Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time [1st ed.] 9783030451592, 9783030451608

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi
Introduction: Gender and Authority (Adele Bardazzi, Alberica Bazzoni)....Pages 1-13
Front Matter ....Pages 15-15
Language and the Problem of Women’s Authority (Deborah Cameron)....Pages 17-33
Negotiating Authority Through Feminism: Girls’ Political Experience in Italian Social Movements (Arianna Mainardi, Carlotta Cossutta)....Pages 35-57
Kenyan Political Autobiographies: Reviving Generational Power and Masculine Authority (Anaïs Angelo)....Pages 59-81
#MeToo, but First: The Question of Analytic Priority in Identity Politics (Antonette Talaue-Arogo)....Pages 83-103
“Exemplary” Lesbians: The Struggle for Adequate Representation (Charlotte Ross)....Pages 105-128
Front Matter ....Pages 129-129
The Bio-medicalization of Intersex Variations Between Medical and Parental Authority (Michela Balocchi, Ino Kehrer)....Pages 131-149
“The Law Believes the Words of Women More Than the Words of Men”: Gendered Experiences of Divorce in Ben Ali’s Tunisia (Sarah Grosso)....Pages 151-169
What Does the Shastra Have to Say? The Age of Consent Bill Controversy and the Reimagination of Hinduism in Modern Western India (Alok Oak)....Pages 171-194
Female Religious Authority in Muslim Majority Contexts: Past Examples and Modern State-Initiatives (Roja Fazaeli)....Pages 195-219
Lived Religion and Female Informal Authority in a Neighborhood in Stuttgart, Germany (Petra Kuppinger)....Pages 221-239
Front Matter ....Pages 241-241
The Politics of Reproduction: Abortion and Authority in Soviet Cinema (Serian Carlyle, Rachel Morley)....Pages 243-270
Female Genital Mutilation: Authority, Fact and Fiction (Tobe Levin von Gleichen)....Pages 271-290
The Authority of Pornography (F. Vera-Gray)....Pages 291-312
Reconfiguring the Template: Representations of Powerful Women in Historical Fiction—The Case of Anna Komnene (Ioulia Kolovou)....Pages 313-330
Staging Female Creatives in French Caribbean Women’s Theatre (Vanessa Lee)....Pages 331-348
Back Matter ....Pages 349-365

Citation preview

Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time Edited by

a de l e b a r da z z i a l be r ic a b a z zon i

Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time

Adele Bardazzi  •  Alberica Bazzoni Editors

Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time

Editors Adele Bardazzi The Queen’s College University of Oxford Oxford, UK

Alberica Bazzoni School of Modern Languages and Culture University of Warwick Coventry, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-45159-2    ISBN 978-3-030-45160-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute at the University of Oxford, which funded the Gender and Authority Network from which this volume originated. We are particularly grateful to the colleagues and friends who made the Network possible, in particular Julia Caterina Hartley, Natalya Din-Kariuki, David Bowe, Richard Williams, Vittoria Fallanca, Marzia D’Amico and Kira Allmann. We also thank the British Academy and The Queen’s College, Oxford, for supporting our research. Our gratitude goes to the anonymous reviewers of the initial project for their extremely valuable advice on the book’s structure and bibliographical references, and especially for encouraging us to release our feminist voices. We also wish to thank all the external reviewers of the chapters who have kindly and generously helped us on this journey. Their expertise, perceptive comments and feedback have been precious for improving the final shape of this book. Thanks are also due to our editors at Palgrave Macmillan, Amelia Derkatsch Poppy Hull and Sharla Plant, for their excellent assistance throughout the realization of this book project. Finally, we would like to thank the contributors of this volume for their inspiring research and for having joined us in this collective enterprise. The Editors December 2019 v

Contents

1 Introduction: Gender and Authority  1 Adele Bardazzi and Alberica Bazzoni Part I Politics  15 2 Language and the Problem of Women’s Authority 17 Deborah Cameron 3 Negotiating Authority Through Feminism: Girls’ Political Experience in Italian Social Movements 35 Arianna Mainardi and Carlotta Cossutta 4 Kenyan Political Autobiographies: Reviving Generational Power and Masculine Authority 59 Anaïs Angelo 5 #MeToo, but First: The Question of Analytic Priority in Identity Politics 83 Antonette Talaue-Arogo

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6 “Exemplary” Lesbians: The Struggle for Adequate Representation105 Charlotte Ross Part II Law and Religion 129 7 The Bio-medicalization of Intersex Variations Between Medical and Parental Authority131 Michela Balocchi and Ino Kehrer 8 “The Law Believes the Words of Women More Than the Words of Men”: Gendered Experiences of Divorce in Ben Ali’s Tunisia151 Sarah Grosso 9 What Does the Shastra Have to Say? The Age of Consent Bill Controversy and the Reimagination of Hinduism in Modern Western India171 Alok Oak 10 Female Religious Authority in Muslim Majority Contexts: Past Examples and Modern State-Initiatives195 Roja Fazaeli 11 Lived Religion and Female Informal Authority in a Neighborhood in Stuttgart, Germany221 Petra Kuppinger Part III Imaginaries 241 12 The Politics of Reproduction: Abortion and Authority in Soviet Cinema243 Serian Carlyle and Rachel Morley

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13 Female Genital Mutilation: Authority, Fact and Fiction271 Tobe Levin von Gleichen 14 The Authority of Pornography291 F. Vera-Gray 15 Reconfiguring the Template: Representations of Powerful Women in Historical Fiction—The Case of Anna Komnene313 Ioulia Kolovou 16 Staging Female Creatives in French Caribbean Women’s Theatre331 Vanessa Lee Index349

Notes on Contributors

Anaïs  Angelo  holds a PhD from the European University Institute, Vienna, and is a postdoc at at the Institute for African Studies, University of Vienna (Austria). Her work focuses on political history, presidentialism and gender in postcolonial Kenya. She is the author of Power and the Presidency in Kenya (2020). Michela Balocchi  is a postdoctoral researcher and activist for intersex human rights. Prior to this she was Marie Curie Fellow at the American University/Washington DC and at the University of Verona with the project INTERSEXIONS.  She co-founded the group “intersexioni”. She edited the collective volume INTERSEX. Antologia Multidisciplinare (ETS àltera, 2019). Adele Bardazzi  is Laming Research Fellow at Queen’s College, University of Oxford, UK.  Her research focuses on modern and contemporary Italian poetry, discourses of mourning and loss, the cross-fertilization between verbal and visual, and gender studies. She co-founded the Gender & Authority Research Network in 2016, from which this book project originates.

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Alberica  Bazzoni is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK. She holds a PhD in Italian Literature from the University of Oxford, UK, and is the author of Writing for Freedom: Body, Identity and Power in Goliarda Sapienza’s Narrative (2018). Her main areas of research are modern Italian literature, sociology of culture, and gender and sexuality studies. Deborah  Cameron  is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford, UK. Her publications on language and gender include The Myth of Mars and Venus (2007), On Language and Sexual Politics (2006) and, with Sylvia Shaw, Gender, Power and Political Speech (Palgrave, 2016). She is also the author of Feminism, a short introduction to feminist thought and feminist politics (2018). Serian Carlyle  studied at the University of Cambridge and at University College London (UCL), where she wrote her dissertation on the representation of pregnancy in Russian and Soviet cinema. She has also written on the use of prostitution in film as a vehicle for critiquing state failings and analyzing changing gender norms. Carlotta Cossutta  is a post-doctoral fellow in Political Philosophy at the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, and she is part of the research center Politesse—Politiche e teorie della sessualità (Università di Verona). Among her research interests are feminisms, queer theories and the history of women’s political thought. Roja Fazaeli  is Assistant Professor in Islamic Civilisations at Trinity College Dublin. Fazaeli has published widely on the subjects of “Islamic feminisms,” “female religious authorities,” “women’s rights in Iran,” and “human rights and religion.” Her last book, Islamic Feminisms: Rights and Interpretations Across Generations in Iran, was published by Routledge in 2016. Sarah Grosso  is a lecturer at Webster University Geneva (CH), where she teaches courses on gender and communication. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the London School of Economics in 2014 on women’s rights and family law in Ben Ali’s Tunisia. She also consults for clients such as the ICRC, UNESCO and UNICEF.

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Ino Kehrer  holds a Master degree in Law at the University of Bologna (2016), and is a PhD candidate at the Human Rights Centre, University of Padua since 2017 and a member of Intersexioni. Her most recent publication is ‘Cuts into Children’s Future: a Comparative Analysis Between FGM, Male Circumcision and Intersex Genital Surgeries’, PHRG 3 (3), 2019. Ioulia  Kolovou  MSc, PhD, is a writer and researcher who lives in Glasgow. Her interests are the reception of Byzantine women in contemporary literature, historical fiction and nonfiction, and medieval gender and sexualities. Her biography of Anna Komnene, Anna Komnene and the Alexiad: The Byzantine Princess and the First Crusade, was published in March 2020. https://www.waterstones.com/book/anna-komnene-andthe-alexiad/ioulia-kolovou//9781526733016. Petra Kuppinger  is Professor of Anthropology at Monmouth College in Monmouth, IL, USA. She has conducted research on space, globalization and consumerism in Cairo, Egypt, and on space, culture, and Islam in Stuttgart, Germany. She authored Faithfully Urban: Pious Muslims in a German City (2015) and co-edited Urban Life, 6th edition (2018). Vanessa  Lee is a postdoctoral researcher at the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford. Her research interests include postcolonial theater and film; gender studies; and European, Asian and Caribbean theaters. She is also a playwright and theater practitioner. Arianna Mainardi  is a postdoctoral research fellow in Sociology at the University of Milano-Bicocca. She is vice-chair of the Women’s Network at ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association). She has published on political activism and gender issues, digital culture and sexuality, youth and digital media consumption. Rachel Morley  is Associate Professor of Russian Cinema and Culture at University College London. Her research interests include representations of gender in early Russian cinema and contemporary female filmmakers working in Russian. Morley has written widely on Russian and Soviet

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film. Her monograph Performing Femininity: Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema was published by I.B. Tauris in 2017. Alok Oak  is a doctoral researcher at the Leiden Institute of Area Studies, University of Leiden, the Netherlands. His recent publications include ‘M G Ranade and the Challenge of Reinventing Hinduism’, in David Kim, ed., Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History, (2018), pp. 54–73. Charlotte Ross  is Reader in Gender, Sexuality and Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her publications include the monograph  Eccentricity and Sameness. Discourses on Lesbianism and Desire Between Women in Italy 1860s/1930s (2015). More recently, she has been working on queer representation from a comparative perspective. Antonette Talaue-Arogo  holds a PhD in Literature from De La Salle University Manila, where she teaches literature and theory and criticism. She was a participant in the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in 2009. Her research interests include postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism, continental philosophy, and translation studies. F. Vera-Gray  is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Durham University. She has published widely on violence against women, including two books: The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety in Public (2018) and Men’s Intrusion, Women’s Embodiment: A Critical Analysis of Street Harassment (2016). Tobe Levin von Gleichen  is an activist against Female genital mutilation (FGM) and visiting professor at King’s College, London. She is an associate, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University; a former research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford; founder of UnCUT/VOICES Press, and author of many books, articles and speeches.

List of Figures

Fig. 12.1 Fig. 12.2 Fig. 12.3 Fig. 12.4 Fig. 12.5 Fig. 12.6 Fig. 12.7 Fig. 12.8

Liuda reacts angrily when she overhears Kolia and Volodia deciding that she must have an abortion. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927) The abortion clinic. Liuda sits at the far right-hand edge of the screen. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927) Liuda’s view from the window—an idealized image of motherhood. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927) The nurse’s view from the window—a pragmatic image of motherhood. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927) Liuda leaves Moscow and the men to have her baby on her own. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927) “Who is to blame?” (Ermler, The Parisian Cobbler, 1928) Shunned by Irina and her daughter, Grisha is replaced by Petr, the model surrogate father. (Savchenko, A Chance Encounter, 1936) The “scoundrel” and the “saintly” woman: Rodion refuses to take responsibility for Katerina’s pregnancy. (Feature film Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, director Vladimir Menshov © Mosfilm Cinema Concern, 1979)

247 248 249 250 252 253 257

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Fig. 12.9

Katerina keeps her baby. (Feature film Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, director Vladimir Menshov © Mosfilm Cinema Concern, 1979) Fig. 12.10 Fruza breaks the fourth wall to reassure the viewer. (Nikiforov, Fruza, 1981. Image courtesy of UE National Film Studio “Belarusfilm”)

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1 Introduction: Gender and Authority Adele Bardazzi and Alberica Bazzoni

This collection of essays investigates the relationship between gender and authority in different contexts, periods and fields. Who is permitted to speak and who holds authority in the arts, in the public sphere, in academic institutions and in politics? Who is recognized as a legitimate voice in debates and in a decision-making process, and how is that legitimation produced and preserved? What are the gendered configurations of authority? From the designing of school and university curricula to the authority of victims of abuse, from the adoption of inclusive language to the identification of stereotypes and structural inequality, a critical reflection on authority sheds light on the values and power dynamics that produce

A. Bardazzi The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] A. Bazzoni (*) School of Modern Languages and Culture, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_1

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and reproduce hierarchies, inequality and oppression. Through a variety of methodological approaches, this volume addresses some of the most pressing and controversial themes under scrutiny in current feminist scholarship and activism, such as pornography, political representation, LGBTI struggles, female genital mutilation, the #MeToo movement, abortion, divorce and consent, to name but a few. The combination of disciplines and topics here included brings together representational and social dimensions, showcasing the fundamental notion of gender and authority under different facets and pointing out recurrent patterns. In turn, the focus on gender and authority works as a key to productively challenging, transforming and renewing the specific disciplines themselves. The present edited volume is rooted in the conversations that developed over the past few years as part of the Gender and Authority Network, an interdisciplinary research project which aim has been to explore and question received notions of social, political and cultural authority, specifically as they intersect with issues of gender.1 The volume combines selected and revised proceedings from the Network’s conferences and seminars with invited essays from established and emerging scholars and selected contributions sent in response to a Call for Papers in 2018. We reached out to several international research centers and institutions with the aim of opening up the discussion to scholars and countries beyond the—mostly Anglo-American—existing Network, enriching and diversifying the thematic focus and the theoretical, methodological and political outlook of the volume. In imagining and assembling this book, we have worked closely with the authors, developing a mutually inspiring and exciting dialogue. As the authors’ distinctive knowledge, expertise and intellectual curiosity have illuminated new aspects as well as recurring patterns of authority, the ongoing conversation has brought to the fore new questions and approaches, which have in turn further interrogated  Starting from the two-day international conference Women and the Canon, held at Christ Church, Oxford, in January 2016, the Gender and Authority Network then hosted a series of seminars, roundtable discussions and lectures by scholars from both within and outside the University of Oxford, all addressing the pivotal issues of gender and authority. The project has also reached out to a non-specialist audience through public engagement and knowledge exchange events as well as its popular blog and podcast series BOSS, available online: https://soundcloud.com/ gender-authority-network. 1

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their work. The present book is thus not a collection of pre-existing material, but rather the occasion that has prompted a collective reflection and critique around the interlocked notions of gender and authority. In this way, the volume aims to represent both a legacy of the Network’s activity over the past few years and the emergence of new connections and conversations by bringing together researchers working across different disciplines, periods and geographical contexts, and by enabling a dialogue among approaches and specialisms so different from one another, in order to understand, frame and challenge the reproduction of hierarchies and inequalities. The essays in this volume develop a feminist exploration and critique of the notion of authority, looking at how authority functions in different contexts and on different planes, both symbolic and material, and opening up spaces for re-thinking its unequal distribution and hierarchical configuration. Although we do not aim to provide a single definition of authority and gender, leaving it to each contribution to set their own theoretical and methodological approach, we introduce here the broader conceptual framework and research questions that inspire the book as a whole and that may guide the reader through the different outlooks featured in it. The notion of authority has manifold and ambivalent facets. Its ambit and connotations are the subject of a longstanding debate among historians, political philosophers and sociologists alike.2 The term “authority” comes from the Latin auctoritas, a juridical and political expression denoting the ability and right to make decisions by virtue of an acknowledged superior status, conferred by age, prestige, influence or ability.3 The notion of auctoritas was opposed to that of potestas, the latter term meaning a material force that can coerce its subjects into obedience.4 The English word “authority” has inherited this twofold meaning of influence and coercive power, as it refers to a semantic constellation comprising prestige, status, power, force, leadership, command and  Canonical contributions to this debate include (among many others): Weber, Politics as a Vocation; Friedrich, Authority; Arendt, “Authority in the Twentieth Century” and “What is Authority;” Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality; Agamben, State of Exception; Sennett, Authority. 3  See Smith, “Auctoritas,” 115. 4  See Agamben, “Auctoritas and Potestas,” in State of Exception, 74–88, and Arendt, “What is Authority.” 2

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expertise. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it first as “the power to enforce obedience or compliance” and, second, as “the power to influence action, opinion, or belief, especially because of one’s recognized knowledge or scholarship; authoritative opinion; acknowledged expertise.” Additionally, authority is defined metonymically as “a person or (especially) body having political or administrative power and control in a particular sphere.”5 As it emerges from its etymology and definition, authority refers both to a subject who holds power, individual or institutional, and to formal and informal dimensions of power. It permeates all social domains, starting from the family, where parental authority, for example, comes to mind; moving on to small groups, communities, schools, churches, industries; and then to larger social formations, such as the modern nation-state. A reflection on authority in a given social context may thereby take into consideration its distribution—questioning who holds authority and which legitimate and recognized bodies are exercising it—and its configuration, asking which features define authority and for whom. From a feminist perspective drawing attention to gender, such as the one adopted in this volume, a critical focus on authority means exploring the heteronormative organization of society into a male-female binary, the hierarchical relationships of power between men and women, and the gendered characterization of authority in relation to sanctioned notions of femininity and masculinity. As with “authority,” for the purposes of this book we have not privileged a single perspective on gender, as each contribution develops its distinctive understanding and use of this category. By adopting gender as a fundamental dimension of analysis, the  essays in this volume draw attention to patriarchal structures, the male-female binary, constructions of femininity and masculinity, heteronormativity and body politics. For example, a critical focus on gender allows for a distinction between forms of authority that are traditionally masculine and feminine, typically with a separation between domestic and public spheres, and subversive appropriations of authority on the part of women (or by subjects who are otherwise erased or disempowered within a patriarchal system) that unsettle traditional norms and roles and  “Authority,” The Oxford English Dictionary.

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transform the notion of authority itself. By encompassing both a formal dimension of power, rooted in the coercive force of legal and political institutions, and an informal dimension of power, related to cultural and material elements that accord status and recognition, the notion of authority proves a particularly fitting and productive key for re-reading the power dynamics that shape gender relations and that determine the reproduction (or the transformation) of a social order. In other words, the notion of authority crosses multiple forms of power and social formations, thus capturing the complexity of the factors that contribute to shape—and challenge—patriarchal structures of power. Because of its manifold semantic implications, the notion of authority can be read from a predominantly negative perspective, as referring to oppressive, conservative and “authoritarian” forms of power, or it can be read as a positive attribute that fosters an empowering and transformative potential. Focusing on differentials of power along the lines of gender, the contributions in this volume highlight both positive and negative aspects of authority, distinguishing between different connotations of the term depending on the position of the subjects involved. In this way, a feminist focus on gender shows that there is no neutral subject of authority, and therefore no univocal connotation of the term, but multiple subjects implicated in manifold relationships of power. Many of the chapters included here focus on unexpected, combative and subversive appropriations and displacements of authority by subjects who are traditionally excluded from it. Authority, in this sense, is redefined as the possibility of having a voice and being listened to, coming closer to the semantic field of agency and self-determination rather than coercive imposition. Finally, the concept of authority is closely linked to that of author (auctor in Latin) as the source and originator of a text or discourse.6 Artistic, philosophical and religious traditions are built on the authority of those who are recognized as their most influential and respected authors. As an additional definition by the OED highlights, authority can also mean “an authoritative piece of writing; a book, passage, etc.,

  The semantic link between auctor and auctoritas is discussed by Arendt in “What is Authority,” 121–2. 6

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accepted as a source of reliable information or evidence.”7 Reflecting on the notion of authority from a gender perspective opens the space for an investigation of the construction of intellectual canons and cultural legitimacy. Who is allowed to speak, and who is granted status within a discipline, a field of expression, a conversation? Which positions and interests are represented in a specific canon, and which ones are conversely erased or silenced? By foregrounding the interplay between gender and authority, contributions in this volume question the alleged neutrality of any body of knowledge, including the respective academic disciplines to which they belong, hence challenging male (and white, heterosexual, etc.)—dominated genealogies of thought. Our approach in designing this volume is deeply informed by longstanding feminist efforts to highlight and critique the pervasive nature of power and to create practices of negotiation, resistance and subversion. Indeed, the notion of authority speaks directly to that of power, on the one hand, and to that of agency, on the other, offering a distinctive lens to look at hierarchies and inequalities. Michel Foucault’s influential reflections on the constitutive effects of power have contributed to emphasize the continuum that exists between institutions, cultural norms and everyday life, and the role that knowledge plays in sustaining and reproducing power structures.8 Foucault has shown the deep interconnectedness of power and knowledge, paving the way for the investigation of discursive, legal, disciplinary and representational dimensions of authority. In line with a Foucauldian understanding of the link between power and knowledge, recent works have explored issues closely related to authority in the academic world, focusing on the unequal status of different fields and the persistence of deep-seated privilege and discrimination based on gender, race and class in higher education institutions. Notably, in Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship Maria do Mar analyzes the “epistemic status” of feminist and gender studies in academia, “challenging questions about power, inequality and the production and legitimation of knowledge.”9 The alleged neutrality and objectivity of  “Authority,” OED.  See Foucault, The Will to Knowledge; Discipline and Punish and The Birth of the Clinic. 9  do Mar, Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship, 1. 7 8

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academic knowledge is also challenged in a substantial collection of essays on privilege and bias in American universities, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia. As the editors clearly explain, “the idea of pure and interest-free truth has been and continues to be used to perpetuate unjust social hierarchies.”10 By giving voice to the experiences of black and Latina female academics, Presumed Incompetent unmasks the racialized, imperialist and gendered perception and reproduction of authority in academic culture. The present collection is congruent with these works, which incisively demonstrate the pervasiveness of power structures in determining the authority—or lack thereof—of specific discourses and subjects. At the same time, the multifaceted understanding of authority that emerges from the essays in this volume also brings it close to feminist reflections on agency. Without replicating a paradigm of free will and abstract, individualistic self-­ determination, feminist thinkers have cogently argued for retaining the notion of agency, understood as the ability to speak and make choices challenging normative discourses.11 For example, bell hooks focuses on black girls’ agency as “acts of defiant speech”: “Talking back,” hooks writes, “meant speaking as an equal to an authority figure. It meant daring to disagree and sometimes it just meant having an opinion.”12 Similarly, in her recent volume Willful Subjects, Sarah Ahmed discusses agency in terms of “willfulness,” a “failure to comply with those whose authority is given” which turns into a desiderative and assertive response to normative authority.13 In this sense, agency can also be understood as a claim of authority by disempowered yet willful subjects who “talk back” to oppressive structures and discourses. While the main lens adopted here is that of gender, this is understood in its interaction with other axes of differentiation that produce  Gutiérrez y Muhs et al., Presumed Incompetent, 5.  Like power and authority, agency is also a loaded term that has been the subject of extensive investigation and debate by feminist thinkers and activists. For poststructuralist feminist critiques of individual and collective agency, see for example Butler, “Performative Agency”; Davies, “The Concept of Agency”; for a re-elaboration of agency in the direction of care and solidarity, see for example Mahmood, Politics of Piety; Isaacs, “Feminism and Agency.” 12  hooks, “Talking Back,” 127, 124. 13  Ahmed, Willful Subjects, 1. 10 11

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oppression, including race, class, age and sexuality, following an intersectional paradigm.14 The notion of intersectionality originates with black feminism in the United States and prompts an analysis of social relations and social status that takes into account the concurrent oppressive effects of multiple aspects of identity. Groundbraking works such as Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, Angela Davis’s Women, Race and Class, bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, Chandra Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes, and Cherry Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back have made an enormous contribution to developing an understanding of intersectional forms of oppression, speaking to both academic and activist audiences. While the intersectional paradigm informs, to varying degrees, all essays collected here, some contributions focus specifically on intersectional dimensions of authority, opening up multiple directions of analysis beyond the principal axis of gender. In particular, Antonette Arogo explores the interrelatedness of race, gender and class within the #MeToo movement, developing an insightful discussion of analytic priority in identity politics and the intersectional paradigm. From a different angle, Vanessa Lee analyzes the work of Caribbean female playwrights, combining a focus on race and gender to discuss their authorial status, and Roja Fazaeli points out the significance of religious education for women from different social backgrounds in contemporary Iran. The volume is organized in three thematic sections, each one comprising essays that span different periods and social contexts and that employ a variety of methodologies and sources. The first two sections look at the interplay of gender and authority in the social sphere, focusing respectively on “Politics” (Section 1) and “Law and Religion” (Section 2). The third section, “Imaginaries,” explores the theme of gender and authority by looking at the world of artistic and discursive representation, including analyses of films, plays, literary texts and pornographic imaginaries. The selection of topics and disciplines included in this volume is, of course, by no means exhaustive of the subject. There are plenty of research  On the concept and origin of intersectionality, see Carastathis, “The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory”; Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” and “Mapping the Margins.” 14

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areas—from migration to disability studies to development, to name but a few—where a focus on a gendered dimension of authority is extremely relevant. Our aim in putting together this volume is, rather, that of providing a substantial and diverse range of examples of areas where a critical focus on gender and authority can be adopted, and of approaches and methodologies through which this can be achieved. Furthermore, the essays show the innovative and transformative effect that such a framework may have on academic disciplines themselves, hopefully paving the way for further investigations. Different aspects, contexts and connotations of authority emerge from the essays. A first, important element is the relationship between formal and informal authority in processes of decision-making. Legal institutions and the formal right to make a decision are explored, for example, in essays by Alok Oak, Michela Balocchi and Ino Kehrer, and Sarah Grosso, respectively in the contexts of legislation on marriage in colonial India, the medicalization of intersex people in Italy and divorce in Tunisia. These essays show the ways in which legal authority is embedded in social relations of power, and how spaces of negotiation may open up in the conflict between competing authorities (such as between doctors, parents and international law, in Balocchi and Kehrer’s essay) or between laws and cultural/religious customs (such as between progressive legal reforms and patriarchal traditions, in Grosso’s chapter; or between religious and legal sources, and between colonizers and colonized, in Oak’s essay). In most contexts, decision-making power is accorded informally; in this case, perceived authority plays a crucial role, calling into question values and hierarchies. Who is recognized by a community as the figure entitled to make a decision and speak for others, and how is that legitimation constructed? Tobe Levin asks this question in relation to authorization of the cut in representations of female genital mutilation, while Serian Carlyle and Rachel Morley apply it to the conflict between pregnant women, men and the State on the right to abortion in the Soviet Union. The authors brilliantly show how patriarchal authority works informally through cultural norms to control female bodies and reproduce gender hierarchies. A second aspect that the volume illuminates is that of the gendered and racialized configuration of authority. By addressing the question of

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“what does authority look like?” Deborah Cameron analyzes the masculine features of linguistic and discursive authority and points out the impossibility for women to appropriate it in the same way as men do and the limitation of women’s assimilation to men as a solution. Similarly, Anais Angelo looks at the construction of political authority as masculine by Kenyan leaders, also noting the importance of literacy in the politicians’ narratives, while Ioulia Kolovou discusses the gendered features of political power and legitimate authorship in the case of twelfth-century Byzantine historian and princess Anna Komnene. Linked to the question of the configuration of authority is that of its distribution, namely, “who is entitled to speak for the others?” If authority looks like those in power, subjects who do not possess the characteristics that confer status easily find themselves disempowered and prevented from representing themselves (when not from speaking altogether, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has cogently argued).15 As essays by Antonette Arogo, Charlotte Ross, and Carlotta Cossutta and Arianna Mainardi argue, informal authority reproduces hierarchies also within spaces supposedly dedicated to challenging inequalities, such as social movements. Arogo discusses the impact of class and race in determining the perceived authority of victims of abuse in the #MeToo movement, highlighting the “white” and “upper-­ class” features of authority. Ross looks at the question of authority and political representation in British and Italian lesbian movements, showing how lesbian subjects with more normative agendas and trans-­ exclusionary views are credited with the authority to speak for other—“queerer”—subjects by the larger authority of mainstream media. Cossutta and Mainardi look at gendered relations of power and male-­ oriented structures within social movements of the Italian far left. Cossutta and Mainardi’s chapter also showcases a third, fundamental dimension of authority that this volume investigates, namely the negotiation of authority by traditionally disempowered subjects and the opening up of practices of solidarity, resistance and subversion that reshape authority itself. The girls interviewed by Cossutta and Mainardi use feminism as a framework to redefine authority horizontally, activating processes of subjectivation whereby authority is constructed from shared knowledge  See Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?.”

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and mutual recognition. Similarly, F.  Vera-Grey interviews women on their relationship to pornography, which is held as an authoritative source on sexuality, but also actively questioned and creatively appropriated by the women. Through these interviews, Vera-Grey dismantles a top-down understanding of the authority of pornographic representation over subjective experience. Petra Kuppinger and Roja Fazaeli identify emerging, transformative instances of female authority in religious contexts. Kuppinger investigates a horizontal exercise of informal authority in the form of knowledge-sharing and guidance over religious issues among women in a multi-cultural neighborhood in Germany. Fazaeli looks at the way in which state-sponsored religious education for women, mostly aimed at the conservative control of Iranian society, opens up spaces of empowerment for women, which reverberate positively in the domestic sphere. Authority is also redefined through women’s appropriation of an authorial position. Oak investigates the case of Pandita Ramabai, the sole female response to the legal/theological debate over the age of consent in India. Oak highlights how Ramabai used her exceptional authority as an upper-caste woman reputed for her Sanskrit learning in order to challenge the very terms of the debate itself, trying to bend it toward the empowerment of women. Similarly to Ramabai, female black artists Maryse Condé and Gerty Dambury discussed by Lee and writers Vera Mutafchieva and Maro Douka discussed by Kolovou use their artistic voices to become authors of their own narrative and defy normative roles, stereotypes and identities. In this way, these essays propose a direction for a feminist appropriation and redefinition of authority, shifting its connotation from coercive power to agency, shared knowledge and the possibility to critique the political and epistemic foundations of inequality and oppression.

References Adorno, Theodor W., et  al. 1982. The Authoritarian Personality. New  York/ London: Norton c1950. Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Ahmed, Sarah. 2014. Willful Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1956. Authority in the Twentieth Century. The Review of Politics 18 (4, October): 403–417. ———. 1968. What is Authority. In Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought, 91–141. New York: Viking. Authority. 2018. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/13349?redirectedFrom=authority&. Accessed 25 September 2019. Butler, Judith. 2010. Performative Agency. Journal of Cultural Economy 3 (2): 147–161. Carastathis, Anna. 2014. The Concept of Intersectionality in Feminist Theory. Philosophy Compass 9 (5): 304–314. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (8): 139–167. ———. 1991. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6): 1241–1299. Davies, Bronwyn. 1991. The Concept of Agency: A Feminist Poststructuralist Analysis. Social Analysis 30: 42–53. Davis, Angela. 1981. Women, Race and Class. New York: Random House. do Mar Pereira, Maria. 2017. Power, Knowledge and Feminist Scholarship. An Ethnography of Academia. London: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception. Trans. A.  M. Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, Tavistock Publications. ———. 1990. The Will to Knowledge. Volume 1, The History of Sexuality. Trans. Robert Hurley. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ———. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan, 2nd edn. New York: Vintage Books. Friedrich, Carl J., ed. 1958. Authority. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gender and Authority Network’s Podcasts Series. https://soundcloud.com/gender-authority-network. Accessed 20 August 2018. Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella. 2012. In Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, ed. Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. Gonzalez, and Angela P. Harris. Boulder: University Press of Colorado. hooks, bell. 1981. Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press.

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———. 1986–87. Talking Back. Discourse 8: 123–128. Isaac, Tracy. 2002. Feminism and Agency. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (1): 129–154. Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom: The Crossing Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Moraga, Cherríe, and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. 1981. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New  York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press. Sennett, Richard. 1993. Authority, c1980. New York: W.W. Norton. Smith, William, ed. 1890–91. Auctoritas. In A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. London: J. Murray. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1994. Can the Subaltern Speak? In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia University Press. Weber, Max. 1965. Politics as a Vocation. Trans. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Women and the Canon Conference Program. http://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/ women-and-canon. Accessed 20 August 2018.

Part I Politics

2 Language and the Problem of Women’s Authority Deborah Cameron

“ Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” A Brief History of Verbal Hygiene for Women For the past fifty years, it has been a truth almost universally acknowledged that women’s continuing inequality in the Western public sphere is at least partly a consequence of their socialized inability to speak and write with authority. Both in popular self-help literature and in some influential forms of expert discourse, women’s ways of using language have been persistently characterized as “weak,” “powerless,” “tentative,” and “unassertive;” many initiatives designed to help women succeed in business, politics and the professions include, or even center on, forms of speech and language training which aim to replace women’s supposedly dysfunctional verbal habits with other, more “authoritative” strategies. In this chapter I will present a critical examination of this form of “verbal

D. Cameron (*) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_2

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hygiene for women.”1 After briefly outlining its history, I will argue, drawing on evidence from feminist research on language and gender, that it is an ideological mystification of a problem whose real causes lie elsewhere—not in women’s own verbal behavior, but in the gendered and sexist discourses through which their behavior is interpreted and evaluated. From the late middle ages until the mid-twentieth century, most of the literature that instructed European and North American women on the proper use of language did so on the assumption that a virtuous woman was reticent in private and silent in public. Early modern conduct books exhorted women to cultivate the virtues of modesty, piety and obedience; their husbands might need to be “skillful in speech,” but a wife should “boast of silence.”2 Challenges to this strict sexual division of linguistic labor could provoke extreme reactions: in 1837, as abolitionist women like the Grimké sisters toured the United States lecturing on the evils of slavery, Congregationalist ministers issued a letter declaring that a woman who asserted her authority by speaking in public was no different from a prostitute: she would “not only cease to bear fruit, but fall in shame and dishonor in the dust.”3 Throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, secular writers continued to treat private domestic life as women’s primary sphere of influence, and to emphasize verbal self-­ effacement as one of the hallmarks of socially acceptable femininity. Emily Post, author of the 1920s bestseller Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, suggested that women conversing with men should refrain from expressing their own opinions and instead ask their male interlocutor for his. “The cleverest woman,” Post observed, “is she who, in talking to a man, makes him feel clever.”4 Similar advice appeared in the marriage manuals or “guides for brides” which remained popular into the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, as increasing numbers of women entered professional employment, and as a moderate, liberal form of feminism which campaigned for sex-equality in the public sphere made its  See Cameron, Verbal Hygiene.  Jones, “Nets and Bridles,” 8. 3  Quoted in Bean, “Gaining a Public Voice,” 26. 4  Post, Etiquette, 51. 1 2

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way into the cultural mainstream, a new kind of linguistic advice began to appear which was diametrically opposed to the tradition just described. As women’s aspirations changed, their habitual ways of using language began to be seen as an obstacle to their advancement. The “feminine” qualities they had previously been encouraged to display—reticence, modesty, self-effacement, deference to the needs and feelings of others— were redefined as problematic, preventing women from exercising the authority demanded by their new public roles. How could a woman be a credible leader if she was unable or unwilling to use a direct, assertive and confident style of speech? To fulfill her potential and achieve her ambitions she would need to learn new ways of using language—and conversely, to unlearn the dysfunctional habits imposed on her by a male-dominated and sexist culture. Ideas about what these dysfunctional habits were came from two main sources. One was the theory and practice of assertiveness training, which was originally developed by therapists to combat the extreme passivity found among patients who had spent extended periods in psychiatric institutions,5 and was later taken up by grassroots feminists who saw a parallel with the situation of women;6 assertiveness training courses designed specifically for women would later become a popular form of career development offered by institutions such as universities. Another important source, however, was the then-emerging academic study of language and gender. One particularly influential text was the linguist Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place, which proposed that girls were socialized from early childhood to use language in ways that reflected their subordinate social status; in particular, they were exhorted to be “ladylike,” which meant expressing themselves less forcefully than boys and men.7 The examples Lakoff discussed included a preference for weak expletives (e.g., “fudge” rather than “fuck”), the habit of using tag questions rather than declarative statements (“it’s a lovely day today, isn’t it?”), as if asking for the addressee’s approval, and the tendency to make super-­ polite requests like “I wonder if you could possibly send me that report?”  Rakos, Assertive Behavior.  Withers, “Don’t Talk While I’m Interrupting,” 106–9. 7  Lakoff, Language and Woman’s Place. 5 6

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Lakoff did not suggest that women were unable to use other linguistic strategies if the context required them to do so. As she saw it, the problem they faced was more that they were liable to be damned whatever they did: if they used the “ladylike” register she labeled “women’s language,” they would be judged as weak and lacking in authority, but if they did not use it they risked a different kind of negative judgment, that they were overly aggressive and “unfeminine.” I will suggest later on that this analysis of the problem was, and still is, broadly correct. But in the popularized version that came to inform most advice and training, the nuances of Lakoff’s argument were lost. What was left was a cruder “deficit model,” according to which women had only one style in their repertoire, and that style was objectively undesirable, to be eliminated through remedial instruction and replaced with what was seen as the obvious alternative: imitating the supposed behavior of men. I use the word “supposed” advisedly here, because the tradition of advice I am discussing, which emerged in the 1970s and is still going strong today, is almost uniformly lacking in any kind of evidence base. It begins from sweeping and inaccurate generalizations about the actual linguistic behavior of both sexes, and proceeds to recommend the “male” behavior as preferable, without in most cases offering any justification beyond the unstated proposition that if men are more successful than women in some field of endeavor, and men also use linguistic features X, Y and Z more/less than women do, increasing/decreasing women’s use of X, Y and Z will help them to become more successful. For instance, a 1980s’ text entitled Leadership Skills for Women: Achieving Impact as a Manager asserts that “men typically use less body language than women,” and then tells readers they should “watch men’s body language to see how they do it.”8 The implication is obviously that “less” body language is preferable to “more,” though this claim is not supported by any explanation in terms of the meaning or communicative function of men’s or women’s body language: it is simply taken for granted that whatever men do should be regarded as the norm. If women’s behavior is different, it is axiomatically deficient. That it is also axiomatically women’s problem is clearly demonstrated by another recommendation made in Leadership  Manning and Haddock, Leadership Skills, 7.

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Skills for Women: “Speak directly to men and stand firm when you are interrupted. Statistics show that women allow themselves to be interrupted up to 50 percent more often than men. Don’t contribute to those statistics!”9 These injunctions completely bypass the political analysis offered by feminists like Lakoff, who presented women’s verbal behavior as a product of their socialization in a culture structured by sex inequality, and saw changing that culture as the way forward. In advice literature the way forward is individual self-improvement: it is both women’s responsibility to fix their problems, and women’s fault if they do not succeed.

 he Tradition Continues: Empowering Female T Speakers in the Twenty-First Century Though by the 1990s many feminists were highly critical of deficit model–based approaches to communication training for women,10 “talk like a man” advice has not withered away over the last twenty-five years; training courses based on it remain a flourishing (and lucrative) enterprise. In 2017, for instance, The Times reported that the business arm of Britain’s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) offers courses for women—at a cost per trainee of £625 plus VAT for the entry-­ level course and nearly £4000 for the senior executive version—which focus on eliminating behaviors that “unknowingly reduce [women’s] authority by denoting vulnerability or submission.” According to The Times reporter Fariha Karim, these “mistakes” include “using too many head tilts; […] taking up less physical space than men; inappropriately and excessively smiling; and failing to interrupt enough.”11 A spokesperson for RADA told Karim that the entry-level course, “Confidence and Presence for Women,” was aimed at recent graduates who were struggling to make the transition from education to professional employment. “Quite often,” she explained, “they haven’t been taught about how to  Ibid., 15.  For criticisms see Cameron, “Verbal Hygiene”; Crawford, Talking Difference; Gervasio and Crawford, “Social Evaluations of Assertiveness.” 11  Karim, “Rada gets women to act like men.” 9

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hold themselves and make their voices heard. Our courses are trying to change that by giving women the skills they need to empower themselves.” What she did not explain was why these young women’s male peers, though equally new to the world of work, did not need the same kind of support to make the transition. The unspoken premise here is that men already have the skills required to flourish in a professional environment, because the cultural and communicative norms of the workplace are male norms. This language of “empowerment” may be new, but there is nothing new about the assumption that women should change themselves to fit a male-dominated culture, not vice versa. “Feminine” habits—whether or not there is any evidence they actually exist—must be replaced by “masculine” ones—again, regardless of whether they exist, and also regardless of whether there is any good reason to favor them over the alternatives. (Why, for instance, should it be assumed that if women interrupt others less frequently than men, it is the women and not the men whose behavior requires adjustment?) The kind of advice that used to be found mainly in books like Leadership Skills for Women and in women’s magazines aimed at a similar demographic (middle-class or upwardly mobile professional women) is if anything even more pervasive today than it was in the past. Articles on the theme of “how women undermine their authority at work by using the wrong words/tone of voice/body language” appear regularly on many popular (and largely free) general-interest websites like Slate and the Huffington Post, as well as specialist business sites like Business Insider, Forbes and LinkedIn, and it only takes one viral example to create a new myth about women’s “weak” and “powerless” language. That was the effect, for instance, of a 2015 piece by former Google executive Ellen Petry Leanse, which claimed that women in business over-used the word “just.”12 “Just” can function as a hedge (i.e., a way of making a request or statement sound more tentative), and hedging in general was identified by Lakoff as one of the characteristic features of women’s language; but until Leanse’s intervention “just” had not featured prominently in advice on speaking with authority (perhaps because it can also function in the  Leanse, “‘Just’ Say No.”

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opposite way, to mark emphasis, as it does in Nike’s slogan “Just Do It”). After Leanse criticized it, however, it quickly became a shibboleth. Within a few months someone had developed an app called “Just Not Sorry,” which highlights each use of “just” in the text of email messages and invites the user to delete it. Holding your mouse over the offending word cues a pop-up message telling you (in most cases misleadingly, for the reasons already explained) that “‘just’ demeans what you have to say. ‘Just’ shrinks your power.” “Sorry,” another word targeted by the app, is said to “undermine your gravitas and make you appear unfit for leadership.”13 The case of “sorry,” whose alleged over-use by women has become a cliché of recent advice literature, will serve to illustrate how this genre has developed since the 1970s. One notable development is the extent to which the same expert wisdom is now being disseminated globally, without regard to cultural and linguistic differences. The text quoted below, for instance, appeared on an Indian website14: If you think about it, women are always apologizing—even when it’s not their fault. Especially when it’s not their fault. In the boardroom. When asking if someone’s got a moment to talk. When accidentally bumped by the gent who just sat in the next chair. While handing baby to daddy. In the process of recovering their legitimate share of the quilt at bedtime. While opening the passenger door of the car. It’s like they are genetically hardwired to apologize for being there, for bringing themselves to notice, for leaving the kitchen, for abdicating parenting responsibility however brief it may be, for being greater than the sum of the parts society (mostly the male bits) expects them to be. It’s the residual guilt of generations of conditioning.

But if you read on, you discover that the real message is about a different kind of conditioning: “Stop it, says this advertisement by shampoo brand Pantene. Don’t be sorry. If anything, be sorry about not being sorry. Instead of apologizing, shine strong—like your Pantene-shampooed hair.” This text is an advertorial, linked to a worldwide promotional campaign 13 14

 Cauterucci, “New Chrome app.”  Roy, “Women, don’t be sorry.”

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for haircare products made by the US-based company Pantene. Embedded in it is a link to a video of the TV commercial, “Sorry not sorry,” that launched the campaign in America. The ad presents a series of vignettes in which women apologize unnecessarily, followed by the “stop apologizing and shine strong” message. At least in the United States, audience responses were overwhelmingly positive. Pantene had understood, as the trade publication Adweek commented, that “talking about sexism and feminism and female empowerment is a great way for brands to build buzz.” What is new here is not the commercial exploitation of feminism. That was already happening in the self-help books and training courses of the 1970s and 1980s. But today discourse on “sexism and feminism and female empowerment” can be used to sell not only self-help books and training courses, but also completely unrelated products like shampoo. A certain kind of feminism has itself become a successful brand, with which other brands are keen to be associated.15 Its appeal to companies like Pantene is connected to its focus on individual “empowerment” rather than societal change. The message of the “Sorry, not sorry” ad, or the RADA courses—that women who aspire to succeed in public or professional life just need to stop “holding themselves back”—is politically unthreatening: it suggests that women can be empowered without disturbing the established values and practices of the public sphere, and without demanding that men give up any of their privileges. But this discourse on language, gender and authority has now existed for nearly fifty years: three generations of professional women have been initiated into the secrets of assertiveness, leadership, confidence and presence, and yet the problem clearly has not been solved. There is, I suggest, a straightforward reason for that: the discourse I have been describing misdiagnoses the problem and prescribes remedies which are doomed to fail.

 On contemporary feminism as a commodity or a “brand,” see Rottenberg, The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism, and Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once. 15

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 he Real Problem: Gendered Expectations T and Sexist Judgments Even leaving aside the other problems with it, such as its inadequate evidence base and its reliance on a deficit model, advice to women to “talk like a man” overlooks the obvious point that women are not men. A woman who behaves in the same way as a man will not necessarily be judged in the same way: what is approved of in him may not be tolerated in her. As Lakoff pointed out over forty years ago, if women avoid using “women’s language” in an attempt to come across as confident and decisive rather than as weak and tentative, they may attract the criticism that their speech is “unfeminine.” That is still, in fact, a common assessment, typically conveyed using a set of code-words that are seldom if ever applied to men (for instance, “bossy,” “shrill” and “strident”). In a recent analysis of the performance evaluations given to male and female managers in the tech sector, Kieran Snyder found that a high percentage of the women who received critical feedback were told they should moderate their “abrasive” way of speaking; in a sample of 248 reviews, seventy-one women—but only two men—received comments of this kind.16 Since the data for her analysis consisted only of the evaluations themselves, Snyder had no way of knowing whether the women who were described by their assessors as “abrasive” behaved differently from the men who attracted no such criticism. But other studies have presented evidence that women who behave in the same ways as men do may nevertheless be perceived as more aggressive. In 2000 Elisabeth Gidengil and Joanna Everitt analyzed the press coverage of a Canadian election in which two of the five competing parties were led by women, and found a striking pattern in the verbs of speaking used by journalists to report or introduce quotations from the leaders’ campaign speeches and other public statements.17 Though the researchers’ analysis of the speeches themselves revealed no sex-difference in aggressiveness, the verbs used to report women leaders’ utterances consistently implied a more aggressive stance: they included “argued,” “blasted,” 16 17

 Snyder, “The Abrasiveness Trap.”  Gidengil and Everitt, “Talking Tough.”

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“fired at,” “hammered away” and “launched [an attack on].” Men were no less likely to attack or argue with their opponents (unsurprisingly, in the context of political campaigning), but these verbal moves were not described in the same kind of language; most commonly they were reported using the maximally non-committal formula “he said.” If, as studies like this suggest, our judgments of male and female speakers reflect our ideas about what is normal and desirable for each sex, that clearly creates a problem for women in positions of authority. Whereas there is no conflict between authority and masculinity—in men, authority is considered natural and desirable—for women the situation is the opposite: displays of authority are seen as unfeminine, and displays of femininity are seen as lacking in authority. In every situation, therefore, women must decide what balance to strike between projecting authority and performing femininity. Too little of the former will make them appear weak; too little of the latter will make them appear “abrasive.” This is a classic double-bind, and the advice given in self-help texts and on training courses does nothing to help women negotiate it. Consider the advice given to women on RADA’s “Confidence and Presence” course, that they should avoid “inappropriate and excessive smiling.” Women are routinely expected to smile, and their failure to smile is frequently treated (by men in particular) as a deliberate affront. Almost every woman has had the experience of been told to smile by acquaintances, co-workers and for that matter complete strangers. And in that situation, women may decide that it is rational to comply: even if it is demeaning to smile when you have no reason or desire to do so, a token gesture may seem preferable to a refusal which might provoke argument or conflict. Is it reasonable to call this smiling “inappropriate and excessive”? Is it helpful to tell women they should emulate the behavior of men, who are not subject to the same expectations, or liable to incur the same sanctions? Injunctions like “stop smiling,” “don’t apologize” and “stand firm when you are interrupted” imply that women have unfettered agency, and nothing to lose by following advice to “talk like men.” The trainers who castigate them for their “weak” or “unassertive” behavior seem never to consider the possibility that this behavior might be the product of strategic choices, made under conditions which constrain women’s options in ways they do not constrain men’s.

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Saying “sorry,” which as noted earlier has become an obsession among popular advice-givers, is a case in point. Like smiling, apologizing does appear to be more frequent among women than among men (though like all generalizations about gender and linguistic behavior, this one masks an enormous amount of individual and contextual variation). However, the explanation typically given in advice literature—that women’s more frequent apologies are a symptom of their insecurity and lack of confidence—is an oversimplification. One study of gender and apologies asked male and female subjects to keep a diary of their offences and to note in each case whether they had apologized.18 Men and women reported apologizing for the same proportion of their offences, but the raw number of offences, and therefore apologies, was higher for women than men. To the researchers this suggested that men may apologize less because they have a higher threshold for perceiving behavior as offensive. In an earlier study, Janet Holmes had noticed that the men in her data were less likely than women to apologize for common infractions such as interrupting someone in conversation or getting too close to them.19 It is tempting to relate this finding to the fact that the right to take up both physical and linguistic space is unequally distributed between the sexes: men are permitted to take up more space than women. Women are not granted the same license to impinge on others’ space, and they may also be more sensitive to infractions which they are more often on the receiving end of. Once again, describing women’s apologies as “excessive” or “unnecessary,” and attributing their behavior to psychological traits like insecurity or lack of confidence, glosses over the key point that women’s linguistic choices are not made in a social vacuum, or on the proverbial “level playing field,” but in a context of structural sexual inequality. There is something deeply paradoxical about a discourse whose ostensible aim is to redress the power imbalance between men and women, but whose recommendations ignore the existence of that imbalance. It is never acknowledged that following advice to “talk like a man” means unilaterally claiming rights which your interlocutors may be reluctant to grant, and which they may penalize you or judge you negatively for 18 19

 Schumann and Ross, “Why Women Apologize.”  Holmes, Women, Men and Politeness.

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demanding. But apart from the uselessness of its recommendations, the edifice of linguistic advice and training described in this chapter invites an even more fundamental criticism: that in focusing on changing women’s behavior it misrepresents and mystifies the nature and root causes of their problem. The real problem is not women’s inability to use the language of authority; it is our culture’s intolerance of authority in women. Indeed, to call it “intolerance” is to understate the degree of hostility and resentment female authority can provoke. This is particularly visible in online forums, where women who express opinions confidently or forcefully are liable to be deluged with misogynist abuse, often couched in the violent, sexually explicit register that the communication researcher Emma Jane dubs “Rapeglish.”20 But misogyny (by which I mean, following the philosopher Kate Manne, not the indiscriminate hatred of women as a class, but rather the systematic punishment of women who step out of their allotted place and are seen to be usurping men’s prerogatives or refusing to meet their needs)21 is not a novel product of the digital age. It is a thread that, as the classicist Mary Beard reminds us, runs through the whole history of Western culture; and as Beard also notes, the public speech of women has always been one focus for it.22 Prohibitions on women’s public utterance are attested across a wide variety of cultures (not only Western ones) and over a vast swathe of historical time; the Victorian clerics mentioned earlier in this chapter, who were scandalized by the phenomenon of women lecturing to mixed audiences, were echoing sentiments that had been expressed centuries earlier by luminaries like St Paul (“the woman should be silent in church”) and Plutarch (“a woman should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she would guard against stripping off her clothes”). In most Western societies these rules are no longer in force (though they are still observed in certain cultural and religious settings), but a woman who speaks from a position of authority, or who takes it upon herself to intervene in public discourse, can still be seen as trespassing on men’s turf. The  Jane, Misogyny Online.  Manne, Down Girl. 22  Beard, Women and Power. 20 21

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authoritative female speaker may also be seen as withholding something men have traditionally felt entitled to demand from women, namely their undivided attention and admiration. A woman does not, as Emily Post puts it, “make a man feel clever” by competing with him, or giving him orders, or expecting him to treat her opinions as no less valid and important than his own. Though today we may pay lip-service to the principle of equality, in practice the entry of women into the public sphere still provokes anxiety and resentment. And it is those responses, rather than women’s own behavior, that undermine women’s authority. If complaints about women’s supposed linguistic deficiencies are just post hoc rationalizations of a deeper resistance to female authority which is rooted in sexism and misogyny, it follows that the problem cannot be solved by tinkering with the minutiae of women’s verbal and nonverbal behaviors—their voices, the words they use, how often they smile or how much they tilt their heads. But that raises a further question, one that so far I have only mentioned in passing: if changing women’s behavior is not the answer, why do so many people—including many women who would describe themselves as feminists—apparently believe it is?

 eoliberal Feminism and the Appeal N of Verbal Hygiene There is no mystery about the investment of some people and organizations in the kinds of advice and training discussed in this chapter. Verbal hygiene for women is a profitable business, from which significant numbers of people—consultants, materials developers, trainers, life-coaches, freelance writers for publications like Slate and Business Insider—derive an income. A lot of the demand for their services comes from companies and other organizations which need to be seen to be doing something to address the various issues that fall under the heading of “equality and diversity.” Sending women on training courses is an attractive option, since it is cheaper and less disruptive than almost any other type of intervention. Whereas proposals to change an institution’s hiring and remuneration policies, its criteria for promotion or its childcare and parental

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leave provision might be met with accusations of unfairness to men, the provision of training to women is uncontentious: not only does it not require any action from men, it also reassures them that their current, privileged position is not the result of injustice—rather it is women who cannot compete, and who therefore need remedial instruction. If this sounds cynical, I acknowledge that it is: in my view the provision of “career development” courses training women in generic “soft skills” like “communication” or “confidence” is itself largely a cynical box-ticking exercise. The people responsible either do not know or do not care that this kind of training has a fifty-year history in which it has achieved very little beyond diverting attention from the institutional sexism which is in fact responsible for the persistence of inequality. At the same time, this bandwagon could not keep rolling without the co-­ operation of women themselves. If women rejected the patronizing assumptions of the deficit model and demanded more radical measures to combat institutional sexism, it would be difficult for organizations to ignore them. Yet many women have bought into those assumptions: today, even more than in the 1980s, policing women’s linguistic behavior—pulling them up on their “over-use” of “just,” “sorry” and an array of other shibboleths—is both presented and apparently received as an authentically feminist gesture. Catherine Rottenberg, the author of a recent book charting the rise of “neoliberal feminism,” sees this emphasis on empowerment through self-­ improvement as part of a larger trend.23 She argues that what has emerged in Anglo-American mainstream and popular culture during the past decade is a form of feminism which fully embraces the neoliberal ethos of competitive individualism. This variant of feminism, the feminism of Beyoncé and Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In (and also of Leanse’s piece about “just” and Pantene’s “Sorry not sorry” advertisement): incites women to perceive themselves as human capital, encouraging them to invest in themselves and to be empowered and “confident.” Ultimately,

 Rottenberg, Neoliberal Feminism.

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it produces a new feminist subject who is incessantly pressed to take on full responsibility for her own well-being and self-care.24

Though clearly its seeds were planted much earlier, Rottenberg suggests that since around 2012 neoliberal feminism has blossomed, and now represents the dominant understanding of what feminism is about: empowering individual women to make their own choices and control their own lives (which is code, she says, for achieving the much-discussed “work-life balance”). It has been able to flourish not only because it seems to offer a solution to the problems faced by many women but also because it offers a solution to one of neoliberalism’s own problems, its inability to integrate unpaid care and reproductive work into its market-centered model of the world. Women continue to be responsible for almost all of this work, but neoliberal feminism presents it as their choice; being able to make that choice is seen as the defining feature of what it means to be “empowered.” And if women choose to “lean in,” to claim a role in the public as well as the private sphere, the providers of advice and training are there to help them develop their human capital and overcome the personal deficiencies that prevent them from competing on equal terms. It is not difficult to understand the appeal of the idea that every woman has the capacity to succeed through her own efforts, and that what she makes of herself is entirely up to her. Nor is it difficult to understand why the alternative analysis—that our destiny is shaped by social forces which we as individuals cannot control—is unappealing and even offensive to some women, who feel it positions them as helpless victims rather than as autonomous agents (though we may associate this view with contemporary neoliberalism, in fact it has been a common reason for female anti-­ feminism throughout the movement’s history). But the problem of women’s authority cannot be resolved at the level of the individual, because authority, generally defined as “the ability to command or influence others without coercion,” requires consent. If women’s claims to authority are (still) not recognized as legitimate, if they are met with resistance or hedged about with conditions, the solution is not to change women, but rather to change the social conditions which shape both the production and the reception of their speech. 24

 Bailes, “Catherine Rottenberg: Neoliberal Feminism.”

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References Bailes, Jon. 2019. Catherine Rottenberg: Neoliberal Feminis. State of Nature, 9 January 2019, https://stateofnatureblog.com/catherine-rottenberg-neoliberal-feminism. Accessed 14 August 2019. Bean, Judith Mattson. 2006. Gaining a Public Voice: A Historical Perspective on American Women’s Public Speaking. In Speaking Out: The Female Voice in Public Contexts, ed. Judith Baxter, 21–39. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Beard, Mary. 2017. Women and Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books. Cameron, Deborah. 1995. Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge. ———. 1994. Verbal Hygiene for Women: Linguistics Misapplied? Applied Linguistics 15: 382–398. Cauterucci, Christina. 2015. New Chrome App Helps Women Stop Saying ‘Just’ and ‘Sorry’ in Emails. Slate, December 29, 2015. https://slate.com/ human-interest/2015/12/new-chrome-app-helps-women-stop-saying-justand-sorry-in-emails.html. Accessed 14 August 2019. Crawford, Mary. 1995. Talking Difference. London: Sage Publications. Gervasio, Amy, and Mary Crawford. 1989. Social Evaluations of Assertiveness: A Critique and Speech Act Reformulation. Psychology of Women Quarterly 13: 1–25. Gidengil, Elisabeth, and Joanna Everitt. 2000. Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage. Working Paper no. 12, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. https://shorensteincenter.org/ wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2000_12_gidengil_everitt.pdf?x78124. Accessed 14 August 2019. Holmes, Janet. 1996. Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman. Jane, Emma. 2017. Online Misogyny: A Short (and Brutal) History. London: Sage Publications. Jones, Ann Rosalind. 1987. Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and 16th Century Women’s Lyrics. In The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse, 39–72. New York: Methuen. Karim, Fariha. 2017. Rada gets women to act like men. Times, May 18, 2017. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/625-class-helps-women-to-intimidatelike-a-man-twqvnth59. Accessed 14 August 2019. Lakoff, Robin. 1975. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row.

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Leanse, Ellen Petry. 2015. ‘Just’ Say No. Linked In, May 29, 2015. https://www. linkedin.com/pulse/just-say-ellen-petry-leanse. Accessed 14 August 2019. Manne, Kate. 2018. Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manning, Patricia with Marilyn Haddock. 1987. Leadership Skills for Women: Achieving Impact as a Manager. California: Crisp Publications. Post, Emily. 1922. Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage. New  York: Funk and Wagnell. Rakos, Richard F. 1991. Assertive Behavior: Theory, Research and Training. New York: Routledge. Rottenberg, Catherine. 2018. The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roy, Gitanjali. 2014. Women, Don’t Be Sorry. Stop Apologizing All the Time. NDTV, June 23, 2014. https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/women-dont-besorry-stop-apologizing-all-the-time-580507. Accessed 14 August 2019. Schumann, Karina, and Michael Ross. 2010. Why Women Apologize More Than Men: Gender Differences in Thresholds for Perceiving Offensive Behavior. Psychological Science 21: 1649–1655. Snyder, Kieran. 2014. The Abrasiveness Trap: High-Achieving Men and Women Are Described Differently in Reviews. Fortune, August 26, 2014. http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-ias/. Accessed 14 August 2019. Withers, Jean. 1975. Don’t Talk While I’m Interrupting. Ms, March 1975, 106–9. Zeisler, Andi. 2016. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement. New York: Public Affairs.

3 Negotiating Authority Through Feminism: Girls’ Political Experience in Italian Social Movements Arianna Mainardi and Carlotta Cossutta

Introduction The relationship between gender and authority is a complex subject that has been investigated by political philosophy, social sciences and feminism in different ways but with equal intensity. As feminist and queer activists, as well as female researchers, we have heard this theme emerge over the years in the practices and political discussions that we have experienced and that form the background of this contribution. Feminist reflections, in particular, have been fundamental to our questioning the relations of power and authority in which we have found ourselves living.

A. Mainardi (*) University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] C. Cossutta University of Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_3

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This questioning is present in the research into the political action of girls involved in Italian social movements that we have been carrying out for some time. In La Jeune Fille può partecipare? Una riflessione attorno al genere come dimensione dell’agire politico tra le ragazze dei movimenti sociali [Can the Jeune Fille participate? A reflection on gender as a dimension of political action among the girls in social movements],1 we proposed an investigation into the forms of subjectivation experienced by young girls in the context of the male-oriented political structures of the self-­ organized groups of the Italian far left—in this respect, “male” refers to a hegemonic and authoritarian masculinity. In that contribution we were interested in the forms of action that girls put into place in a context defined by historically male practices and how—and if—feminism is a useful tool to them. We were, and are, driven by an interest in how girls negotiate their relationship with feminism. We are aware, of course, that feminism has a stratified history in which, within a common framework, the different generations and geographical and social contexts have given rise to different ways of understanding the political practices and the objectives of feminist struggles. For this reason, it seemed important to us to focus our research on exploring how and if the debate on authority within feminism had pervaded the reflections of girls who are politically active in mixed contexts not necessarily focused on gender issues. These reflections on authority are part of a context, exemplified here by the Italian one, in which there is a growing vitality in the struggle movements for LGBT rights (lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans∗) and recently formed queer feminist collectives. As Lorenzo Bernini argued in his speech at the 2013 Biennale della Democrazia [Biennial of Democracy], women’s and LGBT movements in Italy have a long and glorious history.2 A story that has often remained hidden, handed down through underground and non-institutionalized channels, in part due to the choice in the 1980s to not create departments of Women’s or Gender Studies, but to pervade the different disciplines in a transversal way. For a long time, this resulted in a form of marginality that is being questioned  Cossutta and Mainardi, “La Jeune Fille può partecipare?.”  Bernini, “Intervento.”

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only now. Forms of militancy are starting to express themselves and to recognize their own characteristics and courageous studies are emerging in the academic world, investigating the specificities of feminist collectives while also accounting for the ferment that is at work in the contemporary Italian political landscape.3 Queer and feminist reflections are ever more able to enrich and address the central themes of social movements, such as the construction of subjectivity in a time of crisis or the demands of income and welfare.4 The queer perspective, intrinsically intersectional, offers spaces for new alliances and new influences crossing different struggles, from anti-racist to animalist, and passing through new forms of internationalism. At the same time, it is more difficult to find texts that take into account how social movements (which do not recognize themselves in the feminist and queer movements) include a gender dimension in their political action,5 perhaps because the movement itself seems to exclude gender as a critical lever for action. Indeed, movements often seem to treat gender as a separate sector, detached from the rest, juxtaposed to other claims without real interconnection, so much so that it leads us to question: is a non-separatist work on gender possible? By “separatist,” we do not mean the division between genders or female-only spaces, but the division by areas of interest, among which gender issues seem to be the only ones with an exclusive and particular character. This attitude is often also shared by the researchers who alternately observe social and feminist movements, as if they were two mutually impermeable contexts. Actually, feminist movements have always been able to critically observe the social and political movements of their own time, of which feminists are often an active part, in order to highlight risks, aporias, unbalanced power relations and forms of exclusion.6 It is no accident that Non una di meno (“Not One Less”—a nationally based feminist movement against gender violence, which developed following an international movement born in Argentina, Ni Una Menos) dedicated part of its work  See Bonomi Romagnoli, Irriverenti e libere.  Busi and De Simoni, “Soggettività insolventi.” 5  For more on this topic see Wulff, Bernstein and Taylor, “New Theoretical Directions.” 6  Arruzza and Cirillo, Storia delle storie del femminismo. 3 4

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and a chapter of its “Feminist Plan Against Male Violence Against Women and Gender Violence” to the topic of sexism in movements, recognizing that: The episodes of violence and sexism within movements, self-managed and occupied spaces are not an exception but the consequence of daily asymmetries and hierarchies of power and of binary division of roles within social spaces. This on the one hand leads to the reproduction of male and female stereotypical roles, on the other it makes access and intelligibility for trans∗ or gender non-conforming people difficult. We have also recognized as a sexist practice the one of delegating the management of sexism in spaces to women: we will continue to fight the delegation mechanism and to have an intersectional and transfeminist perspective that overcomes the automatic association of feminine and feminist/anti-sexist.7

In this chapter we are interested in investigating whether this critical lens also belongs to the girls who are active in social movements and who do not recognize themselves primarily in the feminist or queer movement, girls who are part of a context characterized by the classic political action of self-organization; participating in political collectives, taking part in self-managed assemblies, attending and managing self-organized social spaces. Starting from our dual position as researchers and activists, we focus on five semi-structured interviews with girls between twenty-one and twenty-nine years working in Milan in some occupied and self-managed spaces,8 to understand, through their gaze and their words, which roads they follow to negotiate different forms of authority, and whether feminist reflections find space on those paths.9 In so doing, the chapter offers a consideration of the relationship between gender and authority from  Report of the panel “Sexism in the Movements.” The feminist plan against men’s violence produced by Non Una di Meno is also available online. See “Feminist Plan.” 8  In these five interviews, the focus has been placed on politics, authority and feminism. They are part of ten interviews with girls conducted in recent years on political participation and gender issues (some results are published in Cossutta and Mainardi, “La Jeune Fille può partecipare?”). Eight girls are involved in the whole research project; two of them have been interviewed twice over time in order to introduce a longitudinal perspective to the analysis and see changes through time. 9  All interviews have been transcribed and anonymized. 7

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the bottom up, from the direct experiences of the young activists involved in social movements, to comprehend how their gaze on the world can build new practices and new understandings of the exercise of power. In this respect, recognizing how gender gives structure to, and at the same time enables, power relations inside and outside social movements is crucial for understanding the challenges faced by political participation today.

Feminist Perspectives on Authority The violence with which femininitude is administrated in the world of authoritarian commodities recalls the way the dominant power feels free to manhandle its slaves, when in fact it needs them to ensure its own reproduction.10

From its origins, feminism has been characterized as a political and theoretical movement capable of challenging the modern conception of power, and therefore also that of authority. Referring to Max Weber’s definition we can argue that power, in the modern age, is characterized by “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will against resistance.”11 Authority, therefore, becomes the name of a relationship between unequal subjects, in which one has the strength to not only avoid conditioning by others, but also to impose your will on them. In this sense, this modality of understanding authority moves away from the classical model that saw auctoritas as an ability to act, to give life to something, and from whence it would bestow supremacy on those who embarked on the same path.12 In relation to the Weberian definition, it is clear that from the beginning the feminist movement could be understood as an anti-­authoritarian movement; however this reading would be reductive. In fact, feminist thought aims not so much to destroy authority as to highlight the forms of oppression that are experienced by its subjects and to propose new  Tiqqun, Raw Materials, 103.  Weber, Economy and Society, 53. 12  For a brief history of the concept of authority see: Sennett, Authority. 10 11

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models of action and independence. Mary Wollstonecraft underlined how women’s ability to act meant liberation from conditions of dependence and compulsion, but without recreating such power relations. In the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she writes that she wants women to have power over themselves and not over men. She expresses a strong desire for independence—“independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue—and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath”13—that is not transformed into a desire for domination but, on the contrary, calls into question the very presuppositions of domination, imagining forms of authority that do not feed on the resistance of others. According to Rebecca Hanrahan and Louise Antony, “feminism is, at least partly, an antiauthoritarian movement: it is and has been historically a movement that calls into question received views, that challenges the legitimacy of existing hierarchies, and that unmasks many traditional ‘authorities’ as arbitrary and ungrounded. But if that’s so, on what basis do we claim authority for ourselves? How do we render authority problematic without relinquishing it?”14 In this light it is possible to read the history of the feminist movement as the history of attempts, through different models, to build new social relationships, characterized by the intertwining of public and private spheres, which aim to avoid the reproduction of the oppressive conditions that women have suffered in the past. The models that continue to act can, in a very schematic way, be divided into two major strands: on the one hand there is a request for inclusion in the public sphere, which opens it up to modification and moves on the level of rights and formal equality; on the other hand there is a declared extraneousness to the forms of male politics and power, clearly expressed by Virginia Woolf in Three Guineas and pursued by the feminism of sexual difference.15 These models, of course, interweave and are not clearly distinguishable in

 Wollstonecraft, “Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” 80.  Hanrahan and Antony, “Because I Said So,” 59. 15  See Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference; and Cavarero, “The Need for a Sexed Thought.” 13 14

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practice, but give rise to different imaginations and different ways of understanding political participation. In Italy, in particular from the 1970s, the relationship between feminism and authority was first formed in the direction of rejection, through the practice of self-awareness and the gathering in small groups, often in conflict with the self-organized political groups of the far left.16 But shortly thereafter part of the movement expressed the need to find new genealogies and new forms of female authority, capable of overcoming the classical structures of power. That approach has been based on the admonition of Luce Irigaray that if subjects “aim simply for a change in the distribution of power, leaving intact the power structure itself, then they are resubjecting themselves, deliberately or not, to a phallocratic order.”17 Precisely in an attempt to escape the phallocratic order, the Italian thought on sexual difference has turned to the figure of the Mother as a form of female authority that is based on the practice of “entrustement,”18 in which a younger woman recognizes in another woman a figure not only of reference, but also of authority. This practice should be a tool for escaping the male imaginary, allowing for the tracing a different story and the building of forms of subjectivation that are not subservient to the male gaze. As Luisa Muraro puts it, “if I put myself in the genealogy of the mother, if I measure myself by the relationship with a woman, if above the established power I put female authority—if I create symbolically—then it is another world, but in the most practical and realistic way. It is already a practice of many.”19 In this sense, the women who follow these thoughts on sexual difference recover the ancient definition of authority “which comes from the Latin verb augere, meaning the ability to make others grow and prosper, to nurture and, almost literally, to augment” and re-signify it as a non-oppressive practice.20

 Stelliferi, Il femminismo a Roma.  Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, 81. 18  For a reconstruction of the practices of entrustment see: Scarparo, “In the Name of the Mother.” 19  Muraro, “La politica è la politica delle donne,” 2. 20  Buttarelli, “Fare autorità, disfare potere,” 87. 16 17

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It is clear that this reading of female authority has many risks, first of all that of reproposing a constant reproduction of the identical, normative forms of femininity that can trap subjects as much as male models and become accomplices to them.21 In reaction to these risks, a feminism that feeds on the reflections of queer theory, especially on power as productive as well as repressive, has emerged in Italy since the end of the 1990s. If, following Foucault, we understand how we are providing the very condition of its existence and the trajectory of its desire, then the power is not simply what we oppose but also, what we depend on for our existence and what we harbor and preserve in the beings that we are.22

In this sense the practice of starting from one’s own situation and of positioning oneself, able to read the power structures in which we live in order to subvert them, is equally reclaimed. However, it was also precisely in the 1990s that a strong backlash against feminism began to develop, declaring its aims had already been achieved, and depicting feminists as exaggeratedly and prejudicially anti-­ men. This backlash fed on feminist language, proposing the idea of girlpower and the image of a hyper-feminized girl who finds her power in this feminization. This form of girlpower is commercial and institutionalized and emphasizes girls’ free ability to act, above all in the field of consumption or individual and solipsistic affirmation (spiced up by new rhetoric about young people). A form of power and authority, therefore, that feeds on stereotypes about girls and transforms them into models of self-­realization. At the same time, however, the figure of the girl as a weak subject in need of protection re-emerges as a victim unable to choose. This is also evident in the construction of the physicality of the “girl,” as Iris Marion Young shows in her essay “Throwing Like a Girl,” where she draws on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological analysis of the lived body to analyze “the situatedness of the woman’s actual bodily movement and orientation  Putino, Amiche mie isteriche.  Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, 2.

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to its surroundings and its world.”23 Young notes that girls and women often fail to fully utilize the spatial potential of their bodies (e.g., they throw “like girls”), they try not to take up too much space and they tend to approach physical activity tentatively and uncertainly.24 The girls, therefore, find themselves squeezed between a form of illusory power and forms of victimization that are its direct, even if apparently paradoxical, consequences. It is within this framework that Tiqqun describes the Jeune-Fille [young girl] as the perfect device of biopolitics: a model, not referring to sex or age, which allows us to grasp some of the productive forms of subjectivity that biopower enacts.25 Michel Foucault showed how biopolitics, unlike sovereignty, does not limit itself to the power of bringing death, but also assumes that of giving life, forging it and giving it form.26 The young girl is the subject that most of all is subjected to these productive thrusts: the female body is increasingly exposed to intrusions by forms of external power and is even more so in a moment, like that of adolescence, in which identity is in formation and the gaze and recognition of the other take on great value. The Jeune-Fille, therefore, is pure appearance, pure “care to the maintenance of its facade,”27 squeezed between the imperative of perfection at all costs and that of naturalness, understood both as spontaneity and as adherence to an ideal of healthy, biological life in contact with nature. Even if young girls do not immediately identify with the Jeune-Fille, they are heavily exposed to her solicitations and, because the power that acts on them is cloaked in “laughable neutrality,”28 it seems to be even more difficult to unmask and question it. It is for this very reason that recent feminist theorizations have indicated “a resurgent patriarchy” in the neoliberal post-feminist era, which re-orders and re-establishes the heterosexual matrix through a “postfeminist masquerade” required of  Young, Throwing Like a Girl, 143.  Ibid. 25  Tiqqun, Raw Materials. 26  Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics. 27  Tiqqun, Raw Materials, 67. 28  Ibid., 96. 23 24

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girls and women: post-patriarchy does not act in an openly repressive manner, but uses biopower to make subordination seductive.29 Remarkably, feminism—or, better, feminisms—has long questioned power relations and has redefined the idea of authority through a critical perspective that involves issues such as gender equality, resistance and subjectivity in their mutual, and sometimes contradictory, relationship. In the next section we will outline how girls articulate their presence in the collective political realm, looking at how feminism informs their discourses around politics and authority, opening up to new political practices and subjectivity. We did not provide the girls with a definition of feminism, but, conversely, we started from their understanding of what feminism means to them. Through this frame, we look first at how the concept of authority is negotiated in the girls’ personal and political experience, producing an ambivalent understanding of power. Second, the analysis will show how male-oriented forms of political actions are challenged in order to build political spaces and methods that are more inclusive and antipatriarchal, where feminism becomes a constitutive tool for imagining new forms of political alliances and authoritativeness.

 he Girls’ Gaze: Criticizing Authority T and Practicing Feminism There is a rhetorical narrative that says that in our spaces there is no leaderism, no power … it is not true. In all spaces there are subjects that matter more than others. (Sara)

Authority emerges as an ambivalent concept in the words of the interviewees. The girls’ first thoughts on authority seem to be directed toward the figures—or relationships—that represent the institution, toward people that hold some form of power exercised in a unidirectional way, whether scholastic or familial. But through the girls’ narratives a theme of authority emerges that evokes the semantic fields of competence, experience and credit.  McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism.

