āmār prōjā . . . Andore abōlā kāndé Pheye āmār sājā. Orey bājā, bājā, bājā, Tā dhin tā nāchi āmi, Kōchubaner rājā. (I am the noble ‘raja’, the king of the garden of trifles. I have no land, no savings, nor do I have any subject . . . I punish women in my home and make them weep. Beat the drum! Let me dance! I am the king of the garden of trifles.)1 The song, published in Anusandhan, a well-known Bengali periodical in the nineteenth century, was a part of an iconic performance in the streets of Calcutta. It was a form of pantomime, popularly known as ‘sawng’. A known critic of the newly born elite class of the nineteenth century, the sawng had been approved by a section of the rich people of the city. Mostly the workers in the palaces of neo-riches, fishermen, bell metal workers and water suppliers (popularly known as ‘vistis’) were the performers of sawng. Therefore, sawng performances mainly critiqued the authorities of nineteenth-century Calcutta in the form of satire. The concept of protest against the dominant section of the native society through sawngs, khemtas,2 kavigans3 and several other satirical performances changed with the advent of popular nationalist ideas in the first half of the twentieth century. The target of the satire shifted from the elites of the city to British administrators. The use of the sawngs, kavigans and other elements of popular street performances

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were used to attract the common working class towards the campaign against the British government. The nationalist leaders not only funded several performances of sawngs, but also made literary contributions to make those performances more political. Thus, with the intervention of the educated class, the character of the tool of subaltern cultural protest changed thereby initiating the decline of a medium of a protest. This chapter will focus on the transformation of sawng performances in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Calcutta. Through the difference between the songs written in the nineteenth century and during the nationalist movement, it will show how the cultural practices of the working class changed with time and political situation. Apart from focusing a complex relationship between a form of street performance and the changing nature of protest movement, this chapter will also give an idea about the changing nature of the socio-political history of a colonial urban society in South Asia.

The ‘sawng’: definition ‘Sawng’, according to the noted Bengali linguist Haricharan Bandyopadhyay, is a disguise intended to induce laughter among the common people.4 He also describes the comedians of a carnival as sawng. Apart from Bandyopadhyay, other known Bengali historians and social scientists relate sawng performances with ‘Gajon’, a spring festival to celebrate the occasion of the Hindu deity Shiva’s marriage with Parvati, the daughter of Himalaya, the king of the mountains. Another group of Bengali social scientists relate ‘Gajon’ with the tribal god ‘Dharma’. Dharma is usually worshipped in Chaitra, the last month of the Bengali calendar (which spans between mid-March and mid-April) in the western part of West Bengal. Gajon and sawng form essential parts of that ritual.5

The sawng performances in nineteenth-century Calcutta It is not very clear as to when and what kind of ritual brought sawng into the newly born colonial capital of the South Asian subcontinent, but there is no denying the fact that the anti-establishment character of sawng performances were visible since the beginning. The first instance of dispute during a sawng performance made it a topic of discussion in the vernacular newspapers. It happened in the early phase of the nineteenth century. A sawng performance on the streets of Calcutta, which happened to be a part of the immersion ceremony of the Hindu goddess Sarasvati (the goddess of education and literature), had illicit content according to the colonial administration. The police authorities stopped the performance and arrested Kashinath Chattopadhyay, the man who organised the sawng performance on the occasion of the immersion of the idol at his own house.6 The prohibited sawng performance was based on the self-contradictory nature of native officials of the colonial administration. This incident showed the humorous but critical nature of sawng performances in nineteenth-century Calcutta.

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Although, Chattopadhyay, who lived at the chasha-dhopa para (an area of washer men turned farmers, presently the northern side of the ‘Girish Park’ area of Kolkata) was not very far from Kansaripara (the area of bell-metal workers, presently located at the eastern side of ‘Girish Park’), which was the main centre of nineteenth-century sawng performers and playwrights.7 The performers of Kansaripara sawng used to perform in several social and political occasions apart from religious festivals. Native landlords, priests of the Hindu temples and leaders of Hindu communities used sawng performances as critiques against each other and also against the social reformers of the nineteenth century.Therefore, they not only supported different street performances financially but also thoroughly enjoyed them with the common or poorer sections of the society. Kaliprasanna Sinha, one of the most prominent members of the landed gentry of nineteenth-century Calcutta and a notable writer, described the interest of the neo-rich sections on the sawng performance of Charak8 festival. In his satires on nineteenth-century Calcutta, Sinha showed the involvement of native landlords and other neo-riches for a sawng performance as an audience in the Baroyaritola of Chitpur area. According to Sinha’s satiric masterpiece Hutom Pyanchar Naksha(1862), the sawngs’ performance in the Chitpur area was mostly mimicry against the colonial dressing and campaigns for modern European education by the church. The criticism of rich zamindars and businessmen who blindly adopted European dressing and food habits were also targeted by Baroyaritola sawng performers.9 Though criticised, the neo-rich class thoroughly enjoyed the sawng performances. Apart from economic help, some of them gave literary contributions in sawng performances. Rupchand Pakshi, one of the known songwriters of nineteenth-century Calcutta wrote a few songs for sawng performances. Originally from Orissa, Pakshi was famous for his capability of impromptu song writing. There were many people like Rupchand Pakshi who actively participated in the sawng performances in the nineteenth century. Apart from entertainment, the clash between different caste or sub-caste group leaders featured in the sawng performances. Soumendra Nath Mukherjee considered this clash as one of the forms of elite politics in the nineteenth-century urban elite class. According to Mukherjee, the political scenario of nineteenth-century Calcutta was totally controlled by the British and no one except some poor Muslim peasants dared to organise a movement against them. As a result, the native subjects of colonial administration were busy with many less important areas of politics. Formation of castebased groups and establishing caste courts (popularly known as caste cutcheries) was one of the most important of the political games that they played against each other.10 These caste groups used sawng performances against each other. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, the new elite class influenced by western education and western thought of enlightenment and modernity, was a prime target of sawng performances, mostly funded by the leaders of the Hindu traditional caste groups. Therefore, the sawng used several illicit remarks against Rammohun Roy and Isvarchandra Vidyasagar, the doyens of the renaissance of Bengal. Sumit Sarkar explained the attack on Vidyasagar for advocating the Widow Remarriage Act of

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1856.11 The reactions came from the caste leaders were against Vidyasagar and they targeted him both in the courts and in the public places.The caste leaders took help from the popular cultural mediums to attack against Vidyasagar. The Kansariparasawng performances were used along with several other entertainment programmes including the famous panchali12 song by poet Dasarathi (Dashu) Ray. Binoy Ghosh, an eminent sociologist, wrote about the role of the street performers in demoralising Vidyasagar’s movements for enlightening the Bengali society.13 Kansaripara sawng performances were used against the Widow Remarriage Bill. Many Bengali litterateurs of the nineteenth century were against the idea of reformation. Iswar Chandra Gupta, editor of Samvad Prabhakar, one of the leading Bengali newspapers of the nineteenth century, wrote a satiric poem against the bill. Few lines of the poem were performed by the sawng. Badhiyachhe daladali, lagiyachhe gol Bidhaba r biyehobe, bajiyachhedhol. Koto badi pratibadi, kare koto rob Chhele buri adi kuri, matiyachhe sob. (They divided into groups and created chaos, drums were playing for remarriage of a widow. Many men were protesting against it although some people, of ages, were enjoying the new tradition.)14 Ghosh also find some songs, praising Vidyasagar’s steps on widow remarriage. The songs were even woven in the handloom sarees of Santipur and also spread in different popular cultural spheres of nineteenth-century Bengal (e.g. the jatras, kavigans etc.).15

Protests against Kansaripara sawng performances Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin discussed the nature of carnivals in public places of a medieval European city. In his well-known research on Francois Rabelais, a French novelist at the time of renaissance in Europe, Bakhtin showed that the languages and incidents used by Rabelais were mostly used on the streets or in a marketplace. The characters of the novels written by Rabelais were, according to Bakhtin, those played by the carnival artists. Mostly unsophisticated in terms of the use of language and humorous in terms of dressing and attitude, the acting of the carnivals in a marketplace was loud and bold. They utilised such opportunities to criticise the authorities who in turn accepted those criticisms. According to Bakhtin, the carnivals of Europe in the middle ages challenged the rulers through humorous performances. Gargantuan and Pantagruel, characters in Rabelais’ novels, were symbols of challenges against the authorities.16 The sawngs of the nineteenth-century Kolkata were more similar with this Bakhtin’s idea of a carnival. It challenged the authority of the new elites and their understanding of a ‘civil society’. They got economic support from the native zamindars or some native businessmen only because they targeted newly emerged Brahmo Samaj in their

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satire. The Brahmo Samaj was a society formed by Rammohun Roy to reform Hinduism from all kinds of superstitions. In the late nineteenth century, the bifurcation between Brahmo Samaj and clash between its two founder members Kesub Chandra Sen and Devendranath Tagore was an interesting topic for sawng performers. They criticised Kesub especially for getting his daughter married into a traditional Hindu royal family of Cooch Behar. Kesub took this satire as an offence against him and took firm steps to stop sawngs and other satiric performances. Kesub and his close associates in Brahmo Samaj established a society for prevention of obscene performances in the 1870s and argued to ban almost all kinds of satiric street performances (sawng, jatra, khemta etc.). Hindoo Patriot, one of the leading weekly newspapers of the nineteenth century, strongly criticised the steps taken by Kesub and his associates. The newspaper even blamed the newly educated Bengali middle class for its ignorance of “indigenous cultural traditions” of the country. Talking about the activities of the society for suppression of public obscenity, Hindoo Patriot described The louder and noisier suppressors will always carry it against the more prudent part of the community; the most violent will be considered as the most moral; and those who see absurdity will for the fear of being thought to encourage vice, be reluctant to oppose.17 The news had clearly predicted the emergence of a new class in colonial Indian society.The new class was educated in modern English education and closely associated with colonial officials. Therefore, the concept of modernity in the Victorian era also made a deep impact upon the native elites of the city. The native elites accepted the social and cultural systems of the colonial superiors and designed the questions of ethics and morality according to the British ideas of the nineteenth century. Thus, the notion of maintaining discipline according to the British legal system made a distinction between the ‘modern’ educated middle class and the traditional socio-cultural norms of nineteenth century Calcutta. This penchant for discipline in life and activities provoked Kesub Chunder Sen and the likeminded native elites to lodge complaints against what they considered obscene in the language used in the street performances. This elitism helped colonial rulers in imposing censorship against various theatrical performances including professional theatres. The ultimate blow came in February 1876 through the Dramatic Performances Control Act. The imposition of the act needed an obscene performance. A small satire by some of Kansaripara sawng actors, titled- “The Police of Pig and Sheep” before Upendranath Das’s Surendra Binodini at the Great National Theatre fulfilled the requirement. The satire targeted Stuart Hogg, the then Commissioner of Calcutta Police and Charles Lamb, the police superintendent, the two most influential persons in charge of maintaining Calcutta’s law and order. The enactment of the Dramatic Performances Control Act, according to Sumanta Banerjee, put an end to the production of political satires and farces not only on stage but also on the streets.18

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A protest against the prohibition of popular and street performances came from a small section of the privileged class of the city.The Hindu caste leaders, along with some zamindars who were totally annoyed and disliked the activities of Brahmo leaders and social reformers, argued in favour of sawng and other popular street performances. A group of people from the British Indian Association made an appeal to the Viceroy in favour of sawng and other popular and street performances.19 Hindoo Patriot also had lodged a protest against the prohibition of street performances. Babu Kristo Dass Paul, the editor of Hindu Patriot and one of the main patrons of Kansaripara sawngs, also opposed the ban on sawng performances. He wrote several articles on this ban and also lodged his protest to the viceroy.

Changing nature of the elites and the decline of Kansaripara sawngs In spite of several protest movements and complaints, the sawng performances of Kansaripara never re-emerged. Apart from different legal obstructions, some formidable changes in the society also became a key factor contributing to the decline of Kansaripra sawng performances. Acceptance of a modern education system in the mid-nineteenth century initiated a sense of ‘modernity’ and ‘literacy’ among a section urban Bengali people. These peoples were mostly employed by the British government or different companies owned by the British citizens. Some of them were directly associated with British educational reformers. This kind of close associations with the British citizens gave the native Bengalis a vague idea about key social and political concepts in Europe; i.e. freedom, liberty, equality, civilisation, citizenship and, above all, modernity. Partha Chatterjee dated the beginning of early colonial modernity with the inception of new institutions of schooling of boys and young men long before the officially regulated system of colonial education in the 1830s.20 Though initially started with an idea of a basic training in English and some practical skills, such as bookkeeping or draftmanship for the colonial entrepreneurs, these schools indirectly helped to reformulate the class structure – and thus the colonial middle class was born in Calcutta. This new class was in favour of new cultural mediums influenced by European cultural traditions. Therefore, the educated middle class was more interested in theatre, the newly emerged tradition of Calcutta’s popular culture, especially with the Sans Souci Theatre in 1848. Referring to Amritalal Bose’s writings, Chatterjee mentions that the price of a ticket in those theatres was approximately sixteen rupees, which was more than the monthly salary of majority of the salaried people in those days. According to Chatterjee, the new educated middle class developed a taste in this new tightly framed cultural medium to express their feelings and expectations towards the colonial administrators.21 Thus, one of the major cultural interventions of colonial modernity gradually reduced the attraction to street performances like sawngs, which was a result of the huge cut in financial patronisation from the middle and upper middle class. Rich zamindars and native businessmen also started funding the theatre companies not only to earn profit but also to maintain control over the society and its culture. The theatres of Girish Chandra Ghosh, Amritalal

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Bose, Upendranath Dutta and others introduced the preliminary idea of nationalism in Calcutta’s cultural arena. The acts of Kansaripara sawngs, on the other hand, were not able to introduce the ‘modern’ tradition of cultural nationalism since the performances were designed and performed by the working class people who lacked the political consciousness of the educated elites and were also not equipped with the language of the latter. Therefore, the act of sawng staged before Upendranath Dutta’s “Surendra Binodini” which used both ‘obscene’ and ‘objectionable’ words against the highest police officials stood in stark contrast with the language of the emerging theatres. This resulted in the repugnance of the colonial administrators towards sawng performances. As a result, the sawng performances became the softest target among all other cultural mediums in the nineteenth century, which resulted in their decline.