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On the one hand the dimension of power (who holds it, how it is exercised and toward whom) emerges explicitly and authority assumes a negative meaning closely connected to the imposition of opinions, points of view and roles, as the opposite to sharing knowledge and skills. This point of view on power looks at its intimidating and coercive nature and is based on the girls’ experience in the context of some assembly practices (where the speaking time is often unequally allocated) and the organization of social spaces and marches (where there is a strict division with respect to gender roles that often expects boys to be in front in marches and riots and girls to take care of cleaning in the squat). The girls’ narratives not only describe hierarchies and vertical management of power, but, above all, they become a critique of the different forms of authoritarianism. The critique of authoritarianism is directed toward the political spaces they inhabit as well as the more intimate spaces and relationships in their lives—whether with parents or with partners—leading them to question the contexts they inhabit and in which they participate: “I have often questioned how we could undermine these types of dynamics” (Sara). On the other hand, however, authority is also configured as authoritativeness: given to those who have skills and abilities that they make available to others in order to make spaces for exchange and comparison possible in the context of their political experience in social movements. Authority as an ambivalent dimension able to encompass both a positive and a negative view of the management of power is highlighted by Sara. In her words, the spaces of grassroots politics are not exempt from forms of authoritarianism, but they also open up possible forms of sharing and exchange that challenge the idea of power as a synonym for imposition. On the one hand authority can be authoritative, on the other authoritarian. I recognize authoritativeness in many of my comrades on certain issues on which I feel like reflecting or seeking advice and I recognize them as authoritative. With those I recognize as authoritarian … I cannot deal with it. (Sara)

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If the girls’ first socialization to authority took place during childhood and adolescence in the domestic spaces (home and family) and scholastic settings (in confrontation with educational figures), in the political spaces in which they are actively engaged today, their relationship to authority is questioned and redefined as a possible space of subjectivation that decides who can speak, when and how. We will now go in-depth into the relationship that the girls build with politics. By relationship with politics we mean, first of all, the forms that the girls assume as militants in the self-organized social movements of the far left (e.g., assemblies, student collectives, squats, occupied houses, demonstrations)—the collective dimension of their political engagement. In October I attended the first assemblies and I started to become involved in the movement. It was the first time I joined a collective and I had political independence. (Giorgia) I lived alone for a year in a house squat. (Sara)

That collective political engagement is also often expressed in the narratives through an “us,” as highlighted by the interview of Giulia. With my collective we do a lot of work in the neighborhood. We have written a text about the construction of resistant communities for rebuilding a social fabric and working with neighboring collectives to create a network. (Giulia)

Furthermore, we refer to the more individual sphere of political experience; by which we mean the subjective relationship that the girls establish with the collectives to which they belong and the spaces that they inhabit. I use graphics as propaganda, it’s my artistic discipline. I’m available for those who need it in the movement. I deal with graphics and communication. I take care of the social and communication part in general. (Giorgia)

It is a dimension that is made up of the girls’ everyday life and nourishes the political practice of their subjective perspectives, skills and experiences. Sometimes these experiences are contradictory, as in the case of

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Patrizia, for whom finding “her place” in the political collective has been a complex path that deals with self-confidence and the ability to value to her own contributions. In the squat I mainly deal with issues related to gender and anti-sexism, but it started really only a few months ago. I struggled to find a path that … I felt was really mine, in which I could give my contribution without falling into banality or believing it was trivial, superfluous. (Patrizia)

By studying the political and biographical experiences of the young “alteractivist,” Geoffrey Pleyers highlights how the processes of the subjectivation of young people in the context of political participation are based on a double push: one centered on the concept of resistance and the other focused on self-affirmation as the principle of meaning (the need to think for themselves outside the rules imposed by society).30 Thus, a mutual influence emerges between “processes of subjectivation and action towards social change,” one which highlights the close connection between subjectivities, everyday life, individual experiences and political action. In this double composition of subjectivity—subjectivation and action toward social change—what interests us is recognizing the strong reflexivity present in the girls’ narratives with respect to their experience, but also with respect to the forms of antagonistic politics to which they belong. We therefore recognize that there is a double aspiration in their political experience: one to be part of collectives and political projects in a narrow sense, and one to build political paths that start from their being a situated subject in the world, starting from their subjective experiences. In this regard, the girls’ gendered position is central and becomes a constituent aspect of their current engagement with politics, where gender is understood both as an embodied dimension (to have grown up as girls, to recognize themselves as girls in self-organized political spaces) and as an interest in specific issues related to feminism and its struggles. Their positions give life to new collectives and political practices within the social and political spaces in which they already participate: 30

 See Pleyers, “Engagement et relation.”

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Lately there has been a lot of time dedicated to gender issues. I militate in a cross-spaces collective that deals with gender issues within the movement and this thing was born out of our need, we all felt this need. (Giorgia)

This process of building new political paths and opening up to gender issues has the effect of politicizing the sphere of relationships which is usually relegated to the private sphere in the political contexts they inhabit, but which is instead seen here as a strategic place for the resolution of inequalities that are experienced. Often some dynamics of the patriarchy are reproduced by both men and women, because capitalism in all its forms is in everyone’s lives. The authority, that is for me the patriarchy, can be annihilated by starting from personal relationships and not necessarily the political ones. In the political contexts there are an infinite number of personal relationships, so this could be fundamental. (Sara)

By calling into question personal and political relationships Sara thinks it is possible for women and men to imagine new spaces for politics within which they can rethink power relationships based on gender. Importantly, Sara also highlights the gendered hierarchies present within masculinities: Romantic relationships gone badly, with suffering, friendships gone badly, often politics and emotional and sexual relationships are mixed and push people to distance themselves from the movement, and I understand it. It is what I did too […] So many things are taken for granted. And in my opinion everyone suffers, also men. I know many men who suffer from the dynamics of power triggered by other males. (Sara)

In all cases, girls perceive the political culture in which they are immersed as male-oriented and fight to subvert this “macho” culture from the inside. Episodes of violence and gender subordination do emerge from their narratives, as exemplified by Giorgia. Starting from here, the girls act individually and collectively to actively build political milieus in which they feel more comfortable.

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The same thing that I try to eliminate in my father, in my brothers and in my friends I have to undermine every day even with my comrades who do politics. I would like them to arrive sooner at certain things because they should have the tools to understand. Let’s say that … yes, they are part of society too, and so many times I’ve had to stop them, push them back, put them in their place and start political conversations with my female comrades to share our thoughts because we felt uncomfortable. (Giorgia)

The girls draw attention to the gendered nature of political organization and practice, consciously unpacking its non-neutrality with respect to gender power relationships. The implicit male gaze rooted in politics is uncovered by the interviewees, alongside its capacity to build hierarchies between people and thus reaffirm a male understanding of authority. The interviewees often felt devalued and questioned, as girls, by their comrades. Belittling the value of gender issues and delegitimizing girls’ voices as “exaggerated” are some of the discursive repertoires through which girls’ authority is put at risk. If some boys discredit their positions, they respond, as we will see later, by redefining the space of action. They told me that maybe I focused too much on this thing (feminism), that I took it too much into consideration, that I was a bit exaggerated. They also told me that being a feminist nowadays is quite anachronistic. One thing that has bothered me is that they told me that I wanted to consider anti-sexism as much more important than anti-fascism and anti-­ racism. It bothered me. (Giulia)

Being a woman and a girl matters in the interviewees’ political engagement—their consciousness and knowledge are shaped by their embodied experiences. Gender is not neutral nor solely positive or negative; if on the one hand it can penalize, on the other it opens up new avenues for imagination. Being a girl is a transversal condition. In the last year I started to be more careful about these issues. For a long part of my life I experienced a cross marginalization in all the environments and therefore I did not notice this in the political environment because we live this marginalization constantly. I started to become more aware of myself and to understand that all of this should not happen in the political spheres, especially in our spaces. (Giorgia)

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In this scenario, the possibility of recognizing themselves as feminists is the springboard for the girls to look for new political imaginaries, to rethink what is political and what is resistance. The chance of finding a name (feminism) to refer to one’s discomfort due to stereotyped discriminations and gendered roles makes it possible not to move away from political practice, but to redefine it by looking for places and times in which to feel more comfortable. This is not an individual practice but, as we saw in the previous paragraph, it builds new collective paths. It is as if it (feminism) had given me a different awareness and an extra strength that helped me in everything I did. It was like a little piece that we took for granted, I realized that it is not enough to call yourself anti-sexist to be it. (Giulia)

Feminism thus provides the girls with a discourse through which they can talk about themselves within the collectives and social centers to which they belong without denying their subjective experience. Furthermore, being able to define themselves as feminists constructs the terms of a position from which they can observe themselves and the world as political subjects: in other words, feminism provides the key to being a subject capable of action, where action refers to the ability to undermine patriarchal and normative visions of relationships and society, and it starts from the girls questioning themselves as subjects. For me it (feminism) is a political path, and by political I do not mean limited to street protests or to the presentation of books, but it is also an internal path. Politics already has this meaning for me, an inner journey that you try to transmit and share outside and it is the best way to involve other people. For me, feminism is this, in particular it is the liberation of all genders. (Patrizia)

The entanglement of personal and political experiences clearly emerges from Patrizia’s words, nourishing a collective path that passes through the public space of politics, as well as an inner path that allows girls to recognize themselves as subjects, giving substance to a feminism that is both a critical tool through which to look at the world and a practice of action.

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In the girls’ definitions of feminism there emerges first of all an idea of equality between men and women, but also an idea of gender equality in a broader sense, a less normative and dichotomous idea of gender, as Giulia states: “total equality in relation to any genders and sexual orientations and characteristics.” Moreover, a tendency to consider feminism and its struggles in close relationship to other political struggles emerges in the narratives of the interviewees. As Giulia claims: “for me being feminist also means being anti-fascist, anti-racist—mainly gender equality but general equality.” Feminism becomes constitutive of the girls’ subjectivity, and is also a critical lens through which to look at power relations more broadly, not only those based on gender but also those based on race and class. For me feminism is the commitment to building an equal and equitable society, for me feminism is also that commitment which transcends gender issues and perceives inequalities in general: class, race... [...] Feminism pushes you to look for a strength in yourself and in others in order to organize an answer. (Giorgia)

As Giorgia highlights, being feminist not only allows us to critically observe the relations of power and recognize all forms of inequality and subordination, but also structures our own action, giving form, in practice, to the desire for change. It gives the strength to politically organize a response, opening the meshes of politics and allowing for experimentation with new practices. We are taking time with our female comrades to analyze new and exploratory practices. For example, we are creating a game about harassment and sexism that a woman can experience … it is beautiful because it is made by women and men and we can also see how men understand what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal world. (Giulia)

What emerges through Giulia’s words is that complicity with men in the fight against sexism is considered crucial within the movement. Nevertheless, separate moments and spaces seem to be vital to discussing and imagining other forms of relationships and life, without necessarily

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practicing and claiming separatism, but recognizing the need for discussion out of the male gaze. The need to nurture the relationship with the other girls and women, who are the allies in building new spaces and new understandings of politics, takes shape in the words of Sara and Giulia. I’m not really interested in separatism but I’m interested in the moment when, with men, I can’t recognize myself as a political subject but with women I don’t have this problem because I’m not afraid of not being recognized by the (female) other. (Sara) In respect to gender issues, everything started within my collective from the need for a women-only space, at the beginning, to talk about certain issues in a more protected environment, without male interference, even just to understand each other. This latent need has come out of different political communities and we have decided to organize a working group, that has become a collective. (Giulia)

By beginning with the critique of current political practices, and through a more conscious relationship with feminism and their other comrades, the new collectives focus on gender issues and on fighting sexism and are attentive to being more inclusive and horizontal. Of course you carry with you the dynamics from the classical political environment but you see an effort … in this context all people speak and they more or less all take responsibility and face issues. (Giulia)

The girls call into question the structures of power they have known so far in order to build new power. This new power is performed, taking into account an idea of authority that enables one to speak, and legitimizes the political existence of all. The relationship with feminism is the source of a new knowledge, a collective and relational knowledge, which starts from women and is able to build new forms of politics that open the way for new articulations of authority, where authority is understood as an entanglement of knowledge, sharing and action: Among girls no one is afraid of taking responsibility. […] There is no unequal division of responsibility and authority. (Giorgia)

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Interviewer: to whom do you grant authority? Tania: to anyone in reality, to everyone who has knowledge that I don’t have, to anyone who has knowledge, then you can always question this knowledge. My active participation is my power of action, this power can also be an authority and it is certainly positive, when it doesn’t overpower the other and takes into account the others. (Tania)

If the spaces of social movements struggle to challenge a more normative idea of authority, Tania and other girls, instead, challenge it through feminism, intended as a tool for reformulating the idea of political authority, thus opening toward the construction of a new idea of authority: (Feminism) influenced my idea of authority because it opened my eyes more, and then certain dynamics that I used to justify are now inserted into broader dynamics of power that have been unveiled and everything makes more sense to me. It is difficult for me to justify now certain behaviors because feminism has given me a complete lens to interpret dynamics of power and power relations, a more complete lens to look at reality and society. (Giorgia) Feminism is also this, it is also questioning what authority is and why it is the authority at that time in your life, in society, in politics, in the context you live in. And to choose what kind of authority to exercise and what kind of authority you want to be. (Tania)

Thus they not only discuss the boundaries of political practices but also build their own subjectivity and reflect around themselves as authoritative subjects. Furthermore they recognize that diverse bonds of authority can be built among and within relationships with other girls and women. Here, older women appear to be trustworthy due to their experience— similar to the entrustment practice of the feminists of sexual difference— but at the same time the girls find spaces through which they can recognize themselves as “authorities.” As Giorgia points out: There are women with more experience to whom I give respect and a more sensitive attention and I trust them. [Nevertheless] there is no unequal division of responsibility and authority [in our collective].

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In sum, the girls challenge the alleged neutrality of politics by shedding light on its masculine and “macho” nature. Thanks to embracing a feminist discourse that does ask not only for more space for girls but also for new forms of politics that reshape the idea of who the political subject is as the girls question the hierarchies that are crystallized in the current forms of politics. Simultaneously they build new spaces that can give room to an idea of authority constructed from shared knowledge, autonomy of subjects and a feminist gaze. In doing so, they affirm their political agency, imagine their own authority and produce a new political subjectivity.

Conclusion In the girls’ narratives, social movements are permeated by the same norms of the wider society that they experience (school, family, peer groups); here too there are unbalanced power relations based on gender that risk inhibiting different forms of political participation by crystallizing male-oriented forms of authority within political practices. But these environments also produce the seeds of change. The interviewees’ reflections on their experiences as girls able to organize collective relationships and projects thus become the seeds of change. Being a girl is seen as both a possible source of subordination and a possibility to construct new imaginaries. Together with all those who want to challenge authoritarianism in favor of more horizontal and shared forms of power based on relationships and exchange—male and female comrades—girls build a political space and an authority that refers to the self, to others and to the world.31 It seems important to us to highlight how girls try to reformulate the concept of authority and its practices in order to find their own voice, a way to speak publicly and achieve self-determination, and at the same time to build collective actions, always keeping their own possibilities connected to those of others. The girls’ point of reference is not necessarily a relationship or a continuity with other past feminist activities, but  See Players, “Engagement et relation.”

31

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feminism is a critical lens and method which they use to look at reality: to criticize, analyze and also construct it. These results problematize  theorizations of the resurgent patriarchy and the post-feminist neoliberal scenario, as described by McRobbie,32 opening up to new species of subjectivation that arise from the need to question, as feminists, gendered roles and relationships, both within and outside the contexts of the movement. If for Tiqqun the Jeune-Fille develops her power (often fictitious) by adhering to the biopolitical imperatives in which she lives, relying on appearance and commodification, these jeune-filles question themselves and the milieus they inhabit in order to find spaces and ways in which to experiment with different political practices. Thus, by embracing feminist discourses in the Italian context girls challenge oppressive models and call into question social relationships, imagining new practices for all, and in so doing they reject authoritarianism and affirm their authoritativeness based on relationships and alliances with other girls. In conclusion, if what characterizes feminist theories and practices is the ability to question the boundaries between public and private and thus redefine the political sphere and the concepts that accompany it, we can say that the girls find within this position the possibility to rethink the political spaces they occupy and the authority—which they are subjected to or which they embody—starting from their own experience and using the spaces and actions of politics to imagine new forms of subjectivity and life.

References Arruzza, Cinzia, and Lidia Cirillo. 2017. Storia delle storie del femminismo. Rome: Alegre. Bernini, Lorenzo. Intervento all’interno del Panel Sessualità, genere, democrazia, Biennale Democrazia 2013. https://www.academia.edu/3709765/Intervento_ a l _ p a n e l _ Se s s u a l i t % C 3 % A 0 _ g e n e re _ d e m o c r a z i a _ - _ Bi e n n a l e _ Democrazia_2013. Accessed 17 September 2018. 32

 See McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism.

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Bonomi Romagnoli, Barbara. 2014. Irriverenti e libere. Femminismi nel nuovo millennio. Rome: Editori Internazionali Riuniti. Busi, Beatrice, and Simona De Simoni. 2014. Soggettività insolventi, prospettive femministe al tempo della crisi. Alfabeta 2 (35): 11. Butler, Judith. 1997. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Buttarelli, Annarosa. 1995. Fare autorità, disfare potere. In Oltre l’uguaglianza: Le radici femminili dell’autorità, ed. Diotima, 85–103. Naples: Liguori Editore. Cavarero, Adriana. 1991. The Need for a Sexed Thought. In Italian Feminist Thought, ed. Sandra Kemp and Paola Bono, 180–185. Oxford: Blackwell. Cossutta, Carlotta, and Arianna Mainardi. 2015. La Jeune Fille può partecipare? Una riflessione attorno al genere come dimensione dell’agire politico tra le ragazze dei movimenti sociali. In Genere e partecipazione politica, ed. Sveva Magaraggia and Giovanna Vingelli, 49–60. Milan: Franco Angeli. Feminist plan against men’s violence, produced by Non Una di Meno. https:// drive.google.com/file/d/1r_YsRopDAqxCCvyKd4icBqbMhHVNEcNI/ view. Accessed 10 September 2018. Foucault, Michel. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hanrahan, Rebecca, and Louise Antony. 2005. Because I Said So: Toward a Feminist Theory of Authority. Hypatia 20 (4): 59–79. Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective. 1990. Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Muraro, Luisa. 1991. La politica è la politica delle donne. Via Dogana 1: 2–3. Pleyers, Geoffrey. 2016. Engagement et relation à soi chez les jeunes alteractivistes. Agora débats/jeunesses 1 (72): 107–122. Putino, Angela. 1998. Amiche mie isteriche. Naples: Cronopio. Report of the panel “Sexism in the Movements.” In the National Assembly of Non una di meno, Bologna, February 4–5, 2017. https://nonunadimeno. wordpress.com/2017/02/15/report-del-tavolo-sessismo-nei-movimentiassemblea-4-5-febbraio-2017-a-bologna/. Accessed 17 September 2018. Scarparo, Susanna. 2005. In the Name of the Mother: Sexual Difference and the Practice of ‘Entrustment’. Cultural Studies Review 11 (2): 36–48. Sennett, Richard. 1980. Authority. New York: Knopf.

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Stelliferi, Paola. 2015. Il femminismo a Roma negli anni Settanta. Percorsi, esperienze e memorie dei Collettivi di quartiere. Bologna: Bononia University Press. Tiqqun. 2001. Raw Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl. Paris: Editions Mille Et Une Nuits. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1989. Vindication of the Rights of Women. In The Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler, vol. 5, 79–266. London: William Pickering. Wulff, Stephen, Mary Bernstein, and Verta Taylor. 2015. New Theoretical Directions from the Study of Gender and Sexuality Movements. In The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements, ed. Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, 108–130. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

4 Kenyan Political Autobiographies: Reviving Generational Power and Masculine Authority Anaïs Angelo

Introduction In 2016, in the midst of the Kenyan presidential campaign, writer and activist Nanjala Nyabola pleaded for an end to the political manipulation of masculinity, in an article provocatively entitled “It’s Time to Axe Kenya’s Big Dick Politics.”1 She was denouncing the state of affairs in which male circumcision, or the absence thereof, may be invoked as a measure by which to gauge a politician’s capacity to lead. She was referring to a statement allegedly made by the deputy president, William Ruto, regarding Gideon Moi (leader of the Kenya National African Union and son of the former president Daniel arap Moi [1978–2002]), I thank the editors as well as the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments.  Nyabola, “It’s Time to Axe.”

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A. Angelo (*) University of Vienna, Wien, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_4

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as the two fought to gain votes in the Rift Valley. Ruto had claimed that Moi was uncircumcised and therefore lacked the legitimacy to “sit with elders and make decisions,” as the newspaper The Star reported.2 The issue itself was not in any way new. In 2006, the Kenya Human Rights Commission had already noted that the “politics of the foreskin” had become a popular topic when discussing politicians’ ability and legitimacy to rule.3 In the 2007 presidential campaign, the circumcision of the candidate Raila Odinga was equally subject to debate, showing once more how a sexualized rhetoric was being increasingly used to (de)legitimize authority.4 Nyabola’s plea against the sexualization of politics reminds us of Achille Mbembe’s description of the postcolony as a masculine entity, with the “phallic domination” that has characterized both colonial and postcolonial politics.5 Mbembe reads African political life as an exhibited body, whose vile organs and orifices (such as the mouth, the belly and the phallus) represent power: an interpretation widely circulated in African studies. But this representation of masculinity eschews its historical mechanisms. As Miescher and Lindsay note, masculinity should not be seen as a static ornament of power, but can be defined as “a cluster of norms, values, and behavioral patterns expressing explicitly and implicitly expectations of how men should act and represent themselves to others.”6 Masculinities are plural and constructed: the institutions, contexts and actors that shape a “masculine” ideology should thus be historically situated.7 The use of the prism of masculinity to investigate African politics has long flourished.8 In political science, masculinity is epitomized by the concept of “big men”: the self-accomplished, rich and influential characters elevated as symbols of moral, political and economic authority.9  “Gideon Moi Is Uncircumcised.”  “The Politics of the Foreskin.” 4  Musila, “Violent Masculinities,” 151–2, 162. 5  Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 21. 6  Miescher and Lindsay, “Introduction: Men and Masculinities,” 4. 7  Ibid. 8  For a comprehensive historiographical review, see Miescher, “Masculinities.” 9  On the concept of “big man” see in particular Médard, “Le ‘Big Man’.” On masculinity as an ingredient to self-accomplishment and leadership see Lindsay, Working with Gender; Miescher, Making Men in Ghana; Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow. 2 3

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Taking up a historical perspective, Alicia Decker analyzes the way in which Idi Amin Dada, president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979 and renowned for his particularly bloody rule, utilized a gendered discourse as a “performance of power.” She sheds light on how Amin fashioned himself as a hypermasculine leader, being both the “father of the nation” and a “man’s man.”10 In doing so, Decker emancipates the idea of “masculine” authority from the traditional interpretation, according to which it is merely a colonial legacy inherited by the postcolonial elite at independence (a view that characterizes, for example, Mbembe’s argument). Similarly, Paul Ocobock shows how Kenyan state authority was embedded in long-lasting heated debates over age and gender (manhood in particular) that existed at every level of colonial and postcolonial society.11 He describes how an “elder state” rose from the ashes of British colonial rule and how seniority (defined not only by age but also by “material wealth, kinship and knowledge”) became “an essential component of African statecraft and nation building.”12 In Kenya, just as in many other African countries, the gendering of state building has its roots in colonial politics.13 With the colonization of the territory that started in the late nineteenth century, the control of women and the normalization of the significance of womanhood were an essential ingredient for British rule.14 In an attempt to reshape social roles into what were considered to be (colonial) “modern” norms, women’s roles were confined to those of the “proper” housewife, who would prevent men from deviant masculine behaviors (such as visiting prostitutes).15 Despite women’s commitment to the struggle for decolonization, the achievement of independence in 1963 did not empower women.16 On the contrary, the conservative and paternalistic spirit characteristic of colonial rule was appropriated by the new elite: male politicians  Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow, 10, 18.  Ocobock, An Uncertain Age, 16. 12  Ibid., 156. 13  See for example: Geiger et al., Women in African Colonial Histories. 14  Kanogo, Womanhood in Colonial Kenya. 15  White, “Separating the Men from the Boys.” 16  Again, this was common to many African countries. See for example Bouilly and Rillon, “Relire les Décolonisations.” 10 11

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dominated national politics. Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president (1963–1978), remained silent on women’s issues.17 Little changed with his successors: Moi clearly encompassed conservative policies when it came to women’s political and social rights.18 Although women’s political representation increased under Mwai Kibaki’s and Uhuru Kenyatta’s regimes (respectively 1991–2002 and 2002–present), the patriarchal structure of both Kenyan society and its politics is still firmly established.19 As this chapter demonstrates, a gendered narrative of state building, equating authority with masculinity, lives on in Kenya. Masculine values, such as the rule of the patriarch over his family (marrying into a family, then establishing and feeding his own family), not only call for respect and venerability in society, but are also set as the precondition for assuming functions of power. Masculinity becomes the exclusive credential as to who can possess and exert authority. Recently published political autobiographies of (male) leaders have become a medium through which to picture the journey to independence as a personal and therefore male achievement, condemning women to the sidelines of national politics. Kenyatta’s anthropological study of the Kikuyu people, Facing Mount Kenya, has played an instrumental role in regrounding a masculine definition of leadership into a mythical traditional past.20 Kenyatta sought to justify the superiority of male leadership by invoking the myths of the origins of his Kikuyu tribe.21 Kenyan autobiographies have systematically reactivated this myth and, just like Kenyatta in his time, created for themselves an entitlement to craft a masculine discourse on Kenyan national history. High-ranking Kikuyu politicians who all served under Kenyatta’s presidency defined themselves as self-made men, using their individuality as the landmark of a new generation of leaders. By contrast, women are condemned to live in the shadow of the heroic masculinity of their husbands.  Thomas, Politics of the Womb.  Stamp, “Burying Otieno”; Ebila, “A Proper Woman.” 19  See in particular Musila, “Phallocracies and Gynocratic Transgressions”; Okoth, “Kenya’s Parliament.” 20  Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya. 21  See Berman’s and Lonsdale’s exhaustive research articles on Kenyatta’s encounter and writing of anthropology, in particular: Berman and Lonsdale, “Custom, Modernity, and the Search for Kihooto,” 176. See also Berman, “Ethnography as Politics”; Peatrik, “Le Singulier Destin.” 17 18

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The Mythical Roots of a Masculine Leadership In 1934, Kenyatta met the London School of Economics and Political Science Professor of Anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski and embarked on a non-degree diploma in anthropological studies. Kenyatta was, at the time, the representative of the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), a political party defending Kikuyu interests against white settlers in Kenya. The KCA had sent him to London with the hope that he would plead their cause directly with the British government. The British authorities ignored him, and so he was in search of a language by which to voice Kikuyu political claims.22 Anthropology was the ideal science: while Malinowski wanted to expand his scientific program on African anthropology, Kenyatta was about to appropriate the “expert knowledge” so far reserved for white scholars. Published four years later as Facing Mount Kenya, his work was, unsurprisingly, politically loaded. Kenyatta was searching for a political recognition not only in the British metropole but also in the Kenyan colony, and so he traded his dandy Western suit for a monkey fur, to appear as a traditional elder on the cover of his book and reinforce his claim to authority over Kikuyu history and his Kikuyu people.23 Facing Mount Kenya was written to respond to the ways in which colonization had disrupted traditional authority. At the same time, Kenyatta was using literacy to claim new generational power against the non-literate traditional elders.24 The authority Kenyatta was re-imagining was grounded in a gendered narrative clearly dividing male and female political roles and capacities. In the very first pages of Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta recounts that the Kikuyu tribe was born out of the inherent inability and even out of the failure of female leaders to fairly rule the community. The myth is one of the stories explaining the origins of the Kikuyus, telling of how God allotted land to Gikuyu (the first Kikuyu man) and gave him a wife, Mumbi, with whom he had nine daughters. Nine Kikuyu clans were named after them; the daughters were later married and lived happily  Berman, “Ethnography as Politics.”  Péatrik, “Le Singulier Destin.” 24  Berman and Lonsdale, “Custom, Modernity, and the Search for Kihooto.” 22 23

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with their families.25 Kenyatta then describes how the Kikuyu society shifted from a cruel and unfair matriarchy to a lawful patriarchy, as women abused their position of power: It is said that while holding superior position in the community, the women became domineering and ruthless fighters. They also practiced polyandry. And, through sexual jealousy, many men were put to death for committing adultery or other minor offences. Besides the capital punishment, the men were subjected to all kinds of humiliation and injustice.26

Kenyatta goes on to relate the ways in which men plotted a rebellion against women, using “flattery” to have intercourse with them: once pregnant, “the brave women were almost paralyzed by the condition in which they were” and so they were unable to oppose the rebellion and the regime change: patriarchy and polygamy.27 Dedicating large parts of the book to the division of labor between men and women, Kenyatta anticipated the criticism that women, especially when it comes to marriage, were the “mere chattels of the men.”28 He responded to this “misconception of the African’s social custom” by emphasizing that: “the women are essentially the home makers, as without them there is no home in the Gikuyu sense of social life.”29 He consciously depicted a Kikuyu society where gender roles were defined by tribal laws and, as such, where they ensured men’s freedom of action within the social, political, economic and cultural spheres. Although he acknowledged women’s central role to “mother” the Kikuyu tribe, the possibility of women becoming political leaders was simply ignored: Kenyatta confined women’s role within the nation to the family. As Ndungo shows, there is a long oral tradition of depicting women as intellectually and physically inferior to men, and as so irresponsible and unreliable that they would be unable to control the economic and political  Muriuki, A History of the Kikuyu, 46; Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya, 4–8.  Kenyatta, Facing Mount Kenya, 6. 27  Ibid., 6. 28  Ibid., 161. 29  Ibid., 161 and 180. 25 26

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spheres of society.30 Just like the reactivation of the Kikuyu myth, this positing of gender divisions showed that Kenyatta imagined leadership as a masculine affair. This strict division of social roles must be read in the context of the social and political disruptions caused by colonial rule,  and to which Kenyatta was responding. While colonial rule denied women of political and economic agency, its politics were also coated in a discourse of emancipation, emphasizing women’s individual rights (so as to better attack tribal customs); the indigenous male ruling elite saw this potential emancipation as endangering the moral foundations of its leadership.31 Written as an anthropological work in the time of colonization, Facing Mount Kenya was intended to resolve the contradictions inherent to a disrupted traditional past. Kenyatta clearly recognized that the social and economic disruptions fueled a new, urban class of women prostitutes, whom he saw as a sign of a decadent form of individualism.32 Significantly, the emancipation and individualization of women’s status and rights, although it was part of the general discourse against colonial rule, highlighted the limits and contradictions of the male elite, revealing that political legitimacy was deep-rooted in patriarchal values.33 Upon independence, the symbolic image of the “father of the nation,” which overarched the decolonization processes, further entrenched politics within a masculine realm of action, silently evicting women from national history and memory.34 As recent autobiographies show, not only is authority imagined as masculine and attached to an imagined patriarchal past, but the very act of writing is meant to legitimate the exclusive “distribution” or “possession” of authority by male actors, thereby barring women from official political roles.

 Ndungo, “The Image of Women.”  Musandu, “Tokenism or Representation?,” 4; Thomas, Politics of the Womb. 32  Bujra, “Women Entrepreneurs.” On Kenyatta and individualism, see Angelo, “Virtues for All.” 33  Wipper, “The Politics of Sex”; Thomas, Politics of the Womb; Stamp, “Burying Otieno.” 34  On the notion of the “father of the nation” see “Héros Nationaux.” On women’s political rights after independence see Wipper, “Equal Rights”; Nzomo, “Kenyan Women in Politics.” 30 31

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 olitical Autobiographies: Establishing P a Masculine Authority Political autobiographies constitute a very popular, longstanding and varied genre in Kenya.35 Since independence, autobiographies have offered a useful way of contesting national histories. The debate is all the more salient in Kenya because of the Mau Mau war that devastated the country in the 1950s. Mau Mau freedom fighters demanded the free redistribution of the land that British colonizers and white settlers had appropriated. The British government responded with force, repressing the rebellion in an extremely brutal counter-insurgency war that left postcolonial Kenya divided along the lines of the pro-Mau Mau and the so-­ called loyalist elite the British had brought into power.36 Because they narrate the history of the formation of the postcolonial state, autobiographies often appear as a response to the Mau Mau discourse on the liberation struggle. Whereas former Mau Mau fighters sought to offer alternative histories or memories of the nation, recently published autobiographies by former politicians are written in defense (and praise) of the politics of the postcolonial regime. Through their attempt to integrate a certain dose of “Mau Mau” rhetoric in their own narratives of the liberation struggle, they tend to fit the calculated “amnesia” orchestrated by the new regime, which condemned the freedom fighters’ movement to oblivion.37 Criticized for offering a “falsified sense of history” or what has been described as a “convenient truth,” political autobiographies have been written with parsimony.38 During Kenyatta’s presidency, only the two most prominent nationalist leaders of the time, Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga, published their autobiographies, in which they showcase the alternative ideological visions they defended in the 1960s and 1970s.39 In  Maupeu, “Les Autobiographies au Kenya,” 171. For the colonial period, see Peterson, “Wordy Women” and Peterson, Creative Writing. 36  Branch, “Defeating Mau Mau.” 37  Clough, Mau Mau Memoirs. On the concept of amnesia in Kenyan history, see Atieno-Odhiambo and Lonsdale, Mau Mau & Nationhood. 38  Muchiri, “The Intersection of the Self and History,” 90. See also Ochieng, Place of Biography, 77–8. 39  Mboya, Freedom and After, and Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru. 35

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the 1980s we subsequently find accounts of detentions conducted under Kenya’s second president, Moi.40 Political autobiographies recounting the trajectory of politicians, however, are recent. In the last ten years, autobiographical accounts have filled Kenyan bookshops as former ministers from both Kenyatta’s and Moi’s eras published their testimonies. This new wave of autobiographies features mainstream (male) politicians, such as high-level administrators or ministers with strong local political bases, who did not belong to the close circle of presidential power—in fact, neither of the Kenyan presidents, nor their closest collaborators, left an autobiographical trace.41 The fusion between personal and national narrative is a defining feature of this new wave of political autobiographies.42 Duncan Ndegwa, former head of the Civil Service and governor of the Central Bank of Kenya during Kenyatta’s presidency, was one of the first to publish an autobiography in 2007. Entitled Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story, it merges a personal narrative with that of “the father of the nation,” Jomo Kenyatta.43 The autobiographies that followed his were all constructed on the same linear structure, merging personal political histories with the general history of the struggle for independence. Njenga Karume (businessman and former MP), Simeon Nyachae (politician and civil servant), Taaitta Toweett (former MP and government minister), Gikonyo Kiano (former minister) and Jeremiah Nyagah (former minister) were all born before independence, and each claims a share in the legacy of the making of the nation.44 They first retrace their childhood during colonization and their quest for education, and then emphasize their dedication to the nation, working, as they describe it, for its freedom and development, before and after independence.

 Maupeu, “Les Autobiographies au Kenya,” 178.  Ibid., 183–4. 42  Although Gikonyo Kiano’s biography is not, strictly speaking, an autobiography, it presents the same structure and characteristics as the autobiographies written by his contemporaries. 43  Ndgewa, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles; Cheserem, The Will to Succeed. 44  Karume, Beyond Expectations; Nyachae, Walking Through the Corridors of Service; Toweett, Unsung Heroes of Lancaster; Gikonyo Kiano, Quest for Liberty; Thatiah and Nyagah Trust, Jeremiah Nyagah; Kiereini, A Daunting Journey. 40 41

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The association of personal and national narratives serves a specific purpose: the search for an “authoritative voice” to assert and legitimate one’s political leadership. Lonsdale demonstrates the close connection between writing and political authority, showing how younger generations have used literacy to distinguish themselves from their elders and to claim authority over traditions.45 Similarly, Peterson shows how “creative” biographical writing was used to express political grievances.46 As such, recent political biographies are not merely an “ideological project,” as Hervé Maupeu describes them.47 They can also be interpreted as political acts: their authors are not only handing down historical testimony, but seeking to assert their authority over a highly controversial history of political leadership. It is perhaps not surprising that the mention of the Kikuyu myth of origin, first told by Kenyatta in Facing Mount Kenya, serves as an opening theme to recently published political biographies, and is systematically used to assert both the Kikuyu identity of the author and his entitlement to lead.48 Ndegwa’s autobiography serves as a significant example. His discussion of Kikuyu society and virtues appears to be a digest of Kenyatta’s book Facing Mount Kenya, as well as of the president’s speeches, in which he repeatedly speaks against “idleness, laxity and laziness” while extolling the virtues of hard work. While the book opens with Ndegwa’s “Encounter with Jomo Kenyatta,” the second chapter details the “Roots of my Worldview.”49 Ndegwa specifically mentions the allegory of a “revolution in Gikuyu ways of life from maternal to paternal society.”50 He then details the men’s mythical revolt against “persistent humiliation preferred against men by the womenfolk for decades.”51 In all the hundred pages dedicated to Kenyan pre-colonial and colonial history, women

 See Lonsdale, “Listen While I Read.”  Peterson, “Wordy Women” and “Casting Characters.” 47  Maupeu, “Les Autobiographies au Kenya,” 172. 48  Karume, Beyond Expectations, 10; Kiano, Quest for Liberty, 2–3. 49  Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles, Chapters 1 and 2. 50  Ibid., 14. 51  Ibid., 15. 45 46

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appear only as mothers, holding (just as Kenyatta had described in 1938) “the power to life and death” as well as the history of birth in the family.52 By contrast, the few autobiographies written by female Kikuyu politicians cut short any speculation on how the myth of Kikuyu origins grants more authority to male politicians. For example, the Kenyan politician Wambui Waiyaki Otieno simply omits the myth out of her autobiography Mau Mau’s Daughter: A Life History. In Unbowed: A Memoir, Kenyan activist and politician Wangari Maathai merely comments, after briefly retelling the history of Gikuyu and Mumbi and their matrilineal clans, that “it is not explained how women lost their rights and privileges.”53 The brevity of her comment is a statement in itself: according to her, the mythical Kikuyu past serves to recall her ancestry. At no point should it influence the “distribution” of authority in politics. The fact that Kenyan political autobiographies are dominated by men is no small detail. Exploring the ways in which gender roles define national imagining, Boehmer argues that far from re-inventing gender roles, newly independent states “re-enshrine(d) male privileges” as women were excluded from the political areas to be controlled within the realm of the family.54 Unterhalter makes a similar argument, showing how autobiographies of South African male nationalist leaders shaped a “heroic masculinity.”55 Analyzing Maathai’s autobiography, Ebila points out that women’s leadership was imaginable only within the realm of the family—outside of it, women could not emancipate themselves politically.56 The biographical discourse thus becomes instrumental in shaping a gendered discourse on political authority and leadership. As personal narratives are intimately associated with greater political events, manhood opens the door to political responsibility and achievement.

 Ibid., 77.  Maathai, Unbowed. A Memoir, 5. 54  Boehmer, Stories of Women, 33–4. 55  Unterhalter, “The Work of the Nation.” 56  Ebila, “A Proper Woman.” 52 53

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 Quest for Generational Authority: Fathers A Versus Sons While women are attributed a purely maternal function and are deprived of individuality, male authors narrate how they emancipate themselves from a coercive traditional authority to become self-made men. This emancipation is channeled through their quest for education and literacy. Breaking up with their fathers appears manifests itself as the first step on the road to self-accomplishment. The theme echoes the competition that Lonsdale describes between generational and dynastic historical discourses: “generations opposed sons to father” in a competition over power and authority.57 Following Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya, the new wave of political biographies demonstrates a continuous search for generational authority. Their authors belong to a generation of leaders who emancipated themselves from the power of elders through (colonial) literacy, and claimed an authority defined through generational transfer of power (favoring the new generation of elite politicians, younger, Western educated and literate, contesting the traditional, “dynastic” figures of authority such as the elders), while adhering to a conservative view of the past (reactivating Kikuyu myths of origins, for example). In his autobiography, Karume narrates how the village boy he once was became one of the most influential businessman in postcolonial Kenya. In addition, he was also the chairman of the powerful Gikuyu Embu Meru Association (GEMA), created in 1971 to maintain the political and economic strength of the Kikuyu in the Mount Kenya region. As the title emphasizes, Beyond Expectations: From Charcoal to Gold traces Karume’s incredible achievements, despite having received no secondary education. Karume stresses the tensions with his father over this issue: his father first opposed his desire to go to school, until he realized that his son “needed an education if [his] life was to be any different from his own or that of other villagers.”58 The decision was all the more difficult for a farmer like his father, since being deprived of help to herd the livestock could be damaging to his masculinity: “If a man talked about taking his  Lonsdale, “Contest of Time.”  Karume, Beyond Expectations, 32 and 42.

57 58

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sons to school, his drinking companions would tease him.”59 His father was too poor to pay school fees for secondary education and Karume had no choice but to further exploit his business acumen: a talent he had discovered at a young age, as he sold exercise books to his fellow pupils in school, a lucrative business which transformed him as “the concept of profit and loss became part of [his] central motivation.”60 Reflecting on his life trajectory, Karume felt bound to emphasize in his conclusion that although he had no secondary education, he was later able to secure the “best schooling” for his children, thus reaffirming his authority as a family man.61 The biography by Peter Thatiah and Jane Kiano of Dr. Kiano, a former cabinet minister and allegedly the first Kenyan to have earned a PhD, opens with the following lines on Kiano’s father: “Unfortunately, like many other things he [Jonathan Kiano] tried in life, he never succeeded. He never left Kirikoini but one of his sons did and went on to blaze the trail of legend.”62 His father is depicted as a banal person, “respectable” yet not “a figure of prosperity”: he was poor, did not own land. Moreover, he was unable to pay his son’s school fees. This is presented as a source of shame and the sign of a lack of intellectual creativity, overcome only by his “son’s reputation.” Kiano’s secondary studies were financed by the Local Native Council (LNC) of Fort Hall (today Murang’a), his home region.63 Thereafter, as he aimed to go to Makerere University, his father refused to discuss the issue of finances, leaving the young Kiano “armed with his ambitions and nothing else.”64 By contrast, Kiano’s mother is hailed for her hardworking character. She appears as the one who encouraged his love for books and learning, but also the one taking care of the household financially. Yet at no point was she a role model for her son; on the contrary:

 Ibid., 32.  Ibid., 50. 61  Ibid., 284. 62  Kiano, Quest for Liberty, 1. See also Atemi, “As First Kenyan.” 63  Kiano, Quest for Liberty, 22, 24. 64  Ibid., 30. 59 60

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She occupied one of the largest slots at the Lower Kahuti Market. On market days, she was assured of taking home substantial income. When Kimani and Gikonyo were around, she would advise them to study hard to avoid ending up working at the market like many young people then.65

Uninspired by his family members, Kiano is depicted as a self-made man. His courage is extolled, especially when it comes to discussing politics. Right after the Second World War, as Mau Mau agitation was increasing, Kiano taught at the Gihunguri Technical Training College, where he allegedly dared to discuss politics with his students.66 His verbal bravery is hailed as proving that he was a supporter of the Mau Mau cause— though he was, in fact, away from Kenya during the Mau Mau war, studying at Stanford University.67 At this point, the biography serves as a (barely covered) praise of Kiano: Even as he told them these stories and edged them towards what was inevitable, Gikonyo was not like them and they knew it. He was destined for something else in life. They knew his presence there was just a transient occurrence. The older teachers would encourage their students to strive to be like Gikonyo, even though they knew the exhortation was in vain.68

Nyagah’s autobiography traces his own political achievements. Like Kiano, he was a representative in the Legislative Council before independence, then became an MP and cabinet minister. The book opens with the example set by his father, who “had travelled the path before him, leaving behind a pioneering legacy that was unequalled in his time.”69 Yet, he continues to emphasize “the huge personality differences” between himself and his father, Nyagah being as tall and robust as his father, yet far more tolerant and accommodating “with even the characters his father would have loved to cane.”70 Nyagah further contested his father’s  Ibid., 23; see also 31.  Ibid., 36. 67  Ibid., 37, 64–5. 68  Ibid., 37. 69  Nyagah, Sowing the Mustard Seed, 1. 70  Ibid., 8. 65 66

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a­ uthority in interpreting the Bible.71 Later on, he also opposed his father’s desire to take a second wife, as polygyny was against the Church’s prescribed beliefs. This was in vain, as they were “two strong-willed men who shared stoic principles; but not the same methods.”72 Just like Kiano, Nyagah is depicted as a self-made man: “he became a man of his own at Kahuhia [where he was posted as a teacher in 1944]. Although most of his achievements so far had to be attributed to the support his father had accorded him, from here onwards his direction in life depended wholly on his personal abilities.”73 For all of these Kikuyu writers, their achieving the authority to speak also lies in the telling of how they experienced circumcision. Circumcision is shown in its traditional function: becoming an adult.74 Karume relates how he falsely claimed for a few years of being circumcised, entrusting his best (male) friend but betrayed, though by accident, by his sister who did not know that he had lied. The issue was quickly forgotten. As he returned to his hometown in Elburgon, “already circumcised […] the issue was no longer regarded as important.”75 As he describes his circumcision as “a valuable landmark in my life,” marking the “passage from youth to manhood,” Ndegwa emphasizes the heroic strength of his peers: “not a single boy cried;” besides, “[t]here was no one else to blame for the pain, just a cultural force.”76 The girls (whom he secretly observed), however, were “mortally afraid of the ritual for they had to be dragged into position. Panic followed as girls screamed their way towards the ferocious woman who wielded her knife menacingly.”77 Clearly, Ndegwa is portraying circumcision as a landmark of his heroic masculinity.

 Ibid., 26. See also 30.  Ibid., 62–3. 73  Ibid., 38. 74  Cagnolo, The Agı ̃kũyũ. 75  Karume, Beyond Expectations, 48. 76  Ndegwa, Walking in Kenyatta Struggles, 131. 77  Ibid., 129–30. 71 72

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Women: Leaders in the Shadow of the Family? In traditional Gikuyu society, circumcision was a precondition for marriage: although all these writers mention their marriage, it is systematically depicted as a necessary accomplishment in a man’s life and is related in an almost anecdotal way.78 Similarly, their wives occupy very little space and limited roles in these autobiographical narratives. Women can be mothers, sisters, wives and eventually some mythical figures mentioned in passing: but they remain in the shadow of the “family man.” They are, as Ebila wrote, “proper women” imprisoned in patriarchal political traditions (both pre-colonial and colonial) according to which “they are supposed to be seen but not to be heard.”79 The nationalist narratives are predominantly male, perpetuating the idea that women never entered politics. A significant example is found in Nyagah’s autobiography, where he mentions that one of his political opponents in the 1970s was a woman, Beatrice Kanini, yet does not provide any other details about her identity and her career, which appears to have been reduced to failure: “she fared very poorly in the [1969] elections.”80 Kanini was one of the first women to vie for a parliamentary seat, and a staunch opponent of the Kenyatta regime.81 Yet, women’s invisibility was and is carefully calculated, even in recently published political biographies. Although Karume, Kiano and Nyagah mention how their wives helped them during their local political campaigns (mobilizing women’s votes in particular) and/or running their private businesses, they seem clearly unwilling to detail the political influence their wives seem to have had. Kiano married twice and both his wives supported his politics. His first wife, Ernestine Kiano, was involved in supporting her husband in organizing student airlifts to America in the 1960s and owned a private school her husband had founded. Her influence was considerable until the two divorced, after it emerged that “Ernestine’s overprotective nature  Cagnolo, The Agı ̃kũyũ, 84.  Ebila, “A Proper Woman,” 146–7. 80  Nyagah, Sowing the Mustard Seed, 330. 81  Obonyo, “How Mbogo Earned Her Place.” 78 79

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was inhibiting her husband’s ministerial duties and, even more importantly, his dignity.”82 No picture of Ernestine was printed in the autobiography. As Kiano remarried shortly after, he encouraged his new wife Jane Kiano to “join the leadership in the constituency. She was later made a leader in the Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization” and became the national chairperson.83 The organization was ruled by wealthy, urban female politicians, connected to the male political elite through marriage or birth. It played a central role in the political co-opting of the women’s vote: Kenyatta’s fourth and latest wife in particular, Mama Ngina, was a key figure.84 According to Jane herself, Kiano “discussed all political matters with me and sought my views on all political issues in our constituency and the country. He involved me in all political and development affairs, and I became his campaign manager in our constituency. In every political rally, he would introduce me to speak to the women.”85 However, no further details about her concrete political influence and network are provided. In Nyagah’s autobiography, his wife Eunice Wambere Nyagah is mentioned a few times, yet without much detail being provided on her actual commitment to his political activities. In the later 1950s and early 1960s, as Nyagah was often traveling between Nairobi (where he was an MP) and his constituency in Embu, his wife “took the role of MP during the four days that Nyagah was away in Nairobi.”86 Her ability to “lend her ears to people ranging from the local drunks to the lowliest village women in Embu” is hailed, and although it is noted that she “was not a poster political wife,” her influence is interpreted as a religious, natural calling: “like her husband, she believed that serving the people of the constituency was an extension of the Lord’s commission of being your brother’s keeper. Therefore, to her the political work […] carried the same  Kiano, Quest for Liberty, 215.  Ibid., 217. 84  Jomo Kenyatta’s stance on the organization, however, remained obscure: despite formally praising women’s equal rights at independence, he subsequently supported all attempts to limit family laws (such as the Affiliation Act) and refused to have his name or photographs associated with any family planning campaigns. See Wipper, “The Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organization”; Thomas, Politics of the Womb, 170. 85  Kiano, Quest for Liberty, 249. 86  Nyagah, Sowing the Mustard Seed, 125. 82 83

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dogmatic weight as the parables of Jesus Christ.”87 Framing her influence in religious terms instead of political skill or leadership capacity echoes the Christian discourse on the family, and more particularly the Protestant view of the wife’s role: that of woman confined to being a mother and acting as the “manager” of the family. Being an active woman devoted to work, the wife is entitled to become the effective collaborator of her husband.88 As Nyagah’s biography shows, women’s contributions to their husbands’ work remain clearly separated from the political sphere of action. In his conclusion, as Eunice’s death was announced, Nyagah was said to have “not only lost interest in everything after she died, but he also lost the will to live.”89 His wife was once more celebrated as the anchor of the family—she would not be remembered for her individual achievements. As his autobiography reached its conclusion, Karume dedicated a whole chapter to his two wives. Although described them as “one of the pillars of my success” (terms that are reminiscent of those of Nyagah), his wives have virtually no personality outside of the shadow of their husband.90 He saw in his first wife’s character the same strengths as his own: Marianne Wariara Wairiri was hardworking and disciplined.91 Again, Karume mentions that she was instrumental in running some of his farms and, more importantly perhaps, in campaigning across his “Kiambaa constituency drumming up support for me. She was my manager for Women’s Affairs in the Constituency, and she participated in many projects to help elevate the status of women in Kiambaa.”92 Although Karume states that “[f ]rom independence until her death, she was always at my side,” from his account we cannot gain a clear understanding of her contribution to Kenyan history. Similarly, her political role is referred to in passing, as Karume mentions that she was “he treasurer of the giant Mugumo Nyakinyua Women’s Group,” a local association in Kiambu.93  Ibid., 126.  I thank Vladimir Angelo for his useful advice on this topic. See Gisel, Encyclopédie du Protestantisme, and Sachs, The Oxford History of Anglicanism. 89  Nyagah, Sowing the Mustard Seed, 410. 90  Ibid., 283. 91  Karume, Beyond Expectations, 283. 92  Ibid., 284. 93  Ibid., 288. 87 88

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As for his second wife, Karume lauds her “down to earth” mind-set (because she preferred the Kenyan Coast to London) and the “knack for farming and business” she shared with Wariara.94 Yet again, marriage seems but an opportunity for him to emphasize the “primary qualities of a successful polygamous marriage [that are] fairness, firmness and wisdom on the part of the husband.”95

Conclusion Since Kenya has become independent, political autobiographies have remained instrumental in shaping a discourse that places men as the legitimate tenants of authority. As the autobiographical genre enables authors to subtly fuse both their personal achievements with the grand history of the nation, male authorship becomes a shortcut to male history. Nevertheless, the masculine supremacy and exclusivity that define Kenyan political biographies rely on the staged invisibility of women’s political influence. Their political role during and after decolonization in Kenya needs to be further explored. The challenge of writing a nuanced history of masculinity must bring women out of the shadow of the family man, so as to explore authority in light of female power.96

References Angelo, Anaïs. 2015. Virtues for All, State for No One?: Jomo Kenyatta’s Postcolonial Political Imagination. In African Thoughts on Colonial and Neo-­ Colonial Worlds: Facets of an Intellectual History of Africa, ed. Arno Son-­ deregger, 67–86. Berlin: Neofelis Verlag. Atemi, Caleb. 2013. As First Kenyan PhD Holder, Kiano Gave Us a Craving for Education.  Daily Nation, 2 August 2013. https://www.nation.co.ke/ news/1056-1935434-11jq035z/index.html. Accessed 9 July 2020. Atieno-Odhiambo, Elisha S., and John Lonsdale. 2003. Mau Mau & Nationhood: Arms, Authority & Narration. Oxford: James Currey.  Ibid., 287.  Ibid., 285. 96  Ocobock, An Uncertain Age, 16. 94 95

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Berman, Bruce. 1996. Ethnography as Politics, Politics as Ethnography: Kenyatta, Malinowski, and the Making of Facing Mount Kenya. Canadian Journal of African Studies 30 (3): 313–344. Berman, Bruce, and John M.  Lonsdale. 2007. Custom, Modernity, and the Search for Kihooto: Kenyatta, Malinowski, and the Making of Facing Mount Kenya. In Anthropology, European Imperialism and the Ordering of Africa, ed. Robert J.  Gordon and H.  Tilley, 173–198. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Boehmer, Elleke. 2005. Stories of Women, Gender and Narratives in the Postcolonial Nation. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bouilly, Emmanuelle, and Ophélie Rillon. 2016. Relire les Décolonisations d’Afrique Francophone au Prisme du Genre. Le Mouvement Social 2: 3–16. Branch, Daniel. 2009. Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya. Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and Decolonization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bujra, Janet M. 1975. Women ‘Entrepreneurs’ of Early Nairobi. Canadian Journal of African Studies 9 (2): 213–234. Cheserem, Micah. 2006. The Will to Succeed: An Autobiography. Nairobi: The Jomo Kenyatta Foundation. Clough, Marshall S. 1997. Mau Mau Memoirs: History, Memory, and Politics. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Decker, Alicia C. 2014. In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda. Athens: Ohio University Press. Ebila, Florence. 2015. ‘A Proper Woman, in the African Tradition’: The Construction of Gender and Nationalism in Wangari Maathai’s Autobiography Unbowed. Tydskrif Vir Lettterkunde 52 (1): 144–154. Fr. C.  Cagnolo, I.M.C. 2006. The Agı ̃kũyũ: Their Customs, Traditions and Folklore. 2nd ed. Nairobi: Wisdom Graphics Place. Frederiksen, Bodil F. 2008. Jomo Kenyatta, Marie Bonaparte and Bronislaw Malinowski on Clitoridectomy and Female Sexuality. History Workshop Journal 65 (1): 23–48. Geiger, Susan, Jean Allmam, and Musisi Nakanyike, eds. 2002. Women in African Colonial Histories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. “Gideon Moi is Uncircumcised, Says DP Ruto”. The Star, 22 February 2016. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/02/22/gideon-moi-is-uncircumcisedsays-dp-ruto_c1298987. Accessed 9 July 2020. Gisel, Pierre, ed. 1995. Encyclopédie du Protestantisme. Paris: Édition du Cerf. “Héros Nationaux et Pères de la Nation en Afrique”. Ed. Marie-Aude Fouéré and Hélène Charton, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire 118 (2) (2013).

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Kanogo, Tabitha. 2005. Womanhood in Colonial Kenya. Oxford: James Currey. Karume, Njenga. 2009. Beyond Expectations: From Charcoal to Gold. An Autobiography. Nairobi: Kenway Publications. Kenyatta, Jomo. 1965. Facing Mount Kenya. New York: Vintage Books. Kiano, Gikonyo. 2013. Quest for Liberty. Nairobi: Longhorn Kenya Ltd. Kiereini, Jeremiah Gitau. 2014. A Daunting Journey. Nairobi: Kenway Publication. Lindsay, Lisa A. 2003. Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southeastern Nigeria. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Lonsdale, John M. 1996. ‘Listen While I Read’: The Orality of Christian Literacy in the Young Kenyatta’s Making of the Kikuyu. In Ethnicity in Africa: Roots, Meanings & Implications, ed. Louise de la Gorgendiere et al., 17–53. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. ———. 2002. Contest of Time: Kikuyu Historiography, Old and New. In A Place in the World. New Local Historiographies from Africa and South Asia, ed. Axel Harneits-Sievers, 201–255. Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill. Maathai, Wangari. 2006. Unbowed. A Memoir. London: Arrow Books. Maupeu, Hervé. 2008. Les Autobiographies au Kenya: La Production d’un Genre Littéraire. In Le Statut de l’Ecrit. Afrique, Europe, Amérique Latine, ed. Christiane Albert, Abel Koubouama, and Gisèle Prignitz, 171–189. Pau: Presses Universitaires de Pau. Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Mboya, Tom. 1986. Freedom and After. Nairobi: East African Publishers. Médard, Jean-François. 1992. Le ‘Big Man’ en Afrique: Esquisse d’Analyse du Politicien Entrepreneur. L’Année Sociologique 42: 167–192. Miescher, Stephan F. 2005. Making Men in Ghana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2018. Masculinities. In A Companion to African History, ed. William H. Worger, Charles Ambler, and Nwando Achebe, 35–58. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell. Miescher, Stephan F., and Lisa A.  Lindsay. 2003. Introduction: Men and Masculinities. In Men and Masculinities in Modern African History, ed. Stephan F. Miescher and Lisa A. Lindsay, 1–29. Portsmouth: Heinemann. Muchiri, Jennifer. 2014. The Intersection of the Self and History in Kenyan Autobiographies. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies 1 (1–2): 83–93. Muriuki, Godfrey. 1974. A History of the Kikuyu: 1500–1900. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

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Musandu, Phoebe. 2018. Tokenism or Representation? The Political Careers of the First African Women in Kenya’s Legislative Council (LEGCO), 1958–1962. Women’s History Review: 1–20. Musila, Grace A. 2012. Violent Masculinities and the Phallocratic Aesthetics of Power in Kenya. In The New Violent Cartography. Geo-Analysis After the Aesthetic Turn, ed. Sam Okoth Opondo and Michael J. Shapiro, 151–170. Abingdon: Routledge. Ndgewa, Duncan. 2007. Walking in Kenyatta Struggles: My Story. Nairobi: Kenya Leadership Institute. Ndungo, Catherine M. 2006. The Image of Women in African Oral Literature. Gender Issues Research Report Serie 23: 1–80. Nyabola, Nanjala. 2016. It’s Time to Axe Kenya’s Big Dick Politics. African Arguments, 1 March 2016. http://africanarguments.org/2016/03/01/itstime-to-axe-kenyas-big-dick-politics/. Accessed 9 July 2020. Nyachae, Simeon. 2010. Walking Through the Corridors of Service: An Autobiography. Nairobi: Mvule Africa Publishers. Nzomo, Maria. 1997. Kenyan Women in Politics and Public Decision Making. In African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Gwendolyn Mikell, 232–254. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Obonyo, Oscar. 2006. How Mbogo Earned Her Place in the Local Women’s Hall of Fame. Sunday Nation, 3 September 2006. https://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/lifestyle/1214-142296-9pdm3u/index.html. Accessed 18 August 2019.  Ochieng, William R. 2005. Place of Biography in Kenyan History: 1904–2005. Kisumu: Mountain View Publishers. Ocobock, Paul. 2017. An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya. Athens: Ohio University Press. Odinga, Oginga. 1995. Not Yet Uhuru. Nairobi: East African Publishers. Okoth, Juliet. 2017. Kenya’s Parliament Continues to Stall on the Two-Thirds Gender Rule. The Conversation, July 10, 2017. https://theconversation.com/ kenyas-parliament-continues-to-stall-on-the-two-thirds-gender-rule-79221. Accessed 9 July 2020.  Peatrik, Anne-Marie. 2014. Le Singulier Destin de Facing Mount Kenya. The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (1938) de Jomo Kenyatta. Une Contribution à l’Anthropologie des Savoirs. L’Homme. Revue Française d’Anthropologie 212: 71–108.

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Peterson, Derek. 2001. Wordy Women: Gender Trouble and the Oral Politics of the East African Revival in Northern Gikuyuland. The Journal of African History 42 (3): 469–489. ———. 2004. Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya. Portsmouth: Heinemann. ———. 2006. Casting Characters: Autobiography and Political Imagination in Central Kenya. Research in African Literatures 37 (3): 176–192. Sachs, William L., ed. 2017. The Oxford History of Anglicanism. Volume V. Global Anglicanism, c. 1910–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stamp, Patricia. 1991. Burying Otieno: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity in Kenya. Signs 16 (4): 808–845. Thatiah, Irungu, and Jeremiah Nyagah Trust. 2013. Jeremiah Nyagah. Sowing the Mustard Seed. Seattle: Rizzan Media. “The Politics of the Foreskin”. In The 2006 Kenya National Human Rights Commission Referendum Report, September 2006. http://www.knchr.org/ Portals/0/CivilAndPoliticalReports/BehavingBadly.pdf?ver=2013-02-21140244-413. Accessed 9 July 2020.  Thomas, Lynn M. 2003. Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya. Berkeley: University of California Press. Toweett, Dr. Taaitta. 2010. Unsung Heroes of Lancaster: An Account of Kenya’s Constitutional and Political Transformation. Nairobi: Dr. Taaitta Toweett Foundation. Unterhalter, Elaine. 2000. The Work of the Nation: Heroic Masculinity in South African Autobiographical Writing of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The European Journal of Development Research 12 (2): 157–178. White, Luise. 1990. Separating the Men from the Boys: Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and Terrorism in Central Kenya, 1939–1959. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 23 (1): 1–25. Wipper, Audrey. 1971a. The Politics of Sex: Some Strategies Employed by the Kenyan Power Elite to Handle a Normative-Existential Discrepancy. African Studies Review 14 (3): 463–482. ———. 1971b. Equal Rights for Women in Kenya? The Journal of Modern African Studies 9 (3): 429–442. ———. 1975. The Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organization: The Co-Optation of Leadership. African Studies Review 18 (3): 104–107.

5 #MeToo, but First: The Question of Analytic Priority in Identity Politics Antonette Talaue-Arogo

Introduction: Intersecting Identities On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano shared on Twitter a screenshot sent to her by her friend Charlotte Clymer with the message: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me Too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”1 She prefaced this tweet as follows: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”2 Milano’s post swept the Internet, with the hashtag #MeToo trending No. 1 on Twitter. The post resonated deeply with people at the height of the unfolding allegations of sexual harassment and rape against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.3 Not long after, it was revealed that the  Milano, “If all the women.”  Ibid. 3  BBC News, “Harvey Weinstein timeline.” 1 2

A. Talaue-Arogo (*) De La Salle University Manila, Manila, Philippines © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_5

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slogan was created more than a decade earlier by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, who in 2006 started using the phrase as a signal of solidarity among survivors of sexual violence and, through such support, as a means toward the healing process. The following year, Burke formed the non-­profit organization Just Be Inc. to help victims of sexual violence, especially young women of color. The “Me Too” campaign was launched, and it was grounded in the idea of “empowerment through empathy.”4 Milano, who was credited by some media outlets for the movement, soon acknowledged Burke as its founder.5 In her acceptance speech as the recipient of the Black Girls Rock! 2018 Community Change Agent Award, Burke enjoins fellow black women: “Don’t opt yourself out of what was started for you because the media isn’t acknowledging your hurt and your pain and your stories. They never have. This is your movement, too.”6 This watershed moment in what is designated as fourth-wave feminism, a current in the women’s movement characterized by the deployment of digital technology, recalls the history of feminist politics. It is the history of black women’s subordination to white women in the fight for women’s rights. Furthermore, it is the history of the false universalism of the “universal sisterhood” posited by feminist critics. Jessie Kindig remarks: “It is not surprising, historically speaking, that the #MeToo began decades ago as part of an activist campaign led by Tarana Burke to support marginalized women of color who experienced sexual assault, yet only went viral when it was popularized by the white and the wealthy.”7 In the United States, the women’s movement started from the movement for the abolition of slavery. While providing impetus for women’s suffrage, the black male vote resulting from the Fifteenth Amendment vexed certain white women suffragettes. Rebecca Ann Latimer Felton, the first female US Senator appointed in 1922 and who served a term of exactly one day, infamously said: “I do not want to see a negro man walk to the polls and vote on who should handle my tax money, while I myself  Vagianos, “The ‘Me Too’ Campaign”; Burke, “It made my heart swell.”  Vagianos, “The ‘Me Too’ Campaign”; Milano, “I was just made aware.” 6  Vagianos, “Tarana Burke Tells Black Women.” 7  Kindig, “Introduction,” Loc. 97–99. 4 5

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cannot vote at all.”8 According to Jad Adams, support for women’s right to vote in the South was solicited through the appeal to white supremacy.9 Racism permeated the suffrage movement, manifesting in the mistreatment of black women. When Sojourner Truth delivered her landmark speech “Ain’t I A Woman” at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Ohio, “many white women urged that she be silenced, fearing that she would divert attention from women’s suffrage to emancipation.”10 At a demonstration in Washington, DC, in 1913, touted as the original Women’s March11 “black women were forced to stand at the back to appease the suffragettes from the southern states—even though a number of states were desegregated.”12 Unsurprisingly, ways to circumvent the Nineteenth Amendment to disadvantage black women were put into action, such as making property and property tax a requirement for acquiring registration certificates. On this point, Adams contends: By such means the majority of the black female population of the South was disenfranchised. When black women suffragists sought assistance from their erstwhile friends the white women suffragists in the National Woman’s Party they were told that as black women were discriminated against in the same way as black men, this was a race issue not a women’s rights issue, so they felt under no obligation to help.13

At work in this justification for the withholding of support for black women and, consequently, the delegitimization of the black woman’s struggle is what Ange-Marie Hancock calls “the hegemony of ‘single-axis’ thinking.”14 Used by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, who is recognized to have founded intersectionality studies with her paper entitled “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist  Quoted in Sanghani, “The uncomfortable truth.”  Adams, Women and the Vote, 10. 10  Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” 153. 11  Boissoneault, “The Original Women’s March on Washington.” 12  Sanghani, “The uncomfortable truth.” 13  Adams, Women and the Vote, 244. 14  Hancock, Intersectionality, 71. 8 9

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Politics,” presented in 1988 and published the following year, single-axis thinking can be understood as the antithesis of what has come to be known as intersectionality, an emergent paradigm that analyzes the diverse factors and complex relations that dually constitute identity and determine experience.15 Crenshaw argues that a single-axis framework delineates categories of group identity as causal forces of oppression. It perpetuates inequality by considering the privileged members within a given category of difference as representative of the experience of oppression and as the agents of redressal. Within the single-axis framework, black women are rendered invisible, their circumstances that are formed by the interaction of sex and race neglected. One might add class, for the purposes of this chapter understood as socio-economic position. “In other words,” Crenshaw posits, “in race discrimination cases, discrimination tends to be viewed in terms of sex- or class-privileged Blacks; in sex discrimination cases, the focus is on race- and class-privileged women.”16 Intersectionality, then, is a multidimensional framework, a new structure of analysis central to which is the intersectional experience. Indeed, intersectionality is rooted in black women’s politics and black feminist theory and criticism. This historical and philosophical grounding, however, has been utilized to critique intersectionality as essentialist, the very impulse against which intersectionality struggles. As Vivian M. May writes: We must question why intersectionality is misconstrued as endorsing essentialist identity models or political approaches, caricatured as a narrow lens focused “only” on Black women and solely on “oppression” (the two are often homogenized and conflated), or used by practitioners in ways that uphold single-axis thinking, rather than align with its matrix orientation (wherein lived identities are treated as interlaced and systems of oppression as enmeshed and mutually reinforcing: one form of identity or inequality is not seen as separable or superordinate). From an intersectional orientation, no one factor is given explanatory or political priority: multiple factors are treated as enmeshed.17  See Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.”  Ibid., 140. 17  May, Pursuing Intersectionality, ix. 15 16

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Crenshaw provides an explanation for this apparent contradiction in intersectionality studies, a result of the narrowness of single-axis thinking. In her landmark paper, she demonstrates the ways in which intersectionality is inadequately addressed in antidiscrimination law by reviewing three legal cases with black female plaintiffs. The decisions show that, on one hand, the court denies the difference between the work experience of white and black women and, on the other hand, the court ascertains that the specificity of black women’s experience disallows them from utilizing statistics on their primary group identity or “larger classes,”18 whether based on sex or race, to support their case. Crenshaw self-reflexively observes: “It seems that I have to say that Black women are the same and harmed by being treated differently, or that they are different and harmed by being treated the same. But I cannot say both.”19 She sees this as a false dichotomy in that the discrimination of black women is both similar to and different from the experiences of white women and black men, and “often they experience double-discrimination, the combined effects of practices which discriminate on the basis of race, and on the basis of sex.”20 This is what makes Crenshaw’s metaphor of an intersection compelling as it conveys the understanding that oppression, or injury to human dignity, is a configuration or a crisscrossing of factors in no determinate and circumscribed form. Among the disadvantages when intersectionality is left unaddressed by the courts is that, in this case, black women are not properly recognized as injured—and injurable—subjects within a judicial system that only acknowledges discrete categories and privileged members thereof as subjects of intervention and reparation. Decades before what many have critiqued as the whitening of the Me Too movement, Crenshaw, inheriting Truth’s powerful rhetoric, anticipates Burke’s exhortation at present: “When feminist theory and politics that claim to reflect women’s experience and women’s aspirations do not include or speak to Black women, Black women must ask: ‘Ain’t We Women?’”21

 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” 150.  Ibid., 148–9. 20  Ibid., 149. 21  Ibid., 154. 18 19

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Politics of Representation Crenshaw’s appropriation of Truth’s provocation by collectivizing the female subject is indeed a question of representation, of authorized representation and of authority in representation. It is a problematization that has long haunted identity politics. For instance, Edward W. Said’s Orientalism, considered as the genesis of postcolonial studies, opens with the epigraph from Karl Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.”22 Said argues that colonization as an act of conquest was facilitated by discourses across disciplines that positioned the Orient, the Middle East and formerly colonized areas generally as the negative image of the West. This system of representation that admitted stereotypes while excluding other knowledges that do not conform to colonial ideology produced the Orient that colonial discourses were purportedly simply representing. The Orient was constructed as inferior, as a figure of lack. The colonized do not possess the positive values embodied by the colonizers whose mission it is to educate them and liberate them from their immaturity and irrationality, that is, their lack of humanity. They stay infants, from Latin “infans,” meaning without speech, deprived of the right to speak, to represent themselves. The inaccessibility of representation to the colonized is one way to understand Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s intersectional approach to postcolonialism in “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” It is important to note that this precedes Crenshaw’s aforementioned text and that Mohanty does not explicitly use the terminology. This work, however, is a strong case for her inclusion in the genealogy of intersectionality studies and intersectionality’s intersection with postcolonial feminism. Mohanty asserts that colonization plays a role in class and gender theorization, and that the word is specifically “use[d] by feminist women of color in the U.S. to describe the appropriation of their experiences and struggles by hegemonic white women’s movements.”23 For Mohanty, colonization is a gesture of universalization, a suppression  Said, Orientalism.  Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 333.

22 23

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of the heterogeneity of subject positions and internal divisions within the target population and culture. In conceptualizing the colonized as Other, quintessentially represented by the “‘Third World Woman’ in some recent (Western) feminist texts,” colonial discourses, including theory and criticism, produce the source population and culture as a coherent subjectivity as well.24 Colonial discourse, therefore, is also an act of self-conceptualization and self-representation. In this light can one speak of a monolithic Western feminism, Mohanty puts forward, that is different from work in the area that properly acknowledges its plurality of agendas and paradigms. The Third World Woman represented in Western feminism is a subject-effect, an essence derived from “‘women’—real, material subjects of their collective histories,”25 the construction of which is naturalized through “the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse.”26 It is equally important to note that, according to Mohanty, the fixed nature of women here is not their biological constitution but their shared oppression. The interrelation between discourse and power then translates into material conditions of knowledge production, including dissemination of authorized ideas through publication. There is, therefore, a double gesture enacted in the universalization of the Third World Woman given that universalization is accompanied by particularization, the representation of her negative difference from the normative Western Woman. Mohanty articulates this persistent binarism that is mapped along categories of sex, race and class: This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and being “third world” (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-­ oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions.27

 Ibid., 333.  Ibid., 334. 26  Ibid., 335. 27  Ibid., 337. 24 25

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It is this double gesture that belies the essential woman, whether Western or Third World, and the presupposition of the universal sisterhood in feminist writing, the idea that “what binds women together is the sociological notion of the ‘sameness’ of their oppression”28 and, conversely, the equitability of the results of feminist victories. Instead, for Mohanty, experiences of marginalization and advancements must be contextualized in particular socio-historical realities and their concomitant value systems. Against the homogenization of men as oppressors and women as oppressed, the specificity of analysis more accurately shows the relativeness and fluidity of positions of power and powerlessness. As discussed in the preceding section, the history of voting rights in the United States foregrounds the shifting relations between and within categories of group identity. The right to vote was granted, with exceptions, to black male citizens before it was granted to women, but in both cases techniques to prevent black men and women from exercising this right were put into effect. The marginalization of black women in first-wave feminism is revealing of the ways in which patriarchy is not purely male dominance. Furthermore, it can be perpetrated similarly by women who benefit from the subordination of the interests of members of the same sex who are also identified by other categories that are different from their own identifications. The erasure of black women ironically brings into unconcealment “multiple kinds of invisibility—that of mainstream societies and of the subaltern communities they are simultaneously located within.”29 Moreover, in America, the very first to have their right to vote recognized were propertied individuals, mostly white male landowners.30 Hancock insists that black suffragettes were aware of the racism in the movement; that is, they were cognizant of their erasure or invisibility.31 One might also say their silence or, in Gayatri C. Spivak’s contentious formulation, “the subaltern cannot speak.”32 What determines changing subject  Ibid.  Hancock, Intersectionality, 73. 30  AlJazeera, “Who got the right to vote when?.” 31  See Hancock, Intersectionality, chapter 3. She discusses the work of Maria Miller Stewart whose public lectures predated Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech. Stewart fought for stronger presence for black women, particularly in Boston’s political scene. 32  Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” 104. 28 29

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­ ositions and social relations are intersections of differences in group p identity that, after Crenshaw, have neither prior determination nor circumscription. Any political action to address inequality will be more effective if these differences are seriously considered. Mohanty points out that if experiences of oppression vary within group identities, policies premised on homogeneity will also yield differential, even counterproductive, results that lead to the “colonization of the conflicts and contradictions which characterize women of different social classes and cultures.”33 With cogent succinctness, she urges: “Beyond sisterhood there is still racism, colonialism and imperialism!”34

Contestations on Centrality How might one analyze the intersections between sex, race and class after the reductive binarism of oppressor and oppressed, or superordinate and subordinate, has been critiqued or deconstructed? What is intersectionality’s response to the argument that analytic priority is a precondition for effective political change? Is not this triadic structure—“race-gender-class analysis”35—a reiteration of analytic priority, albeit in the mode of pluralized interpretations, that results in the repression of other “axes of difference,”36 such as ability, sexuality or the minoritization of other women of color in light of the representativeness of black women’s experience?37 Intersectionality replaces the model of center and periphery with interconnecting categories of group identity that are “analytically equal but not identical.”38 According to Hancock, what this means is that categories of identity are epistemologically salient and ontologically  Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 344.  Ibid., 348. 35  Hancock, Intersectionality, 79. 36  Ibid., 78. 37  Rita Dhamoon argues that the common framework of the fight for visibility in intersectionality studies in Canada marginalizes deaf people, positing hearing as normative. See Hancock, Intersectionality, 78–79. 38  Hancock, Intersectionality, 95. 33 34

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i­ ndependent, all carrying explanatory potential and political significance. It is different from feminist standpoint theory that incorporates class and race as categories that determine and diversify gender experience. In this framework, gender remains the primary axis of difference under which other categories are subsumed. Thus, feminist standpoint theory remains within the center-periphery model from which intersectionality diverges. Hancock also distinguishes intersectionality from multicultural feminism that adopts an additive approach to categories, therefore maintaining the discreteness or separation of these very categories. One example of intersectional thought and practice Hancock points to is Chicana feminism in the 1970s, which articulates a Chicana consciousness responsive to what Anna Nieto-Gómez phrases as the “sexual racist oppression that they as Chicana women must contend with.”39 Here, sexism and racism are analytically equal, both exacting demands from and creating conditions of oppression for Chicana women. Analytic equality, it can be seen, is the opposite of analytic priority. Audre Lorde phrases the former’s ethos memorably: “there is no hierarchy of oppressions.”40 Lorde sees all unequal social structures as an assertion of the superiority of one group to and their dominance over others. Combatting inequality requires a coalitional politics that does not allow particularity of the experience of oppression to be an obstruction to “the right to peaceful existence” desired by other groups. She testifies: “Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack on Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are black.”41 Compare this to Tithi Bhattacharya’s thoughtful reflection on #MeToo: Any discussion of #MeToo must first acknowledge the fact that the deeply autobiographical testimonies of sexual violence by women actually trace the biography of something else: the workplace. Nested within the accounts  Quoted in Hancock, Intersectionality, 96.  Lorde, “There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.” 41  Ibid. 39 40

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of personal violations lies yet another secret, the stunningly dictatorial nature of the workplace, that is, perhaps for the first time, being discussed openly. #MeToo shows the normative nature of the boss’s control over worker’s lives, reproduced each day through the power he holds over employment and enforced each day through intimidation, bullying, and outright violence.42

Women who come forward are commonly asked why they did not report what happened to them to the authorities. Further to this inquiry is the question of why they stayed in their jobs if they knew something was going to happen, and after harassment already took place. The implicit caveat to these questions is “if what you are saying is true.” Bhattacharya reasons that the silence of abused women is explained by an ongoing violation before and after the actual incident that is committed by perpetrators of sexual abuse whose authority enables them to dangle the threat to the women’s employment, to put at risk “their ability to work, and hence, live.”43 In other words, what is at stake is not only job security but all other domains of human existence that it impacts, such as family, health care and residence. Bhattacharya recounts the story of an eighteen-­ year-­ old rape victim from Oaxaca, Mexico, working in California. Speaking with another young woman from a local farmworker women’s organization where she reported the incident, she said: “I would like to speak as you speak, but I can’t defend myself.”44 For Bhattacharya, women are silenced not only by the literal prohibition of speech but by the structure in place that exposes them to further instances of injury or violation upon speaking out. One can add that this is a system that delegitimizes, deauthorizes, their speech through the natural, since commonplace, attitude of skepticism or doubt of their word. The power of #MeToo, then, is its collectivizing energy—from Truth’s woman to Crenshaw’s women—amounting to such force as is needed to challenge this structure. “Since sexual violence forms such an integral part of labor discipline for women,” Bhattacharya continues, “then surely the solution lies in improving workplace conditions […] [where] workers were  Bhattacharya, “Socializing Security, Unionizing Work,” Loc. 1099–1103.  Ibid., Loc. 1123. 44  Quoted in Bhattacharya, “Socializing Security, Unionizing Work,” Loc. 1130. 42 43

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de-individualized living beings, without race or gender, who existed to ‘further corporate interests’.”45 She concludes: “Unions that do not understand this fundamentally dictatorial nature of the wage form—that it is the sole, mediated, route to life—do not understand the rich, complex, and necessarily contradictory reasons that motivate workers, especially women, to fight.”46 Bhattacharya’s argument for the primacy of class in analysis and politics utilizes what can be called, drawing from her own work, the “but first” approach, which brings to mind what Crenshaw explains as the “but for” approach in antidiscrimination law. Antidiscrimination law addresses how single categories as race or sex produce unfair outcomes. It defines race and sex discrimination “in terms of the experiences of those who are privileged but for their racial or sexual characteristics.”47 This single-axis thinking disregards the multiple factors that create various conditions of suffering. Black women cannot, as white women can, easily say that but for their sex, they would have equal access to rights and opportunities. Now, the “but first” approach to thinking about, toward acting on, discrimination is an argument for analytic priority. In Bhattacharya’s view, class identity has epistemic privilege and political urgency. Differences based on sex and race are subsumed under class position because capitalism operates precisely through deindividualization and the invisibility of the individual as laborer—capitalism produces the sexless, raceless worker—variously theorized in Marxism as commodity fetishism, alienation and reification.48 Bhattacharya calls for a renewed understanding of the tyranny of capitalism and its exploitation of labor as the primary cause of inequality and violence. Following Hancock’s discussion, Bhattacharya is more closely aligned with feminist standpoint theory, specifically with works in this paradigm that critically engage with Marxist theory. Consider, for example, the Combahee River Collective’s inclusion of the categories of race and sex in class analysis: “We need to articulate the real class situations of persons who are not merely raceless,  Ibid., Loc. 1133–1134, 1151–1152.  Ibid., Loc. 1174–1176. 47  Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” 151. 48  See Burris, “Reification: A Marxist Perspective.” 45 46

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sexless workers but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working, economic lives.”49 In identifying a first axis of oppression, despite its inclusivity, feminist standpoint theory becomes a universalizing gesture, the pitfall of which is the reduction or diminution of differences in positing a primary, that is, preceding and originary, concept or structure. In this light, it is a repetition of or a variation on colonial discourse, in line with the foregoing section, which is to say that it is an imperialistic gesture, absorbing difference into the logic of the Same. To this point, Hancock’s model for intersectionality is useful for its insistence on what she calls “situational contingency.”50 She explicates: Intersectional contingency is distinct from the notion both that “context matters” and that individual identity is all that matters. Using the situation as a lens does not reify personal experience, for individuals can experience a situation in question in very different ways. Nor does it reify the structural aspects that shape such situations, assisting in holding individuals responsible for their actions in a situation.51

Intersectionality takes as a given the existence of unequal social structures; namely, sexism, racism, classism or elitism, and other forms of discrimination that define reality. These determine aspects of daily life, including interactions within the domestic sphere and the professional domain. There is a dialectic between social context and individual identity that plays out in the choices people make within the confines of their subject positions in everyday existence, resulting in a difference-in-­ similarity, what can be understood in relation to Hancock’s situational contingency. There are commonalities in contexts of oppression, serving as basis for empathy and call to action on behalf of or alongside other group identities. Certainly, collectivism impelled by a wider scale of belonging enables more effective interventions in unequal social structures, as is evidenced by the developments in the #MeToo movement. Yet, commonality does not equate to homogeneity of circumstance and  Quoted in Hancock, Intersectionality, 115.  Hancock, Intersectionality, 110. 51  Ibid., 110–111. 49 50

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response. The #MeToo campaign itself brings to sharp relief longstanding internal hierarchies and the risk of perpetuating hierarchization even by those who have been disadvantaged. Intersectionality proffers a way of responding to the complexity of social relations. It is an invitation to a more generous view of co-existence, more reparative than it is retributive, in the spirit of Lorde’s conviction: “I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group.”52 The enmeshment of axes of difference or categories of group identity is, as Crenshaw imagines, multidirectional and, given the number of ways of intersection, indeterminate. Such indeterminacy refuses the hierarchization of oppressions; put differently, it rejects the question of whose suffering matters most. It is finally a reminder of constant and heightened awareness of other axes of difference that demand to be foregrounded and other equally injurious points of intersection.