Changing nature of the working class Apart from the financial crisis and the newly formed taste of the rich people as well as the new Bengali middle class of the city, the transformation of the labouring communities was also responsible for the decline of Kansaripara sawng performances.The increase in the number of jute mills in the 1880s changed the structure of Kolkata’s working class. According to the census of 1881, the number of workers involved in the jute industry was 696. Compared to the workers involved in carpentry (4,979) or brickkiln (5,061) the number of jute mill workers was very nominal in 1881.22 The demand increased with the establishment of Indian Jute Manufacturers Association or IJMA in 1884. The production of jute evidently increased from the late 1880s with a considerable increase in demand in the UK and due to IJMA’s constant interference in the jute business. Increasing demand of jute encouraged several British industrialists to build factories in the surrounding areas of Calcutta. It increased the number of labourers as well. According to 1891 census of the city, 2,396 people of Calcutta’s labouring communities were involved in jute factories of the surrounding areas.23 This number increased up to 24,064 by 1901, almost ten times more than 1891 census.24 This new tradition gradually increased migration of labourers from outside Bengal. A large number of labourers came from the neighbouring states of Bengal, mostly from the northern region of Bihar. The demographic structure of the working class had changed with migrant labourers and it affected the social and cultural scenario of the working class. Sawng performances which happened to be a popular medium of entertainment for the working class of nineteenth-century Calcutta, lost its currency among the emerging population of migrant labourers. The majority of them were Hindi speaking and therefore they failed to appreciate the humour of sawng performances.

The sawng performances of the twentieth century and the impact of nationalism After the decline of Kansaripara sawng performances, it re-emerged in the Jeliapara area of central Calcutta in the first decade of the twentieth century. Popularly

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known as ‘jeleparar sawng’, the sawng had a good acceptance among the nationalist leaders and some of them used sawng performances during nationalist campaigns. However, local historians have dated Jeliapara sawngs some years later in 1882. Originating from the house of Durgacharan Kundu, one of the leaders of the fishermen community and the owner of the largest fish market in Howrah, the sawng did not have any clear political or humorous message. It was meant simply for the entertainment for the fishermen communities of that particular area. The Jeliapara sawng performances also declined after the death of Durgacharan and the plague epidemic in Calcutta in 1903.25 Sawng performance was again revived in 1913bya group of educated people within the fishermen community. Jyotish Chandra Biswas, the leader of the group who revived Jeliapara sawng, participated in the nationalist movement and was a close associate of Nirmal Chandra Chunder, a leading member of the then Indian National Congress and later the founder member of the Swarajya Party. As Sumit Sarkar correctly pointed out in his pioneering work on swadeshi movement, the leaders of the movement put emphasis on vernacular literature, songs, plays, jatras and different local religious festivals to spread radical nationalism.26 Thus, Jeliapara sawng simply became a tool of the Swadeshi nationalism. Apart from writers within the fishermen community, some of the eminent poets and playwrights began composing songs for the sawngs. Though they tried to maintain the unsophisticated simplicity of language originally used by the sawngs, the very idea of nationalist politics was too difficult for the labourers to understand and thus it lost its currency as a medium of entertainment as well. As an example, we may refer to the Jeliapara sawng against Miss Katherine Mayo for the derogatory comments in her novel Mother India, which was hardly understand able for the common people. Erchaite obak kando ache ki re ar, Chaluni j, se o korchhe chhuncher bichar. Sagarparer nagor dhora swechhacharini Tara e holo Bharat narir kechhakarini! Tao amader shunte holo hay ma Tarini. etc. (We are stunned to hear how a bloody whore from the other side of the sea tells about the unruly nature of women in our own Country! It’s almost like a saucepan called the kettle black. Oh, goddess ‘Tarini’! This is only possible because she thinks that we are bloody dirty ‘niggers’ and can’t tell anything to our masters.)27 Though the satire in this sawng performance was appreciated by the educated nationalist elites of Calcutta, it certainly meant nothing for the common and illiterate people of the city. Not only that, due to the dominance of Hindu leaders in the Swadeshi nationalist politics, songs, plays and adaptations of vernacular literature mostly had Hindu influences, thereby creating a feeling of displeasure among other religious communities. This displeasure even turned into a violent riot in Calcutta when a religious procession was passing by a mosque and made excessive noise in

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spite of objections from the police. This caused a month-long riot (2 April–9 May) in 1926. The police prohibited all kinds of religious processions and the sawng procession was also banned. As a result, in the following year, sawng performance added a special song on communal harmony, which was also considered a nationalist initiative and therefore was unable to bear any message to the people belonging to the working class and those living in the slums. The song was as follows: Bigoto bottrish shon, Pan ni sawnger doroshon, Tar karon pulisher baron – Khomabhikkha tai korchhi nibedon. Goto Chaitre maitri khosiye, Bharatputtur shottur hasiye, Bhai hoye bhaike shasiye, shohor bhasiye, Reshareshir bonya korechhilo anayan. . . . Ekhon jworer neiko sign, temperature twenty-nine, Aine kinba quinine korechhe obostha ‘normal’. (You have not seen the sawng last year due to objection from the police. We are sorry for that. The people of the city fought with each other in last Chaitra of 1332 BS. Forgetting their old bonding, they killed and threatened each other and created an ambience of enmity. . . . Now there is no sign of that bad fever, due to anti-riot laws or maybe the Malaria make the situation under control.)28

The failure of sawng There was no doubt that the process to connect common working class people through sawng performances was the best possible way for the nationalist leaders, but they completely failed to create a subaltern consciousness towards nationalist movement through the sawngs of Jeliapara. This is firstly because the nationalist movement involved educated playwrights, poets and litterateurs in sawng performances. They wrote songs and plays for sawng which had been performed by the little or almost uneducated actors of the ordinary working class who lived in the lanes and by-lanes of the Jeliapara. Not familiar with the lingo of the educated class, the performers failed to appreciate the meaning of the songs they were to perform, which resulted in a disparity between their dialogues and their actions. Therefore, they gradually lost their interest in sawng performances. Secondly, the nationalist politics also changed its traditional approach. The rising of Gandhi totally changed the political scenario all over India. His acceptance among the people of all sections removed the necessity for any cultural method for nationalist campaigns. Apart from Gandhi’s role, the death of Chittaranjan Das in 1925 and gradual decline of the Swarajya Party in Bengal gradually made sawng performances redundant.

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However, the final blow came in 1930, when the successful attack on the armoury of Chittagong by Surya Sen and his associates created a huge sensation among the radical nationalist politicians. Protest marches were organised all over Bengal. Even the Kalikata Kaibartta Samiti, the organisation of the fishermen community at Jeliapara, planned a meeting and sawng performance to celebrate the occasion. Fakirchand Garai, the then secretary of the samiti took the initiative. Getting a report on this programme from the intelligence branch, the Calcutta Police imposed a ban on the performance and issued warrants against the secretary and the chief organiser.29 The ban continued till the next year, and this broke up the team of performers and organisers. Meanwhile, the death of Fakirchand Garai also created a vacancy in the organisation and the sawng performances of Jeliapara came to an end and were not revived until the last decade of the twentieth century.

Conclusion The transformation of songs and plays of sawng performances in nineteenth and twentieth centuries showed a major shift in the nature of cultural practices in the urban society. It projected how a mass culture for simple entertainment gradually became complicated with the influence of modern political ideas. The sawng performances of Kansaripara in the nineteenth century had simplicity in its presentation which automatically attracted people of the working class to participate. However, the Jeliapara sawng was more organised and got more economic support from the Swarajya Party, but it gradually got detached from its own roots.The main essence of the sawng as I have mentioned at the beginning of the chapter was a subaltern festival. ‘Gajon’, by no means, was a festival of the upper-class Hindus. The participation of the working class was essential and sawng was a relief from a month-long celibacy of the ‘sanyasis’ who performed the Gajon. The rich people, mostly the businessmen and the landlords, who lived in the palaces in nineteenthcentury Calcutta had their own festivals, rituals and entertainments. Sawng performances for them were a cultural activity of the lower class, which they also enjoyed thoroughly and sometimes used against their rivals. There was not any evidence of cultural interference in the sawng performances in the nineteenth century. The Jeliapara sawng of the twentieth century broke the equation. With the increased amount of educated middle-class involvement in the political and cultural scenario of the city, a new definition of urban protest had emerged. They tried to find out the way to enter the social life of the working class and involve them as a part of the new form of a nationalist protest movement. That was one of the main reasons behind the acceptance of sawng as a tool for building cultural protest against colonialism. But, apart from very few leaders in labour movements in jute mills and also in Calcutta Corporation, the leadership of the lower class was almost next to nothing.The crisis of lower-class leadership failed to create a unified strong cultural protest before the late 1930s. Even the three available books on sawng in Bengali also did not address the problem properly. They blamed the ban on the colonial police. The decline of sawng actually showed the failure in the practical application of the modern political philosophy of inclusive nationalism – a nationalism that

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brought with it the concept of making ‘one nation – one country’ through cultural movements.

Notes 1 Banerjee, Sumanta, The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta, Calcutta, Seagull Books, 1989, p. 127. Print. Original poem was taken from Anusandhan (17 Ashar, 1304BS). Translation of the poem was done by the author. 2 Khemta: A form of Hundusthani music. Khemta was very popular among the neo rich zamindars in nineteenth-century Calcutta. An erotic dance form was an inevitable part of Khemta songs. Mostly performed by the women lived in the prostitute quarters, the dance was one of the erotic performances and the working class of the city also enjoyed those dances. 3 Kavigan: A popular form of performance by the village poets. 4 Bandyopadhyaya, Haricharan, Vangiya Shabdakosha (Vol. II) (an encyclopedia of Bengali language), New Delhi, Sahitya Academy, 1966, p. 2075–2076. Print. 5 NiharRanjan Ray and Binoy Ghosh created the ‘Gajon’ festival with Shiva. However, Ray gave some details of Dharma worship and related ‘Gajon’ also with the annual worship of Dharma. Binoy Ghosh also described Dharma worship in several areas of Bardhaman, Birbhum and Purulia of West Bengal. Although the sawng performances are not an inevitable part of the Gajon festivals. Sawng has been performed some other religious rituals also. For details, please consult, Ray, Nihar Ranjan, Bangalir Itihas (adiparva), Calcutta, Dey’s Publishing, 2010, p. 485–487. Print and Ghosh, Binoy, Paschimbanger Samskriti (Vol. 1), Calcutta, Prakash Bhavan, 1976, p. 143–145. Print. For details about sawng performances in other Bengali rituals please consult Bandyopadhyay, Bireswar, Bangladesher Sawng Prasange, Calcutta, Manisha Granthalaya Pvt. Ltd., 1996, p. 2–3.Print. 6 Bandyopadhyay, Brajendranath (Ed.), Samvadpatre Sekaler Katha (Prathama Khanda) 1818– 1830, Calcutta, Bangiya Sahitya Parishat. 1356 BS, 1949, p. 139. Print. 7 Bose, Debashis, “Kolkatar Pallinam: Talikar Sandhane”. Kalikata Purakatha. Ed. Debashis Bose, Calcutta, Pustak Bipani, 1990. p. 306–311. Print. 8 Charak: A ritual of self-flagellation by the Gajon sanyashis. They hung themselves by a huge swinging post with an anchor and move like a swinging wheel. Originally came from the word ‘chakra’ or the swinging wheel, Charak is an inevitable part of Gajon festival. Please see Bandyopadhyay.1966.854.Print. 9 Nag, Arun (Ed.). Satik Hutom Pyanchar Naksha., Kolkata: Ananda Publishers Private Limited, 2008. p. 52–55. Print. 10 Mukherjee, Soumyendra Nath. Calcutta: Myths and History, Calcutta, Subarnarekha, 1977. p. 1–4. Print. 11 Sarkar, Sumit. Writing Social History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997. p. 224– 225. Print. 12 Panchali: Poems or verses usually composed for worshiping Hindu deities. Sometimes the poems are made instantly by the poets and used in different rituals. These poets are used to write panchali songs on some local and social issues. Dasharathi Ray (popularly known as Dashu Ray) was one of the famous poet and composer of nineteenth century Bengal. 13 Apart from widow remarriage, Vidyasagar was engaged in several educational reforms. He took steps to stop polygamy among the Hindus, initiated girl-child education and female education. He spent few years among the tribes in the last few years of his life. 14 Ghosh, Binoy. Vidyasagar o Bangali Samaj, Calcutta: Orient Longman, 1973. p. 250–251. Print. Translation of the poem is mine. 15 Ghosh. 1973. 252. 16 Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984. p. 146–150. Print. 17 The Hindoo Patriot, 28 September 1873, 459–460. 18 Banerjee. 1989. 188. Print.

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19 Judicial File No. 214, Proceedings Vol. No. 12–13 of 1876. “Dramatic Performance Act XIX of 1876”. 231–237. 20 Chatterjee, Partha. The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Ranikhet, Permanent Black, 2012. p. 125. Print. 21 Chatterjee. 2012. 229. 22 Census of the Town and Suburbs of Calcutta 1881. Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press. p. 45. Print. 23 Census of Calcutta and Its Suburbs 1891. Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press, 1892. p. CVIIICIX. Print. 24 Census of India 1901: Calcutta, Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1902. p. 100– 101. Print. 25 De, Shankar Prasad. Samajik o Rajnaitik Prekshapat e Jele Kaibartta, Adi Kolkatar Jelepara o Jeleparar Sawng, Kolkata, Offbit, 2006. p. 271–273. Print. 26 Sarkar, Sumit. The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal: 1903–1908, New Delhi, People’s Publishing House, 1973. p. 252–254. Print. 27 De. 2006. Op. cit. 345. Print. The translation of the poem is mine. Goddess ‘Tarini’ is another name of Hindu goddess Kali. 28 De. 2006. 355. Print. Translation of the poem is mine. Chaitra, 1332 BS is April 1926 according to the English calendar. 29 Kalikata Kaibartta Samiti. Barshik Pratibedan 1336BS (Annual Report 1931), Calcutta, 1931. p. 4–5. Print.

10 ‘WE SHALL RISE’ Intimate theory and embodied dissent Marcus Bussey

I am searching for the gaps people have not spotted, for the clues they have missed. (Zeldin, 1995: 13)

This chapter explores intimate theory and embodied dissent. It is an attempt to bring together my own experience of dissent with ways of knowing that step beyond traditional parameters for theory. As much as I have a love of words and an appreciation for their power, I recognise that words are never enough.You can tell the worth of a person by what he or she does, not what he or she says. Similarly, you can measure the worth of an idea, insight, principle, by the actions it inspires. Yet beyond this, there is an embodied horizon of possibility which calls us to act, do, be and relate directly with this world.This is the space of intimate theory where a dance, a song, a practice – either mundane or esoteric – can offer intimate critical possibilities for dissent and for initiating sublime movements for personal or social transformation. Thus I am looking, as Theodore Zeldin is in the opening quotation, for gaps and clues. In this I move from theoretical abstraction to personal introspection. I deploy my first-person voice regularly to shake things up. I also dance and engage poets. All of this is in the endeavour to embody aspects of intimate dissent and its possibilities.The logic running throughout this chapter is that theory is a distinctive human activity and has been corralled in recent centuries into steadfastly textual forms that restrict its operative and generative qualities. My epistemological premise is that the mind is not the only source of wisdom: body wisdom underpins and sustains much of human action in the world. Just as birds know when to migrate, the body knows when to dance. Unlike birds, however, we have disciplined the body into less joyous, deeply repetitive processes of production and identity formation.We no

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longer trust the body, and this is the source of much of our destructive behaviour today. Our psychotic civilisation is in fact raging against the body’s containment. We are taking this rage out on the planet, its biosphere and its marginalised peoples. It seems easy to hurt what we have no relationship with. The distance between the ego I and the world out there must be challenged and this leads to an opening discussion on theory that seeks to move us from distance to intimacy.