Conclusion: Minoritizing #MeToo To return to the chapter’s starting point, Burke, speaking on the direction of the #MeToo campaign, expresses her concern over how its digitalization redirects the movement away “from marginalized people. And to some degree, it’s still happening. The conversation is largely about Harvey Weinstein or other individual bogeymen. No matter how much I keep talking about power and privilege, they keep bringing it back to individuals.”53 For Burke, the impetus is to draw attention to the marginalized: “There’s no conversation in this whole thing about transgender folks and sexual violence. There’s no conversation in this about people with disabilities and sexual violence. We need to talk about Native Americans, who have the highest rate of sexual violence in this country.”54 Instead, what have been front and center are stories about “powerful men in Hollywood and the mostly white female celebrities who have accused

 Lorde, “There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions.”  Burke, “Tarana Burke Says,” Loc. 160–61. 54  Ibid., Loc. 163–65. 52 53

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them of sexual misconduct and assault.”55 Her call to what can be interpreted as the “becoming-minor,” borrowing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, of the Me Too movement betokens a vigilance against precisely the minoritization of identity groups by social movements that capitalize on individuals and select categories to gain currency and advance political aims.56 This explains not simply the dominance of Weinstein in popular consciousness but also, as Burke notes, the differing cultural and judicial responses to him in comparison to individuals like R. Kelly whose alleged sexual abuses are normalized in that “we still have space for him”57 because the victims are black women and girls. Equally important is Burke’s awareness of the exclusionary tendency of any social movement and, therefore, her appeal, beyond Crenshaw, to demarginalize the intersection of disability and sex, say, and for the consideration of other alterities along the lines of sexuality and ethnicity. While intersectionality is positioned against the hierarchization of single-axis thinking, contra-essentialism or the reification of the following approach, it has to move beyond the triadic structure of race, gender, class that is determinative of analysis and politics. There are two binary oppositions that frame the discussions of this present moment in feminist theory and practice, particularly in the AngloAmerican context. The first, as discussed throughout this chapter, examines the dialectic between universalism and particularism in the face of the purported excesses of identity politics, and the second problematizes the site of subjective agency as either individual or collective. Related to the latter duality, the authority of the subject established by the Cartesian ego cogito has been put to question since the hermeneutics of suspicion of the nineteenth century, as explored by Paul Ricoeur, reaching its apogee in the theory revolution of the twentieth century.58 After structuralism and poststructuralism, this subject is a collective subject defined by group identity struggling to exercise negative freedom from the ideological constraints of subject positions. The tendency toward negative liberty can  Chan, “Our Pain Is Never Prioritized.”  See Deleuze and Guattari, “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature.” 57  Burke, “Tarana Burke Says,” Loc. 169. 58  See Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy. 55 56

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be seen in the various schools that emerged after the turn to theory in the 1960s in which a decentering, or deconstruction, of subjectivity and a skepticism toward norms of thought and action have been, as it were, normative. Paradigmatic of these impulses is queer theory represented by Judith Butler and her foundational text, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, which interrogates the juridical subject of feminism whose identity is secured through the categories of sex, gender and sexuality.59 In positing identity as performance and performative, Butler ruptures the unity of the feminist subject insofar as sex, like gender, is now understood as a cultural construction. In this framework, sex no longer necessitates gender, and gender no longer necessitates sexuality. Such antifoundationalism breaks down, rather than consolidates, identity, attenuating collectivism and its normative force, otherwise conceptualized by Spivak as strategic essentialism, as basis of subjective agency. In theory and criticism, the death of the subject, or “the death of the author,”60 also functions as a corrective to the dominance of “oracular figures,”61 the predilection to map the history of thought through the authoritative discourses of individual thinkers who are predominantly male and white. Thus, while identity politics is premised on groupness, in its philosophical dispensation, what has taken place is a movement toward individualism that is further reinforced by the turn to ethics and the turn to affect in critical theory beginning in the 1980s.62 In these paradigms, positive freedom is underlined; that is, the capacity of the individual to actively transform identity, what the later Michel Foucault calls “aesthetics of existence” or “technologies of the self.”63 Peter V. Zima’s remarks are apposite at this juncture: What has been overlooked here is the fact that this subject did not only arise, think and act in concrete material circumstances described in the critiques of the Young Hegelians and Marxists, but became established through a constant interplay with collective, abstract or mythical subjects:  See Butler, Gender Trouble.  See Barthes, “The Death of the Author.” 61  Elliott and Attridge, “Introduction,” 3. 62  See Anderson, The Way We Argue Now. 63  See Foucault, The Use of Pleasure. 59 60

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with nation, state and class, Spirit, World Spirit and History. Above all, the interaction between the abstract, individual subject of philosophy and the collective subjects (groups, organizations, movements) of society was ignored entirely.64

In Marxism, as Zima explains, individual autonomy enabled by the shift from feudalism to capitalism is illusory as freedom is constrained by exchange value, in which case the subject ceases to be a subject and becomes an object. Thus, Marxists locate positive freedom, which Isaiah Berlin “links […] to the very substance of subjectivity,” not in the individual but in the collective subject, the proletariat, that is expected to overcome capitalist society.65 Comparably, in fourth-wave feminism, subjective agency is collective as preceded by Crenshaw’s pluralization of Truth’s Woman, but a collective that is dynamic and informed by the suppression of heterogeneity by the myth of the universal sisterhood. Such a pluralizing gesture is aligned with Burke’s exhortation to focus the conversation on structures of oppression rather than individuals, whether they be perpetrators of sexism and abuse or advocates of women’s rights. Indeed, the raising of public consciousness, and the marshaling of support through new media, by individuals of celebrity status in cultural, commercial, political, even academic fields cannot be discounted and deserves acknowledgment. The argument for the precedence of the social body is nevertheless important to examine in light of the limitations of a movement driven and dominated by personalities. That individual subjectivity presupposes a biological entity, who enters into the Symbolic Order and becomes a social subject,66 that is defined by temporal existence accounts for the transitory publicity, no matter how meteoric, of issues of general interest. In contrast, collective subjects “as groups, institutions or organizations […] do not know biological death—but they are permanently threatened by social and political disintegration.”67 Throughout history, there have been figures who have not only played  Zima, Subjectivity and Identity, 1.  Ibid., 5. 66  For a succinct discussion of Lacanian psychoanalysis, specifically the Symbolic Order, see Thomas, Ten Lessons in Theory. 67  Zima, Subjectivity and Identity, 6–7. 64 65

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pivotal roles in instigating changes in society but have also captured the collective consciousness long after their lifetime. The same can be said of leading lights in the women’s movement, such as Truth. Yet, for a movement to be effective, collective and cumulative efforts are necessary. This argument is grounded in the view that language is a social fact and requires the consent enacted through the everyday speech of members of a linguistic community to properly function as mode of communication and effect domains of action. The sociality of language explains its ideological deployment even as it enables the possibility of resistance to the very same. The production of counter-discourses similarly necessitates prevalent usage by any peripheral group identity, a signal of the possibility of positive liberty exercised by the collective subject, following Marxism, that is able to bracket ideology and oppose oppressive ways of thinking and being. Moreover, positive freedom makes possible the progression from the struggle over the particular concerns of a group identity to a cultivation of a more expansive sense of belongingness, what has been theorized under the rubric of new cosmopolitanisms.68 The recuperation of cosmopolitanism at present from its intellectual and political history of elitism and eurocentrism is a response to the ethical imperative of recognition of difference and delivers an injunction against the appropriation of particular experiences of suffering. It self-reflexively resists the idea that collectivization is always already suspect of universalizing and imperializing gestures. Instead, in alignment with intersectionality as situational contingency, after Hancock, it is a theory and practice of an open and ongoing conversation and collaboration between sameness and difference or the universal and the particular. The new cosmopolitanisms proffer a model to the endeavor to minoritize the #MeToo movement, or to demarginalize the intersections of sex and other, more precisely othered, categories of identity. Harnessing positive freedom, it develops critical awareness of privileges and its attendant hierarchies, promoting the suspension thereof in affiliation and solidarity with others.

 For a comprehensive discussion on cosmopolitanism, see Anderson, The Way We Argue Now, 69–92. 68

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References Adams, Jad. 2014. Women and the Vote: A World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. AlJazeera. 2016. Who Got the Right to Vote When?. AlJazeera. https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2016/us-elections-2016-who-can-vote/index.html. Accessed 9 July 2020. Anderson, Amanda. 2006. The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. Barthes, Roland. 2001. The Death of the Author. In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. Vincent B.  Leitch, 1466–1470. New  York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Bhattacharya, Tithi. 2018. Socializing Security, Unionizing Work: #MeToo as Our Moment to Explore Possibilities. In Where Freedom Starts: Sex Violence Power #MeToo: A Verso Report. London/New York: Verso. Kindle. Boissoneault, Lorraine. 2017. The Original Women’s March on Washington and the Suffragists who Paved the Way. Smithsonian.com, January 21, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/original-womens-march-washington-and-suffragists-who-paved-way-180961869/. Accessed 9 July 2020. Burke, Tarana (@TaranaBurke). 2017. It Made My Heart Swell to See Women Using This Idea  – One That We Call ‘Empowerment Through Empathy’ #metoo. Twitter, October 15, 2017. https://twitter.com/taranaburke/status/ 919704166515335174?lang=en. Accessed 9 July 2020. ———. 2018. Tarana Burke Says #MeToo Should Center Marginalized Communities. Interview by Elizabeth Adetiba. Where Freedom Starts: Sex Violence Power #MeToo: A Verso Report. London/New York: Verso. Burris, Val. 1988. Reification: A Marxist Perspective. California Sociologist 10 (1): 22–43. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York/London: Routledge. Chan, Melissa. 2019. ‘Our Pain Is Never Prioritized.’ #MeToo Founder Tarana Burke Says We Must Listen to ‘Untold’ Stories of Minority Women. April 23, 2019. https://time.com/5574163/tarana-burke-metoo-time-100-summit/. Accessed 9 July 2020. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (1): 139–167. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/ iss1/8. Accessed 9 July 2020.

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Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1985. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature: The Components of Expression. New Literary History 16 (3, Spring): 591–608. Elliott, Jane, and Derek Attridge. 2011. Introduction: Theory’s Nine Lives. In Theory After ‘Theory’, ed. Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, 1–15. London/New York: Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The Use of Pleasure: Volume 2 of the History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books Edition. Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2016. Intersectionality: An Intellectual History. New York: Oxford University Press. Kindle. Kindig, Jessie. 2018. Introduction. In Where Freedom Starts: Sex Violence Power #MeToo: A Verso Report. London/New York: Verso. Kindle. Lorde, Audre. 1983. There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions. In Bulletin: Homophobia and Education. Council on Interracial Books for Children. http:// www.pages.drexel.edu/~jc3962/COR/Hierarchy.pdf. Accessed 9 July 2020. May, Vivian M. 2015. Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. New York/London: Routledge. Milano, Alyssa (@Alyssa_Milano). 2017a. I Was Just Made Aware of an Earlier #MeToo Movement, and the Origin Story Is Equal Parts Heartbreaking and Inspiring. Twitter, October 16, 2017. https://twitter.com/alyssa_milano/status/ 920067975016624128?lang=en. Accessed 9 July 2020.  ———. 2017b. If All the Women Who Have Been Sexually Harassed or Assaulted Wrote ‘Me Too.’ as a Status, We Might Give People a Sense of the Magnitude of the Problem. Twitter, October 15, 2017. https://twitter.com/ alyssa_milano/status/919659438700670976?lang=en. Accessed 9 July 2020. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary 2 12 (3, Spring–Autumn): 333–358. BBC News. 2018. Harvey Weinstein Timeline: How the Scandal Unfolded. BBC News, September 18, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainmentarts-41594672. Accessed 9 July 2020.  Ricoeur, Paul. 1970. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (the Terry Lecture Series). Translated by Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Sanghani, Radhika. 2015. The Uncomfortable Truth About Racism and the Suffragettes. The Telegraph, October 6, 2015. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ women/womens-life/11914757/Racism-and-the-suffragettes-theuncomfortable-truth.html. Accessed 9 July 2020.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1994. Can the Subaltern Speak?. In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. Edited and introduced by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 66–111. New York: Columbia University Press. Thomas, Calvin. 2013. Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing. New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic. Vagianos, Alanna. 2017. The ‘Me Too’ Campaign Was Created by a Black Woman 10 Years Ago. HuffPost, October 17, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-me-too-campaign-was-created-by-a-black-woman10-years-ago_us_59e61a7fe4b02a215b336fee. Accessed 9 July 2020. ———. 2018. Tarana Burke Tells Black Women Me Too Is ‘Your Movement, Too’. HuffPost, September 10, 2018. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ tarana-burke-tells-black-women-me-too-is-your-movement-too_us_5b967c 8fe4b0162f472f65f6. Accessed 9 July 2020.  Zima, Peter V. 2015. Subjectivity and Identity. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

6 “Exemplary” Lesbians: The Struggle for Adequate Representation Charlotte Ross

Introduction: The Vexed Question of Discursive Authority In a poststructuralist world where identity labels are contested, due to the risk of homogenizing variegated groups, what language do we use and what positions do we assume when we speak about, or for, marginalized groups like “lesbians”? Who has, or assumes, the authority to speak on their behalf, and to what effect? What authority and legitimacy do the words of self-appointed spokespeople have in mainstream discourse, in this age of globalized, social media? These questions matter because of the power of cultural discourse to both influence and proliferate signification;1 they matter because discourse has the power to reinforce  Hall, “Introduction.”

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C. Ross (*) University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_6

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or to undermine, and because not everyone is accorded the same right to enter into public debate. Classic and more contemporary theoretical reflections on the concept of “authority” associate it with power and agency, and have debated the continuing endurance of historic, pyramidal hierarchies of traditional forms of authority.2 Recently, Mark Haugaard has argued that while authority is often seen as “power over,” it should also be conceptualized as “power to.”3 This essay is concerned with the assertion of this latter form of authority, the power to speak on behalf of others, which depends on a sociological authority in that it “entails agency that comes from performative acts that appear epistemically reasonable.”4 As Hannah Arendt argued, authority relies on “recognition,” and should not need to be coercive.5 I explore the ways in which individuals or subgroups aligned with lesbian subcultures have assumed the power to speak on behalf of the larger community of lesbians, without having the consensus or recognition that endows them with the authority to do so. From another perspective, we might consider this as the co-opting of the broader category of “lesbian,” by groups who wish their definition to be accepted at the dominant one; thus they take a reductive, essentialist approach to identity.6 This situation emerges from several decades of political activism, as campaigners aligned with the Feminist, Civil Rights and LGBT movements, among others, have challenged the historic silencing of subjugated and so-called minority groups, sought to enshrine rights for these groups and insisted on their authority to represent themselves. Ensuing questions of identity politics, of location, and of the difficulties of campaigning on collectively agreed agendas to improve rights or broaden representation have been much discussed. One key starting point is the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement, by a group of black lesbians  See, for example: Arendt, “Authority in the Twentieth Century”; Whiteman, “The Death of Twentieth-Century Authority”; Haugaard, “What is Authority?.” 3  Haugaard, “What is Authority?,” 25. 4  Ibid. 5  Arendt, On Violence, 45. 6  For a comparable discussion of how feminism has been “hijacked,” or “co-opted,” see Loke, Bachmann, Harp, “Co-opting Feminism.” 2

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who assert that they themselves—rather than white feminists or lesbian separatists, for example—are best placed to campaign for their own rights, and also reflect on the difficulties of collective organization.7 However, while on one level it seems vital to listen to how minority groups wish to represent themselves, based on their lived experience, some minority groups can make problematic claims, and some claim to represent larger numbers of people than they actually do. In 1992, Linda Alcoff published an insightful article that engages with such issues, entitled “The Problem of Speaking for Others.”8 Alcoff comments that location and positionality are multiple and mobile, not static, which impacts on the meaning we ascribe to the speaker’s words.9 Drawing on the work of Gayatri Spivak, Alcoff also notes the importance both of allowing oppressed groups to have a voice and of exercising caution when responding since “the simple solution is not for the oppressed or less privileged to be able to speak for themselves, since their speech will not necessarily be either liberatory or reflective of their “true interests,” if such exist.”10 Fundamentally, Alcoff insists on the importance of maintaining a critical awareness of who is speaking, to whom and with what effect. Alcoff’s work remains relevant today. Drawing on her insights, and other scholarship on gender, sexuality, identity, representation and authority, I analyze two particularly instructive examples of the fraught dynamics of speaking on behalf of “lesbian” communities. My focus is on Italy and the UK, two European contexts which differ in terms of legislation on LGBTQIA+ rights, media representation (both of the putative generic lesbian community and individual high-profile “out” lesbians), and the structure of lesbian activist networks. In particular, I consider how the term “lesbian” is used in a problematically universalizing way by lesbian-identified women with normative agendas, who seize an unsanctioned authority to speak on behalf of the broader population of lesbians. I then explore the responses by other lesbians who demand a queerer understanding of the category, and consider the way that these debates  See Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement.”  Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” 9  Ibid., 16–7. 10  Ibid., 23. 7 8

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are framed in the media. To clarify, I make no claims to offer a systematic analysis of cultural and media discourse, but rather seek to disentangle the dynamics of certain moments in which discursive authority on behalf of an implicit group seems to be assumed without broader consultation. I consider what kind of authority this might constitute, and how certain definitions of the “lesbian” have been sanctioned by dominant culture as more “epistemically reasonable” than others.11

 ey Terms for Debate: From Strategic K Essentialism to Abyssal Displacement Before turning to my case studies, I begin by unpacking the terms in my title in more detail. The category of “lesbian,” like the category of “woman,” has been thoroughly deconstructed by many scholars and activists. They have warned of the dangers of using this identity label in a hegemonizing manner, implying that it is a fixed and stable, monolithic sexual identity.12 However, while Judith Butler has called for the meaning of the label “lesbian” to remain permanently unclear, she has also acknowledged that categories may be necessary to make political claims for subjugated groups; in these situations, Butler urges, we must use these categories with due caution and subject them to “critical scrutiny.”13 Here we are in the realms of what Spivak has called “strategic essentialism,” where struggles to validate multiple differences are in tension with campaigns to improve civil rights for a larger group.14 Such campaigns often claim to represent the “lesbian community,” yet this term too should be used cautiously, since it can indicate diverse phenomena, from small groups where individuals socialize together, to (drawing on the work of Benedict Anderson) forms of imagined lesbian comradeship between people who may never meet in person.15 The idea of the broader lesbian  Haugaard, “What is Authority?,” 25.  See, for example, Vicinus, “They Wonder to which Sex I Belong”; Meese, (Sem)Erotics. 13  Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” 308 and Undoing Gender, 36. 14  Spivak, “Subaltern Studies”; see also Bernstein, “The Strategic Uses of Identity.” 15  See Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6–7, and Rothenberg, “And she told two friends,” 171–2. 11 12

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community can play a crucial role in supporting isolated individuals, but due to its fluid character it is also subject to manipulation by those who wish to define it in a specific way to fit their own agenda. In both Italy and the UK, as in many other contexts, women who desire other women have historically been underrepresented, or represented in problematic ways: pathologized, objectified for male viewers, stereotyped and so on.16 Therefore socio-cultural and political representation, which is always crucial for marginalized or subjugated groups, is particularly important for those who in some way align themselves with the category of “lesbian.” In my title I obliquely evoke Teresa de Lauretis’s notion of “inadequate” representation, on which she comments in The Practice of Love. Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire.17 De Lauretis laments the “inadequacy” of representations of lesbian relationships and identities in mainstream Anglo-American culture. She identifies problematic recurring patterns of stereotyped, negatively portrayed lesbians who often seem to be constructed to titillate male viewers rather than to speak to other lesbians. These comments were made several years ago now, and there have certainly been enormous developments in cultural representation, and what we might call the “speakability” of lesbianism, particularly in the anglophone world. Lesbians are the new black—as evidenced in the recent hit Netflix series about women in prison, Orange Is the New Black,18 which included several women characters who were sexually and romantically involved with other women. However just because female characters who desire women appear more frequently in cultural texts, does it mean that representation of lesbians is now “adequate”? Contemporary critiques indicate that this is certainly not yet the case. For example, Sarah Holley notes that while there have been legislative breakthroughs in terms of the legalization of same-sex marriage in many Western countries, this has also shaped narratives of lesbian relationships so they are often represented as happily  On the Italian context see, for example, Milletti and Passerini, Fuori della norma; and Ross, Eccentricity and Sameness; on the UK see Castle, The Apparitional Lesbian. 17  de Lauretis, The Practice of Love. 18  This popular series was created by Jenji Kohan for Netflix. It premiered in 2013 and the fifth and final season was released in 2017. 16

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aligned with the heterosexual norm, rather than challenging it.19 While some lesbian couples may be satisfied with this implication, others would contest it due to an investment in reconfiguring traditional approaches to the couple, or a desire to queer intimacy.20 If the more frequent representations of lesbians in cultural discourse continue to be problematized, what might adequate representation of a deconstructed and contested group like “lesbians” look like? In queer times, improved representation might be characterized as seeking the visibility of multiple, variegated, unapologetic identities, practices and communities; representations that both affirm the validity of and continually call into question the limits of “lesbian” identities.21 Yet how would such a population speak publicly? One possible response to this question is through “exemplary” bodies. In Eve Sedgwick’s discussion of a protest demanding the recognition and representation of black queerness in the media, she reflects on the sociocultural and political requirement for minorities to be “exemplary bodies”: they are obliged not only to demand representation but to be and give representation, in a performative manner.22 While the possibility for minorities and their allies to represent themselves is precisely what the Combahee River Collective was striving for, this is far from an easy task. Sedgwick shares her experience of the difficulties of negotiating the complexities of reference, as the bodies of those physically present at a protest “refer” to others who are not present and for whom they speak, in some way, although this speaking is haunted by a form of what she terms “abyssal displacement.” Sedgwick also reflects on the uncertainty of the underlying intentions of the protesters: what do the placards and bodies actually signify? What are the exemplary bodies present attempting to convey, and who can really hear or see them as they might wish them to be heard or seen? In relation to the present discussion, we might ask whether exemplary bodies actually just represent a small minority, while seeming to speak for a broader community. In some situations, might such voices be taken up and spun as “exemplary” of the broader community by  Holley, “Perspectives on Contemporary Lesbian Relationships.”  Umberson, Thomeer and Lodge, “Intimacy and Emotion Work.” 21  Here I draw on the concept of new queer cinema, developed by B. Ruby Rich and others. See, for example, Hayward, “Queer Cinema.” 22  Sedgwick, Touching, Feeling, 31. 19 20

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political factions who find these voices easier to stomach than more radical ones? In Haugaard’s words, are some positions more easily accepted as “epistemically reasonable,” and given sociological authority, because they align more neatly with existing norms? To return to Alcoff, we should remain highly critical of spokespeople who claim to articulate the “true interest” of the larger group that they seem to represent; moreover, we should listen out carefully to the displaced voices, to determine what kind of consensus supports the show of authority.

“ Exemplary” Spokespeople for the Lesbians: Italy and the UK In what follows, I explore some instances in which “exemplary” figures of various kinds speak on behalf of, or about, lesbian lives. I argue that the continued invisibility of some subcultures, such as lesbians, means that at times subgroups within these categories are given more space, credence and discursive or epistemic authority in the mainstream media (some lesbians are more equal than others). This may then work to the detriment of more challenging, radical positions that are voiced, but remain relatively silenced in dominant discourse. In bringing these two situations together, I note a common trend: more conservative lesbians who wish to preserve and reinforce the category of lesbian as biological woman seem prepared to disrupt or even break with the broader LGBTQIA+ movement in order to assert their positionality. I first provide some detail about the socio-cultural and legal context, contrasting Italy with its European neighbor, the UK. Italy is often thought of as “backward” in terms of LGBTQIA+ rights, and is currently ranked 32  in the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) Europe table of LGBTI rights; the UK is currently ranked 4.23 Italy has no provision for same-sex marriage, and civil partnership legislation was approved only in 2016, while the UK legislation on civil partnerships was introduced in 2004, and in 2013 the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act  This table is based on “how the laws and policies of each country impact on the lives of LGBTI people” (ILGA, “Country Ranking”). 23

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was passed. The current Italian legislation does not include provision for the recognition of parental responsibility of a partner’s existing children or children born to the couple: this means that if two women decide to become parents through donor conception, only the woman who gives birth is the legal parent. It is currently not possible for same-sex couples to conceive by donor conception in Italy: they need to go abroad, for example to the UK, where both partners can also be recognized as parents thanks to the 2008 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act. Moving away from legislation that pertains to reproduction and monogamous couples, Italy’s anti-discrimination laws also have more loopholes than UK law, and seem to be applied in a rather more haphazard way. This is partly due to historic legislation about acts that might offend public modesty—such as same-sex couples displaying any kind of affection in public. The degree of offensiveness of such acts remains open to interpretation which has led to gay male couples being arrested for holding hands and kissing in public.24 Activist groups supporting lesbians in Italy have existed since the 1970s in various forms, but the most visible today, the national network Arcilesbica, was founded in 1996 and has many local groups across the country.25 In the UK, Stonewall is the largest, national association supporting LGBT rights, and there are many local groups for those who identify as LGBTQIA+; recently, the Lesbian Rights Alliance (LRA) was founded which states on its website that it collaborates with lesbian individuals and groups across the UK.26 This research explores two situations  In the UK, the Equality Act (2010) protects a series of characteristics, including being or becoming a transsexual person, being married or in a civil partnership and sexual orientation. In Italy, while article 3 of the Constitution seems to assert equality for all citizens, it has not historically been implemented in this way. The first law to mention sexual orientation, Legislative Decree 216/2003, regarding equality in the workplace, actually specifies that people can be discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality in certain professions, such as the armed forces (article 3). Article 527 of the Italian Penal Code punishes anyone who engages in “obscene” acts in public with a fine or imprisonment. For details of the male couple who were arrested, see La Repubblica, “Bacio gay al Colosseo.” 25  See their website, http://www.arcilesbica.it/. 26  For information on Stonewall, see https://www.stonewall.org.uk/. In the UK, for “older” lesbians, defined on some sites as women over forty, there is the “Older Lesbian Network.” This operates through local groups, similarly to Arcilesbica, but does not have a centralized committee, president or national conference. The London site can be found here: http://www.olderlesbiannetwork.btck. co.uk/. For details of the LRA, which their Facebook page states was founded in January 2018, see: 24

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in which open letters by lesbian groups were published on social media and discussed in national newspapers: in both cases, these letters claim to speak on behalf of a broader community of lesbians and push a normative, essentialist agenda; in both cases, a response by the broader lesbian community critiqued this approach and called for a queerer perspective. In Italy, heated debate about Arcilesbica has spilled into the national press. Differences in the Italian lesbian activist community began to emerge in 2016 as the recent law on civil partnerships was introduced. It provoked problematic discussions about whether same-sex couples had the right to be parents, including statements from the Vatican and traditional groups such as the “Sentinelle in piedi” [Standing Sentinels] that support the heteronormative family and binary sexual difference.27 Ultimately the article that would have permitted the recognition of the non-biological parent was removed from the bill just days before it was passed. Surrogacy was another issue that surfaced in relation to the draft bill: it is currently illegal in Italy, but the bill alludes to children of Italian citizens who are born to surrogates abroad. Various figures within Arcilesbica expressed strong views against surrogacy and wrote an open letter denouncing the practice, which was signed by fifty Italian selfidentified “lesbians.” Signatories include the sociologist Daniela Danna and the President of Arcilesbica Nazionale Cristina Gramolini.28 The letter specifically condemns surrogacy as the commodification of women’s reproductive capacities, and of children, and demands that all countries adhere to the policy that the legal mother is the one who gives birth, not the intended mother who signed a contract, even if she is the egg donor. The letter is entitled “Lesbiche contro la GPA” [Lesbians against surrogacy],29 and was discussed in the national center-left daily La Repubblica, in September 2016, with this headline: “Appello di 50 https://lesbianalliance.org.uk/ and https://www.facebook.com/LRalliance/. No detail is provided about the groups with which it collaborates. 27  See their website, www.sentinelleinpiedi.it. For a detailed discussion of the Vatican view on homosexuality, the family and so-called anti-gender groups that claim that the heteronormative family is under attack from “gender theories,” see Garbagnoli and Prearo, La crociata anti–gender. 28  See https://www.tpi.it/2016/09/28/50-donne-omosessuali-appello-utero-in-affitto/. The signatories were not included in the Repubblica article. 29  In Italian, GPA stands for “gestazione per altri/e,” literally gestation for others.

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l­esbiche contro l’utero in affitto. No a mercificazione di donne e bambini” [Appeal by 50 lesbians against womb for rent: no commodification of women and children].30 Inevitably, this letter raises questions of who is speaking for whom, and with what authority. Lesbians are still rather phantasmatic in Italian culture. They have been evoked more frequently in the Italian media since the early 2000s, in relation to campaigns for LGBT rights and Pride parades.31 Indeed, in terms of volume, there is not a significant discrepancy in media coverage between Italy and the UK: a keyword search in two broadly comparable national newspapers, The Guardian and La Repubblica, for the terms “lesbian(s)” /lesbica/lesbiche for the past year produced 203 hits on the Guardian and 178 for La Repubblica.32 Moreover, in both contexts, the vast majority of these articles speak about the generic category of “lesbians” without further qualifying what this might mean, or acknowledging that this refers to a highly variegated group. However, the contexts differ in terms of the visibility of high- profile media figures. In the UK, there are now several “out” lesbians (e.g., the TV presenters Clare Balding, Sue Perkins and Sandi Toksvig; politicians like Angela Eagle; and authors like Jeannette Winterson and the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy), whereas in Italy there are fewer high-­ profile public figures who have openly discussed their sexuality: a notable exception is the politician Paola Concia. Indeed, rarely is the voice of an individual lesbian-identified woman heard in Italy, so the category “lesbians” remains an undefined group.33 As a result, while only those who have actually signed the open letter about surrogacy technically support it, the evocation of the broader category of lesbians implies that a larger demographic agrees with this position.  Custodero, “Appello di 50 lesbiche.”  See Ross, “Visions of Visibility.” Here and elsewhere I use the shorter acronym (LGBT, not LGBTQIA+) to reflect the focus of the campaigns. 32  Both newspapers are national, politically independent but broadly center-left dailies. The search was carried out on their websites (larepubblica.it; theguardian.com) for the period November 16, 2017, to November 16, 2018. 33  Indeed, many high-profile women in relationships with other women reject the label “lesbian”; as I have argued elsewhere, this seems to be due to perceived stigmatization rather than through a desire to queer sexual categories. See Antosa and Ross, “Dirsi lesbica oggi?.” 30 31

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The individuals who signed the document are named on some websites (although not in all newspaper articles); they are the exemplary bodies that Sedgwick theorized who are performatively constructing the figure of the Italian lesbian in the Italian cultural imagination (and beyond). Yet their stance, to paraphrase Alcoff, is neither liberatory nor reflective of the views of the broader community of “lesbians.” Indeed, their position has been widely critiqued by many activists, as I discuss in a moment. Several problematic views are associated with Danna and Gramolini in particular: I mention them specifically since Gramolini has made numerous public statements and Danna has written books and articles on the issue.34 Gramolini and Danna, and the lesbians who align with their views, question gay men’s ability to be parents; in their statements they explicitly tie women to their reproductive capacities, and link pregnancy inextricably with motherhood. Their views are steeped in biological essentialism and a wish to maintain sexual binaries, an inherently transphobic position. As a result, they have been held up as exemplary lesbians indeed, and accorded epistemic authority by Catholic and traditional associations supporting the normative family, and politicians like Paola Binetti who have praised them for being “brave” to speak out against the prevailing LGBT discourse that supports same-sex parenting and is understood as supporting surrogacy.35 A major problem with these statements is that they are pervaded by blanket generalizations that function to remove nuance and reinforce problematic binary logics: in addition to the repeated references to undifferentiated groups of lesbians the views regarding surrogacy seem reduced to a choice of vehemently for or against. It would be unethical to support surrogacy in all circumstances, or to forbid it in all circumstances. Surrogacy is highly complex: women are certainly exploited in some situations where there is inadequate regulation, and even where regulation exists, often a woman’s “choice” to carry a baby for another couple is not entirely free. Ethical reflections on the question have suggested that it is imperative to distinguish between  See, for example, Bonini et  al. “Desires and Rights” and Danna, “Le madri lesbiche.” For a detailed and insightful discussion of the debate on surrogacy in Italy, see Cossutta, “Maternal Relations.” 35  Custodero, “Appello di 50 lesbiche.” 34

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commercial surrogacy, and informal arrangements between people who also have or develop kinship bonds.36 To her credit, Danna does acknowledge this, although her brief comment is lost in the slew of universalizing rhetoric.37 However the issue that I want to focus on here is not whether or not surrogacy is ethical, but the discourses on women’s bodies and maternity articulated by these lesbians, the space they have been granted in the media, and their repercussions. Blanket statements that refuse to acknowledge the possibility that surrogacy arrangements might be consensual are unhelpful. The demonization of gay men as exploiters of women’s bodies is problematic. Moreover, while it is crucial to protect the rights of the surrogate, reinforcing an emphasis on the mother’s biological bond with her baby implicitly stigmatizes non-normative family formations, and insists that motherhood is linked to biology, rather than culturally constructed. The next significant public statement from the “lesbian community” (a notion increasingly under strain in this situation) was a critique of those lesbians who had opposed surrogacy. Another open letter appeared on various websites and in the newspaper Il Manifesto on May 18, 2018, written and signed by lesbians who are frustrated by the essentialist views expressed by some figureheads in the movement, and who argue that surrogacy can be emancipating.38 The letter specifically takes issue with the view that there are irreducible differences between men and women and that women are specifically differentiated from men by their capacity for reproduction. It critiques the stigmatization of gay men, who are portrayed as only able to become parents through the exploitation of women’s bodies, and accuses Danna of using fascist rhetoric to call into question the legal recognition of non-biological gay male fathers. It also  See the round table discussion on surrogacy, in which Zsuzsa Berend presents her research that reveals how surrogates may consider themselves “independent, smart, resourceful, generous women” (Bonini et al. “Desires and Rights,” 392). See also Cossutta, “Maternal Relations,” for a deconstruction of socio-cultural constructions of maternity, including reflections on surrogacy. For a philosophical view on the ethics of surrogacy, see, for example, Marway, “La gestation pour autrui commerciale.” 37  See Danna, “Le madri lesbiche.” Universalizing rhetoric is exemplified by Paola Binetti who declared that no woman would give up her child after nine months of pregnancy unless she was in great difficulty (Custodero, “Appello di 50 lesbiche”). 38  Guazzo et al., “La maternità, la GPA e una diversa emancipazione.” 36

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includes complaints that discussions about lesbian politics seem to have been sidelined by this debate about surrogacy, in which women are identified first and foremost as mothers, not subjects, and queer approaches to lesbianism, female sexuality, the category of woman and embodiment are pushed out of the picture in another form of “abyssal displacement.” Recently, some Arcilesbica groups, including the one in Bologna that was the national headquarters, have opted to disassociate themselves from the national network, stating that they refuse to be part of an organization that cultivates a monolithic and authoritarian approach to complex issues.39 Thus we have a situation in which the imagined community of Italian lesbians is given voice through a national newspaper, articulating a view that demonizes gay men and supports the heteronormative family politics of the Vatican and far-right groups. These groups also express their support for the “brave” lesbians, and treat them as “exemplary,” since they give further validity to their own normative agenda: if even the lesbians are against the gay men, then it seems more legitimate to oppose their desire for parenthood. Thus while the signatories of the letter do not have a mandate to represent the broader community of lesbians, they are effectively accorded sociological authority by influential institutions who find their views more congenial than those of other elements of the broader LGBTQIA+ activist community. One effect of this letter was to destabilize the LGBTQIA+ movement and to threaten the legislation on civil unions: arguably, the media debate about surrogacy impacted on the decision to remove the article recognizing non-biological co-parents. Indeed, one might even speculate that this was a conscious or unconscious intention of the authors of the open letter, since otherwise why specify that it was written by lesbians? If these anti-surrogacy lesbians are performatively creating the cultural figure of the phantasmatic lesbian, they are doing so in a traditional mold, effecting an “abyssal displacement” of other lesbians to whom they seem to refer but whom they have not consulted. This is not coercive “power over,” but the “power to” effectively silence other perspectives.

39

 Lezpop, “Duro colpo ad Arcilesbica Nazionale.”

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Some of the discursively displaced lesbians continue to voice their concerns, and to strive for queerer representation: the visibility of multiple, variegated, unapologetic identities, practices and communities; representations that both affirm the validity of and continually call into question the limits of “lesbian” identities. Paola Guazzo, the first signatory on the pro-surrogacy letter, is not fazed by the arguments: she notes on her blog that discord is not always a problem and welcomes the opportunity to debate, to rethink the lesbian movement publicly and perhaps to form new associations.40 These lesbians too are exemplary, performatively constructing the lesbian subject: but crucially, they get less space in the dominant media. Their letter appears on many LGBTQ sites,41 and in the left daily paper Il Manifesto, but not in La Repubblica. Il Manifesto has a distribution (online and in print) of around 10,600, while La Repubblica has a distribution of around 217,000.42 Thus in dominant media circles, more space and epistemic authority are given to the anti-surrogacy lesbians. These exchanges have an impact on how the LGBTQIA+ movement’s position on same-sex marriage and parenthood is understood. In Italy, as in other countries, there have been heated debates within the movement for many years about what some see as the normative, assimilationist drive behind legal and political campaigns on these issues, which inevitably take energy away from ongoing struggles for trans rights, for example. Scholars like Lisa Duggan have critiqued homonormativity, “a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions [such as marriage], but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption.”43 What is unusual about the Italian situation is that in addition to familiar  Guazzo, “Impressioni di febbraio.” It is worth noting that these debates are unfolding alongside tensions between sexual difference feminists and queer activists and thinkers, including queer transfeminists. For a compelling overview of the situation, see Bazzoni, “A View on Queer and Feminism.” 41   See, for example, https://www.arcigay.it/articoli/aderisci-alla-lettera-delle-lesbiche-italianestanche-dallideologia-sulla-gpa/. 42  FIEG, “Statistics on Sales of Daily Papers.” 43  Duggan, The Incredible Shrinking Public, 179. 40

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fissures in the movement between those who support or oppose decisions to make the campaign for same-sex marriage a central focus for their activism,44 there is also a publicly articulated split between those who support surrogacy and those who do not. Narratives of the split in the movement about same-sex unions tend to present two opposing sides as though they were two discrete camps: the radical queers, and the neoliberal assimilationists, who are moving ever move to the right.45 However things are inevitably more complex. As the ongoing debate in Italy reveals, a group of lesbian activists may support surrogacy and the legal recognition of same-sex parents at the same time as they call for queerer definition of the category of “lesbian.” Turning now to the UK, the point of contention is support for trans rights. Tensions about whether transwomen are welcome in “women only” or “lesbian” spaces have been ongoing for several decades in various countries, but came to a head in the UK national newspapers in 2018 since there was also a Government consultation on the reform of the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, with a view to improving the legal gender recognition process.46 It is beyond the scope of this chapter to engage with the detail of this consultation; instead, I focus on the open letter by a group of 135 lesbians. In July 2018, the Lesbian Rights Alliance published a letter on their website accusing Stonewall of erasing “actual lesbians,” whom they define as biological women who have relationships only with other biological women.47 The LRA refuses to accept that transwomen who do not undergo penectomies might identify as lesbians and accuses Stonewall of “not only promoting hate crime against lesbians, but imposing compulsory heterosexuality on lesbians.”48 Indeed,  For example, Arcigay supports the campaign for same-sex marriage, while the SomMovimento nazioAnale supports a queerer approach to valuing more diverse forms of kinship. See SomMovimento nazioAnale, “Sfamily Way.” 45  Acquistapace et al., “Tempo di essere incivili,” 72. 46  For more details, see https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/reform-of-the-gender-recognition- act-2004. For discussion of how the gendering of spaces can effect a kind of “tyranny” on trans, non-binary but also cis-gendered people, see Doan, “The Tyranny of Gendered Spaces.” 47  LRA, “Open Letter.” 48  The ongoing exchanges between lesbian and trans activists have a complex history, and while Stonewall now supports trans people, this has not always been the case. See Brown, “Stonewall’s Complicated Relationship.” 44

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they s­ pecifically demand that Stonewall stops claiming to represent lesbians if they are to continue to support trans rights. Like the anti-surrogacy statements made by Italian lesbians that sought to protect women from exploitation through commercial surrogacy, these views are motivated by a desire to protect vulnerable individuals: in this case, young lesbians who apparently experience pressure to identify as trans and, the LRA claim, in some cases feel bullied into undergoing gender reassignment procedures since there is no support for them as lesbians.49 However, just as the statements on surrogacy mobilized a universalizing rhetoric, seeing all cases of surrogacy and all gay male parents as inevitably exploiting women’s bodies, and reinforcing the notion of women as mothers, so the LRA’s letter employs a homogenizing discourse. It appears under a banner that reads “lesbian: an adult human female homosexual,” conjuring a rigid, biologically essentialist idea of the exemplary lesbian, and displacing, or even stigmatizing, those who do not identify as such, including non-binary individuals. Moreover, the LRA characterizes gender reassignment procedures as “mutilation,” and casts transmen as aggressive bullies. Of course, vulnerable people should be protected, but we must also distinguish between exploitation and choice, and avoid blanket demonization. In addition to publishing this letter, the LRA also disrupted London Pride in 2018. A group of around ten protesters lay down on the road at the front of the march, shouted their accusations against Stonewall and distributed leaflets that made anti-trans statements, as well as emphatically stipulating that lesbians are biological women, that men cannot be lesbians, that lesbians do not want to have sex with men, and calling for lesbians to leave the LGBTQIA+ movement to fight for separatist spaces.50 The leaflets were also signed by another anti-trans group, Mayday4Women.51 Here the LRA takes an explicitly anti-queer position that dictates who can identify as lesbian and how, and deliberately seeks to fragment the LGBTQIA+ activist movement. It strives to embody the  LRA, “Open Letter.”  Gabbatiss, “London Pride.” 51  A link is provided on the leaflet to their Facebook page (Mayday4Women2.0) which is no longer visible. 49 50

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exemplary lesbian, performatively asserting its version of lesbianism as the definitive and authentic one. Unsurprisingly, these events caused a flurry of Twitter activity both in support of and against the LRA’s position.52 In print media, meanwhile, the disruption of Pride and the letter did not elicit a great deal of interest. No articles appeared in The Sun, The Mail and The Guardian, although The Times and The Independent did cover the story. In the latter, Josh Gabbatiss reported the incident at Pride, including critical views on the LRA’s action, and Yas Necati authored a longer piece the week later, which again problematized anti-trans, essentialist views and crucially reflected on the fact that trans activists at Stonewall inspired the entire LGBTQIA+ movement today as we know it.53 The Times view represents the polar opposite: in a brief article that offers no context or explanation, Will Humphries summarizes some (extremely problematic) key points of the statement and within fifteen lines manages to cite twice what the LRA call the “absurd idea that male-bodied persons with penises can be lesbians.”54 Moreover The Times subsequently featured several articles that not only support the LRA’s views but also express further highly offensive anti-trans statements: one example (flagged on the LRA’s Facebook page) is a piece by Lucy Bannerman which characterizes trans activists as waging “a form of McCarthyism in bad wigs and fishnets, thanks to a bunch of bullies, trolls and humourless misogynists.”55 As in Italy, the broader lesbian population has spoken back to the LRA’s open statement, and to the problematic reporting of it in The Times. Aside from individual blogs, an editorial appeared immediately in the lesbian magazine Diva, which links to and thereby takes issue with Humphries’s article. The editor Carrie Lyell challenges the LRA’s authority to speak on behalf of all lesbians, and insists that rather than descending into mudslinging and infighting, minority groups must stand together and support each other.56 Crucially, rather than homogenizing the  For some examples see Gabbatiss, “London Pride.”  See Gabbatiss, “London Pride,” and Necati, “The Anti-trans Protests.” 54  LRA, “Open Letter.” 55  Bannerman, “Trans Movement.” 56  Lyell, “An Open Letter.” 52 53

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LGBTQIA+ population, for Lyell this means valuing the variegated demographics it includes, seeing how oppression touches some groups differently and seeking to support them. Similar points are made in a blogpost by a group of 149 feminists, which includes lesbians, who point out that these separatist, essentialist lesbians had gained from the LGBTQIA+ movement in the past and stood to lose by disassociating themselves from it in future.57 While the movement is and needs to be varied, scholars have argued that it is only through collective action that battles have been won in the past, which create the building blocks for further struggles in the present and future.58 As in Italy, however, the reach of the queerer message is limited: The Times monthly circulation (c.430,000) is far greater than that of Diva or individual blogs, with the result that, beyond activist circles, the dominant message, which is accorded sociological authority due to its “epistemic reasonableness” for normative society, remains the more problematic, essentializing one: it defines lesbians as anti-trans, biological women.59

Conclusions Comparing these two situations, it is striking how the ostensible subject (surrogacy or trans rights) becomes a springboard to (re)define what a lesbian is. This is achieved in part through evoking lesbian authorship, lived experience and hence a political position, and in part by offering a specific, rigid definition of a lesbian. In the absence of variegated lesbian representation, and the dominance in media discourse of generic evocations of an amorphous “lesbian” population, a discursive intervention that offers these details has the potential to seem authoritative. Of course, the relative visibility of a handful of several, diverse “out” lesbian media personalities in the UK mitigates to some extent the impact of generic understandings of what a “lesbian” might be, but the extremely problematic reporting of the exchanges in The Times only serves to reinforce the  Bernard et al., “Feminist Solidarity.”  Bernstein, “The Strategic Uses of Identity.” 59  See Statista, “Circulation of Newspapers.” This figure relates to June 2018. No recent statistics are available for Diva, but monthly sales in 2010 were c.55,000. See Shields, “Thriving Diva.” 57 58

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LRA’s essentialist, transphobic message. While these open letters can be read as examples of strategic essentialism, their aim is not to invoke an identity label as a temporary, tactical act in order to achieve greater rights for this marginalized community. Instead the anti-surrogacy lesbians in Italy want to protect surrogates, but also, it seems, to strengthen biological definitions of women, and to position lesbians in opposition to gay male parents. Similarly, the LRA is seeking to offer a normative definition of a lesbian. Neither group of signatories consulted the broader lesbian community before making their statements, thereby disregarding the variegated character of this population. Thus the abyssal displacement results either from a willingness to sideline those lesbian-identified women who disagree with their position, or a refusal to acknowledge their existence. Ultimately, a key aim of these campaigns is to fracture the LGBTQIA+ movement, in what seems a deeply short-sighted move, since their own well-being depends on the success of ongoing and future LGBTQIA+ campaigns.60 Returning to the idea of exemplary bodies, we see how splinter groups among the broader lesbian population are using their identities performatively to assert and impose a homogenizing notion of the lesbian which is profoundly materialist, but also essentialist. They bolster their unauthorized authority to speak for “lesbians” more generally through their alignment with traditionalist discourses of sex and gender. In both instances, the first open letter (opposing surrogacy or trans rights) can be read as a rejection of the deconstruction of the category of “lesbian” theorized by Butler and others, and a return to a form of divisive identity politics, one that threatens even strategic essentialism in the broader LGBTQIA+ movement. However, we also see transversal support for LGBTQIA+ individuals expressed by the queerer lesbians, as they refuse to be pigeonholed and speak in support of other denigrated groups (gay men, trans individuals). These latter exemplary bodies first suffer abyssal displacement, but then reinstate themselves, expressing a position that cuts across presumed or congealed axes of opposition within the movement. The structures of lesbian networks are certainly changing in Italy as a result of these declarations, while in the UK, activist groups are reaching out to each other (e.g., lesbians and transwomen), in order to disrupt the 60

 Bernard, “Feminist Solidarity.”

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perceived sociological authority of the LRA. It remains to be seen whether the desire of essentialist lesbians to break with the broader movement will impact on national campaigns in either country, and whether the queerer view will manage to make itself heard or garner recognition, and thereby authority, outside activist/LGBTQIA+ circles, in more mainstream discourse.

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Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali (FIEG). 2018. Statistics on Sales of Daily Papers, February and March 2018. http://www.fieg.it/documenti_item. asp?page=1&doc_id=373. Accessed 9 July 2020. Gabbatiss, Josh. 2018. London Pride: Anti-Trans Activists Disrupt Parade by Lying Down in the Street to Protest ‘Lesbian Erasure’. The Independent, July 7, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/antitrans-protest-london-pride-parade-lgbt-gay-2018-march-lesbian-gay-rightsa8436506.html. Accessed 9 July 2020. Garbagnoli, Sara, and Massimo Prearo. 2018. La crociata anti-gender: dal Vaticano alle Manif pour tous. Turin: Kaplan. Guazzo, Paola. 2018. Impressioni di febbraio. Lesbiche queer, un futuro. March 2018. https://guazzingtonpost.blogspot.com/2018/03/impressioni-di-febbraio-lesbiche-queer.html?q=dove+sono+le+lesbiche. Accessed 9 July 2020. Guazzo, Paola., et al. 2018. La maternità, la GPA e una diversa emancipazione. Il Manifesto. May 5, 2018. https://ilmanifesto.it/la-maternita-la-gpa-e-unadiversa-emancipazione. Accessed 9 July 2020. Hall, Stuart. 1997. Introduction. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, 1–11. London: The Open University. Haugaard, Mark. 2017. What Is Authority? Journal of Classical Sociology 18 (August): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X17723737. Accessed 9 July 2020. Hayward, Susan. 2006. Queer Cinema. In Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, 329–333. New York: Routledge. Holley, Sarah R. 2017. Perspectives on Contemporary Lesbian Relationships. Journal of Lesbian Studies 21 (1): 1–6. Humphries, Will. 2018. Lesbian Fury at Stonewall over ‘Trans Agenda’. The Times. July 17, 2018. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lesbian-fury-atstonewall-over-trans-agenda-pmm03kw05. Accessed 9 July 2020. ILGA. 2020. Country Ranking. https://www.rainbow-europe.org/countryranking. Accessed 9 July 2020. La Repubblica. 2011. Bacio gay al Colosseo. May 4, 2011. https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/05/04/news/gay-15785305/. Accessed 9 July 2020.  Lesbian Rights Alliance. Open Letter to Stonewall. https://lesbianalliance.org. uk/open-letter-to-stonewall/. Accessed 9 July 2020. Loke, Jaime, Ingrid Bachmann, and Dustin Harp. 2017. Co-Opting Feminism: Media Discourses on Political Women and the Definition of a (New) Feminist Identity. Media, Culture & Society 39 (1): 122–132.

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Lyell, Carrie. 2018. An Open Letter to the Lesbian Rights Alliance: You Do Not Speak for Us. Diva. July 17, 2018. http://www.divamag.co.uk/DivaMagazine/Views/An-open-letter-to-the-Lesbian-Rights-Alliance-You-donot-speak-for-us/. Accessed 18 August 2019. Marway, Herjeet. 2012. La gestation pour autrui commerciale: droit et éthique. Travail, genre et sociétés 2 (2): 173–181. Meese, Elizabeth A. 1992. (Sem)Erotics. In Theorizing Lesbian Writing. New York: New York University Press. Milletti, Nerina, and Luisa Passerini, eds. 2007. Fuori della norma. Storie lesbiche nell’Italia della prima metà del Novecento. Milan: Rosenberg and Sellier. Muraro, Luisa. 2016. L’anima del corpo. Contro l’utero in affitto. Verona: La Scuola. Murgia, Michela. 2016. Non chiamatela maternità surrogata. L’Espresso, February 2, 2016. http://espresso.repubblica.it/attualita/2016/02/01/news/ michela-murgia-non-chiamatela-maternita-surrogata-1.248420. Accessed 9 July 2020. Necati, Yas. 2018. The Anti-Trans Protests at Pride Were the Latest in a Long History of Transphobia in the LGBTQ+ Community. The Independent. July 15, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/anti-trans-protests-london-pride-transgender-transphobia-terf-lgbt-feminist-a8448521.html. Accessed 9 July 2020. Ross, Charlotte. 2008. Visions of Visibility: LGBT Communities in Turin. Modern Italy 13 (3): 241–260. ———. 2015. Eccentricity and Sameness. Discourses on Lesbianism and Desire between Women in Italy 1860s–1930s. Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang. Rothenberg, Tamar. 2005. ‘And she Told Two Friends’: Lesbians Creating Urban Social Space. In Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities, ed. David Bell and Gill Valentine, 165–181. London: Routledge. Sedgwick, Eve. 2003. Touching, Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Shields, Rachel. 2010. Thriving Diva Reflects the Growth of the Lesbian Scene. The Independent. February 7, 2010. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ media/press/thriving-diva-reflects-the-growth-of-the-lesbian-scene1891479.html. Accessed 9 July 2020. SomMovimento nazioAnale. 2016. Sfamily Way. Molto di più delle unioni civili. February 14, 2016. https://sommovimentonazioanale.noblogs.org/ post/2016/02/14/sfamily-way-molto-di-piu-delle-unioni-civili/. Accessed 9 July 2020.

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Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography. In Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Statista. 2018. Circulation of Newspapers in the United Kingdom (UK) as of June 2018 (in 1,000 Copies). June, 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/529060/uk-newspaper-market-by-circulation/. Accessed 9 July 2020. Umberson, Debra, Mieke Beth Thomeer, and Amy C. Lodge. 2015. Intimacy and Emotion Work in Lesbian, Gay and Heterosexual Relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (2): 542–556. Vicinus, Martha. 1992. ‘They Wonder to which Sex I Belong’: The Historical Roots of the Modern Lesbian Identity. Feminist Studies 18 (3): 467–497. Whiteman, Michael. 2010. The Death of Twentieth-Century Authority. UCLA Law Review Discourse 58: 27–63.

Part II Law and Religion

7 The Bio-medicalization of Intersex Variations Between Medical and Parental Authority Michela Balocchi and Ino Kehrer

Research Frame, Definitions and Terminology In this chapter, we analyze the medical theories and practices adopted in the “management” of intersex variations in “Western societies.” The approach is multidisciplinary, combining the perspectives of sociology and law; the cultural frame is the same, however, and is characterized by paying attention to the human rights of individuals with variations of sex characteristics (VSC).1 The sociological part of this chapter relates to a research project on medical and social practices adopted in case of  This chapter is the result of a common work, but academically the authorship can be attributed as follows: Michela Balocchi is the author of sections “Research Frame, Definitions and Terminology,” “Pathologization of Differences and Dominant Medical Practices” and “Concluding Remarks”; Ino Kehrer is the author of sections “Medical Authority” and “Parental Authority.” 1

M. Balocchi (*) Research Center PoliTeSse, Verona, Italy I. Kehrer Human Rights Centre “A. Papisca”, University of Padova, Padova, Italy © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_7

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intersex variations.2 The juridical part deals with the question of whether physicians and parents should be still legally legitimized to make a decision (and what kind) with regard to unnecessary and intrusive medical treatments on minors who cannot decide for themselves due to their young age. “Intersex” is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of natural bodily variations. Individuals with an intersex variation are born with sex characteristics—anatomy, chromosome patterns, hormonal and gonadal structure—which do not fit the typical traditional binary notion of female or male bodies. We decided to not use the acronym DSD (disorders of sexual development), as that is a very questionable terminology that was adopted primarily within the medical context since the Chicago Consensus Conference in 2005.3 We have chosen “intersex” and “VSC” trying to use a respectful and non-pathologizing language, in agreement with the requests of the intersex human rights movement.4 Most intersex variations are not visible at birth: they may be discovered while running medical exams, for example, to determine the reasons for an absence of menarche—such as in the case of women with complete androgen insensibility (CAIS), or to determine the causes of infertility—as is the case for individuals with XXY chromosomes. In case of variations visible at birth, the newborns are usually considered as a social and psychological emergency,5 a “mistake of nature” that has to be medicalized through unnecessary cosmetic surgeries and pharmacological treatments, in order to make them conform to the sex/gender dichotomy system that is assured and maintained by the legal national system.

 The research was funded by the Seventh Framework Program FP7-PEOPLE-2013 IOF of the European Union Marie Curie Actions n. 627162 (2014–2017). 3  The conference was organized in Chicago by the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endòcrine Society and the European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology, with the aim to write a Consensus Statement for the management of the VSC; some patient advocates, and only two intersex activists, were present too. 4  As we can read on the Darlington Statement: Joint Consensus Statement from the Intersex Community Retreat in Darlington (March 2017): “the word ‘intersex’ […], belongs equally to all people born with variations of sex characteristics.” Balocchi, “The Medicalization of Intersexuality”; Davis, “DSD is a Perfectly Fine Term.” 5  Greenberg, “Legal Aspects of Gender Assignment.” 2

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Since the early 1990s, the international intersex movement has denounced these non-consensual, elective surgeries, attesting their (irreversible) negative effects. Notwithstanding the claims of the intersex movement and their allies, the dominant medical protocol remains linked to the binarism, heteronormativity and genderism championed by the so-called Optimum Gender Rearing (OGR) model, created by psychologist/sexologist John Money and his team in the second half of the 1950s.6 The case of such invasive medical practices performed on healthy intersex newborns raises questions concerning the authority of those making decisions in this regard. Two different holders of authority can be identified: clinicians and parents. We can consider the authority of the medical class as a mixture of all the three Weberian ideal types: the “charismatic,” the “traditional and legal” and the “rational.”7 The “charismatic” is linked to the doctors’ cultural status and professional knowledge (real or supposed as it may be on the matter); the “traditional and legal” is related to the deep-rootedness of a medical practice and was not only unquestioned for decades (with very few exceptions),8 but internationally legitimized by the widespread adoption of such protocols. The “rational” authority is linked to the fact that the choice of medical procedures should be evidence based. The authority of parents can be considered mostly under the “traditional and legal” type, since, on the basis of a code of conduct that reflects established habits, customs and beliefs, parents are entrusted to make decisions in place of their offspring, on the assumption that they will choose the best course of action. The aim is to question whether a third type of authority, namely the legal-rational authority of the law, should intervene to protect the children’s rights to an “open future” and a free development, often impaired by the joint action of the parental and medical authorities.

 The OGR was based on the idea that the newborns’ gender identity was like a tabula rasa, moldable through a gendered education but also influenced by the appearance of external genitalia. The protocol for intersex newborns indicated cosmetic surgery within eighteen months from birth, followed by a strictly binary gendered education to the related gender role and expression. Money and Ehrhardt, Man & Woman. 7  Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organizations. 8  Diamond and Sigmundson, “Management of Intersexuality.” 6

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 athologization of Differences and Dominant P Medical Practices Questioning matters of decision-making authority within the treatment of intersex minors is part of the broader issue of the pathologization of VSC. Intersex bodies, and in general non-conforming bodies, have been heavily pathologized and consequently subjected to routine medicalization, highlighting how the medical system has functioned as a social controller of bodies and the binary system. This is the by-product of a longstanding tendency of greater acquisition of authority and credibility by medicine, over other institutions devoted to social control.9 In the nineteenth century, the social and legal order was based on a prescribed “natural normality” of bodies, connected to gender identities and gender roles, which, over time, has become more structured because of new positivistic discoveries by medicine and biology. According to Michel Foucault, science and modern medicine started to view physical irregularities and atypical bodily characteristics as a sign of potential moral deviation and as a condition of anomalous, amoral and deviant personalities and behaviors. Indeed, it was in that period that new specific words were invented, such as “homosexual,” “inverted,” “intermediate sex” and “intersexual,” and “transvestite.”10 Behind this terminology stands the necessity to establish clear boundaries between normality and abnormality, nature and education, biological sex and the so-called psychological sex, as well as the “real nature” of the sex of the “hermaphrodites.”11 These are indeed the decades of the polarization of dichotomies (male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, normal/pathological, moral/immoral) and of the conceptualization of the differences between genders on the ground of a biological determinism. In this framework, science and medicine have been considered the most authoritative sources of knowledge to talk about the “nature” of an individual, by virtue of their use of biological “facts.”12  Marchetti, L’invenzione della bisessualità.  Benadusi, “Dalla Paura al Mito dell’Indeterminatezza.” 11  Busi, “La Nuda Vita degli Ermafroditi.” 12  See Laslett et al., Gender and Scientific Authority; Karkazis, Fixing Sex. 9

10

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This background has led to the perception of bodies with atypical characteristics as being affected by pathologies. The passage from anomaly to pathology is strictly cultural and is based on a moral judgment by which the different with respect to the majority of cases becomes abnormal. Thus, the birth of a child with VSC began to be presented as a psycho-­social emergency that needs to be treated as soon as possible, even when no health problems are observed.13 The “normalizing” medical practices—questionable term that is used even by the Italian National Committee of Bioethics14—started to be seen as the best solution to ensure the children’s development in conformity to the sex/gender norms and heteronormativity with “no hint of abnormality.”15 Those practices are divided in the so-called feminizing and masculinizing procedures. Feminizing procedures include clitoris reduction, clitoroplasty, vaginoplasty and the construction of an artificial vaginal canal.16 Masculinizing procedures consist of hypospadias “repair,” surgical transfixation of undescended testes and mastectomy. These practices can be associated with sterilizing procedures such as gonadectomy and/or hysterectomy,17 the removal of “discordant reproductive structures” that are often followed by lifelong hormonal treatments, and other humiliating, disturbing, stigmatizing and harmful procedures such as vaginal dilation and frequent unnecessary genital examinations,18 often accompanied by medical

 In fact, there are only a few cases of necessary early medical intervention (such as when the urinary tract is obstructed). See Karkazis et al., “Genital Surgery.” 14  Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica, I disturbi della differenziazione. 15  Kipnis and Diamond, “Pediatric Ethics,” 405. 16  Clitoroplasty aims to modify the size and form of the clitoris and is purely aesthetic. Vaginoplasty interventions are described as “functional,” meaning that a vagina is constructed, or the existing vaginal canal is widened in view of future penetrative and heterosexual intercourses (in line with the already mentioned mainstream heteronormative medical approach). 17  The removal of healthy viable testes and/or ovaries is recommended to prevent gonadal tumor, but the risk of developing a tumor varies among the different types of intersex traits. For example, in case of low risk—inferior than that of breast cancer—it could be sufficient to monitor the gonads, while in many other cases, gonadectomy (leading to sterilization) could be safely postponed to a later age, as in almost every case cancer occurrence is very low before puberty. Deans et al., “Timing of Gonadectomy”; Lee et al., “Global Disorders of Sex Development.” 18  Roen, “Intersex or Diverse Sex Development,” 7. 13

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display photography, also of genitals.19 The short- and long-term consequences of these interventions started to be documented in the 1990s by individuals with VSC who underwent them. They include: chronic pain, scars, incontinence, loss of sexual sensation, loss of sexual function, sterilization, attribution of the wrong sex/gender (at birth),20 and psychological trauma—including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).21 Beside the surgical and hormonal intervention on minors, the increasing use of prenatal diagnosis raises concerns on a bioethical and human rights level. The prenatal diagnosis can lead to selective abortion even late-term, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to eliminate intersex fetuses, and arguable treatments on pregnant women. Selective abortion may be performed following the advice of the medical staff, since a prenatal diagnosis of an atypical chromosomal or anatomical asset, or of an unusual correspondence between chromosomes and genital anatomy of the fetus, is considered as a proof that the fetus carries a rare disease.22 In case of a diagnosis of a 47, XXY variation, for example, the percentage of parents-to-be choosing abortion can reach 88%. As per pregnant women, they may be exposed to prenatal treatments involving dexamethasone to avoid the potential androgenization of the genitalia in fetuses and newborns with CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia), even though this may put the well-being of both mother and child at risk. In medical circles, the use of dexamethasone as a prenatal medical treatment has therefore started to be questioned, yet it is still used in experimental therapies that are “part of research projects that have ethics approval and patient’s follow-up protocols.”23  During childhood, individuals with intersex variations are often subjected to unnecessary, repeated exposure to photographs of their genitalia: among the consequences of this practice is the perception of having an ugly/wrong body. Bauer and Truffer, “NGO Report”; Creighton et al., “Medical Photography.” 20  Although there are not enough certain quantitative data yet, according to the researches below an average of between 8% and 20% of children develop a gender identity that is different from the one they were assigned at birth. Hughes et  al., “Consensus Statement”; Furtado et  al., “Gender Dysphoria.” 21  Minto et al., “The Effect of Clitoral Surgery.” 22  Meoded Danon et  al., “Between Concealing and Revealing”; Vaknin et  al., “Termination of Pregnancy.” 23  Department of Health and Human Services, Health and wellbeing, 19. 19

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Medical Authority The dominant medical interventions are based on guidelines and recommendations released by physicians, whose authority is taken for granted because of long-established trust toward their knowledge and expertise. Here, indeed, an interdependent relationship between power and knowledge can be observed.24 As suggested by Foucault, the possession of a specific form of knowledge is a guarantee for independence, because it enables the subjects to act in a certain discipline unabated for as long as their legitimacy remains unquestioned. Nonetheless, “power cannot function unless knowledge, or rather knowledge apparatuses, are formed, organized, and put into circulation.”25 In this sense also the medical authority functions in this way, because it operates in clinics and hospitals that are normally recognized as apparatuses of knowledge. These apparatuses contribute to the centralization of knowledge that is necessary to control what kind of information is circulated, a process favored by the gaze, the act of seeing. This act, in Foucault’s view, becomes the combination of a specific knowledge and enacted power,26 as it represents the way in which accumulated information may alter the perception of a certain phenomenon by restricting the gaze to the “uncharacteristic of the object as manifestations of the defect that must be dealt with.”27 In these terms, the medical gaze is part of the diagnosis and subsequent treatments proposed by the medical authority. In the case of intersex people, the medical gaze reflects and reinforces the socio-cultural and legal system based on the sex/gender binarism that produces and reproduces the pathologization of bodies that are considered different. The aim is to “cure” and “normalize” in order to hide biological anomalies and differences even if this does have harmful and painful consequences. Within the multidisciplinary medical teams (composed of neonatologists, surgeons, pediatricians, gynecologists, geneticists, endocrinologists,  Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic; Foucault, “The Subject and Power.”  Foucault, Society Must be Defended, 33. 26  Dreyfus and Rabinow, Michel Foucault. 27  Farrell and Lillis, “An Adaptation to.” 24 25

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etc.), there can be different views concerning the treatments. The number of physicians opposing the aforementioned interventions has increased in recent times, even though a small number voiced their concerns openly due to the risk of professional marginalization.28 Power and positions of authority tend to reproduce and to maintain themselves. As stated by Foucault, one tool used (in this case by clinicians) to reach this aim is the way they communicate the diagnosis to parents or affected individuals, as “whatever precepts are given about so a delicate matter, it will always remain beyond the reach of the multitude.” By using a very technical language, they underline the legitimacy of their authority to “decision and intervention”29 and simultaneously exclude or limit the caregivers’ capacity to participate in the decision-making process.30 The way and content of communication about a minor with a VSC has a profound impact. Especially in the case of prenatal diagnosis, the parents’ reaction can be deeply affected, at times leading to the decision to interrupt the pregnancy.31 A study conducted in 2015  in Australia shows that feelings about VSCs change over time: the initial prevalently bad feelings experienced by affected individuals were, in time, replaced by prevalently positive feelings.32 Intersex people’s initial discomfort was caused by the fact that they often received little to no information about their variations and found it out in a traumatizing way; this contributed to the perception that something is “wrong” with their bodies and that they are in need of being “fixed.” This is a by-product of the concealment model common to OGR procedures, recommending to hide some or all information to patients (and sometimes to parents too), in an attempt to avoid psychological traumas and to facilitate the acceptance of their assigned gender of rearing.33 On the contrary, nowadays, adult intersex individuals have widely testified how the concealment model produces  Balocchi, “Un Apparente Paradosso.”  Foucault, The Birth of, 115, 89. 30  Farrell, “An Adaptation to.” 31  Lalatta, “Diagnosi e Consulenza.” 32  Jones, “Intersex and Family.” 33  Tamar-Mattis, “Exceptions”; Beh and Diamond, “An Emerging Ethical and Medical Dilemma.” 28 29

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and reproduces an atmosphere of taboo and misconception, followed by stigma, secrecy and feeling of shame.34 Parents are more inclined to give their consent to cosmetic surgeries and other medical treatments when they receive a diagnosis that portrays the VSC as a pathology and as a psycho-social emergency that needs to be resolved urgently.35 Therefore in-depth information concerning the variation,36 the involved risks of surgeries and the possible alternatives are often not shared with the parents.37 The problem of this misinformation has been addressed by the Columbian Constitutional Court in the Sentence n. T-551/99, where the Court stated that parents must receive detailed information about the advantages and disadvantages of surgically altering a child’s genitalia, by having ample periods of time to consider the alternatives to genital-normalizing surgery, by establishing therefore that the parental consent should not only be informed but also qualified and persistent.38

Parental Authority Until the time when children are able to fully outweigh the consequences of their consent is reached, law usually empowers the caregivers to give their surrogate consent for any meaningful decision, as it is believed that they will know the best course of action to ensure the child’s wellbeing.39 The parents’ authority to surrogate decision-making is not unlimited, as it is part of the parental duty to the cure and custody of the minor.40 Parents must make decisions taking into first consideration both the immediate and the long-term best interest of the child. Complying with  Zieselman, “Invisible Harm.”  Streuli et al., “Shaping Parents”; Roen and Pasterski, “Psychological Research.” 36  According to the OGR model, without having complete information, parents would be more able to bond with their children, also avoiding the “risk” that they may reveal the difficult and possibly shocking truth. 37  Roen, “Intersex or Diverse.” 38  Columbian Constitutional Court, Sentencia T-551/99 Bogota, Aug. 2 1999. 39  Beh, “An Emerging.” 40  UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2013), “General comment n.14.” 34 35

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this standard means that the decision-maker has to “select the option that maximizes the person’s overall good and minimizes his/her overall risks of harm,” by taking into account the well-being of the child, and that of the future adult.41 In cases of medical treatments where there is a lack of evidence about medical necessity and beneficial nature, the capacity of parents to make impartial, objective decisions that have the highest benefit for the minor is controversial and under discussion. While there are no ethical and legal issues concerning vital surgeries, when they are deferrable the parents’ capacity to focus on the best interest of the child may be impaired by a conflict of interests with their own beliefs, values, prejudices and the inappropriate influence of other external factors. Parents are rarely prepared for the birth of an intersex child because of ignorance about and disregard for the intersex reality. Some studies highlight that parents may experience shock, confusion, fear, guilt, anger, sadness, anxiety, shame and alienation when they are faced with the unexpected, atypical aspect of their newborns’ genitalia.42 In this situation, parents are likely to experience a sense of necessity and urgency for the treatment, especially when recommended by clinicians to make a timely decision to solve the “social emergency” and to ensure a supposed “normal” psychophysical development of their children.43 This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that the civil status law of almost every country requires the assignment to the female/male sex on birth certificates within less than a week and up to a maximum of four weeks after the child’s birth.44 Some parents thus think that they can protect their children through genital surgery, believing that by “fixing” their sex they could prevent them from being stigmatized, bullied and derided. The parental fear of social exclusion and of potentially negative social and emotional outcomes for their children, due to their diversity, also reflects the parents’ “own beliefs of binary sex and gender (i.e. children are either born

 Kopelman, “Using the Best Interest Standard.”  Slijper et al., “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”; Gough et al., “They did not Have a Word.” 43  Mattioli and Jasonni, “Andrologia chirurgica pediatrica.” 44  Ghattas, Human Rights Between the Sexes. 41 42

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female or male and become women or men).”45 In line with what Anne Tamar-Mattis has defined as the “magic wand” theory of surgery,46 parents give their consent to surgeries believing that by aligning the aesthetic appearance of the child’s genitals to one of the binary sexes, they could create a “unity between sex, gender and physical function” that fixes and fully addresses the “atypical appearance, function, and psychosocial concerns.”47 Even though parents may believe they act in their children’s best interests by avoiding their exclusion and stigmatization, parental consent should be carefully analyzed, bearing in mind that “an adult’s judgment of a child’s best interests cannot override the obligation to respect all the child’s rights under the Convention of the Rights of the Child.”48 As mentioned, the removal or modification of healthy tissue from a person’s body impairs permanently the children’s right to physical and psychological integrity, even more so if this is associated to a long-term diminished (or loss of ) sexual sensitivity and reproductive capacity. Also, early surgical assignment to gender, decided by a third party before the children have the opportunity to express their gender identity, constitutes a limit to the human right to self-determination, and it is based on sex/gender binary system and heteronormativity: on one hand, it follows the idea that gender identity is determined by sex anatomy and genital appearance; on the other, it is driven by the aim to create genitals which are suited for heterosexual reproductive intercourse.49 We observe that the achievement of a “normal” appearance and hetero-functioning genitalia is often privileged over the preservation of sexual sensitivity, disregarding the de facto limitation of the individuals’ authority upon their bodies and sexual rights. The harmful life-altering nature of such surgeries is difficult to reconcile with the children’s right to an “open future” and free development.50  Sanders et al., “Parents Need to Protect,” 3318.  Tamar-Mattis, “Exceptions.” 47  Sanders, “Parents Need”; Crissman et al., “Children with Disorders.” 48  UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2011), “General comment n.13”; UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2013), “General comment n.14.” 49  That means a vagina which is able to hold a penis and a penis which is able to penetrate a vagina. 50  Feinberg, Freedom and Fulfilment; Kon, “The Shared Decision-Making Continuum.” 45 46

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The intervention of the authority of law, at least through the involvement of courts, could play an important role for the protection of the autonomy-­ based human rights of the concerned children, by preventing parents from making decisions that have long-lasting harmful effects. Parental authority has already been limited in cases of evidently harmful decisions, such as objections to blood transfusions necessary for survival (as in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses), sterilization and cutting of female genitalia. Many commonalities can be observed between genital surgeries on intersex children and genital cutting of female children,51 but while parents and physicians do not possess legal authority to decide the modification of girls’ genitalia, they do have that power with regard to intersex children’s genitalia. Even if in both cases parental consent is based on cosmetic, rather than medical, reasons, which reflect socio-cultural pressures and beliefs, legal systems show an evidently different treatment according to the sex characteristics of the child. In recent times at an international level, awareness about the harmful consequences of unnecessary genital surgeries on intersex children is increasing, as shown by the UN Special Rapporteur on torture as well as by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner (in 2013 and 2015) and by the recommendations of several United Nations committees on the occasion of the periodic review of member States.52 Nonetheless, at a national level a significant policy disjunction can be witnessed:53 only Malta and Portugal have adopted specific legal dispositions concerning unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants. In particular, the Maltese Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act (the GIGESC Act, April 2015) is an example of how the “rational” authority of law can intervene to protect the fundamental rights of individuals, by rendering unlawful, in this case through art. 14, every “intervention on the sex characteristics of a minor […] if this can be deferred until the person to be treated can provide informed consent.”  Ehrenreich and Barr, “Intersex Surgery”; Jones, “Intersex Genital Mutilation.”  For a full list of committees of the United Nations that have so far condemned unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants, see http://stop.genitalmutilation.org/post/IAD-2016-Soon-20-UNReprimands-for-Intersex-Genital-Mutilations 53  Carpenter, “The Human Rights of Intersex People.” 51 52

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Concluding Remarks Genetics and biological sciences have widely demonstrated the variety of differences in human and other-than-human sex characteristics. That notwithstanding, the more is known about variations of sex characteristics, the more the medical system tries to counteract or to “normalize” those differences into an apparent conformity with the socio-cultural sex/ gender dichotomy that is also assured by the legal national system. Newborns with intersex traits are still usually considered a “psychosocial emergency,” a “mistake of nature” that has to be fixed since infancy, through unnecessary treatments that may have painful, irreversible effects. The current situation raises questions concerning the legitimacy to exercise the authority to make decisions about non-vital medical treatments on minors, as both clinicians and parents are still influenced by gender stereotypes, embedded into a heteronormative and sexist socio-­ cultural frame. Both nonetheless claim (and usually honestly believe) to pursue the “best interest” of intersex children, but the results of medical treatments based on their decisions are too often characterized by painful irreversible effects and severe human rights infringements. In these practices, the “first do not harm” fundamental medical principle and the “best interest” of the child are highly disregarded. If “the best interest” of children does not assure their “open future” and free development—which imply respecting children’s fundamental human rights of self-determination and bodily integrity, as advocated by the international intersex movement—the “first do not harm” principle itself also results disrespected. By inquiring into how a third kind of authority can intervene to protect intersex children, mention was made of recent international recommendations, and of the power of national law as a legal-rational authority. As of today, only the GIGESC Act aims to legally protect the fundamental rights of intersex children, imposing sanctions on those who violate the dispositions. That is also a product of the tireless work of the international intersex movement, through punctual requests repeatedly expressed in public joint statements and declarations.54 54

 ILGA Europe, “3rd International Intersex Forum Concluded.”

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In recent years, several states have considered adding a “third-gender,” “gender-neutral” or “different” option to that of female or male on official documents and/or passports.55 The idea behind this kind of new regulations, such as the one recently implemented in Germany,56 is both to acknowledge the existence of sex/gender and gender identity diversities and to ease the existing pressure to legally assign a newborn to the sex/gender binary system, which has enhanced the parents’ feeling of necessity and urgency of assigning, even surgically, the intersex newborn to the unique female or male options. The “third option” has not been specifically requested by the international intersex movement, which instead hopes for the altogether deletion of sex/gender mention in official documents. The intersex movement is skeptical about whether civil status modifications will be able to produce both outcomes as it was hoped with the German regulation of 2013. The possibility to leave the sex entry on birth certificates blank was not followed by a decrease in unnecessary surgery. The intersex movement thus underlines that the legislative measures implemented so far need to be matched with effective articulated efforts to stop unnecessary treatments.57 One of the biggest problems remains the socio-cultural frame within which the medical and legal systems manage the existence of intersex people. It is clear that there exists an urgent necessity to take steps toward a better informed society and cultural/political leadership, in order to enable the welcoming acceptance of innate and acquired variations and diversities. It is necessary to preserve and give voice to the subjectivity of individuals with VSC, and to assure recognition of their fundamental human rights and of their authority upon their bodies. Quoting Joel Frader, “medicine”—and we can add law—“can reflect common social prejudices or they can help society develop acceptance and appreciation for human diversity. We endorse the latter.”58  Countries such as Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Denmark, Germany, India, Malta, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Pakistan. 56  Starting from January 1, 2019, Germany became the first European country to introduce a fourth option on birth certificates: along the F and M options, and the possibility to leave the entry blank, individuals with certified VSC can be registered as divers [other]. 57  Carpenter, “Identification documents”; Agius, “Third Gender”; Bauer and Truffer, “Intersex: Third Gender.” 58  Frader et al., “Health Care Professionals,” 428. 55

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Ghattas, Dan C. 2013. Human Rights between the Sexes. A Preliminary Study on the Life Situations of Inter* Individuals. Rheinheim: Heinrich Böll Foundation Publication Series on Democracy. Gough, Brendan, Nicky Weyman, Julie Alderson, Gary Butler, and Mandy Stoner. 2008. ‘They did not Have a Word’: The Parental Quest to Locate a ‘True Sex’ for their Intersex Children. Psychology & Health 23 (4): 493–507. Greenberg, Julie Anne. 2003. Legal Aspects of Gender Assignment. The Endocrinologist 13 (3): 277–286. Hughes, Ieuan, Christopher P. Houk, Faisal S. Ahmed, Peter A. Lee, et al. 2006. Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders. Pediatrics 118 (2): 753–758. ILGA Europe. 2013. 3rd International Intersex Forum Concluded, December 2013, https://www.ilga-europe.org/resources/news/latest-news/3rd-international-intersex-forum-concluded. Accessed 9 July 2020. Jones, Melinda. 2017a. Intersex Genital Mutilation  – A Western Version of FGM. International Journal of Children’s Rights 25 (2): 396–411. Jones, Tiffany. 2017b. Intersex and Families: Supporting Family Members with Intersex Variations. Journal of Family Strengths 12 (2): 1–29. Karkazis, Katrina. 2008. Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience. Durham: Duke University Press. Karkazis, Katrina, Alexander A. Kon, and Anne Tamar-Mattis. 2010. Genital Surgery for Disorders of Sex Development: Implementing a Shared Decision-­ Making Approach. Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism 23 (8): 789–805. Kipnis, Kenneth, and Milton Diamond. 1998. Pediatric Ethics and the Surgical Assignment of Sex. Journal of Clinical Ethics 9 (4): 398–410. Kon, Alexander A. 2010. The Shared Decision-Making Continuum. JAMA – The Journal of the American Medical Association 304 (8): 903–904. Kopelman, Loretta M. 2013. Using the Best Interest Standard to Generate Actual Duties. AJOB Primary Research 4 (2): 11–14. Lalatta, Faustina. 2017. Diagnosi e Consulenza in Epoca Prenatale, 1° Congresso Nazionale Klinefelter Italian Group (KING), Padua, September 16, 2017. Laslett, Brenner, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Helen Longino, and Evelynn Hammonds, eds. 1996. Gender and Scientific Authority. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Lee, Peter, Anna A. Nordenstrom, Christopher P. Houk, Faisal S. Ahmed, et al. 2016. Global Disorders of Sex Development Update Since 2006: Perceptions, Approach and Care. Hormone Research Paediatrics 85 (3): 158–180.

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Marchetti, Valerio. 2011. L’invenzione della bisessualità: Discussioni tra teologi, medici e giuristi del XVII secolo sull’ambiguità dei corpi e delle anime. Milan: Mondadori. Mattioli, Girolamo, and Vincenzo Jasonni. 2004. Andrologia chirurgica pediatrica. Il neonato con genitali ambigui: l’assegnazione del sesso. Conference: Patologie andrologiche dell’età giovanile. Il ruolo della prevenzione. Rome, December 15, 2004. Meoded Danon, Limor, and Anike Krämer. 2017. Between Concealing and Revealing Intersexed Bodies: Parental Strategies. Qualitative Health Research 27 (10): 1562–1574. Minto, Catherine L., Lih-Mei Liao, Christopher R.J.  Woodhouse, Philip G. Ransley, et al. 2003. The Effect of Clitoral Surgery on Sexual Outcome in Individuals Who Have Intersex Conditions with Ambiguous Genitalia: A Cross-sectional Study. The Lancet 361 (9365): 67–71. Money, John, and Anke A. Ehrhardt. 1972. Man & Women, Boy & Girl: The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Roen, Katrina. 2019. Intersex or Diverse Sex Development: Critical Review of Psychosocial Health Care Research and Indications for Practice. The Journal of Sex Research 56 (4–5): 511–528. Roen, Katrina, and Vickie Pasterski. 2014. Psychological Research and Intersex/ DSD: Recent Developments and Future Directions. Psychology and Sexuality 5 (1): 102–116. Sanders, Caroline. 2012. Parents Need to Protect: Influences, Risks and Tensions for Parents of Prepubertal Children Born with Ambiguous Genitalia. Journal of Clinical Nursing 21 (21): 3315–3323. Sanders, Caroline, Bernie Carte, and Lynne Goodacre Carter. 2008. Parents’ Narratives about Their Experiences of Their Child’s Reconstructive Genital Surgeries for Ambiguous Genitalia. Journal of Clinical Nursing 12 (23): 3187–3195. Slijper, Froukje M., Petra G.  Frets, Annemie L.M.  Boehmer, S.L.  Drop, and M.F. Niermeijer. 2000. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS): Emotional Reactions of Parents and Adult Patients to the Clinical Diagnosis of AIS and its Confirmation by Androgen Receptor Gene Mutation Analysis. Hormone Research 53 (1): 9–15. Streuli, Jürg, Effy Vayena, Yvonne Cavicchia-Balmer, and Johannes Huber. 2013. Shaping Parents: Impact of Contrasting Professional Counseling on Parents’ Decision Making for Children with Disorders of Sex Development. The Journal of Sexual Medicine 10 (8): 1953–1960.

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8 “The Law Believes the Words of Women More Than the Words of Men”: Gendered Experiences of Divorce in Ben Ali’s Tunisia Sarah Grosso

Introduction Munir was frustrated.1 A litigant in the midst of an acrimonious divorce case, he felt disadvantaged in the divorce proceedings: “The law believes the words of women more than the words of men,” he lamented. Being less believable had considerable implications for his divorce judgment; he lost custody of his children and paid a substantial amount of his salary each month to his wife in alimony. Munir’s struggle to be believed embodied some of the tensions surrounding Tunisia’s divorce laws, part of the country’s Personal Status Code (PSC) that some (women and men) perceived as advancing women’s rights at the expense of men. Given its key role in advancing women’s rights, family law has been a central focus of feminist, anthropological scholarship on the Middle East

 All names are fictional to protect the confidentiality of my informants.

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and North Africa.2 A woman’s rights in the family are seen as the foundation for her broader economic and political participation in society.3 Reciprocally, it is in the context of these kin relations that a woman may, or may not, be able and willing to access rights attributed to her by the law.4 A sense of competing authority between kinship and the state is central to Frances Hasso’s concept of the “devil’s bargain”: women’s rights activists make a “devil’s bargain” when they “appeal to male-dominated states to regulate, intervene, or change the rules in sexual and family life in order to address a range of problems and challenges, including lack of economic and other resources, political and citizenship exclusions, or intimate violence.”5 The increased intervention of the state in the family appears as a double-edged sword: as “‘traditional’ authority systems of family, religious, tribal, and ethnic institutions” are weakened,6 the state gains “authority over intimate domains.”7 Any advances in freedom obtained come at a price. Drawing on different notions of authority (Hannah Arendt, Max Weber),8 this chapter traces different shifts in authority to consider the longstanding feminist question of “what results from the reliance on the state as the main arbiter of rights and protections for women” in the context of Tunisia’s innovative family law reform and Ben Ali’s repressive state.9 It argues that these shifts in authority contributed to the tensions that appeared in perceptions and experiences of divorce law, in particular the notion espoused by Munir that the law “favors” women. This chapter draws on anthropological research conducted on marriage and divorce in Ben Ali’s Tunisia between 2004 and 2008  in the urban suburbs of the capital in Ben Arous in a courthouse and in a

 See for instance Joseph, Gendering Citizenship and The Public/ Private; Hoodfar, Iranian Women, Dahlgren, Women’s adah; Singerman, Avenues, Mir-Hosseini, Iranian Women. 3  Joseph, Gendering Citizenship; Hoodfar, Iranian Women. 4  Joseph, Gendering Citizenship. 5  Hasso, Bargaining, 107. 6  Ibid., 112. 7  Ibid., 107. 8  Arendt, What is Authority?; Weber cf Donovan, Legal Anthropology. 9  See Hasso, Bargaining, 107. 2

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lower-middle-class neighborhood.10 From 2007 to 2008, I regularly attended the Court of First Instance in Ben Arous, where I conducted ethnographic and documentary fieldwork observing proceedings (public hearings and reconciliation sessions); interviewing litigants, lawyers, judges and clerks; and compiling a sample of 196 divorce files; these files were randomly selected from those that were available in the court office that handled personal status cases. I also spent a total of six months living with a family where I observed daily life, conducted semi-structured interviews and collated family trees in around thirty households. This chapter is based on my observations and my informants’ accounts from both structured interviews and everyday discussions about the family, marriage and the PSC. This dual perspective helps to elucidate some of the contradictions that emerge between fluid, lived experiences of kinship and discourses of kinship, perceived ideals, which may (or may not) correspond to a lived reality, past or present. One term used to describe the “traditional” family model premised on the authority of older males was “patriarchy.” The presence of this term in the regional and Tunisian literature suggests its continued relevance, while acknowledging the multiplicity of meanings.11 Here, “patriarchy” refers to the “traditional” and “Muslim” kinship model that appears in Tunisian scholarship related to the PSC and to which my interlocutors referred in our conversations, sometimes nostalgically and sometimes to voice their opposition to it, often from a feminist perspective.12 Drawing on these multiple sources, this chapter will first consider the PSC’s legitimacy in light of the perceived authority of the newly independent state to reform family law that had remained a prerogative of the religious courts. Second, it will consider the shifts that have occurred in the realm of kinship in the context of this family law  Fieldwork was partially funded by a Sutasoma Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute. I would like to thank the editors, as well as the two reviewers, for their comments on the original text. 11  See Hasso, Bargaining. See also Joseph, Gendering Citizenship (which also refers to “modern patriarchy,” “neo-patriarchy” and “international patriarchy”), to suggest just some of the variations in meaning attached to this term, while reflecting shifts in meaning across place and time. 12  In Le code tunisien, Tunisian feminist activist Sana Ben Achour contrasts the “model of the traditional patriarchal family” with the “Tunisian conjugal family.” This idea is also present in the writings of the ATFD (Association des Femmes Tunisiennes Démocrates), a Tunisian women’s organization. 10

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that sought to place greater emphasis on the conjugal couple. Finally, it will consider the shift of authority from religious to state courts in ruling over divorce cases and in the authority of evidence used that, as we shall see, has gendered implications for those who enter the divorce court.

The Authority to Reform the Law? Tunisia’s PSC is well known as an exceptional model for family law reform in the Arab world in favor of women’s rights.13 It is particularly celebrated for its outright ban of polygamy and for enabling women and men to divorce on an equal basis. These are also the elements that are most hotly disputed, seen as a departure from Islamic law that had organized the family affairs of Tunisia’s Muslim population prior to independence. The court system was also reformed; a unified state court system would preside over personal status matters including the divorce of both male and female citizens, replacing the Islamic courts that previously had jurisdiction over these cases. In this way, the state made itself the arbiter of marital disputes, although, due to the perceived departure from Islamic values, its legitimacy remained questionable. The PSC was introduced top-down by Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first President. It became possible to enact this controversial legal reform after Bourguiba’s victory in the civil war that had been an ideological battle between Bourguiba, a reformist, nationalist, who was trained as a jurist in France and who had a personal engagement with women’s rights,14 and his rival, Ben Youssef, who had the support of the more conservative factions in rural areas and the religious establishment, and who had been defeated and forced into exile.15 In this context, family law reform and women’s rights took on a symbolic role.  In Turkey, Ataturk had changed family law radically in 1926. However, he consciously departed from Islamic law, introducing a version of the Swiss Civil Code of 1889. Although the law nonetheless maintained some features of Islamic law (Yildirim, Aftermath), Hafsia has argued that the Turkish code has been poorly received by Turkey’s Muslim majority population. In response to this, Bourguiba—Tunisia’s first President—strove to position his reforms in an Islamic framework (Hafsia, Le contrat, 79). 14  Arfaoui, The Development, 55. 15  Charrad, States, 202. 13

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Writing about the law from a Weberian perspective, James Donovan explains that “authority is a species of power but not one necessarily rooted in violence;” rather, it “acquires its power through normative legitimacy.”16 It is this authority that influences how people perceive the law: “people commit to a given legal order because they perceive it as being legitimate.”17 The perceived legitimacy of the law is critical as it also influences the ability and willingness of citizens to appeal to courts in the event of family or personal disputes, shaping their experience of the legal system. Family law reform was a controversial issue, even before the PSC, in the 1930s when the progressive religious scholar Tahar Haddad argued for the abolition of polygamy, along with other measures to promote women’s rights, and was rapidly crushed by the religious authorities for being contrary to Islam. Bourguiba consciously leaned on the authority of religion by presenting the PSC as a modern interpretation of Islam— drawing on Haddad’s ideas—to appeal to the majority Muslim population, learning from the experience of Turkey that had introduced a secular religious code in 1926.18 Debates concerning the legitimacy of the law— and whether it was “Islamic” or not—continued under the reign of Ben Ali, who positioned himself as the successor to Bourguiba as a defender of women’s rights. During fieldwork, Haddad’s arguments were explained to me and to other foreigners during Arabic classes, the PSC being heralded as a symbol of Tunisia’s proud, progressive record on women’s rights. To feminists such as Sana Ben Achour, the code had not gone far enough, retaining too many areas of gender inequality by maintaining the dower and the husband’s role as head of the household and failing to address the gendered inequalities in inheritance and the matter of a Muslim woman not being allowed to marry a non-Muslim.19 Well-educated  Donovan, Legal Anthropology, 51.  Ibid., 51. 18  For instance, a preface to the 1958 edition of the code explicitly positions it as an interpretation of Islamic law: “Hence, the drafter of the Code has chosen from the depths of this Islamic legislation what can respond to all these needs […] with a style that is easy and understandable in all its parts and that can be accepted by the elites and be clear for the masses” (cited in Zeghal, The Implicit Sharia, 123). 19  S. Ben Achour, Les Chantiers, 9. 16 17

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members of the elites tended to share this perspective. Others, however, felt the reforms had gone too far, perceiving the PSC as a morally questionable departure from Islamic values threatening the moral fabric of society. A widely shared view I observed in the neighborhood was the idea that by facilitating divorce, the PSC encouraged extra-­marital sex (taboo and strictly forbidden in the religion) with the risk of children being born in an unhealthy environment out of wedlock leading them to a life of crime or prostitution. The legitimacy of the law remained hotly contested and the moral doubts surrounding the PSC shaped the environment in which individuals decided—or did not decide—to file for a divorce and interacted with the state via its court system.

Gendering Authority Some forms of authority are built on inequality and rooted in a hierarchical relationship, which is all the more compelling as the “ruling and the ruled” are perceived to “belong to two altogether categories of beings.”20 In feminist literature on gender and citizenship, the concept of authority emerges to highlight forms of gender inequality, identifying women’s subordinate position within gendered, hierarchical relationships. For instance, women are described as lacking “authority” vis-à-vis men in patriarchal kinship systems. To Suad Joseph, who studied gender and citizenship in Lebanon, male authority over women and younger males is central to the definition of patriarchy, the counterpart of their obligation to care for women and juniors.21 This model based on male privilege “is then replicated by male authority over women in all areas of decision-­ making in the public sphere.”22 In this context, authority equates to power over decisions that are deemed to impact the family, including those related to marriage and divorce. By making it possible for women and men to file for divorce and basing marriage on the consent of both spouses, the PSC opened up new  Arendt, What is Authority?, 10.  Joseph, Civic Myths, 123; See also: S. Ben Achour, Le code tunisien; ATFD, Femme et République. 22  Moghadam, Feminism, 10. 20 21

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possibilities for women, in particular, to take decisions related to family life. Earlier anthropological research on Tunisia describes how the PSC was seen as a challenge to the “traditional,” patrilineal, patrilocal family based on the “authority of the eldest man:”23 “people regret very much that today girls have a say in their marriage and are given the power to challenge the authority of their father.”24 In marriage, previously, the father had the ultimate say in his daughter’s marriage in the Maliki rite, while in the Hanafi school it was compulsory to seek the girl’s agreement.25 Similarly, in divorce, before independence, a man could repudiate his wife, ending their marriage unilaterally without the need for justification or recourse to a court.26 He would simply be required to pay his wife maintenance during the three-month waiting period before she was allowed to remarry.27 In contrast, a woman wanting a divorce would have to appeal to a religious authority: if the harm against her were proven, a male, religious judge would rule a divorce on her behalf.28 After the PSC, men, like women, had to negotiate their divorce in a court of law. A wife, like a husband, could now file for divorce unilaterally; the judge could not refuse her request, although, like a husband, she would also be liable to pay her husband compensation for moral damages, the amount of which would be negotiated in court. The PSC giving more rights to women (and men) as individuals was a deliberate move by Bourguiba to dilute allegiance built on tribes and kinship and to bolster support for the new nation-state.29 Echoing Hasso’s “devil’s bargain,” a woman gained the right to end her marriage, but she now had to appeal to the state. However, feminist scholars have highlighted the continued tensions “between the patriarchal model of the traditional, Muslim family and the conjugal model of the Tunisian  Camilleri, Modernity, 591.  Abu Zahra, Sidi Ameur, 128. 25  Paraphrased and translated from Y. Ben Achour, Politique, 212. 26  Charrad, Unequal Citizenship, 10. 27  See Blili, Histoire de Familles, 187. The waiting period was to ensure that she was not pregnant and to establish paternity. 28  Charrad, Tunisia at the Forefront. 29  Y. Ben Achour, Politique, 208–9. Camilleri, Modernity and Abu Zahra, Sidi Ameur also make this argument. 23 24

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family, between legal equality and religious and masculine privilege.”30 Notably, in its definition of marital duties, the PSC maintained the husband as the head of the household and, until the 1993 reform, included the wife’s duty of obedience (Article 23).31 Consequently, the new, legal opportunities for women to make key decisions about their marriage and divorce must be understood against the backdrop of these ambiguities within the code itself, as well as cultural-religious perceptions of gender roles in the family and society. During fieldwork, it was common to hear people complain about the worryingly high rates of divorce. This concern was often linked with doubts about the ability of women to take key decisions regarding marriage and divorce alone—even if in practice these decisions were shaped by their relationships. Divorcing women were commonly perceived as being morally dubious; they were judged to be money-grabbing or self-­ serving, silencing the possibility that the divorce laws could also protect women by enabling them to end an unhappy or violent marriage. These fears were linked with gendered perceptions of authority, or, rather, the perception of authority as a male concept. In conversations with people in the neighborhood and the court, concerns about divorce law were often framed within a religious discourse citing this well-known Koranic verse that was seen to establish male authority over women. This verse was also cited by the women’s organization ATFD when discussing social factors that lead to resistance to women’s rights. In these depictions, male authority rested on the perceived natural difference between men and women: Men are in charge of [are guardians of/are superior to/have authority over] women (al-rijalu qawwamuna ‘ala al-nisa’) because God has endowed one with more [because God has preferred some of them over others] (bi-ma faddala Allahu ba‘dahum ‘ala ba‘din) and because they spend of their means (wa-bi-ma anfaqu min amwalihim).32

 S. Ben Achour, Le code tunisien.  Ben Jemia et al, Rapport tunisien, 10. 32  Text and English translation from Shehada, House of Obedience, 27. 30 31

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Ahmed, a lawyer in his thirties who worked on divorce cases, lamented the high divorce rate and spoke of his fears that women were not competent to take the decision to file for divorce. In his words, “women lack intellect and religion” due to the physiological differences that make women weaker than men with a tendency to privilege “sentiments” over “rationality.” Fears about the moral decline caused by divorce contributed to doubts placed on the moral legitimacy of the state that empowered women to make these decisions via the PSC and that validated them in its courts.

Authorizing Marriage, Authorizing Divorce The PSC based marriage on consent. However, my informants stress that this is not a radical departure from previous practice or from how they perceive Islam; “forced” marriage is strictly forbidden in the religion and parents should check whether a girl agrees to a marriage proposition; girls would, however, be very unlikely to go against their father’s wishes. Despite the legal change, marriages continue to be given an aura of respectability socially and religiously as they are sanctioned by paternal authority, even if the couple has met independently. At the same time, this visible role obscures the many ways in which couples meet and decide to get married in practice. My interviews and conversations with people in the neighborhood reveal the key role played by female kin in “traditional” marriages in selecting the potential bride or groom or assessing whether the future couple are well matched. They also reveal a general atmosphere of mistrust between men and women. In this context, young men are beginning to turn again to their mothers to find them a suitable, trustworthy bride. Some couples meet independently. Based on the family trees I gathered and on interviews with people about their marriages, this happens with increasing frequency given the mixing of the sexes in public places, including schools, universities and work places. According to the Family Judge, female employment is one reason for marital discord as women who have some financial independence are less likely to be tolerant of an unhappy marriage. In the legal code, a woman is free to file for a divorce; the judge cannot prevent her from divorcing, but can only

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dictate the amount of compensation she would pay her husband. However, I met women who wanted to divorce yet for whom divorce was unthinkable as they were deeply embedded in kin relationships that made the decision impossible. In practice, the continued role of the father, in symbolically sanctioning marriages, places limitations on the authority of women, and sometimes men, to file for a divorce. The breakdown of a marriage risks being perceived as a reflection of the father’s failed judgment and is a source of shame for the natal family. In one case, a new bride left her husband after finding out that he had lied to her and returned to her father’s home; her father sent her back, refusing to accept that any child of his would divorce. Despite having a good job and being financially independent, she did not insist and remained in the unfulfilling marriage. What mattered in this case was also the role her family had played in selecting the husband; her mother had brought them together and her father had validated the choice. It quickly became apparent to me that women also suffer more from the strong stigma attached to divorce. When I spoke to people about this, the stigma was most often explained in relation to women; no longer virgins, there were fears about them being “free” to engage in sexual relations outside marriage. In contrast, it was deemed “normal” for men to engage in sexual relations, whether married or not. Whoever instigated the divorce and whoever was to blame for the marital breakdown, rumors and a bad reputation would often haunt a woman during and after a divorce. Some women moved to a new neighborhood to escape the gossip or to hide their divorced status; Munir told me that his ex-wife pretended that he had died and concealed the divorce from some people in her own family: “People respect her, because she doesn’t tell them she is divorced,” he told me. Being stigmatized in this way in her family and in the neighborhood made many women keen to reconcile an unsatisfactory marriage. When I discussed what it meant to be a good wife with women in the neighborhood, they evoked the feminine characteristics of “patience” and “sacrificing herself for her children.” By not filing for a divorce and seeking to reconcile, a woman embodied this idealized image of a good, respectful wife. Nejia, a forty-two-year-old housewife, summed up this sentiment; a mother of three, she would stay in her marriage although they argued and he hit her, afraid that a divorce could affect her

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daughter’s chances of finding a husband: “women are patient and good as they have children and refrain from asking for a divorce.” In this way, in contrast to Ziba Mir-Hosseini who found that women could find counter-­intuitively empowering spaces in the gender unequal divorce regime in Iran,33 my research highlights that Tunisia’s supposedly empowering divorce laws are not empowering for all. Women who enter the court to file for a divorce do so against the backdrop of these prejudices about divorcing and divorced women. The same idealized image of a good wife also resonated in the court, where wives would seek to portray these values to persuade the judge to “take their side” during the reconciliation sessions, frequently by maintaining that she did not want to divorce and preferred to stay in the marriage, however difficult it may be. Similar arguments appeared in the divorce files authored by lawyers on behalf of their clients. This does not mean that men were entirely free from family pressures; the man I met who had ended up re-marrying his ex-wife after his family refused to let him move on and marry a different woman is testimony to the generational pressures faced by both men and women on some occasions. Although the state increasingly intervened in these family matters, and provided citizens with legal options to end their marriage, kin relations and allegiances shaped the context in which these decisions were taken. The “devil’s” bargain did not simply mean replacing one source of authority with another, or that only women would be affected by the imposition of a new form of authority over their intimate affairs.

 he Changing Dynamics of Marriage T and Divorce Changes in the dynamics of modern marriage that placed greater emphasis on the conjugal couple also provided the context in which individuals made decisions on marriage and divorce. The duty to maintain the upkeep of the family was seen as the counterpart of male authority both by those I interviewed and in the PSC according to the legal professionals 33

 Mir Hosseini, Marriage on Trial.

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to whom I spoke. However, in practice this too was changing and it was increasingly difficult to live up to the ideal of the sole male breadwinner. Women were more likely to work as one salary was increasingly insufficient to provide the income needed to fund a lifestyle driven by consumer goods in the urban neighborhood in the suburbs of the capital city. The high cost of living meant that women might need to work just to provide the basics. At the time of fieldwork, in the neighborhood and court, it was desirable for a man to have a wife who was able to work and contribute to the household, as long as this meant being employed in a reputable profession and, ideally, one that could easily be combined with childcare; one such option may be teaching. Nonetheless, although women did play an increased financial role in the household, they were often described as “helping” their husbands, in keeping with the ideal of the male role as provider. Based on my observations in the neighborhood, changes in residence patterns also serve to place greater emphasis on the conjugal couple and the nuclear family unit, creating a literal distance from the couple’s natal families; patrilocal residence may not be possible or desirable, in particular following waves of internal migration to the suburbs of the capital. These changes were apparent in the newly built neighborhoods in Ben Arous, where people necessarily lived farther from their natal kin and couples were united by material and emotional links of dependence as they built their lives and families together and, increasingly, took decisions together as a couple. As well as remaining enshrined in the public imagination, the model of the male head of household also held legal weight, having been written into the PSC. This meant that failing to live up to the expected role of breadwinner had legal repercussions for men, who could be sanctioned by the state for failing to maintain the family; the PSC explicitly states that the husband remains head of the household and must provide for his family (Article 23 and Articles 37-53bis, PSC). Although this legal article was updated in 1993 to reflect the economic reality that wives increasingly make a financial contribution to the household, it was unclear how this new phrasing was being interpreted in practice. Nonetheless, a husband’s main marital duty is to pay maintenance (nafaqa) to his wife and children. As this living allowance is a vital necessity, the state enables a

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wife without nafaqa to file a complaint against her husband quickly and easily at the Cantonal Court. The process takes between two weeks and three months, and is initiated by the wife making an oral statement to the judge when it is assumed that she is telling the truth. It is for the husband to provide evidence that he is maintaining her. In these cases, as Munir feared, the law literally believes the words of women more than men. After being summoned to court and required to show documentary evidence of his income, the judge fixes a monthly payment; the failure to pay—whatever the circumstances, such as unemployment or ill health— can lead to a prison sentence. While these proceedings are designed to help those in need, husbands feared the ease with which a wife can bring her husband to court and expose him to the real possibility of a prison sentence, even if his circumstances meant he currently had no income. Many, like Munir, feared their wives using their rights in the law vindictively or manipulatively to place pressure on them in the event of a divorce. In this way, men became subject to the authority of the state via procedures instigated by their wives in a way that many considered unjust.

The Authority of Evidence Authority enters this debate on family law and women’s rights via its connection with the truth or, more precisely, via what people can be made to believe is the truth.34 In the domain of the law, legally valid forms of evidence establish truth for the purpose of the case at hand. Divorce had moved from being the jurisdiction of religious courts to that of state court. At the same time, shifts in the nature of evidence led to certain types of marital failings being believed more than others, in a way that gave the impression to some, like Munir, that the state, through the court, could more readily exercise its authority over men, rather than over women. Previously, a key form of evidence was witnessing, recalling that only wives needed to petition a court for a divorce, while husbands could repudiate their wives unilaterally.35 After Independence, however, the 34 35

 Arendt, What is Authority? 10 and 24.  Hafsia, Le contrat, 60.

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PSC introduced a document-based regime, according to which the divorce judgment is made on the file alone.36 Annelise Riles, an anthropologist who has studied the techniques and procedures of the law, stresses the role of documents as a medium through which “diverse types of agency are produced, stretched or abbreviated.”37 The evidence in Tunisian divorce cases can be read through this lens: the shift in authority from witnesses to documents follows the perceived shift in authority from the husband to the wife in the divorce court, echoing Munir’s frustration. If this is the case, it is because certain types of document speak most authoritatively about particular forms of “harm” that are, in practice, gendered. Litigants can file for divorce on different grounds. In cases of divorce for harm, a litigant must prove the harm that has compelled them to end their marriage and they will be entitled to receive compensation payments from their spouse. In cases of divorce without grounds, a litigant does not need to justify their demand; however, they will be required to pay their spouse compensation for unilaterally ending the marriage. It is in their interest, therefore, to demonstrate that the divorce is motivated by harm done with the goal of mitigating any compensation they will owe. In theory, according to the legal code, all forms of evidence can be used in a divorce case. However, jurisprudence has established that only final judgments38 from other court cases could be used as proof in cases of divorce for harm. In other words, the greatest authority is placed in documents that were authored by the state itself via other court cases and that were validated via its own legal codes and procedures. As Brinkley Messick has noted, this change echoes a political change and marks a shift in the weight of authority toward the state.39 The restrictions on the kinds of documents that hold authority have implications for the kinds of arguments that can be used as the basis for  Although the couple meet a judge in person for a reconciliation session, it is the written record of this session (taken by the judge dictated to a clerk) that enters the file and is used as evidence. 37  Riles, Introduction, 21. 38  This means a judgment that can no longer be subject to appeal and that was not delivered in the absence of the litigant. Confessions could also be used as evidence, but these were rare and I did not find these in the files that I examined. 39  Messick, Just Writing, 34. 36

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a divorce case; state-authored documents were most commonly used as evidence to prove the husband’s failings, notably his failure to pay maintenance, as in the nafaqa case mentioned above. In other cases, the document provided was the final judgment of a criminal case. On some occasions this case was directly related to the marriage (domestic violence, adultery). In other instances, the case might be unrelated to the marriage (bank robbery, drugs). As far as the divorce was concerned, the husband’s imprisonment was evidence that he was unable to earn a living and provide for his wife and children. Consequently, the divorce court was a key site where the economic basis of male authority was being questioned via sanctions by the state. In contrast, the wife’s key marital duties of taking care of her husband and children required her to remain present in the marital home. Consequently, while wives frequently complained about their husband’s failure to pay nafaqa, husbands accused their wives of having abandoned the marital home. However, this accusation was extremely difficult to back up with legally valid evidence. Although notaries were used to provide expert witness statements attesting to the wife’s absence, this evidence was insubstantial. First, the notary could only attest to her absence at a given time; this procedure was subject to abuse, for instance, by husbands deliberately inviting the notary to call when their wife was absent for legitimate reasons such as work or visiting family. Second, jurisprudence established that the court was only able to sanction an unjustified absence; if the wife claimed to have fled the marital home for a valid reason such as domestic violence, her absence was not considered to be causing her husband “harm” and could not justify a divorce for “harm.” In practice, therefore, it was extremely rare for a case to succeed on this basis. In the 196 files I examined in 2007–2008, nine were initiated by husbands claiming divorce for harm due to their wife’s absence from the marital home. Of these nine only three were granted by the court. In two of the three successful cases, the wife seemed to have disappeared entirely and had no contact with the court during the case, a silence which in itself seemed to prove her absence. In this sense, with the introduction of the PSC, the legal procedures made it easier for wives to provide legal evidence to prove the failings of their husband, contributing to a sense in the eyes of some that the law

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favored women. This is a key reason why Munir felt the law believed and favored his wife. The court could not refuse his wife’s request for a divorce. He lost custody of his beloved sons. His ex-wife was not respectful of his visiting rights and he did not want to get the police involved to enforce them. He was also required to pay a considerable proportion of his salary for his children and also to their mother, as the person with custody responsible for caring for them. “The father must spend and obey,” he explained, “otherwise he will end up in prison. The law gave her everything. Normally, she should get nothing, but she gets everything by law. By force and in the name of the children.”

Conclusion Recalling Hasso, what is it that results from the reliance “on the state as the main arbiter of rights and protections for women”?40 Thinking about gender and authority can help unravel the apparent paradoxes and contradictions that surround the practice and experience of these progressive divorce laws. To benefit from the “devil’s bargain” and access rights guaranteed by the state, women and men must be able and willing to navigate the legal procedures. Divorce law is not translated into practice in a vacuum; rather, individuals remain embedded in kin and other relationships that are still informed by ideals that confer men greater authority than women to take decisions about family life. If the “devil’s bargain”—displacing a hierarchy based on kinship in favor of a hierarchy based on the relationship between citizen and the state—is so insidious, it is because it does not suggest where there may be space for women to hold their own legitimate authority as authors of their own lives. For women especially, the “devil’s bargain” can appear as a double-bind; they remain embedded in wider kin relations in which they are expected to be subordinate and may still be required to defer to the needs of their natal family, while being required to disclose intimate details of their lives to the state should they appeal to this authority to access their individual rights. In this way, a woman’s authority remains  Hasso, Bargaining, 107 (paraphrased).

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relational and constrained by gender inequalities; despite having gained rights and a voice in the divorce court, socially and within her marriage, a woman may not activate her rights and remain silent. The “devil’s bargain” also has its implications for men, who must now appeal to the state if they wish to divorce and are open to discipline by the state if they fail in their marital duties. Questions of legitimacy—of the Islamic credentials of the PSC and of Ben Ali’s repressive regime—further complicated the ability of citizens to approach the legal system in pursuit of their rights. The cohabitation of two forms of authority is also evident in the divorce proceedings that may appear to favor women. Somewhat counter-­ intuitively, a woman’s legal authority (which is not so much hers, as it is her ability to harness the authority of the state) rests on her not appearing authoritative in court. By performing the ideal of the obedient, subservient wife, she is better able to generate evidence that appeals to the state to win a favorable divorce settlement and, in the process, enabling the state to exercise its authority over certain husbands, like Munir. Consequently, the lived experience of women’s rights and the gendered consequences of the “devil’s bargain” can be understood within multiple layers of authority that may compete and conflict and that shape the context in which individuals choose to pursue—or not—the rights provided for them in law in this intimate domain of life.

References Abu Zahra, Nadia. 1982. Sidi Ameur: A Tunisian Village. London: Ithaca Press. Achour, Ben. 2005. Face à l’ambivalence des “principes relatifs au statut personnel,” la reponse du juge: les principes fondamentaux de l’ordre juridique, 24–26 Novembre 2005, Gammarth, IX Congrès International de Méthodologie Juridique. ———. 2010. Le Code tunisien du statut personnel, 50 ans après: les dimensions de l’ambivalence. L’Année du Maghreb [En ligne], II 2005–2006, published July 08, 2010. http://journals.openedition.org/anneemaghreb/89. Accessed 1 August 2019. Arendt, Hannah. 1968. What Is Authority. In Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought, 91–141. New York: Viking.

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Arfaoui, Khedija. 2007. The Development of the Feminist Movement in Tunisia 1920s–2000s. International Journal of the Humanities 4 (8): 53–59. ATFD (Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates). 2008. Femme et République: un combat pour l’égalité et la démocratie. Tunis: ATFD. Ben Achour, Sana. 2004. Les Chantiers de L’égalité au Maghreb. Policy Paper 13. IFRI. Paris. Ben Achour, Yadh. 1992. Politique, religion et droit dans le Monde Arabe. Tunis: Cérès Productions Cerp. Ben Jemia, Monia, Souhayama Ben Achour, and Mariem Bellamine. 2006. Rapport tunisien: le droit tunisien de la famille entre modernité et tradition, CNRS, Mission Droit et Justice, 15 August 2006. Blili, Temime. 1999. Histoire de Familles: Mariages, répudiations et vie quotidienne à Tunis. 1875–1930. Editions Script: Tunisia. Camilleri, Carmel. 1967. Modernity and the Family in Tunisia. Journal of Marriage and the Family 29 (3): 590–595. Charrad, Mounira M. 2001. States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Post-­ Colonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. California: University of California Press. ———. 2007a. Tunisia at the Forefront of the Arab World: Two Waves of Gender Legislation. Washington and Lee Law Review 64 (4): 1513–1527. ———. 2007b. Unequal Citizenship: Issues of Gender Justice in the Middle East and North Africa. In Gender Justice, Citizenship and Development, ed. Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay and Navsharan Singh. Ottawa: International Development research Centre. Dahlgren, Susanne. 2005. Women’s Adah Versus ‘Women’s Law’: The Contesting Issue of Mahr in Aden Yemen. Égypte/Monde arabe, Troisième série. http:// ema.revues.org/1045. Accessed 22 September 2013. Donovan, James M. 2008. Legal Anthropology: An Introduction. Lanham/ Plymouth: Altamira Press. Hafsia, Nazli. 2005. Le contrat du mariage en Tunisie jusqu’en 1956. Tunisia: Editions Cartaginoiseries. Hasso, Frances S. 2014. Bargaining with the Devil: States and Intimate Life. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 10 (2): 107–129. Hoodfar, Homa. 2000. Iranian Women at the Intersection of Citizenship and the Family Code: The Perils of ‘Islamic Criteria. In Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph, 287–313. New  York: Syracuse University Press.

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Joseph, Suad. 1997. The Public/Private: The Imagined Boundary in the Imagined Nation/State/Community: The Lebanese Case. Feminist Review, no. 57, 73–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1395802. Accessed 26 April 2020. ———. 2000a. Gendering Citizenship in the Middle East. In Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph, 3–32. New York: Syracuse University Press. ———. 2000b. Civic Myths, Citizenship and Gender in Lebanon. In Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed. Suad Joseph, 287–313. New  York: Syracuse University Press. Messick, Brinkley. 1989. Just Writing: Paradox and Political Economy in Yemeni Legal Documents. Cultural Anthropology 4 (1): 26–50. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. 1993. Marriage on Trial: A Study of Islamic Family Law. New York: I.B. Tauris. Moghadam, Valentine M. 2009. Feminism, Legal Reform and Women’s Empowerment in the Middle East and North Africa. International Social Science Journal Publisher: UNESCO. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ abs/10.1111/j.1468-2451.2009.00673.x. Accessed 9 July 2020. Riles, Annelise. 2006. Introduction: In Response. In Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge I, ed. Annelise Riles, 21. USA: University of Michigan Press. Shehada, Nahda. 2009. House of Obedience: Social Norms, Individual Agency, and Historical Contingency. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 5 (1): 24–49. Singerman, Diane. 1995. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Yildirim, Seval. 2005. Aftermath of a Revolution: A Case Study of Turkish Family Law. Pace International Law Review 17 (2). Article 8. Zeghal, Malika. 2013. The Implicit Sharia: Established Religion and Varieties of Secularism in Tunisia. In Varieties of Religious Establishment, ed. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Lori G. Beaman, 107–130. London: Ashgate.

9 What Does the Shastra Have to Say? The Age of Consent Bill Controversy and the Reimagination of Hinduism in Modern Western India Alok Oak

Introduction The nineteenth century was a particularly interesting period for the social reform movement in India. It was primarily concerned with the social status of upper caste women. Thus, one of the first social reform initiatives undertaken by the Bengali reformer Ram Mohan Roy was the issue of sati, which culminated in the total ban on the inhuman practice of forcing an upper-caste widow to burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. A law to that effect was passed by the Governor-General of Bengal Lord William Bentinck in 1829 and was later extended to other parts of India under British jurisdiction.1 In the subsequent decades, The author would like to express his gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the chapter and to Aneesha Srinivasan for long conversations over some of the issues raised here. The usual disclaimers apply.  See Mani, Contentious Traditions.

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questions related to woman’s role in the family, her status as a wife, her responsibilities as a mother and her overall role in the bourgeoning nationalist movement of India were hotly debated and contested in the public sphere of India.2 As Ashis Nandy has pointed out: All major social reforms and attempts at social change after the beginning of British rule have centered on woman and feminity [sic]. It is by protesting against or defying the traditional concepts of woman and womanhood that all Indian modernizers have made their point. On the other hand, all forms of conservatism and protests against modern Western encroachments on Indian society have taken shelter in and exploited the symbol of motherhood.3

Such debates were facilitated by the introduction of modern political and educational systems, where issues related to citizenship rights and responsibilities of a State were widely discussed. Of particular influence were the writings of nineteenth-century British thinkers such as John Stuart Mill, who were avidly read in the colonies.4 The exposure to European modernity created turmoil in the social set-up of India, which was ruled for centuries by religious norms related to the status of women, the unchallenged authority wielded by the male members in a family, the invincibility of the clerical (shastri/pundit) class and the social-behavioral diktats laid out for members of a community in the private and public spheres. The notion of authority within the religious lexicon, at once, takes up questions related to its “nature,” that is, whether the authority is exercised through an oral or written tradition. In the context of Vedic religion, scholars have debated over the “performative” aspects of Vedic religion, that is to say, the authority (adhikara) over religious rituals.5 With the advent of modernity in the nineteenth century, Indians also engaged in debates concerning the enunciation of the Vedic and Dharmashastra (theologico-legal) texts and who truly wielded hermeneutical authority  See, for example, Chakravarti, Rewriting History and Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution.”  Nandy, At the Edge of Psychology, 37. 4  Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India; Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India and Mantena, “Mill and the Imperial Predicament.” 5  See Patton, Jewels of Authority. 2 3

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over them. The Western-educated University graduate Indians were quick to adapt to the European-Enlightenment discipline of “textual hermeneutics.” They transformed the centuries-old Vedic-Dharmashastra scriptures, replete with their canonicity, into an “Enlightenment Text.” An “Enlightenment Text,” Laurie Patton explains, “can be viewed as a printed or written source of knowledge to which each individual has access without the mediation of a community.”6 The birth of “Enlightenment Texts” opened up the vast pool of Hindu religious canon to Indians, which resulted into nationalist-racist pride amongst the upper-caste educated men, excitement amongst the lower castes and women, and tremendous anxiety amongst the clerical class. The British Indologists too started studying the Dharmashastra texts with an avid historical interest into India’s ancient past. The legal structure developed in the nineteenth century by the British colonial state was a complex phenomenon. After the transfer of power to the British Crown (1858), Queen Victoria clearly stated that the British state would not interfere in the religious customs and practices of the natives.7 However, since the English jurisprudence worked on the principles of equity, justice and good conscience, Henry Maine (a member of the Imperial Legislative Council from 1861 to 1869) divided the laws related to India into criminal and civic laws.8 The Indian Penal Code dealt with the former and adhered to the English tradition, whereas the latter followed the native religious theologico-legal tradition (the Dharmashastra texts) and thus came to be construed as Customary Laws. As Flavia Agnes has pointed out: the process of legislation adopted by the British was selective and affected only some aspects of civil and criminal law while a large area which was

 Patton, “Introduction,” 11.  The Queen’s Proclamation (1858) clearly stated: “We do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of any subjects on pain of our highest displeasure.” As quoted in Desikar Char, Readings in the Constitutional History of India, 294. 8  Mantena, Alibis of Empire, 89–118. 6 7

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termed as religious was left out of its purview, to be regulated by the natives as per their religious doctrines.9

The traditional schools of Hindu jurisprudence were divided into Mitakshara (prevalent throughout India, except Bengal) and Dayabhaga schools (distinct to the Bengal region).10 The rules of scriptural interpretations were laid out in the Mimamsa texts and these two schools of Hindu jurisprudence referred to different authorities within the Mimamsa textual corpus. The British State could not, thus, create a uniform civil code due to these textual and geographical variations. Therefore, it adopted the method of adjudication, whereby case laws and judicial interpretation of legal principles took precedence over Hindu scriptural interpretations, allowing the British State to pass civil laws related to family, marriage and inheritance. Amongst them the “Widow Remarriage Act” (1856), the “Indian Divorce Act” (1869), the “Prohibition of Female Infanticide Act” (1872) and the “Age of Consent Act” (1891) directly affected Hindu women’s life and simultaneously challenged the twin authorities of Hindu religious scriptures and the authority exerted over them by the upper-caste male exegetes. The present chapter seeks to deploy the notion of authority, in its theologico-­legal aspects, in tracing the growth of gender consciousness in late nineteenth-century western India. The three primary wielders of authority which/who had direct bearing upon the “life-world” of uppercaste Hindu women include the Hindu theologico-legal texts (Dharmashastra texts), the social status of male exegetes (shastris) who were the traditional bearers of the Dharmashastra texts, and the colonial British State which utilized its legal apparatuses (such as the Legislature and Judiciary) in framing laws for India. The underlying notion of patriarchy contributed to a male-centered discourse operationalized by the three wielders of authority. A first challenge to such a patriarchal discourse was initially posed by the male reformists during the agitation related to widows’ right to remarry (1856) and in the subsequent years

 Agnes, “Politicization of Personal Laws,” 5, italics in the original.  Trevelyan, Hindu Law.

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was further fueled by educated Hindu women (primarily of the upper castes). Multiple studies in recent years have explored the role played by women in the emergence and growth of feminism in nineteenth-century India.11 Scholars have also undertaken extensive research on the writings of women (especially the genre of autobiography)12 and have written informative biographies of some of these female author-activists.13 Amongst these studies, the controversy surrounding the Age of Consent Bill (AoC Bill) has garnered special attention.14 The present chapter seeks to enhance the existing literature on the controversy surrounding the AoC Bill by focusing specifically on the theologico-legal debates, which have not been adequately explored by its scholars. It is my contention that centering the discussion about the AoC Bill around the nature of the theologico-legal debates will contribute to refining our understanding of the nature and form of the early nationalist opposition to colonial policies, the appropriation of the “gendered subject” by the male and colonial authorities for their separate agendas and the development of feministnationalist consciousness amongst women who used the instrument of religion for their emancipation. The chapter will begin with a brief summary of the events that led to the AoC Bill. After a brief interlude in the textual basis for Hindu marriage and its consummation ritual, the next section will explore debates in Maharashtra regarding the commandments found in the Hindu scriptures and their role in defending/opposing the British colonial state’s decision to interfere in the Customary Laws. The final section will deal  See, for instance, Kumar, The History of Doing; Anagol-Mcginn, The Emergence of Feminism in India; Jain, Indigenous Roots of Feminism and the more recent Allender, Learning Femininity in Colonial India. For specific issues such as women’s fight for education, see Rao, “Women’s Education” and Chakraborty, “Women’s Education and Empowerment.”; on women’s right over their bodies and sexuality, see Tambe, Codes of Conduct; on widows’ right to remarry see the classic work by Carroll, “Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform.”; on conjugal rights, see, Burton, “From Child-Bride to ‘Hindoo Lady’.”; and finally on the issue of child marriage, see Major, “Mediating Modernity.” 12  Sarkar, “A Book of Her Own,” and Paranjape, “Subjects of Gender.” 13  Chakravarti, Rewriting History. 14  The classic text on the AoC debates for well over five decades remains Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Social Reform. For more recent work on the controversy, see Lamba, “Bringing The State Back In.” 11

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with Pandita Ramabai and her text The High Caste Hindu Woman (1887) which was a powerful defense of female agency vis-a-vis religion, the colonial State and male social authority. It must be stated at the outset that this analysis is confined to the spatial limitations of the erstwhile Bombay Province of colonial western India. Scholars have undertaken remarkable studies on the erstwhile Bengal Province with great insight.15 However, the nature of debate around the women’s question taking place in the Bombay Province and especially in the town of Pune has its own peculiarities.16

 ackground to the Age of Consent Bill B Controversy (1891) The immediate background to the debate around the marital rights of a Hindu woman and the subsequent AoC Bill was the Dadaji v. Rakhmabai case (1884–1888).17 Rakhmabai, an eleven-year-old girl, was married to a twenty-year-old man, Dadaji Bhikaji, in 1875. After spending six months in marriage, Rakhmabai decided to separate from her husband. Her separation was on the grounds that Dadaji was unable to provide proper residence and financial support to her. He suffered from tuberculosis, was an alcoholic and showed unruly behavior toward her parents and relatives. She also suspected his foul character. The marriage was not consummated. Dadaji filed a case against her in 1884 with the Bombay High Court. The court case attracted tremendous public attention and a strong male outrage against Rakhmabai. The plaintiff as well as the defense counsels invoked Customary Laws and Hindu scriptures. Justice Pinhey  See especially Karlekar, Voices from Within, and Sarkar, The Hindu Wife.  Pune, about 150 miles from Bombay, was the seat of power for the Peshwa rulers and a traditional Sanskrit learning center of the Indian subcontinent, with hundreds of Vedic pathashalas [Vedic schools] which offered upper-caste boys rigorous training in the Vedic scriptures and turned them into learned Pundits and Shastris who enjoyed extraordinary privileges at the various royal courts. See Dandekar, Sanskrit and Maharashtra, and Larios, Embodying the Vedas. Unlike in Bengal, the orthodox sections of Pune society found it very difficult to accommodate the waves of liberal thought that was entering the region under British colonialism. Their resistance to all forms of westernization resulted in a distinct socio-religious movement of Western India. 17  Kosambi, “Gender Reform.” 15 16

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of the Bombay High Court dismissed the case on the grounds that no court (in England or India) could force a woman to consummate a marriage, despite the wedding rituals, against her will. Ipso facto, in the absence of the consummation of marriage Rakhmabai’s right to separate from Dadaji was upheld by the Court. Justice Pinhey further stated that at the time of marriage Rakhmabai was a minor.18 Justice Pinhey was applying the British Common Law framework to the case. The “Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857” passed by the British Parliament allowed ordinary British people to apply for a divorce. Justice Pinhey applied the legal precedents of the 1857 Act to India considering it a British colony and its inhabitants as subjects of the Crown. A disgruntled Dadaji appealed to the Appellate Court presided by Justices Sargent and Bayley. Justice Pinhey’s verdict was construed by the Appellate Court as an undue interference into the Customary Laws of the natives. Therefore, the two judges overturned the earlier verdict on the grounds that wedding rituals were duly performed and that the British Common Laws were inapplicable in toto to India. At the time the British Parliament had not set a minimum legal age for British girls to marry and was following the Roman Canon Laws of the twelfth century.19 Therefore a minimum legal age for an Indian girl-bride could not be determined. Customary Law (based upon Dharmashastra) prevailing in India contained divergent opinions. Therefore Rakhmabai’s status as a minor at the time of wedding was deemed irrelevant and she was denied her conjugal rights by the Appellate Court.20 In the immediate aftermath of the case, the Government of India formed a committee of fourteen leading jurists and civil servants of Bombay and called for an amendment to Section 260 of the Civil Procedure Code (XIV of 1882) regarding restitution of conjugal rights and divorce. Taking advantage of the debates around the Rakhmabai case, a Bombay-based philanthropist and social reformer Behramji Malabari wrote and published “Notes on Infant Marriage in India and Enforced  For an account of the entire episode, see Chakravarti, Rewriting History, 138–51.  The “Ages of Marriage Act” was passed by the British Parliament in 1929. It fixed the minimum age for marriage for both sexes at 16. 20  The “Child Marriage Restraint Act” was passed in 1929. It criminalized the practice of marriage for girls below the age of 16 and for boys below the age of 18. 18 19

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Widowhood” on August 15, 1884, and sent it to all the influential men of Bombay and Bengal for their opinion. He also publicly distributed the pamphlet. The Notes were celebrated in the social reform quarters of Bombay Province. Justices K.T. Telang and M.G. Ranade came out in support of the Notes. M.G. Ranade demanded legislative and executive sanction for limiting the age for marriage. In an article for the Times of India (August 24, 1884) he wrote: The truth is, the orthodox society has lost its power of life, it can initiate no reform, nor sympathize with it… it is this conviction of the hard conditions of the problem which retards our progress. People find fault with us, even abuse us for half-heartedness, for our apparent want of fire and enthusiasm. God only knows that in our households we are perpetually at war with our dearest and nearest, we struggle and strive to do our best, and have perforce to stop at many points when we fear the strain will cause rupture.21

The British parliament had passed the “Criminal Law Amendment Act” (1885) under pressure from the London-based “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children” and raised the age of consent for British girls from thirteen to sixteen. Malabari spent several months in England trying to persuade the British government to pass a similar legislation for India and arousing British public opinion in favor of it.22 Due to mounting pressure from the social reformers in India and the British press, which was criticizing the government for its lackadaisical behavior, Sir Andrew Scoble introduced the Age of Consent Bill in the Legislative Council on January 9, 1891 and this was turned into a law on March 19, 1891.23 The new Law made sexual intercourse with a girl of less than twelve years a cognizable criminal offence.24 The AoC Bill was celebrated  Quoted in Ganachari, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, 128.  For a detailed account of Malabari’s activities in England, see his biography written by Gidumal, Behramji M Malabari, 125–245. 23  The Calcutta Sessions court convicted Hari Mohan Maiti on July 6, 1890, under Section 375 of Indian Penal Code for abetting the death of his ten-year-old wife, Phulmoni Dasi, while having sexual intercourse. However, since Phulmoni was of legal age he could not be tried for marital rape or rape with a minor. He was sentenced to twelve months of hard labor. The verdict added pressure on the Legislative Council to pass the Bill. For details, see Sarkar, The Hindu Wife and Hindu Nation, 191–225. 24  See Engels, “The Age of Consent Act of 1891” for the events occurring in the Bengal Province. 21 22

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amongst the progressive and reformist sections of India, who upheld the Bill as having Hindu sacerdotal sanction, whereas the conservatives were anguished by the “foreign interference” in the religious matters of Hindus, seeing it as an assault on the Queen’s Declaration of non-interference in the native Customary Laws. Both took refuge in the Dharmashastra texts in arguing their case. Since the Rakhmabai case and the “Notes” published by Malabari were concerned with issues related to conjugal rights, age of marriage and the role of consummation of marriage within the theologico-legal space, the reformists and the conservatives participated in a vociferous debate about their exegetical origins. In these debates as well as the Court rulings, the consummation ritual (known in Sanskrit as garbhaadhaan-vidhi) played the most significant role and attracted maximum attention. A brief enquiry into the theologico-textual origins of the ritual serves to better situate the debate.

The Hindu (Vedic) System of Marriage Marriage is considered as one of the samskaras [sacraments] that make up the life of a Hindu. Marriage-samskara’s origin can be traced to Jaimini’s Sutras (600–200 BC), where it is prescribed as a purification act to be performed before a Vedic alter (Jaimini Sutra, 3.8.3).25 All samskaras fulfill sacred and profane purposes. Thus, the marriage-samskara is seen as a union of two individuals (and their families) legitimized by God and society. There is no unanimity amongst the writers of various Sutra and the later Smriti texts on the number of mandatory samskaras. They vary from seven to forty-five and are divided into three parts—those performed before and after the child is born, those performed during and after the completion of Vedic studies and those performed during the life as a householder. Of these, the garbhaadhaan is the first samskara to be performed after marriage when the wife completes her first menstruation cycle and is biologically capable to conceive a child. Of these numerous samskaras, those which have a direct bearing upon the present enquiry 25

 Kane, History of Dharmashastra, 190–1.

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into the AoC Bill controversy are the ritual of vivaah [marriage] and garbhaadhaan. They will be explored in brief. Pre-marital sex was considered a grave sin and sexual promiscuity was prohibited by Hindu scriptures. The earliest records of the institution of marriage are found in the Rigveda, the oldest Hindu text (X.85.36). Following Rigveda, the Dharmashastra texts prescribed complex rules for choosing an ideal bride which included caste-tribe (gotra) restrictions. The minimum age for marriage for a man was not set. Generally speaking a Brahmin boy would need at least twelve years to complete his Vedic education after his upanayana ceremony (performed at the age of eight). Thus the groom would be above twenty years at the time of his marriage. However, some scriptures suggested that a Brahmin should forfeit his desire for marriage once he reached the age of forty-five. Most scholars agree that the earliest Vedic texts do not clearly state the age of marriage for a girl. However, the girl had to be a virgin. Numerous injunctions in the latter Smriti and Dharmashastra texts argued that the girl bride must be a naganika (the naked one). Thus the Baudhayaana Dharma-sutra (c.600 BC), for instance (IV.1.11–14), states: let him give his daughter, while she still goes naked, to a man who has not broken the vow of chastity and who possesses good qualities, or even to one destitute of good qualities; let him not keep (the maiden) in (his house) after she has reached the age of puberty.26

P.V. Kane is of the view that the practice of pre-pubescent marriage became popular only after the composition of Yajnyavalkya Smriti (c. 200 CE)27 and holds the growth of Buddhism partly responsible for this change.28 In texts such as Samskara-Kaustubha, marriage for a girl was projected as an equivalent to the upanayana ceremony for boys and thus had to be performed around the age of eight. However, the most horrendous threat to girls came from the Parashara-Samhita (VII.6–9), considered as an authoritative text on marriage rituals, which stated that if a girl  As quoted in Kapadia, Marriage and Family in India, 138.  Kane, History, 443. 28  Many girls and boys adopted Buddhist monastic life. 26 27

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remains unmarried after she turns twelve, the souls of her ancestors will be cursed to drink her menstrual blood and her parents will rot in hell permanently. The garbhaadhaan ceremony is described in the Atharva-Veda (V.25.3) and the Brihadaaranyaka Upanishad (VI.4.21). By offering food and water, divine blessings are sought for the embryo. Then the wife is primed for intercourse. Once again the deities are invoked to help her in opening herself up (literally) for the husband. Most of the ancient scriptures agree that the garbhaadhaan ritual is to be performed three days after marriage. The girl must have had her first menses prior to the garbhaadhaan ritual.29 Thus, sexual intercourse with a pre-pubescent girl was strictly prohibited by the scriptures. It is quite clear that most of the later Smriti texts, using their authoritative status, sanctified the marriage of upper-caste girls at an early age by using various threats against the family-members and invoking the codified rituals. Since garbhaadhaan ceremony was to be performed after the girl’s first menses, the shastris did not enter into a deeper enquiry whether the counting of first menses was after marriage or the very first menses which the girl experiences. An easy way out was to count the latter. Thus the girl was married off at a tender age (before she reached puberty) which became a norm amongst the upper-caste Hindus for well over 1000 years. Finally, it is vital to remember that women did not possess any rights in ancient Hindu India to lead religious ceremonies, although they could participate in some of them as a companion to the husband. They were denied the right to read and interpret the scriptures and thus the exegetes remained primarily a male-dominated class.30 However, there indeed existed a caveat. While the theologico-legal texts contrived female docility, a parallel tradition within Hinduism gave women substantial freedom in choosing their husbands. Within the form of marriage popularly known as the Swayamvara [Self-ordained Marriage], the girl could choose her husband and the time for marriage. Principal characters from the two Indian Epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, were shown opting for the Swayamvara method. Thus Devika’s marriage to 29 30

 Kane, History, 201–6.  McGee, “Ritual Rights.”

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Yudhisthira (Mahabharata 1.90.84), Kunti’s marriage to Pandu (Mahabharata 1.105.2), Damayanti’s choice of Nala (Mahabharata 3.53) and the famous contest to win over Draupadi are examples of Swayamvara marriage.31 Similarly the famous Kamasutra text also made marriage optional for a girl. However, since the Epics and Kamasutra were not part of the Dharmashastra canon, they were dispensed off by the Hindu exegetes and the subsequent British law-makers and thus remain confined to the margins of tradition.

 en Interpret the Shastras: The Debate M Between Ranade, Bhandarkar and Tilak In the context of the appropriate age for marriage, male intellectuals of Maharashtra participated vociferously in a prolonged debate. The jurist Mahadev Govind Ranade and the pioneering native Indologist and Sanskritist Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar belonged to the camp of social reformers. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the young editor of two newspapers and a latter-day nationalist leader, represented the conservative side. Tilak vehemently opposed the British colonial state’s intent to raise the age of marriage for girls to twelve and regarded it as an interference into the religious customs of Hindus.32 Interestingly none of the public intellectuals who participated in the debate took upon themselves to directly challenge the legal parameters of the Bill, irrespective of being legal experts.33 They debated the viability of the law in the context of the traditional Hindu Law as stated in the Shastras. It must be clarified that the exegetical enquiries undertaken by the upper-caste educated men fulfilled a specific purpose, that being, assisting/opposing the British legislators in framing the AoC Bill under the auspices of the Customary and Criminal Laws. A precise interpretation of the theologico-legal texts was of vital importance in determining the  Schmidt, Some Women’s Rites, 84–5.  See the numerous articles published in Tilak, Samagra Lokmanya Vol. 5, and especially 203–5, 232–9. 33  Ranade was a judge in the Bombay High Court and Tilak had studied law at the premier Deccan College of Pune and conducted private tuitions for young legal aspirants. 31 32

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clauses of the Bill. Since the Bill was intended to criminalize pre-­pubescent sexual intercourse, an enquiry into the theologico-legal basis for the appropriate age for sexual intercourse was deemed necessary. It must also be remembered that neither the social reformers nor the conservatives and the legislating British State sought opinions from women, whose lives and bodies they were expecting to regulate. Justice M.G. Ranade came out in absolute support of raising the age for girl’s marriage.34 In an essay titled “The Age of Hindu Marriage,” he argued that during the Sutra period marriage was optional. Those women who chose to get married had no maximum age-limit, while it generally varied for a man, depending upon the number of years required of him to spend in the house of his guru for studies (Brahmacharya). These principles were most famously laid out in the Grihya-sutra and the Mahabharata. The Smriti texts carried forward the progressive legacy of the Sutra texts, only to be manipulated in the later centuries. Nevertheless, Ranade contended that thirty-six authoritative Sutra and Smriti texts recommend twelve to be the minimum age of marriage for girls while sixteen to be the age for its consummation.35 In a speech delivered to the Education Society in Pune on May 22, 1887, he argued that the interpretations of the Dharmashastra texts must be in consonance with deshaachaar [customs of the land]. Since India, barring a few princely states, was under foreign colonial rule, the British common law was applicable, while the ancient Hindu Law ought to be suspended. Tilak strongly disagreed with Ranade and pointed out that irrespective of the governing institution deshariwaaj or sadaachaar [customs and traditions of a land] lay prior to deshaachaar. Tilak separated Shruti texts from Smriti texts and pointed out the traditional hermeneutical principle, namely, in case of different maxims found within the same or different Shruti texts, each maxim was to be considered as separate dharma [means of conduct]. According to tradition Manu-smriti was considered the oldest and the most authoritative Smriti text. When maxims from the Manu-smriti were found to be either incomplete or missing, other Smritis were referred to for better clarity. The most important commentators on 34 35

 See, Ranade, “A Shastrical Text,” and the collection of his essays in Religious and Social Reform.  Ranade, Religious and Social Reform, 26–52.

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the Smriti texts such as Neelkantha, Kulluku and Vijnyaneshwar followed this basic hermeneutical principle in their approach to the ShrutiSmriti texts. Therefore, Tilak granted great weightage to the commandments given by these commentators who seemed to agree that only after reaching a consensus about the “correct reading” of a ShrutiSmriti maxim did deshaachaar apply and in case the latter came in conflict with the former, the latter had to be abandoned.36 Ranade had interpreted the maxim “na stree swaatantram arhati” [a woman is not worthy of freedom] from Manu-smriti (9.3) as a conditional constraint on her freedom. Thus, according to him, relative freedom was guaranteed to a woman only in terms of protection to her life and not in terms of the pursuit of her interests or entitlements. It was the duty of the father, husband and son to protect the woman during different phases of her life. Tilak refuted Ranade’s interpretation by citing other passages from Manu-smriti and argued that a woman possesses no freewill, relative or otherwise, since she tends to pursue vyabhichaar [immoral acts] and hence must always be obedient to her father, husband or son. Thus the constraint upon her freedom was not relative but absolute. In an article titled “Raobahadur Ranade Yaanche Apurv Yukti-chaaplya” [The Extraordinary Intellectual Deceit of Mr. Ranade] published on June 7, 1887, in Kesari, Tilak wrote, “As ridiculous it is to find references to railways or telegraph wires in the Vedas so it is preposterous to claim that the Shruti-Smriti texts spoke of freedom of women.”37 R.G. Bhandarkar defended Ranade by publishing a pamphlet entitled “A Note on the Age of Marriage and Its Consummation According to Hindu Law” in 1891.38 Bhandarkar gave a more systematic exposition of the texts used by Ranade. Bhandarkar quoted the Manu-smriti (9.89–90), the Baudhayaana-smriti (4.1.14) and the Vasistha Sutras (16.67–68) to argue that the Sutra and Smriti writers had reached a consensus regarding the appropriate age for girls to get married, that being, three years after reaching puberty. On the issue of consummation of marriage, authoritative texts such as Ashvalaayana and Paraashara extended the period for  Tilak, Samagra Lokmanya Vol. 5, 77–90.  Ibid., 85, my translation. 38  Bhandarkar, Collected Works, Vol. 2, 538–83. 36 37

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sexual abstinence up to one year post-wedding. The fourth part of the pamphlet dealt with the garbhaadhaan ritual. Referring to extensive number of texts Bhandarkar drew the following inferences, namely, ­sexual intercourse (marked by the garbhaadhaan ceremony) ought to have been performed after the first menstrual cycle post-wedding but could also be postponed indefinitely, and the prerogative rested solely with the wife. Bhandarkar argued that Paraashara Samhita, considered by many as the authoritative text on the garbhaadhaan ritual, was of recent origin. Older texts such as Baudhayaana-sutra, which recommended abstinence from sex for up to three years after marriage, seemed to be more in sync with the traditions of that period and hence must be considered more authentic.39 Tilak challenged Bhandarkar’s interpretation by arguing that the difference between “mandatory” and “permissive” nature of shastric precepts was unwarranted especially since most of the Smritis such as Manu, Yaajnavalkya, Paraashara and Baudhayana as well as their commentators held similar views, namely, that intercourse during puberty was “mandatory” till the birth of a son. Bhandarkar had based his thesis on the garbhaadhaan ritual and the accompanying Prajaapatya Homa [Prajaapati alter-ritual] described in the Ashvalaayana Smriti. Bhandarkar had interpreted the term ritu as ‘any menstrual cycle’, following which, the first intercourse could be postponed indefinitely. Tilak argued that such a reading of the term was peculiar to Bhandarkar and had no basis in the traditional exegesis. In fact, exegetes such as Anantdeva, in his “Samskara Koustubha,” or Chaturvimshati Smriti (author unknown), had interpreted the term ritu as the first menstrual cycle of the girl.40 The conclusions to be drawn from his statements were quite clear. His opposition to the AoC Bill was on the grounds of the shastra’s injunctions. The ancient texts, according to him, clearly stated that the garbhaadhaan ritual had to be performed (by the husband) on the first day of the first menses of the girl. This would mean that the girl had to be married before she hit puberty. However, he was also clear that the shastras prohibited any sexual relation between the married couple if the wife was in her pre-pubescent age. 39 40

 Ibid., 559–83.  Tilak, Samagra Lokmanya, Vol. 7, 978–83.

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The Feminist Challenge: Pandita Ramabai Pandita Ramabai (1858–1922), an upper-caste woman reputed for her Sanskrit learning who later converted to Christianity and invoked the ire of India’s orthodoxy, wrote a small tract entitled The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1887/1901).41 It presented the extraordinarily dire situation of the upper-caste Hindu girls through various facets of their life. The tract, written in English, was an exemplary record of the social conditions of women. It was also an appeal to the learned gentry of India and the United States to take up the urgent task of women’s emancipation. Ramabai’s life is a glaring testimony of a revolutionary subject. By her own admission, Ramabai was taught Sanskrit from a very young age by her father Anant-shastri Dongre, a Vedic priest, who believed in girls’ education. For Anant-shastri’s reformist acts, he and his family were ostracized from their village and community following which they traveled across India. After her parents’ death, Ramabai continued to suffer considerable hardships along with her brother, which made her question her Hindu faith and devotion.42 During her sojourn in Bengal, she debated with Hindu clerics. She was also given an opportunity to read the Vedas by the Bengali reformist Keshab Chandra Sen.43 She married a lower-caste man and upon his death, she returned to her native state of Maharashtra accompanied by her infant daughter. Inderpal Grewal has argued that her interactions with hundreds of women from different regions, cultures and caste-class backgrounds during her extensive travels in India helped her to develop a keen sense of gendered solidarity formed by a common sense of exploitation.44 She decided to study medicine in England and raised funds for it by publishing a book titled “Stri Dharma Niti” [The Duties of a Woman] (1882). Upon her arrival to England in 1883, she came under the tutelage of the “Anglican Sisters of St Mary” at  The extraordinary life of Pandita Ramabai has been well documented by her contemporaries such as Macnicol, Pandita Ramabai, as well as by recent historians such as Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai in addition to her own memoirs Ramabai, A Testimony. 42  Ramabai, A Testimony, 5–6. 43  Women and people belonging to the lower-castes were prohibited from reading and reciting the Vedas. 44  Grewal, Home and Harem. 41

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Wantage and was baptized a year later by Sister Geraldine.45 Thereafter, Ramabai traveled to North America where she gave lectures on Hinduism and collected donations to build a shelter-home for destitute upper-caste women (which included widows at first but later was opened to women of all castes and classes) in Maharashtra. In her travelogue, Ramabai appreciated the democratic values of liberty and equality cherished in the American public sphere.46 She was also impressed by the relatively high level of literacy amongst the working classes as opposed to their Indian counterparts. However, she sharply criticized the practice of slavery and rebuked the American Methodist Church for treating women as inferior to men. The book The High-Caste Hindu Woman was written upon her arrival to India. It draws many comparisons between the American and IndianHindu women, where the former are projected as liberated human beings worthy of emulation around the world, whereas the latter are torn in a three-way conflict between patriarchy, nationalism and colonialism. My choice for this particular text and its author requires some explanation. It would be foolish to suggest that Ramabai was the sole femalespokesperson for the feminist cause in Maharashtra in the late nineteenth century. Historians have documented the struggles of hundreds of women (across different classes and castes) who participated in raising feminist consciousness in Maharashtra in the final three decades of the nineteenth century.47 Numerous magazines and newspapers were run by social organizations which published articles and appeals by women writers. Women had started opening up about their lives and hardships by writing autobiographies. With respect to the AoC Bill, public meetings in the Bengal and Bombay Provinces were attended by hundreds of women. Women also sent several petitions to the government pleading for more rights and liberties and equal treatment by law. One such petition signed by 514 members of the Arya Mahila Samaj (Society for Aryan Women, established by Pandita Ramabai) was sent to the Governor of Bombay Sir  For a brief account of Ramabai’s encounter with British racism and Anglican colonial sense of superiority during her years spent in England, see Grewal, Home and Harem, 189–97. 46  Ramabai, Returning the American Gaze. 47  Anagol-Mcginn, The Emergence of Feminism in India. 45

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Bartle Frere in support of the AoC Bill. The petition demanded the minimum age for girls to marry to be restricted at twelve years of age.48 The High-Caste Hindu Woman was written in the midst of the clamor for women’s rights. However, the distinctness of the text lies in its attempt at religious exegesis which was a rare endeavor from a female author. Thus, the text is an act of defiance against the male and the colonial state’s propriety over the Hindu scriptures by an “insider/outsider”—a native Christian convert and a colonial subject who had traveled to the West. The main text is divided into four parts, resembling different phases and life-roles of an upper-caste Hindu woman—her childhood, her marriage, her position in society and the societal suffering inflicted upon her as a widow. The final two sections consist of general reflections on the mistreatment of girls in Indian society and an appeal to the American Christians to help their “Hindu sisters.” Ramabai pointed out that the Vedic injunctions recited during a wedding ceremony were meant only for the prosperity of the groom, whereas the girl was turned into a property owned by the husband and his family. She wrote, “[i]t is to be presumed that the texts are introduced in honour of the man whom she marries […]. Henceforth the girl is, not only his property, but also that of his nearest relatives,” turning her into an “impersonal being,” and she quoted Apastambha Sutra (II.10.27.3) to support her claim.49 According to her, the degradation of women amounting to an ontic refusal was at the foundation of Hindu wedding-ritual (Vivaah) sanctioned by the theological texts. She further argued that the ancient custom had always been to marry the girl-child off at a tender age and quoted Manu (9.94) which states that the minimum age for a girl to be married is eight and maximum twelve. Ramabai also showed awareness of the class-caste dimensions of the marriage business when she wrote, “Very few suitors offer to marry the daughters of poor parents, though they may be of high caste families. Wealth has its own pride and merit in India, as everywhere else in the world, but even this powerful wealth is as [sic.] nothing before caste rule.”50 She adds that upon marriage the girl’s  Anagol-Mcginn, “The Age of Consent Act.”  Ramabai, High-Caste Hindu Women, 66. 50  Ibid., 61. 48 49

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identity gets suffused with that of her husband and his family, turning her into an “impersonal being [who] can have no merit or quality of her own.”51 Unfortunately one does not find any references to the appropriate age for consummation of marriage or the garbhaadhaan ritual in the writings of Ramabai. However, common-sense tells us that these rituals were of lesser significance for Ramabai. Since Ramabai had converted to Christianity and traveled extensively to gain a first-hand experience of the Anglo-Saxon world, she came to believe that only true love was the uniting force behind marriage. She gave the example of Europe and America where the decision of whom to marry rested with individuals (although she was quick to add that the marriage proposals in the West are always made by men). Freedom to choose one’s partner was not a modern EuroAmerican phenomenon but was traced by her in ancient India. Thus, the Swayamvara system was regarded as an ideal form of marriage by Ramabai due to the freedom of choice and the embedded notion of consent for the bride. Ramabai argued that the Swayamvara system was prevalent in India until the eleventh century AD and was discontinued after the Muslim invasion and the introduction of the purdah (veil) system. Since it was ludicrous to imagine that a young child had the ability to choose an appropriate partner for herself, marriage would generally happen only after she attained maturity. Read with hindsight, Ramabai’s small treatise was an important interjection by the female reformer of the time prompting Meera Kosambi to call the book “an unofficial Indian feminist manifesto.”52 Ramabai was in absolute favor of a woman’s choice of her partner which would enable her freedom from family and social restrictions. She was impressed by the system of nuclear family and marriage by choice which she witnessed during her foreign travels. Such marriages were seen as “success stories” by Ramabai, ultimately resulting into what Grewal has termed a system of “compassionate marriage.”53 The book did not generate much excitement amongst the Indian social reformers since it was circulated privately  Ibid., 66.  Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai, 128. 53  Grewal, Home and Harem, 208. 51 52

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while Ramabai was on a tour of the United States. However, amongst the American Christian Evangelical feminist circles the book was an instant hit with its first 9000 copies sold-out within a year.54 The book is remarkable because it was an attempt by an Indian woman to challenge the Vedic exegesis undertaken by the Brahmin men who, notwithstanding their genuine concern, remained oblivious to a woman’s marital plight. Ramabai did not choose to seek sympathy from her readers nor did she lampoon the Vedic injunctions. Instead, she confronted the orthodoxy by projecting a counter-exegesis of the scriptures and reprimanded the liberal camp for ignoring the voice of women, considering that the whole debate was raging over a woman’s ownership of her own body. Finally, the text projected a hopeful future for the “destitute young upper-caste widows” which included opening special care centers, making women financially independent by educating them and teaching them to be qualified nurses, teachers and housekeepers and exposing them to books from around the world which would broaden their minds.55

Conclusion Women’s response to the Age of Consent Bill was marred by the restrictions imposed upon them by the dominant male leaders of the Indian society. Due to their lack of education and forcible confinement to the private sphere, women found it difficult to participate in the public debates on religion, law and sexuality. However, women such as Ramabai provided a ray of hope. In the later years Maharashtrian women came out with the experiences of their miserable lives by writing autobiographies.56 Others had to take up pseudonyms and narrate the pangs of an early ­marriage. Even if women found it difficult to debate with men over the interpretations of shastras, they tried to voice their viewpoints through other means. A cursory look at the vernacular newspapers of that period

 Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai.  Ramabai, High-Caste, 131–42. 56  Kosambi, Crossing the Threshold. 54 55

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reveals many women writing small appeals and notes. They also hoped that the colonial state would be sympathetic to their cause. As this chapter makes clear, the gendered relations of late nineteenthcentury western India were governed by three prominent authorities— the colonial state, the traditional male exegetes and the theologico-legal commandments. Even the male social reformers, who found it their moral responsibility to “uplift” the depressed woman out of her misery, could not abandon their inherent patriarchal bias, which denied women their right to self-representation and to paving the way for their “emancipation.” While the Age of Consent Law may have been a moral victory for the social reformers against their immediate conservative adversaries, the life of women improved but marginally. It was only under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi (1920–1947) that Hindu women were able to break the religious shackles and participate fully in India’s nationalist movement.