Theory and distance The power of theory (Greek: theoria or θεωρία) is linked intimately to the power of distance. We see the world as a ‘theatre’ (Greek θεωρεῖν) within which we act, and with some distance we can theorise by looking for causal links and animating forces that help us make sense of life in all its complexity. Within the empirical and structuralist traditions, distance allows us to name and objectify whilst, from a poststructuralist position, distance enables the identification of patterns. Such distance is effected, for instance, in the poststructural philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and their brilliant concept of the Body without Organs (BwO) (1987: 153) which abstracted the causal links and animating forces (their intensities and flows) to lay bare the foundation of processes in our world. Manuel De Landa describes their BwO in the following terms: The concept of the BwO was created in an effort to conceive the genesis of form (in geological, biological, and cultural structures) as related exclusively to immanent capabilities of the flows of matter-energy information and not to any transcendent factor, whether platonic or divine. (2006: 263) This distance enables us to make sense of many things, although it has not been able to overcome the problem of subjectivity that is so often the elephant in the room when it comes to any attempt at objectivity and the theorisation that so often accompanies it. Theory thus remains an intensely human activity involving greater or lesser degrees of reflexivity. Reflexivity itself assumes a certain capacity for distance and contemplation whilst acknowledging the bounded nature of worldview and paradigm that shapes the ‘self-consciousness’ necessary for us to theorise and test these theories. Daya Krishna, for instance, links self-consciousness to the śāstras as organised bodies of knowledge at the heart of civilisation that describe both practical and theoretical knowledge (1997: 22; 222–224). As Krishna deploys the concept of śāstra in his work, he offers a description of the śāstric process that is akin to the BwO in that they generate forms, and when they encounter one another new hybrid possibilities emerge. Sastras, he observes “give rise to an unending chain of interpretive acts . . . as each of the śāstras has presuppositions of its own, the problem arises of its interrelationship with others, sometimes leading to substantive mutual influence” (1997: 222). In Krishna’s understanding, a śāstra is an abstraction that shapes future actions and sense making whilst maintaining an

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ordered sense making in the present. It provides explanatory, normative frameworks for acting and theorising in the world, identifying the causal links and animating forces by which a civilisation comes to understand and express itself. When a śāstra encounters another śāstra, there are co-creative sparks that generate new forms and new śāstric possibilities. These are important insights, yet Krishna, De Landa and Deleuze and Guattari exemplify theorisation that is distant and disconnected from the life-worlds of people. They theorise in order to understand grand processes of movement. There is a tacit link between the grand and the intimate in their approaches which is given some air space as they burrow down into civilisational, geological, biological and cultural expression.Yet such distance does not allow for the phenomenological appreciation of theory as an ontological dimension of human movements.To access such a dimension requires us to move into the world and stand with and amongst its people. This is embodied work and calls the researcher to step into the research and allow him or herself to be swept up in the process. In describing his work on the Swadyaya Parivar1 movement in India, Ananta Kumar Giri states: In this study I have tried to follow the method of participant observation but while carrying this out have not followed the strict boundary between subject and object. I have not made Swadyaya and the Swadyayees into an object of study without myself sharing in its normative vision, to begin with. I have taken part in Swadyaya but with my participation have not abandoned my role as an observer. I have tried to understand the dilemmas and aspirations of the actors. But I have not gone to Swadyaya with an apriori privileging of the role of the observer nor with a suspicion of its spiritual vision and mode of realization. I have also tried to open myself to the transcendental realm which animates the vision and practice of Swadyaya. But, as I have tried to open myself to the transcendental dimension of Swadyaya, I have also tried to understand its work in the lives of actors and in their life spaces – Swadyaya centers, neighbourhoods, villages, communities, and regions. (2009: 27) For Giri it is this ‘dwelling amongst’ that brings people’s struggles to life (see for instance: Giri, 2013). His is an embodied approach to understanding in the manner of itinerant scholars such as the poets of India and, in modern times, people like Walter Benjamin who walked the byways of the world in order to taste life and give it back to their fellow travellers. This of course involves struggle as embodied scholarship involves risk and places a relational demand on the heart that is rarely so strongly expressed or understood in the world of traditional scholarship. It also means walking an ethical tight-rope in which one’s relationships are always double edged in that it becomes difficult to separate research from life. This requires a sensitivity to the other and also to our actions and words, in particular the written words that scholars craft and develop as their ‘bread and butter’. Yet this is also a rich and wonderful space from which to work. It involves intimacy, openness and

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compassion, theoretical sophistication and a reflexive capacity to be simultaneously immersed in, and separate from one’s object of research.

Personal resistance This intimate space allows for micro-theories that grow out of individual reflection and personal somatic experience. This is a place of personal resistance. It is where individuals can articulate through actions and sometimes words a personal power to step out of their given roles, their tragic circumstances or the banality of safe secure social conditions and surprise power in ways both creative and unexpected. The Australian indigenous poet Romaine Moreton2 sums up this alternative dimension to theory as both an embodied and wilful perseverance. A refusal to disappear. I will make oppression work for me, With a turn and a twist, Be camouflaged within stated ignorance, Then rise And surprise you by my will. I will let you pass me over, Believe me stupid and ill informed, And once you believe me gone or controlled Will rise And surprise you by my will. The rising Moreton is describing is a very physical movement. It is no metaphor for a rising in the romantic idealised sense of reclaiming our dignity, our human rights.This is a physical rising up of bodies so pushed down and eclipsed by history and cultural blindness that they must literally stand up, on the earth, to reclaim their place in Australian society. It is only when you believe me gone, Shall I rise, From this place where I Wait Cross legged Wait, To surprise you by my will. This involves waiting and timing. It begins as an individual act of resistance, as Moreton speaks at first in the first person, until there is a powerful shift to the

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collective ‘we’ that stands up for ‘all people’. Such a rising combines spirit with body in a rising up against inhumanity. I command my spirit to rise, And surprise you by my will. And for all people, We are here and we are many, And we shall surprise you by our will, We shall rise from this place where you expect To keep us down, And we shall surprise you by our will. (in Douglas, 2001: 42–45) This chapter steps close to resistance and seeks to understand how intimate theory, working at the micro level of resistance, expands our understanding of movements, not as sublime moments in the Kantian sense, but as visceral ruptures in the fabric of individual and collective life.This grounding of the sublime in the everyday is what I am looking for. The embodied extension of macro processes into the life-world, as Eelco Runia argues (via his engagement with Schiller’s concept of the sublime), points to the human capacity to disobey, to enact a “ ‘sublime’ disobedience” such as Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden where he “wrested himself free from his instincts” (Runia, 2014: 111) and stepped into human consciousness. It matters that Adam and Eve ate the apple. They needed to enact disobedience through a physical, sensory transgression. Just as for Moreton ‘rising up’ is a physical stepping into her individual and collective authority as an act of resistance, so too, in the mythic domain, Adam and Eve needed to discover their bodies – their ‘nakedness’ – and choose to be free. This discovery of the sublime through the body sits at the heart of this chapter. Bodies encounter bodies and share pleasures and pains, ideas and materials, hopes and fears. Bodies also stand on the barricades of riots and revolutions, whilst others cower in basements and dream of the ‘Inspectors of Cruelty’3 who punish the foolish for hoping, for stepping out and rising up. The body acts as a vehicle for a kind of intimate theorising I think of as body wisdom. I have picked up this term from the work of Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter (2016).The following section lays out my approach to body wisdom and intimate theory and adopts the first person voice to flag, like Moreton did, the personal nature of such work before returning to the collective third person.

The body So the body is where it all begins – it is the vehicle that supports sublime movement in this world. It is the mechanism that dances and acts and lives in the present in the light of the past whilst responding to that deep call inside that says ‘tomorrow

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can be better’; ‘tomorrow I might become a little more Me!’ It is also the body that resists its own limits, it resists the definitional claims made by others as to its inherent nature. I look now to the body in motion, moving and responding to this world. My body knows it is not alone in this activity of living and resisting. It is always in motion with other bodies. My body wisdom says move; discover and make sense of life through moving; be a little freer. It asks me to pay attention to this being, the dasein or ‘thrownness’ of my being (Bussey, 2006). It is the red rag to the bull that calls life in all its rich encounters into being. Without this body we cannot taste life, we cannot express it. I theorise my possibilities through my body: I test and craft culture, both receive and innovate, through my body. It is the performative and co-creative basis for all my identities in life, the coat hanger upon which I hang all my selves (think habitus) and through which I spill over into this world. This spilling over is what lies at the heart of sublime movements. The body refuses any longer to be contained in some straitjacket that stifles its creativity, its exuberance. Body wisdom challenges each of us to step out into the world, to take risks and to grow beyond what is – to resist the present and craft alternative pathways into the future. British poet Kate Tempest captures the spirit of this spilling over and the sense of ‘thinness’ that occurs when we turn our backs on movement: No woman’s too woman to stand tall and strong. No man’s too man to want loving. Need guidance. All hearts shrink before violence. All fists clench for their friends. We’re from here. We carry it. Everything that ever went wrong here. Every single body that gave in. Caved in. Break through the boards in the windows. Find a man thinner than string. Blinking. Trying to keep everything in. (2014: 83) Tempest’s poetry is deeply embodied and transgressive. In it the body is the vehicle for life and it can either ‘cave in’ or ‘break through’. We all know which feels better. Even when all our upbringing, education and experiences have endeavoured to domesticate the body, we know what it means to yearn to be a little freer of imposed constraints; to have that feeling Tempest describes when “My heart throws its head against my ribs, it’s denting every bone it’s venting something it has known since I arrived and felt it beat” (2014: 105). Even when we forget and our memories seem to have withered, we still sense the presence of a provocation, the shadow of an unknown known, often stalking us as a fear. Furthermore, we often fear what we desire – such as freedom, the forbidden fruit. Yet, as Theodore Zeldin notes, “Fear

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has nearly always been more powerful than the desire for freedom: humans are not born to be free” (1995: 8). I am uncomfortable with his conclusion, but certainly culture has always prioritised security over freedom (Bussey, 2014a). This security numbs us, dulls the senses and blunts our lust for life. “We plunge to numbness” Tempest reminds us, “It’s much safer, safety’s so appealing” (2014: 105). Culture teaches us to fear because security is what lies at the heart of the survival of the collective. After the first lesson of eating the apple, the second lesson is survival. Once we have this under wraps, we can consider living and resisting the cage of culture by exploring its possibilities. So movement towards freedom always involves a considerable amount of unlearning and rediscovering what freedom feels like, what its possibilities involve. Explorations in the sublime. Tempest observes of this process that we ‘don’t learn [but] remember’ (2014: 47). Memory, so much a cultural resource, is the “something we have known” that she refers to when we first felt our heart beat.This visceral sense of being embodied and in the world is amplified by the presence of other bodies such as the mother who carries us, births us and feeds us. Together our bodies take action into the world and such action is, as Judith Butler argues, ‘always supported action’ (2015: 72) in which bodies coagulate into movements, social processes and devise new śāstras for new conditions.

Eros and critique Of course social movements involve people taking action as collectives. Yet the theorising of movements often overlooks the fact that collectives consists of individual bodies in motion. Bodies in motion obey rules of conditioned order that set the horizon for what is possible – they swarm or flock according to such rules, displaying a collective intelligence or mind. But when a body has been conditioned into unfreedom, the horizon of possibility is also limited. In a fascinating reflection on how embodied resistance must resist not just political power but also the power to be seduced, Dominic Fox relates the following anecdote: at a PLO training camp in Jordan, Andreas Baader announces to his Palestinian hosts, who are astonished and outraged by the sight of his female comrades sunbaking naked on the roof of their hut, that sexual and political emancipation must arrive together: ‘fucking and shooting are the same thing’. The same thing. Make love as you would make war. Pleasure must be separated from the power that supports it; the act of pleasure must become an act of warfare against that power. Not only, as naïve sexual liberationists would have it, against the prohibition of pleasure and the imposition of unpleasure; but also against the prescribed, sanctioned, obligatory pleasures. (2009: 59) In this account of Baader’s insight that ‘fucking and shooting are the same thing’, we can see that resistance involves doing things differently in the understanding that, as Foucault (1990) demonstrated, pleasure has a central role in the biopolitical

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nature of embodiment and the construction of resistance. Human social passivity in modern democratic societies is premised on the pleasure principle in which the rewards for unfreedom are the seduction, gratification and dulling of our senses. Yet the body resists domestication, it longs for expansion and joy. Cynthia WintonHenry describes her own discovery of her body wisdom in the following passage: I was forever trying to hold myself in. I felt too big and too weird most of the time. I judged my energetic bursts of joy, anger, and opinion. I was selfconscious about my high level of activity. I abhorred violent behaviours and greatly feared my own ability to hurt others. When I realized that thrusting was an intrinsic part of my unique nature and not a personality defect, I was relieved. The more I let my energy move out from my centre in strong, joyous beams, the more I felt inner peace and clarity in my body. No wonder I had to dance. (2016: 95) Winton-Henry is a dancer who was called to express her spirituality in the often conservative domain of Christian ministry. She found it imperative to resist the dualist distinction of body-spirit and has advocated, particularly in her collaboration with Phil Porter via a system of improvisatory movement known as InterPlay, for a return to the body as a spiritual source of wisdom and inspiration in its own right. To dance is to celebrate and build community, it is to force the heady world of theory and political activism to acknowledge that dance and play have subversive and creative possibilities in their own right. Resistance in fact can be fun. In fact, part of this is to acknowledge the body’s potential to act as an intimate conduit for transformation that is stimulating, even erotic. bell hooks, she intentionally does not use capitals, made this point some years ago when she explored the role of eros in her own teaching and noted that the sparkle of intellectual stimulation was responded to in the body. As she puts it: Understanding that eros is a force that enhances our overall effort to be selfactualizing, that it can provide an epistemological grounding informing how we know what we know, enables both professors and students to use such energy in a classroom setting in ways that invigorate discussion and excite the critical imagination. (hooks, 1993: 60)

We have a right to play Body wisdom functions as a receptor for self-actualisation and the deeper knowing that accompanies individual and social transformation. This deepening is intensified when bodies play together: dancing, frolicking, flocking and improvising. Such moments for many of us, unused to play as adults, make us feel vulnerable, exposed and awkward. The sexual energies that arise may confront us, even scare us. Eros is a powerful stimulant that awakens us to our own bodies

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and also to the intuition that we are deeply alive and connected to one another and to this universe. The experience of vulnerability and a growing awareness of deeper relational patterns at work in our lives is part of the unlearning spoken of earlier, in which we come to remember that our bodies can play, in fact that we have a right to play (and joy and fun – including the erotic) and that vulnerability, an essential part of resistance (Bulter, 2016), begins in such simple acts of ‘rising up’. Such vulnerability is both embodied and also emotive. The body so often bears both, risking exclusion, wounds and even annihilation for causes that matter. In addition, a vulnerable body is a body open to redefinition in which eros and even love have a role, as Alice Walker notes of the men of the Black Panther movement. These were men who loved, admired, and were sometimes in love with, each other. They were confused by this. Who, at the time, after all, except perhaps James Baldwin, could have taught them that love is the revolutionary emotion, partly because it cannot be limited, cannot be compartmentalized, cannot be controlled. (1997: 154) This capacity for love is a central feature of intimate theory as I understand it. Love so often informs the sublime and provides the energy for resistance. “Revolution really must occur within”, Walker argues and this starts by realising “the value of saving the self ” (1997: 156). This insight is also a central element of Joanna Macy’s work on Buddhist environmentalism and social action. The title of her book says it all: World as Lover, World as Self (2007). Love is the relational glue that can outlast both rage and fear. The body is able to love and outsmart the Inspectors of Fear that the poet Dylan Thomas mentions in his poem “Under Milkwood”. The body can stand on the barricade, but it can also play, dance and love. All are needed. The body can love, even out-love, the obstacles thrown in the way of self-actualisation including – perhaps most importantly – its own conditioning. When moving with others, the body understands how we are all connected, part of enlarged selves or what Macy called an “encompassing self ” (2007: 150). What is important is that we can only act in the world through the body. It is a vehicle for both celebration and suffering.This brings me back to the personal now as the basis for an intimate theory of movements: I feel solidarity with WintonHenry’s affirmation of body wisdom as a liberatory tool for both self and world. When I dance and play with others, I feel expanded, freed from the constraints of my social and institutional roles. Such embodied work allows me to embrace connection, relationship and also a rich – even erotic – sense of being in this world. This sense is important, and leads Macy to ask: ‘Does it matter what we do?’ Her answer is unequivocal: It matters to the extent that we matter. Indeed our acts matter – incarnate – in us, for they make us who we are. (2007: 60)

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This deeply pragmatic insight calls for us to turn now to look at how resistance, as actions that “make us who we are”, can be understood not simply as a functional requirement for life but as a calling to push back at limits and link our ‘rising up’ with a critique of our socially conditioned selves through what Foucault called “the art of not being governed quite so much” (2002: 45, italics added).

Resistance and critique Critique is ironically, given my earlier comments, all about distance. At its heart lies a commitment to resisting the stickiness of any given ‘present’ – this work of resistance is a constant challenge because resistance is always partial.This is what Giri was pointing to when he described his approach to participant research. He had to be both within and without the Swadyaya movement simultaneously. This reflexivity allows the researcher to see with new eyes and find that the present is not a given but a remarkable and highly contingent arrangement of multiple possibilities. Such being in the world but not of it, to paraphrase a Buddhist notion, is not the same thing as taking a strictly objectivist stand. It allows for a third space, a space that Ashis Nandy seeks to describe with his metaphor of the shaman. The shaman cannot be captured by a single lens because the “shaman has one foot in the familiar, one foot outside; one foot in the present, one in the future; or, as some would put it, one foot in the timeless” (Nandy, 2007: 176). This ambivalent relationship with any present sets the stage for a form of resistance that is resilient and makes the categories of self/other opaque.Thus Moreton can switch from first to third person effortlessly when she affirms ‘we shall rise up’, and Giri, having journeyed with his Swadyayi comrades, can announce that, for all its limitations, “The Swadyaya movement has created a new relational revolution” (2009: 299). To gain this insight Giri had to step into the Swadyaya movement, he had to swim in its current, listen to the stories and share in the labours of the swadyayiis. One cannot achieve either a new relational revolution or a collective rising up simply by critiquing from a distance. What we need is a new relational critique, one in which we too are critiqued and made vulnerable, just as Giri needed to be vulnerable to gain the insights into a movement like Swadyaya. Relational critique is furthered through an intimate theorising that accounts for the embodied experience of resistance. As Foucault recognised, this struggle is a form of resistance that seeks to become a little freer, more fully present to a context without being owned by it. For Foucault the issue of governmentality, and the biopolitics it implies, are core challenges for our times. To theorise movements, particularly sublime movements, in such a context is to understand that critique involves stepping beyond governmental regimes and stepping into resistance as an embodied art. To step into resistance calls for holistic mobilisations that incorporate critical engagements with values and actions, desires and fears, bodies and ideas. To theorise such modes of resistance involves exploring patterns, connecting dots and reframing goals according to which movement can be understood as an assemblage of radical and simple, personal and public, sacred and secular actions engaging our bodies, our practices,

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our hopes and fears, our imaginations, our longings and our choices, our wallets and our communities. Importantly, Foucault did not see critique as a tool but as an ‘art’. This art of not being governed ‘quite so much’ involves an attitude towards power that is suspicious of hierarchies and centralised processes that privilege values, attitudes and norms that fail to adequately account for relationship and all that this entails. Judith Butler argues strongly that power, as it is currently constituted, drives people apart and corrodes relational consciousness. It is as if under contemporary conditions, there is a war on the idea of interdependency, on what I elsewhere called the social network of hands that seek to minimize the unlivability of lives. (2015: 67) Recognising this problem of disaggregation, Theodore Zeldin devotes his text An Intimate History of Humanity to the exploration of our common humanity. He observes that: Enough is known, enough has been written, about what divides people; my purpose is to investigate what they have in common. So I have focussed particularly on how they meet. The search for new and old types of relationships, both close and distant, has, in my view, been the most important human preoccupation throughout history, though it has been disguised under many names, taking many different paths. (1995: 16) Theorising the ‘social network of hands’ allows for intimate processes in which both worldviews and norms along with śāstras, old and newly formed, jostle one another; this initiates a process of frisson in which we rub up against possible movements that are new to us and that hide in the shadows of our consciousness. This can be a pleasurable, even sensuous/erotic activity of discovery. It involves cocreative explorations in which the Other features as interlocutor, provocateur and amanuensis. The intimate sense of interdependency invites engagement and robust encounters in which limits are tested and we are often called to love what we do not understand, but recognise as human and part of the contingent and vulnerable nature of our individual and collective being.

Critical spirituality This loving – this call to love what we do not understand – is an important critical tool. Such loving breaks down the boundaries that separate us from broader, deeper, more fully engaged relationships with people, the planet and its biosphere and the cosmos we inhabit.The whole continuum opens up for us.To love in this way is an art – as Foucault reminds us – that carries us beyond our limited selves and opens

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us to a generative intimacy. This opening up presupposes simultaneously distance and proximity.This is, I have long argued, a spiritually critical stance that recognises the relational as the beginning of movements (Bussey, 2000). Such an awareness is spiritual in that it moves beyond a cognitive appreciation for interconnectedness to an embodied sense of inter-being (see Hanh, 1988). Certainly the language we use ˙ to describe this is culturally mediated, yet the perception is deeper than language. There is an apophatic dimension at work here that silences the theorist (Sells, 1994) and allows us to simply Be beyond words, and importantly, to allow awareness and emergence to become active elements in our resistance. Critical spirituality links this allowing to the consciousness of inter-being and asks: “Is this action for the good of all?” and “How much does this action increase our sense of inter-being?” Nandy’s shaman can ask such questions. Butler’s ‘work of hands’ is striving to realise the socially just principles implicit to these questions, though she herself would feel uncomfortable with the term ‘critical spirituality’. Walker would recognise in her eloquent appreciation for revolutionary love the logic implicit to these questions. Whilst Giri in his ongoing work of co-walking is striving to embody what he calls ‘practical spirituality’ in all his inquires (Giri, 2016). This pragmatic stance also informs the challenge in both the poetry of Moreton and Tempest. For critique to fulfil its potential as the ‘art of not being governed quite so much’ it needs to embrace the spaces beyond words where both silence and noise act as alternative spaces from which intimate, embodied, sensory and loving actions may arise. My commitment to embodied wisdom is premised on this point. Through the body I am able to look to the unrepresentable within the dominant grammar of reality. Of course, this is paradoxical as all expression, to be even partially intelligible, must work from the known (i.e. Present) – an agreed upon set of meanings – towards the unknowable (Bussey, 2013a).To encounter the unknowable is a challenge. It is to acknowledge that we are forever incomplete, as we premise our identities on what we know and on the performative dimension of this knowing. This is what engaged Georges Bataille, who understood that what we know is always the counterpoint to our greater ignorance. His dance with the greater force of ignorance is the constant provocation, and a seductive call to theorisation: Life will dissolve itself in death, rivers in the sea, and the known in the unknown. Knowledge is access to the unknown. Nonsense is the outcome of every possible sense. (1988: 101)

Noise! I find this statement to be particularly delicious because it links sense to nonsense. This is an important connection as cultures and civilisations have a tendency to privilege their worldviews, their sense-making commitments to certain realities, over others. James Dator for instance declares, “Seldom has a technology been

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the subject of more worship than the word is in literate cultures” (2008: 95). The printed word trumps the spoken, whilst a tweet can overshadow both. Yet, sense making is also embodied, intuitive and aesthetic. This chapter has paid attention to theorising the intimate spaces beyond the general focus of theory because I have become increasingly aware over the years that much of what we do as activists and transformative scholars is not in the head but in the heart (Bussey, 2008; Bussey, 2009). I have discovered through working particularly with children, I was a school teacher for 20 years, that to make a change I always had to begin with myself. I have to move to allow others to move. This is not simply a nice metaphor but, for me at least, a truth. I must move through the world, I must dance, play and sing. I also invite others to do the same in workshops designed to introduce some ‘nonsense’ into the worlds of very sensible people (see Bussey, 2014b). To theorise in such a space invites us to step beyond text and ‘rational’ theory, as a human communicative act, and to understand that theory, intimate theory, involves the non-verbal, the somatic and the relational. To step beyond localised, discipline-specific theoretical discourse into these broader registers of encounter is to resist the dominance of the abstract and the textual (Mignolo, 2003; Sells, 1994). Frances Dyson, for instance, speaks to the capability of Noise, that medium which makes a nonsense of our senses, as an aesthetic engine of resistance and possibility: I have capitalized the ‘N’ [in Noise] in order to differentiate between local, everyday acoustic ‘noise,’ and ‘Noise’ used conceptually, as an engine of difference and, aesthetically, as a form of resistance to stultifying and exclusive cultural values. . . [in which] [N]oise functions as an urstuff, the undifferentiated, unpresentable flux from which all information, all meaning, emanates. (2015: 7–8 [N]oise in original) It is from this urstuff that sublime movements arise. They come as a surprise to everyone. They capture the hearts, imaginations and bodies of all involved. Intimate theory kicks in when the sublime rupture recedes (because we have some distance from the event) and we begin to construct the narratives that make sense of what has happened. The body, as a site of theory, has a role in this work of sense making. It enacts and plays, it holds and releases, it suffers and celebrates for – perhaps even on behalf of – the rupture. When ‘sensible’ folk dance and play, they begin to destabilise their conditioning and start to lose the self-control that all things ‘sensible’ is based on. They become more open, more attentive to their bodies amongst other bodies, their spirits amongst other spirits. To let go in this way is the start of being governed a little less. It is the way we begin to access modernity’s wound, the sense that we are all separate individuals competing for ‘air space’ in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. Intimate theory begins a process in to, and out of, this wound.

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Conclusion This comment brings me to the concluding section of this chapter. To understand the intimacy at work in theorising and sense making allows us to recognise that when we resist the present, we are actually freeing up the future. The critical theory movement (Gramsci, 1971; Adorno, 1973; Horkheimer, 1972; Illich, 1971; McLaren, 2005; Habermas, 2001) aimed to challenge the present by exposing its complicity in maintaining and perpetuating dominant power structures. It was a deeply intellectual engagement with the mechanisms of domination. As much as I am indebted to these scholars, I would argue that to date critical theory has fallen short of its aspirations because the body and its intimate theoretical possibilities have been overlooked. A broader theoretical palette is available to the activist and transformative scholar when embodied resistance is understood to involve both standing on the barricades and also, to use Alice Walker’s phrase, ‘saving the self ’. The self is saved when the isolation of the modernist ego is broken down and a ‘relational revolution’ begins. Such a revolution must be understood as both embodied and spiritual, visceral and apophatic, that is why an intimate theoretical stance is required in which embodied self-reclaiming is taken as the basis of wholesome and holistic futures. In this way personal journeying is linked to collective transformation. They go hand in hand. There is no ‘I’ without the ‘we’ and adopting an embodied scholarship offers concrete possibilities for theorising in ways previously denied to us. There is certainly more art here than structure, but we should not be deceived. The structure grows organically out of embodied processes that can be learnt and honed. Silence may seem a stranger to us but we can become comfortable with silence through bush walking, jogging or meditating. Dancing and playing can seem alien and threatening experiences, but there are many embodied modalities where we can engage skilled guides in unlocking this potential in us. Non-western cultures have many traditions that still live without the need for the kind of linguistic calisthenics many theorists deploy – we should pay attention to them. A poet can capture an insight with greater clarity than most philosophers and that is why I have drawn on poets in this chapter. My own choice of language in switching from the personal to the impersonal also allows greater freedom to my theorising. As does my use of poets. Both make my reflections more intimate. Finally, I am certain that ‘we will rise’ and will continue to rise because we are embodied spiritual beings. My body and my spirit both resist limits, and there is plenty of evidence to support this claim. Zeldin, Walker, Giri, Butler, Deleuze, Foucault, Macy, De Landa, Bataille and Dyson all approach this issue from different fields yet all make the same point – resistance is not futile, it is an essential part of who we are. Longing to expand is our core human characteristic. All sublime movements have been attempts to create a little more ‘cultural space’. At the individual level the same is true – we as individuals push back at the constraints in life (Bussey, 2013b). At both the collective and individual level, our greatest impediment is fear; our greatest asset is our creativity. When we access our body wisdom

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as individuals we are opening up to transformation and developing tools such as attention, relational awareness, creative spontaneity and the capacity to trust that the body knows. Furthermore, through the body we access another grammar that affirms connection. Words are wonderful but they are never enough. Sometimes I feel a rage in my heart that we have become slaves to words and lost this capacity for intimate theory. My spirit rebels! I fear we are now all too ‘sensible’. I grieve with the Ugandan poet Okot p’Bitek4 (1984): Bile burns my inside! I feel like vomiting! For all our young men Were finished in the forest, Their manhood was finished In the classrooms, Their testicles Were smashed With large books!