References Agnes, Flavia. 2005. Politicization of Personal Laws: A Study of Colonial India. In Women of India: Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods, ed. Bharati Ray, Vol. 9, Part 3 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, ed. Debi Prasad Chattopadhyay, 3–25. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations. Allender, Tim. 2015. Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1932. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Anagol-Mcginn, Padma. 1992. The Age of Consent Act (1891) Reconsidered: Women’s Perspectives and Participation in the Child-Marriage Controversy in India. South Asia Research 12 (2): 100–118. ———. 2005. The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920. Aldershot: Ashgate. Bhandarkar, R.G. 1928. In Collected Works of Sir R G Bhandarkar, Vol. 2, ed. N.B. Utgirkar. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Burton, Antoinette. 1998. From Child-Bride to ‘Hindoo Lady’: Rukhmabai and the Debate on Sexual Respectability in Imperial Britain. The American Historical Review 103 (4): 1119–1146.

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Carroll, Lucy. 1983. Law, Custom and Statutory Social Reform: The Hindu Widow’s Remarriage Act of 1856. The Indian Economic and Social History Review 20 (4): 363–388. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1993. The Difference-Deferral of (a) Colonial Modernity: Public Debates on Domesticity in British Bengal. History Workshop 36: 1–35. Chakraborty, Rochana. 2009. Women’s Education and Empowerment in Colonial Bengal. In Responding to the West: Essays on Colonial Domination and Asian Agency, ed. Hans Hagerdal, 87–102. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Chakravarti, Uma. 1998. Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Chatterjee, Partha. 1989. The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question. In Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, 306–323. New Delhi: Kali For Women. Dandekar, Ramchandra Narayan, ed. 1972. Sanskrit and Maharashtra: A Symposium. Poona: University of Poona Press. Desika Char, S.V. 1983. Readings in the Constitutional History of India, 1757–1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Engels, Dagmar. 1983. The Age of Consent Act of 1891: Colonial Ideology in Bengal. South Asia Research 3 (2): 107–131. Ganachari, Aravind. 2005. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar: The Secular Rationalist Reformer. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Gidumal, Dayaram. 1892. Behramji M Malabari: A Biographical Sketch. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Grewal, Inderpal. 1996. Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel. Durham: Duke University Press. Heimsath, Charles H. 1964. Indian Nationalism and Social Reform. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jain, Jasbir. 2011. Indigenous Roots of Feminism: Culture, Subjectivity and Agency. New Delhi: Sage. Kane, Pandurang Vaman. 1941. History of Dharmasastra: Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law, Vol. 2, Part 1. 1st ed. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Kapadia, Kanaiyalal Motilal. 1972. Marriage and Family in India. Calcutta: Oxford University Press. Karlekar, Malavika. 1991. Voices from Within: Early Personal Narratives of Bengali Women. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Kosambi, Meera. 1995. Gender Reform and Competing State Controls Over Women: The Rakhmabai Case (1884–1888). Contributions to Indian Sociology 29 (1–2): 265–290. ———. 2007. Crossing the Threshold: Feminist Essays in Social History. Ranikhet: Permanent Black. ———. 2016. Pandita Ramabai: Life and Landmark Writings. London/New York: Routledge. Kumar, Radha. 1993. The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1800–1990. 1st ed. London: Verso. Lamba, Rinku. 2009. Bringing the State Back in, Yet Again: The Debate on Socio-Religious Reform in Late-Nineteenth- Century India. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29 (2): 186–200. Larios, Borayin. 2017. Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra. Berlin: De Gruyter. Macnicol, Nicol. 1926. Pandita Ramabai. Calcutta: Association Press (Y.M.C.A). Major, Andrea. 2011. Mediating Modernity: Colonial State, Indian Nationalism and the Renegotiation of the ‘Civilizing Mission’ in the Indian Child Marriage Debate of 1927–1932. In Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development, ed. Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann, 165–190. London: Anthem Press. Mani, Lata. 1998. Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mantena, Karuna. 2007. Mill and the Imperial Predicament. In J.  S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, ed. Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras, 298–318. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press. McGee, Mary. 2002. Ritual Rights: The Gender Implications of Adhikara. In Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, ed. Laurie L. Patton, 32–50. New York: Oxford University Press. Nandy, Ashis. 1990. At the Edge of Psychology: Essays in Politics and Culture. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Paranjape, Makarand R. 2013. Subjects of Gender: Gender Trouble and Women’s ‘Authority’. In Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority, 103–127. Dordrecht: Springer. Patton, Laurie L. 1994. Introduction. In Authority, Anxiety and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation, ed. Laurie L. Patton, 1–18. Albany: SUNY Press.

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———., ed. 2002. Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Ramabai, Pandita. 1901. The High-Caste Hindu Woman (1887). Chicago: Fleming H Revell Company. ———. 1907. A Testimony of Our Inexhaustible Treasure. Kedgaon: Ramabai Mukti Mission. ———. 2003. Returning the American Gaze: Pandita Ramabai’s The Peoples of the United States (1889), reprinted, translated and ed. Meera Kosambi. Delhi: Permanent Black. Ranade, Mahadev Govind. 1888. A Shastrical Text on the Age of Hindu Marriage. Quarterly of Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 11: 2. ———. 1902. Religious and Social Reform. A Collection of Essays and Speeches, compiled by M B Kolaskar. Bombay: Gopal Narayan and Co. & G. Claridge and Co. Rao, Parimala. 2007. Women’s Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India, Part 1, Basic Education. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 14 (2): 307–316. Sarkar, Tanika. 1993. A Book of Her Own, a Life of Her Own: Autobiography of a Nineteenth-Century. History Workshop Journal 32 (1): 35–65. ———. 2001. The Hindu Wife and the Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schmidt, Hans-Peter. 1987. Some Women’s Rites and Rights in the Vedas. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Stokes, Eric. 1963. The English Utilitarians and India. 1st ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tambe, Ashwini. 2009. Codes of Conduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Tilak Bal Gangadhar. 1976a. Samagra Lokmanya Tilak, Vol. 5. Pune: Kesari Prakashan. ———. 1976b. Samagra Lokmanya Tilak, Vol. 7. Pune: Kesari Prakashan. Trevelyan, Ernest John Sir. 1917. Hindu Law: As Administered in British India. 2nd ed. Calcutta/Simla: Thacker, Spink and Co. Zastoupil, Lynn. 1994. John Stuart Mill and India. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

10 Female Religious Authority in Muslim Majority Contexts: Past Examples and Modern State-Initiatives Roja Fazaeli

There are numerous examples of female religious authority in the history of Islamic civilizations. Although many of the women who held religious authority in the past remain largely unknown, a growing body of literature over the past two decades has attempted to highlight the role and importance of some in their various roles from transmitters of hadith [pl. ahadith, traditions of Prophet Muhammad, authoritative reports of his deeds or sayings] to judges and scholars of fiqh [jurisprudence].1 This chapter gives a brief historical overview of female religious authorities in the I am indebted to Elaheh Nouri for sharing her excellent dissertation and data with me as I wrote this chapter. My gratitude as well to Murat Şiviloğlu for his helpful comments in the context of Turkey.  The Itha Ashari Shi’as hadith literature also constitutes the traditions and sayings of the twelve Shi’a Imams and those of Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad. 1

R. Fazaeli (*) Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_10

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history of Islam and focuses on contemporary trends and current state initiatives occurring in the hawza [full term hawza-i illmiyyah—Islamic seminaries within the Shi’a context] contexts of Iran around the training, social presence and influence of female religious authorities. Although religious education and religious authority are ultimately connected, one should not equate the two; this study observes that women who complete higher levels of Islamic education do not necessarily become religious authorities. The chapter also brings to light spaces created by state initiatives for women in fields that have historically been dominated by men, such as the study of Islamic sciences and jurisprudence. Iranian female tolab [“hawza” students] are overturning the male monopoly on religious discourses due to a rapid increase in state-sponsored female religious education. This chapter argues that the education of female religious authorities in Iran is linked to state control of religion and religiosity. The example of Turkey is occasionally used as a point of comparative reference while examining what is unique about Iranian state control of religion and religiosity through education. In this regard the present chapter also draws upon a history of Turkish state sponsorship in the development of vaizes [female preachers],2 and vice-muftias [female jurists qualified to issue nonbinding legal opinions]—although it makes no attempt at normative or critical argumentation in the Turkish context.

 istorical Accounts of Muslim Women H Religious Authorities There are historical records of women who held varying degrees of religious authority dating back to the first generations of Muslims (salaf ).3 These dynamics of female religious authority merit closer scrutiny, especially given recent initiatives to train and certify women as religious  The terms “vaizes” and vaizeler are used interchangeably in this chapter; both refer to Turkish “female preachers.” 3  The word “salaf ” means “predecessors” or “ancestors” and in most usage refers to the first three generations of the Muslim umma [community] who have been said to have lived pious lives and “are considered to have lived the normative experience of Islam.” See entry “Salaf ” in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. 2

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scholars and vice-muftis in Muslim majority countries.4 These state initiatives differ from the historical accounts in two significant ways. First, more informal and one-to-one teacher/student methods for knowledge transmission have been largely replaced by public university-style education. In Iran, this has gone hand in hand with the reform of the “hawza” and trends for “hawza” education to mirror more closely university-style pedagogy and degrees. Likewise, in Turkey “vaizes” are widely recruited from amongst female religion and theology graduates of Turkish universities. Second, these state initiatives greatly outpace historical accounts in terms of the sheer rise in the number of students who have been affected by such a shift in religious discourse and leadership preparation. Early Muslim women played an active and dynamic role in the initial preservation, transmission and interpretation of the Qur’an and “hadith.”5 Hafsa bint ‘Umar (d. 656), one of Muhammad’s wives, is an important figure, particularly in terms of the textual preservation and formation of the Qur’an. Hafsa was regarded “as an authority on the oral and written Qur’an,” by her father the Caliph Umar ibn al Khattab.6 Reportedly, she was able to recite, read, write and edit Qur’anic text.7 Aisha bint Abu Bakr, Maymunah bint al-Harith al-Hilaliya and Umm Salama are other named wives of Muhammad who are credited for the transmission of thousands of “ahadith.” Another noteworthy figure in early Islam is Umm Waraqa who “memorized the Qur’an [kanat qad jama’at al-qur’an],” following which “the Prophet asked her to lead her household in prayer [qad amaraha an ta’umma ahl dariha], which she did repeatedly.”8 Scholars such as Asma Afsaruddin, Fatima Mernissi, Asma Barlas and Leila Ahmed have laid the groundwork for women-centric study of early Islamic society by casting light on the lives of such women who accompanied the Prophet. Just as the life of Muhammad is held as an example for  In addition to Iran and Turkey, the Moroccan Mourchidat [state trained female religious guides] are noteworthy. See Rausch, “Women Mosque Preachers.” 5  Alwani, “Muslim Women as Religious Scholars,” 48. 6  Khan, “Did a Woman Edit the Qur’ān?,” 190. 7  Ibid., 191. 8  Afsaruddin, “Literature, Scholarship,” 116. 4

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e­ mulation, so too the lives of his companions, including the women of his household, have been used as examples of devotion throughout Islamic history. It is possible to begin to gauge the changes in the agency and influence of women in Islam by examining how the first generation of Muslim women faced fewer barriers in “commenting on and interpreting Islamic sacred texts,”9 while the generations that followed “primarily functioned as transmitters rather than as interpreters of the traditions.”10 Ruth Roded draws attention to many of the female religious scholars who worked during the medieval Islamic period,11 and Mohammad Akram Nadwi gives an extensive overview of the role of some 8000 women who were transmitters of “hadith” (muhaddithat), theologians and jurists in this time.12 However, after the “Sahabiyyat” [women contemporaries of Muhammad who were his companions], fewer accounts of women religious scholars and authorities exist in biographical dictionaries. These include, as identified by Afsaruddin, “the kitab al-Nisa’ (“Book of Women”) of the Mamluk scholar Shams al-Din al-Sakhawi (d. 902/1497), the Kitab al-Aghani (“Book of Songs”) of the ‘Abbasid scholar Abu ’I-Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 356/967),”13 and Nafh al-tib fi ghusn al-andalus al-ratib (“The Fragrance of Perfume in the Moist Bough of al-Andalus”) by the North African historian al-Maqqari (c. 1578–1632).14 The latter makes reference to “literary women in Muslim Spain of the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries.”15 Arezou Azad observes that Ibn ’Asākīr’s (d. 571/1176) Ta’rīkh Dimashq contains entries on more than 200 women, but also notes that “these are mainly members of the Umayyad family rather than scholars.”16 As cited by Azad, Richard Bulliet in his work on the biographical dictionaries of Baghdad, Nishapur and Gurgan finds  Hermansen, “Introduction,” 11.  Ibid. 11  See Roded, Women in Islamic Bibliographical Collections. 12  Nadwi, Al-Muhaddithat. See also Azad, “Female Mystics,” 56. 13  Afsaruddin, “Literature, Scholarship,” 117. 14  Ibid., 118. 15  Ibid. 16  See Azad, “Female Mystics,” 56. 9

10

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that Al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī and ’Abd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī (d. 529/1132) each include a small number of women in Ta’rīkh Baghdād (completed d. 463/1071) and al-Siyāq li-Ta’rīkh Naysabūr respectively, but also suggests that these “women were mentioned on account of their kinship ties to the compiler” and that if they were known for scholarship, it tended to be in “hadith.”17 The medieval trend of women to act as transmitters of tradition is also attested to by the work of Mohammad Shams al-Din al-­ Dhahabi (d. 1347) in Siyar a’alam an-nubala.18 As Islam expanded territorially, religious rhetoric around gender became increasingly affected by the patriarchal structures of the local cultures to which Islamic norms were being adapted. According to Afsaruddin, “[m]ost jurists and theologians by the fifteenth century had decided that leadership of prayer of mixed congregations was not an appropriate role for women and that virtuous women best exercised their virtue within the confines of their home.”19 However, while such structural changes did not necessarily decrease respect for the learning of women per se, their social implications equated to less opportunity for the public mediation of religion through gendered structures of power. Consider for instance al-Shilbiyaa, a sixteenth-century Castilian woman. Afsaruddin writes that she: gained renown for her remarkable knowledge of Islamic law and jurisprudence, so much so that it became widely circulated that there was a qadi in Lucena (al-Shilbiyya’s husband) whose wife surpassed him in knowledge of the law and of judicial proceedings [...]. Al-Maqqari reports that at judicial assemblies, al-Shilbiyya’s husband, before uttering any legal pronouncement, would consult with her and she would indicate to him the correct legal decision.20

 Ibid.  See Ibid. See also Schneider, “Gelehrte Frauen,” 107–21. 19  See Afsaruddin, “Literature, Scholarship,” 117. This is a broad observation made generally about Islamic territories, but of course there were exceptions, for example, the Sufi Tariqas. 20  Ibid., 123. 17 18

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The more contemporary examples are less dramatic. However, the medieval Persian tradition of women’s leadership attested to by Dhahabi is recognizable in its twentieth-century Iranian analogue, Maktab-i Fatemeh in Isfahan. Maktab-i Fatemeh was founded and managed by mujtahidah [a female Shi’a jurist qualified to exert meaning and interpret Islamic sources]21 Nosrat Amin (1886–1983) in 1965 and later continued under the direction of her student Zinat al-Sadat Homayouni (1917–2016).22 In fact, Homayouni indicates that ayatollah Qudusi occasionally sent his students from Maktab-i Tawhid to Isfahan to study at the Maktab-i Fatemeh.23 Such institutions gained rapid acceptance; Farideh Mostafavi, daughter of ayatollah Khomeini, began her formal “hawza” education at Dar al-Zahra in Qom.24 Against such histories the very significant role of women as transmitters of scholarly traditions through the centuries is clearly not yet fully understood in institutional or public terms. In theory and practice women have occupied authoritative  roles and have been recognized as religious scholars throughout the history of Islam. However, in most cases the authority they have yielded regardless of their scholarly standing has been limited, mainly due to the male dominated structure of Islamic religious authority. At the same time, in the past forty years there has been a shift in the discourse, structure and perception of female religious authority in Muslim majority contexts, during which time the number of female religious leaders of different ranks has increased considerably; a relevant portion of this increase owes to state sponsorship of religious education for women. As Hilary Kalmbach writes: “Growth of female religious leadership is inherently linked to larger social, religious, and political changes that have impacted Muslim communities since the early twentieth century.”25 The state initiatives are largely programs to control religion and religiosity and propagate a statist interpretation of Islam. In  Primary Islamic sources include the Qur’an and the Hadith literature.  See Künkler and Fazaeli, “The Life of Two Mujtahidahs.” 23  “Gerdehamaee Modiran va Masolan Houzehaye Elmiye Khaharan Sarasar Keshvar [the gathering of managers and officials of the women’s seminaries throughout the country].” See also “Qudusi, Ali,” https://hawzah.net/fa/Mostabser/View/3538. Accessed 7 May 2020. 24  Akhvat, “Be Yadegar Emam,” 6. 25  Kalmach, “Introduction,” 1. 21 22

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the majority of contexts, women’s religious authority does not extend beyond female-specific spaces, for example, female-only congregations or rulings that apply to female-specific issues. Therefore, these women’s authority often does not encompass the same domain as that of their male counterparts. Nonetheless, more and more women are occupying explicitly religious spaces such as mosques in different ways, as well as attending once male-dominated madrasahs and “hawzas.” Against the backdrop of an increase in state-funded programs for women’s religious education, this chapter considers the Iranian context in terms of state funding and support for women’s religious leadership alongside some limited attention to female “vaizes” [preachers] in Turkey as a point of comparison.

State-Sponsored Female Religious Education The inauguration of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979) was followed by a series of Islamization initiatives. Women, many of whom were participants in the revolution, were faced with a series of misogynistic laws and decrees. These laws were imposed by the new state to limit women’s access to many of the public domains. The state’s control of women’s bodies became a strategy of the hardline regime whose Islamization projects extended to controlling women’s behavior and appearance. With the rise of political Islam, Iranian women were projected as a homogenous entity, and their “chador” cladded bodies became a symbol of the Islamic Republic.26 State intervention and its own brand of Islamization were also extended to the education sectors including the “hawza.” Religious education in Iran, in particular “hawza” education, has gone through a period of substantial change since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The institution of the “hawza” in Najaf (Iraq) and Qom (Iran) has historically been a center of religious learning for the Shi’a. Traditionally, religious learning in the “hawza” was organized around high ranking clerics and the marja of the time. As Robert Gleave writes, “[a]mongst the change occurring within the Hawza is the gradual move towards a centralised bureaucracy, and a formalisation of educational qualifications. This has 26

 See Fazaeli, Islamic Feminisms, 22–3.

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happened more rapidly in Qum, where educational reform has been linked with state intervention within the Hawza.”27 The state influence and intervention in the “hawza” extends to educational reforms to standardize curricula under the Markaz-i Modiriat-i Hawza ‘Illmīyya [the Centre for the Management of the Hawza].28 Gleave notes that presently “[i]n Iraq, Iran and elsewhere, the Hawza has to recruit students who might be tempted by more formal and internationally recognised qualifications.”29 He concludes that “[r]ecognising this new competitive context is at least part of the reason for the reforms the Hawza has witnessed in the last half century.”30 This process of reform generally entails substantial state financial support and ideological influence.31 In this reform process, the number of “hawza” students has increased, and with those increased numbers has come increased relevance and influence. Another substantial change in the “hawza” has been the sharp increase in the number of female “tolab” (plural of talabeh). The “tolab” have historically, due to the segregated and male-centric structure of the “hawza,” been mostly men. However, given the visible participation of women in the “hawza” and the increase in the number of female hawzas across Iran, the Iranian talab-eh is no longer stereotypically a turban-wearing man. In fact, Elaheh Nouri observes that the female “hawza” students have now surpassed their male counterparts in number.32 Against the backdrop of this increase, there is limited research conducted both inside and outside of Iran to shed light on the paths of female “hawza” students during their studies and upon graduation.33 The male institution of ruhaniat [the clergy] post-1979 clearly continues to have a strong social and political presence

 Gleave, “Seminaries in Shi’ite Islam,” 6.  Markaz Modiriat-i hawzah-i ʿIllmīyya. It is also important to note that the above-mentioned Centre is under the management of the office of the leadership (daftar-i rahbari). 29  Gleave, “Seminaries in Shi’ite Islam,” 6. 30  Ibid. 31  See Hoodfar and Sadr, “Can Women Act as Agents,” 27. This excludes the older “hawzas” such as the Faiziyeh and Haghani schools. According to some clerics in Qom to whom I have spoken, the older and more established “hawzas” have managed to stay more autonomous. 32  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e, 4. 33  Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries”; Künkler and Fazaeli, “The Life of Two Mujtahidahs”; Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e; Tawasil, “Towards the Ideal Revolutionary.” 27 28

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and influence in Iran; the influence of female ruhanis [clergy] is more difficult to discern. A point of comparison to the “hawza” is the Imam Hatip schools in Turkey.34 These are Islamic schools which offer vocational education (mesleki eğitim), and according to Iren Ozgur “provide the most prominent exception to the rule of secular education in Turkey.”35 The schools were set up in 1924 with a mandate to train male students to become prayer leaders (imams) and preachers (hatips).36 However, according to Kandiyoti and Emanet, they have become “the cornerstone of national education.”37 The establishment of Imam Hatip schools was a direct consequence of the 1924 Unification of Education Law (Tehvid-i Tedrisat Kanunu), which brought all education institutions under the management of the Ministry of Education thereby eliminating the Ministry of Shari’a and Charitable Endowment.38 According to Mona Hassan, Imam Hatip schools were opened in place of closed medreses to train male Imams and preachers. The establishment of separate Imam Hatip schools for girls occurred in the mid-1970s. Mehmet Tarhan points out that by 1990 girls formed a quarter of all Imam Hatip school students. By the end of that decade, girls accounted for almost half of all Imam Hatip secondary school students.39 Iren Ozgur observes that throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, the schools, with social tumult, “shifted from the margins of the Turkish education system to a position of prestige, controversy, and influence.”40 Following political shifts in the country, an increasing number of female graduates from Imam Hatip schools began to enter the university system and theological faculties,  It is important to note that there are other schools in Turkey which provide religious education. Iren Ozgur notes that some of these schools are registered and operate under the auspices of the Diyanet. However, these are not registered and therefore operate illegally. There are also unofficial Qur’anic schools usually run by religious orders as well as “traditional-style ‘medreses’.” In addition, there are Gülen schools which operate both in Turkey and internationally. See Ozgur, Islamic Schools, 27–8. 35  Ibid., 1. 36  Ibid., 2. See also Hassan, “Women at the Intersection,” 113. 37  Kandiyoti and Emanet, “Education a Battleground,” 870. 38  Hassan, “Women at the Intersection,” 113. See also Ozgur, Islamic Schools, 31. 39  Hassan, “Women at the Intersection,” 116–7. 40  Ozgur, Islamic Schools, 2. 34

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ultimately impacting the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı).41 In Iran, despite the fact that reforms have led to the expansion of religious educational opportunities for women, there has not been a concurrent and proportional increase in the numbers of women wielding religious influence as leaders.42 However, the sharp rise in the number of female “hawza” students has arguably had an impact on public opinion, especially with regard to the gendered nature of rohani. The integration of women seminarians into the institution of rouhaniyat is supported by Nouri’s observation that “houzewi women have an independent existence, [numerically, they equal] those of the Male talabehs and even in recent years they have outnumbered men.”43 Research conducted by Nouri between 2006 and 2016 establishes that the number of female seminarians has increased substantially from 32,000 to 75,000.44 The same study places the total number of female “hawza” graduates at 90,000.45 According to the official website of Markaz-i Modiriat-i Hawza ‘Illmīyya Khaharan [the Centre for Management of Female Seminaries],46 there are currently 481 “hawzas” for women spread across Iran.47 In her study, Nouri highlights the attraction of “hawza” education for women from specific sectors of society, including women from religious and conservative families, as well as women who, due to a variety of factors, are unable to access university education. The latter choose the “hawza” as an alternative to university as at the end of their education, due to modern educational reforms, they will gain a third-level degree comparable to one obtained at universities.48 According to Amina Tawasil, women’s  See Hassan, “Women at the Intersection,” 115–20.  Sakurai, “Women’s Empowerment,” 32. 43  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e, 4. Howzevi women refer to women “hawza” students as well other women, for example, “hawza” professors who have an involvement within the institution of the “hawza.” 44  Note these figures are according to informal sources. See: Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e, 2. 45  Ibid., 2. 46  See http://www.whc.ir/maps. The website provides an interactive map where one can search for different “hawza” at different locations across Iran. 47  This number has risen from 280 in 2010; see Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries,” 729. 48  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e, 84–9. 41 42

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access to “hawza” education became “a nation wide project” by the early 1990s.49 One aspect that distinguishes the course and direction of theological training for women in Iran from that of women in Turkey is that of further employment and leadership opportunities upon graduation. While in Turkey the “vaizes” have set employment opportunities, Iranian female graduates do not have the same kind of job security. Furthermore, women “hawza” students and graduates in Iran have tended to view their main role and duty as lying within the domestic context. The ideals of motherhood and marriage take priority for many of them over career. Therefore, many do not seek, nor are able to avail of employment, in religious and legal professions. Despite greater access to education, their post-­ educational prospects are significantly curtailed by social and economic factors. Sakurai articulates this dynamic in the following way: The establishment of Jami’at al-Zahra, the first official female seminary in post-revolutionary Iran, opened new possibilities for women to enter the male-dominated clerical hierarchy [...]. [A]s opposed to the male seminaries whose dominant role is to train mojtaheds who can issue a competent legal opinion, the primary role of female seminaries is to train educators and propagandists.50

In contrast to Iran, where the growing number of female “hawza” graduates trained as educators and propagandists lack job security, creating what is essentially a women’s educational bubble, the diyanet has in recent years recruited female graduates of theological faculties and appointed them as vaizes [preachers] and vice-muftis, both fields previously dominated by men. The “diyanet” was established in 1924 “to administrate the affairs related to faith and worship of the religion of Islam.”51 Since 1965, the “diyanet” has been “carrying out religious affairs pertaining to faith, worship and moral principles, informing the society on religion and administering places of worship.”52 These duties had  Tawasil, “Towards the Ideal Revolutionary,” 105.  Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries,” 727. 51  Presidency of Religious Affairs, “Establishment and a Brief History.” 52  Ibid. 49 50

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­ istorically been carried out by men employed by the state who perh formed functions including those of “muftis, preachers, Qur’ān teachers, imams, and muezzins.”53 In other words, the “diyanet” controls the expression of religion in the Turkish public realm. Chiara Maritato observes that the “diyanet” “is one of the emblems of Turkish secularisms (laiklik).”54 Howsoever the emblematic nature of the diyanet is currently understood, it is clear that the number of women employed by the “diyanet” has risen considerably since 2003. In particular, the number of female vaizelers55 has risen from 29 in 1990 to 727 in 2014.56 This recent increase in the number of state-sponsored women preachers in Turkey is, as Mona Hassan has shown, directly linked to the increase in the number of female graduates of faculties of theology in Turkish universities.57 Fatma Tütüncü notes that in Turkey the integration of women into the sphere of religious authority demonstrates a change of “politics and discourse on women.”58 Unlike the Iranian “hawza,” which promotes a traditional understanding of gender, the “diyanet,” according to Tütüncü, has started to break away from traditional gender roles by promoting gender equality on occasions such as Mother’s Day and International Women’s Day. Advocacy for women has also found a place at Friday sermons. Tütüncü gives the example that on these occasions men are told by members of “diyanet” “to behave well towards their wives and daughters, particularly refraining from using violence against them.”59 In the context of a theology of creation, they are offered the explanation by the head of Diyanet “that women can occupy all positions including his own and those of mufti, muezzin and imam.”60 However, it is important to note that “vaizes”’ roles are limited as they are not  Hassan, “Reshaping Religious Authority,” 86.  Maritato, “Compliance or Negotiation?” 351. 55  This chapter considers only “vaizeler” employed by the “diyanet” and does not cover voluntary women’s religious activism (Islamist movements or other Islamic congregations). 56  See Hassan, “Reshaping Religious Authority,” 86, and Maritato, “To Make Mosques a Place for Women,” 43. Maritato notes that in 2010 alone 11,041 women were employed by the “diyanet,” 10,655 of which were female Qur’an teachers. 57  Hassan, “Reshaping Religious Authority,” 87. 58  Tütüncü, “The Women Preachers,” 595. 59  Ibid., 608. 60  Ibid. 53 54

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permitted to lead congregations in prayer or give Friday sermons. In Iran, on the other hand, the female “tolab” uphold a traditional Islamist discourse on gender, which is propagated by the state and is extended through the “hawza” and its “tolab.” The Iranian model of the “hawza” and the rise in the number of female “tolab” has challenged the monopoly of male “tolab”; however, the politics and discourse around women in the domain of the Islamic republic remains largely unchanged. Yet both the Iranian and the Turkish states centrally regulate access to and activity within women’s religious education. Both the “vaizes” in Turkey and the female “tolab” in Iran should be understood historically as part of a statist pattern of control of religion and religiosity. Whereas the Turkish model focuses on professional vocation, the emphasis in the Iranian context has been  on the ethical influence and institutional formation offered by a “hawza” education. In her research, Nouri identifies two main types of “hawza” students in Iran.61 The first type is what she terms ta’al-i gara. These women are spiritually oriented and enter the “hawza” mainly to attain spiritual grace [kasb-e feiz-e manavi] and to increase their religious knowledge. Many of the ta’ali gara women have a religious worldview and consequently regard the “hawza” as a holy space, much like shrines of Shi’a Imams or mosques. Any activity, including education, undertaken in such spaces is therefore deemed spiritually valuable. Reading and learning material with religious content becomes part of their search for spiritual completeness and divine satisfaction. Some of these women also regard it as their religious duty to study Islamic sciences, and the “hawza” provides these women with the necessary structure to fulfill what they deem as a religious responsibility or obligation. The “hawza” is regarded as a safe space for women due to its gender-­ segregated nature. There is no, or very little, interaction with men, and men’s access to the women’s “hawza” is difficult without ample prior arrangement having been made. The only men who frequent the “hawza” are male professors. In an interview that Nouri conducted with one of the “hawza” students, she stresses the difference in atmosphere at the “hawza”

 Nouri studies a number of female “hawzas” including: Jama’at al-Zahra, Madrase-i Masoomieh and Madresy-e Sedigheh Kobra in Qom and Houze-ye Elmieh Fatima Chizer in Tehran. Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e. 61

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compared to universities due to its single sex nature. Her interviewee relates: I am not saying that the hawza environment is hundred percent healthy (morally), however there is relative calmness and this calmness is possibly due to the fact that the environment is hundred percent for women and apart from male professors, you are not stressed as my friends who are university students tell me that a man one day criticizes your hijab, the next day the way you are walking and the day after that the way your sitting, your mind becomes preoccupied and you are not able to concentrate on your studies.62

Men’s lack of access to this environment means that there are no men to control women’s bodies. Although women “hawzas” are public institutions, women from families with clear gendered roles find it comfortable to transition from the private realm of the family to a public but segregated and controlled “hawza” environment. In broader terms, these post-­ revolutionary segregated spaces have been constructed to give religiously conservative and traditional women “unprecedented access to public participation.”63 Another important factor that attracts women to the “hawza” is its flexibility, in particular for married women and mothers. As Nouri suggests, “hawza” education generally takes longer than university education due to the flexibility inherent to “hawza” education.64 For the women engaged in it, “hawza” education is viewed in terms of necessary duty; hence, it should continue regardless of the number of years devoted to it. The “hawza” also caters well for women with more traditional conceptions of gender, where marriage and motherhood tend to be highly valued. The “hawza” tolerates longer absences for women with families and it is possible to take time out of lectures to breastfeed children or take  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e.  Tawasil, “Towards the Ideal Revolutionary,” 108. 64  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e, 67–8. 62 63

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extended maternity leave. Often a “hawza” also provides child-care facilities for women with children. Therefore, the “hawza” environment supports and nourishes a notion of womanhood constructed by the Islamic Revolution and valued by traditionalists.65 Tawasil refers to the howzevi women as “women who conceive of building a Shi’i Islamic society as an end to oppressive conditions.”66 She writes, “[t]hey work on strengthening that vision through the state and their Islamic education.”67 In other words, the “howzevi” women positively negotiate their traditional roles as mothers and wives to advance their access to education. Within this normative framework, a maternal posture of nurturing belief rooted in a revolutionary political context is supported by the study of Islamic sciences made available in “hawza” education. This provides a meaning and rationale for study beyond employment. Tawasil’s research helps underscore that women “tolab” are not passive participants of religious education; rather, they choose to arm themselves with religious knowledge in order to help advance a social vision to which they are committed. As a result, they can sometimes uproot normative expectations through religiously claimed agency even as their rationale remains squarely within a traditional framework. One example Tawasil notes in this regard concerns those “howzevi who expressed their desire to delay marriage to further their Islamic education, an expression that often involved using Islamic texts and stories of unmarried women in Islamic history to debate their seniors or teachers.”68 As Tawasil underscores, “[t]heir insistence was on delaying marriage and motherhood rather than remaining unmarried.”69 Yet the deployment of knowledge as a lever of social power is a strategy visible within the family following marriage as well. For instance, Tawasil notes that “[t]he howzevi’s practice of asking their husbands for permission as to who could enter their homes, [as to] leaving their homes, and [as to]  Tawasil, “Towards the Ideal Revolutionary,” 102.  Ibid., 103. 67  Ibid. 68  Ibid., 110. 69  Ibid. 65 66

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their children, was a display of their ‘observing eta’at’ (obedience).”70 She recalls that while she initially registered these questions as an example of “mere consultation,” her fieldwork among the “howzevi” led her to understand that this was both “a religious obligation” and “a source of mobility.”71 The process allowed the “howzevi” to “authenticate her expansive knowledge of Islamic contract law, including marriage contracts in which parties of a contract were obligated to fulfill its conditions.”72 Relative to one “hawza” student, Maryam, Tawasil observes, “the performance of asking permission is her evidence that she in fact was a ‘knower’ of Islamic law. She held the power of that assessment.”73 She continues, “[f ]ramed in this manner, eta’at to Mohammad (Maryam’s husband) authenticated her knowledge and enabled her to continue learning, working, and attempting to excel in her endeavors. Her expertise allowed Maryam to transform her surroundings by teaching about the rights of women in Islam.”74 Examples such as Maryam’s demonstrate how Iranian female “tolab” are constantly negotiating spaces and authority. In a previous study that I conducted with Mirjam Künkler, we examined the curriculum of Jamiʿat al-Zahra (JZ), the largest center for theological training for women in Iran—and one independent from the Markaz-i Modiriat-i Ḥawza-hā-yi ‘Illmīyya Khaharān75—to discern how the seminary had developed since its foundation in 1984 and how its curriculum compared with the male “hawza” in Qom as well as other peer female “hawzas” throughout Iran. That study sought to account for the paucity of contemporary influential female mujtahidahs in Iran compared to a prerevolutionary period when no equivalent to Jamiʿat al-­Zahra existed and

 Ibid., 112.  Ibid. 72  Ibid., 112–13. 73  Ibid., 115. 74  Ibid. 75  I began working on female “hawzas” and in particular on Jamiʿat al-Zahra jointly with Mirjam Künkler in 2009. 70 71

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female students, such as Nusrat Amin,76 Zohreh Sefāti,77 Monir Gorji,78 Maryam Behrouzi,79 would have had either to undergo training at home or to attend one of the handful of maktabs [centers for religious studies] that began to grow in number during the early 1970s. That study indicated that while international “hawza” students become more involved in public life in their countries of origin after completing their studies, Iranian graduates were not as visible in public life.80 Findings by Nouri support this and indicate that, by and large, female “hawza” graduates do not opt for a public career after graduation but place a higher priority on their roles within the household economy.81 However, Nouri identifies a second category of “hawza” student who she terms roshd gara [growth oriented]. The “roshd gara” are students who choose “hawza” education in order to make gains in the economic, social and cultural realms and excel in society.82 The “hawza” is often an attractive alternative for these women when they do not  Nosrat Amin (1886–1983) is revered as the most influential “mujtahidah” of twentieth-century Iran. She was born and lived in Isfahan where she opened an all-female seminary, called maktab-i fatimah and left behind numerous works on jurisprudence, theology and ethics. For more information on the life and works of Nosrat Amin, see Fazaeli, “Nusrat Amin,” Oxford Bibliographies; Rutner, “Religious Authority,” 24–41; and Künkler and Fazaeli, “The Life of Two Mujtahidahs.” 77  Zuhrah Sefāti (b. 1953) is one of the most high-ranking female religious authorities in Iran today. She has a number of publications and has received several ijāzahs of rawāyat and ijtihād. For more on Sefāti, see Künkler and Fazaeli, “The Life of Two Mujtahidahs.” 78  Monir Gorji (b. 1940s) is a well-known interpreter of the Qur’an and a popular preacher. She was the only female member (out of seventy-five members) of the Majlis-i Khubrigan-i Qanun Asasi [Assembly of Experts of the Constitution] in 1979. Gorji’s best-known publication is Nigarish-i Qur’an bar Huzur-i Zan dar Tarikh-i Anbiya. 79  Maryam Behrouzi (b.1945) studied Islamic studies in Qom. She was the co-founder of the Iranian Women’s Islamic Association, which was banned in 1975. In 1978 she was imprisoned and released the following year. As a Member of three parliaments after the 1979 revolution, she participated in women-specific legislative proposals and vehemently criticized discrimination against women in general and female MPs in particular. Today she chairs the largest Islamic Women’s Organization, Jami‘at-i Zeinab, which extends to eighty-two branches in Tehran and sixty branches in other cities. In the 1990s, the Organization successfully lobbied for legal reform that would grant widows of the Iran-Iraq war custody over their children, which was previously awarded to the deceased man’s family. In an act unprecedented in the Islamic Republic, the Organization proposed in 2007 female candidates to the election of the Majlis-i Khubrigan [Assembly of Experts], a body consisting of religious scholars only. Predictably, their candidates were rejected by the Guardian Council. See Hoodfar and Sadr, “Islamic Politics,” 885–903. 80  We combined my research at Qom with interviews of Jamiʿat al_Zahra graduates in the UK (mainly from the Khoja community). 81  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e. 82  Ibid., 65. 76

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otherwise have access to good educational opportunities and are therefore unable to pass the university entrance exams (concur). Entering the “hawza” is easier than entering the university in Iran and due to its policy of segregation it is perceived as a safe environment, particularly for girls from conservative and often rural communities, who need the moral support of their families to enter the “hawza.” Additionally, “hawza” degrees, according to Nouri, are sometimes even more credible in workplaces where religious values are highly regarded. Many of these “roshd gara” students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds; by entering the “hawza,” they hope to improve their situation.83 Other women choose to study in the “hawza” simply because the “hawza” education helps them to break up the routine of daily lives spent largely in tending to family duties. For these women “tolab,” having a job is not a serious concern or a priority in comparison to the value placed on their roles as wives or mothers.84 Many women in the “hawza,” including the “roshd gara,” believe in the traditional Islamic notion of gendered roles whereby the man is the head of the household and provider for the woman and the family, and where a woman’s role remains in the private realm and confined to being a mother, a wife or a daughter with duties primarily to the men in the family. This traditional gendered role, reverence for motherhood and family life, is also included in the “hawza” curriculum. Especially  for “tolab” with children, however, the “hawza” education is a way of engaging in life outside of the house. Those who do seek work often attend hawza  education to break the routineness of everyday life in addition to building social capital.85 As Sakurai notes, for graduates of women’s seminaries: “A degree that certifies the completion of a certain level of study is more valuable than the traditional ejazeh (lit., permission) that guarantees the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to a student.”86 She further observes that “a degree is acquired not just to secure employment in contemporary Iran. It is a ‘label’ that credits a person with a social value.”87 For instance, “for a woman who ends up as a  Ibid., 66.  Ibid., 67. 85  Ibid., 71. 86  Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries,” 732. 87  Ibid. 83 84

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housewife, a tertiary degree enhances the quality of life in terms of the respect that she can obtain from both her family and her husband. This in turn increases her self-confidence. It can increase the value of her nuptial gift (mahriyeh or mahr) as well.”88 Because marriage remains such a central societal event, many women “tolab” are attracted to job prospects which are flexible with time and have a preference for part-time work so that they can dedicate enough time to their family lives. As a result, jobs which the “tolab” prefer include school teacher, university professor/lecturer and propagator/missionary, where they can give talks or preach at different gatherings and religious ceremonies or be dispatched for propagation work. Propagation work tablīghat-e islami [Islamic propagation] is a central aim of the “hawza” culture in Iran.89 Female “tolab” who are thought to meet the necessary requirements to undertake propagation abroad are recruited by the Sazman-i Farhang va Ertebatat-i Islami [Organization of Islamic Culture and Communication] and the Jami’a al-Mostafa al-’Illmīyya, which administer the dispatch of propagators and are answerable to the Rahbar’s Office. Just as some women “tolab” prefer to work in spaces such as the “hawza” where there is gender segregation, the state also recognizes that it is necessary for women to work outside the house in areas where they are needed by other women with similar preferences, for example as women doctors and nurses. Sakurai, relying on Mirmomeni, also notes that seminary graduates may also proceed on to university following graduation, particularly in “majors such as religious science, history, philosophy or Arabic literature.”90 She observes that “[u]nder the present regime, those who possess degrees from both a seminary and university are granted significant advantages in obtaining a post in governmental organizations” and notes a parallel between this and the practice of how “male clerics arm themselves with ‘double degrees’ in order to survive as civil servants in the modern state as well as to maintain their positions in the religious hierarchy as ruhani or specialists in spiritual matters in present-day Iran.”91  Ibid.  Nouri, Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e. 90  Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries,” 732. 91  Ibid. 88 89

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The foundation of the “hawza” can be traced back to the 1970s when a limited number of “maktabs” for women were founded thanks to the support of ulama of the time. These “maktabs,” namely Maktab-e Tawhid, Maktab-e Ali, Maktab-e Hejrat, Maktab-i Fatima, Maktab-i Zeynab and Maktab-i Zahra operated independently of each other and had their own specific education programs.92 Homa Hoodfar and Shadi Sadr credit female religious activists with the inception of Jami’at al-­Zahra as they first sought ayatollah Khomeini’s consent.93 However, ayatollah Khamenei on October 1, 1989 (20 Mehr 1368) characteristically credited men with the inception of JZ, suggesting that “having Islamic scholars and open-minded propagator (mobaleqan) from among the ladies, is necessary for Islamic societies and regimes in a number of ways. And it is important that the efforts of the ambitious men who started this process have been fruitful.”94 The founding members (hiyat moasis) listed on the JZ website are all men.95 The objectives for the establishment of JZ are set out in article 5 of the institution’s statute, which reads: JZ has been established in order to introduce and promote the pure Mohammadan Islamic culture (Islam Nab-i Mohammadi) and education by methods of Islamic training and education in order to train women thinkers, Islam specialists, authority and experts who are role models for other Muslim women inside and outside of Iran.96

Given the large size of JZ’s student body, the faculty, the high schools associated with it and the international programs specifically designed for foreign students to transmit certain schools of thoughts back to their  JZ’s founding committee posed the question to ayatollah Khomeini on whether all the different theological training centers for women in Qom should come under the directorship of JZ. See this communication related by hujjatulislam Tabatabi (director of JZ) in “Gerdeham-i Modiran va Masolan hawza-ha-i ʿIllmīyya Khaharan Sarasar Keshvar [the gathering of managers and officials of the women’s seminaries throughout the country].” 93  Hoodfar and Sadr, “Can Women Act as Agents,” 28. 94  “Gozareshi az Jami’at al-Zahra (S) – Seyed Ali Khamenei.” 95  These include ayatollahs Meshkini, Mousavi Ardibili, Janati, Fazel Lankarani, Mohammad Ali Shari, Mohammad Reza Tavasoli and Hassan Sane’i. 96  “Gozareshi az Jami’at al-Zahra – Hadaf-e az tashkil-e Jami’at al-Zahra.” 92

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societies and disseminate genuinely “Iranian Shi’i post-revolutionary theologies,” the impact of JZ graduates within society is difficult to quantify. A handful of “mujtahidah” are known to have emerged from JZ since its inception in 1984. The present leading female “ulama” in Iran, few as they are, seem to be products of the pre-revolutionary decentralized seminary culture rather than of the massive post-revolutionary apparatus put in place by the state. According to Sakurai: This subordination of female seminaries resulted in bureaucratic management and the adoption of a university-style system, thereby transforming seminaries into revolutionary agencies, whose primary role is to train the propagandists (muballigh) of valayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurisprudent authority), rather than to train mojtaheds who can issue competent legal opinions, which has predominantly been the role of male seminaries.97

Therefore, although the expansion of religious education within the “hawza” has given Iranian women, in particular those from traditional and disadvantaged backgrounds, access to third level education, the “hawza” education remains confined to a statist interpretation of Islam wherein female “tolab” are trained to promote state’s interests rather than being educated to assume religious authority.

Conclusion In Iran the “hawza” has extended its remit to allow an increasing number of female students to study in female-only “hawzas,” which have bourgeoned across the country. Women, in particular those with more conservative and traditional outlooks, choose to study in the “hawza” for a number of reasons. Some regard the “hawza” as a religious and spiritual safe space where they can study Islamic sciences in a gender-segregated realm. Many married women also find the “hawza” ethos to mutually support the roles of wife and mother that they have prioritized. The

97

 Sakurai, “Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries,” 744.

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“hawza’s” flexibility around, and support for, women with families is noteworthy; it simultaneously advances some progressive professional policies and also upholds traditional gender norms. In contrast to Turkey, Iranian “tolab” do not necessarily expect to pursue a set career path. Yet both in Turkey and in the Islamic Republic of Iran the expansion of women’s religious education, and in a lesser but linked fashion the religious authority of women, has been integrated into state initiatives designed to strengthen the social and political control of religion and religiosity. Such state initiatives promoting women’s participation in historically male-dominated realms of religion and religious authority break away from the traditional private religious education that numerous elite women enjoyed throughout Islamic history. The work being done to unearth historical accounts of the women religious scholars and authorities who emerged from these traditional spaces of private elite education is a welcome trend. At the same time, more research is also required on new state initiatives that train female Islamic scholars and religious authorities. These initiatives have opened up new opportunities for women to enter and to subsequently change male-dominated landscapes of religious offices, mosques and Islamic educational spaces. In this way, they may be seen to variously fit with, and break, older molds of female religious leadership that have been continuously exerted by Muslim women across the diverse contexts of historical Islam.

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Hermansen, Marcia. 2013. Introduction. The New Voices of Muslim Women Theologians. In Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians, ed. Ednan Aslan, Marcia Hermansen, and Elif Medeni, 11–35. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Hoodfar, Homa, and Shadi Sadr. 2009 October. Can Women Act as Agents of a Democratization of Theocracy in Iran. UNRISD and Heinrich Böll Stiftung: 3–37. ———. 2010. Islamic Politics and Women’s Quest for Gender Equality in Iran. Third World Quarterly 31 (6): 885–903. Kalmach, Hilary. 2012. Introduction: Islamic Authority and the Study of Female Religious Leaders. In Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, 1–31. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Kandiyoti, Deniz, and Zühre Emanet. 2017. Education a Battleground: The Capture of Minds in Turkey. Globalizations 14 (6): 869–876. Khan, Ruqayya Y. 2014. Did a Woman Edit the Qur’ān? Hafsa and her Famed ‘Codex’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82 (1): 1–43. Künkler, Mirjam, and Roja Fazaeli. 2012. The Life of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in 20th Century Iran. In Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, 127–161. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Maritato, Chiara. 2017a. Compliance or Negotiation? Diyanet’s Female Preachers and the Diffusion of a ‘True’ Religion in Turkey. Social Compass 64 (4): 530–545. ———. 2017b. To Make Mosques a Place for Women, Female Religious Engagement within the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs. In Contemporary Turkey at a Glance II: Turkey Transformed? Power, History, Culture, ed. Meltem Ersoy and Esra Ozyurek, 39–52. Weisbaden: Springer. Markaz Modiriat-i hawzah-i ʿIllmīyya. https://ismc.ir. Accessed 26 August 2019. Nadwi, Mohammad Akram. 2007. Al-Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam. Oxford/London: Interface Publication. Nouri, Elahe. 2017. Sankh Shenasi Zanan-e Talab-e ba Asas-e Angizehay-e Anan az Tahsil dar Houze-hay-e Elmiyeh. Phd Dissertation, Tehran University. ———. Sankh Shenasi Zanan Talabeh bar Asas-e Angizeha-ye Ishan As Tahsil dar Houzehaye Elmiyeh. In Roshd Sad dar Sad-i Tolab Zan az Sal-e 85 ta 95/ Sankh Zanan Talabeh bar Asas-e Angizeha-ye Ishan As Tahsil dar Houzehaye Elmiyeh. Paygah-e Tahlili Khabari Kahnevadeh va Zanan (15 Mehr 1395). http://mehrkhane.com/fa/news/28835/-95-‫ات‬-85-‫سال‬-‫از‬-‫زن‬-‫طالب‬-‫درصدی‬-‫صد‬-‫رشد‬

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‫�سنخ‬%E2%80%8C ‫انگزیه‬-‫براساس‬-‫طلبه‬-‫زانن‬-‫�شنایس‬%E2%80%8C -‫در‬-‫حتصیل‬-‫از‬-‫ایشان‬-‫های‬ ‫حوزه‬%E2%80%8C‫علمیه‬-‫های‬. Accessed 26 August 2019. Ozgur, Iren. 2012. Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey, Faith, Politics, and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Presidency of Religious Affairs. Establishment and a Brief History: A Short Historical Background to the Directorate of Religious Affaire. http://www. diyanet.gov.tr/en-US/Institutional/Detail//1/establishment-and-a-brief-history. Accessed 26 August 2019. Rajabi, Muhammad Hasan. 1995. Mashahir-i Zanan-i Irani va Parsi-guyi az Aghaz ta Mashrutih. Tehran: Surush Press. Rausch, Margaret J. 2012. Women Mosque Preachers and Spiritual Guides: Politicizing and Negotiating Women’s Religious Authority in Morocco. In Women, Leadership, and Mosques, Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, 59–85. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Roded, Ruth. 1994. Women in Islamic Bibliographical Collections: From Ibn Sa’d to Who’s Who. Boulder: Lynne Riernner Publishers. Rutner, Maryam. 2015. Religious Authority, Gendered Recognition, and Instrumentalization of Nusrat Amin in Life and after Death. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11 (1): 24–41. Sakurai, Keiko. 2011. Women’s Empowerment and Iranian-Style Seminaries in Iran and Pakistan. In The Moral Economy of the Madrasa, Islam and Education Today, ed. Keiko Sakurai and Fariba Adelkhah, 32–59. New York: Routledge. ———. 2012. Shi’ite Women’s Seminaries (howzeh-ye ‘elmiyyeh-ye khaharan) in Iran: Possibilities and Limitations. Iranian Studies 45 (6): 727–744. Salaf. The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/ article/opr/t125/e2071#. Accessed 15 August 2019. Schneider, Irene. 1998. Gelehrte Frauen des 5./11. bis 7./13.Jh.s nach dem biographischen Werk des Dahabi (st. 748/1347). In Philosophy und Arts in the Islamic World. Proceedings of the 18th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants. held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Sept. 3–9, 1996), ed. Urbain Vermeulen and Daniel de Smet, 107–121. Leuven: Peeters. Tawasil, Amina. 2015. Towards the Ideal Revolutionary Shi’i Woman: The Howzevi (Seminarian), the Requisites of Marriage and Islamic Education in Iran. Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 14: 99–126. Tütüncü, Fatima. 2010. The Women Preachers of the Secular State. Middle Eastern Studies 46 (4): 595–614.

11 Lived Religion and Female Informal Authority in a Neighborhood in Stuttgart, Germany Petra Kuppinger

Introduction On a summer day in 2015, my friend Feride1 and I stood in line at a supermarket check-out in Stuttgart, Germany. As we were waiting our turn, Feride casually watched the woman behind us piling her shopping onto the conveyer. Among other products, the young woman, accompanied by a girl of about six years of age, was going to buy a bag of “Bacon Peps,” a chips-type snack. Feride carefully looked at the shopping and then the woman. Both Feride and the other shopper wore headscarves and were recognizable as pious Muslimas. Feride quickly appraised the situation, understanding that this pious woman most likely did not know English and hence did not know what “bacon” was. Feride assumed that the other shopper was not Turkish or of Turkish descent like herself, but  All personal names are pseudonyms.

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was most likely of Bosnian or Macedonian descent and proceeded to very politely and carefully address the young woman in German: “Do you know that bacon is pork?” The woman questioningly looked at Feride who quickly added: “As a Muslima you should not be buying such things.” Feride pointed to the bag and the word “bacon” and explained a few more details about the snack’s pork content. The woman attentively listened to Feride’s explanations about the snack’s ingredients. She did not say much as a response, but without further ado took the bag off the conveyor and put it in a nearby container for sales items. She thanked Feride for the information and everybody proceeded with their shopping. This brief encounter at a supermarket check-out illustrates aspects of daily lived religion, pious conversations and negotiations, and informal authority as they occur among women in ordinary neighborhood spaces. Such interactions are manifold and involve female strangers, neighbors, friends, relatives or colleagues who coincidentally or by design encounter each other in a variety of spaces such as homes, schools, stores, restaurants, parks, work places or on public transportation. Some encounters are brief and ephemeral like the short dialogue between Feride and the other shopper, others occur in longer casual meetings among acquaintances, or at regular social activities in private or public spaces. Some exchanges about proper religious practices are the result of questions raised among female friends, relatives, neighbors and others who have established relationships with each other. Resulting conversations and discussions question, correct, or subvert individual and communal practices and activities. They serve to better align the behavior of other women with more solidly established and agreed upon pious practices and regulations, but also to relax some believers’ perceived overly rigid behaviors, and to point out more feasible compromises and practices. When they engage other believers, women use their religious, cultural, social and practical knowledge and resulting informal authority to correct their interlocutors, like Feride did in the supermarket, and to articulate pious practices and workable compromises for everyday lives and concerns. Women sometimes point out, discuss or evaluate perceived lax practices of fellow believers and remind them of their pious duties. They might debate the appropriate nature of practices perceived as overly strict and suggest less rigid possibilities that are theologically acceptable. In such informal interactions, women often carefully inform and encourage each

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other to rethink their possibly not well-thought out pious and mundane habits and practices. These all-female encounters largely unfold among “equals” and no male scholar, clergy or other authority figure claims superior knowledge. Instead, women seek to help their peers to improve or refine their pious lifestyles and practices. Authority here does not work top-down, but sideways. It is informal authority, which gives advice to be considered without insistence, that is, without resulting in a form of strict supervision or control. Such advice unfolds in small and seemingly insignificant spaces and moments. The supermarket check-out line is not a space where observers routinely look for manifestations of pious practices and debates, and profound theological engagements, or where women seek a better understanding of everyday religiosities and evidence of lived religion. Yet, people live much of their lives and practice their pieties in such mundane contexts. Women, in particular, frequently act at the interface of piety and the secular city in spaces like supermarkets, schools, playgrounds or neighborhood streets, and are often confronted with (new) products or activities to which they have not given much thought previously. Small urban spaces and interactions might be overlooked as sites of religious negotiations, but they are relevant spaces of lived religion. In ordinary moments and spaces, pious women make choices, act based on their religiosities, encounter each other and debate aspects of their pious practices. To understand lived religions, it is important to examine ordinary spaces, acts and interactions. Religious practices are often best observed in inconspicuous contexts away from houses of worship, formal religious authorities and the more watchful eyes of religious figures and elders. Women’s religious practices and informal conversations about religion often unfold in mundane spaces where women consult with each other, advise each other as equals or seek to gently inform each other as partners on their pious journeys. Thus, when Feride addressed the woman in the supermarket, she did so to carefully help the woman and not to lecture her, to prove superior theological knowledge or to work her authority in matters of faith.2  This scene reflects Feride’s understanding of who is/should be a pious Muslim. From an analytical perspective, wearing a headscarf is not a decisive or reliable sign of Muslim religiosity. 2

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In this chapter I examine neighborhood encounters where women debate, negotiate and, very importantly, reflect about pious Muslim practices and attempt to informally guide each other to adopt more suitable or acceptable Muslim practices and lifestyles. I explore situations where women discuss aspects of Muslim religiosities and sensitivities and analyze ensuing compromises and reactions among pious neighbors. I also discuss moments where a sense of neighborly control and supervision might cause anxieties among those women who occasionally fail to live up to vaguely shared pious standards and cause some to judge others based on their own perceived better practices. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork (since 2006) in the working class/immigrant neighborhood of Nordbahnhof in the southern German state capital of Stuttgart, this chapter illustrates the working of women’s informal Muslim religious authority and their casual discussion and negotiation of everyday Muslim practices and sensitivities in small urban public, semi-public and private moments and spaces. Centrally, I explore the “sideways” working of informal religious authority, when women seek to guide and inform their peers about best possible pious practices. Authority here does not work top-down, where those vested with formal authority take the lead, showcase their theological knowledge and possibly exert their power over their audience. Instead, female informal authority in neighborhood encounters works largely among equals. It seeks to inform and improve. Only occasionally women seem overwhelmed by informal neighborhood pious discourses and suggested practices and seek to avoid some suggested practices and the eyes of their “stricter” peers with regard to the implementation of these practices. I argue that informal religious authority, debated and exercised among female friends, relatives, neighbors and strangers in neighborhood spaces and ordinary encounters, constitutes a vital element in the articulation, negotiations and maintenance of pious female urban lifeworlds. Theoretically, this chapter engages questions about the power of women’s every-day and informal authority and debates and how they mediate aspects of conformity and defiance in the making of lived ­religion/Islam.

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Informal Religious Authority and Neighborhood Encounters Much urban social interaction unfolds when individuals casually chat with neighbors in stairways, streets, parks or train stops; spend time together in cafés, restaurants or bars; encounter each other at school or work; attend meetings or events in schools, neighborhood centers and other local venues and, very importantly, when people socialize in various spaces with friends and relatives.3 In their casual conversations, women discuss and evaluate their own experiences, reflect about the acts of others, challenge the practices of some, applaud and recommend those of others, negotiate new or emergent social and cultural contexts, and very crucially seek guidance from those they love and respect and whose experience and knowledge they appreciate. Casually talking about religion in neighborhood spaces, believers (and sometime also non-believers) review religious practices, evaluate their appropriateness and permissibility, and occasionally also judge some of them. Lived religion and talk about religiosity take place, as Lara Deeb notes, in “streets, on balconies, in cafés, kitchens […], at women’s morning meetings and men’s evening conversation, and with families sitting around the television at night.”4 Deeb insists that conversations among the pious are an important “informal space where questions could be asked and points clarified,” especially for those who are not (yet) as knowledgeable about faith-based practices or for younger believers.5 Deeb explains that “lunchtime gossip,” rumors or accounts of visible practices can trigger conversations about religious practices in unlikely circumstances.6 In resulting discussions, individuals challenge or strengthen existing practices and reflect about and create new ones.7  On the importance of small public and semi-public spaces (“Third Spaces”) in the making and maintenance of neighborhood cultures, see Oldenburg, The Great Good Place. Classic and current ethnographies point to the critical role of neighborhood spaces for urban cultures, see Whyte, Street Corner Society; Jackson Jr., Real Black. 4  Deeb, An Enchanted Modern, 101–102. 5  Ibid., 124. 6  Ibid., 102. 7  Ali, Young Muslim America. 3

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Individual believers hope to create more comprehensive and correct Islamic practices for themselves, and more faith-inspired spaces and interactions in their neighborhoods and lifeworlds.8 Some seek to stake out new spaces for themselves and their concrete interests, such as for example the women fashion designers and fashionistas whom Emma Tarlo studied and who created and maintain the field of Islamic fashion in London.9 Producers and consumers there act as creative and aesthetically aware urban citizens who frame and negotiate their fashionable products and practices in a distinctly Muslim pious framework. Much has been written about the teaching and mediation of religion and concretely Islam in the more formal contexts of mosques, Islamic associations and their theological and educational programs.10 Scholars analyze trends and emerging practices and engagements among broader constituencies that carry their religious beliefs into society.11 Researchers examine complex processes of identity construction especially among Muslim youth in minority contexts in Europe and the United States.12 Some scholars explore the growing influence of Muslim women as theologians, teachers, mediators and leaders in different contexts.13 These works have greatly contributed to a better understanding of the localization of Islam in different contexts and also the growing role of Muslim women in religious contexts and debates, but they largely focus on interactions and debates in the more formal contexts of houses of worship, pious groups and networks, and pay less attention to random interactions between often very different (pious) individuals that unfold at a distance from places of faith and formal religious teaching and authority. Yet these small chance encounters are significant, especially for the context of pious women who are less likely to attend mosques, communal prayers and related activities. Everyday interactions between women in  Henkel, “The Location of Islam”; Newcomb, Women of Fes.  Tarlo, Visibly Muslim. 10  Jonker, Eine Wellenlänge zu Gott; Tietze, Islamische Identitäten. 11  Gerlach, Zwischen Pop und Dschihad. 12  Gazzah, “Maroc-Hop”; Bayoumi, “Being Young”; DeHanas, London Youth;. Ali, Young Muslim America. 13  Kalmbach and Banu, Women, Leadership and Mosques; Jaschok and Shui, The History of Women’s Mosques. 8 9

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neighborhood spaces illustrate the lived application of theological knowledge in their daily lives that are more complex than the more selective contexts of mosques which, in particular in Germany, also tend to be more ethnically and theologically homogenous. Because of their ephemeral and random nature, such encounters are harder to observe and chronicle than, for example, discussions in a Qur’an study group, but they are significant aspects of religious, cultural and social negotiations and transformations.14 A careful look at the working of informal female authority and negotiations of urban everyday religiosities and pious practices in shared spaces is crucial in the analysis of lived religion. Neighborhood spaces are the stage where women interact with a vague understanding of the unique characteristics of the place and its residents. Such an understanding at times also produces expectations about the “appropriate” behavior of co-­ religionists. While there is no such thing as the neighborhood culture in the Nordbahnhof quarter and many locals live in their rather distinct national or ethnic bubbles, there is nonetheless a generally shared understanding of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of the quarter in which many, in particular, younger residents take considerable pride. Residents frequently encounter each other in shared spaces like the local school, cultural center, supermarket, train stops, parks and playgrounds. Especially the school brings ethnic groups together. The quarter’s shared spaces also constitute a stage where Muslims of different ethnicities and religiosities encounter each other. Most local residents are aware of the ethnicity and religions of many of their neighbors and those with whom they routinely interact. Many pious Muslimas are recognizable because of their headscarves. Turkish and Turkish-German individuals are the largest and most established immigrant group in the neighborhood (outnumbering ethnic Germans, especially among the younger generations).15 They are also the largest Muslim constituency which in itself is characterized by a vast range of religiosities and faith-based practices (and the lack thereof ).  For work on debates in Qur’an study groups, see Kuppinger, “Women, Leadership, and Participation.” For excellent work on Bible study groups, see Bielo, Words upon Words. 15  I have written elsewhere in more detail about this neighborhood, see Kuppinger Faithfully Urban. 14

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Over the decades, they were joined by Muslims from Bosnia, Macedonia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently from Syria. A small number of ethnic German converts to Islam also live in the neighborhood. Local Muslims differ in their religiosities and adherence to religious rules. While the pious are united by the teaching of the Qur’an, each ethnic group also has some of their own religious, social and cultural practices. With their different experiences and lifeworlds, ethnically and religiously diverse Muslims are occasionally puzzled by the practices of diverse fellow believers. At the same time, they seek to adjust some of their practices to the local (secular) urban environment without compromising religious rules and sensitivities. Religious and cultural differences surface in unexpected situations, as people witness each other’s practices and interpretations of religious rules. Recognizing differences, individuals or groups, given the appropriate context, engage in conversations that compare, correct, challenge or seek to adjust such differing practices. In such interactions, women employ their theological, but also cultural, social and practical (local) knowledge. Drawing on their religious knowledge and other experiences, they exercise a soft informal authority, in particular as they seek to guide those they deem not sufficiently educated about appropriate religious practices. Resulting interactions are situated at complex intersections between informal religious authority, casual conversations, mutual support, but also informal social control and surveillance, and elements of local gossip. Women are at the forefront of such religious encounters and debates as they are more likely to have chance encounters by way of their activities in the neighborhood.

The Neighborhood Nordbahnhof is close to downtown Stuttgart. Central parts of the quarter were built in the final years of the nineteenth century as housing for railroad workers.16 In the 1920s and 1930s, the postal administration added apartment blocks for their workers. Until the mid-1990s,  Kuppinger, Faithfully Urban; and Kuppinger, “Cinderella Wears a Hijab.”

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residence in these apartments was restricted to railroad and postal workers. Since private real estate companies took over the buildings in the 1990s, they opened them to the general public. Nordbahnhof has always been a migrant neighborhood. Many of its earliest residents were railroad workers recruited from the region and other parts of Germany.17 After the Second World War, thousands of ethnic German refugees, and refugees from Soviet-occupied East Germany settled in Stuttgart. Starting from 1954, Germany contracted workers from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco or Yugoslavia.18 Many migrants who worked with the railroad or postal service settled in Nordbahnhof, which for more than 100 years has been a first home for new arrivals to the city who came from ever more distant places. In 2012, a refugee center (mostly for Syrians) opened in the premises of a former railroad workers’ dormitory.19 Over the last half century, thousands of Muslim have become integral parts of the neighborhood and the city and have negotiated their own local cultural and religious lifeworlds. Nordbahnhof accommodates dozens of nationalities and ethnicities. Many Turkish, Italian and Portuguese families have lived here for three or four generations. Since the 1990s individuals of German descent from the former Soviet Union; war refugees from Bosnia, Macedonia, Afghanistan and Iraq; and migrants from Eastern Europe and East Germany moved to the neighborhood joining earlier waves of arrivals. Approximately 6000 residents live in the quarter, about 80% of whom are immigrants and their descendants.20 In their daily lives, new and established multi-ethnic and multi-religious residents negotiate cultures and lifeworlds and perform the complex labor of cultural, social and religious mediations.  Kurz, Nordgeschichte(n).  Bade, Europa in Bewegung; Bade, Deutsche im Ausland; Finkelstein, Eingewandert. 19  Schieferecke, “Ein Ja unter Schmerzen.” 20  Socioeconomic data for Nordbahnhof is hard to identify, since the quarter is part of the urban unit (Bezirk) of Stuttgart-North which also includes the wealthy quarter of Killesberg. Statistics for this Bezirk represent an average of some of wealthiest citizens with the more disadvantaged residents of Nordbahnhof. Only a few items of more detailed data are available. For example, in the subunit of Killesberg, less than 30% of the residents have roots of migration, whereas in the central section of Nordbahnhof this figure is over 80%, see Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Datenkompass Stadtbezirke Stuttgart, 55. 17 18

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Compromises In the pre-Christmas season of 2007, the second-grade teachers at the local elementary school announced an afternoon of Christmas crafts for the children who could make Christmas gifts and decorative objects. Most children were excited to attend. Ulrike, a German convert to Islam, who takes correct religious practice very seriously, did not want her daughter, Karima, to attend this craft session. She insisted that this was a Christian practice and hence not appropriate for Muslims. Other Muslim mothers did not take the religious aspect of the event so seriously and did not object to their children attending. They largely saw the fun and crafts parts as good experiences for their children. One mother, Lale, who was also a good friend of Ulrike’s, insisted that there was no harm in second-­ graders doing crafts, regardless of the occasion. Lale recounted her discussion with Ulrike to me, a few days after the crafts day, when we were having coffee in her house. She explained that her own daughter, Hatice, was firmly rooted in her Muslim faith and everyday pious practices and that some Christmas crafts would not endanger her Muslim identity or piety. Lale was somewhat disquieted by Ulrike’s rigidity and did not see the theological relevance or threat of making a few pieces of Christmas decoration. After all, Lale explained to Ulrike, it was only a crafts session with no religious teachings involved and only the occasion was Christian. Lale insisted that Karima should not be excluded from a fun activity in which most children participated. She pleaded with Ulrike to let Karima participate. As they talked, Ulrike voiced her concern about Karima cutting out and coloring distinctly Christian items and symbols, like Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph or scenes with the manger and animals in the barn. Lale assured Ulrike that all of that was no problem. When Ulrike was still not convinced, Lale suggested that Ulrike should alert the teachers about her concerns and tell them that Karima should stick to winter themes such as snowflakes and snowmen and only create winter arts. With such a compromise, Karima could participate in the event and not work with Christian symbols. Ulrike agreed with the very reasonable nature of the compromise, which was pragmatic and religiously acceptable to her. She talked to the teachers and Karima ended up happily producing a selection of winter-themed gifts and ornaments.

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The conversation with Lale, who is a good friend and well-versed in religious matters, produced a compromise for Ulrike that was based on friendship, relevant social and cultural understanding, and very importantly was rooted in the informal religious authority of a knowledgeable and dedicated believer. In the encounter with Ulrike, Lale used her experience with the school system (she had an older child), her understanding of her strong Muslim identity, her theological knowledge, her personal piety and social skills for formulating an acceptable compromise with Ulrike, and she devised and helped with a way to communicate this solution to the teachers. Lale carefully communicated to Ulrike that the issue was not serious enough to warrant a more extreme reaction (here, Karima’s withdrawal). Instead, she suggested a workable and religiously sound compromise for Ulrike. Lale underscored the fact that it is better for Muslim children to see and engage in some Christian practices and learn about religious practices and differences than to be excluded from fun activities that include many children and teach useful crafts skills. On a more abstract level, Lale made a pious argument for cooperation, tolerance and shared experiences in a multi-religious society. She insisted that a pious Muslim can participate in Christian-based activities without losing her religious identity and without violating Muslim regulations and sensitivities. Ulrike accepted Lale’s informal authority and the suggested compromise. Lale explained that she spoke to Ulrike as a friend and equal and that she tried to convince the latter of the validity of her own pious practices and religious knowledge. Their encounter was one between friends and equals where informal female authority worked to inform, gently convince, and ultimately to improve practices and very importantly also to foster neighborhood social peace and tolerance.

Negotiating Pious Interactions and Spaces Many pious individuals, like Feride in the supermarket encounter, are concerned about the correct practices of fellow Muslims, especially if they know or assume that the person in question desires to be a “good” Muslim, but might not be knowledgeable or aware of specific issues. Individuals assume that others might have lapsed in the proper practices or have gone

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too far in adjusting their interactions to the norms of secular mainstream society. Believers understand it as their right or even duty to correct flawed practices, to alert fellow believers about improved behavior and very importantly to situate interactions between Muslims in the appropriate pious context. Many believers think it is preferable for the pious to interact with each other in a distinctly pious idiom and, if possible, they seek to create material and discursive Muslim spaces that differ from mainstream (Christian and/or secular) society. Subsequently, they insist on using visible/audible signs of being Muslim and attempt to situate social interactions in a distinctly Muslim framework. In the next example, I will look at an interaction across gender and age lines, where a pious woman gently reminds an older man of his possibly lapsed practices. Mr. and Mrs. Hadzic, an elderly Bosnian Muslim couple, lived in the same apartment building as my friend Emine.21 Mr. Hadzic, a very friendly man in his seventies, kept in touch with some of the neighbors. Because Emine was Turkish, Mr. Hadzic for years greeted her with a friendly “Merhaba” [hello]. More recently, Emine decided that interactions between Muslims should be framed in a more distinctly Muslim idiom and started to greet Mr. Hadzic with the appropriate Muslim greeting: “Salam Aleikum.” One day, Emine told me about her efforts to resituate her interactions with Mr. Hadzic in a Muslim discursive space. She explained, “I kept greeting him with ‘Salam Aleikum’ for a while until he caught on, and often, but not always, replied with ‘Aleikum as-­ Salam’.” In her encounters with Mr. Hadzic, Emine wanted to show and teach him proper ways of greeting between Muslims, even if their interactions took place in the stairways of an apartment building in Germany. Emine noted that more recently Mr. Hadzic increasingly responded to her greetings in the expected ways, but occasionally he reverted to the old “Merhaba.” Emine’s efforts to invite or introduce Mr. Hadzic to a more Islamic way of inhabiting an apartment building have only partially been successful, as Mr. Hadzic seems comfortably settled in his social practices.22  I have written elsewhere in more detail about this encounter; see Kuppinger, “Flexible Topographies.” 22  For the notion of inhabiting spaces in a Muslim way, see Henkel, “The Location of Islam.” 21

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Emine never directly confronted Mr. Hadzic about what she thought was an inappropriate way to greet another Muslim. She was too polite and also clearly realized that, as Mr. Hadzic (who was of her parents’ generation) was an elder, her teaching him would have been inappropriate. Yet, she was convinced that she was right and hence “taught” him by repetition. She exerted her informal religious authority in a polite but insistent manner. Without much explanation, Mr. Hadzic understood and accepted her wish to create a more Muslim discursive environment for their encounters in their building. He obeyed, but was not concerned enough about her wish or insistence to completely remake his greeting practices. This interaction is interesting from a perspective of gender and age. Emine took the liberty to correct an older male, which seems awkward or even inappropriate according to dominant social, cultural and religious conventions. Emine went about her project of teaching Mr. Hadzic in a very gentle and unobtrusive manner. She never lectured the older man, but kindly insisted on the religiously more appropriate nature of her greeting. Knowing that Mr. Hadzic was overall less observant than she was, Emine used her visible Islamic credentials (like her headscarf ) and her informal theological knowledge, to situate herself in a position of informal religious authority which Mr. Hadzic readily accepted, but he just as readily insisted on some of his less religiously inspired practices.