Notes 1 A self-development social movement originating in Maharashtra, India, in which Swadyayees work at social projects whilst developing their own inner lives through intellectual and spiritual practices. 2 See http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/romaine-moreton/ for more on the fascinating poet/scholar. 3 Reference to Dylan Thomas’ great poem Under Milkwood (1954). 4 Thanks to Jim Dator for alerting me to this wonderful and devastating critique of education (2008: 93).

References Adorno TW. (1973) Negative Dialectics, London: Routledge. Bataille G. (1988) Inner Experience, Albany: State University of New York Press. Bulter J. (2016) Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance. In: Butler J, Gambetti, Zeynep, and Sabsay, Leticia (Eds.) Vulnerability in Resistance. Durham and London: Duke University, 12–27. Bussey M. (2000) Critical Spirituality: Neo Humanism as Method. Journal of Futures Studies 5: 21–35. Bussey M. (2006) The Paradox of Being: Dasein as a Potential ‘Ground’ for Futures Work. Journal of Futures Study 10: 91–94. Bussey M. (2008) Embodied Education: Reflections on Sustainable Education. The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic and Social Sustainability 43: 139–147. Bussey M. (2009) Causal Layered Pedagogy: Rethinking Curriculum Through a Futures Lens. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 6: 1–14. Bussey M. (2013a) Foresight Work as Bridge Building: Poetry, Presence and Beyond. Journal of Futures Studies 17: 103–116. Bussey M. (2013b) Re-Imagining Limits. Sociological Bulletin 62: 129–131.

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Bussey M. (2014a) Concepts and Effects: Ordering and Practice in Foresight. Foresight 16: 1–16. Bussey M. (2014b) Intimate Futures: Bringing the Body into Futures Work. European Journal of Futures Research 2: 1–8. Butler J. (2015) Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dator JA. (2008) Universities Without ‘Quality’ and Quality Without ‘Universities’. In: Bussey M., Inayatullah, Sohail, and Miljevic, Ivana (Eds.) Alternative Educational Futures: Pedagogies for Emergent Worlds. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 91–112. De Landa M. (2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze G and Guattari F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London and New York: Continuum. Douglas J. (2001) Untreated: Poems by Black Writers, Alice Springs: Jukurrpa Books. Dyson F. (2015) The Tone of Our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy, and Ecology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault M. (1990) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure, New York: Vintage Books. Foucault M. (2002) What is Critique? In: Ingram D (Ed.) The Political, Oxford: Blackwell, 191–211. Fox D. (2009) Cold World:The Aesthetics of Dejection and the Politics of Militant Dysphoria, Winchester, UK: Zero Books. Giri AK. (2009) Self-Development and Social Transformations? The Vision and Practice of the SelfDevelopment Study Mobilization of Swadhyaya. New York: Lexington Books. Giri AK. (2013) A New Morning with Chitta Ranjan: Adventures in Co-Realizations and World Transformations. Bhubaneswar: Siksasandhan. Giri AK. (2016) Spiritual Pragmatism: New Pathways of Transformation for the Posthuman. In: Banerji D, and Paranjape, Makarand R (Eds.) Critical Posthumanism and Planetary Futures. New Delhi: Springer India, 225–242. Gramsci A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks, New York: International Publishers. Habermas J. (2001) On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action, Cambridge, MA: Polity. Ha nh TN. (1988) The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, ˙ Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. hooks b. (1993) Eros, Eroticism and the Pedagogical Process. Cultural Studies 7 (accessed 5/8/07). Horkheimer M, and Adorno, Theodor W. (1972) Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum. Illich I. (1971) Deschooling Society, London: Penguin Books. Krishna D. (1997) Prolegomena to Any Future: Historiography of Cultures and Civilizations, New Delhi: Munshiram. Macy J. (2007) World as Lover,World as Self, Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. McLaren P. (2005) Red Seminars: Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy, Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Mignolo WD. (2003) The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy,Territoriality, and Colonization, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Nandy A. (2007) Time Treks: The Uncertain Future of Old and New Despotisms, Ranikhet: Permanent Black.

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p’Bitek O. (1984) Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers Ltd (Kindle Edition). Runia E. (2014) Moved by the Past: Discontinuity and Historical Mutation, New York: Columbia University Press. Sells M. (1994) The Mystical Languages of Unsaying, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tempest K. (2014) Hold Your Own, London: Picador. Walker A. (1997) Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer’s Activism, London: The Women’s Press. Winton-Henry C, and Porter, Phil. (2016) Move: What the Body Wants, Kelowna, Canada: Wood Lake. Zeldin T. (1995) An Intimate History of Humanity, New York: Harper Collins.

11 WOMEN IN BLACK A women’s peace movement Susan Finch

Introduction As a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. (Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, 1938, p. 197)

There have been women’s movements for peace at many times, and in many places – connected by a wide range of theories that link violence against women with the violence of militarism and war. How that link is theorised differs from group to group, place to place, and time to time. Few of these theories suggest that all women are inherently peaceful, or that all men are biologically predisposed to violence. Rather, they are influenced by the feminist proposition that unequal gender relations contribute to violence against women, as well as to militarism and war. Women in Black is an international movement of women who organise against violence, militarism, and war, and work for peace with justice. This activism is founded on a connection between gender and violence, ranging from opposition to violence against individual women, to opposition to militarism and war.

Women in Black – a history In January 1988, twenty-one years after the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and a month after the first Palestinian intifada started, a small group of women stood once a week, at the same hour and same place in Jerusalem, to protest the occupation. They were dressed in black and held up a black sign in the shape of a hand with ‘Stop the Occupation’ written in white. “It was a simple form of protest that women could do easily. . . . We could bring our children, there was no chanting or

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marching, and the medium was the message” (Bat Shalom, an Israeli women’s peace organisation). Within months, vigils sprang up throughout Israel, calling themselves Women in Black. Women in Black in Palestine/Israel were inspired by earlier women’s movements that were similar in style, although in different contexts, like the Black Sash in South Africa, and the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina. Black Sash, a non-violent women’s resistance organization (1955–94), campaigned against the removal of black voters from the voters’ roll and wore black sashes as a protest against apartheid at silent vigils and marches. Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, an association of mothers, began to march and hold weekly vigils in 1977 to find their children and grandchildren who had been ‘disappeared’ by the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–83), and still campaign to this day. The Israeli/Palestinian women initiated a Women in Black movement that spread to many other countries. In Italy, for example, a group of women went to Palestine and Israel in 1988, met Israeli and Palestinian Women in Black, and then founded their own Donna en Nero (Women in Black) on their return which soon had groups in many Italian towns. Donna en Nero in turn went to support women in former Yugoslavia when war broke out, and Zene u Crnom (Women in Black) in Belgrade held vigils regularly from 1991. Zene u Crnom developed a strong movement that supported conscientious objectors and survivors of rape and massacres, campaigned across borders against the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, organised international conferences, and theorised the Women in Black movement. Women in London supported Palestinian and Israeli women’s resistance against the occupation of Palestine in 1988, and demonstrated against the Gulf War, the UK/US bombing of Iraq, and war crimes in former Yugoslavia. Groups of women throughout the UK gradually began to use the name and take up the symbolism of Women in Black to hold silent vigils in protest against violence and war. In March 1993, inspired by the now worldwide Women in Black vigils, the first Women in Black action in India was initiated by Vimochana [Liberation] – a women’s collective in Bangalore. They organised against the country being torn apart by the politics of communalism, fundamentalism, and nationalism after the deliberate destruction of the Babri Masjid and the culture of peaceful coexistence it symbolised. In 1992 Hindu activists had demolished the 16th-century mosque, and over 2,000 people had been killed in the inter-communal rioting that followed. Vimochana, part of Women in Black India and the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council, went on to organize a thirty-thousand-strong vigil of women near Beijing in 1995 at the 4th UN World Conference on Women calling for ‘a world safer for women’ and an end to wars and armed conflicts. Participants from all over the world took the message home with them. Over the years Women in Black spread to different cities and towns in India and in a quiet, sustained way has sought to make public the many forms of

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wars against women – wife beating, dowry murders, foeticide, infanticide, sexual assault, rape. (International Women in Black conference in Bangalore concept note, 2015) The 17th International Women in Black conference in Bangalore in 2015 was attended by Women in Black from twenty-five countries – Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, the Basque country, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kashmir, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Palestine, Spain, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden,Tunisia, the UK, and the USA – to share information and theories about women’s actions against war and the wars against women. The Women in Black movement has grown steadily and been strengthened by international conferences. Each Women in Black conference is held in a different country and brings a different perspective. At first these were held in Serbia, then in Brussels, Jerusalem, Marina di Massa in Italy, and the Spanish city of Valencia. In 2015, when the conference was held in Bangalore, more women from India were able to attend than ever before and brought a unique fusion of resistance to the violence experienced by women through rape, caste discrimination, dowry murder – and through economic globalisation and the new far right backlash against women in India. Workshops explored feminist alternatives to military action, genocide in Armenia; injustice, inequality, and violence against women in Afghanistan; flashpoints of war – in Palestine, North East India, Kashmir, and Sri Lanka; hate politics; the culture of violence and violence of culture; virtual gender violence – cyber-crimes against women; climate change and war; nuclear weapons and nuclear energy; mediation beyond borders; feminist anti-militarism and everyday life; lesbians and transgender in the peace and justice movement; and dancing for peace. The conference began with a ‘Court of women’, where a thousand students joined Women in Black to hear testimonies and poetry, and see dancing, ‘Against War, For Peace’ that focused on war as genocide, wars without borders, wars against civilizations, and wars against women. The Court of Women in Bangalore 2015 concluded:‘the best way to bring justice to those who’ve testified . . . about so much loss is for us together to build a powerful global women’s movement to transform this world’.

Women’s peace movements – some context In many countries and regions around the world, women are organising in women-only groups and networks to oppose militarism and militarisation, to prevent wars or bring wars to an end, to achieve justice and sustainable peace. (Cockburn, 2010)

Women in Black built on a history of international women’s peace movements, including the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and – in the

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UK – women who had campaigned successfully against the American Cruise Missiles that were based at Greenham Common in England from 1983–92.

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) started with an international Congress of Women at the Hague in 1915 which brought together 1,200 women from twelve countries to call for an end to war. It is now an international non-governmental organisation with national sections covering every continent, an International Secretariat based in Geneva, and a New York office focused on the work of the United Nations. Since it was established in 1915, it has brought together women from around the world to work for peace by non-violent means and promote political, economic, and social justice for all. There is considerable overlap between activists in WILPF and Women in Black. WILPF uses existing international legal and political frameworks to achieve fundamental change in the way states conceptualise and address issues of gender, militarism, peace, and security. Their strength lies in their ability to link the international and local levels, for example by being the only women’s anti-war organisation to gain consultative status with the United Nations. WILPF was instrumental in achieving United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on women and peace and security which was adopted on 31 October 2000. The resolution reaffirms the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, peace negotiations, peace-building, peacekeeping, humanitarian response, and in post-conflict reconstruction, and stresses the importance of their equal participation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security. Resolution 1325 urges all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all United Nations peace and security efforts. It also calls on all parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse, in situations of armed conflict. In 2015 a Global Study on UNSCR 1325 found that “Militarism serves to uphold and perpetuate structural inequalities that in turn operate to disenfranchise women and girls from public goods, entrench exclusion and marginalisation, and create the ingredients for a platform of broader inequalities that increase the potential for violent conflict to occur” (Global Study on UNSCR 1325 [2015, p. 207]). However, WILPF is clear that Women can make a difference. Liberian women showed the warring parties and the world this. After more than ten years of brutal civil war which had devastating impact on women, gross human rights violations and rampant sexual violence used as a tactic of the war, a group of unarmed women mobilised to demand an end to the violence that was tearing their country

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apart. “We want peace, no more war”, was the simple but powerful message of the movement. The women were able to exert pressure on the warring parties at the negotiation table and pushed them to sign a peace agreement (the Accra Peace Accord 2003). They played a critical role in ending the civil war, in the liberation of child soldiers, in disarmament, and in the decline of sexual violence. Women’s groups were also instrumental in the election of Liberia’s President, and Africa’s first female President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (WILPF, 2019).

Women in the movement against nuclear weapons Another key strand of the women’s peace movement woven into Women in Black in the UK was a peace campaign against siting US Cruise Missiles at Greenham Common in England. The protest started with a WOMEN FOR LIFE ON EARTH march from Cardiff to RAF Greenham Common in 1981, which grew into a women’s peace camp that lasted nineteen years. Women from all over the country (and many other countries) came to join huge demonstrations where they ‘embraced the base’ creating chains of 30,000 women around the nine-mile perimeter and tying photos and baby clothes to the fence. Eventually, the Women’s Peace Camp was instrumental in the decision to remove Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the USA in 1991/92. Some of the women who were at Greenham Common are now part of Women in Black in the UK. Weekly silent vigils and non-violent protests continue against the occupation of Palestine, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the arms trade and the UK’s Trident nuclear missiles, and in support of refugees and asylum seekers. One of the four submarines that carry the Trident missiles, based in Faslane, Scotland, is always on twenty-four-hour patrol. Each submarine carries eight Trident missiles, and each missile has up to five nuclear warheads. Every warhead is eight times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima by the United States in 1945, killing over 140,000 people, so each of the four submarines could kill forty-five million people instantly – and trigger a ‘nuclear winter’. Women in Black, together with other campaigners like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), War Resisters International, Trident Ploughshares, and many others, demonstrate at Faslane in Scotland, at the Atomic Weapons Establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield, and Parliament in England – lying down and blockading roads. International protesters from France, Finland, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Japan, and all around the UK join them to ‘lock-on’ (lock themselves to the gates and fences), sing and dance, and lie down in the roads attached to blocks of concrete to close the Weapons Establishments. When the UN opened negotiations in March 2017 on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”, over 130 states participated. Summing up the first week of negotiations, the chair of the UN talks, Costa Rican ambassador Elayne Whyte said there were high levels