Observing and Being Observed Informal female religious authority and debates can foster review and adjustment of everyday practices, make other believers aware of unknown issues (ingredients of snacks), teach complex religious practices, create possibilities of legitimate compromises, point out new practices, or illustrate possibilities for appropriate participation in mainstream activities. In some contexts, however, informal female religious authority and the understanding that women often watch each other and hold each other to particular religious standards can become a challenge for some in their daily lives.

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Casually talking with Ayşe’s one day, we discussed the availability of halal food (food permissible by Muslim law) items in the neighborhood, after the last Turkish grocery store had closed a few years earlier and a Turkish supermarket closed only a year after opening. Ayşe noted that now one had to travel by car or train to larger Turkish supermarkets in nearby quarters. Ideally, she remarked, she would always have halal cold cuts for sandwiches for her family, but as a working mother, she noted that in a busy week she simply did not have the time to make the extra trip to the supermarkets that carried halal meat products. “Between you and me,” she explained, “I am telling you, that I sometimes buy the chicken cold cuts from the regular supermarket. It is not a perfect solution, but it works for me when pressed for time.” Ayşe added that she would not tell such things to some of her local pious female friends, as they might judge her for such compromises. Ayşe’s predicament with halal products illustrates the complicated working of religious regulations, sensitivities and informal authority at the neighborhood level where women are often well aware of their friends and neighbors’ daily acts, habits and religious practices. In a Muslim minority context, some practices are harder to maintain and individuals make compromises that appear workable or permissible to them, but are not understood as such by others. Here the critical and watchful eyes of other pious women become a source of anxiety. Women who tend to do more grocery shopping for their families are in such contexts more challenged to make compromises and they are more exposed to female peer pressure and supervision. Putting non-halal cold cuts into one’s shopping carts always carries a small risk of detection by those who take such issues more seriously and might, even in a friendly manner, point out such a mistake (much like Feride pointed out the bacon snack). In this case, even well-meant female informal authority can be the source of pressure and anxiety. Another complex interaction of informal authority, neighborly surveillance and aspects of benign gossip and possibly judgment are illustrated by a conversation I had with Sabihe in her living room. Among other issues, we discussed Ramadan (which had been over a few weeks earlier) and Ramadan practices in the neighborhood. We ended up talking about

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a group of local Turkish women most of whom wore headscarves and who routinely met in the neighborhood bakery in the morning after they dropped off their children at school. The group usually shared a relaxed cup of coffee on the bakery’s outside tables. They continued this practice on some Ramadan days. I noted that I had seen the women several times during Ramadan and Sabihe responded: “Oh yes, I see them there all the time. They should not be doing this. Obviously, there is no way that they are all menstruating at the same time.”23 Much like in the case of Ayşe and the non-halal cold cuts, Sabihe’s words illustrate the local workings of informal female religious authority or more precisely the pressure to adopt appropriate religious practices, in particular in public places. Sabihe’s remark about the women and them not possibly all menstruating together illustrates a judgment of the coffee-drinking groups’ religious practices. Because three out of the usually four women wore headscarves and thus visibly identified as pious Muslimas, Sabihe held them to pious standards and the public consumption of coffee during Ramadan contradicts the latter. While this conversation involved only Sabihe and myself and hence remained rather inconsequential, such informal debates among larger groups of women serve to define practices and delineate boundaries among believers. They can shame individuals (“why is such and such covering her hair, but not her arms?”) and cause anxieties. For a while, a number of women in the neighborhood insisted that a new Turkish restaurant should be avoided because their meat (regardless of a posted sign) was not halal. The casual and informal surveillance and control of peers add an interesting facet to the working of women’s informal religious authority in the neighborhood. Women are aware that the eyes of others are on them in local public spaces. For some individuals, like Ayşe, this causes anxieties. Others, like the women who collectively drink coffee in a public venue during Ramadan, do not seem to care what other pious women think. Yet others, like the woman with the bacon snacks in the supermarkets, seem to appreciate the helpful remarks of their fellow believers.  Islamic law specifies that women who menstruate are excused from fasting for the days of their menstruation. Ideally they would have to make up for the missed days later. 23

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Informal female religious authority works in a multi-layered manner. It seeks to gently improve and set, maintain and carefully enforce religious rules and practices. It is appreciated by those who are willing to acknowledge but it can also cause some anxieties, and sometimes it is simply ignored.

Negotiating Lived Religion Pious Muslims might go to mosques or Qur’an study groups, read theological books and watch religious TV programs, but the application of religious knowledge and the informal authority they draw from their acquired expertise often happens in random encounters in mundane spaces. In this chapter I examined interactions among women (and one man) which illustrate faith-based debates, the working of informal female religious authority, and the resulting sentiments and compromises. I showed how women use arguments, knowledge and informal authority to illustrate their points and urge others to rethink their religious and social practices. I described anxieties or possible judgments that result from an intricate web of interactions, observations and debates among women who encounter each other in shared spaces. These encounters illustrate a complex landscape of female religious knowledge, practices and authorities that pious Muslimas maneuver in their urban lifeworlds. While individuals do not constantly think about religious issues, specific situations can trigger theological debates. Sometimes, individuals are caught off-guard, like the young woman in the supermarket. Other encounters, like that over Christmas/winter crafts, are intentional as individuals seek opinions and advice from others. The close web of informal social encounters in a neighborhood that is home to a sizeable and diverse Muslim population can cause stress to those who occasionally design their own solutions to religious questions, like Ayşe’s occasional purchases of non-halal chicken products. Women gently watch out for each other, but also sometimes too carefully watch the everyday acts of their fellow believers. Subsequently, pious Muslims are caught in a web that supports their faith-based practices, provides

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them with solicited and unsolicited advice, but also threatens to call out their “mistakes” or judge their perceived faulty practices. Small encounters in neighborhood spaces demonstrate the complex everyday working of female informal religious authority and knowledge. In these interactions, a heterogeneous constituency of (pious) Muslimas watches out for each other, helps and teaches others, tries to gently improve others’ practices and in the process creates a web of local faith-­ based interactions and practices. Their interactions exemplify the translation of theological knowledge and the resulting informal authority into the minutiae of believers’ everyday lives and symbolize the efforts of some believers to create faith-based lifeworlds in a Muslim minority context. Women’s theological knowledge and informal authority work in ordinary neighborhood moments and spaces. They are used and applied in brief and ephemeral encounters between strangers, neighbors, friends and relatives. These interactions and resulting compromises deserve more analytical attention as they represent the application of learned religion in concrete situations. In minute encounters in supermarkets, stairways, streets and living rooms, women negotiate and create relevant practices, compromises and guidance for each other and in the process they level existing tensions and differences in religious practices. By criticizing and judging others, pious Muslimas hope to convince their peers to abide by or return to what they perceive as correct practices. Not everybody agrees on the latter and hence these negotiations will remain a critical feature in neighborhoods where diverse Muslims live side by side.

References Ali, Muna. 2018. Young Muslim America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bade, Klaus, ed. 1992. Deutsche im Ausland. Fremde in Deutschland. München: C.H.Beck. ———. 2000. Europa in Bewegung: Migration vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. München: C. H. Beck. Bayoumi, Moustafa. 2010. Being Young, Muslim and American in Brooklyn. In Being Young and Muslim, ed. Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 161–174. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Bielo, James. 2009. Words Upon Words: An Ethnography of Evangelical Bible Study. New York: New York University Press. Deeb, Lara. 2006. An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press. DeHanas, Daniel Nilsson. 2016. London Youth, Religion, and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University. Finkelstein, Kerstin. 2006. Eingewandert. Berlin: Links Verlag. Gazzah, Miriam. 2010. Maroc-Hop: Music and Youth Identities in the Netherland. In Being Young and Muslim, ed. Linda Herrera and Asef Bayat, 309–324. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gerlach, Julia. 2006. Zwischen Pop und Dschihad. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. Henkel, Heiko. 2007. The Location of Islam: Inhabiting Istanbul in a Muslim Way. American Ethnologist 34 (1): 57–70. Jackson, John L., Jr. 2005. Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jaschok, Maria, and Jingjun Shui. 2000. The History of Women’s Mosques in Chinese Islam: A Mosque of their Own. Richmond: Curzon. Jonker, Gerdien. 2002. Eine Wellenlänge zu Gott. Der “Verband Islamischer Kulturzentren” in Europa. Bielefeld: Transcript. Kalmbach, Hilary, and Masooda Banu, eds. 2012. Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority. Leiden: Brill. Kuppinger, Petra. 2012. Women, Leadership, and Participation in Mosques and Beyond: Notes from Stuttgart, Germany. In Women, Leadership and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority, ed. Hilary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano, 323–344. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2014a. Flexible Topographies: Muslim Spaces in a German Cityscape. Social and Cultural Geography 15 (5): 627–644. ———. 2014b. Cinderella Wears a Hijab: Neighborhoods, Islam and the Everyday Production of Multi Ethnic Urban Cultures in Germany. Space and Culture 17 (1): 29–42. ———. 2015. Faithfully Urban: Pious Muslims in a German City. New York: Berghahn Books. Kurz, Jörg. 2005. Nordgeschichte(n). Stuttgart: Gulde Druck. Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, ed. 2013. Datenkompass Stadtbezirke Stuttgart. Statistik und Informationsmanagement. Newcomb, Rachel. 2009. Women of Fes: Ambiguities of Urban Life in Morocco. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Oldenburg, Ray. 1999. The Great Good Place. Berkeley: Marlowe & Co. Schieferecke, Marc. 2012. Ein Ja unter Schmerzen. Stuttgarter Zeitung. February 21. Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. Oxford: Berg. Tietze, Nikola. 2001. Islamische Identitäten: Formen muslimischer Religiosität junger Männer in Deutschland und Frankreich. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition. Whyte, William Foote. 1993 [1943]. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Part III Imaginaries

12 The Politics of Reproduction: Abortion and Authority in Soviet Cinema Serian Carlyle and Rachel Morley

Introduction On Mother’s Day 2017, Russia’s Federal News Agency reported that a video of statements about mothers made by President Vladimir Putin had gone viral on the Russian Internet.1 “A mother is a sacred [sviatoe] thing,” Putin pronounces. “I say this without any irony […]. The most sacred thing is a mother. A mother can be likened to the Motherland [Rodina]; they are such closely related concepts.”2 The President’s insistence on the connection between mothers and the Motherland  Gromov, “Mamu sravnivaiut s Rodinoi.”  Ibid.

1 2

S. Carlyle Independent Scholar, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] R. Morley (*) University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_12

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alludes to the significance of motherhood in Russian formulations of femininity.3 As Olga Issoupova observes, there is “a prevalent cultural myth that sees motherhood in Russia as an inalienable part of the female personality [and] the essence of Russian femininity.”4 Putin’s words also invoke a prevalent Soviet myth, however: that of motherhood as a civic duty and a patriotic undertaking of national importance. The state’s appropriation of motherhood ran throughout the Soviet period, finding particularly prominent expression in times of demographic decline. It led to the female body, and in particular the pregnant female body, being used as the site for debates about and the promotion of prevailing socio-ideological agendas. The tension between the choices facing pregnant women—to embrace motherhood or to abort the pregnancy—therefore makes abortion a productive context against which to consider how different forms of authority are exercised and responded to and to explore attitudes toward female autonomy. Given the importance to the Soviet state of cinema as an educational tool and the use of censorship to control discussion of ideological concerns, it is unsurprising that these issues were often addressed through the medium of the fiction film.5 However, while there is a considerable body of scholarship on the representation of motherhood in Soviet film,6 there has as yet been no sustained consideration of the treatment of abortion. This chapter addresses this gap by providing a critical overview of the representation of abortion in films made between the early-Soviet 1920s and the Brezhnevite 1980s. Adopting the Weberian definition of authority as a form of power that is defined and supported by the norms of a social system and generally accepted as legitimate by those who participate in it, we consider the treatment of various forms of authority, including patriarchal (in Weber’s terms, “traditional authority”), as exercised by protagonists cast in the

 The Russian word for Motherland, “rodina,” is a feminine noun (often capitalized) linked to the verb “to give birth” [rozhat´/rodit´]. 4  Issoupova, “Motherhood and Russian Women,” 5. 5  Fiction films tell a fictional/fictionalized story in which believable narratives and characters serve to convince the viewer that the world of the film and the events that take place there are real. 6  Attwood, “Rodina-Mat´,” 15–28. 3

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roles of husbands/boyfriends and parents/older “mentor” figures.7 Considering the films in their socio-ideological contexts, we explore how the extra-diegetic authority of the Soviet state (what Weber termed “rational-legal authority”), embodied in abortion legislation and policy, impacts on the films’ representation of abortion. We also examine whether the pregnant female protagonists themselves are accorded authority in decisions concerning abortion. Thus we assess the extent to which Soviet cinema reflects, or actively promotes, the bio-political authority of the state, and ask whether film-makers sought to challenge prevailing socio-­ ideological stances on abortion.

The 1920s: Abortion and Early-Soviet Cinema With reproduction and motherhood considered to be state concerns, abortion had a conflicted history in the Soviet era. Deemed murder and banned before the Russian Revolution, it was legalized by Lenin’s young government on November 18, 1920. However, despite the fact that Bolshevik policy aimed to liberate women from gender-based inequality and oppression, the legalization of abortion was not motivated by belief in the right of women to choose. Nor was it an unqualified endorsement of the procedure; as Susan Gross Solomon notes, “the text of the edict opened with a statement that abortion was an evil.”8 Instead, it was considered a practical necessity, required to enable more women to join the labor force and to reduce women’s reliance on dangerous back-street abortions.9 Despite the legalization of abortion, most of the “everyday life” films [bytovye fil´my] made during the 1920s did not directly address this issue. One of the first to do so was Abram Room’s Bed and Sofa, also known as Third Meshchanskaia Street [Tret´ia Meshchanskaia, 1927]. Conceived as a “problem film” [problemnyi fil´m] that would raise questions about  Weber distinguished three types of legitimate authority: rational-legal, which depends on the rules and laws of a state or other organization; traditional, which derives legitimacy from long-standing customs and social conventions; and charismatic, which relies on the charisma of individual authority figures. Weber, “The Three Types of Legitimate Rule.” 8  Gross Solomon, “The Demographic Argument,” 60. 9  Ibid., 60–1. 7

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contemporary social issues, such as changing gender roles and relations, without providing solutions, Bed and Sofa locates its complex exploration of these concerns in the context of a ménage à trois. After the Revolution, this was theorized as an alternative to the bourgeois/patriarchal model of marriage which would enable New Soviet Men and Women to live within the collective, in what the politician and sexual theorist Aleksandra Kollontai described, in 1923, as “love-comradeship.”10 By participating in such a relationship, Kollontai explained, “[p]eople’s feelings will become collective ones, and inequality between the sexes, as well as the dependence of woman on man, will disappear without a trace, lost in the memory of past centuries.”11 The film’s script was inspired by a newspaper report of a young mother, visited in a maternity hospital by two men, both of whom she considered her husbands and the child’s fathers; they called their relationship a ménage à trois and insisted that, as members of the Young Communist League [Komsomol], they did not feel jealousy.12 Bed and Sofa puts these utopian ideals to the test, and its treatment of abortion plays a central role in its analysis. The film’s early sequences introduce us to a married couple, Kolia and Liuda. It is clear that their relationship is based on patriarchal models of male dominance and female subservience, through both their characterization and the symbolic treatment of space: while Kolia is master in their flat and also leaves it to go to work, Liuda remains confined both to the domestic space, as a housewife with no role outside the home, and within it; as Julian Graffy notes, “[e]ven within the space of the flat she is marginalised, continually retreating to the kitchen.”13 When Kolia runs into his old friend Volodia, who, newly arrived in Moscow, has found work but not accommodation, he invites him to move in and sleep on their sofa. Initially put out, Liuda is soon reconciled to the idea: Volodia is more thoughtful than Kolia, bringing her gifts, helping with housework and taking her out. Predictably, while Kolia is away on a work trip, Liuda

 Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 19.  Ibid. 12  Ibid., 14–5. 13  Ibid., 34. 10 11

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and Volodia enter into a relationship.14 When Kolia returns, Liuda, asserting her autonomy for the first time, insists that Volodia stays. Kolia moves out, but cannot find anywhere to live, so Liuda, taking pity on him, invites him to move back and sleep on the sofa. Gradually, Volodia reveals himself to be more authoritarian than Kolia, locking the door when Liuda tries to go out alone. The men swap their sleeping arrangements once more, and they settle into a life à trois, in which, far from enjoying equality and independence, Liuda is dominated and oppressed by both men. When, two months later, they realize Liuda is pregnant, they are unsure who the father is. The men agree that she must have an abortion: neither of them wants to look after another man’s child. The men’s assumption that this is their decision to make clearly angers Liuda (Fig. 12.1). She appears to accept that they have the authority to decide, however, for the next sequence takes place in the waiting room of a private abortion clinic, where she and several women from diverse social

Fig. 12.1  Liuda reacts angrily when she overhears Kolia and Volodia deciding that she must have an abortion. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927)  “De facto” (unregistered) marriage [fakticheskii brak] was passed into law in the Soviet Union in January 1927. Ibid., 49–50. 14

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Fig. 12.2  The abortion clinic. Liuda sits at the far right-hand edge of the screen. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927)

backgrounds are sitting (Fig.  12.2). Hereby Room, as Graffy observes, “hints at the different reasons which would bring women to the abortion clinic.”15 While the director seems to want to convey sympathy for and understanding of some of the women, his treatment of others is less charitable. He makes it clear that two of them (a garrulous older woman and a fashionable young woman, possibly a prostitute) are frequent visitors to the clinic: they both appear unconcerned and, when the doctor arrives, he nods at them, in recognition. As Graffy shows, the male doctor’s confident, authoritarian presence is also significant for the way it characterizes the abortion clinic as another place where “a man presides over women”; he also identifies in the clinic other “eloquent echoes” of life in the flat, which serve to link the two places and to characterize them both as spaces in which men impose their authority on women.16 Liuda’s discomfort is clear: the sequence begins with a close-up of her fidgeting hands. Affected by the tense atmosphere, she opens a window  Ibid., 65.  Ibid., 66.

15 16

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Fig. 12.3  Liuda’s view from the window—an idealized image of motherhood. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927)

and, in a series of shot–counter-shot sequences, Room shows the viewer both what Liuda sees and her reaction. First, a child cradling a doll; Liuda smiles and leans out for a better view. Then, a pretty baby swaddled in a lace sheet (Fig. 12.3); Liuda’s smile grows, before suddenly fading. If she has any remaining conviction that abortion is the right decision for her, it evaporates when an emergency occurs in the operating room. Liuda gathers her belongings and leaves. She will shortly decide to leave another place that oppresses her. For the moment, however, we remain in the clinic. The nurse moves to close the window, but first looks out. Her view—two babies in the same pram, one holding an empty basket in a dirty hand (Fig. 12.4)—is a sobering (but compassionate) counterpoint to Liuda’s idealistic vision of motherhood. The sequence ends, however, with the focus on the fashionable woman/prostitute, who stubs out her cigarette and strolls, unperturbed, into the operating room. That this sequence contains notes of criticism and didacticism is clear. Despite showing understanding about why women might, in some circumstances, choose to terminate a pregnancy, the film-makers nonetheless represent abortion negatively, as frightening, dangerous, and, in some cases, irresponsibly, if not immorally, over-used. State policy had

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Fig. 12.4  The nurse’s view from the window—a pragmatic image of motherhood. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927)

remained pro-natalist, even when abortion was legalized in 1920.17 In the second half of the decade, the medical authorities began to express concerns that abortion was impacting negatively on the birth rate.18 Pro-­natalist discourse intensified and an anti-abortion campaign was launched.19 Some commentators have therefore felt that Room here “bow[s] to authority in his ‘compromised’ treatment of abortion,” because, as Paul E. Burns puts it, Liuda’s decision not to have the termination “positively conformed to the regime’s desire to discourage this legal option.”20 Judith Mayne makes a similar point, concluding that the film ultimately foregrounds Liuda’s realization of “the necessity of maternity” and her “acceptance of her social obligation.”21

 Gross Solomon, “The Demographic Argument,” 61.  Ibid., 62. 19  Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 66. 20  Burns, “An NEP Moscow Address,” 74, 78. 21  Mayne, Kino and the Woman Question, 122–3, 125. 17 18

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Liuda’s embrace of motherhood does indeed appear to place her within the confines of the extra-diegetic authority of the state and its requirement that female citizens reject abortion. This suggestion is strengthened, moreover, when the men who had insisted that she have an abortion are condemned, albeit gently, and identified as “scoundrels” [podletsy] in an intertitle near the end of the film. As Graffy argues, however, this surface-­ level reading of the film’s plot overlooks both the way the abortion clinic is represented as an oppressive male-dominated space, akin to the flat, and the ambiguity of the film’s ending. After leaving the clinic, Liuda returns home and packs a bag. She asks the caretaker to remove her name from his register, then leaves to catch a train that will take her out of the city. Thus Room suggests that, in order to escape the men’s assumed authority over her life and her body, Liuda has to leave not only her husbands and the “utopian” model of the ménage à trois, but also Moscow, “the ideological centre of the Soviet state.”22 The film could, therefore, be seen as having “overarching subversive ideological implications,” suggesting that Liuda’s decision is an active rejection of Soviet social obligations and of “all Soviet systems.”23 This was not lost on officials. While some praised the ending for showing “the triumph of the maternal instinct,” many more were critical, arguing that it was not “educational” and did not resolve the ménage à trois theme “in a Soviet way.”24 Indeed, in the film’s diegetic world, Liuda’s choice to continue her pregnancy is represented as a personal, not an ideological, decision. It is a rejection of the men’s attempt to impose their patriarchal authority on her body and it empowers her to assert her individual autonomy by leaving. This emphasis on the personal is made clear symbolically. While packing, Liuda takes a framed photograph of herself down from the wall, removes her photograph and hangs the empty frame back on its nail, thus transforming one of the film’s many images of entrapment and oppression into a powerful symbol of personal liberation. The dynamism of the film’s closing sequence, which shows a smiling Liuda, bathed in sunshine, sitting alone by the open window of a fast-moving train, suggests the same (Fig. 12.5).  Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 73.  Ibid., 73–4. 24  Ibid., 90–1. 22 23

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Fig. 12.5  Liuda leaves Moscow and the men to have her baby on her own. (Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927)

If Bed and Sofa displays understanding about why abortion might be desirable in certain circumstances, subsequent films offer less nuanced representations. Fridrikh Ermler’s The Parisian Cobbler [Parizhskii sapozhnik, 1928], released almost a year after Bed and Sofa, is set among the Komsomol youth and a certain standard of behavior is therefore expected of the protagonists. When Katia falls pregnant, however, her boyfriend Andrei tells her to abort the baby. Katia refuses, so Andrei takes matters into his own hands. Receiving no support from the ineffectual head of their Komsomol group, he turns to Mot´ka, a hooligan, believing his claim that if his gang rapes Katia her pregnancy will be “liquidated.”25 However, after his attempt to lure Katia to the gang’s hideout is discovered, Andrei is tried and dismissed from the Komsomol, whose members promise to support Katia and her baby, thereby compensating for their leader’s earlier failure. Denise Youngblood suggests that Ermler intended to make a film in support of the growing campaign against abortion,26 and the film’s conclusion seems to support this. We see a close-up of a  Ibid., 62.  Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, 145.

25 26

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Fig. 12.6  “Who is to blame?” (Ermler, The Parisian Cobbler, 1928)

woman’s furious eyes (Fig. 12.6) and an intertitle asks, “Who is to blame?” [Kto vinovat?], encouraging viewers to consider who bears responsibility for Katia’s experience. There are several differences between these two films. The most striking one is that while the Soviet state is remarkable by its absence in Bed and Sofa, in The Parisian Cobbler the state, through the Komsomol, does step in to assume responsibility for the baby. The treatment of abortion nonetheless shares significant similarities. In both cases, the male protagonists refuse to accept responsibility for the child they have fathered and attempt to impose their assumed patriarchal authority on their pregnant partners, insisting on a termination. In both cases, the women resist the men’s authority, choosing to keep the baby. Finally, in both cases, the filmmakers condemn the men, with the condemnation becoming significantly harsher in The Parisian Cobbler (the later film) and involving an element of social/state punishment. Thus they introduce a narrative model that would be repeated and developed in subsequent films.

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 he 1930s and 1940s: Abortion T and Stalinist Cinema In the early 1930s, the ratio of abortions to births rose sharply and demographic anxieties intensified.27 Concurrently, Stalin’s “Great Retreat” engineered a return to traditional gender roles, and state policy became increasingly pro-natalist. An article published on May 23, 1935, in Pravda, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, announced that “[i]n our country, the mother figure is one of the most respected. We reserve the best conditions for our mothers […] to give birth… while the barbarian capitalists are depriving their women of what is most dear to them: their right to childbirth.”28 Just over a year later, on July 27, 1936, abortion was re-criminalized. That same year, Room’s Bed and Sofa was banned from exhibition.29 Its nuanced stance on abortion and ambiguous open ending did not satisfy the increasingly hard-line authorities. It is unsurprising, given shifts in state policy on abortion and the increasing pressure placed on film-makers to make unambiguous ideological films, that films made in the 1930s are wholly negative in their treatment of abortion. A less predictable shift sees women sometimes being cast as the parent who desires abortion, against the wishes of the father, whose patriarchal authority to decide the matter is, in such cases, often upheld by the films’ resolution. In Mark Gall’s I Don’t Want a Child [Ne khochu rebenka, 1930], when Ol´ga decides to have a termination in order to continue as a factory worker and Komsomol member, her husband enlists her fellow workers to dissuade her.30 As Ol´ga prepares to give birth, it is announced that her factory is opening a nursery where her baby can be looked after, while she works. As Gall’s film therefore shows, while a woman’s working role was a crucial feature of Soviet womanhood, maternity was also expected. Indeed, as our discussion of later 1930s’ films shows, motherhood was frequently coded as a sine qua non, a non-­ negotiable pre-requisite for Soviet women who aspired to excel in other  Avdeev et al., “The History of Abortion,” 41–2, 60.  Ibid., 43. 29  Graffy, Bed and Sofa, 101. 30  Ibid., 108. 27 28

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Soviet roles. Here, then, the state steps in, gently demonstrating its authority and enabling Ol´ga to combine motherhood with her existing Soviet responsibilities. In later Stalinist films, model Soviet women will be shown achieving this through their own actions. As the 1930s advanced, the contrast between protagonists who embrace parenthood and those who reject it was increasingly used to suggest a value judgment. The idea that characters who promote abortion should be “punished” was also developed. In Eduard Ioganson’s comedy The Crown Prince of the Republic [Naslednyi prints respubliki, 1934], when Sergei tries to persuade his pregnant wife Natasha to have an abortion, arguing that a baby will hinder his work, Natasha nonetheless continues with the pregnancy. After a series of adventures, the film ends happily: Natasha rejects Sergei, the reluctant father, and leaves with Andrei, who is willing to help her raise the child.31 Thus Andrei becomes the first in a line of model (surrogate) fathers, who—unlike Kolia and Volodia in Bed and Sofa—are happy to raise another man’s child. These dynamics are exploited in two mid-1930s’ “sport [fizkul´tura] films,” which both feature a pregnant runner. In Iurii Zheliabuzhskii’s Miss Ellen Grey’s Laurels [Lavry Miss Ellen Grei, 1935], Tania is so obsessed about beating the record held by the American athlete Ellen Grey that she decides to terminate her pregnancy to focus on running, despite her husband’s conviction that this is wrong.32 When a female doctor—the voice of state authority33—refuses to give Tania an abortion, telling her that it will ruin her health and that her motives are “weak” [neosnovatel´ny], Tania goes ahead with the procedure elsewhere.34 Despite training hard, Tania is beaten into third place in the race. Significantly, the woman who wins is a mother, a fact that is emphasized, as Samuel Goff observes, by  On this film, see Widdis, “Child’s Play,” 327–8.  We are grateful to Julian Graffy for providing us with his viewing notes on this film. We also thank him for reading early drafts of this chapter and for making many invaluable suggestions. 33  It is noteworthy that here, as in some later films, a female doctor speaks against abortion. However, while the medical profession is no longer represented as a realm of male authority, as in Bed and Sofa, female medical personnel do not display compassion or understanding; instead, they are often brusquely dismissive, as here. 34  This plot detail is confirmed in Sobolev, Iurii Zheliabuzhskii, 123–4 and in contemporary sources, such as “Lavry Miss Ellen Grei.” 31 32

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her child’s noisy celebration: “Daddy, look! Mummy’s come first!” [Papa, smotri! Mama pervaia!].35 This plot is reprised, with significant variations, in Igor´ Savchenko’s A Chance Encounter [Sluchainaia vstrecha], released on October 21, 1936, almost three months after abortion had been banned. When Irina, a toy-­ factory worker, meets Grisha, a sports instructor, they fall in love. Grisha is training Irina, a talented runner, for the All-Union Spartakiada games in Moscow, but she falls pregnant. Believing (as Tania did) that pregnancy will scupper Irina’s chance of winning, Grisha angrily rejects the pregnancy. While he does not utter the word “abortion”—in the contemporary ideological climate he could not, of course, do so—his meaning is clear. Horrified, Irina has the baby on her own. Three years pass before Irina can resume running, but when she does, she not only wins the race, but also breaks the national women’s record. Thus Savchenko rewards Irina for her socially conscious, Soviet choice of continuing her pregnancy and prioritizing motherhood over sporting success. That her victory, like Tania’s defeat, is contingent upon her maternity is emphasized: while the spectators applaud, Irina embraces her daughter. By contrast, Grisha—who, as Graffy observes, “cannot understand or support the film’s main ideological position, the cult of the child”36—is punished; shunned by Irina and their child, he is replaced by Petr, an ideal father figure who supported Irina’s decision to keep the baby from the outset (Fig. 12.7).37 The state’s promotion of motherhood as the Soviet woman’s patriotic duty reached its apotheosis in the mid-1940s, partly because of the devastating impact of the Second World War on the population. On July 8, 1944, Stalin instituted the Motherhood Medal [Medal´ materinstva], to be awarded to women who bore and raised five or six children, the Order of Maternal Glory [Orden “Materinskaia slava”], for mothers of seven to nine children, and—the highest honor of all—the title MotherHeroine [Mat´-geroina], to be conferred on mothers of ten or more  Goff, “Physical Culture,” 166.  Graffy, “An Unpretentious Picture?” 311. 37  The film’s pro-natalist message is bolstered by the fact that the protagonists work in a toy factory; accordingly, the film is “marked by the ubiquitousness of children” and their doting parents. Ibid., 306–7. See also Widdis, “Child’s Play.” 35 36

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Fig. 12.7  Shunned by Irina and her daughter, Grisha is replaced by Petr, the model surrogate father. (Savchenko, A Chance Encounter, 1936)

children.38 While abortion effectively disappeared from Stalinist fiction films after its criminalization in 1936, the positive-negative opposition of women with children and those without continued.

The 1950s: Abortion and “Thaw-Era” Cinema The ban on abortion remained in force for almost two decades, until Nikita Khrushchev overturned it in 1955. As in 1920, however, this was not a recognition of women’s right to choose, but a pragmatic attempt, once again, to reduce underground abortions. Policy under Khrushchev remained firmly pro-natalist, and the government concurrently launched an extensive anti-abortion campaign, which sought to promote fear of the procedure by emphasizing its emotional and physical risks. 38

 Bridger, “Heroine Mothers,” 105.

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Film-makers also began to address abortion again, most noticeably in Vasilii Ordynskii’s A Person is Born [Chelovek rodilsia, 1956]. The opening sequence, in a maternity hospital, introduces Nadia, who, unlike the other new mothers, has no husband to send her gifts or letters. A flashback explains why. After arriving in Moscow from the provinces, with hopes of entering university, Nadia had naively entered a relationship with Vitalii and become pregnant. Their relationship had ended when Vitalii berated Nadia for refusing “a first-rate solution” [pervosortnyi vykhod] to this problem: an abortion that he has arranged for her. His phrasing—“I have a tame doctor” [I vrach svoi chelovek]—makes it clear that he has found himself in, and extricated himself from, such situations before. In its representation of abortion and of characters who promote it, A Person Is Born is faithful to the formulae established in earlier films. Thus Vasilii, a “Thaw-era” addition to the long line of fathers who shirked their parental responsibility in the 1920s and 1930s, is unambiguously condemned. Towards the end, Vasilii’s father visits Nadia. On hearing how his son has treated her, the father twice calls him a “scoundrel” [podlets], the word used of Kolia and Volodia in Bed and Sofa.39 When he next sees Vasilii, he slaps him. Moreover, as in earlier films, the abortion-­promoting “scoundrel” is replaced in the family by a better man/father-figure, the kind-hearted Gleb, who has consistently supported Nadia and her child. Thus, by the end of the film, Nadia’s explanation that she failed the math test in her university entrance examination because “I forgot the formula” [Zabyla formulu] has acquired an ironic note. Members of the Mosfil´m studio’s Artistic Council were also alert to the schematic nature of these elements of the film’s plot and characterization. Mikhail Papava, who praised the film for tackling “such an important theme,” commented that its weakest feature was Gleb’s role, which was too “functional” [funktsional´no], adding that the character of Vitalii’s father also lacked depth.40 In other respects, however, there is much in A Person Is Born that is new. In his discussion of the theme of  It seems likely that this intertextuality was intended. Documents recording a discussion of the script at the Mosfil´m studio reveal that the film was assigned to be made in Abram Room’s workshop. “Shirokoekrannogo goria u nas net,” 55. 40  Ibid., 55–6. 39

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happiness in Soviet films from 1956, Graffy describes the film as “one of the […] least formulaic” in this regard, since Nadia is implicitly depicted as “living with depression.”41 Josephine Woll also comments on the “originality” of its portrayal of the heroine’s personal growth and life as a single mother.42 For, while Bed and Sofa had ended with Liuda’s decision to ignore male authority/advice and reject abortion in favor of motherhood, in A Person Is Born Nadia makes this decision at the very start. The film’s focus is therefore not Nadia’s decision itself, but rather the impact that her refusal to abort her baby has on her life. The film charts in vivid detail the practical and emotional challenges she faces as a single mother, thus developing and complicating the representation of motherhood as personal liberation expressed in Room’s film. Another late-1950s’ film that touched on abortion was Sergei Gerasimov’s enduringly popular And Quiet Flows the Don [Tikhii Don, 1957–1958], an adaptation of Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel (1928–1932, 1940), in which Natal´ia dies a painful death after undergoing a back-­ street abortion. Amy Randall describes how 1960s’ public-health literature exploited the film’s “cultural currency,” using Natal´ia’s demise to exemplify the dangers of illegal abortion.43 State medical authorities even recommended that doctors should read excerpts from the novel at public lectures, because it would have a “significant emotional impact on women listeners.”44

 he 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: Abortion T and Brezhnevite Cinema The anti-abortion campaign intensified during the Brezhnev era (1964–1982), as termination rates continued to rise. From the mid-­1960s, films featuring abortion became more numerous, invariably resorting to scaremongering and moralizing, thereby mirroring the approach of  Graffy, “But Where Is Your Happiness,” 234.  Woll, Real Images, 44. 43  Randall, “Abortion,” 18. 44  Ibid. 41 42

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contemporary anti-abortion campaigns. In Pavel Liubimov’s The Women [Zhenshchiny, 1965], for example, Dusia’s decision to have an abortion leaves her sterile, ashamed and bitter. Years later, she meets Alia, a younger woman who has become pregnant in similar circumstances. Despite her own struggles, Dusia questions Alia’s decision to continue with her pregnancy. As in Stalinist films, however, the female protagonists’ fates appear to be dictated by their decisions: while Dusia is punished for her abortion, Alia is rewarded for keeping her baby with a promising relationship with the son of Dusia’s friend Katia. In line with the tendency of “Thaw-­ era” films to refuse black-and-white binaries, however, Liubimov—who trained during the political and artistic Thaw under Khrushchev— endows his protagonists with a complexity that was lacking in Stalinist films. Thus he allows Dusia to redeem herself through a good action: when Katia attempts to thwart Alia’s relationship with her son, Dusia opens Katia’s eyes to her mean-spiritedness, encouraging the potential reconciliation of the couple. A striking use of the trope of abortion is found in Aleksandr Askol´dov’s The Commissar [Komissar, 1967, released 1988]. Intended to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution and set during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), the film displeased the authorities and was shelved for over twenty years. The censorship documents show that the main problems were the director’s sympathetic treatment of the film’s Jewish subject and protagonists and his representation of Bolshevik/ Russian femininity, through the figure of the eponymous Red Army Commissar, Klavdiia Vavilova.45 Heavily pregnant, but only because she could not leave the front in time for a termination, Vavilova repeatedly expresses anger about this, cursing the doctor who refused to carry out a late-term abortion and telling Mariia, the Jewish mother-of-six with whose family she is billeted to give birth, that she tried to rid herself of her unborn child by drinking iodine. Mariia’s shocked reaction to Vavilova’s admission makes it clear that she considers her desire for an abortion unnatural and inhuman: “Oh, my God! This woman has lost her mind! Your words will make stones cry. One shouldn’t even say such things about the children of one’s worst  Stishova, “Passions over Commissar,” 62–75.

45

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enemy. And you’re speaking of your own flesh and blood!” Her words reiterate one of the key tenets of contemporary pro-natalist rhetoric which stressed that “choosing motherhood was natural whereas choosing abortion was unnatural.”46 The opposition of the “natural” and the “unnatural” is further embodied in the contrast between Mariia and Vavilova, reflected in their different physicalities, clothes, behavior, language and voices. Mariia, with her brood of children, represents the “natural” feminine values that the “unnatural”/masculine Vavilova lacks. While this black-and-white binary representation of abortion and motherhood is not new, the use that Askol´dov makes of it is. Vavilova is a Commissar, the quintessential ideological figure. The “unnatural”/negative qualities associated with her therefore also extend into the film’s portrayal of the values of the Revolution. As Evgenii Surkov, the associate chairman of the State Cinema Committee [Goskomitet] and chief editor of its Scenario Board, observed in 1966, echoing Mariia’s response to Vavilova’s desire for an abortion: We all know that the Revolution […] has revealed […] humanity to millions of people […]. Thus we cannot accept the fact that […] the Revolution appears as a force which distorts the human nature of the heroine, depriving her of simple everyday feelings, even of the instincts of motherhood, love, and femininity.47

In this way, the trope of abortion is fundamental to Askol´dov’s depiction of the Revolution, the cause Vavilova represents. The inhumanity expressed in Vavilova’s desire to abort her unborn child creates an image of a monstrous Mother Russia, devoid of maternal feeling, which fails to affirm the positive humanistic values of the Revolution that commemorative films were expected to celebrate.48

 Randall, “Abortion,” 20.  Stishova, “Passions over Commissar,” 67. 48  This representation is gradually complicated, for motherhood transforms Vavilova: her “natural” femininity emerges, displacing the “masculine”/ideological persona of Commissar. Finally, however, Vavilova is faced with another choice: remain with her son or re-join her battalion to fight the Whites. For many viewers, her decision to leave the baby was even more contentious than her desire for an abortion. See Berghahn, “Do the Right Thing?” 568–70. 46 47

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A less contentious treatment of abortion is found in Liubimov’s A School Waltz [Shkol´nyi val´s, 1979], produced at the Maksim Gor´kii Central Studio for Children’s and Young People’s Films. More explicitly pro-natalist than his earlier The Women, this film actively re-enforces the Brezhnevite anti-abortion campaign through its mise-en-scène. When the teenaged Zosia goes to an abortion clinic, the prominent poster in the background features the silhouette of a crying woman alongside a wilting flower. In case the viewer misses the symbolism, it is emblazoned with the word “Abortion.” This detail explicitly recalls contemporary health-­ education posters, which often used the metaphor of a dead or dying flower to suggest that abortion would have a negative impact on future fertility.49 A nurse reinforces this message, informing Zosia that there is a 90% chance of infertility, or even death, following a termination and thus becoming, like the female doctor in Miss Ellen Grey’s Laurels, the uncompromising voice of state authority. Unsurprisingly, Zosia elects to continue with the pregnancy. In earlier films, as we have seen, it was often the biological father who pressured his pregnant partner to have an abortion. Here, however, Zosia’s boyfriend Gosha plays no part in her decision and the figure who attempts to exercise authority over Zosia is her mother, Ella. As she takes Zosia to the clinic, Ella complains that she is tired of explaining why abortion is the best option, reminding Zosia of the wonderful opportunities her future holds. As Olga Klimova observes, Ella’s authority is, however, undermined from the outset: she is conducting an affair, which leaves her indifferent to her daughter—she is unaware of Gosha’s presence when he and Zosia consummate their relationship (the presumed moment of conception).50 By comparison, Zosia is shown to be a “mature young woman with the ‘proper’ moral values.”51 Klimova argues that through this battle between parent and child, Liubimov attempts, within the confines of censorship, to express dissatisfaction with the state, suggesting that in the film “abortion functions as a metaphor of the ‘corrective’

 Randall, “Abortion,” 21.  Klimova, “Soviet Youth Films,” 138. 51  Ibid., 147. 49 50

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politics, which authoritative (parental) figures use to adjust citizens’ (teenagers’) behavior and actions.”52 The failings of this apparent authority figure are fundamentally important. The argument that Ella represents the authority of the state is undermined, however, by the fact that her advocacy for an abortion directly contradicts contemporary anti-abortion policy, articulated in the clinic sequence. Thus Ella’s advice is simply another example of her flawed authority. The film’s theme of generational conflict therefore appears to function to encourage teenagers and young women—the film’s intended audience—to have the confidence to ignore “bad” advice, even when proffered by parental authority figures, and instead to make the ideologically “correct” decision of continuing with the pregnancy. The tendency toward plotlines in which women reject abortion continued throughout the Brezhnevite period. In Vladimir Men´shov’s academy award-winning Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears [Moskva slezam ne verit, 1980], set initially in 1958, Katerina falls pregnant after Rodion forces himself on her. When she breaks the news to him, the pregnancy is already advanced: Katerina recounts that she attempted to get a termination, but it was too late. Rodion refuses to take responsibility for the pregnancy and, in an outburst that demonstrates the film-makers’ understanding of the thematic tradition within which they are working, he explicitly alludes to the gendered treatment of the themes of pregnancy and abortion. Accusing Katerina of attempting to cast him in the role “of a negative hero” [otritsatel´nogo geroia], he says that he feels like a character in a play with a familiar plotline: “She’s expecting a baby, but he doesn’t want it. He’s a scoundrel [podlets] and she’s saintly [sviataia]” (Fig.  12.8). It is revealing that the word that Rodion here uses ironically—“scoundrel”—is the word used to condemn the reluctant fathers in both Room’s Bed and Sofa and Ordynskii’s A Person Is Born. Rodion also refers ironically to the political myth of motherhood as a sacred [sviatoe] undertaking, as Putin would do, “without any irony,” almost forty years later.

52

 Ibid., 145.

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Fig. 12.8  The “scoundrel” and the “saintly” woman: Rodion refuses to take responsibility for Katerina’s pregnancy. (Feature film Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, director Vladimir Menshov © Mosfilm Cinema Concern, 1979)

There is no further discussion of this issue. Katerina has the baby (Fig.  12.9). The action then jumps to 1979, and, as in Stalinist films, Katerina is rewarded for continuing with her pregnancy, achieving both professional success (becoming a factory director) and, eventually, personal success (happiness in a romantic relationship). For Ariel Noffke, the fact that none of the film’s three female protagonists undergoes an abortion makes its representation of their lives unrealistic.53 While the absence of abortion might not convey the social reality of the time, however, it does reflect the contemporary pro-natalist ideological reality of both periods in which the film’s action is set. As Sue Bridger demonstrates, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Stalinist theme of the “mother-heroine” was resurrected, becoming the focus of sustained propaganda campaigns that sought to reverse  Noffke, “Abortion Culture,” 29.

53

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Fig. 12.9  Katerina keeps her baby. (Feature film Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears, director Vladimir Menshov © Mosfilm Cinema Concern, 1979)

demographic decline.54 Iurii Egorov’s One Day Twenty Years Later [Odnazhdy dvadtsat´ let spustia, 1981] reflects this ideological imperative, featuring a “mother-heroine” with ten children. Nadezhda (whose name means “hope”) cheerfully lectures guests on what France can do to reverse its shrinking population. Though the film acknowledges that she faces difficulties, they do not subdue her desire for more children. When her husband suggests that they do not have to continue a pregnancy that is causing her upset, Nadezhda cannot comprehend his meaning. When she finally does, she finds the idea that she might have an abortion so laughable that it cheers her up. The film’s final shot lionizes her “mother-­ heroine” status, implicitly valuing it above those of her classmates, who have various careers (such as architect, academic, actress, Navy officer), by locating Nadezhda and her family at the center of the group when they pose together for a photograph at a class reunion. Viacheslav Nikiforov’s Fruza [1981], set in the post-war 1940s, also valorizes a woman’s decision to keep her baby in difficult circumstances 54

 Bridger, “Heroine Mothers,” 105, 107.

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Fig. 12.10  Fruza breaks the fourth wall to reassure the viewer. (Nikiforov, Fruza, 1981. Image courtesy of UE National Film Studio “Belarusfilm”)

and, as a television film, would have conveyed this message to large audiences. Fruza falls pregnant after beginning a relationship with a married man. Her older fellow worker, Drozdova, advises her not to have the child, correctly predicting that Fruza will be ostracized when people learn about her pregnancy, but Fruza rejects her counsel. As she breast-feeds her baby in hospital, she fantasizes that her colleagues will welcome the new-born and congratulate her. However, despite a kindly nurse’s prediction that “Everything will be OK,” only Drozdova visits Fruza. In the film’s final sequence, Drozdova urges Fruza to enter their workplace, but Fruza hesitates and remains outside, alone. It seems initially that she is scared, but it soon becomes clear that the intention is programmatic, for Fruza turns to face the camera, which begins to track in on her until she is framed in medium close-up. Throughout the track-in, Fruza, holding her baby tightly, meets the gaze of the camera, breaking the fourth wall (Fig. 12.10). This powerful moment of direct address sends a clear message to the viewer: Motherhood has conferred on Fruza new strength and self-belief. She made the right choice. Everything is OK.

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Conclusion The films discussed in this chapter were made over a period of almost sixty years during which the Soviet Union saw three leaders and three significant changes in state policy on the status of abortion: legalization in 1920, banning in 1936 and re-legalization in 1955. There are, nonetheless, similarities in their treatment of abortion. Most films, with the exception of Askol´dov’s The Commissar, make it clear that choosing motherhood over abortion eventually ensures the success and happiness of the pregnant woman, and sometimes, by extension, that of the Motherland/nation as a whole. Protagonists—male and female—who promote or choose motherhood are “rewarded,” whether with personal happiness, social inclusion or success in other areas of their Soviet lives. Conversely, those who promote, desire, or undergo abortion are invariably “punished,” whether with personal unhappiness, social exclusion or failure. By neglecting to promote motherhood, they have stepped outside socio-ideological doctrine and are held to account for this transgression. On the surface level of plot, therefore, Soviet cinema’s representation of abortion does appear to reflect the extra-diegetic bio-political authority of the Soviet state, as embodied in abortion legislation and policy. That is not to say, however, that the films act as blunt instruments of state authority. While some do represent abortion in ways that recall the methods of state campaigns against it—consider the scaremongering poster and the rhetoric of the nurse in A School Waltz and Natal´ia’s death-bed scene in And Quiet Flows the Don, for example—many use abortion for much broader purposes, as a device through which to explore social questions about changing gender and generational roles and relations and, in the case of The Commissar, to reassess a key moment of Soviet history. Thus, despite the broad similarities apparent in the films’ approaches to abortion as an element of plot, there are also significant differences in the treatment of the theme across the period. While Stalinist films show motherhood as a non-negotiable duty and abortion as an unutterable, un-Soviet error, films made in other Soviet periods represent the decision to reject abortion in more personal terms, as a statement of female autonomy and a rejection of the “traditional authority” invested in husbands/

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boyfriends and parents/older “mentor” figures. Films such as Bed and Sofa and A Person is Born, for example, thus demonstrate an interest in the female perspective that Stalinist films lack. In this way, they challenge the prevailing socio-ideological stances on abortion. After all, the legalization of abortion was not motivated by a belief in the right of women to choose either in 1920 or in 1955. In depicting female protagonists who actively assert this right, the makers of these two films are perhaps suggesting that it should have been.

References Filmography

Askol´dov, Aleksandr. 1967/1988. The Commissar [Komissar]. Egorov, Iurii. 1981. One Day Twenty Years Later [Odnazhdy dvadtsat’ let spustia]. Ermler, Fridrikh. 1928. The Parisian Cobbler [Parizhskii sapozhnik]. Gall, Mark. 1930. I Don’t Want a Child [Ne khochu rebenka]. Gerasimov, Sergei. 1957–58. And Quiet Flows the Don [Tikhii Don]. Ioganson, Eduard. 1934. The Crown Prince of the Republic [Naslednyi prints respubliki]. Liubimov, Pavel. 1966. The Women [Zhenshchiny]. ———. 1979. A School Waltz [Shkol´nyi val´s]. Men´shov, Vladimir. 1980. Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears [Moskva slezam ne verit]. Nikiforov, Viacheslav. 1981. Fruza. TV. Ordynskii, Vasilii. 1956. A Person is Born [Chelovek rodilsia]. Room, Abram. 1927. Bed and Sofa [Tret´ia Meshchanskaia]. Savchenko, Igor´. 1936. A Chance Encounter [Sluchainaia vstrecha]. Zheliabuzhskii, Iurii. 1935. Miss Ellen Grey’s Laurels [Lavry Miss Ellen Grei]. Bibliography

Attwood, Lynne. 1993. ‘Rodina-Mat´’ and the Soviet Cinema. In Gender Restructuring in Russian Studies, ed. Marianne Liljeström, Eila Mäntysaari, and Arja Rosenholm, 15–28. Tampere: Slavica Tamperensia II. Avdeev, Alexandre, Alain Blum, and Irina Troitskaya. 1995. The History of Abortion Statistics in Russia and the USSR from 1900 to 1991. Population: An English Selection 7: 39–66. Berghahn, Daniela. 2006. Do the Right Thing? Female Allegories of Nation in Aleksandr Askoldov’s Komissar (USSR, 1967/87) and Konrad Wolf ’s Der

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Geteilte Himmel (GDR, 1964). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 26 (4): 561–577. Bridger, Sue. 2007. Heroine Mothers and Demographic Crises: The Legacy of the Late Soviet Era. In Gender, Equality and Difference during and after State Socialism, ed. Rebecca Kay, 105–122. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Burns, Paul E. 1982. An NEP Moscow Address: Abram Room’s Third Meshchanskaia (Bed and Sofa) in Historical Context. Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 12 (4): 73–81. Goff, Samuel. 2018. Physical Culture and the Embodied Soviet Subject, 1921–1939: Surveillance, Aesthetics, Spectatorship. PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge. Graffy, Julian. 2001. Bed and Sofa. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. ———. 2009. ‘But where Is your Happiness, Alevtina Ivanova?’ New Debates about Happiness in the Soviet Films of 1956. In Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, ed. Marina Balina and Evgenii Dobrenko, 217–237. London/ New York: Athena Press. ———. 2012. ‘An Unpretentious Picture’?  – Igor´ Savchenko’s A Chance Encounter. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 6 (3): 301–318. Gromov, Aleksei. 2017. “‘Mamu sravnivaiut s Rodinoi’: v Seti poiavilos´ videopozdravlenie Vladimira Putina s Dnem materi” [‘A Mother Can Be Likened to the Motherland’: Vladimir Putin’s Congratulatory Mother’s Day Video Has Appeared on the Internet]. Federal’noe agentstvo novostei [Federal News Agency], November 26. https://riafan.ru/1000768-mamu-sravnivayut-srodinoi-v-seti-poyavilos-videopozdravlenie-vladimira-putina-s-dnemmateri. Accessed 2 July 2018. Gross Solomon, Susan. 1992. The Demographic Argument in Soviet Debates over the Legalization of Abortion in the 1920s. Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 33 (1): 59–81. Issoupova, Olga. 2000. Motherhood and Russian Women: What It Means to Them and Their Attitudes towards It. PhD dissertation, University of Manchester. Klimova, Olga. 2013. Soviet Youth Films under Brezhnev: Watching Between the Lines. PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. Lavry Miss Ellen Grei (Rekord) [Miss Ellen Grey’s Laurels (Record)]. 1935. Repertuarnyi biulleten´ po kino [Cinema Repertoire Bulletin], (4): 2. Mayne, Judith. 1989. Kino and the Woman Question: Feminism and Soviet Silent Film. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

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Noffke, Ariel. 2014. Abortion Culture: Soviet Trends in Family Planning. Tulane Journals 1 (1): 24–34. http://journals.tulane.edu/index.php/NAJ/article/ view/182/132. Accessed 27 July 2018. Randall, Amy. Fall 2011. ‘Abortion Will Deprive you of Happiness!’ Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era. Journal of Women’s History 23 (3): 13–28. ‘Shirokoekrannogo goria u nas net…’. K istorii fil’ma Chelovek rodilsia. 2006. [‘We Have No Widescreen Grief…’. Toward the History of the Film A Person is Born]. Kinovedcheskie zapiski [Film Study Notes] 77: 51–63. Sobolev, Romil. 1963. Iurii Zheliabuzhskii. Stranitsy zhizni i tvorchestva [Iurii Zheliabuzhskii. Pages From His Life and Work]. Moscow: Iskusstvo. Stishova, Elena. 1990. Passions over Commissar. Wide Angle 12 (4): 62–75. Weber, Max. 1958. The Three Types of Legitimate Rule. Trans. Hans Gerth. Berkeley Publications in Society and Institutions 4 (1): 1–11. Widdis, Emma. 2012. Child’s Play: Pleasure and the Soviet Hero in Savchenko’s A Chance Encounter. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 6 (3): 319–331. Woll, Josephine. 2000. Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. Youngblood, Denise. 1992. Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13 Female Genital Mutilation: Authority, Fact and Fiction Tobe Levin von Gleichen

In the video Warrior Marks (1993), Alice Walker asks the mother of little Mary if she condones the tradition that has recently inflicted pain on her child who, after all, is only four years old. Mary has undergone clitoridectomy and is presently “coming out” with the other, older girls. Big Mary’s answer is unambiguous: she feels impotent to stop the custom but pauses before adding, had she the power to stop it, she would.1 Creative writers who share advocates’ wish to see the end of this human rights abuse explore the question of authority in the continuance of genital ablation, making the thematic quest resonate in various genres discussed in this chapter—one documentary, two short and one full-length film plus one play and one novel. The works appeared originally in French, German and English, penned by nationals of France, Senegal, Germany, Kenya and the United States.  See Walker and Parmar, Warrior Marks, 323.

1

T. L. von Gleichen (*) Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_13

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Bintou in Paris Slow dawn probes the room, taking a census of ordinary things—couch, crib, and mother who suddenly bolts upright. The baby is missing! In a shattered voice Bintou pleads into the phone, “Aminata! Are they with you?… Adama and Issatou…?” No, they’re not. “Where then?” she rasps. Desperate, Bintou sprints to intercept her elder sister in a northern arrondissement of Paris. Together they assault a door. It opens, cautiously. “No,” with a stern expression the exciseuse replies. “No one has been here this morning.” Cut to Bintou’s key slipping into its lock and her husband Adama, already home, invading the frame. “Where is she?” shrieks Bintou, rushing to cuddle her tranquil daughter. “I’ve changed my mind,” the father states. “She’ll never be cut.”2

In 1994, renowned attorney Linda Weil-Curiel, the world’s only lawyer who has systematically prosecuted female genital mutilation (FGM), produced the “educational fiction” Bintou in Paris. The film ends with an immigrant patriarch’s vow to spare his daughter, thereby marking a paradigm shift plausibly emerging from community discussions and persuasion. Wisely, Weil-Curiel agreed with African anti-excision groups of the time—the late 1970s, early 1980s—decrying prosecution unless accompanied by instruction. A story featuring only Malian actors, set in venues frequented by the Diaspora, the film transfers the inherited authority from tradition to innovation just as physical displacement, from Mali to Paris, confronts all participants with change. Thus, immigration, education and jurisprudence together promote saying “NO” to the cut. How does the drama “argue”? Decisively, Adama, Issatou’s father, consults an Imam authorized by tradition who asks whether the assembled men have read the Koran. Like the majority, Adama has not, he admits, shamefaced in the circle of immigrant comrades. “Well, I have,” the religious counselor assures the group, and reports that clitoridectomy plays no role in the holy script. Thus, the imprimatur of the faith leader tips the scales in this video produced and distributed by the “Commission pour  Levin, “Creative Writing of FGM,” 111–12.

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l’Abolition des mutilations sexuelles” (CAMS) [Commission to Abolish Female Sexual Mutilation] in France. The first contemporary African feminist author to decry “les mutilations sexuelles” [sexual mutilations] in her 1978 book La Parole aux négresses [Black Women Speak Out], Awa Thiam founded CAMS in 1982. On returning to Senegal, the doctoral candidate passed leadership in Paris on to Weil-Curiel and bequeathed what has emerged as excision opponents’ strategy of choice: personal narrative. In Thiam’s indictment of FGM, P.K., pseudonym for a victim Thiam knew, tells readers what excision felt like, emotionally and physically. Pain, betrayal and impotence overwhelm her—a toxic mix easily ignited and sometimes exploding in Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Imagine the eight-year-old taken by the hand and told she is going to her aunt’s. Paraphrasing Alice Walker’s “witnessing,” the child is snatched, overpowered and, with arms pinned and legs forced apart, undergoes amputation—without anesthetic—of her inner labia and clitoris, a scene shown, by the way, in Sembène’s Moolaadé. Pantomimed in Warrior Marks by a dancer with a voice-over, “in the throes of endless agony,” she felt “wet,” P.K. tells us. “The blood flowed in torrents. I would have given anything to be a thousand miles away.”3 Far more than that distance leads to Paris where French law already advances abolition. Although a fiction, Bintou in Paris was inspired by Weil-Curiel’s association with Thiam (who is also a friend of mine). The plot blueprints a persuasive scenario whose young heroine from Bamako, Bintou, draws on her own experience to decide. Without consulting the spouse she has come to join, she arrives determined that her baby be spared. Although the potential victim is an infant, not a girl, Bintou knows she is endangered by the ease of escaping justice in France when a child is cut before she can speak. At the same time, the age of cutting had already begun to sink back home in the 1970s, as Assitan Diallo reported at the CAMS conference in Dakar, December 1982, organized by Thiam.4 Thus, returning to the screenplay, learning of his wife’s resolve, Adama scowls; instead of an embrace, he spurns Bintou from the moment she deplanes and, finding an ally in his mother, pressures his wife to accept  Quoted from Thiam, La Parole aux Négresses, in Walker and Parmar, Warrior Marks.  Levin, “Solidarische Rassistinnen,” 63.

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the baby’s mutilation. Self-assured in her authority, the mother-in-law lifts the receiver, promising to solve this “one-time little problem.” Bintou, however, emphatically disconnects the call. Her elder sister Aminata, a nurse already settled in Paris, supports her. A fierce advocate for ending FGM, Aminata educates wherever she can, for instance, in Clignancourt, an arrondissement with a dense African Diaspora population from former French colonies. Aminata’s audience is standing on the supermarket check-out line. Unused to hearing “clitoris” pronounced in public, the customers display embarrassment mixed with approval. Then again, in a salon, Aminata continues her harangue despite the subtext while tresses transform into cornrows: “il faut souffrir pour être belle” [one must suffer to be beautiful]. Often, where clitoridectomy is “normal,” the remodeled vulva is thought to define the feminine and enhance physical attractiveness. As one ambivalent insider asks about “female circumcision,” implying that the natural organ is ugly, “[i]f this were your face, would you leave it as is?”5 Yet patriarchal beauty standards meet their nemesis in health, and not a few salon clients already view excision not only as injurious but also as the stamp of male control. What is more, they dismiss it as an indispensable ethnic marker—“[c]ut or not, we’re still African,” Bintou insists. Denouncing FGM as a human rights abuse, a plurality of beauty-seekers asks why violence should be done to them. “[W]hy repress [women’s] sexuality? Why mistreat us simply because we’re women?”6 The sisters’ choice to be “positive deviants”—that is, persons defying the majority despite (immense) pressure to conform—is not explicitly sourced. We know, however, that opposition exists in the homeland because Bintou’s mind had been made up before she came. Yet, Diaspora residence and legislation promote coming out with such heretical resolve despite the mother-in-law’s tongue-in-cheek query, “[i]s it the French law you’re afraid of?” Implying, no need to be. “I know someone, fast and reliable.” In fact, even if arraignment and convictions had not yet—in the 1990s—deterred many immigrant parents in France, the fiction includes, as we have seen, an Imam’s counsel against excision, based on lack of  El Guindi, “Had This Been Your Face.”  Levin, “Creative,” 112.

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approval in the Koran, which makes plausible the father’s change of heart. On learning from an Islamic scholar that religion does not mandate FGM, he is swayed to preserve his child intact. As the all-African cast of Bintou in Paris makes clear, authority, which is invested in individuals by community consensus, can transition from the traditional trustees of “culture”—the father and his mother—to the upstarts, a younger female cohort daring to assert their opposition to a harmful custom. Now, the self-assurance with which Bintou’s mother-in-­ law pursues excision reveals how invested the older woman is in her clout, backed by majority opinion, to do so. And in asylum cases, for example, the license that family members beyond the nuclear exercise over a child can be decisive. In many practicing communities, a broad swathe of elders is authorized to initiate the cut, not merely a child’s own parents. But Bintou in Paris, though the father has the final word, depicts a successful challenge to the inherited rights of elder women while modeling a younger maternal generation enabled to resist.

Sharifa’s Three Last Wishes Bintou’s happy end is, however, not repeated in Klaus Werner and Uschi Madeisky’s 2000 documentary, Die drei Wünsche der Sharifa. Bei den Kunama in Eritrea [Sharifa’s Three Last Wishes]. Shot on location over many months south of Barentu near the Ethiopian border, the film foregrounds a parched landscape of endless acacia bushes whose thorns symbolize infibulation.7 The ethnography chronicles mother Geneth’s effort, like that of Bintou, to spare her daughter Agid the sealing of her vulva. Although FGM is nearly universal among the nine Eritrean ethnic groups, 30% of cut Kunama are infibulated,8 and the film shows this to occur. We recognize it in the bindings wound around the weeping child’s legs. Yet, in contrast to Bintou’s husband’s openness to persuasion by an  After slicing off the labia minora and often, though not always, the visible part of the clitoris, the remaining labia majora are infibulated, that is, stitched or otherwise made to adhere so that, on healing, a tiny opening for urine and menses remains. See Abdi, “Watering the Dunes with Tears.” Nura Abdi endured infibulation. 8  Kuring, “Female Genital Mutilation in Eritrea.” 7

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Imam not to cut, Agid, whose spouse plays no role, resists neighbors’ harassment for as long as she can but at last gives in to excision when a trance ritual that aims to connect with ancestral spirits—the Andinna shamans’ quest for guidance from the other world—fails to reveal Sharifa to her.9 From the dead Queen whose third wish had been that her granddaughter Geneth be cut, Agid had hoped for a sign granting permission to desist. Sharifa is dead; but the film makes clear that death itself rules. The Grim Reaper holds authority over the living, just as belief, manifesting as fear, eclipses reason. The voice-over confirms: “Wishes are taken as seriously as in other places, law.” This helps to explain, regarding authority over FGM, the otherwise puzzling if not incomprehensible complicity of women, especially among the Kunama whom Madeisky chose to film (out of 200 known matrilineal options) due to their matriarchal structure identified by inheritance through the mother to daughters and the higher status of the mother’s brother compared to the child’s father. Madeisky has devoted her career to documenting groups where forms of “mother right” (Mutterrecht à la Bachofen) can be found. Among the Kunama, a queen rules and yet rigorously insists on obedience from the tribe’s females. Upon her death, three deeds must be fulfilled. First, once she is interred, burial caverns will be filled; hence a new one, involving hard work and great expense, must be excavated. Responsibility for this devolves upon Habiba, her oldest surviving daughter. Second, a young woman has been impregnated by a man not her husband. Now, according to Max Dashu, Kunama teens freely enjoy male company with no taboos on sexual experience—a challenging fact given that, as we have seen, they are nearly universally genitally mutilated and 30% infibulated. However, perhaps those very physical barriers to pleasure permit its being sought; nor is the renegade pregnancy so unusual because a ceremony covers it. The errant male is obliged to sponsor a purification rite—Mashkabara10—paid for with a calf, but, so far in the film, he has reneged. Sharifa’s second wish is therefore that he should provide the required animal whose slaughter and flesh, once distributed to all the villagers at a major feast, obliges them to  Source Memory Net, “Andinnas of the Kunama.”  Dashu, “Sociopolitical Aspects of the Andinnas.”

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provide in perpetuity for the basic needs of mother and child. As for the third wish, as noted above, the deceased requires FGM for Geneth, Agid’s four-year-old. Now, even without an otherworldly mandate, Agid would be challenged to resist the persistent snide remarks and additional hounding of neighbor women who taunt her repeatedly about her sluggishness. “Isn’t it about time you invited us to Agid’s circumcision?” they heckle. Yet Agid stalls, postponing the fateful day. She herself had almost died, bleeding for months after the “rite.” “I have only one daughter,” she further explains, “and don’t want to lose her.” When a neighbor points out that, without genital ablation, the girl will not marry, the implication being she will remain without support, Agid responds, “She’ll inherit my farm.” But will she? Retribution for remaining intact is expulsion, and the exiled do not inherit. A vicious cycle. The distraught mother is especially stumped by an appeal to ethnicity we have seen discarded in Bintou’s hair salon. Agid hears from an elderly neighbor, “All Kunama are circumcised. Do you want your child to be an outcast?” Of course not. “I want Genet to be one of us, Kunama,” Agid affirms. Still, the desperate search for an exit persists. A 2000-year-old ceremony, explained by Gudrun Frank-Wissmann and summarized here,11 offers some hope. Andinnas, “trance-priestesses,” endure weeks-­ long exertions that alter awareness and are thought to allow progenitors to appear. Agid invokes Sharifa, hoping to negotiate the mandate. The film shows the women adorned with “hornlike crown[s] of fat” as the celebrants “display entranced speech and gestures […]. During several weeks of ritual, they walk over the land, many miles in special iron shoes” and “when greeting an older Andinna, they kiss her and grab her vulva.”12 This specific aspect of female hierarchy is not shown on screen, but suggestive of it is the extended cinematic time devoted to dancing, in reality lasting for hours, even for days. The movie details the sacrifice of poultry and the dead beast’s blood eagerly quaffed. Smoking, sipping presumably intoxicating liquids, and modifying consciousness through frantic gyrations and chant, participants resemble the possessed in the Zār Cult 11 12

 Source Memory Net, “Andinnas of the Kunama.”  Ibid.

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widespread in the Horn of Africa. Only after the finale, in which some seekers have been gratified but others, not, do “the Andinna spirits return to their world.”13 Agid has fervently sought Sharifa. The film features her among the other questers singing “the same song that is sung for the grain harvest,”14 that is, tying the female to the earth’s fertility, a force that brings forth life, not death, a known risk of FGM. But the effort is to no avail. Sharifa has refused to show up, the absence leaving an exhausted mother to admit her impotence. Lacking power to save her child, Agid authorizes the blade. Early in the film, although without genital close-ups, viewers are exposed to the first scene of carnage. Outside the agudo—a thatched-­roofed circular hut—spectators see the entry obscured by ululating neighbors whose cries are intended both to convey jubilation and to cover up the infant’s shrieks. They fail; we hear her. And the heart-breaking sound creates suspense. Throughout the film, we are rooting for Agid, hoping she will stand strong, wishing her success. When she fails, we all do. If from the human rights perspective unjustifiable, her capitulation is understandable. As noted: Powerful elderly women demand that an uncut woman be expelled from the tribe; she can neither inherit nor be buried in the family grave. Above all, ancestral spirits can be vile and threaten to visit catastrophe on them all.15

Two catastrophes have already broken. News of renewed conscription in the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia has been announced; and elephants have shown up earlier than usual to drink from a diminishing water supply. Drought has arrived. How could Agid risk the well-being of the tribe to satisfy her singular desire? More important than the individuals—Agid and Geneth—is the group. Authority lies with it.  Ibid.  Ibid. 15   “Die alten mächtigen Frauen jedoch mahnen, daß eine unbeschnittene Frau aus der Stammesgemeinschaft ausgestoßen wird, nicht erben kann und nicht im Familiengrab beigesetzt wird. Vor allen Dingen drohen sie mit dem Geist der Ahnen, denn der kann schrecklich sein und Unheil über ganze Familien bringen.” Back Cover, Die drei Wünsche der Sharifa, DVD. Translation is mine. 13 14

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Moolaadé or Sanctuary Prize-winning filmmaker Ousmane Sembène’s Moolaadé, shot in Mali and Burkina Faso, illustrates that, in another “high-context” culture, it does not have to be this way even if, as it is with the Kunama, community consensus rules. Still, as Sembène shows, the polity can change itself. In 2004 in Cannes, the movie took first prize in the category “Un certain regard,” [From another angle] and both Sembène and leading actor Fatoumata Coulibaly confirmed in private conversations that the film was indeed produced to serve the movement against FGM, making it the first full-length feature to place genital abuse at the heart of the plot. With Sembène, I attended three events at Mt. Holyoke College in the fall of 2004. A showing of Moolaadé was followed by a podium discussion with author Nawal el Saadawi, vociferous opponent of excision and a guest at Smith College that semester. In addition, on September 21, 2007, I spent an evening with Fatoumata Coulibaly at national holiday celebrations in the Embassy of Mali in Berlin, both of us guests of the late Ambassador Fatoumata Siré Diakité (d. 14.10.2016). We discussed the genesis of the film. The storyline revolves around Collé Ardo Sy, an excised mother, who, like Bintou but unlike Agid, has saved her daughter from bolokoli, literally “sitting under the knife” but translated in the subtitles (inaccurately sanitized, I suggest) as “purification” or “salindé,” the “rites” organized every seven years. In this season, six girls run away, two drown themselves in the well while four others seek protection—called moolaadé—from Collé who permits them to shelter in her compound. She authorizes their escape by deploying the community’s unanimous belief in an invisible force that, once invoked, can be disarmed only if she decides to pronounce the magic word. Fear of punishment for breaking the spell ensures respect for the boundaries drawn—very much like the power Sharifa exercises from the other side. Violation, people are convinced, will bring harm to one and all. For this reason, proclaiming moolaadé represents a huge responsibility that Collé accepts at her daughter’s urging, much to a co-wife’s discomfort. The third spouse (Collé is the second) understands her elder’s choice as a revolt against their husband, his family and the

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entire village. In conflict are the right to sanctuary for escapees from FGM versus attachment to excision, and the two sides compete for authority. In fact, campaigns in the real world are beset by a similar dynamic. Motivated to maintain their prestige and material gain, cutters insist that excision continue. They appeal to the all-male elders knowing the two groups’ interests overlap, the men desiring sexual access to shorn genitals because bolokoro or unexcised women are taboo. “Have you ever?” one patriarch says to another. “Who, me? Never!” Insubordinate in this rigid hierarchy where age trumps youth and males dominate females, Collé dares step out of line and thus incurs a brutal public whipping. Clearly, domestic violence as the West defines it—husbands beating wives—is unquestioned as a social norm. Only the degree of violence is controversial. Thus, Collé’s husband, reluctant at first, grows increasingly enraged as she continues refusing to recant. “Say the word!” he orders, the intensity of impact escalating with each act of disobedience. But Collé’s mouth remains sealed—her dogged silence as a weighty enactment of female authority. “That was a magnificent performance,” I remarked to Coulibaly in Berlin. “Your wincing convinced me it wasn’t simply play-acting. That lash bit!” Yes, she admitted, it did. The pain was real. The throng’s sadistic joy seems authentic as well, bellowed like bloodlust at a prize fight. Nearly all the village men and many of the women goad the husband on. “Break her!” the crowd thunders. But Collé, wavering from her ordeal, staunchly refuses to sink. When, after what seems a very long time, an itinerate worldly vendor with the symbolic name Mercénaire wrests the whip from the aggressor’s hands, and the circle is broken by a rush of Collé’s allies who prevent her collapse. Increasingly, women change sides. Once defiance appears possible, together they defy the men’s edict to confiscate and burn all radios, a source of enlightened ideas and likely origin of knowledge that elsewhere, excision is dying out. Reminding viewers of book burnings and witch-hunts, the closing frames juxtapose a flaming pyre of transistors with Collé’s raucous group celebrating victory inherent in their public opposition to patriarchal power. Yes, radio broadcasts and, increasingly, podcasts and smartphones do help propagate an anti-cutting message. Nonetheless, break-through responds in Sembène’s film mainly to internal pressure. Collé and her

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allies compel the cutters, vanquished and stripped of authority, to cast away their knives. Attitudes at hand permit alternatives to emerge, as Stephen Bishop argues in Empathy and Rage: the “oppositional narrative”16 is a domestic product. Hence, what Collé does is fight FGM by leveraging a cultural belief in amnesty. She also appeals to reason by displaying her disfigured torso, cut from pubic bone to breast by a crude C-section occasioned by her genital wounds, the inelastic scar tissue impeding the infant’s exit. She nearly amputates her finger by biting it in pain during intercourse after FGM and exhibits enormous courage in not succumbing to the lash. Sembène’s genius shows in his blending of these genital assaults, intercourse and FGM, superimposing them one on the other. Collapsing time, he scripts an incontestable kinship between excision and penetration in the emotions of the underling—a theme found not coincidentally in the #End FGM Animations, launched by Janet Fyle MBE in the House of Commons on September 12, 2017.17 First, Sembène shows a skinny girl of seven or so, crying and struggling, shouting “I don’t want it!” As she kicks and scratches, four enormous women overwhelm and capture her. The ear-piercing shrieks as the blade bites and, above all, the expression of anguish reveal the torment inflicted on her. Immediate cut to Collé in bed with her husband thrusting hard, nearing his climax with increasing ardor, as she, her face filling the screen like the child under the knife, feels only pain. The most intimate act to which a wife submits incorporates the ultimate chain of command. Husbands pleasure themselves on top while wives endure agony below. Now, because early, forced and child marriage often accompany FGM, and Sembène is concerned with women’s human rights, a sub-theme in the marriage plot targets under-aged brides. The subject emerges from a conversation in French between Mercénaire and the Chief ’s son, familiar with “Western” ideas about age of consent. The latter’s betrothed is only eleven years old, a fact that enrages the peddler who minces no words. “Paedophile!” he hurls at the village nobleman who replies with a defiant middle finger.

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 Bishop, “Oppositional Approaches.”  Fyle et al., “#End FGM Animations.”

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Still, the movie ends with a suggestive glance exchanged between the Chief ’s handsome son and the attractive Bolokoro, Amsatou, Collé’s uncut daughter, lending the narrative a touch of Romeo and Juliet allure. She had been his fiancée until her intact status repels the young man’s father who, certain of his authority to do so, imposes another daughter-­ in-­law. This time, his son rebels, declaring in public that he will choose his own bride. The patriarch’s response? A whack that breaks the handle of his sunshade. Viewers never learn whether the star-crossed get together, though they might. Sembène has shown a deeply patriarchal people in transition, and media’s influence on their change of heart is strong. Yet liberal messages are contested and authority itself is in dispute, especially the communal right of men to chastise wayward women. The very evening after Mercénaire’s heroic interference as a husband flagellates his wife, a mob appears. Villagers in whiteface carry flaming torches as they drive him away only to murder him off-stage before they plunder his goods and cash. The weight of tradition is present in this outrage, as it is despite promises of progress in WAAFRIKA 123. Kenya. 1992. Two Womyn Fall in Love, by Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko.

WAAFRIKA 123 WAAFRIKA is possibly the only play that includes FGM as a crucial theme penned by a trans FtM (female to male) author, born in Tanzania, raised in Kenya and now in California. Not about FGM per se, the drama shows clitoral amputation as a crowd’s punishment of choice for challenging gender identity and gender roles. Like the murderous pack in Moolaadé, vigilantes understand a drought to result from celestial rage at a specific challenge to tradition. Just consider. Awino, the daughter of the Chief, has a female lover and in sex-play, imagines herself a male. As critic Michael V. Rodriguez, aware of his pronouns, has it, “Awino denounces their clitoris in favour of a penis.”18 The globe itself is out of kilter. So to set things right, a tribe, the Luo, which rarely practices clitoridectomy,  Rodriguez, “WAAFRIKA 123.”

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excises the African princess by force—and gang rapes her white mate. Where is authority here? In heteronormative and patriarchal violence. Yet the string of subtitles foresees an alternative. Kenya, in 1992, despite the death penalty for homosexuality, is enjoying increased freedoms, and a more open-minded regime may permit social mores to evolve. “On the eve of the country’s first democratic elections,” the playwright notes, everyone is brewing with expression, even in the tiny, rural village, Luoland, with no electricity or running water some 250 kilometers northwest of Nairobi. There, although lesbians “don’t exist” in Kenya, two women fall in love: Bobby, a blond American development worker and Awino from the Luo tribe. To complicate matters, Awino’s father is also the Chief who enforces traditions and codes. So when starvation strikes, the villagers blame the lesbians for innumerable deaths. To regain equilibrium, to make everything “normal” again, Awino – butch bordering on trans – must be “circumcised” by force so s/he can act like a real woman rather than a woman “who wants to be” a man.19

Before authority falls by default into the hands of the horde, it had been on the side of a hierarchy at whose apex is, unsurprisingly, the male. In an interview with 20% Theatre Company, where the play enjoyed a nine-­ night Twin Cities run in 2018, actor Dua Saleh underscores its challenge to “gender restrictions and limitations on sexuality [that] serve a functional purpose in patriarchal societies […] effectively benefit[ting] those at the top.”20 Emotions such as love and lust destabilize this scaffolding, erasing distinctions of rank and power and, if allowed free range, would, it is feared, lead to the mob. A work of queer fiction, one of WAAFRIKA’s most heuristic scenes links binary gender, as a man or a woman buttressed by a name, to ethnicity, that is, distinction from neighboring tribes. Searching for identity, Awino knows that social status depends on the reciprocal vision of others but, also aware of the post-modern challenge, s/he wants to (re)create the self from the inside out. The very quest is a recipe for instability 19 20

 Mwaluko, WAAFRIKA. Back cover description.  “WAAFRIKA 123 featured artist Dua Saleh.”

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excoriated by the Chief in a key exchange at Awino’s mother’s grave. Awino has moved in with Bobby and tongues wag. What is with this Mzungu (white) woman? The Chief inquires. The “neighbors hear strange noises coming from inside your kraal at night,” he states and wants to know whether it is true, what they say: that his daughter “eats like a man… sleeps like a man… dress[es] like a man.” Awino avoids answering directly, detouring into reasons why having moved away is helpful, permitting “questions I wouldn’t be able to ask if I were still at home. I can get to know who I really am. What I really want. Where I need to go to find it.” Indeed, it sounds as though Awino is lost, but that cannot be, from the Chief ’s perspective, for all things are already in place: You know very well what our customs are. Our women never wear trousers, never shave their hair for baldness, never leave their father’s home unless it is to marry a man from the Luo tribe, not living with a woman from United States. Tradition, that is what is inside you. Along with your name inscribed on the inside because it is deeper, bigger, stronger than anything you can hope to become.

To cement these reactionary views profoundly counter to the modern elevation of becoming over being, the Chief continues his interrogation: “Which is great—the name or the person behind it?” Awino offers the desired conservative answer. “The name makes the person great.” So what is Awino’s name? To “humor [the] ancestors,” the princess recites: Awino Eliel Mwendua Sechelele Odhiambo… meaning girl born early morning as the sun ripens after the choice moon whose nature brings peace and plenty at harvest as First-born daughter to the third wife of His Excellency Chief Odhiambo of the great Luo people. There Baba, my full name and full meaning.

Yes, that is the name, but missing is its origin. “Who named you?” the Chief asks. Awino says he—the father—did; then guesses the mother and finally admits, “I don’t know.” Gesturing toward the grave, the sovereign exhorts Awino to smell, feel and taste the earth that covers it, and when asked its flavor, the correct answer emerges: “Our tribe,” the collectivity

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superimposed on the individual daughter. When looking at Awino, the Chief sees a palimpsest, not her but himself plus Awino’s mother and a plethora of other people: I see our flesh joined in you. And I also see our village… Remember the route you took to come here? Remember how every person you saw greeted you  – from policeman to women at the market… They showed you respect… why? Because of what is written on your face. It says, These are my people. I belong here with my tribe… Same ancestors, same journey. … Whatever you wish to be – inside, outside or otherwise – Luo runs through your blood.

Awino gets the father’s point but remains confused. When he asks what s/he feels, “Two different things at once,” is the reply. The heart says, “Yes, Awino. Your home is here among your own.” But then… new questions liv[e] inside me… more intense than anything my own people can offer… These feelings tell me there is a new way to live in the… world. And Baba… for the very first time in my life, I’m not afraid to confront them.

What WAAFRIKA shares with Bintou, Sharifa and Moolaadé is the outside coming in, not in the form of colonial oppression but as liberation wrenched from disruption of traditional gender rules. In Weil-Curiel’s fiction, Mali arrives in Paris. In Sharifa’s Three Wishes, Agid mentions changes in the cutting custom that have reached her ears from more urban centers. And in Moolaadé, the radios as well as the two men who have lived abroad import an egalitarian ethos. What sets WAAFRIKA apart is its radical portrait of gender tied to on-stage voluptuous, raunchy carnality, insouciant about sex taboos conservative societies maintain to contain the disruptive potential of lust. As Tracie Jones suggests, “Powerful and fearless… Mwaluko’s ground-breaking drama challenges our local and global imaginings of African love and sexual identity. [The] play nuances the struggle for a sense of self as male and female and should kindle an urgent dialogue about entrapment in the gender binary.”21 Excision cements the trap. Just as circumcision makes the man, so too 21

 See Jones, Back cover endorsement. WAAFRIKA. 123.

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does excision create the woman. The female emerges from a literal reduction via amputation of the clitoris, the only organ in any body destined to serve Eros alone. As Simone de Beauvoir suggests in Le deuxième sexe [The Second Sex], women are made, not born. And handmaid to the gender divide is the cutters’ tool.

Stones Unlike excision which seeks to diminish the authority of its victims, queer discourse aims to empower. In other words, gender fluidity is inimical to cutting. Can a growing acceptance of LGBTQ, polyamory and other varieties of sexual play and identity end FGM? What can stop the blades? After campaigning for more than forty years, we still do not know. What we do know is that one serious impediment to abolition is the support of women strongly identified with their assigned roles. How is this to be explained? Theories abound. The sociological—patriarchy; the psychological—fear; the theological—anguish in light of a fierce conviction that mystical forces demand conformity. We could add the economic: cutters benefit directly and mothers indirectly when the monetary (barter) value of married-off daughters enriches an entire homestead. Yet another claim, less easily parsed, holds that female authorship of FGM is a source of women’s power. Agid’s neighbors remind her of this, as would the Sierra Leonean Bondo and secret societies elsewhere, including in Liberia and in Moolaadé. But as Sembène shows, excision empowers some women, namely those already endowed with social capital. Again, the collectivity is in charge, with threat of exile being the ultimate tool for keeping the wayward contained. Jeanie Kortum’s prize-winning novel Stones explores why, like Sharifa, another Ur-mother requires her minions to maintain the custom. Since birth is also the Ur-expulsion, maybe in delivery and maternity we will find a clue to the terror inherent in the threat of separation. And blood shed surely plays a significant role. First, though, what is Stones about? According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: “Not since Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy has a novel so boldly placed female genital mutilation at its heart. Stones does not turn away but looks directly at this ancient rite,

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encompassing and also challenging modernity’s response to it.”22 A poetic tour de force in the genre of magical realism, replete with thick metaphor, Stones reminds me of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and James Joyce’s Ulysses in the complexity of textual performance which, never sacrificing clarity, leads the reader toward an understanding of female complicity in cutting as blood sacrifice. In short, if plasma is assumed to have mystical, perilous power—think simply of menstruation taboos—the authority to make it flow from the region of greatest awe, the vulva, adds to a woman’s status. In other words, hostility sheds male warriors’ blood; fertility is conjured when female chieftains cause it to flow.23 Inspired by matriarchal power inferred from prehistoric female sculptures judged to be religious objects, Stones introduces Emely/Amely, a UCLA researcher in “Narrative Anthropology” with a Western and a tribal moniker in search of her own identity and that of the Ur-mother. Having completed her MA, she returns to study the remote, undocumented tribe she had left at age seven when, to keep her intact, her mother placed her in a boarding school that led to the University of Nairobi and a post-doc in the United States. But she never learned why she had been sent away. Sealing the maternal lips was fear of breaking the taboo against naming what had been done to her as a girl and what she hoped to spare her child. But Emely/Amely feels abandoned. After many years abroad, hoping to reconnect, she accepts an assignment that brings her home. Home is an isolated tribe possessing sacred knowledge, an Ur-script purportedly the oldest document ever procured. It is connected to the Great Mother who, however, is dying of neglect. She withdraws from nature in response, and famine looms. It can only be averted by providing the nourishment of choice: a girl’s spilled genital blood, the cutting in turn to be undertaken by a stranger, a Messiah, identified as the desired sacred “Stone Woman.” Emily, now Amely, slips into this role. The allegorical portrayal, a mélange of tribal myth and present belief, confronts the protagonist with contradictions. She accepts to become the Messianic  Gates, Back cover endorsement. Stones.  In many private conversations over chicken potpies, the late Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond OBE insisted on the link between FGM and fertility. She was an expert on excision in Sierra Leone. 22 23

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figure but rejects FGM. Her education ensures her dismissal of the blade, possible in the absence of fear that kept her mother silent. Hence, Amely/ Emely denounces; she escapes; and although the virgin whose vulva was to be proudly slashed and sewn is indeed cut, she does not stay cut. Enter the Deus ex Machina: “The Great Mother has returned her to her birth anatomy” and proclaimed an end to FGM: “The cutting of women’s parts will never be sanctioned by any force that honors life,” the Great Mother decrees. “This is a crime so sinister, so well designed, it is perpetrated not by the oppressors but by the oppressed themselves.”24 If an antidote exists, it arises from a benediction that the Great Mother offers. FGM defiles not only the excised girl, she proclaims, but the maternal as well. “Nothing beautiful or strong comes from bodies” whose sexuality has been tainted. Only “anger, pain, [and] resentment” ensue. “This is not what I wish for my women. I want them to live full, lusty lives, speaking with all their parts, singing the music of their sighs. I want them ardent, praying, crying, kissing, and coupling.”25 Where then does authority reside? In the blade at the service of a patriarchal ethos hostile to sexual fulfillment, especially for women. But also, once the fight is won, in integrity, that is, in human frames, female and male, left to mature unharmed.

References Filmography Bintou in Paris. 1994. Video Cassette. Directed by Kirsten Johnson, Julia Pimsleur and Linda Weil-Curiel. Paris: CAMS, Commission for the Abolition of Sexual Mutilations. Die Drei Wünsche der Sharifa. Bei den Kunama in Eritrea. 2000. DVD. Directed by Klaus Werner and Uschi Madeisky. Frankfurt am Main: Colorama Filmand TV Produktion.

 Kortum, Stones, 324–25.  Ibid., 324.

24 25

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Fyle, Janet, Isolde Godfrey, Jess Harvey, Holly Willmott. #End FGM Animations. Woven Ink. https://www.wovenink.co.uk/endfgm-animations/. Accessed 17 November 2018. Moolaadé. 2004. DVD.  Directed by Ousmane Sembène. London: Curzon Artificial Eye, Distributor.

Bibliography Abdi, Nura. 2003/2004. Watering the Dunes with Tears. Trans. Tobe Levin. Feminist Europa. Review of Books 3–4: 28–33. http://www.stiftung-frauenforschung.de/attachments/article/81/issn_1570_0038_neu_FE%20 03_2004.pdf. Accessed 09 July 2020. Bishop, Stephen. 2009. Oppositional Approaches to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in African Literature. In Empathy and Rage. Female Genital Mutilation in African Literature, ed. Tobe Levin and Augustine Asaah, 38–51. Oxfordshire: Ayebia. Dashu, Max. 2011. Sociopolitical Aspects of the Andinnas. Veleda, February 26. https://www.sourcememory.net/veleda/?p=97. Accessed 09 July 2020. de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. Le deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 2017. Back Cover Endorsement. In Jeanie Kortum, Stones. Foreword by Tobe Levin. Phoenix/Frankfurt am Main: She Writes Press/UnCUT VOICES Press. El Guindi, Fadwa. 2006. ‘Had This Been Your Face, Would You Leave It as Is?’ Female Circumcision Among the Nubians of Egypt. In Female Circumcision: Multicultural Perspectives, ed. Abusharaf Rogaia Mustafa, 27–46. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Jones, Tracie. 2016. Back Cover Endorsement. WAAFRIKA. 123. 1992. Kenya. Two womyn fall in love. Frankfurt am Main: UnCUT/VOICES Press. Joyce, James. 1922. Ulysses. Paris: Sylvia Beach. Kortum, Jeanie. 2017. Stones. Phoenix/Frankfurt am Main: She Writes Press & UnCUT/VOICES Press (co-imprint). Kuring, Diana. 2009/2010. Female Genital Mutilation in Eritrea. Trans. Tobe Levin. Feminist Europa. Review of Books 9–10: 105–39. http://www.ddv-verlag.de/issn_1570_0038_FE%2009_2010.pdf. Accessed 09 July 2020. Levin, Tobe. 1983. Solidarische Rassistinnen: Bericht über eine Konferenz in Senegal. Emma, February.

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———. 2008. Creative Writing of FGM as an Act of Violence and Human Rights Abuse. In Violence: ‘Mercurial Gestalt’, ed. Tobe Levin, 111–124. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. Morrison, Toni. 1987. Beloved. New York: Alfred Knopf. Mwaluko, Nick Hadikwa. 2016. WAAFRIKA 123. Kenya. 1992. Two womyn fall in love. Frankfurt am Main: UnCUT/VOICES Press. Rodriguez, Michael V. 2018. WAAFRIKA 123 Transfixes with Fire, at TheatreFIRST, Berkeley. Theatrius, May 13. https://www.theatrius. com/2018/05/13/waafrika-123-transfixes-with-fire-at-theatrefirst-berkeley/. Accessed 09 July 2020. Source Memory Net. 2011. Andinnas of the Kunama. February 26. https:// www.sourcememory.net/veleda/?p=77. Accessed 07 July 2020. Thiam, Awa. 1978. La Parole aux négresses. Paris: Dcnoël-Gauthier. “WAAFRIKA 123 featured artist Dua Saleh.” 2018. 20% Theatre Company Twin Cities, November 9. http://www.tctwentypercent.org/waafrika-123-featured-artist-dua-saleh/. Accessed 09 July 2020. Walker, Alice, and Pratibha Parmar. 1993. Warrior Marks. Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women. New York: Harcourt Brace.

14 The Authority of Pornography F. Vera-Gray

Introduction The dichotomies structuring the pornography debates, typically divided into camps of pro and anti, allow little space for exploration of the overlaps between positions and the ambiguity within. Answers to addressing the existence of sexism in pornography, for example, are commonly split in similar ways to the sexualization debates: either sexual protection— reduce or limit what is available—or sexual celebration—increase or expand what is available.1 In this an account of women’s sexual agency is reproduced as either unconstrained, thus equally available to all, or constrained and thus not really free: we are either empowered or victims. Such divisions are implicated in the minimal empirical attention paid to women’s relationships to porn. This absence is notable given the  See Gavey, “Beyond Empowerment?”; also Vera-Gray, “Girlhood, Agency, and Embodied Space.”

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F. Vera-Gray (*) Durham University, Durham, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_14

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breadth of theoretical work on women and porn,2 much of which posits pornography as a useful vehicle for the expression of women’s sexual subjectivity often to the detriment of fully addressing the ambiguity that one finds in women’s actual accounts, the ambivalence in their attitudes and the multiplicity of their positions. Previous research on women’s relationships to pornography has consistently found that there is no universal “woman’s” experience of pornography.3 This supports an intersectional approach that pays attention to how the lived experience of pornography is mediated through the context within which it is encountered; a context which is shaped by gender, as well as by age, sexuality, ethnicity, ability and class. Despite this, much empirical research has stalled at analyses focused on cause and effect, even with agreement across positions on pornography as to the problems in such an approach.4 Philosophical approaches have also largely left the embodied “doing” of pornography unaddressed,5 focusing instead on an ongoing discussion about whether pornography is a form of speech and if so, what kind.6 In such an arena, Robin Morgan’s famous injunction that “[p]ornography is the theory, and rape the practice”7 has been dismissed as an expression of a causal relationship, the notion that pornography causes rape, a claim that is unable to capture the lived ambiguities of how agents act, and are acted on, in situation. If instead we take up the revision of Andrea Dworkin that “[p]ornography is the theory, pornography is the practice,”8 we are invited to move towards an exploration of how pornography functions in relation to our  For examples, see Juffer, At Home with Pornography; Smith, One for the Girls!; Ziv, Explicit Utopias.  Ciclitira, “Pornography, Women and Feminism”; Senn, “Women’s Multiple Perspectives”; Parvez, “The Labor of Pleasure.” 4  See the discussion by Segal, “Does Pornography Cause Violence?”; and from an anti-pornography perspective, Boyle, “The pornography Debates.” 5  See, for example, Langton, Sexual Solipsism; Saul, “On Treating Things as People”; and Vadas, “The Manufacture.” 6  Mason-Grant, Pornography Embodied. 7  Morgan, “Theory and Practice,” 139. 8  Referenced by MacKinnon as personal communication. See MacKinnon, “From Practice to Theory,” 21. 2 3

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understandings of sex and sexuality. Such a move is not the same as arguing for a supra-social account, denying the existence of the self outside of social construction. Nor is it claiming a direct causal line from theory into practice. Rather, it invites us to ask questions about how pornography operates as a “social institution,” organizing and authorizing our sexual practices and pleasures. Drawing on empirical research with one hundred women on their relationships with and experiences of online mainstream pornography, this chapter shows how their accounts demonstrate the authoritative position of porn in relation to their experiences of sex and sexuality. This authority revealed itself through the positioning of pornography as a legitimate and legitimating power in relation to sex and desire. Similar to previous findings on the influence of pornography on men’s sexual practices,9 women spoke about pornography as functioning not just as sexual fantasy but also in ways that manifested in their everyday sexual lives. These functions are categorized here into three key areas: pornography as a form of expression or conversation about sex and desire (articulating sex); pornography as a way to explore or validate sex and desire (legitimating sex); and pornography as a means to judge expectations and gain instruction on sex and desire (demonstrating sex). Given the nature of online pornography, distributed mostly by men to men,10 such legitimating power should be understood as gendered, reinscribing a maleoriented understanding of sexual practices and pleasures. Before entering the study’s findings this chapter gives a brief outline of the research methods and sample characteristics. It then moves to detailing women’s accounts of the function of porn in their lives in terms of the three key areas above, namely pornography as expression, as exploration and as expectation. The chapter ends in considering the implications of the analysis for moving the porn debates forward, suggesting that an understanding of pornography as “social institution” might help in situating the practice and meaning of porn for individuals within its social and structural functions.

 Sun et al., “Pornography and the Male Sexual Script”; Bridges et al., “Sexual Scripts.”  Johnson, “Mapping the Feminist Political Economy.”

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Talking to Women About Porn The accounts given here are drawn from a wider project on women’s experiences of mainstream online pornography. The project, Women on Porn,11 involved an online questionnaire together with in-depth telephone interviews with one hundred women.12 Participation was open to women over the age of 18 who were living in the United Kingdom at the time of the study. Questions were developed through building on the two largest previous studies of women’s relationships to pornography, and aimed to cover the range of relationships to pornography.13 Recruitment came from a variety of sources, and aimed to encourage participation from women without a clear position on pornography, as well as to increase participation from groups under-represented in pornography research.14 The questionnaire closed with a total of 1,684 respondents. Women completing the questionnaire were directed to a page where they could leave contact details if they wanted to talk more about their responses through an in-depth interview. Contact details were held separate to their questionnaire responses in order to maintain anonymity. In addition, interview information was available through the project website, and links to this were included in all blogs and advertisements for the project. In total 229 requests for interview were received, resulting in 122 booked interviews, of which 100 took place. Interviews were held between March and July 2017 and were conducted over the phone or audio-only Skype, digitally recorded, and professionally transcribed.15  For more information, see the project website www.womenonporn.org  The questionnaire was hosted on Survey Monkey between October 1, 2016, and December 31, 2016, and comprised fifty questions ranging from first exposure to initial access, pornography refusal and regular practice, including most used search terms and sites. 13  See Ciclitira, “Pornography, Women and Feminism”; Senn, “Women’s Multiple Perspectives.” 14  The survey link was sent out through social media networks. Several high profile feminists shared the link, including Caitlin Moran and the Guilty Feminist Podcast. In addition, paid advertising was used to target minoritized ethnic women, with adverts appearing in the Voice, Gal-Dem and the Eastern Eye and a call for participation circulated among Black British studies academic networks. Blogs were also written for the Voice, the Women’s Equality Party, Mumsnet and Shh! Women’s Erotic Boutique. 15  Participants were asked to choose a name for the research process and publication. Some used their real names as a way of challenging the silence around women speaking about pornography, 11 12

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The decision not to conduct interviews face to face was initially a practical one, due to reasons of geography and number of participants; however, on reflection, this method proved immensely useful in enabling women to speak about difficult subjects including, for some, the types of pornography they used, histories of abuse and experiences of masturbation and sex. Interviews averaged an hour, and participants were invited to share any thoughts following the interview via an anonymous online form. Eight interviewees shared follow up information. An interview schedule was developed to guide the semi-structured interviews. The schedule was centered around exploration of women’s engagements with pornography, what Maria Garner has termed their “pornography biographies.”16 Women were invited to talk through their experiences of pornography from the first time, through any experiences with partners, up to their relationship to it today.

Sample Characteristics Participants were asked to self-define their age, ethnicity, sexuality, class and religious beliefs, including those outside a formal religion. These categories have been collapsed to allow for an analysis of demographic spread and to help maintain participant anonymity. Almost half of all participants fell into the 25–34 age range (45%), with the other half divided between 35–44 (24%), 18–24 (16%), 45–54 (12%) and 55 and over (3%). Just over three quarters (77%) of participants identified as being from a White ethnic background, with 15% from a Black ethnic group, 5% with dual heritage (Black-White, Asian-White, or Arab-White) and just 3% identifying themselves as having an Asian ethnicity. A wide range of sexualities was given by participants. In particular women identifying as bisexual in the sample is significantly larger than others used pseudonyms. Some women were asked to choose pseudonyms, or different pseudonyms, in order to allow a unique name for each participant. Transcripts were thematically coded in NVIVO. For the data presented here, this coding began with the broad code of function. This code was used to look beyond the level of pornography’s use for masturbation, aiming instead for a deeper understanding of the roles of pornography in women’s sexual lives. 16  Garner, Conflicts, Contradictions and Commitments.

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would be expected in the general population.17 Broadly, sexuality was grouped into five categories: asexual (2%), bisexual (35%), heterosexual (46%), lesbian (7%) and other (10%). The “other” category included where participants said they were unsure or questioning, or gave answers such as sexual or fluid. Half of participants identified as middle class (50%) and over a quarter identified as working class (28%). The remainder were lower middle class (11%), upper middle class (5%) and unsure (4%). In addition, the vast majority of participants were either atheist (59%) or agnostic (13%), with the remaining quarter of participants identifying across a range of religious belief systems including as Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan and Sikh. As attributing all of a participant’s demographics to their quotes here could make them identifiable—particularly given the uniqueness of some religious and class identifiers—only information regarding participants’ age, ethnicity and sexuality is used.

The Functions of Pornography Building on the broad agreement across varying positions on pornography about the problems with attempting to establish causality between pornography consumption and sexual action,18 meta-analyses on the evidence on pornography and young people have adopted a slightly different approach: that of sexual scripts.19 Sexual scripts refer to what we understand sex to be, across five connected areas: (1) what is considered sex, (2) who sex is for, (3) what events/acts should or should not happen in sex, (4) how people should respond to these events/acts, and (5) the  In 2016, when this study took place, census estimates for women bisexuals sat at under 1% of the population, compared to over one third of the research participants. 18  See for example Boyle, “The Pornography Debates”; Segal, “Does Pornography Cause Violence?.” 19  Braithwaite et al., “The Influence of Pornography”; Fritz and Paul, “From Orgasms to Spanking”; Sun et  al., “Pornography and the Male Sexual Script”; Zhou and Paul, “Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady.” 17

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consequences of the sex events/acts.20 Scripts can differ across individuals as they are influenced by a range of sources—some of which are shared (such as religion) and some of which are not (such as family). They can also change across our life course through interaction with different sexual partners or through different sexual experiences, as well as being influenced by popular culture—such as the meanings and practices of sex we see represented in mainstream movies or novels. Applied to the study of pornography, sexual script theory suggests that through porn, users can acquire understandings about sexual practices and desires, activate existing understandings of sexual practices and desires and apply understandings of sexual practices and desires.21 In this way, unlike causal theories, exploring pornography through the lens of sexual scripts allows space for the role of agency in how the lessons of pornography are taken up by the individual, at the same time recognizing how pornography forms part of the landscape through which individual expressions of agency are realized.22 Importantly, sexual script theory operates mostly at the level of the individual; that is, the focus is on the individual in terms of what is acquired, activated and applied. Yet women’s descriptions of the functions of pornography suggest the need for conceptual tools that can account for something a little different from this. What their accounts reveal is how, in addition to operating on an individual level, pornography has both a social and structural function. Though their experience of porn differed, it was understood in a similar way, namely, as a form of expression or conversation about sex and desire, as a way to explore or validate sex and desire and as a means to judge expectations and gain instruction on sex and desire. Taken together, such similarities demonstrate a shared understanding of pornography as a “social institution,”23 one that acts to authorize sexual practice and pleasure.  Zhou and Paul, “Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady.”  Wright, “Pornography and the Sexual Socialization of Children.” 22  Vera-Gray and McGlynn, “Regulating Pornography.” 23  The defining features of a social institution as drawn on here are outlined by Yancey Martin, “Gender as Social Institution.” 20 21

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Pornography as Expression and Conversation As Ashley explains, the use of pornography as a tool for expressing sex and sexuality was understood by many participants as indelibly connected to a wider cultural silence around sex. I think the best thing about having pornography in society is that it will hopefully open up a wider dialogue, no pun intended, hopefully it’ll open up a wider dialogue about sex and respect as well as consent and all the kinds of politics that surround it. Because sex education at school was appalling so it’s no wonder why a lot of guys and a lot girls turn to porn. (Ashley, 25–34, Black African, Bisexual)

This silence extended to include the body, in particular women’s bodies as sexually desiring, not only sexually desirable. In the absence of social dialogue about the female sexual body—distinct from the female sexualized body24—women like Sorrel talked about pornography as an expression of what the body looks like, as well as what it does. It’s weird to think of it now but you have this thing that was part of your body, which is your vagina, but you never looked at it, especially being Caribbean, all you were told is that you have to wash it and you have to wash it three times a day, and it has to be exceptionally clean but you weren’t really allowed to look at it or do anything, it was supposed to be covered and you have to keep your legs crossed. I remember with my brother’s porn magazines, even though those images were white women, I was looking at it and thinking, “Oh, does it have that, does it have lips?” Then I would think, I wondered if mine was like that because I’m a little black girl and these are white women. It was always about gaining information from outside, even though it wasn’t really even me but it was me. (Sorrel, 45–54, African Caribbean British, Sexual)

For Alig, this expressive role was not only about individuals; pornography can also work to express desired and desirable sexual acts to a sexual partner. Combined with the descriptions of Ashley and Sorrel, we start to see  Jackson and Scott, “Embodying Orgasm.”

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one of the social functions of pornography: in the absence of broader conversations, porn becomes a way of communicating sex and sexual pleasure to ourselves and to others. Well, if you’re going to watch porn together then it has to be something that you’re both comfortable with. So you need to, in some ways, talk about what you like to watch, and then find something that you both like. But it’s kind of hot. I mean, I guess with that partner I was comfortable to say what I liked and what I didn’t. But sometimes you watch some things and it can be, “Oh actually, I’d like to try that.” Or, “Oh, I really don’t like that.” Or, “Oh, I like that, I forgot to say.” Whatever, you know, like, sometimes things come up and you’re like, “Yeah actually, I like that.” (Alig, 25–34, White Other, Unsure)

Some women spoke of a conflict in how handing over this function to pornography can in fact limit what is and can be articulated as sex. Their concern lies in how, by functioning to enable sexual expression, the sexual pleasures and practices most commonly represented in pornography become the “dominant narrative” on sex,25 in effect establishing a hegemonic sexual script against which others are measured. I mean, for me personally, I think it’s a good thing. I think it can help the conversation about sex being a lot more open. Because porn is so readily available and it’s everywhere, and it’s easier to talk about sex, I think. But then, I’m not sure the conversations that it leads to are necessarily good ones. Just because you’re talking about porn it doesn’t mean you’re having a good conversation. So in terms of the expectations it creates, people might see things in porn and it might lead to amounts of conversation amongst friends about whatever they’ve seen. But the conversation might be, “I want to do that.” And it may be that whatever you’ve seen may be something particularly extreme that you may not, or shouldn’t, be practicing, you know, if you’re not an experienced person trying these things. I worry about the kinds of conversations it might lead to in that respect, but also it can lead to good conversations, just about sex generally, about what people like, which is a good thing. (Angelica, 25–34, Black British, Heterosexual) 25

 McKenzie-Mohr and Lafrance, “Telling Stories Without the Words.”

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The best thing was that it semi-normalized sex, because you know in a society where we don’t talk about it and you never mention it and everyone’s doing it but no one can say that they’re doing it, it was, you know, there’s lots of proof that people are having sex. The flip side of that is they’re not, are they? It’s a performance and a director requested a particular thing, even down to a camera angle, they’re after a male viewpoint, aren’t they? So, in hindsight that’s not at all what’s happening, but a few years ago that is how I saw it. That it was a way to normalize sex and to learn a bit more about different experiences that I might want to have. (Nat, 18–24, White, Heterosexual)

As Nat’s account shows, some participants connected the use of pornography as a vehicle to communicate about sex and sexuality to its use as a tool for sexual exploration. Such a connection speaks to another social function of pornography, this time as a practice that legitimates sexual scripts.

Pornography as Exploration and Validation Both Alex and Abigail spoke positively about the validating function of pornography. For them, this function again sits firmly within a social context that allows little space for women to explore or endorse their sexual desires in relation to those of other women. It’s very affirming to find porn with the sex that I like, that is really varied and multifaceted and really interesting for me, for all sorts of reasons, personally. My identity as a very sexual being has been affirmed by it, I guess. Because I have been at school or in particular social groups that are more judging of sexuality, or just more uncomfortable with open conversations about it. Being able to have my own outlet, that isn’t related to anyone else and doesn’t depend on anyone else. I can tell everyone else to bugger off and I’d still have it, at the end of the day, and I’d be fine. (Alex, 25–34, White British, Bisexual) I think personally it’s been the source of my sex ed, my sexual aspiration, I feel like it filled a void where my school did not teach me about anything.

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And obviously I have a job now with regards to it which is helpful but more personally than that, it made me feel valued and valid and it made me realize my desires and it made me comfortable in a way that I was able to go out and pursue those that was safe, in a way that was informed and in a way that helped me be empowered, that helped me to know what I want and to be able to explore myself sexually as well. (Abigail, 18–24, White British, Sexual)

Alongside descriptions of how pornography worked to affirm sexual pleasures, women also spoke about using pornography as a means to safely explore sexual practices without the commitment of doing this with another person. This is not only about pornography authorizing existing desires, but also being used as an authoritative source of inspiration and experimentation, as Ella and Trish describe. It’s enjoyable and it can be eye opening as well, it’s a way for you to explore the things that are possible, things that you might potentially enjoy that you wouldn’t necessarily come across otherwise until you found like a partner who would suggest it or like through their own experimentation. I think that’s valuable and I think it’s just an enjoyable tool that people can use for their own pleasure. (Ella, 18–24, White European, Heterosexual) I think watching porn definitely made me go “Oh, I like the look of what’s happening in that video, I want to try that out” so I guess that helped with some things, you know, with being confident in what I want or what I definitely don’t want on the other flip side. (Trish, 25–34, White Irish, Heterosexual)

Here pornography functions to open out what is possible as “sex,” with this broader understanding for some translating into sexual practice. This movement shows the ways in which the functions of pornography are not wholly separate and exclusive. The exploratory function can become more instructive, as Sadie explains. It’s also opened my eyes to different kinds of sex and sexual practices, because often we’re made to feel that only straight “vanilla sex” exists and I think that has allowed me to be a bit more creative when I’m having sex. I

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learned to give oral sex to men, for example, through a combination of porn and tutoring from a partner. If I was ever faced with the prospect of giving oral sex to a woman, I think I’d look to porn for tips. (Sadie, 25–34, Black Caribbean, Heterosexual)

Though for some exploration and instruction were connected, more often the exploratory function of pornography was described as a means in itself. This exploration was linked to fantasy, a way of exploring the possibilities of sexual practice and desire without any commitment or intention to bring this into one’s own sexual life. I guess it’s given me quite a lot of sexual pleasure, I suppose. It’s a place to put those darker fantasies that you don’t necessarily ever want to do in real life. I’m not particularly guilty person but it’s not something that you’d have a place to explore otherwise and I guess occasionally there’s stuff that I wouldn’t perhaps even want to share with a partner, although that feels maybe ambivalent. (Leonora, 35–44, White British, Lesbian) I think being able to fantasize and being able to vicariously have sex that I would never feel safe having, or don’t even want to have. So, I think I’ve learnt through experience that things that I fantasize about aren’t necessarily the kind of sex that I want to have. So I really love not hardcore BDSM, but I want to watch and fantasize about really hardcore BDSM. So being able to see other people do that sort of stuff and fantasize about it gives me that. I can have those experiences a little bit but not actually have to have them, which is good. (Harper, 25–34, White British, Bisexual)

Like Harper, Stine directly links this function of fantasy to notions of safety, in particular for Stine this is safety from sexual violence. This connection reveals the importance of understanding women’s accounts of their pornography use as stemming from a particular context where expressions of women’s sexuality are not just discouraged but positioned in terms of danger. I would probably say it provides a space to explore certain things that you might be interested in without having to put your own body in that situation. So when I was exploring the idea that anal might be something I was

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interested in, it allowed me to look and see do I get turned on by watching these images? Do I get turned on by the idea of it, before I’ve already committed myself to a situation where I’ve said to a guy, “Yes cool, go on then,” and something like that because again, I do feel, and it’s wrong and I know it’s wrong, but when you enter into a sexual situation, if you’ve consented to do one thing and you change your mind, it’s almost like it’s too late and that’s wrong because it’s never too late. I can tell you to get the fuck off me but it’s almost easier to just go along with it than voice your lack of concern and have it ignored, which is a pretty sorry state of affairs, isn’t it? (Stine, 25–34, White, Heterosexual)

The importance of situating women’s experiences of pornography within a social order that limits women’s sexuality at the same time as requiring it is thus brought forward. It is not enough to highlight the role of porn as a vehicle for women to explore sexual fantasies they may feel unsafe to practice. Discussions of pornography must be situated: accounting for and addressing the broader social context where, for many women, heterosex is a site of unsafety.

Pornography as Expectation and Instruction Overwhelmingly, the most common function of pornography for most participants was as a form of instruction. As shown in the discussion of pornography as expression, this use of porn must be understood as arising out of a context where sexual pleasure and practice, particularly for women, remains stigmatized and unspoken. This led to many women speaking about seeking out pornography in their childhood and adolescence to gain information on what sex looks like and how to do it. I got a little bit obsessed with it when I was that age, you know, and I think it was like this thirst for knowledge because nudity, we don’t walk around naked as perhaps nature intended, anymore and adults really don’t want to talk to us about sex and things like that, so I was kind of like “Oh, maybe I could learn something.” (Amelia, 25–34, White Irish, Bisexual)

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I think if I just wanted to learn certain things, I would just go on and just be like, “Oh what’s that about?” Because even like within the [Black British] community, a lot of the time when people speak about things, you still don’t know. Like for example, you’ll hear men talking about if a woman knows how to be on top, she needs to know how to ride. So, when I would see things like that in music and stuff, I’d be like okay, I need to know how to do this because it’s the expectation of me that I should know how to ride and be on top. So, I would go and look that up and be like okay, I need to learn how to do that. (Bonita, 25–34, Black British, Heterosexual)

While for some women pornography functioned as a useful way to learn what was expected of them sexually, for others such expectation was experienced as alienating them from developing their own expectations of sex, as Makeda describes. Well I think that particularly if I consider how young children are, I was twelve when I first saw porn and I know that I’m certainly willing to bet my right hand that my cousins, my mum’s cousin’s children whose house I watched it at, they will have seen it much earlier than that. So those are our first expressions of human sexuality that we’re exposed to and we grow up thinking that that’s what it is and that’s what we think is normal and that we then try to reproduce in our own sexual lives. That’s some fucked up shit, excuse my French, because it completely limits our possibilities to truly know ourselves and to really open up to another person and then let another person get to know us, sexually and in other ways because I think sex is linked to many other parts of our relationship, be those relationships intimate or not. (Makeda, 45–54, Black African, Heterosexual)

Pornography’s instructive role wasn’t limited to women’s early experiences. Some participants spoke about returning to porn during their sexual lives in order to learn new skills or refresh how to do sex and pleasure. This suggests that the “acquiring” nature of sexual scripts should be understood as an iterative process in relation to pornography, a process that can extend across one’s sexual life. I think there was a point in my life where I’d never given a blow job. And I guess that at one point it was kind of like I was watching porn to see how

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other women do it, to get, like, almost like a little tutorial. I think that’s the only time I’ve probably watched it for a particular purpose though, other than just to get off. (Kush D., 35–44, African, Straight) Sometimes I’ll watch something and be like “That looks really hot, I want to try that” like if someone’s kind of fucking you from behind and then they might like pull you up so that they’re kind of like holding you and then you’re a bit more upright, like I remember thinking, “Oh I really want someone to do that to me” and then I got someone to do that to me and it was fun, so like definitely [learning] positions and stuff. (Zoe, 25–34, White Jewish, Fluid/Bisexual)

Pornography’s instructive role was experienced not only by women directly—learning what to do themselves—but also for many women through their sexual experiences with men. Kirsten discusses this in relation to the sexual practices of an ex-boyfriend who used pornography and how she experienced his behavior as instructed through porn. There were a couple of times in sex where he did something and I didn’t understand what he was doing. He held me on the bed, he held my neck. He wasn’t strangling me, he wasn’t that extreme. It was just—oh no it wasn’t my neck it was my hair. He pulled my hair back and I didn’t understand what he was doing. I never said that I liked that. To me it just seemed weird. And I just immediately, my immediate instinct of response in my head was I’m sure he’s seen this in porn. Like, I don’t know why he thinks that I like this when I really don’t. Get your hand out of my hair. (Kirsten, 25–34, White British, Heterosexual)

Lubna’s abusive ex-husband also understood the instructive role of pornography, but drew on it more explicitly. She describes how he used it as a tool both to teach her what was expected of her sexually and to justify his own violence. He became quite violent. I connect those two things together. I’m absolutely sure that what he was seeing was what he was acting out on me. Within a couple of days [of marriage], he’d forced me to perform oral sex on him and I had no idea. I can’t even begin to tell you how naïve about

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sex I was. He actually said to me, “This is what people do. Do you want to watch one of these films and I’ll show you what women who know what to do, do for their men?” […] he would refer back to these videos. “I’ll show you. You watch them with me. You will see what these women do to make their men happy.” (Lubna, 45–54, British Asian, Heterosexual)

These two routes for pornography to act as instruction—through one’s own access and through the access of those with whom one has a sexual relationship—do not exist in silos. Instead they can act to reinforce each other, with the authority of pornography constituted and reconstituted through such recurrence. The process needed for porn to operate in this way, as with expression and exploration, is necessarily a social one: this individual function needs to be recognized and enacted by others in order for it to work for oneself. This demonstrates how the lived experience of pornography is both as an individual and social practice. It is this understanding that provides the basis for situating pornography as a social institution.

Pornography as a Social Institution The differences seen across the ways in which women experience the function of pornography in their lives—from Alex’s positive experience of her personal use as a form of affirmation, to Makeda’s belief that porn has limited her ability to express herself sexually—reveal the need for a conceptual approach that can acknowledge the weight of dominant narratives on the sexual scripts of individual actors, without universalizing experience or discounting the individual’s ability to resist and remake meaning. This need must be balanced with the ways in which the shared functions of pornography across women’s accounts demonstrates that it is not enough to theorize porn only in terms of its being an individual practice with individual meanings. What is clear is that there is something more structural going on here in terms of pornography being understood as the authoritative voice on how to speak sex, do sex and be sexual. Such a role is made explicit in the accounts of Eleanor and Maddie.

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I think there’s probably a lot of subtle ways in which me and all of my partners have been influenced by the kind of pornography that we’ve watched. And that definitely plays a role in kind of what I expect in sex and probably what they expect too. So, for example – this is something that I’ve made an effort to fight against since identifying its role in my life and behavior and expectations in the bedroom – but actually I’m not expecting the same amount of kind of like oral sex from my partner as I would be happy to give them. I think especially when I was younger as well, feeling like I should make really sort of loud melodramatic noises when I come, that sort of thing. (Eleanor, 25–34, White British, Bisexual) I think a lot of pornography is used to shape sex. I think they’re similar in some ways and different in other ways. I’m a lesbian and I feel like my experience of sex is very different from that depicted in pornography, they’re just parallel worlds basically, whereas I think that pornography is often used as sort of an educational tool for men and women I think, to depict how this is what sex is like, if you’re not doing it this way then you’re doing it wrong. (Maddie, 18–24, White British, Lesbian)

To help make sense of this structural function without undermining individual action, Sally Haslanger’s work on social practices and Patricia Yancey Martin’s on social institutions are both particularly useful. For Haslanger, understanding social practices begins with an understanding of what she terms “cultural schemas.” These are clusters “of culturally shared mental states and processes, including concepts, attitudes, dispositions, and such, that enable us to interpret and organize information and coordinate action, thought, and affect.”26 Cultural schemas are thus the public meanings that enable us to interpret each other and coordinate together. They help us to interpret unknown situations, providing a map of the familiar to guide us and our actions. Similar to Pierre Bourdieu’s work on social fields and habitus, cultural schemas possess epistemological virtues, providing ways of knowing the world and instructions on how to act within it.27 However, Haslanger’s concept is not as deterministic as Bourdieu’s. In order for cultural schemas to function, they must 26 27

 Haslanger, “Critical Theory.”  Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.

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be recognized, but they need not be endorsed. We can act differently to what they suggest, but we still know what these ways are (and as such know we are acting outside of proscribed norms). Though details on the key features of a social institution are contested, the importance of distinct social practices in constituting them is shared. There is an acknowledgement across approaches to understanding institutions that they are best described as patterns of social practices that recur over time and geography through the actions of embodied agents.28 Using Haslanger then, we can think about social practices as consisting of interdependent cultural schemas (and resources) “when they mutually imply and sustain each other over time.”29 This moves us away from theorizing the meanings of pornography as though these can be understood outside of the situation within which and through which pornography is experienced. Instead it suggests that pornography must be understood as both situated and situating, an iterative approach that looks not only at pornography’s role in endorsing particular sexual scripts, but also at the role of particular sexual scripts in endorsing pornography. As seen across the accounts given in this chapter, pornography fulfills this condition of a pattern of social practices made and remade through individual actions. For pornography to function on an individual level as a form of sexual expression, it has to be understood as being a social practice that articulates sex. For pornography to function on an individual level as a tool for sexual exploration, it must also be experienced as a social practice that legitimates sex. For pornography to function on an individual level to set and establish sexual expectations, it must also be lived as a social practice that demonstrates sex. These shared individual functions of pornography are dependent on pornography operating as a social institution, one that authorizes (or not) our sexual practices and pleasures. As claimed by Yancey Martin, institutions are not only “organized in accord with and permeated by power,”30 they “have a legitimating ideology that proclaims the rightness and

 Yancey Martin, “Gender as Social Institution.”  Haslanger, “Critical Theory,” 8. 30  Ibid., 1258. 28 29

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necessity of their arrangements, practices, and social relations.”31 This is part of the reason why alternative forms of sexually explicit media such as those focused on women’s pleasure or relationality do not have the same explanatory force as porn in its institutional sense (e.g., heteronormative, penetrative and male centered). Such styles sit outside an understanding of pornography as an institution as they do not recur in and reflect the schemas or resources that surround us, most of which imply and sustain practices of inequality and sovereignty.

Conclusion For the women in this study porn functioned in three main connected ways, some of which conflict with others. For some, pornography functioned as a way to speak sex. It was used as a tool for expression or conversation, a way of communicating sex and sexuality (to oneself and to partners), particularly needed given the ways in which silence situates women’s experiences of sexual pleasure and practice. Connected to this, it was also experienced as a source of exploration and validation—a way of understanding how to be sexual—offering a way to experience sexual pleasures and practices that may not be something one wants to explore in their own lives, as well as a way to validate or affirm existing sexual pleasures and practices. The most common function, however, one that works alongside the others, is that of showing how to do sex. Here pornography acts as expectation and instruction, authorizing what counts as sex and what does not. The relationships between these functions are not straightforward, some are inseparable and intertwined. Others are contradictory or raise further questions, such as the relationship between validation and instruction (is pornography both affirming and generating what is understood as sexual pleasure?). All of these exist in situation, identified by participants as one lacking other spaces where sexual practices and pleasures are articulated, legitimated and demonstrated. At the same time, in the absence of other outlets, pornography is functioning to shape the 31

 Ibid., 1257.

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situation itself, a situation where porn is positioned as the authoritative source on what sex is and could be. Developing an understanding of pornography as a social institution helps us to theorize this. It illuminates the ways in which pornography guides us to understand the world in particular shared ways that shape the environment and ourselves so that we are prompted toward particular patterns of action, without thereby precluding our ability to act otherwise. It enables an understanding of how the individual and social practices of pornography may contradict each other; one a route for liberation, the other a source of constraint. A relationship between the individual and the structural is established without positing our action as prescribed by these structures, nor as free from their influence. Instead they are seen as entangled, with what Lois McNay terms “the incorporation of the social into the corporeal,”32 helping to open new paths for examining what we do with porn and what it does with us.

References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boyle, Karen. 2000. The Pornography Debates: Beyond Cause and Effect. Women’s Studies International Forum 23 (2): 187–195. Braithwaite, Scott R., Gwen Coulson, Krista Keddington, and Frank D.  Fincham. 2015. The Influence of Pornography on Sexual Scripts and Hooking up among Emerging Adults in College. Archives of Sexual Behavior 44 (1): 111–123. Ciclitira, Karen. 2004. Pornography, Women and Feminism: Between Pleasure and Politics. Sexualities 7 (3): 281–301. Fritz, Niki, and Bryant Paul. 2017. From Orgasms to Spanking: A Content Analysis of the Agentic and Objectifying Sexual Scripts in Feminist, for Women, and Mainstream Pornography. Sex Roles 77 (9/10): 639–652. Garner, Maria. 2016. Conflicts, Contradictions and Commitments: Men Speak about the Sexualisation of Culture. PhD dissertation, London Metropolitan University.  McNay, “Gender, Habitus and the Field,” 99.

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Gavey, Nicola. 2012. Beyond ‘Empowerment’? Sexuality in a Sexist World. Sex Roles 66 (11/12): 718–724. Haslanger, Sally. 2016. Critical Theory and Practice: Ideology and Materiality. Keynote presentation at the Australasian Association of Philosophy, Melbourne, July. Jackson, Stevi, and Sue Scott. 2002. Embodying Orgasm: Gendered Power Relations and Sexual Pleasure. Women & Therapy 24 (1–2): 99–110. Johnson, Jennifer A. 2011. Mapping the Feminist Political Economy of the Online Commercial Pornography Industry: A Network Approach. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 7 (2): 189–208. Juffer, Jane. 1998. At Home with Pornography: Women, Sex, and Everyday Life. New York: New York University Press. Langton, Rae H. 2009. Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1991. From Practice to Theory, or What Is a White Woman Anyway? Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 4 (1): 13–22. Mason-Grant, Jason. 2004. Pornography Embodied: From Speech to Sexual Practice. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. McKenzie-Mohr, Suzanne, and Michelle N.  Lafrance. 2011. Telling Stories Without the Words: ‘Tightrope Talk’ in Women’s Accounts of Coming to Live Well After Rape or Depression. Feminism & Psychology 21 (1): 49–73. McNay, Lois. 1999. Gender, Habitus and the Field Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity. Theory, Culture & Society 16 (1): 95–117. Morgan, Robin. 1980. Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape. In Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography, ed. Laura Lederer, 134–140. New York: William Morrow and Co. Parvez, Z. Fareen. 2006. The Labor of Pleasure: How Perceptions of Emotional Labor Impact Women’s Enjoyment of Pornography. Gender & Society 20 (5): 605–631. Saul, Jennifer M. 2006. On Treating Things as People: Objectification, Pornography, and the History of the Vibrator. Hypatia 21 (2): 45–46. Segal, Lynne. 1993. Does Pornography Cause Violence? The Search for Evidence. In Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson, 5–20. London: British Film. Senn, Charlene Y. 1993. Women’s Multiple Perspectives and Experiences with Pornography. Psychology of Women Quarterly 17 (3): 319–341. Smith, Clarissa. 2007. One for the Girls!: The Pleasures and Practices of Reading women’s Porn. Bristol: Intellect Books.

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Sun, Chyng, Ana J. Bridges, Jennifer A. Johnson, and Mattew B. Ezzell. 2016. Pornography and the Male Sexual Script: An Analysis of Consumption and Sexual Relations. Archives of Sexual Behavior 45 (4): 983–994. Vadas, Melinda. 2005. The Manufacture for Use of Pornography and Women’s Inequality. Journal of Political Philosophy 13 (2): 174–193. Vera-Gray, Fiona, and Clare McGlynn. 2017. Girlhood, Agency, and Embodied Space for Action. In Nordic Girlhoods: New Perspectives and Outlooks, ed. Bodil Formark, Heta Mulari, and Myry Voipio, 127–136. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2020. Regulating Pornography: Developments in Evidence, Theory and Law. In Research Handbook on Gender, Sexuality and Law, ed. Chris Ashford and Alexander Maine, 471–483. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Wright, Paul J. 2014. Pornography and the Sexual Socialization of Children: Current Knowledge and a Theoretical Future. Journal of Children and Media 8 (3): 305–312. Yancey Martin, Patricia. 2004. Gender as Social Institution. Social Forces 82 (4): 1249–1273. Zhou, Yanyan, and Bryant Paul. 2016. Lotus Blossom or Dragon Lady: A Content Analysis of ‘Asian Women’ Online Pornography. Sexuality & Culture 20 (4): 1083–1100. Ziv, Amalia. 2015. Explicit Utopias: Rewriting the Sexual in Women’s Pornography. New York: SUNY Press.

15 Reconfiguring the Template: Representations of Powerful Women in Historical Fiction—The Case of Anna Komnene Ioulia Kolovou

Introduction: Anna Komnene In her manifesto on women and power, Mary Beard claims that “we have no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except that she looks rather like a man.”1 Masculinity conjures up notions of “power and legitimacy and privilege,” while femininity evokes a state of powerlessness which can only be overcome by violent acts embedded in language.2 Beard points out how the act of women attaining power is invariably described in violent images of breaking “a barrier,” “a glass ceiling” or of seizing (“power-grab”).3 Transgression seems to be inherent in the idea of a powerful woman, who is presented in foundational texts of Western  Beard, Women and Power, 54.  Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 9. 3  Beard, Women and Power, 54. 1 2

I. Kolovou (*) University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_15

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literature as masculine, monstrous, an outlaw and a criminal, an “abuser rather than user of power,” like Medea, Clytemnestra or Antigone of Greek tragedy.4 Textual representations, factual or fictional, of historical women of power and authority are constructed on the same pattern of attributed masculinity, monstrosity and violent transgression. Anna Komnene (1083–1154?), Byzantine medieval historian, first-­ born child of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, is a case-study of such representations. Best known as the author of the Alexiad, the only text in the historiographic medieval Greek canon written by a woman, this twelfth-­ century princess has been portrayed as the mastermind of a coup and assassination plot against her younger brother Emperor John II Komnenos in 1118. As a result, the story goes, she was exiled in a convent, where she wrote her historiographic masterpiece in rancor and bitterness. This portrayal of the historian as a ruthless, power-hungry, fratricidal conspirator has only recently been challenged, most notably by Leonora Neville.5 Anna certainly had some political clout at least in the final years of Alexios’s reign, which was not unusual in her family, famous for its strong, influential women, but she never mentions any dynastic ambitions in her work nor does anything in it suggest any conspiratorial involvement. On the other hand, her “intelligence, power, and personal strength,” “strong authorial presence,” “powerful and clear voice” and “manly writing” have been frequently praised as attributes of her authorship and make her a clear model of female authority.6 According to Neville’s revisionist views, Anna’s authorship and authority were seen by historians as the two sides of the same coin, that is, as revealing the masculine nature of the woman. This led to suspicions of transgressive behavior and misinterpretations of Anna’s texts. As in most cases of successful women authors, Anna’s authorial persona was “taken to be a thinly disguised version of the author’s non-idealized self,” as the poet Sophie Collins puts it.7 Anna’s authorial interjections throughout the text, in which she asserts her authority by displaying her credentials  Ibid., 57, 59.  See Neville, Anna Komnene. 6  Gouma-Peterson, “Preface,” ix–xi; Reinsch, “Women’s Literature,” 101. 7  Collins, Who is Mary Sue?, 29. 4 5

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for writing history (for instance, her high birth and social status with their implications of education and access to knowledge) or tries to gain the benevolence of the audience by appearing humble and sorrowful, were read as character flaws. Her self-assertion was seen as vanity typical of all women writers, summarized in Edward Gibbon’s infamous statement that “an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays, in every page, the vanity of a female author,” or as arrogance and lust for power, summed up in Constantine P. Cavafy’s homonymous poem.8 On the other hand, the humble persona of the old lady lamenting her woes, the death of her parents, her husband, and her fiancée half a century earlier, was taken as a mark of feminine emotionalism branded as “exaggerated frenzy,” “hysterical bombast” or as insincerity hiding a much more sinister reason, i.e. her bitterness and rage for her failure to overthrow her brother and become empress.9 But a fresh look at the text with an awareness of rhetoric and gender performance offers a much simpler explanation—that the author, trying to negotiate a risky equilibrium between traditionally appropriate behavior for the female sex and the masculine demands of the role of the historiographer, adopts a strategy of lament— an acceptable form of feminine expression. This, she hopes, will reassure the readers of her compliance with the rules of normative femininity and make more palatable her perceived appropriation of masculinity in the act of writing history.10 Why then was Anna Komnene so pervasively seen as masculine? Her constructed historical persona is based on an anecdote narrated by thirteenth-­century historian Niketas Choniates. According to Niketas, when the conspiracy of Anna and her husband Nikephoros Bryennios failed owing to Bryennios’s “sluggishness,” in her wrath and frustration Anna blamed nature for having given Bryennios the male genitalia and her the female:

 Gibbon, A History, 26. See Cavafy’s poem “Anna Komnina” (sic).  Buckler, Anna Comnena, 45–6. 10  Neville, Anna Komnene, 31–41. For history writing as a masculine domain, see Ferris, The Achievement of Literary Authority. 8 9

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It is said that the Kaisarissa Anna, provoked by her husband’s sluggishness, was cut to the heart by her suffering and blamed nature very much, for the reason that it gave her the cleft and hollow bits, and Bryennios the long member and the balls.11

Choniates’s piece of vulgar gossip (“it is said”), which was consequently repeated as historical fact, makes a sexually explicit statement on what Jack  Halberstam calls “the naturalized relation between maleness and power.”12 Anna’s complaint for her lack of male genitalia as the obstacle to the fulfillment of her desire, with its Freudian and Lacanian inferences, connects gender and power directly, signaling her desire for masculinity as a desire for power and her frustration at the impossibility of attaining the latter without the former. At the same time, her emotional outburst casts her as a “hysterical” female, alluding to what Sarah Ahmed calls a hierarchy of thought/emotion, which translates into an implicit hierarchy of male/female subjects.13 Ultimately, the attribution to Anna of putative aspirations to executive power undermines her authority as a historian, by questioning the honesty of her writing and accusing her of dissimulation and hypocrisy in not acknowledging those ambitions. Fascinating as she is as a historical character and author, Anna Komnene has rarely been depicted in historical fiction, particularly in the Anglophone world.14 But she has been the subject of two important novels by women writers outside the Anglosphere: Bulgarian Vera Mutafchieva’s I, Anna Komnene (Аз, Анна Комнина, 1991; Greek translation Ēgo ē Anna Komnēnē 1996; no English translation available), and Greek Maro Douka’s Come Forth, King (Enas Skoufos apo Porphyra, 1995;  van Dieten, Nicetae Choniatae historia, pars prior, 10, lines 25–26. My translation.  Halberstam, Female Masculinity, 9. 13  Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 170. 14  A notable exception is Sir Walter Scott’s Count Robert of Paris (1832) in which Anna appears as a secondary but significant character. For an analysis of her depiction in this novel, see Kolovou, “Masculine crusaders, effeminate Greeks, and the female historian,” 89–110 and Kolovou, “First Crusade Fictions.” Scottish writer Naomi Mitchison also wrote a short fictionalized biography: Anna Comnena (1928) in the series Representative Women. 11 12

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English translation David Connolly, 2003). Both novels were critically acclaimed best-sellers and both their authors are canonically inscribed in their respective Bulgarian and Greek cultural contexts.15 In the following discussion of the fictional representations of Komnene in these two novels, I use Ann Rigney’s definition of representation: The notion of a “meaningful relationship” should not be construed here in terms of a perfect fit between the information presented and the past reality represented (past realities are only partially known and can never be fully reconstructed). It involves rather the idea that the understanding of that which is presented is a possible way into understanding that which is absent.16

This definition of meaningful relationship as a complex interplay of presence and absence is particularly interesting in Komnene’s case, in view of the interpretational leaps that were necessary in order to constitute her as a threatening, dangerous presence via an absence in her own work—the missing avowal of dynastic ambition and confession of conspiracy. Given the complex triangulation involving fact, fiction and representation in the genre of historical fiction, a meaningful question would not be how “accurate” or “faithful” the fictional representations of Anna Komnene are to the historical record, which ultimately is a textual construction, but what meaning can be produced from observing the dynamics between the novel and its historiographical reference. Fictional explorations of Anna Komnene’s life and work can be as “truthful” as historiographical ones and often more perceptive and insightful, sometimes anticipating theoretical developments and scholarly findings.

 A note on the spelling of Byzantine names: the Latin versions (Comnenus instead of Komnenos, etc) of these names have been used in the West until relatively recently, when scholars in the field of Byzantine Studies began to use the Greek spellings. The Latin types are used by Connolly (Douka’s translator). I use the Greek versions when referring to the historical characters and the Latin when it is the usage adopted in the novels. 16  Rigney, Imperfect Histories, 25. 15

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 era Mutafchieva: Anna Komnene V and the Genealogy of Dissent Bulgarian historian and best-selling novelist Vera Mutafchieva (1929–2009) wrote Аз, Анна Комнина [I, Anna Komnene—the title is borrowed from Anna’s self-presentation in the Prologue of the Alexiad] at a time when her home country was transitioning from communism to Western-style democracy. In this “novel of ideas,” Anna Komnene serves as “a mirror,” “a guide and exemplum,” as Rosella Mamoli Zorzi puts it, for Mutafchieva to explore feminist questions such as the visibility of women’s lives, support networks and solidarity.17 In its exploration of an intellectual woman’s life, it focuses particularly on the relation of writers and intellectuals with power, discussing issues of doubt, dissent and conformism. As such, it could be read as an apologia for Mutafchieva’s own life. As a member of the Bulgarian scientific élite for many decades motivated by a “vague desire to participate and even direct the social developments which historians research and analyse,” Mutafchieva held a number of positions of power in the socialist regime, and was later accused of being a secret agent for the government, like other prominent intellectuals of the communist years.18 Anna Komnene is the center of this feminist, post-modern, polyphonic novel narrated in the first person from many different, female-only points of view: Anna Komnene herself, her mother Eirene Doukaina, her grandmothers Anna Dalassene and Maria of Bulgaria, and her maid Zoe, who is the only purely fictional character in the novel. Problematizing historiography, the fictional Komnene engages in conversation with the historical Komnene (and with the author herself ), reflecting on the Alexiad with a sometimes critical, sometimes ironical, sometimes approving look.19 The fictional Komnene first appears in the novel quoting a passage from the Alexiad in which the historical Anna complains about her life using  Zorzi, “Venetian Mirrors.”  Marcheva, “L’Historien et/ dans le pouvoir.” This accusation was also made against fellow-­ Bulgarian Julia Kristeva, who references Mutafchieva’s novel I, Anna Komnene, in her own novel Meurtre à Byzance (2004)—in English Murder in Byzantium. 19  Vrinat-Nikolov, L’Affaire Džem et Moi, 191.

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metaphors such as “sea of troubles”, and comments as an aside, in parentheses: “(I think the style is good: flood, sea, waves – all the metaphors are connected to water and its destructive fury. That’s how it should be done, according to Aristotle’s Poetic).”20 Then, dropping the parentheses, she continues: I begin my writing with this extract from the Alexiad on purpose. Those laments in certain parts of my work are the keys necessary to unlock it: this was written by an unfortunate woman, pummeled by fate, miserable from birth to death, a woman who never tasted happiness or even a moment of peace. It may seem strange – although in truth it is not – but the reader wants the author to be a person marked by misfortune.21

Anna asserts that her lamentations are a subterfuge to make her more acceptable to an audience that would resist a confident, prosperous woman: If they could see me through a crack in time, they would melt with envy. But then they wouldn’t read my text. And this is the reason why in all my fifteen books there are frequent lamentations. It is not so much the author but the woman who is obliged to appear miserable.22

Written in 1991, this statement anticipates Neville writing in 2016: “Anna performed misery and anguish in her book in a plea to make her writing more acceptable.”23 Anna’s fear that she will not have readers if she does not appear abject enough seems justified even in the  early twenty-first century, judging by Emma Short’s assertion as late as 2012 that “a trend for portraying the female author as an essentially tragic figure is one which has gathered momentum in recent years.”24 It has been pointed out that the achievements of Anna Komnene were facilitated by the work of other women before her, particularly women in  Mutafchieva, Egō, Ē Anna Komnēnē, 66. All English translations are mine.  Ibid., 66–7. 22  Ibid., 67. 23  Neville, Anna Komnene, 141. Emphasis in the original. 24  Short, “Making up,” 42. 20 21

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her own family: her grandmother, Anna Dalassene, her mother, Empress Eirene Doukaina and her would-be mother-in-law, former Empress Maria of Alania.25 Both novels in this discussion mention this fact and attribute Anna’s brilliance partly to the women who bore, nourished, encouraged and supported her; Anna is the culmination of a collective effort by women operating separately from the ideological restrictions of their societies, developing their own “muted,” distinct networks, as Barbara Hill notes.26 This seems to hit a nerve for Mutafchieva, possibly related to her personal experiences of learning to survive in a repressive state. Citing a well-known passage from the Alexiad in which Anna mentions admiringly that her mother, Empress Eirene, read the difficult works of Saint Maximos the Confessor at dinner and recommended them to her daughter, the fictional Anna remarks: Here is proof that I was right when I told Dalassene that chroniclers write whatever they want without a care for the truth: my description above is perfectly accurate, as long as we substitute the name of the author. It is not Saint Maximos but John Italos, condemned as a heretic. My mother read his works most carefully and promised them to me as a reward for my love for knowledge.27

Anna is taught dissent at her mother’s bosom; at the same time, Mutafchieva suggests that convenient fictions are employed to obscure such facts of dissent and resistance in history. Anna soon discovers that her grandmother also secretly enjoys forbidden satires and plays which she openly condemns for purely political reasons. This genealogy of rebellion could be read as a metaphor for the history of feminist waves: Anna’s grandmother fighting for survival in a man’s world demands equal rights through political power, Anna’s mother asserts her “feminine nature” as power of difference and dissent; thus a female genealogy of empowerment is established, from which Anna benefits in full. Interestingly, Anna  Newman, “Byzantine Laments,” 21.  Hill, Imperial Women, 197–8. 27  Mutafchieva, Egō, Ē Anna Komnēnē, 152. 25 26

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utilizes her lessons in power and resistance to motivate her other grandmother, Maria of Bulgaria, here presented as the subaltern, the colonized subject of the “Roman Empire” whose ceaseless toil enriches the imperial masters. When Maria complains that the wealth of her estates in Bulgaria, the subjected periphery, is “frittered away at the Hippodrome and in politics” by the “conceited patricians,” the “crème-de-la-crème of the Romans,” her grand-daughter tries to incite her to insurgence, thus subverting the hierarchy of generations.28 But Maria, resigned, tells Anna that enslavement is the price they have to pay for “the sins of our family,” the squabbles and lust for power of the ruling family of Bulgaria which needed the support of Byzantium, echoing postcolonial discourse on the complicity of local elites in colonialism.29 In her subaltern status both as a colonized subject and as a woman, Maria has no power over her own possessions, which are appropriated by the colonizer, nor authority, which has not been granted by them. This is one of the pivotal moments in Anna’s political education, when she realizes that revolt may not be an option for the women at the periphery. A similar realization of even greater poignancy comes in the presentation of Anna’s relation with Zoe, a Greek peasant girl with a background of extreme poverty, who is Anna’s nurse and later her personal maid. Zoe stands as a representative of all those who have no voice and invest their hopes on those who do. When young Anna reveals that she does not want to marry and have children but to become a writer and “only belong to herself,” Zoe supports her, expressing the hope that “the divine spark in her soul becomes a flame in whose light we, the poor of spirit, find our way.”30 What is more, Zoe introduces her to Basil the Bogomil, leader of a heresy that, in the novel, stands for active political dissent. This is another pivotal moment politically in Anna’s life, as she has to choose between effective revolution or silence and complicity with the system imposed by her father, who has condemned Basil to burn at the stake for his “heresy.” Anna chooses to conform, unwilling to relinquish her privileged life and status. Eventually Zoe, by now an old, tired woman, dies in  Ibid.,171.  Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 176. 30  Mutafchieva, Egō, Ē Anna Komnēnē, 123. 28 29

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Anna’s service. Anna only finds out when she sees an unfamiliar servant in Zoe’s place. Zoe’s death fills her with remorse, but she knows that this is not enough: How could I shed so many tears when for forty long years I had done nothing to ease the pain of my nurse. I was sorry because I would miss her, because I could trust no other servant as I trusted her, because no one would be so devoted to me. I was sorry for myself, that is, and not for that woman who had lived and died serving me.31

Anna knows that her self-absorbed tears cannot wash away her unfair treatment of Zoe: “There is no forgiveness; no confession, no sigh, no alms-giving can wash out the dirty act, that is how I see it. It is not possible to bargain with conscience, because in that case those who are best at bargaining would have the upper hand.”32 Anna is alerted to the fundamental problem of lack of solidarity in a feminist struggle for self-­ fulfillment which does not consider the needs and even the autonomous existence of the underprivileged. She appears to be aware of “the risks of justice defined as sympathy and compassion: justice then becomes a sign of what I can give to others, and works to elevate some subjects over others, through the reification of their capacity for love or ‘fellow-feeling’.”33 This leaves no space for emotional but ultimately condescending bonding between the over-privileged, elite woman and the poor, overworked servant over the common feminine plight. But what is the point of women’s solidarity, if empowerment is not available to all women? If forgiveness is impossible, then what is needed is action to prevent the injustice, Mutafchieva suggests, hinting at the necessity of a different, more intersectional approach to feminism. As bell hooks has proposed, the reconceptualization of women’s power must involve relinquishing the hierarchies of class and race.34 A monolithic template of female power restricted to women of the ruling classes would only perpetuate the stereotypical male-centered perceptions.  Ibid., 378.  Ibid. 33  Ahmed, Politics of Emotion, 195. 34  hooks, Feminist Theory, 88–90. 31 32

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 aro Douka: Anna Komnene and Strategies M for Survival Maro Douka (b. 1947), one of the canonical contemporary Greek authors, is somewhat akin to Mutafchieva in her intellectual pedigree as a socialist and political activist who held positions of political authority.35 Douka wrote her best-selling novel Come Forth, King [Enas Skoufos Apo Porfyra] in the mid-1990s, when the Greek Left was coming to terms with what at the time looked as the end of the Cold War and the death of communism, as well as the increasing integration of the country into the European Union. Periods of such turbulence offer themselves to collective identity crises; the novel, drawing heavily on the Alexiad, is Douka’s contribution to the perennial discussion in Greece of its identity and cultural affiliations and loyalties, using the distant past as a space in which to discuss the present. It includes eight parts, four of which are narrated in the first person by two of Emperor Alexius’s closest companions, and another four in a close third person by the four women in his life: mother Anna Dalassena, lover Maria of Alania, wife Irene Ducas and daughter Anna Comnena. Douka introduces Anna’s part in the novel with the phrase: “She made herself up like an actress and gazed at the mirror.”36 In the balanced two-­ part structure of this phrase, one emphatically alluding to performance (“make up,” “actress”), the other, more ambiguous, a powerful image of a woman staring at the mirror (what or whom does she see in there?), Douka addresses the fundamental issues of performance and identity. From the image of the actress with its associations to dissimulation (the classical Greek word for actor is hypokrites—hypocrite) to the mirror, symbol of vanity, especially female vanity, but also of self-reflection, we are offered three centuries of scholarly reception of Anna Komnene in a nutshell, from Gibbon’s verdict on the vanity of the female author to  Douka was one of the founding members of the Society of Greek Authors and was elected member of the Athens City Council in 2014 with Syriza, the left-wing party in government at the time. 36  Douka, Come Forth, King, 271. 35

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nineteenth century accusations of dishonesty to the current readings of masculine and feminine performance in the Alexiad. Anna looking at the mirror is at the same time performer and observer; this duality is an important part of her character: [S]he often stopped to observe her tears as they ran down her cheeks and tried to explain logically the reasons that pushed her to play the part of the inconsolable victim. Better that they pity you rather than envy you, she thought; better that they feel you’ve need of them than for them to see you as a solid rock. Be a rock, but without seeming so; never let anyone guess at your strength of soul, nor at your persistence in the path you’ve chosen to follow. […] from being a young child, she reflected, I was taught to cry and get down on my knees, to sigh, so that they’d pander to me. […] But Anna knew: behind her tears and above her misfortunes stood the gilded throne.37

For Douka, Anna’s tears (symbol of Anna’s lamentations in the Alexiad) are tactical; their purpose is to secure her goal by hiding her real strength and elicit goodwill. What is more, growing up in a ruthless patriarchal world where she will be used as a pawn in men’s political games, she is taught early on that this is the only way to succeed. Her desire for power is practical, because it will set her free from the trap set out for her from birth. As her mother reminds her, there is no escape from the common fate of women: You won’t be the first or the last, Irene insisted, there have been many [women] and there’ll be as many again who will find themselves trapped. [...] She points out how difficult it is for the first-born daughter to brush aside the first-born son, such a thing is unprecedented.38

Her mother aims to keep Anna in line with what is traditionally seen as the place for women, not out of malice but because there is no other way to survive in this unequal system, where Anna’s father recognizes her merits but still privileges his feckless sons over her: “what good is all her  Ibid., 303.  Ibid., 298.

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merit, intelligence and ambition to me, she’s a woman.”39 Anna herself realizes what the stakes are on her wedding day, when she learns many unpleasant truths at once: That Sunday, then, after the wedding feast, her father motioned to Bryennius that he could take her and withdraw to the bridal chamber, and Anna noticed a wickedness and maliciousness in his eye, a vulgarity, she’d call it, and a complicity, as if they’d all discussed in among them and had made an agreement. […] Bryennius took her then in his arms, he kissed her as if wanting to suffocate her, and immediately slapped her. The kiss is for my wife, he said, the slap for the Comnena, so that from now on she’ll know her place.40

Marriage seals Anna’s subordination to the order of things, arranged by the patriarchy, as demonstrated in the nauseating tacit “agreement” between her father and her husband. She is even preemptively punished for any indication of strength she may possess due to her high birth, so that she “knows her place” as a wife. This suggests that her mother’s exhortation to Anna that she should accept her fate is not collusion with the patriarchy, but honest intimation of survival tactics in such a world. Anna realizes that if she cannot beat the system, she can play the system. She capitulates to her husband, in terms that acknowledge her subaltern state: “She opened her eyes then and saw him and timidly opened her arms. The occupied land, she thought, will become densely populated.”41 Her surrender serves a purpose: “She loved him, in order to be able to walk the rest of her path.”42 There is no provision for a female emperor in her world; therefore, she will need to use her husband as a means to her end. As Barbara Hill maintains, writing in 1999, a few years after Douka’s novel was first published (the English translation was not available until 2003):

 Ibid., 301.  Ibid., 299. 41  Ibid. 42  Ibid., 300. 39 40

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If we are to turn traditional history on end and understand women as actors instead of victims […] it is necessary to assume that women had goals which they attempted to reach, and to search for their strategies to that end. The perceptions of any particular woman about her situation must be addressed for those perceptions influenced the choices that she made. […] In this particular case, Anna Komnene chose the family way of life in a society influenced by the ideology that the man was the head of the wife. […] She did not visualize either the single life or a denial of relationships as a source of power, but instead perceived marriage as the surest road to her goals. […] That choice should be seen as a strategy for life, not as a failure to live up to a twentieth-century ideal.43

By embracing the role of the submissive female, Anna sets in motion her strategic plan to empower herself. This strategy is perfectly acceptable in terms of third wave feminism, which, in viewing femininity “as a discursive process rather than social location (as it is defined in second wave feminism),” understands that it “can be collectively reworked in potentially subversive ways to counter hegemonic constructions of femininity.”44 However, it is significant that Anna cannot forgive her husband, who “would forever remain dissonant.”45 Similarly, Anna’s mother lives in a permanent state of covert war against her husband, Anna’s father, in Mutafchieva’s novel. The conjugal dissonance in both novels underlines the impossibility of love where there is no equality. Eventually Anna realizes that she cannot have “the gilded throne,” object of her desire. But at the same time, she recognizes that that kind of power (as potestas, embodied in the imperial office) is destructive and unfulfilling (and Mutafchieva reaches the same conclusion). She will be much happier as a writer, away from the center of power, in the peace and seclusion of the convent, where she will be able to fulfill her “first dreams and plans;” “her astrolabe and her half-finished, half-faded poems were waiting for her.” Creativity, knowledge and writing are not a consolation and an outlet for her rage at losing the empire, as historians have represented her, but her true source of intellectual authority and the only  Hill, Imperial Women, 196.  Schippers and Sapp, “Reading Pulp Fiction,” 31. 45  Douka, Come Forth, King, 300. 43 44

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pursuits that matter, the “friends of her soul”: “And the friends of your soul never desert you; these are what will go with you, on your journey to the gates of Hades.”46

Conclusion Both Mutafchieva and Douka seem to agree that Anna Komnene’s true power is located not in executive authority but in authorship. In these terms, empowerment is conceived as the “capacity or creative ability” to pursue her projects of knowledge and writing, a positive power which redeems the final years of her life, rather than dominance over others, which she would have possessed as empress, and which proves disastrous for her personal and public life, as it leads to failure and breakdown of family relationships (both Douka and Mutafchieva accept the historical version of Anna as failed conspirator).47 The writer’s true authority is in her writing, in which she creates a different world, and in which she wields absolute power over the representation of her characters and their deeds for posterity.48 Ultimately, her authority goes beyond the limits of her own historical time, and extends diachronically to the reader. Anna’s very last words in Mutafchieva’s novel are “Consider then, if you will, that I am still among you.”49 Both Mutafchieva and Douka offer strong portraits of the woman, writer and princess Anna Komnene, proposing complex ways of envisioning powerful women. Both Mutafchieva and Douka write from the perspective of the late twentieth century, when feminist movements had been active for a good many decades and the questions and issues they raised informed critical and cultural thinking. What is more, both seem to anticipate the revisionist scholarly re-assessment of Anna Komnene’s life and work. It is remarkable that two authors from “peripheral” linguistic and cultural provenance have taken the lead here, making a case for  Ibid., 289–90.  Allen, “Rethinking Power.” 48  Mutafchieva, Egō, Ē Anna Komnēnē, 388. 49  Ibid., 391. 46 47

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the need to pay more attention to “neglected cultural spaces” in order to discover “the hidden dynamics and routes of cultural transfer—including those between ‘marginal’ cultures themselves.”50 Judging by a recent rising interest in Anna Komnene attested in major literary journals such as the London Review of Books and The Paris Review,51 perhaps the Anglophone world will soon follow suite.52

References Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Allen, Amy. 1998. Rethinking Power. Hypatia 13 (1): 21–40. http://www.jstor. org/stable/3810605. Accessed 17 February 2019. Bahun-Radunović, Sanja, and Marinos Pourgouris. 2006. Prefaces and Faces: Towards a Centripetal Theory of Modernism. In The Avant-Garde and the Margin: New Territories of Modernism, ed. Sanjia Bahun-Radunović and Marinos Pourgouris, xii–xx. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Beard, Mary. 2017. Women and Power: A Manifesto. London: Profile Books. Buckler, Georgina. 1929. Anna Comnena: A Study. London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press. Cavafy, C.P. Anna Komnina. 1975, 1992 [1916–1933]. Trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. https://www.onassis.org/initiatives/cavafy-archive/thecanon/anna-komnina Collins, Sophie. 2018. Who Is Mary Sue? London: Faber and Faber. Douka, Maro. 2003 [1995]. Come Forth, King [Enas Skoufos Apo Porfyra]. Trans. David Connolly. Athens: Kedros. Fanon, Franz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Ferris, Ina. 1999. The Achievement of Literary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press. Gibbon, Edward. 1907 [1781]. A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. V. London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press.  Bahun-Radunović and Pourgouris, “Prefaces and Faces,” xvi.  Newman, “Byzantine Laments”; White, “The Misunderstood Byzantine Princess.” 52  I am most gratefully indebted to the late Dr. Ruth Macrides for inviting me to present this paper at the CBOMGS and CESMA joint seminar at the University of Birmingham in December 2018 and to the audience for their perceptive questions and comments. 50 51

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Gouma-Peterson, Thalia. 2000. Preface. In Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson, ix–xi. New York/London: Garland Publishing. Halberstam, Jack. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Hill, Barbara. 1999. Imperial Women of Byzantium 1025–1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology. Harlow/Essex: Longman. hooks, bell. 2015. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre. New York: Routledge. Kolovou, Ioulia. 2017. Masculine Crusaders, Effeminate Greeks, and the Female Historian: Relations of Power in Sir Walter Scott’s Count Robert of Paris. Journal of Historical Fictions 1 (1): 89–110. ———. 2018. First Crusade Fictions. Unpublished doctoral thesis. University of Glasgow. Kristeva, Julia. 2006. Murder in Byzantium. Trans. C. Jon Delogu. New York: Columbia University Press. Mamoli Zorzi, Rosella. 1999. Venetian Mirrors: Barrett or Browning as the Artist? In The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writers in Western Literature, ed. Paul Franssen and Ton Hoenselaars, 157–166. Madison/ Teaneck/London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press/Associated University Presses. Marcheva, Iliyana. 2012. L’Historien et/dans le pouvoir (À la base des mémoires de grands historiens de la période socialiste). Revue Bulgare d’Histoire 3–4: 95–109. Mitchison, Naomi. 1928. Anna Comnena. London: Gerald Howe. Mutafchieva, Vera. 1996 [1991]. Аз Анна Комнина [Egō, Ē Anna Komnēnē]. Trans. Panos Stathoyannis. Athens: Nea Synora Livanis. Neville, Leonora. 2016. Anna Komnene: The Life and Work of a Medieval Historian. New York: Oxford University Press. Newman, Barbara. 2018. Byzantine Laments. London Review of Books 39: 5. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n05/barbara-newman/byzantine-laments. Accessed 26 November 2018. Niketas Choniatas. 1835 [1207?]. Historia. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae. Weber: Bonne. Reinsch, Dieter. 2000. Women’s Literature in Byzantium? – The Case of Anna Komnene. In Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson, 83–106. New York/London: Garland Publishing. Rigney, Ann. 2001. Imperfect Histories: The Elusive Past and the Legacy of Romantic Historicism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Schippers, Mimi, and Erin Grayson Sapp. 2012. Reading Pulp Fiction: Femininity and Power in Second and Third Wave Feminist Theory. Feminist Theory 13 (10): 27–42. Scott, Walter. 2006. [1832]. Count Robert of Paris. Edited by J.H. Alexander. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Short, Emma. 2012. Making Up, or Making Over: Reconstructing the Modern Female Author. In The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction, ed. Katherine Cooper and Emma Short, 41–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Van Dieten, J. Nicetae. 1975. Choniatae Historia, Pars Prior. Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae. Series Berolinensis 11.1. Berlin: De Gruyter. http:// stephanus.tlg.uci.edu.ezproxy.lib.gla.ac.uk/Iris/Cite?3094:001:18666. Accessed 25 April 2019. Vrinat-Nikolov, Marie. 2001. L’Affaire Džem et Moi, Anne Comnène de Vera Mutafchieva: de l’Histoire-héros à l’Histoire-prétexte. Revue des Études Slaves 73 (1): 185–195. www.jstor.org/stable/43271346. Accessed 20 July 2018. White, Edmund. 2018. The Misunderstood Byzantine Princess and Her Magnum Opus. The Paris Review, March 2, 2018. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/02/byzantine-princess-magnum-opus/. Accessed 26 November 2018.