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of support for “prohibitions against the acquisition, possession, stockpiling, production, manufacture, development, testing, use and threat of use”. Linking with the UN sustainable development goals, there was clear support for proposals from Ireland and Sweden to recognise the gendered impacts of nuclear weapons, as well as for a commitment to the ultimate goal of general and complete disarmament (Johnson, 2017). Women Ban the Bomb, a women-led initiative building on the momentum of movements at the forefront of the resistance, including the Women’s March on Washington organised against Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President in 2017, organises rallies and marches around the world in support of the negotiations currently taking place at the United Nations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Theorising women’s peace movements Women’s peace movements have, of course, different roots in different cultures and societies, growing out of specific wars, civil rights, independence, and feminist movements. There is no ‘one’ theory that links women and peace, but multiple theories arising out of particular histories, places, and perspectives. These include theories that the exclusion of women from power has led to a more violent world – so women are key to making the world more peaceful; that women suffer the most from violence and war, and so have the most to gain in campaigning for peace; and that there is a continuum of gender violence that is a causal factor in violence against women, militarism, and wars. An analysis of gender unites the theories: A gender analysis is an indispensable addition to the miserably inadequate tool-kit with which we currently strive to dismantle militarism and interrupt the cycle of war. (Cockburn, 2007, p. 12) WILPF, for example, argues that violence has a disproportionate impact on women, yet women have been excluded from peace-making processes; they suggest that women have a crucial role to play in building peace, and should be at the table in all peace negotiations: It goes without saying that war and conflict affect both men and women’s human rights. However, there are particular gendered dimensions to violence that have a disproportionate and differing impact on women. Though women have been, and are, active agents in peace and reconciliation efforts at all levels, women and gender analysis are regularly excluded from peace-making processes and decisions. WILPF believes that the exclusion of women, women’s rights and gender remains a key impediment to the attainment of sustainable peace and human security, and must not be ignored! (WILPF, 2017)

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WILPF theorises that: Women have voice and power to be agents of change – to be Peace Women! The Women, Peace and Security Agenda has transformative potential. It is a tool for moving from conflict and violence to peace, from exclusive to democratic decision-making, and from gender inequality to gender justice. Women’s agency, voice, and capacities, and a real gender perspective are critical to local dialogues, better policies and more equitable peace deals. The system is broken when it comes to Women, Peace and Security. We live in a world which invests in and glorifies war.Yet the war system does not protect women from violence. Instead, it makes violence worse. Preparing for, engaging in, and cleaning up from war diverts critical resources from gender justice and peace. It glorifies militarism and violence. It contributes to rape culture and gender discrimination. Militarism normalises and legitimises gender inequality and military action. (WILPF, 2017) WILPF argues that women are not essentially peaceful or always pacifist, but women and children suffer disproportionately from male violence in the home and in war: rape, forced prostitution, sexual trafficking, and abuse of women and children increase during and after war; 80% of refugees fleeing war are women and children. Militarism diverts spending away from health, education, and international development. Arms dealers profit from war while people die in need of clean water and food. Rita Manchanda, a feminist writer and activist in South Asia points out that “women’s perspectives come from the margin or ‘from below’ and therefore may produce better insights into transforming inter-group relations which involve asymmetries of power”. Women’s peace activism does not suggest that women, any more than men, are ‘natural born peace-makers’. But women often inhabit different cultures from men. Most women have a different experience of war from that of most men. Most women fear rape. Women are the majority of refugees. A feminist view sees masculinist cultures as especially prone to violence, and so women tend to have a particular perspective on security and something unique to say about war. Another important concept is that of a ‘continuum’, or more accurately, ‘continua’ of violence in the plural. In the first place, a continuum of scale (from the blow of a fist to an aerial bombardment), and secondly a continuum of time (from violence against women in time of peace to armed conflict in war). We didn’t start as women against war, but as women against violence against women. Through that we came to take a stand against violence in the wider society. (Madhu Bhushan from Vimochana – Liberation – a women’s collective formed in 1979 in Bangalore who started Women in Black in India)

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Cynthia Cockburn (2010), a Women in Black activist, takes up the idea of gendered continua of violence. She suggests that gender power relations are a causal factor in war: From their standpoint, as women face to face with militaristic violence, they perceive a ‘sexual division of war’ that involves close links between masculinity and militarism. As feminists they understand gender to be a relation of differentiation, inequality and power, founded on violence.Applying this understanding to their life experience, as women in the midst of war, or citizens of countries that source war or profit from others’ wars, they perceive gender power relations as an important factor predisposing societies to war, in short as a cause of war. (2010, p. 148) This analysis builds on earlier feminist peace theories: For many peace activists, ‘peace’ means simply an absence of war; for nuclear disarmers it may mean specifically a world without nuclear weapons. But for us, since our basic definition of society is that it is both patriarchal and capitalist, peace means more than that: it means eradicating the causes of war and violence from our society. (Feminism and Non-violence Group, 1983) Gerda Lerner argued that The system of patriarchy is a historic construct; it has a beginning; it will have an end. Its time seems nearly to have run its course – it no longer services the needs of men or women and in its inextricable linkage to militarism, hierarchy and racism it threatens the very existence of life on earth. (Lerner, 1986, p. 229) Society through most of human history has been characterised by structures of power. These include the economic structure, the ethnic structure, and the gender order. They intersect and shape each other. All three are structures of inequality and exploitation, so they have to be imposed and maintained by violence – the wealthy force the resource-less to labour; imperial groups control peoples they see as inferior; and women are treated by men as commodities. So freeing the world of violence needs revolutions, including a gender revolution.

Violence against children: an aspect of the continuum of violence But there is also another continuum of violence – from violence against children to children who become violent adults – that connects to gender. How do boys grow up to become violent? They learn that this is part of becoming a man.

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Enormous numbers of children experience corporal punishment in their homes, schools, care settings, and the penal system in all world regions. A major UNICEF study of child discipline within the home in more than thirty low- and middleincome countries found that on average 75% of children experienced violent discipline, with 17% experiencing severe physical punishment (being hit or slapped on the face, head or ears, or being hit over and over with an implement (UNICEF 2010). Young children are especially vulnerable to corporal punishment, and it has a gender dimension, with girls and boys experiencing different types and frequencies of violent punishment. Corporal punishment in any setting can create a ‘culture of violence’ where other forms of violence can thrive. An extreme example of this is shown by a 2002 study in all fifty states of the USA, which found that students in states where school corporal punishment was permitted were more than twice as likely to die in a school shooting than those in states where it was prohibited. The researcher stated that the results suggest that “the endorsement of school corporal punishment reflects a set of values that are punitive in nature and create a context conducive to the violence that characterizes school shootings” (Arcus, 2002). The acceptance of corporal punishment of children increases social tolerance of other forms of violence. A study of anthropological records of 186 cultural groups from all world regions found that societies which made more frequent use of corporal punishment endorsed other forms of violence more. Societies in which corporal punishment was used more frequently also deliberately educated children to be aggressive to a greater extent and engaged more in warfare. The researchers noted that the findings are consistent with theories that adult violence becomes more prevalent in contexts in which corporal punishment is frequent, that the use of corporal punishment increases the probability that children will engage in violent behaviors during adulthood, and that violence in one social domain tends to influence behavior in other domains. (Lansford and Dodge, 2008, p. 257) Corporal punishment is particularly closely related to intimate partner violence against women: the two kinds of violence often coexist and experiencing corporal punishment as a child increases the chance of both being a (mostly female) victim of violence and perpetrating intimate partner (mostly male) violence as an adult. A US study involving nearly 2,000 families found that corporal punishment and intimate partner violence often coexist. Parents in households where intimate partner violence was perpetrated were twice as likely to inflict corporal punishment on their children (Taylor et al., 2012). This relationship was confirmed by a report which analysed data from interviews with more than 180,000 women in twelve countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. It found that, for all countries with data on the topic, there was an association between experiencing corporal punishment as a child and experiencing partner violence as an adult: the proportion of women who reported experiencing partner violence was far higher among those

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who had been beaten as children than among those who had not been beaten as children – at least twice as high in most cases (Bott et al., 2012). Corporal punishment increases aggression in children, is linked to intimate partner violence and inequitable gender attitudes, and increases the likelihood of perpetrating and experiencing violence as an adult (Gershoff, 2002, 2008). However, forty-nine countries have now banned the physical punishment of children in all settings, including the home. Just as violence against children can be outlawed following public pressure, gender relations can be transformed. The feminist proposition that gender relations are social relations means they too are learned, so they can be changed.

Transformations – changing and imaginative forms of action Virginia Woolf again:We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods. (Three Guineas, 1938, p. 260)

Women organising to end violence against women, and against militarism and war, have developed some imaginative new forms of action and protest that go beyond national boundaries, and have the potential to transform the societies we live in. Women at Greenham Common in the UK, for example, put into practice many feminist ideas: consensus decision-taking, no leaders, no hierarchy, shared responsibility. By identifying nuclear weapons with male violence and hierarchical decision-taking, they generated imaginative forms of non-violent action: weaving webs and padlocking the gates of the US Airforce base, surrounding and decorating it with photos and baby clothes, cutting down the fence and creating new songs. At Greenham and in Greenham groups it’s important that our way of doing things is consistent with the future that we’d like to build. As our song goes: It’s not just the web It’s the way that we spin it It’s not just the world It’s the women within it It’s not just the struggle It’s the way that we win it That’s what gets results. (Finch, 1986, p. 94) For nineteen years women at Greenham Common cut through the chainmail fence and barbed wire surrounding the base with bolt cutters and climbed through and over, danced on the silos that housed Cruise Missiles, created new songs to sing round campfires, and developed imaginative, non-violent forms of resistance that

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resulted in hundreds of arrests and long periods of imprisonment – and the eventual removal of the missiles in 1992/3. I am so glad that I have lived to see women, at long last, asserting not just their rights, but also the importance and relevance of the values they believe in. If the world does not listen, and change its course, there is little hope of civilised life, or even of survival. (Dora Russell, in Jones, 1983, p. xi) Greenham women were inspired by – and learned from – American women who had surrounded the Pentagon in 1980 and 1981. Over 10,000 women surrounded the military headquarters in an act of civil disobedience, “to mourn and rage and defy the Pentagon because it is the workplace of the imperial power that threatens us all. Every day while we work, study, love, the colonels and generals who are planning our annihilation walk calmly in and out of the doors of its five sides.They have accumulated over 30,000 nuclear bombs. We say to everyone who will listen that there will be no peace without feminism, for in this world, war is man-made” (Jones, 1983, p. 42). For the many women in peace movements who call themselves feminists, women’s peace movements are about doing things differently – non-violent, nonhierarchical, imaginative, making connections. “I often like to talk about feminism not as something that adheres to bodies, not as something grounded in gendered bodies, but as an approach – as a way of conceptualising, as a methodology, as a guide to strategies for struggle” (Angela Davis interview 2014, Freedom is a Constant Struggle – Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, 2016, p. 27). One particularly imaginative approach has been developed by the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council (AWHRC) – a network of women and human rights organization in the Asia Pacific region, which integrated the spirit of the Women in Black movement into one of its major programmes, the Courts of Women public hearings. Corinne Kumar, the founder of the AWHRC and the International Coordinator of the Courts of Women, describes their power to transform: The Courts of Women are an unfolding of a space, an imaginary: a horizon that invites us to think, to feel, to challenge to connect, to dance, to dream. It is an attempt to define a new space for women, and to infuse this space with a new vision, a new politics. It is a gathering of voices and visions of the global south, locating itself in a discourse of dissent: it is in itself a dislocating practice, challenging the new world order of globalisation, crossing lines, breaking new ground: listening to the voices and movements in the margins. Over forty Courts of Women since 1992 have heard from survivors of violence, conflict, and war from around the world. Millions of women and girls are killed, brutalised, and intimidated into silence every year. By focusing on the voices, experiences, and resistance of women who are ignored and marginalised by mainstream

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politics, different kinds of peace-building and solutions are emerging from these hearings. The Courts of Women have been interwoven with Women in Black internationally in new and imaginative ways of organising for peace. In Colombia, for example, La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres (Women’s Peaceful Road), a women’s peace movement, organised to end half a century of war, and played a key role in the recent peace process. They identify feminism and pacifism as their two political bastions:“These theoretical foundations have led to its recognition as a novel movement” (La Ruta Pacifica, 2003). Ruta Pacifica is a part of Women in Black, and it organised a Court of Women and an International Women in Black ‘encuentro’ in 2011 attended by over 300 women from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Congo, Ecuador, Honduras, India, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Palestine, Peru, Serbia, Spain, UK, Uruguay, and the USA. The conference theme was ‘Cuerpos y territories sin guerras ni violencias’ (bodies and territories without war or violence) and it began with mime artists and ended with street theatre: women with banners and placards in many languages and butterflies and whistles, face-painted and wearing Women in Black T shirts, marched to the main square in Bogotá, then laid out huge quilts representing Colombian women who had been murdered by men, with crosses and caskets. One woman dressed as a butterfly – symbolising hope – danced street theatre. Women in Black from each part of Colombia and every country represented at the conference spoke, and crowds gathered to watch and listen and discuss. At the next International Women in Black conference in Uruguay in 2013 the theme was: ‘No woman’s body should be a battlefield’. A woman dies from male violence every four days in Uruguay. That is about the same number as die in the UK, but as Uruguay’s population is only three million compared with a UK population of over sixty million, it amounts to over twenty times the UK rate. So, violence against women was the key theme discussed at the 16th international Women in Black meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay in 2013 – where women from sixteen countries shared their work opposing violence, injustice, war, and militarism. Women who came were taken to see one of nine ’communas de mujer’ in Montevideo – women’s centres with legal and counselling support set up by ’Women’s Councils’. All took part in a vigil with street theatre showing a woman beaten and others protecting her outside the Town Hall, while a powerful Uruguayan Women in Black film about violence against women was projected onto a huge building opposite. Ana Olivera, the Mayor of Montevideo (the first woman to become Mayor in Uruguay) spoke at the meeting and press conference: “We can proudly say that we are pioneers in relation to women and peace, creating a special free phone number to denounce domestic violence, and creating ‘Women’s Councils’ in most areas of Montevideo as a tool to support women in their neighbourhoods”. They had just achieved the designation of Montevideo as a ‘Peace City’ by the Hiroshima-based Council of Cities for Peace. Women from the Democratic Republic of Congo talked about rape as a weapon and strategy of war. At least eight million people had died in the wars for

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the Democratic Republic of Congo’s rich resources, and massive and public rapes, torture, and sexual slavery accompanied the fighting. The Congolese women who travelled to Montevideo described the effects of rape: loss of individual and communal identity, loss of social cohesion, and thousands of unwanted children.Women were infected with HIV, as well as shame. They called for an International Tribunal into war crimes, and an end to impunity for rapists – including those wearing ‘blue helmets’ who were employed in UN Peace-keeping missions. In the meantime, they worked in a hospital and refuge with thousands of survivors of rape and their children. Other women at the conference in Uruguay discussed their work with survivors of conflict. Women from Bosnia and Serbia were working with survivors of the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia, supporting them and recording their testimonies. During the Bosnian conflict (1992–95), thousands of women and girls were brutally raped, held in prison camps, hotels, or private houses where they were sexually exploited. Rape was recognised as a powerful tool of war, used to intimidate, persecute, and terrorise. In Bosnia, as in other contexts, UN Peacekeepers, military, and other international actors (including private contract firms) were amongst those exploiting women, perpetrating violence. Zene u crnom (Women in Black) are still on the streets, supporting survivors across borders and raising serious concern about the role of the international community in conflict countries. Armenian women were using creative flashmobs (dancing, music, and singing in public spaces organised and displayed on social media) in support of non-violent conflict resolution. In Italy and Spain, women were demonstrating against US military bases and challenging NATO and the militarisation of everyday life. Palestinian and Israeli women described their struggle to end the occupation of Palestine, and organised support through boycott, divestment and sanctions. Many of the Chilean Women in Black who came to Montevideo for the Women in Black international conference were on trial at home for ‘crimes against family order, public morality and moral order’ (the law that criminalises abortion in Chile), for providing women with ‘morning after’ pills and information.Ten thousand people had come to their last demonstration. Women from Chile said that sexual and reproductive rights were the key issue for them, and in Santiago they had been organizing ‘Pussy Riot’–style naked protests for autonomy over their own bodies and set up a twenty-four-hour abortion hotline. “There is a war against women and we provide the information to give women energy to fight back” (Vivi Munoz, at the Women in Black conference in Uruguay, 2013). Women in Black connects women who are experiencing the immediate effects of war with those living in countries that are waging war, together with women living in countries where male violence against individual women and control of women’s bodies is seen as the most pressing issue. So, Women in Black organises against the whole continuum of violence, from individual male violence to militarism and war. It brings together women who act locally, and think globally, and learn from and inspire each other to create new ways to end violence and achieve justice and sustainable peace.

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The movement shares an understanding that violence against women in the home and in the community, in times of peace and in times of war, is interrelated. Women in Black has no constitution, no manifesto, no offices or office holders, and no membership – yet inspires women across the world to learn from each other how to develop new, creative forms of connection and resistance. The theory of a continuum of violence connects the diverse experiences of women in different places and helps us to understand just how much we need to change gender relations to reach a more peaceful and inclusive future.

References Arcus, Doreen (2002) “School shooting fatalities and school corporal punishment: A look at the states”, Aggressive Behavior, 28, 173–183. Bott, Sarah, Guedes, Alessandra, Goodwin, Mary, and Mendoza, Jennifer Adams (2012) Violence Against Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis of PopulationBased Data from 12 Countries. Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organisation & Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cockburn, Cynthia (2007) From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis. London and New York: Zed Books. Cockburn, Cynthia (2010) “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Perspective”, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 12(2), 139–157. Cockburn, Cynthia (2012) Antimilitarism: Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Davis, Angela (2016) Freedom is a Constant Struggle – Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Feminism and Nonviolence Study Group (1983) Piecing it Together: Feminism and Nonviolence, Available at https://www.wri-irg.org/en/story/2010/piecing-it-together-feminismand-nonviolence (Accessed May 23, 2019). Finch, S. (1986) “Socialist-Feminists and Greenham”, Feminist Review (23), 93–100. Gershoff, Elizabeth Thompson (2002) “Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review”, Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 539–579. Gershoff, Elizabeth Thompson (2008) Report on Physical Punishment in the United States: What Research Tells Us about Its Effects on Children. Columbus, Ohio: Center for Effective Discipline. Johnson, Rebecca (2017) “UN Talks to Ban Nuclear Weapons: What Can They Achieve?” https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/un-talks-nuclear-weapons-what-can-theyachieve/ (Accessed May 11, 2019). Jones, Lynne (Ed.) (1983) Keeping the Peace, Women’s Press, The Global Study on the Implementation of the UNSC Resolution 1325. http://peacewomen.org/sites/default/files/ UNW-GLOBAL-STUDY1325-2015 (1).pdf (Accessed 2.2.2019). Lansford, Jennifer E., and Dodge, Kenneth A. (2008) “Cultural Norms for Adult Corporal Punishment of Children and Societal Rates of Endorsement and Use of Violence”, Parenting: Science and Practice 8, 257–270. La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres (2003) La Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres: no parimos hijos ni hijas para la guerra. Bogotá: Ruta pacífica de las mujeres. Lerner, Gerda (1986) The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manchanda, R. (2002) Women Making Peace: Strengthening Women’s Role in Peace Processes. Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights.

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Taylor, Catherine A., Lee, Shawna J., Guterman, Neil B., and Rice, Janet C. (2012) “Use of Spanking for 3-Year-Old Children and Associated Intimate Partner Aggression or Violence”, Pediatrics 126(3), 415–424. UNICEF (2010) Child Disciplinary Practices at Home: Evidence from a Range of Low- and MiddleIncome Countries. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, Division of Policy and Practice. WILPF (2019) www.peacewomen.org (Accessed May 11, 2019).

12 AFTERWORD Inclusive futures and dissenting visions Meera Chakravorty

As a member of a refugee family uprooted during the partition of India, I have taken a special interest in planning the discourse on dissent helped by my friends and coeditors. I believe that the crisis regarding dissent has provocatively challenged the editors to be responsible for the emergence of the present volume. If people are made refugees because they speak against hegemony, if they are imprisoned because they resist authoritarianism, if their books are banned or burnt because they speak differently, or if people are exterminated because they believe in a different ideology, then a serious sense of crisis emerges. There is no reasoning that allows the extermination of people as happened with Gandhi, Luther, Lincoln, or the women who struggled for their right to vote and, with endless people known or unknown over the years just because their line of reasoning remained unconvincing during their times. Because the categories or constructs in a particular school of thought create confrontations with other constructs and categories of a different ideology, it’s unthinkable how such considerations could reduce the human relations and actions to a pathetically mean level when extermination becomes the only alternative. We are living this crisis. Often, there is a tendency to undermine, for example, this crisis through expressions of a kind of ‘naïve universal humanism’ in which ‘we are equal’ forms the essence of a debate overlooking the categories that are created to construct the concept of ‘equality’ to provide a kind of surface comfort while ignoring the inherent structural inequality sustained and cherished by the hegemonic systems which consistently prevail with hardly any sign of coming to an end and which cause damage to humanity increasingly. To break such impasse we need to contest, we need to debate and dissent, to re-negotiate. The very dynamics of dissent should be renegotiation. Dissent has to challenge such imposed constructs which assume that people can be enslaved or exploited because they dare to disagree, making them feel

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that it is their costly sin that they are paying for. This counter-productive thought is not only colonial in character, but also has brutal treatment as part of its hegemonic structure. For instance, accepting dissent is simply impossible in countries dominated by the state religion; the people of other religions become automatically suspect and are often declared as ideological zealots to be inevitably persecuted. History is full of such instances. It is, therefore, the responsibility of all people to facilitate the debate on dissent in order to disseminate the idea that the role of the people is extremely significant as dissent is the power of conscience and is fundamental to democracy. It’s a myth that the non-academics need a higher education to understand the gravity of the problem and to act. There are ample instances where lay people have used their power of conscience in a way more than commendable. The name of Salumarada Thimmakka (which means Thimmakka, the nurturer of the trees), resonates not only within the country but even in countries outside India as a great protector of trees because she planted 385 Banyan trees along a four-kilometre-long highway between Hulikal and Kudur in Karnataka, the southern part of India, perhaps helped by her late husband only. Besides receiving many awards, she was declared as one of the hundred most influential and inspirational women of the world by BBC in 2016. Recently she was awarded the Padmashri award by government of India. It is important to note here that Thimmakka’s silent act can also be perceived as an act of conscience and an act of dissent against the aggressive role of the Real Estate business. She has expressed that people’s power can indeed act as a dissent. If, inspired by her, many more come forward to restrain this aggression, the effect of the hegemonic system inevitably gets checked and minimized. To confront with dissent is to confront with conscience with the claim of humanity. The dissent becomes effective when it’s a part of an honest debate maintaining a position of independence. More deeply, dissent as a critical voice is an accountability to an ontology in which the human community is structured in a way that the power of conscience is able to preserve the coherence of the community contributing to people’s ‘being’ and ‘becoming’. Dissent can lead to justice to humanity. It’s an irony that a violent attack by the hegemonic institution is interpreted by the system as ‘just’ while a counter-attack by those who oppose it is considered as ‘barbarous’ as pointed out significantly by Edward Said in his The End of the Peace Process. He says: At a moment of considerable Anglo-Indian tension in 1926, the British missionary and intellectual Edward Thompson (father of E.P. Thompson, the great historian of the British working-class movement) published The Other Side of the Medal, a small book that dealt very critically with British colonial policy in India. One of the points he made in his eloquently anti-imperialist tract is that writings about India in English – even in so authoritative a source as the Oxford History of India – simply left out the Indian side of things; this, Thompson says, further deepens the irreconcilability between Indians and the British. . . . Most British historians of India, for example, described the

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famous “Mutiny” of 1857 as a barbarous . . . attack on defenseless women and children, thereby converting the Indian into a savage barbarian to whom the only response was force. Thompson points out that for Indians the “Mutiny” was in fact a rebellion in their struggle against the British, provoked by generations of punishing colonization, racist discrimination, and savage imperial repression of Indian independence. (Said 2002: 44)1 Dissent attempts to reclaim this lost territory. Remembering that the world is a place where categories and boundaries are continuously created which are bound to be disputed and contested through dissent and further remembering how dissent contributed to Jesus’ crucifixion, to the murders of Gandhi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, to the terrible holocaust, and to the sacrifices of innumerable others, we have to make conscious effort to engage with dissent with accountability and responsibility because its importance is deep-rooted and fundamental.

Note 1 Said, Edward W. 2002.The End of the Peace Process. India, Penguin Books. Chapter 8, p. 44.

INDEX

Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. ABBA 48 Acampora, Christa Davis 114, 115, 123n26 – 123n29, 123n31 – 123n33 acquisitive mimesis 122n8 Adams, Phillip 109 Aesop 16 agency 107, 160 Ägitprop theatre 2 agon 106, 110 – 114, 123n28 agonism 114 Akkamahadevi 12, 20, 23n3, 23n5 Alan of Lille 32 Albigensians 26 Allamaprabhu 19 All India Trinamool Congress 62 altruism 20 America Probasi Bangalir Gaan 60 amor fati 112 anachronism 18 Anderson, L. 67 Andersson, Benny 48 Angela of Foligno 27 Ansell-Pearson, Keith 113 Anspach, Mark R 111, 115, 116, 123n38, 123n41, 123n43 – 123n46 anti-nuclear movements 1, 88 – 103 anti-poverty movements 98 anti-utopias 7 Anusandhan 125 Apollonius of Tyana 16 apophatic 148, 150

“Article Nine” group 91 Asher, Sarah Beth 102 Asian Women’s Human Rights Council (AWHRC) 155, 164 Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston 158 Aum Shinrikyo 93 The Australian 111 Baader, Andreas 143 Bachelard, Sarah 119, 124n51, 124n52 Bakhtin, Mikhail 128 Baldwin, James 145 Bandyopadhyay, Haricharan 126, 135n5, 135n6, 135n8 Banerjee, Sumanta 129, 135n1, 135n18 Bangla Adhunik Gaan 55 Bardi 34 Basava 12 Basaveshwara 12, 23n2, 23n5 Bataille, Georges 148, 150 Bat Shalom 155 Baul tradition of Bengal 4, 11, 16, 18 Beatrice of Nazareth 27 Beghards 30, 39n2 Beguines 28, 30, 31, 33, 37, 39n2, 39n3 Bengal renaissance 127 Benjamin, Walter 139 Bhakti movement 4, 5, 13, 23n5 Bhumi 64 Bhushan, Madhu 160

Index  173

Biermann, Wolf 58 Bijjala, king 12, 23n2 biopolitics 146 Biswas, Jyotish Chandra 132 Black Panther 145 Black Sash 155 body 141 – 143 Body without Organs (BwO) 138 Bosnian conflict 166 Boulding, Elise 6 Brahmo Samaj 129 Brautmystik or Bride Mysticism 28 bricolage 38 Bride Mysticism 28 Broadsheet 80 Brother Arnaldo 27 Buddha, Gautama 69 Buddhism 69 Buddhist humanism 66 Bussey, Marcus 7 Butler, Judith 143, 147, 150 Cactus 64 Calcutta 125 – 127, 129 – 132, 134, 135n1, 135n2, 135n5, 135n6, 136n22 – 136n24, 136n29, 137n7, 137n10, 137n14 Calixtus III 36 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 158 capitalism 1, 14, 56, 103 Cardenal, Ernesto 57 Cartesian 23 Cassirer, Ernst 19, 21, 24n17 caste 12 caste antagonism 12 caste-class feud 12 Cenzatti 37 Chakraborty, Nachiketa 64 Chakravorty, Meera 6, 8 Chandrabindu 64 Charter 77 movement 117 Chatterjee, Partha 130, 136n20, 136n21 Chatterjee, Sudipto 53, 61 Chattopadhyay, Kashinath 126, 127 Chattopadhyay, Suman 54 Chaudhury, Khaled 61 Chennabasavanna 21 Chenu, Marie-Dominique 33 Chowdhury, Salil 56, 61, 64 Christianity 104, 105, 108, 123 Christian Pentecostalism 2 Christine de Pizan 38 civil society 93 Clammer, John 7 Cockburn, Cynthia 156, 159, 161

communas de mujer 165 Communist Cultural Movement 60, 61 The Communist Manifesto 5 Compilatio singularis exemplorum 30 Comte, August 20 Congo 4 consent 5 continuum of violence 161 – 163, 166, 167 corporal punishment 162, 163 courts of women 164, 165 Cree communities 15 Cree Nation 15 Cree people 15 critical spirituality 147 – 148 cultural protest transformation 125 – 136 cultures of protest 98 curricular 35, 46 cycle of violence 106 daemon 112 Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) 51 Daisaku Ikeda 69, 74 Das, Upendranath 129, 131 dasein 142, 151 Dator, James 148 Davis, Angela 164 Davis, Megan 114, 119, 123n26, 124n54 de Cantimpre, Thomas 27 Dehne, Harald 5 De Landa, Manuel 138, 139, 150 Deleuze, Gilles 6, 138, 139, 150 Delphians 16 Democratic Republic of Congo 165, 166 Denby, David 108 de Vitry, Jacques 27 dharma 126, 135n5 Dohar 64 d’Oignes, Marie 27 domestic violence 80 Donna en Nero 155 Dostoyevsky, Theodore 108, 123n39 double bind 111, 115, 116 Dramatic Performances Control Act (1876) 129 Dronke, Peter 29 Dutta, Anjan 64 Dutta, Upendranath 129, 131 Dylan, Bob 57 Dyson, Frances 149, 150 dystopia 37 Ecce Homo 114 ecclesiastical writers 13 Eckhart, Meister 29