16 Staging Female Creatives in French Caribbean Women’s Theatre Vanessa Lee

Introduction A significant number of female artists have been active in the world of theatre in Martinique and Guadeloupe from the 1970s onwards, more so even than in metropolitan France. But even taken as a whole, women in French theatre, apart from on the stage, remain very much under-­ represented.1 There is an insufficient number of female playwrights and directors compared to their male colleagues. There is also a disparity between the number of white actors and those of “ethnic origins.” Being a non-white woman exacerbates this discrepancy, for if there are fewer  In 2017, a study of surveys made between 2012 and 2017 concerning the numbers of women involved in the cultural sector in France as a whole concluded that while 52% of students in drama school were female, less than 30% (33% being the figure that makes a minority group no longer considered as such) of heads of national theatres (12%), heads of national and regional theatres (20%), heads of national stages (28%), authors (21%), and directors (27%) were women. Herr, Où sont les femmes? 1

V. Lee (*) Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8_16

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opportunities for female actors, then there are still fewer roles for non-­ white women. This chapter will address how these obstacles remain an issue for black women artists in the contemporary French theatre world, and how their plays explore a range of female artist-types, transcending binaries between agents and performers of artistic production. The analysis will demonstrate how for the female creatives in the plays studied, the issue of authority is twofold. Indeed, these female characters confront institutional and societal authorities that confine them to rigid gendered and racial categories, thus impeding the black female artist’s career and artistic independence. On the other hand, the female artist in these plays also transcends these categories to impose her own artistic authority. Due to the geographically and politically marginalized status of the French Caribbean in relation to metropolitan France, French Caribbean literature may aptly be described as being on the margins of French literature, understood as both literature in French and the literature of France.2 Such marginality has been described by Caribbean intellectuals and writers using the concept of marronage. By marronage is meant the condition of escaped slaves whose fugitive status condemned them to the fringes of what was then considered to be normal society. Caribbean writers have subsequently appropriated marronage to convey the idea of a movement of rejection of established socio-cultural norms, and advocacy of new ways of thinking and of being in the world. Marronage can thus be understood both as a condition of emancipation and of alienation. As for the Caribbean woman writer, she is subject to a double marginalization, or double-marronage, in the words of Suzanne Dracius, “first, as a human being descending from a people whom the laws of slavery forbade writing; […] second, as subject to the condition of woman.”3 But if we extend this to the even further marginalized practice of theatre, which despite the genre’s popularity in a Caribbean context has suffered from lack of funds and opportunities for artists and institutions alike, we may  The French Caribbean, which became overseas administrative regions of France in 1946, here refers to those territories still attached to France: Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyana but not Haiti, which gained independence in 1803. The focus here is on the two entities that constitute Martinique and Guadeloupe. 3  Dracius, “In Search of,” 156. 2

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refer to a triple-marronage, a threefold marginalization specifically affecting French Caribbean women playwrights: they are French Caribbean, they are women, and they write for the theatre. The generation of female French Caribbean theatre-makers, active between the 1970s to the present-day, explores these layers of marginalization in their works and molds the genre so as to tackle contemporary Caribbean identity, culture and politics. As Carole Edwards puts it, “this theatre addresses at once women of the Diaspora and the Antillean community more broadly” and “remains the most apt genre through which to express this intimate reflection.”4 A woman playwright’s portrayal of the female artist on stage is a highly intimate gesture, and several plays by French Caribbean women writers foreground various types of creative women. Three such plays are Maryse Condé’s Pension les alizés [The Tropical Breeze Hotel] (1988), Gerty Dambury’s Trames [Shades] (2008) and her Des doutes et des errances [Doubts and Wanderings] (2014). Born in 1937  in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, Maryse Condé is a writer known for her writings on Africa and the French Caribbean and has written extensively for the theatre; her first play, Le Morne de Massabielle [The Hills of Massabielle], was produced in 1971. Written for, directed by and starring the Martinican Sonia Emmanuel, Pension les alizés5 is the story of Emma, a retired cabaret dancer from Guadeloupe living in Paris.6 In the play, Emma hosts Ismaël, a young Haitian political refugee, with whom she has an affair and whom she almost follows to Haiti before changing her mind at the last minute. It is hinted during the play that Ismaël may have escaped Haiti after betraying his fellow dissidents. It is also revealed that he is the son of a government minister, and has a wife and mistress back in Haiti. After Ismaël’s departure, Emma finds out that he has been killed; aggrieved, she falls into a trance, and describing her make-up ritual she had as a nude dancer, paints a white mask on her face. Pension presents a female character who does not conform to established French and Caribbean  Edwards, “Théâtralisation et quête de liberté,” 184.  Pension les alizés will be referred to as Pension from this point onwards. 6  First performance directed by Sonia Emmanuel at Centre des Arts de Pointe-à-Pitre, April 14, 1988. 4 5

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ideals of femininity. Emma rejects and subverts both the maternal sentiment expected of a woman of her age and the image of the exotic submissive black woman, and provides an alternative portrayal of the ageing female artist. Gerty Dambury was born in 1957, also in Pointe-à-Pitre. She is a poet, dramatist, novelist, theatre critic, actress, director and teacher of English who has worked in both Guadeloupe and metropolitan France. In the 1990s she started writing, directing and acting in her own plays. Over a period of three decades, Dambury’s texts have reflected on and represented a concern with Afro-Caribbean socio-political issues, in particular those of her native Guadeloupe, but also of the wider formerly colonized black world. Trames, set in present-day Guadeloupe, features a series of tense dinners between a mother, Gilette, an intellectual who transcribes recorded testimonies of Guadeloupian women, and her son, Christian, a homeless drug addict.7 The play also features Dabar, described as “the spirit of the house” in the dramatis personae, whose presence neither Gilette nor Christian notices. Over the course of the play, Gilette and Christian fall out over Christian’s father, unemployment and Gilette’s lack of compassion and motherly affection, Gilette even having Christian arrested after he burgles her house towards the end of the play. The play closes when, after a final altercation, Christian accidentally kills Gilette. Gilette and Christian’s difficult relationship in Trames is emblematic of the hardship involved in being a modern, professional woman, and having to balance this role with motherhood. Des doutes et des errances is a self-referential drama insofar as it recounts the staging of a really existing play. It addresses a play within a play as it follows director Suzanne who rehearses with actors Lucie and Jo a production of Les Atlantiques amers, an earlier play by Dambury—here attributed to Suzanne—which recounts the 2009 Guadeloupe general strike.8 Throughout the play, Suzanne tries to maintain her artistic license as playwright and director, finding it difficult to let Jo, a younger and  First performance directed by Gerty Dambury at L’Artchipel, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, April 30, 2008. Des doutes et des errances will be referred to as Doutes from this point onwards. 8  First performed as performed reading directed by Jalil Leclair at Le Musée Dapper, Paris, March 10, 2014. First full production directed by Jalil Leclair at L’Artchipel, Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, October 17, 2014. 7

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more experimental artist, take over the production of her play. Suzanne concludes at the end of Des doutes et des errances that her constant campaigning for the rights of fellow thespians and her attempt at treating Guadeloupean history in her plays is useless. In spite of this, she expresses the desire to continue her work so as to counter the violence that threatens to engulf the disenfranchised youth. The play ends with the trio performing the beginning of Les Atlantiques amers. The unfolding of the plight of Suzanne and of Lucie in Doutes underlines the struggles of Caribbean women artists to maintain their artistic authority, integrity and dignity in a sexist, masculinist and racist industry. The portrayal of the woman artist on stage is a thought-provoking exercise. An actress is both an object/vehicle of theatrical representation, representing a character created by an author under the direction of a director, and at the same time an agent of theatrical representation, for it is her performance that brings the character to life. Allied to this reflection is the constructedness and performativity of gender being deconstructed and interrogated on stage. The concepts of performance and performativity were employed in the 1950s by theorists such as J.L. Austin in the social sciences to conceptualize how individuals perform acts through language, with “performative speech utterances.”9 Feminist and gender studies scholars subsequently applied this concept to explore gender as a performative construct, such as Judith Butler’s concept of “performative acts and gender constitution.”10 Theatre and performance thus appear as the most appropriate artistic media through which to explore, problematize and deconstruct gender, as well as other constructs such as race and class.11 Furthermore, the placing of the figure of the female artist on stage may thus be used by the playwright to foreground issues of gender, of agency and of artistic authority. By presenting their own interpretation of the female body, identity and subjectivity, the female author and performer contest conventional, patriarchal and sexist authorities and reclaim representative and artistic authority for themselves.  See Austin, How to do things.  Butler, “Performative Acts.” 11  For a more in-depth discussion on the performativity of gender and the deconstruction of gender in theatre, see Butler, Gender Trouble; Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis; Ferris, Acting Women; Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters; and Senelick, The Changing Room. 9

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A close reading of these three plays reveals different types of female artist characters and the obstacles they encounter in their quest for recognition, success and identity. Looking at plays written between the 1980s and the mid-2010s—a period which witnessed intense fluctuations of the concepts of race, gender and identity in the arts and society—allows us to appraise the development of these concerns from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century.

Confronting Stereotypes In Condé’s and Dambury’s plays, the female artist characters are confronted with various gendered stereotypes that affect their personal and professional lives. Maryse Condé’s Pension and Gerty Dambury’s Trames feature characters that deviate from stereotypes of Caribbean femininity, such as woman as matriarch; French Caribbean society being considered matriarchal due to its slave and colonial pasts. According to Ina Césaire, “[h]istory forced [the Caribbean woman] to remain with her child while the man was sold elsewhere, and they could not come together as couples; the béké [slave-owner] often exercised his right to sexually exploit women and these practices broke up the traditional family system.”12 Women are seen as matriarchs, as poto-mitan, a term borrowed from the creole word describing the central pillar of the Caribbean voodoo ritual. The poto-­ mitan “stands tall and faces the elements and misfortunes head on, […] endures what life throws at her, and does not give way under the double burden of single parenthood.”13 This could be considered a positive portrayal of the Caribbean woman as a figure of authority. However, it does reduce the role of woman in Caribbean society to one that is domestic and maternal, which as the plays demonstrate can be deemed problematic to some female characters. Gilette in Dambury’s Trames struggles with this “burden of single parenthood,” and does not correspond in any way to the dominant image of the steadfast matriarch of Caribbean society. Gilette’s own attitudes are  Bérard, “De l’enracinement à l’ouverture,” 149.  Gyssels, Filles de Solitude, 65.

12 13

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pitted against those of the women whose testimonies she transcribes during the action of the play. One such testimony is that of “La Femme au bébé” [Woman with a baby], a single working mother. In the recording, “La Femme au bébé” describes her youngest daughter’s christening, which was attended by her ex-husband, who “drank, ate, and then went home to his new wife.”14 Gilette’s son Christian then asks his mother how she would have reacted had she been in the same situation: GILETTE: I would have kicked him out. CHRISTIAN: Yes, but you aren’t a real Caribbean woman… GILETTE: Not a real Caribbean woman from 1953. From 1953…15

In her reply Gilette expresses her belief that a half-century after the events related by “La Femme au bébé,” things have changed for Caribbean women. And yet, in the light of Christian’s comments, the play suggests that such male behavior, as well as Caribbean women’s resignation in the face of it, remains the norm. In the play it is recounted that Gilette herself leaves Guadeloupe for Africa as a young woman to escape such men, and she is convinced that out of the women whose testimonies she transcribes, those who escaped and steered clear of such abusive relationships succeeded in avoiding destitution. When Gilette leaves Africa to return to Guadeloupe, she also leaves behind her husband, thus reversing the expected scenario of the man abandoning the woman to fend for herself and her children. While Gilette brings back her son, it is a decision she is shown to regret, made apparent by the playing out of her troubled and fragile relationship with Christian and her lack of demonstrable maternal sentiment. To emphasize the deficiency in Gilette’s mothering, Christian compares her with his grandmother, Gilette’s own mother—“Mamie”—who provides him with the maternal care denied him by Gilette. Gilette’s mother stands as a counterpoint to her daughter, as a role-model the latter refuses to follow. Gilette resents seeing Mamie “succeed” where she  [a bu., il a mangé et il est reparti chez sa nouvelle femme]. Dambury, Trames, 34.  [GILETTE: Je l’aurais fichu dehors avec pertes et fracas. / CHRISTIAN: Oui, mais toi, tu n’es pas une vraie femme antillaise.../ GILETTE: De 1953... Pas une femme antillaise de 1953...]. Dambury, Trames, 34–5. 14 15

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has “failed,” as in her relationship with Christian, for whom Mamie represents an ideal mother-figure, and in her relationship with Gilette’s ex-­ husband, with whom Mamie gets along better than Gilette herself. Eventually Gilette’s rejection of all maternal stereotypes is confirmed and articulated in her final dialogue with Christian: GILETTE: […] I am free. I am a free woman! That’s what you don’t want to understand, eh? Neither you, nor your grandmother! I won’t let history repeat itself. I won’t be MY mother. I won’t be HIS mother! I tried… I played that role but it just doesn’t suit me. It was all fake.16

She is not, like her mother, a “typical” Caribbean woman. The tirade ends with the phrase: “YOU ARE NOT MY FINAL DESTINATION!,” the “final destination” being the ultimate aspiration a woman is expected to have: motherhood.17 If for Gilette her son is not her final destination, then motherly duty is not her raison d’être. She thus removes herself from her traditional role in French Caribbean society. Her independence and renunciation of the norm are represented as a threat by those around her, the other characters finding her antagonistic. This in turn suggests that the choices made by Gilette remain controversial and unavailable to most women in the world of the play, but given the documentary aspect of Gilette’s transcription-recording, Dambury may also be referring to Guadeloupean social reality beyond the fictional. Another stereotype drawn from French Caribbean history is that of the seductress, which dates from the times of slavery when it was believed that women used their bodies to seduce their white owners. In Condé’s Pension, Emma’s former profession as a cabaret dancer is the perfect embodiment of the image of the reified, exotic, colonized woman. Yet she is critical of the stigma attached to the profession: The new Josephine Baker, that’s what they used to call me! But I didn’t like being called that. When I saw it written in the newspapers, I wasn’t happy.  [GILETTE: [...] Je suis libre. Je suis une femme libre! C’est cela que tu ne veux pas comprendre, hein? Ni toi, ni ta grand-mère! Je ne répèterai pas l’histoire. Je ne serai pas MA mère. Je ne serai pas SA mère! J’ai essayé... J’ai tenu ce rôle-là mais il ne me va pas. Tout ça, c’était faux]. Ibid., 63. 17  [TU N’ES PAS MA DESTINATION FINALE!]. Capital letters in the text. Ibid. 16

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Because I never agreed to wear a belt of bananas around my waist. I was a black woman… a dignified black woman.18

Emma is shown as understanding the use of her body for her own advancement as an emancipatory rather than as a submissive act. She exploits her power over her wealthy admirers, whose gifts allow her to live a comfortable life as an independent woman. However, behind her critique of society’s and her family’s disapproval, Emma still suffers from the perception of others. And so, despite emancipating herself from traditional gendered roles, she has difficulty coming to terms with her life choices: EMMA: […] I know what you others think, with your minds as narrow as matchboxes. “Their daughter […] is a nude dancer […] Yes, my dear, she displays her rump to the whites!” … Do you know what life was like then? The cold, hunger, rationing! […] What else could I have done? ISMAËL: I’m not criticizing you. Ma’am, Ma’am, do not get yourself into such a state! EMMA: […] I let you in my home, and then you go and insult me! ISMAËL: I’m insulting you? EMMA: Say it, say what you think of me! Say that I AM a whore?19

Emma’s reconfiguration of power dynamics between desirer and object of desire that puts the latter in a position of authority remains fragile before centuries-old stereotypes and prejudices of Caribbean and French societies.  [La nouvelle Joséphine Baker, c’est comme cela qu’ils m’appelaient! Mais moi, je n’aimais pas qu’ils m’appellent ainsi. Quand je voyais cela dans leurs journaux, je n’étais pas contente. Parce que je n’ai jamais accepté de ceinture de bananes, moi. J’étais une négresse...digne]. Condé, Pension les alizés, 11. 19  [EMMA: [...] Je vous connais, vous autres, avec vos esprits étroits comme des boîtes d’allumettes. “Leur fille... [...] est danseuse nue [...] Oui, ma chère, elle montre son cul aux blancs!” [...] Vous savez, ce que c’était la vie en ce temps-là? Le froid, la faim, le rationnement! [...] Alors, qu’est-ce que vous vouliez que je fasse? ISMAËL: Moi je ne veux rien du tout. Madame, Madame, ne vous mettez pas dans des états pareils! / EMMA: [...] Je vous reçois chez moi, et voilà, vous m’insultez! / ISMAËL: Je vous insulte, moi? / EMMA Dites, dites ce que vous pensez! Dites-le que je SUIS une pute?]. Condé, Pension, 22–3. 18

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In Emma’s character there are also attributes of the Caribbean matriarch. This is shown, in particular, in her relationship to Ismaël, whom she treats as a child despite embarking on a sexual relationship with him. Despite publicly refuting all maternal sentiments, motherhood is something to which Emma is seen to subliminally aspire, even musing about having a daughter “who would not know the winter, pokey freezing attic rooms, racism and fear.”20 This could be interpreted as a symptom of her regretting her relationship with her own mother, to whom she often refers throughout the play. In contrast to Gilette in Trames, Emma shows regret for leaving her mother, not keeping in touch with her and not being there when she died: “I never saw mother’s tomb. […] One shouldn’t think of the past. Of painful things from the past. It is like thinking of teeth that have been pulled-out.”21 Emma’s pain at leaving her mother is a physical pain, the pain of having something dear wrenched from her body, like a tooth. The struggle of Condé’s and Dambury’s female protagonists with social, gendered and racial stereotypes transpires through these different attitudes towards their mothers and motherhood. Gilette rejects her mother as a symbol of social and gendered repression, whereas Emma admires and misses her mother. While in Dambury’s Trames Gilette tries to balance her professional life with motherhood, Emma in Pension seemingly cannot afford to do so despite an underlying desire to provide maternal care. A symptom of changing times, for Condé’s Emma is older than Dambury’s Gilette, and their own mentalities have adapted to the changing mentalities of their respective epochs. Emma has internalized the social and institutional authorities that are critical of her status as a black female performer, and Gilette guiltlessly defies these authorities which she deems old-fashioned and reductive. In Condé and Dambury’s plays different generations of female creatives struggle with gendered stereotypes and dynamics that still have an impact on contemporary Caribbean women. Gilette’s frustration and “La Femme au bébé’s” testimony in Trames and the solitude and stigma Pension’s Emma still faces despite being retired, independent and  [Elle ne connaîtrait pas l’hiver, les chambres de bonnes glaciales, le racisme et la peur.] Ibid., 115.  [Je n’ai jamais vu la tombe de maman. [...] Il ne faut pas penser au passé. Aux choses qui ont fait mal dans le passé. C’est comme si on pensait aux dents arrachées]. Ibid., 12. 20 21

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strong-­willed reveal that the lot of working class women in the French Caribbean has changed little since the 1950s. Yet Emma and Gilette are characters who in spite of these obstacles persist in living the lives they choose.

Fighting Racial and Gendered Discrimination While Condé’s Pension relates the experiences of a black female performer in the second half of the twentieth century, the reification of the Caribbean woman artist remains an issue today, and no less so in the context of the French theatre where racial bias affects both male and female actors. As Michèle Césaire recalls: “It was in Drama School that I learned I was black. I knew I was mixed-race; but I had no idea that meant I represented Africa.”22 As an actress, Césaire would be cast in “black” roles, irrespective of the fact that she could play other characters. In Doutes, Suzanne’s refusal to perform may be a reaction to the reductive nature of the roles reserved to black women in theatre. Suzanne is however shown to campaign for the rights of French Caribbean actors to perform and direct, and has enlightened her fellow Guadeloupian, Lucie, to the possibilities of playing independent black women and performing black histories. Suzanne does not oppose black women becoming actresses; in fact, they are necessary to the establishing of diversity in an already prejudiced business. However, the example of Suzanne’s character shows that Caribbean women artists can be and should aspire to be more than just actresses. With Lucie’s character, Doutes reveals the struggles of black actors being given “secondary roles” that do not correspond to their heritage and history. For the majority of the play’s action her role remains that of a secondary female character, who does as Suzanne or Jo instructs. Dambury does, however, include one scene in which Lucie demonstrates her increasing awareness of her status as a black female actor after her first encounter with Suzanne. Contained within this scene is a flashback sequence in which Suzanne makes Lucie read excerpts of African  [C’est au Conservatoire que j’ai appris que j’étais noire. Je savais que j’étais métisse; mais j’ignorais que cela impliquait représenter l’Afrique]. Césaire, “La Phrase. Michèle Césaire.” 22

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American director and playwright August Wilson’s The Ground on Which I Stand (1996), a speech denouncing the hegemony of European and white American theatrical forms that impedes African American thespians from expressing their culture and voices on stage. Lucie explains to Jo how, before meeting Suzanne, she could not relate to the characters she portrayed nor to the playwrights who had written them. The roles Suzanne offered her were liberating: “I felt as though I had come back to life […] I could identify almost seamlessly with the character and enrich it with all that I was, with everything I had experienced in my life.”23 This reflection on the lack of representative black roles in French national theatre echoes the discourse of many black theatre artists of the postcolonial Diaspora, such as Michèle Césaire cited above. Eva Doumbia, a French director of Ivorian and Malian origin, has also drawn attention to the fact that productions featuring ethnic actors on stage often do not correspond to her own historical awareness and cultural experiences: “Why should I identify with Nora, Ibsen’s heroine? I do not have a bourgeois background, I am not white.”24 For her, a refounding of “l’imaginaire français” [the way the French imagine themselves] is necessary and should take into account “une autre connaissance de l’histoire” [another way of knowing history].25 Doumbia’s argument, one shared by many theatre practitioners, is echoed by this scene in Doutes. Even though Lucie does not share Suzanne’s level of political indignation, she participates in a movement of rejection of oppressive theatrical and societal norms through her profession of actress. Lucie’s politics are contained within her performance, for she is the vessel through which Suzanne’s political opinions are articulated, but the performer also benefits fully from embodying these opinions, as an act of self-identification and fulfillment. Lucie’s case is an argument in favor of sensitizing actors themselves to the types of roles they could or should perform.  [Je me suis sentie revivre, [...] j’ai eu le sentiment de trouver presque naturellement ma place dans le personnage et d’avoir la faculté de l’enrichir vraiment, de tout ce que j’étais, de tout ce que j’avais expérimenté dans ma vie]. Dambury, Des doutes et des errances, 72. 24  [Pourquoi, moi, je devrais m’identifier à Nora, l’héroïne d’Ibsen? Je n’ai pas grandi dans la bourgeoisie, je ne suis pas blanche]. Bouchez, “‘Le phrasé qu’on enseigne aux comédiens les sépare des quartiers populaires’ Eva Doumbia.” 25  Bouchez, “Le phrasé qu’on enseigne.” 23

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Authorial and Performer Characters While Condé’s and Dambury’s plays reassess the role of the black woman performing artists, they also represent characters in a range of artistic professions. These may be broadly divided into two categories: authorial characters (authors and directors) who are responsible for artistic production, and performer characters (dancers and actors) who transmit the works of the authorial characters. However, in the plays analyzed here, the delineation between these categories is blurred, problematizing conventional boundaries between agents and interpreters of artistic creation. Suzanne in Dambury’s Doutes is fiercely protective of her work Les Atlantiques amers, which Jo, Lucie and herself are rehearsing. The old play being played within the new play was written originally by Dambury herself in 2009, and undergoes a meta-theatrical or rather an intra-­ theatrical reassessment in Doutes, since it is read, performed and discussed by the three protagonists. Doutes outlines the impact of the rehearsal process on the development of a play on stage and on the page, engendering a reflection on the status of the writer in a theatrical context. For the fictional author of Les Atlantiques amers, Suzanne, the benefits of rewriting her play fail to compensate for the concomitant loss of her authorial hegemony. When Jo and Lucie attempt to point out to Suzanne various issues in the play-text, Suzanne remains fiercely protective of her work, exclaiming: “There is no theatre without the text! Everything else is mere agitation!”26 This is an unusual response from a theatre practitioner, theatre being a multimodal art form by definition. For Suzanne, even a collective re-write impinges on her authority as director, and more importantly as author, a fragile status in a theatrical context. Her disquiet about losing control over her work is again shown later in the play when Suzanne expresses her fear of exclusion from the creative process, and manifests her wariness at Jo’s increasing control over the production. It is Jo who offers to direct the play in her stead, Jo whom she implores not to change her production at the expense of the text. Suzanne is increasingly consigned to the role of writer, thus minimizing her control over the  [Il n’y a pas de théâtre sans texte! Tout le reste, c’est de l’agitation!]. Dambury, Des doutes et des errances, 44. 26

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production of the play. The vehemence with which Suzanne fights for her text and the power-play that develops between herself and Jo foreground deeper concerns about the status of the female Caribbean artist. Suzanne is justified in her anxiety at being side-lined, for she is, as a woman and an artist, on the verge of losing her artistic command over her own creation. On a more meta-theatrical level, Dambury’s authorial characters also seek a physical detachment from the action of their plays. The character of Gilette in Trames succeeds in not involving herself in the play’s action. Rather it is otherworldly Dabar, “the spirit of the house,” who organizes the stage space, clears it up and does the cooking. Although the dialogue suggests that it is Gilette who cooks, she is not described in the stage directions as physically accomplishing any domestic tasks. Rather, it is she who describes an action, and Dabar who executes it, as the stage directions show: GILETTE: Stuffed scallops, cream, a bit of curry to add a Caribbean note… […] What should I serve this with? Potatoes, rice, oh no! sweet potatoes […]. All of the reflections uttered out loud by Gilette are turned into actions by Dabar.27

Gilette acts as a conductor or master of ceremonies, which confers on her significant influence over the action. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Gilette cannot help but be part of the action of Trames. In the finale, she is murdered by Christian, and the play closes with Gilette’s lifeless body in her armchair: “We are back with the stage as it was at the start of the play. Gilette in her armchair,” which echoes the opening scene: “The lifeless body of woman in an armchair.”28 Trames thus can be interpreted as a cyclical narrative, which starts and ends with Gilette’s corpse on an armchair. Therefore, Gilette can be seen as a spirit herself, who effectively cannot  [GILETTE: Des coquilles Saint-Jacques, de la crème fraîche, un peu de curry pour garder un soupçon d’Antilles... [...] Avec quoi je vais faire ça? On a le choix, pommes de terre, riz, ah non! patates douces... [...] Toutes les réflexions à voix haute de Gilette sont transformées en acte par Dabar]. Dambury, Trames, 19. 28  [On retrouve le plateau du début. Gilette dans son fauteuil; Dans le fauteuil, une femme, inerte]. Italics in original playscript. Ibid., 64; 7. 27

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act, and so it falls upon Dabar to execute her actions for her. Gilette as spirit or ghostly entity has fully removed herself from the action. But she has achieved this detachment at a price, and this suggests once more that the status of the female artist, as autonomous creator, authorial entity and producer of her own work, remains fragile. As discussed above, rather than docilely fulfilling the role of the actress as non-autonomous vehicle performing the author or director’s bidding, the “performer” characters of Lucie and Dabar in Dambury’s Doutes and Trames, and Emma in Condé’s Pension, present another facet of the potential of French Caribbean women artists. Dabar in Trames is a most unconventional “performer.” Dabar is a quintessentially “acting” character. She performs domestic duties, sets and clears up the set. She also acts out some of the testimonies recorded by Gilette. However, despite performing Gilette’s bidding, there is a considerable amount of agency in Dabar’s actions. Dabar blurs the boundaries between acting and directing, by seemingly “conducting” the events taking place on stage. At the start of the play, Dabar is the first character to appear on stage, and she is the last character to leave at the end. After setting up the space, she utters these words: “AND WHILST THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE WATCHING THE SPECTACLE OF LIVES UNFOLDING BEFORE THEIR EYES, THEY THEMSELVES HAD IN FACT BECOME THE CHARACTERS IN A PLAY THAT WAS BEING PLAYED WITHOUT THEIR KNOWING.”29 Dabar’s opening lines initiate the play’s action. Immediately after she pronounces them, the stage directions indicate that “Gilette comes to life” (Gilette s’anime).30 Dabar’s name is suggestive of this power over the action, for it “literally means ‘scripture’ in Hebrew, a directorial authority that has the power to run the show.”31 At the beginning of the play, was the word, and the word is with Dabar. Dabar’s omnipresence and control of the set and the movements of the characters confer on her the role of conductor, manipulating the  [ET TANDIS QU’ILS PENSAIENT ASSISTER AU SPECTACLE DE VIES QUI SE DÉROULAIENT SOUS LEURS YEUX, VOICI QU’EUX-MÊMES ÉTAIENT DEVENUS LES PERSONNAGES D’UNE PIÈCE QUI SE JOUAIT À LEUR INSU]. Capitalization in original playscript. Ibid., 7. 30  Ibid. 31  Dechaufour, “Trames de Gerty Dambury,” 155. 29

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characters in a play without their knowing. This recalls the role of the conteur, or French Caribbean storyteller, which is for the most part conventionally performed by men. And this grants Dabar further agency in crossing boundaries between performing and directing, as well as between genders. The theme of storytelling permeates the plot of Trames. Gilette’s recordings constitute an oral tradition, and most of Dabar’s dialogue consists of French Caribbean proverbs; French Caribbean conteurs punctuate their stories with calls to the audience and with proverbs. However, despite organizing the characters’ space and movements, Dabar has no power over the events that are to unfold or have unfolded, much like the conteurs, who despite their artistic license cannot change the events they describe, for they are immutable. Suzanne in Doutes and Gilette in Trames demonstrate the difficulties faced by intellectuals and artists who seek to assert their artistic independence and authority. Dabar in Trames subverts binaries dividing authorial and performer characters, by both creating and performing. In both cases, the female artist has to compromise, be it by falling into the fold of the play’s action as does Gilette, or like Dabar being powerless before the events taking place before her. This is emblematic of the experience of Caribbean female artists. Binary differentiation between writer/director and performer, between agents and conveyors of artistic creation, should be transcended when addressing issues of artistic agency. However, the characters in the plays of French Caribbean women artists often compromise to maintain their status, and are constantly under threat of not being recognized or being at risk of being challenged.

Conclusion In each play analyzed above, there is an emphasis on the female artist’s right and need to express herself, to escape her triple-marronage and assert her creative authority. Condé’s Pension, Dambury’s Trames and Doutes explore the status of the female French Caribbean artist and intellectual, from performers who wish to transcend gendered and racist stereotypes, to authorial characters who struggle to preserve artistic agency. These characters, who are portrayed as willful and independent, struggle with

16  Staging Female Creatives in French Caribbean Women’s… 

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the authority of discriminatory social constructs and cultural institutions, and through them gendered and exoticizing stereotypes that affect writers, directors and performers alike are also brought into question. The plays also pose the question of the authority of the artist in a setting that is collaborative and therefore involving multiple authors and figures of authority. It is proposed that the portrayal of the female creative in Caribbean women’s theatre, rather than falling into the trap of the concept of the author as sole authority in an artistic production, can question and transcend such notions. And this may in turn lead to a different vision of the female artist as collaborative, multi-talented and possessing agency.

References Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bérard, Stéphanie, and Ina Césaire. 2010. De l’enracinement à l’ouverture au monde. Africultures (1): 80, 147–181, 150. Bouchez, Emmanuelle. ‘Le phrasé qu’on enseigne aux comédiens les sépare des quartiers populaires’ Eva Doumbia. Télérama.fr. Last modified 1 February 2018. http://www.telerama.fr/scenes/le-phrase-qu-on-enseigne-aux-comediens-les-separe-des-quartiers-populaires,125015.php. Accessed 4 February 2017. Butler, Judith. 1988. Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal 40 (4): 519–531. ———. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York/London: Routledge. Césaire, Michèle. 2011. La Phrase. Michèle Césaire. Libération, April 7. http:// next.liberation.fr/culture/2011/04/07/la-phrase-michele-cesaire_727376. Accessed 1 February 2017. Condé, Maryse. 1988. Pension les alizés. Paris: Mercure de France. Dambury, Gerty. 2009. Trames. Paris: Éditions du Manguier. ———. 2014. Des doutes et des errances, suivi de Les Atlantiques amers. Paris: Éditions du Manguier. Dechaufour, Pénélope. 2016. Trames de Gerty Dambury: Interstices mémoriels Au féminin. In Amour, sexe, genre et trauma dans la Caraïbe francophone, ed. Gladys M. Francis, 153–159. Paris: Éditions l’Harmattan.

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Diamond, Elin. 1997. Unmaking Mimesis; Essays on Feminism and Theater. New York/London: Routledge. Dracius, Suzanne, and R.H.  Mitsch. 2010. In Search of Suzanne Césaire’s Garden. Research in African Literatures 41 (1): 155–165. Edwards, Carole. 2014. Théâtralisation et quête de liberté par procuration chez trois dramaturges antillaises. Women in French Studies 5: 183–193. Ferris, Lesley. 1989. Acting Women: Images of Women in Theatre. London: Macmillan. ———. 1993. Crossing the Stage; Controversies on Cross-Dressing. London: Routledge. Gyssels, Kathleen. 1996. Filles de Solitude. Essai sur l’identité antillaise dans les (auto-)biographies fictives de Simone et André Schwarz-Bart. Paris: L’Harmattan. Herr, Stéphanie. 2017. Où sont les femmes? Toujours pas là! Bilan 2012–2017. Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD). Jardine, Lisa. 1989. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. New York: Columbia University Press. Senelick, Laurence. 2002. The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre. London: Routledge. Wilson, August. The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance. AAS21: A 21st Century Archive of African American Studies. http://aas.princeton.edu/blog/publication/thegroundonwhichistand/. Accessed 21 March 2017.

Index1

A

Abbasid scholar Abu, 198 ’Abd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī, 199 Abdi, Nura, 275n7 Abortion, 2, 9, 136, 243–268 Abram Room, 245, 258n39 Abu Bakr, Aisha bint, 197 Abu Zahra, Nadia, 157n24, 157n29 Abuse, 1, 10, 28, 93, 97, 99, 165, 178, 271, 274, 279, 295 Acquistapace, 119n45 Activism, 2, 8, 35, 38–55, 59, 84, 106–124, 132n3, 152, 153n12, 175, 206n55, 214, 323 Adams, Jad, 85, 85n9 Adhikara, 172 Adorno, Theodor W., 3n2 Advice literature, 21, 23, 27

Afghanistan, 228, 229 African Diaspora, 274 Afsaruddin, Asma, 197–199, 197n8 Agamben, Giorgio, 3n2 Agency, 5–7, 7n11, 11, 26, 54, 65, 97–99, 106, 164, 176, 198, 209, 215, 291, 297, 335, 345–347 “Age of Consent Act,” 174 Age of Consent Bill (AoC Bill), 175, 178, 190 Agius, Silvan, 144n57 Agnes, Flavia, 173, 174n9 Agnostic, 296 Ahadith, 195, 197 Ahmed, Leila, 197 Ahmed, Sarah, 7, 7n13, 316 Akhvat, Khadijeh, 200n24 Alcoff, Linda, 107, 107n8, 111

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Bardazzi, A. Bazzoni (eds.), Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45160-8

349

350 Index

Algeria, 228 Ali, Muna, 225n7 Ali Shari, Mohammad, 214n95 AlJazeera, 90n30 Allen, Amy, 327n47 Allender, Tim, 175n11 Alwani, Zainab, 197n5 America, 24, 74, 90, 189 Amin, Nosrat, 200, 211, 211n76 Anagol-Mcginn, Padma, 175n11 Anderson, Amanda, 98n62 Anderson, Benedict, 108, 108n15 Angelo, Anaïs, 10, 65n32 Anna Dalassene, 318, 320 Anthropology, 62n21, 63 Antigone, 314 Antony, Louise, 40, 40n14 Antosa, Silvia, 114n33 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 8 Arcilesbica, 112, 112n26, 113, 117 Arendt, Hannah, 3n2, 5n6, 106, 152 Arfaoui, Khedija, 154n14 Argentina, 37, 144n55 Aristotle, 319 Arruzza, Cinzia, 37n6 Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates (ATFD), 153n12, 158 Atemi, Caleb, 71n62 Atheist, 296 Athens City Council, 323n35 Atieno-Odhiambo, Elisha S., 66n37 Attridge, Derek, 98n61 Attwood, Lynne, 244n6 Auctor, 5, 5n6 Auctoritas, 3, 5n6 Augere, 41 Austin, J. L., 335, 335n9

Australia, 138, 144n55 Authority artistic authority, 332, 335 bio-political authority, 245, 267 discursive authority, 10, 105–108 informal, 9–11, 221–237 linguistic and discursive authority, 10, 105–108 medical authority, 133, 137–139, 250, 259 parental, 4, 131–144, 263 parental authority, 4, 131–144 paternal authority, 159 political authority, 10, 53, 68, 69, 323 religious authority, 155, 157, 195–216, 223–228, 231, 233, 235–237 traditional authority, 63, 70, 152, 244, 267 Authorship, 10, 77, 122, 131n1, 286, 314, 327 Autobiographies, 59–77, 175, 187, 190 Avdeev, Alexandre, 254n27 Ayatollah Khomeini, 200, 214, 214n92 Ayatollah Qudusi, 200 Ayatollahs Meshkini, 214n95 Azad, Arezou, 198, 198n16 B

Bachmann, Ingrid, 106n6 Bade, Klaus, 229n18 Baghdad, 198 al-Baghdādī, Al-Khatīb, 199 Bahun-Radunović, Sanja, 328n50

 Index 

Bailes, Jon, 31n24 Balocchi, Michela, 9, 131n1, 132n4, 138n28 Bangladesh, 144n55 Bannerman, Lucy, 121, 121n55 Banu, Masooda, 226n13 Barentu, 275 Barlas, Asma, 197 Barr, Mark, 142n51 Barthes, Roland, 98n60 Basse-Terre, 334n7 Bauer, Markus, 136n19, 144n57 Bayoumi, Moustafa, 226n12 Bazzoni, Alberica, 118n40 BBC, 83n3 Bean, Judith Mattson, 18n3 Beard, Mary, 28, 28n22, 313 Beh, Hazel G., 138n33 Behrouzi, Maryam, 211, 211n79 Ben Achour, Sana, 153n12, 155, 155n19, 156n21, 158n30 Ben Achour, Yadh, 157n25, 157n29 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 151–167 Ben Arous, 152, 153, 162 Ben Jemia, Monia, 158n31 Ben Youssef, Fakhereedine, 154 Benadusi, Laura, 134n10 Bengal, 171, 174, 176n16, 178, 186, 187 Bérard, Stéphanie, 336n12 Berman, Bruce, 62n21 Bernard, Jay, 122n57 Bernini, Lorenzo, 36, 36n2 Bernstein, Mary, 37n5, 108n14 Bhandarkar, Ramkrishna Gopal, 182–185, 184n38 Bhattacharya, Tithi, 92–94, 93n42 Bible, 73, 227n14 Bielo, James, 227n14

351

Biennale della Democrazia, 36 Binetti, Paola, 115, 116n37 Biopower, 43, 44 Bishop, Stephen, 281, 281n16 Black feminism, 8, 84–97, 106–107 Black Girls Rock! 2018 Community Change Agent Award, 84 Blili, Temime, 157n27 Boehmer, Elleke, 69, 69n54 Boissoneault, Lorraine, 85n11 Bolokoli, 279 Bolshevik policy, 245 Bombay, 176n16, 177, 178 Bonini, Emanuela, 115n34, 116n36 Bonomi Romagnoli, Barbara, 37n3 Bosnia, 228, 229 Bouchez, Emmanuelle, 342n24 Bouilly, Emmanuelle, 61n16 Bourdieu, Pierre, 307, 307n27 Bourguiba, 154, 154n13, 155, 157 Boyle, Karen, 292n4, 296n17 Braithwaite, Scott R., 296n19 Branch, Daniel, 66n36 Brezhnevite Cinema, 244, 259–267 Bridger, Sue, 264, 265n54 Britain (UK), 21, 107, 109, 111–123 British colonial rule, 61 Buddhism, 180, 296 Bujra, Janet M., 65n32 Burke, Tarana, 84, 87, 96, 96n53, 97, 99 Burkina Faso, 279 Burns, Paul E., 250, 250n20 Burris, Val, 94n48 Burton, Antoinette, 175n11 Busi, Beatrice, 37n4, 134n11 Butler, Judith, 7n11, 98, 108, 123, 335 Buttarelli, Annarosa, 41n20

352 Index C

Cagnolo, Fr. C., 73n74 Calcutta, 178n23 Cameron, Deborah, 10, 18n1 Camilleri, Carmel, 157n23 Canada, 91n37, 144n55 Canon, 6, 173, 182, 314 Carastathis, Anna, 8n14 Carpenter, Morgan, 142n53 Carroll, Lucy, 175n11 Castle, Terry, 109n16 Cauterucci, Christina, 23n13 Cavarero, Adriana, 40n15 Central Bank of Kenya, 67 Centre des Arts de Pointe-à-­ Pitre, 333n6 Césaire, Michèle, 336, 341, 341n22, 342 Chakraborty, Rochana, 175n11 Chakravarti, Uma, 172n2 Chan, Melissa, 97n55 Charrad, Mounira M., 154n15 Chatterjee, Partha, 172n2 Chicago Consensus Conference, 132 Choniates, Niketas, 315, 316 Christian, 76, 188, 230–232, 296, 334, 337, 338, 344 Christmas, 230, 236 Ciclitira, Karen, 292n3 Circumcision, 59, 60, 73, 74, 274, 277, 285 Cirillo, Lidia, 37n6 Clare Balding, 114 Class, 6, 8, 10, 28, 51, 65, 86–89, 91, 92, 94, 97, 99, 133, 155, 172, 173, 181, 187, 188, 224, 265, 292, 295, 296, 322, 335, 341

Clignancourt, 274 Clitoridectomy, 271, 272, 274, 282 Clough, Marshall S., 66n37 Clymer, Charlotte, 83 Clytemnestra, 314 Cold War, 323 Columbian Constitutional Court, 139 Combahee River Collective, 94, 106, 107n7, 110 Comitato Nazionale per la Bioetica, 135n14 Commission pour l’Abolition des mutilations sexuelles (CAMS), 272–273 Communism, 318, 323 Complete Androgen Insensibility (CAIS), 132 Condé, Maryse, 11, 333, 336, 338, 339n18, 340, 341, 343, 345, 346 Consent, 2, 11, 31, 100, 139, 141, 142, 156, 159, 178, 189, 214, 281, 298 Cossutta, Carlotta, 10, 36n1, 38n8, 115n34 Coulibaly, Fatoumata, 279, 280 Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, 142 Crawford, Mary, 21n10 Creighton, Sarah, 136n19 Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, 8n14, 85–88, 85n10, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 178 Crissman, Halley P., 141n47 Custodero, Alberto, 114n30 Customary Laws, 173, 175–177, 179

 Index  D

Dahlgren, Susanne, 152n2 Dambury, Gerty, 11, 333, 334, 334n7, 336, 337n14, 338, 340, 341, 343–346 Dandekar, Ramchandra Narayan, 176n16 Danna, Daniela, 113, 115, 115n34, 116 Dashu, Max, 276, 276n10 Davies, Bronwyn, 7n11 Davis, Angela, 8 Davis, Georgiann, 132n4 Dayabhaga, 174 de Beauvoir, Simone, 286 de Lauretis, Teresa, 109, 109n17 De Simoni, Simona, 37n4 Deans, Rebecca, 135n17 Dechaufour, Penelope, 345n31 Decker, Alicia C., 60n9, 61 Deeb, Lara, 225, 225n4 Deficit model, 20, 21, 25, 30 DeHanas, Daniel Nilsson, 226n12 Deleuze, Gilles, 97, 97n56 Denmark, 144n55 Department of Health and Human Services, 136n23 Deshaachaar, 183, 184 Desika Char, S. V., 173n7 al-Dhahabi, Mohammad Shams al-Din, 199 Dharmashastra, 172–174, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183 Diamond, Milton, 133n8 Dichotomies, 87, 132, 134, 143, 291 Discrimination, 6, 50, 86, 87, 94, 95, 211n79, 341–342

353

Disorders of sexual development (DSD), 132 Divorce, 2, 9, 151–167, 177 do Mar Pereira, Maria, 6, 6n9 Doan, Petra L., 119n46 Domestic, 4, 11, 18, 46, 89, 95, 165, 205, 246, 280, 281, 336, 344, 345 Donovan, James M., 152n8, 155 Douka, Maro, 11, 316, 317n15, 323–327, 323n36 Doukaina, Eirene, 318, 320 Dracius, Suzanne, 332, 332n3 Dreyfus, Hubert L., 137n26 Duffy, Carol Ann, 114 Duggan, Lisa, 118, 118n43 E

Eagle, Angela, 114 Early-Soviet Cinema, 245–253 Eastern Eye, 294n14 Ebila, Florence, 62n18, 69, 74 Education, 6, 8, 11, 21, 67, 70, 71, 133n6, 134, 175n11, 180, 186, 190, 196, 197, 200–216, 272, 288, 298, 315, 321 Edwards, Carole, 333, 333n4 Ehrenreich, Nancy, 142n51 El Guindi, Fadwa, 274n5 Elliott, Jane, 98n61 Emanet, Zühre, 203, 203n37 Embu, 70, 75 Emmanuel, Sonia, 333, 333n6 Empathy, 84, 95 Empowerment, 11, 22, 24, 30, 84, 320, 322, 327 Empress Maria of Alania, 320

354 Index

Engels, Dagmar, 178n24 Entrustement, 41 Equality Act, 112n24 Essentialism, 98, 108–111, 115, 123 European Society for Pediatric Endocrinology, 132n3 European Union Marie Curie Actions, 132n2 Everitt, Joanna, 25, 25n17

Fourth-wave feminism, 84, 99 France, 154, 265, 271, 273, 274, 331, 332, 334 French Caribbean literature, 332 French Guyana, 332n2 Friedrich, Carl J., 3n2 Fritz, Niki, 296n19 Furtado, Paulo S., 136n20 G

F

Family, 4, 46, 54, 62, 64, 69, 71, 72, 74–77, 89, 93, 113, 115–117, 133n27, 151–163, 165, 166, 172, 174, 179, 186, 188, 189, 198, 204, 208, 209, 211n79, 212, 213, 216, 225, 229, 234, 258, 260, 265, 275, 278, 279, 297, 314, 320, 321, 326, 327, 336, 339 Farrell, Thomas C., 137n27 Fazaeli, Roja, 8, 11, 200n22, 211n76 Fazel Lankarani, Mohammad, 214n95 Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali (FIEG), 118n42 Feinberg, Joel, 141n50 Felton, Rebecca Ann Latimer, 84 Female genital mutilation, 2, 9, 271–288 Ferris, Lesley, 335n11 Fertility, 262, 278, 287, 287n23 Fifteenth Amendment, 84 Finkelstein, Kerstin, 229n18 Fiqh, 195 Foucault, Michel, 6, 6n8, 42, 43, 98, 134, 137, 138

Gabbatiss, Josh, 120n50, 121 Gal-Dem, 294n14 Ganachari, Aravind, 178n21 Garbagnoli, Sara, 113n27 Garbhaadhaan-vidhi, 179 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 286, 287n22 Gavey, Nicola, 291n1 Gazzah, Miriam, 226n12 Geiger, Susan, 61n13 Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act (GIGESC), 142, 143 Gender reassignment, 120 Gender Recognition Act, 119 Gerlach, Julia, 226n11 Germany, 11, 221–237 East Germany, 229 Gervasio, Amy, 21n10 Gestazione per altri (GPA), 113n29 Ghattas, Dan C., 140n44, 144, 221–237, 271 Gidengil, Elisabeth, 25, 25n17 Gidumal, Dayaram, 178n22 Gikuyu, 63, 64, 68–70, 74 Gikuyu Embu Meru Association (GEMA), 70 Girlpower, 42

 Index 

Gisel, Pierre, 76n88 Gleave, Robert, 201, 202, 202n27 Goff, Samuel, 255, 256n35 Gorji, Monir, 211, 211n78 Gotra, 180 Gough, Brendan, 140n42 Graffy, Julian, 246, 246n10, 248, 251, 255n32, 256, 259 Gramolini, Cristina, 113, 115 Greek tragedy, 314 Greenberg, Julie Anne, 132n5 Grewal, Inderpal, 186, 186n44, 189 Gromov, Aleksei, 243n1 Gross Solomon, Susan, 245, 245n8 Guadeloupe, 331, 333–335, 337 The Guardian, 114, 121 Guardian Council, 211n79 Guattari, Félix, 97, 97n56 Guazzo, Paola, 116n38, 118, 118n40 Guilty Feminist Podcast, 294n14 Gurgan, 198 Gutiérrez y Muhs, Gabriella, 7n10 Gyssels, Kathleen, 336n13 H

Haddad, Tahar, 155 Haddock, Marilyn, 20n8 Hadith, 195, 197–199 Hafsia, Nazli, 154n13 Haiti, 332n2, 333 Hall, Stuart, 105n1 Hancock, Ange-Marie, 85, 85n14, 90–92, 94, 95, 100 Hanrahan, Rebecca, 40, 40n14 Harp, Dustin, 106n6 Harrell-Bond, Barbara, 287n23 Haslanger, Sally, 307, 307n26, 308

355

Hassan, Mona, 203, 203n36, 206 Hasso, Frances S., 152, 152n5 Hatips, 203 Haugaard, Mark, 106, 106n2, 111 Hawza, 196, 197, 200–216 Headscarf, 223n2, 233 Heimsath, Charles H., 175n14 Henkel, Heiko, 226n8 Hermansen, Marcia, 198n9 Hermaphrodites, 134 Herr, Stéphanie, 331n1 Heteronormativity, 4, 133, 135, 141 al-Hilaliya, Maymunah bint al-Harith, 197 Hinduism, 171–191, 296 Historical fiction, 313–317 Holley, Sarah R., 109, 110n19 Hollywood, 83, 96 Holmes, Janet, 27, 27n19 Homonormativity, 118 Homosexual/homosexuality, 113n27, 120, 134, 283 Hoodfar, Homa, 202n31, 214 Hooks, bell, 7, 7n12, 8, 322 Horn of Africa, 278 Hughes, Ieuan, 136n20 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act, 112 Human rights, 131, 132, 136, 141–144, 271, 274, 278, 281 I

Ibn ’Asākīr, 198 Identity politics, 8, 83–100, 106, 123 Idi Amin Dada, 61 ILGA Europe, 111, 143n54

356 Index

Illmīyya [the Centre for the Management of the Hawza], 202 Imam Hatip schools, 203 Il Manifesto, 116, 118 Imams, 203, 206, 207 Imperial Legislative Council, 173 The Independent, 121 India, 9, 11, 171–191 “Indian Divorce Act,” 174 Inequality, 1–3, 6, 10, 11, 17, 21, 27, 30, 48, 51, 86, 91, 92, 94, 155, 156, 167, 245, 246, 309 Infertility, 132, 262 Infibulation, 275, 275n7 Institutions, 1, 2, 4–6, 9, 19, 29, 44, 60, 99, 117, 118, 134, 152, 180, 183, 200–204, 204n43, 208, 214, 306–310, 332, 347 International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), 111 Intersecting Identities, 8, 37–38, 83–101, 322 Intersex, 9, 131–144 Invisibility, 74, 77, 90, 94, 111 Iran, 8, 161, 196, 197, 201–205, 207, 210, 211n76, 212–216, 228 Iranian Women’s Islamic Association, 211n79 Irigaray, Luce, 41, 41n17 Isaacs, 7n11 al-Isfahani, I-Faraj, 198 Islamic/Islam, 154–156, 154n13, 155n18, 167, 195–201, 203, 207, 209, 210, 211n79, 212–216, 226, 232, 233, 275 Islamic law, 154, 154n13, 155n18, 199, 210, 235n23

Islamic Republic of Iran, 201, 216 Issoupova, Olga, 244, 244n4 Italian far left, 10, 36 Italian social movements, 35–55 Italy, 9, 36, 41, 42, 107, 109, 111–124, 229 Itha Ashari Shi’as hadith literature, 195n1 J

Jackson Jr, John L., 225n3 Jaimini Sutras, 179 Jain, Jasbir, 175n11 Jami’at al-Zahra (JZ), 205, 210, 214, 214n92, 215 Jami‘at-i Zeinab, 211n79 Janati, Ahmad, 214n95 Jane, Emma, 28, 28n20 Jardine, Lisa, 335n11 Jaschok, Maria, 226n13 Jasonni, Vincenzo, 140n43 Jesus Christ, 76 Jewish, 260, 296, 305 Johnson, Jennifer A., 293n10 Jones, Melinda, 138n32 Jones, Tiffany, 142n51 Jones, Tracie, 18n2, 285, 285n21 Jonker, Gerdien, 226n10 Joseph, Suad, 152n2, 156 Joyce, James, 287 Juffer, Jane, 292n2 Just Be Inc., 84 K

Kalmach, Hilary, 200n25, 226n13 Kamasutra, 182 Kandiyoti, Deniz, 203, 203n37

 Index 

Kane, Pandurang Vaman, 179n25, 180 Kanini, Beatrice, 74 Kanogo, Tabitha, 61n14 Kapadia, Kanaiyalal Motilal, 180n26 Karim, Fariha, 21, 21n11 Karkazis, Katrina, 134n12 Karlekar, Malavika, 176n15 Karume, Njenga, 67, 67n44, 70, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77 Kehrer, Ino, 9, 131n1 Kenya, 59, 61–63, 66, 67, 70, 72, 77, 271, 282, 283 Kenya Human Rights Commission, 60 Kenya National African Union, 59 Kenyatta, Jomo, 62–70, 62n21, 64n25, 67n43, 74, 75, 75n84 Kenyatta, Uhuru, 62 Khan, Ruqayya Y., 197n6 Khoja community, 211n80 Kiambu, 76 Kiano, Gikonyo, 67, 67n44 Kibaki, Mwai, 62 Kiereini, Jeremiah Gitau, 67n44 Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), 63 Kikuyu people, 62, 63 Kindig, Jessie, 84, 84n7 Kipnis, Kenneth, 135n15 Kitab al-Aghani (“Book of Songs”), 198 Klimova, Olga, 262, 262n50 Komnene, Anna, 10, 313–328 Komnenos, Emperor Alexios I, 314 Komnenos, Emperor John II, 314 Kon, Alexander A., 141n50 Kopelman, Loretta M., 140n41 Kortum, Jeanie, 286, 288n24

357

Kosambi, Meera, 176n17, 186n41, 189 Kumar, Radha, 175n11 Künkler, Mirjam, 200n22, 210 Kuppinger, Petra, 11, 227n14 Kuring, Diana, 275n8 Kurz, Jörg, 229n17 L

L’Artchipel, 334n7 La Repubblica, 113, 114, 118 Lacanian psychoanalysis, 99n66, 316 Lafrance, Michelle N., 299n25 Lakoff, Robin, 19–22, 19n7, 25 Lalatta, Faustina, 138n31 Lamba, Rinku, 175n14 Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, 229n20 Langton, Rae H., 292n5 Larios, Borayin, 176n16 Laslett, Brenner, 134n12 Lavry Miss Ellen Grei, 255, 255n34 Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endòcrine Society, 132n3 Le Musée Dapper, 334n8 Leanse, Ellen Petry, 22, 22n12, 23, 30 Lebanon, 156 Leclair, Jalil, 334n8 Lee, Peter, 135n17 Lenin, Vladimir, 245 Leone, Sierra, 287n23 Lesbian movements, 10, 118 Lesbian Rights Alliance (LRA), 112, 112n26, 119–121, 123, 124 Lesbians, 10, 36, 92, 105–124, 283, 296, 302, 307 Levin, Tobe, 9, 272n2 Lezpop, 117n39

358 Index

LGBTQIA+, 107, 111, 112, 114n31, 117, 118, 120–124 LGBTI, 2, 111, 111n23 Lindsay, Lisa A., 60, 60n9 Local Native Council (LNC), 71 Loke, Jaime, 106n6 Lonsdale, John M., 62n21, 66n37, 68, 70 Lorde, Audre, 8, 92, 92n40, 96 Lyell, Carrie, 121, 121n56, 122 M

Maathai, Wangari, 69, 69n53 Macedonia, 222, 228, 229 MacKinnon, Catharine A., 292n8 Macnicol, Nicol, 186n41 Maendeleo ya Wanawake Organization, 75 Mahmood, Saba, 7n11 The Mail, 121 Mainardi, Arianna, 10, 36n1, 38n8 Maine, Henry, 173 Majlis-i Khubrigan-i Qanun Asasi [Assembly of Experts of the Constitution], 211n78 Major, Andrea, 175n11 Maktab-i Fatemeh, 200 Malabari, Behramji, 177–179 Mali, 272, 279, 285 Maliki rite, 157 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 63 Malta, 142, 144n55 Mani, Lata, 171n1 Manne, Kate, 28, 28n21 Manning, Patricia, 20n8 Mantena, Karuna, 172n4 al-Maqqari, 198, 199

Marchetti, Valerio, 134n9 Maria of Bulgaria, 318, 321 Maritato, Chiara, 206, 206n54 Markaz-i Modiriat-i Hawza ‘Illmīyya Khaharan [the Centre for Management of Female Seminaries], 202n28, 204 Marriage, 9, 18, 64, 74, 75, 77, 109, 111, 118, 119, 119n44, 152, 153, 156–165, 167, 174–185, 177n19, 177n20, 188–190, 205, 208–210, 213, 246, 281, 305, 325, 326 Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act, 111, 174 Marronage, 332 Martinique, 331, 332n2 Marway, Herjeet, 116n36 Marx, Karl, 88 Masculinity, 4, 26, 36, 48, 59, 60, 60n9, 62, 69, 70, 73, 77, 313–316 Mason-Grant, Jason, 292n6 Matriarchs, 336, 340 Mattioli, Girolamo, 140n43 Mau Mau war, 66, 66n37, 72 Maupeu, Hervé, 66n35, 67n40, 68 May, Vivian M., 86, 86n17 Mayday4Women, 120 Mayne, Judith, 250, 250n21 Mbembe, Achille, 60, 60n5, 61 Mboya, Tom, 66, 66n39 McGee, Mary, 181n30 McGlynn, Clare, 297n22 McKenzie-Mohr, Suzanne, 299n25 McRobbie, Angela, 44n29, 55 Medea, 314 Meese, Elizabeth A., 108n12

 Index 

Menstruation, 179, 235n23, 287 Meoded Danon, Limor, 136n22 Merleau-Ponty’s, Maurice, 42 Mernissi, Fatima, 197 Messick, Brinkley, 164, 164n39 MeToo movement, 2, 8, 10, 87, 95, 97, 100 Middle East, 88, 151 Miescher, Stephan F., 60, 60n6 Milano, Alyssa, 83, 83n1, 84 Mill, John Stuart, 172 Milletti, Nerina, 109n16 Mimamsa texts, 174 Minoritization, 91, 97 Minority groups, 106, 107, 121, 331n1 Minto, Catherine L., 136n21 Misogyny, 28, 29 Mitakshara, 174 Moghadam, Valentine M., 156n22 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 8, 88–91, 88n23 Moi, Daniel arap, 59 Moi, Gideon, 59, 60, 62, 67 Moraga, Cherríe, 8 Moran, Caitlin, 294n14 Morgan, Robin, 292, 292n7 Moroccan, 197n4 Morocco, 228, 229 Morrison, Toni, 287 Mosques, 201, 207, 216, 226, 227, 236 Mostafavi, Farideh, 200 Motherhood, 115, 116, 172, 205, 208, 209, 212, 244, 245, 249–251, 254–256, 259, 261, 261n48, 263, 266, 267, 334, 338, 340

359

Motherhood Medal [Medal´ materinstva], 256 “Mother right,” 276 Mourchidat [state trained female religious guides], 197n4 Mousavi Ardibili, Abdul-­ Karim, 214n95 Muchiri, Jennifer, 66n38 Muftias, 196 Mugumo Nyakinyua Women’s Group, 76 Muhammad, Prophet, 195, 197, 198 Mujtahidah, 200, 210, 211n76, 215 Mumsnet, 294n14 Muraro, Luisa, 41, 41n19 Muriuki, Godfrey, 64n25 Musandu, Phoebe, 65n31 Musila, Grace A., 60n4 Muslim, 153–155, 154n13, 157, 189, 195–216, 221, 223n2, 224, 226–234, 236, 237, 296 Mutafchieva, Vera, 11, 316, 318–323, 326, 327 Mwaluko, Nick Hadikwa, 282, 283n19, 285 N

Nadwi, Mohammad Akram, 198, 198n12 Nafaqa, 162, 163, 165 Nafh al-tib fi ghusn al-andalus al-ratib (“The Fragrance of Perfume in the Moist Bough of al-Andalus”), 198, 283, 287 Nairobi, 75, 283, 287 Najaf, 201 Nandy, Ashis, 172, 172n3

360 Index

Ndegwa, Duncan, 67, 67n43, 68, 73 Ndungo, Catherine M., 64, 65n30 Necati, Yas, 121, 121n53 Neighborhood spaces, 222, 224, 225, 225n3, 227, 237 Neoliberal feminism, 29–31 Neoliberal post-feminist era, 43 Nepal, 144n55 The Netherlands, 144n55 Newcomb, Rachel, 226n8 New Zealand, 144n55 Ngina, 75 Nike’s slogan “Just Do It,” 23 Nineteenth Amendment, 85 Nishapur, 198 Ni Una Menos, 37 Non una di meno, 37, 38n7 Nordbahnhof, 224, 227–229, 229n20 Nouri, Elaheh, 195, 202, 202n32, 204, 207, 207n61, 208, 211, 212 Nyabola, Nanjala, 59, 60 Nyachae, Simeon, 67 Nyagah, Eunice Wambere, 75 Nyagah, Jeremiah, 67, 67n44, 72–76 Nzomo, Maria, 65n34 O

Obonyo, Oscar, 74n81 Ochieng, William R., 66n38 Ocobock, Paul, 61, 61n11 Odinga, Raila, 60 Odinga, Oginga, 66, 66n39 Okoth, Juliet, 62n19 Oldenburg, Ray, 225n3 Oppression, 2, 8, 11, 39, 86, 87, 89–92, 95, 96, 99, 122, 245, 251, 285

Optimum Gender Rearing (OGR) model, 133 Order of Maternal Glory [Orden “Materinskaia slava”], 256 Otieno, Wambui Waiyaki, 69 Ozgur, Iren, 203, 203n34 P

Pagan, 296 Pakistan, 144n55 Paranjape, Makarand R., 175n12 Paris, 272–275, 285, 333, 334n8 Parvez, Z. Fareen, 292n3 Passerini, Luisa, 109n16 Pasterski, Vickie, 139n35 Pathologization, 134–137 Patton, Laurie L., 172n5, 173 Paul, Bryant, 296n19 Peatrik, Anne-Marie, 62n21 Performance, 25, 61, 98, 210, 280, 287, 300, 315, 323, 324, 333n6, 334n7, 335, 342 Performative, 98, 106, 110, 115, 172, 335 Perkins, Sue, 114 Personal Status Code (PSC), 151, 153–159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 167 Peterson, Derek, 66n35, 68 Pleyers, Geoffrey, 47, 47n30 Plutarch, 28 Pointe-à-Pitre, 333, 334 Political philosophy, 35 Politics, 1, 4, 8, 17, 38n8, 40, 44–55, 60–62, 65, 66, 69, 72, 74, 83–100, 106, 117, 118, 123, 206, 207, 243–268, 298, 321, 333, 342

 Index 

Politics of the foreskin, 60 Polygamy, 64, 77, 154, 155 Pornography, 2, 8, 11, 291–310 Porter, Lillis J., 137n27 Portugal, 142, 229 Post, Emily, 18, 18n4, 29 Postcolonial, 60, 61, 66, 70, 88, 321, 342 Postcolony, 60 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 136, 273 Potestas, 3, 326 Poto-mitan, 336 Prajaapatya Homa (Prajaapati alter-ritual), 185 Prearo, Massimo, 113n27 Pride, 114, 120, 121, 173, 188, 227 Prohibition of Female Infanticide Act, 174 Propaganda, 46, 264 Pundit, 172, 176n16 Putin, Vladimir, 243, 244, 263 Putino, Angela, 42n21 Q

Qom, 200, 201, 202n31, 207n61, 210, 211n79, 211n80, 214n92 Queen Victoria, 173 Queer, 10, 35–38, 42, 98, 107–124, 283, 286 Qur’an, 197, 206, 211n78, 227, 227n14, 228, 236 R

Rabinow, Paul, 137n26 Race, 10, 94, 95, 332, 340–342

361

Racism, 85, 90–92, 95, 187n45, 335, 340, 346 Rakos, Richard F., 19n5 Ramabai, Pandita, 11, 176, 186–190, 186n41 Ranade, Mahadev Govind, 178, 182–185, 182n33 Randall, Amy, 259, 259n43 Rao, Parimala, 175n11 Rape/sexual violence, 83, 84, 92, 93, 96, 178n23, 252, 283, 292, 302 Rausch, Margaret J., 197n4 Religious/religion, 5, 8, 9, 11, 28, 75, 76, 152–159, 163, 172–176, 179, 181, 182, 188, 190, 191, 195–216, 222–231, 233–237, 272, 275, 287, 295–297 lived religion, 221–237 Representation, 2, 6, 8–11, 60, 62, 88–91, 105–124, 244, 245, 252, 258–261, 261n48, 264, 267, 313–328, 335 Reproduction, 112, 116, 243–268, 245 Resistance, 6, 10, 11, 29, 31, 39, 40, 44, 47, 50, 100, 158, 176n16, 320, 321 Ricoeur, Paul, 97n58 Riles, Annelise, 164, 164n37 Rillon, Ophélie, 61n16 Roded, Ruth, 198, 198n11 Rodina, 243, 244n3 Rodriguez, Michael V., 282, 282n18 Roen, Katrina, 135n18 Ross, Charlotte, 10, 27n18, 109n16, 114n33

362 Index

Rothenberg, Tamar, 108n15 Rottenberg, Catherine, 24n15, 30, 31 Roy, Gitanjali, 23n14 Roy, Ram Mohan, 171 Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), 21, 24, 26 Ruhaniat, 202 Russian Revolution, 245 Russia’s Federal News Agency, 243 Ruto, William, 59, 60 S

Sachs, William L., 76n88 al-Sadat Homayouni, Zinat, 200 Sadr, Shadi, 202n31, 214 Said, Edward W., 88, 88n22 Saint Maximos, 320 St Paul, 28 al-Sakhawi, Shams al-Din, 198 Sakurai, Keiko, 202n33, 205, 212, 213, 215 Salaf, 196, 196n3 Saleh, Dua, 283, 283n20 Salindé, 279 Samaj, Arya Mahila, 187 Samskaras, 179 Sanders, Caroline, 141n45 Sane’i, Hassan, 214n95 Sanghani, Radhika, 85n8 Sanskrit, 11, 176n16, 179, 186 Sapp, Erin Grayson, 326n44 Sarkar, Tanika, 175n12 Sati, 171 Saul, Jennifer M., 292n5 Sazman-i Farhang va Ertebatat-i Islami [Organization of Islamic Culture and Communication], 213

Scarparo, Susanna, 41n18 Schieferecke, Marc, 229n19 Schippers, Mimi, 326n44 Schmidt, Hans-Peter, 182n31 Schneider, Irene, 199n18 Schumann, Karina, 27n18 Scoble, Sir Andrew, 178 Sedgwick, Eve, 110, 110n22, 115 Sefāti, Zohreh, 211, 211n77 Segal, Lynne, 292n4 Senegal, 271, 273 Senelick, Laurence, 335n11 Senn, Charlene Y., 292n3 Sennett, Richard, 3n2 Sentinelle in piedi [Standing Sentinels], 113 Seventh Framework Program FP7-PEOPLE-2013 IOF, 132n2 Sexual harassment, 83 Sexual scripts, 296, 297, 299, 300, 304, 306, 308 Shastra, 171–191 Shastris, 174, 176n16, 181 Shehada, Nahda, 158n32 Shh! Women’s Erotic Boutique, 294n14 al-Shilbiyaa, 199 Shui, Jingjun, 226n13 Sigmundson, Keith, 133n8 Sikh, 296 Singerman, Diane, 152n2 al-Siyāq li-Ta’rīkh Naysabūr, 199 Siyar a’alam an-nubala, 199 Slavery, 18, 84, 187, 332, 338 Slijper, Froukje M., 140n42 Smith, Clarissa, 3n3, 292n2 Smriti texts, 179, 181, 183, 184 Snyder, Kieran, 25, 25n16 Sobolev, Romil, 255n34

 Index 

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 178 Society of Greek Authors, 323n35 Sojourner Truth, 85, 90n31 Solidarity, 7n11, 10, 84, 100, 186, 318, 322 SomMovimento nazioAnale, 119n44 Source Memory Net, 276n9 Soviet Union, 9, 229, 247n14, 267 Speech and language training, 17 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 10, 10n15, 90, 98, 107, 108 Stalin, Joseph, 254, 256 Stamp, Patricia, 62n18 Statista, 122n59 Stelliferi, Paola, 41n16 Stishova, Elena, 260n45 Stokes, Eric, 172n4 Stonewall, 112, 112n26, 119–121 Streuli, Jürg, 139n35 Stuttgart, 221–237 Subjectivation, 10, 36, 41, 46, 47, 55 Subordination, 44, 48, 51, 54, 84, 90, 215, 325 Sun, Chyng, 293n9, 296n19 Surrogacy, 113–117, 115n34, 116n36, 119, 120, 122, 123 Survey Monkey, 294n12 Swayamvara [Self-ordained Marriage], 181, 182, 189 Syria, 228 T

Tamar-Mattis, Anne, 138n33, 141 Tambe, Ashwini, 175n11 Ta’rīkh Baghdād, 199 Ta’rīkh Dimashq, 198

363

Tarlo, Emma, 226, 226n9 Tavasoli, Mohammad Reza, 214n95 Tawasil, Amina, 202n33, 204, 209, 210 Taylor, Verta, 37n5 Telang, K. T., 178 Thatiah, Irungu, 67n44 “Thaw-era” Cinema, 257–260 Theatre, 331–347 French theatre, 331, 332, 341 Thiam, Awa, 273, 273n3 Thomas, Calvin, 99n66 Thomas, Lynn M., 62n17 Tietze, Nikola, 226n10 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar, 182–185, 182n32 The Times, 21, 121, 122 Times of India, 178 Tiqqun, 39n10, 43, 55 Toksvig, Sandi, 114 Tolab, 196, 202, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213, 215, 216 Toweett, Taaitta, 67, 67n44 Transfeminism, 38, 118n40 Trans rights, 118–120, 122, 123 Transwomen, 119, 123 Trevelyan, Ernest John Sir, 174n10 Tribal laws, 64 Truffer, Daniela, 136n19 Trust, Nyagah, 67n44 Tunisia, 9, 151–167, 228, 229 Turkey, 154n13, 155, 196, 197, 201, 203, 203n34, 205–207, 216, 229 Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), 204 Turkish secularisms (laiklik), 206 Tütüncü, Fatima, 206, 206n58

364 Index U

W

Uhuru, 62, 66n39 Umar, Caliph, 197 Umar, Hafsa bint, 197 Umberson, Debra, 110n20 Umm Salama (Hind bint Abi Umayya), 197 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, 139n40 Unification of Education Law (Tehvid-i Tedrisat Kanunu), 203 United States (US), 8, 18, 24, 84, 90, 186, 190, 226, 271, 284, 287 UN Special Rapporteur on torture, 142 Unterhalter, Elaine, 69, 69n55 Upanayana, 180

WAAFRIKA 123, 282–286, 283n20 Walker, Alice, 271, 271n1, 273, 286 Weber, Max, 3n2, 39, 152, 244, 245 Weberian, 39, 133, 155, 244 Weil-Curiel, Linda, 272, 273, 285 Weinstein, Harvey, 83, 96, 97 White, Edmund, 328n51 White, Luise, 61n15 Whiteman, Michael, 106n2 Whyte, William Foote, 225n3 Widdis, Emma, 255n31 Widow Remarriage Act, 174 William, Lord, 171 Wilson, August, 342 Winterson, Jeannette, 114 Wipper, Audrey, 65n33, 65n34 Withers, Jean, 19n6 Woll, Josephine, 259, 259n42 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 40, 40n13 Women on Porn, 294 Women’s Equality Party, 294n14 Women’s March, 85 Women’s rights, 84, 85, 99, 151, 152, 154, 155, 158, 163, 167, 175n11, 188, 257 Women’s Rights Convention, 85 Woolf, Virginia, 40 Wright, Paul J., 297n21 Wulff, Stephen, 37n5

V

Vadas, Melinda, 292n5 Vagianos, Alanna, 84n4 Vaizes, 196, 197, 201, 205–207 Vaknin, Zvi, 136n22 Valley, Rift, 60 Variations of sex characteristics (VSC), 131, 132, 132n4, 134–136, 138, 139, 143, 144, 144n56 Vatican, 113, 113n27, 117 Vedic religion, 172 Vera-Gray, Fiona, 291n1 Verbal Hygiene, 17–21, 29–31 Vicinus, Martha, 108n12 Vivaah, 180, 188 Voice, 294n14

Y

Yildirim, 154n13 Young, Iris Marion, 42, 43, 43n23 Youngblood, Denise, 252, 252n26 Yugoslavia, 229

 Index  Z

Zār Cult, 277 Zastoupil, Lynn, 172n4 Zeghal, Malika, 155n18 Zeisler, Andi, 24n15

Zhou, Yanyan, 296n19 Zieselman, Kimberly, 139n34 Zima, Peter V., 98, 99, 99n64 Ziv, Amalia, 292n2

365