174 Index

economy of salvation 26 economy-tzars 14 education 2, 6, 14, 35, 42, 45, 77, 127, 129, 130, 142, 170 egotism 106 embodied dissent 137 – 151 The End of the Peace Process 170 enlightened humanism 23 eros 143 – 145; and critique 143 – 144 eternal return 111 – 114 ethnic communities 14 evangelical awakening 33 expressionism 2 Fakir, Lalon 18 false transcendence 105 – 124; dynamics at work 107 – 109; eternal return and transfigurative mindset 112 – 115; mimesis, reciprocity and double bind 115 – 117; overcoming and méconnaissance 110 – 112; premise and argument 105 – 107 female religiosity 27, 33 feminism 2 feminist 154, 156, 159 – 161, 163, 164 feministic theory 42 – 52 feminist initiative 47 – 50 feminist reforms 45 – 47 Fin Amour or Love Mysticism 25 First Nations 118 Fischer, Ernst 64, 65 Floridi, Luciano 38 The Flowing Light of the Godhead 28 Fonda, Jane 48 Foucault, Michel 25, 37, 143, 146, 147, 150 Fourth Lateran Council 32 Fox, Dominic 143 Free to Sing? 53, 58, 61 Freud, Sigmund 120 Fukushima crisis 90, 92 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant 88 – 92, 95 – 97, 99, 100 Gandhi, Mahatma 3, 4, 21, 23n7, 105 Garai, Fakirchand 134 gender-divided statistics 50 gender equality 48 gender oppression 51 Generation X 77, 80 geographical anxiety 17 Germon, J. 81, 82 Ghoraguli, Moheener 57 Ghosh, Binoy 128, 130, 135n5, 135n14, 135n15

Ginsberg, Allen 18 Girard, René 105 – 108, 110 – 112, 115 – 117, 122n9, 123n47, 123n48 Giri, Ananta Kumar 139, 146, 148, 150, 152 global environmental movement 1 globalisation 156, 164 globalization 2, 7 governmentality 146 Greek tradition 16 Greenham Common 157, 158, 163 Group 8 43 – 48, 52 Group 17 group 44 Guattari, Felix 138, 139 Guibert of Tournai 31, 32 Gulf War 56 Gupta, Iswar Chandra 127, 128 habitus 142 Hadewijch of Antwerp 27 – 29, 31, 33, 37, 38 Hagesidamos 115 Haiven, Max 7, 8, 103 Hardacre, Helen 93 Hasegawa Koichi 97, 98 hegemony 5, 8 Henare, Kathryn 76, 82, 85 heretical groups 26 heterogeneity 36 heterotopia 25 heterotopic 26, 37, 38 Hildegard of Bingen 27 Hindoo Patriot 129 – 130, 135n17 Hinduism 4 Hindus 18 Hird, M.J. 81, 82 Hiroshima 158, 165 Hogg, Stuart 129 hooks, bell 144 Hosokawa Morihiro 91, 95 Howell, Martha C. 33 human revolution 68, 69 Hutom Pyanchar Naksha 127, 135n9 hyperbolic romanticism 53 ideology-culture-dichotomy 61 imagination 6 – 8, 144, 147, 149 Indian Raga system 17 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty 158 International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) 96 Internet 2 An Intimate History of Humanity 147 intimate theory 137 – 151 intuition 145

Index  175

Japanese Federation of Bar Associations 96 Japanese post-war Peace Constitution 92 Japan’s anti-nuclear movements: perspectives on 88 – 103 Jataka 15 jeleiapara sawngs 131 – 134 Jibonmukhi Gaan 63 justice 154, 156, 157, 160, 165, 166 Kanoria Jute Mill 61 Kansariparasawngs 130; decline of 130 – 131; elites, changing nature of 130 – 131; performances 128 – 130 Kant, Immanuel 18 – 21, 24n16, 24n24 Kant’s Critique of Judgment 18 Karnataka 11 – 12, 23n7, 170 kavigans 125, 128 Kawesa,Victoria 50 Kerekere, E. 80 Khasnabish, Alex 7 Khemtas 125 King, Martin Luther 4 kirtan 58, 63 Kittell, Ellen 34, 36 Kivu 4 Klein, Naomi 9 knowledge 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 20, 25 – 39, 69, 98, 110, 138, 148 Koizumi Junichiro 91 Kosenrufu Gongyo meetings 71 Kōwhai Group 72, 73 kōwhai ngutukākā 72 Kriesi, H. 66, 67, 84 Krishna, Daya 138, 139 Kumar, Corinne 164 Kumarappa, J.C 3 kunst 25, 27, 31, 33, 36 – 38 Kurtz, Lester R. 102 Kvinnobulletinen 44 La Begue, Lambert 36 labrys (double-headed axe) 74 – 84 Lacan, J. 18 Lambert La Begue 36 Lamprecht of Regensburg 25 – 27 La mystique courtoise 28 Language and Myth 21 La Ruta Pacifica de las Mujeres 165 late medieval Europe 25 – 39 Lawtoo, Nidesh 106, 123n35 Lederach, John Paul 101, 102 Left-Wing Communist party 48 left-wing movement 45 Lenin,Vladimir 84

Lennon, John 57 Lerner, Gerda 161 Lerner, Robert E. 29 Lesbian Activities and Recreation Festival (LARF) 76, 77 lesbian feminist movement 75, 80, 83, 85 Lesbian Opportunities self-help initiative (LOPS) 77, 78 Leunig, Michael 121 Levinas, Emmanuel 117 LGBTQI movement 83, 84 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 90, 91, 97 liberation movements 82 Liège 36 Lilacs 72 literacy 33, 35, 36 literary league 15 lotus 68 – 74 Love Mysticism 25 Low Countries 26, 33 – 36, 38 Luxemburg, Rosa 84 Macy, Joanna 138, 139, 145, 148, 150 Madres de la Plaza de Mayo 155 Makokis, Janice Alison 15 Manchanda, Rita 160 Mandela, Nelson 4 Māori renaissance 80 Maori Sovereignty 80 Māori women 80, 81 Marguerite 28, 31 Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill to Kath 85 Masuzoe Yoichi 96 Mayo, Katherine 132 McGinn, Bernard 27, 30 Mechthild of Magdeburg 27, 28 méconnaissance 107, 110 Meiji era 93 Menippus 16 Métraux, D.A. 70 – 72 Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes 90 middle-class women 46 militarism 154, 156, 157, 159 – 161, 163, 165, 166 Miller, Tanya Stabler 30 mimesis 106, 115, 116, 120, 122n8, 123n47 mimetic pathology 106, 108, 109, 122n6 mimetic theory 106 Minamata disease 101 Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) 97 Mirabilis, Christina 27 Mirror of Simple Souls 28, 29

176 Index

modernity 107 – 109 Moreton, Romaine 140, 141, 146, 148, 151 Morrow Duncan 117 Morton, Timothy 6 Motzkin, Gabriel 20 Mukherjee, Soumendra Nath 127 Mukta Nicaragua 54 Mukwege, Denis 4 Mulder-Bakker, Anneke 35 Munoz,Vivi 166 Murakami Haruki 90 musical movement, father of 62 – 65 Muslims 18 Myall Creek Massacre 111 mystic 121 myth 115, 123n36 “Nagarik” 60 Nandy, Ashis 146, 148 Nanjō Tokimitsu 85 nationalist politics 125 – 136 NATO 164, 166 Naxalite movement 53, 56, 62 Nazrul Islam, Kazi 18, 57, 60 The Necessity of Art 64 neo-liberal 2, 103 neo-liberal capitalism 103 Newman, Barbara 28 Nichiren Buddhism 69 Nichiren Daishonin 69, 71, 73 Nietzsche, Friedrich 105 – 106, 108 – 115, 117, 120, 121n2, 122n3, 122n5, 122n19 – 122n21, 122n23, 123n24, 123n26, 123n28, 123n30 Nishinippon Shimbun 96 noise 148 – 149 non-violence 3 noumenon 19 Occupy movement 14, 78 Oe Kenzaburo 90 orality 36 oral tradition 17 O’Sullivan, Robin Anne 35 The Other Side of the Medal 170 pacific mimesis 106, 120 Pākeha feminist movement 81 Pākeha women 80 Pakshi, Rupchand 127 Palestine 154 – 156, 158, 164 – 166 Panchali 135n12 Panchatantra 15, 16

Parashpathor 64 passive resistance 105 Paul, Babu Kristo Dass 130 p’Bitek, Okot 151 peace 154 – 167 Peace City 165 Pekkanen, Robert 94 personal resistance 140 – 141 Peruzzi 34 phantasms 106 play 144 – 146, 149 poet-wayfarers: of oral traditions 11; silent movement by 11 – 24 political consciousness 64 political environment 2 political institutional hypothesis 94 political lesbianism 78 political movements: child of 56 – 62 political ontology 16 Pope Gregory XI 31 Porete, Marguerite 28, 29, 39n1 Porter, Phil 141, 144 positivism 20 power 26, 31, 34, 36 – 38; of distance 138; of theory 138 praxis 112, 119, 120 pre-figurative research 7 Price, Richard 99 Pryor, Clinton 118, 124n50 Quit India Movement 60 Radclyffe Hall Memorial Society 75 radical humanism 14 radical imagination 7, 8 raga 17 Raj, Frank 105 rape 155 – 157, 160, 165, 166 Ray, Satyajit 62 realpolitik 105 reciprocity 111, 115, 116 Reconciliation movement 111, 118 reflexivity 138 religion 1, 2, 11, 14, 17, 26, 36, 73, 93, 170; of humanity 20 resistance: and critique 146 – 147 ressentiment 105 – 124 reterritorializing, journey 14, 16 revaluation of values 115, 121n2 Richardson, Ruth 77 romantics 18 Roy, Anuradha 61 Roy, D.L. 57 Roy, Rammohun 127, 129

Index  177

Rudra 21 Rumi, Jelaluddin 121 Runia, Eelco 141 Russell, Dora 164 Said, Edward 170 Salumarada Thimmakka 170 Samvad Prabhakar 127 Sankirtan 58 Sarkar, Sumit 127, 132, 135n11, 136n26 śāstras 138, 139, 143, 147 sawngs 125 – 136; definition 126; failure of 133 – 134; nationalism, impact of 131 – 133; performances in nineteenthcentury Calcutta 126 – 128; performances of twentieth century 131 – 133; song of 125 – 136 “Sayanora Nukes” movement 91 scandal 106, 123n42 scapegoat 106, 107, 116, 122n7; mechanism 106, 107, 116 Schyman, Gudrun 48 – 50 Second World War 60 Seeger, Pete 57, 58 Seifuku KojyoIinkai 92 selbstüberwindung 110 self-determination 15 self-mystification 11 Sen, Atulprasad 57 Sen, Kesub Chandra 129 Sen, Mrinal 62 Sen, Rajaniknta 57 Shinto-ism 70 Shiva 126, 135n5 Shoshu, Nichiren 73 Shunya 21 Siddharama 23n5 silence 23 Sils Maria 112 Simon, Paul 57 Simons, Walter 35 Sipo Matador 114 Skinner, Quentin 20 Snow, D.A. 66 – 67, 84 social change 3, 98 Social Democratic women’s union 48 Social Democrats 48 socialism 1 socialist political movements 53 social justice 21 social movements 1, 2, 9, 66; campaigns 99; effectiveness of 88 – 103; framing 3 – 8; and nuclear issue 89 – 92; and society in Japan 93 – 100

social protest 92 – 93 social religious literacy 36 social theory 6 Socrates 16 Soka Gakkai 93 Soka Gakkai International New Zealand (SGINZ) 68 – 70, 72 – 74, 84, 85 song of songs 28 songs of experience 53 songs of innocence 53 songs of movement 54, 59 songs of protest 59 Soule, S.A. 66, 67, 84 spaces, concept 22 special knowledge: hacking 25 – 39; significance of 26 spirituality 2, 144, 147, 148 Staines, Graham Stuart 60 Starr, Amory 103 stereotypes 82 story-telling 16 Sufi Islam 4, 17 Sufi tradition 11 Suman, Kabir 53 – 65; musical consciousness 57; musical movement, father of 62 – 65; political movements, child of 56 – 62 Support Stockings 48 Surendra Binodini 129, 131 surrealism 2 ‘Survival of the fittest 20 Suydam, Mary 34, 36 swadeshi songs 60 Swadyaya Parivar movement 139 Swarajya Party 132 – 134 Sweden 42 – 52; families, impact 42 – 52; feministic theory and practice 42 – 52; labour market and legislation 42 – 52 Swedish electoral system 48 Swedish parents 50 Tagore, Devendranath 129 Tagore, Rabindranath 18, 56, 57, 60 Tamkin, Emily 117, 118 tauschen 116 taxation 45 Tempest, Kate 142, 143, 148 territorialisation 109, 120 Teutonicas, Johannes 32 Theory, theoria 138 Thomas, Dylan 145, 151n3 Thompson, Edward 170, 171 Thomson, Heather 107 – 109, 122n10 Thus Spake Zarathustra 112, 122n20

178 Index

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) 89, 92, 96 Tokyo gubernatorial election 91 Tomake Chai 54 Toussaint, Jean-Philippe 22 trades unions 1 transcendence ethics 105 – 124 transcendent moral ethics 117 – 118; transfiguration, potential synthesis 119 transformations 163 – 167 transformative methodology 117 – 118 transformative movements 109 trident nuclear missiles 158 trident ploughshares 158 triple disaster 89, 95 tsunami 88, 89, 92 Übermensch 106, 122n3 Uganda 50 Uluru Statement 120 unemployment 68 UN Human Rights Commission 4 UNICEF 162 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 157 University of Uppsala 43 Untouchable Girls 74 urbanisation 33 urstuff 149 utopias 7, 11 – 13, 17, 25, 37 Utsunomiya Kenji 95 vachana 4, 11 – 13, 17, 19 – 22, 23n3, 24n20, 24n23, 24n25 Vidyasagar, Isvarchandra 127, 128, 135n13, 135n14 vimochana 155, 160 violence 154 – 167; against children 161 – 163; continuum of 161 – 163 vita apostolica 27, 31, 33 vitae 27, 37, 38

‘Wahpimaskwasis’ (Little White Bear) 15 waldenses 26 Walker, Alice 145, 148, 150 war 154 – 167 War Resisters International 158 Weimar 2 Wellington, New Zealand 66 – 85 Wellington Young Women’s Division 70 – 72 Whitmarsh, Tim 16 Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 127, 128 Wignaraja, P. 102 Winton-Henry, Cynthia 141, 144, 145 women: educational opportunities for 35; general election and 47 – 49; Group 8 43 – 44; as knowledge hackers and knowledge makers 26 – 33; labour market 43; in movement against nuclear weapons 158 – 159; new demands and 44 – 45; right to education 42; salaries 51; stress 51 – 52; and votes 47 Women Ban the Bomb 159 Women Can 46 Women in Black 154 – 167; history 154 – 156 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) 157 – 160 women’s peace movements 156 – 157; theorising 159 – 161 Women’s Pentagon Action 164 Woolf,Virginia 154, 163 working class: changing nature of 131 World as Lover,World as Self 145 World Congress of Sociology 92 Yiannoutsos,V. 81 Youth Cultural Institute 60 Yuki Johnston 69, 74 zamindars 127, 128, 130 Zeldin, Theodore 137, 142, 147, 150 Zene u Crnom 155, 166 Zunes, Stephen 102