Feminist Experiences Research Articles

<em>JFSR</em>: A Journey for the Production of Feminist Space

JFSR:A Journey for the Production of Feminist Space Wong Wai Ching Angela (bio) Besides being a journal title, one could also consider JFSR as a journey in the feminist study of religion. If we date the women’s movement from the universal suffrage years, the feminist movement has already had over a century of history. However, despite this, feminism remains a struggle in many areas of our society, not least the academy (although the year count would be much more complicated, the same could be said for the study of religion). The journey in feminist studies of religion thus always embodies a double marginality in that it is only a supplement or an addition to the “mainstream.” In a Chinese society, such as Hong Kong, where people’s priority is economic “progress,” it becomes a triple marginality. When one is interested in feminism and religion, s/he always finds herself falling into the gap between the two (or three). When s/he goes to a gender studies conference, s/he would be the lone voice talking about the life and thought of the religious women; when s/he goes to a religious studies conference, s/he would likely be ghettoized into a designated corner of women and religion. When one goes to a conference on Chinese women or Chinese religions, s/he almost always has to make an extra effort to insert a space for religion in the former and for gender in the latter. This has continuously reinforced a feeling of “neither / nor” in a feminist religious studies scholar that s/he does not belong to one or the other. In this respect, JFSR signifies a journey into “extraterritorial” space—a space beyond boundaries, a place of nowhere. Feminist studies is surely an intrusion into the existing systems and a transgression of territories, entering [End Page 170] at the same time as it exits. Edward Said’s notion of forgoing of possession of land in the life of a traveler meets well with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s point about women’s landless identity. Both possess not, yet both arrive anew every time they relocate themselves, for travel, migration, or simply in marriage for women. The space they land in is not for them to own. Feminist scholars of religion are natural travelers continuously departing from one border and arriving at another whenever they research and write. S/he must keep crossing territories and boundaries if s/he is to make sense of women’s experience or the life of all marginalized gendered bodies. So much so that Hélène Cixous contended that women always write in white ink, the imagery from mother’s milk, which does not usually make sense or leave a trace on paper.1 This is the challenge Trinh Minh-ha brings to all postcolonial writing and feminist writing.2 It also describes the journey I took from East to West and back, from theology to gender studies to cultural studies to the latest feminist geography that underscores women’s mobility in and out of family and religion (as institutions) whether they are Christians, Daoists, Muslims, or Buddhists in Chinese society. Feminist studies of religion is a movement from one disciplinary site to another, weaving together multilayers of living space where women of different faiths meet. JFSR takes its readers on this journey, where issues of gender, sexuality, and religion cut across contexts with people of diverse culture and pluralistic background and move toward an indeterminate yet open path for all. To use Trinh’s imagery, writers of feminist study of religion are bearers of fables; they recount the changes in the metamorphosis of life stories from one place to another. JFSR is a space where their authors may write to change. JFSR as a journey also provides a space of creativity, offering both a symbolic site in which an imagined community is brought together by the dual foci of feminism and religion and a physical site on which the advancement of feminist experience and reflective thought is textualized. It is a creative space because it inserts itself in space that is not readily there. It is where Jacques Derrida’s dialectic of supplement...

Strategies of Feminist Bureaucrats: United Nations Experiences

SummaryThis paper explores the challenges and opportunities for feminists working as women's rights and gender equality specialists in the United Nations as analysed from a practitioner perspective. Part 1 by Joanne Sandler analyses the experience of feminists struggling with the institutional sexism of the UN bureaucratic machine and shows how this played out in the difficult but ultimately successful negotiations around the creation of UN Women. In Part 2, Aruna Rao describes how cross‐agency UN Gender Theme Groups worked together through a process of reflexive inquiry to strengthen the gender equality programming of three UN Country Teams, respectively in Morocco, Albania and Nepal.

Feminists' Dilemma—With or Without the State? Violence against Women and Women's Shelters in Turkey

This article aims to describe the achievements of the women's movement in the struggle against domestic violence in Turkey and the points of contention between the state and feminists regarding this issue. Our goal in analyzing the Turkish case of violence against women is to reflect on how women's organizations work with the state; what they demand from it; and how they respond to the complex situations and dilemmas of state funded women's shelters. The article is based on field research; we used techniques of participant observation at annual congresses organized by women's organizations specialized in fighting violence against women and in-depth interviews with feminist activists, volunteers and social workers at women's shelters. It describes the experiences of feminists in Turkey, who are in the position of receiving support from and working closely with the state in running women's shelters.

Religious Belonging and the Multiple

Feminist engagement with resources from the world’s religious traditions has sometimes been criticized, but it has not yet been theorized in light of the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging. In order to discern why theologians have had difficulty accommodating data from popular practice and from the margins of religious traditions, Voss Roberts destabilizes each of the three terms of “multiple religious belonging.” She finds that modern definitions of religion are partly responsible for perceptions of multiple commitments as problematic, and that the metaphor of belonging obscures important dynamics of religious identity. This article proposes that the major difficulty with the theories, however, lies in the absence of a serious attempt to theorize the multiple. Voss Roberts thus offers alternative metaphors that more adequately capture the religious experience of feminists in relation to religious traditions.

Onda, rizoma e “sororidade” como metáforas: representações de mulheres e dos feminismos (Paris, Rio de Janeiro: anos 70/80 do século XX)

This article analyses the conceptions of wave, rhizome, and “sorority” as metaphors for the representation of women and their movements in different places and historical periods. It joins critical efforts already made towards analytical trends highlighting circumstantial feminist experiences and thus turning out invisible other social projects, but without taking into consideration possible breakdowns that come from tensions within generations of women and feminists. It also questions the “sorority” metaphor: by its solidarity assumed on the grounds of the shared experience of maternity, it also conceals contingencies that secretly gather women and feminists for different causes in different periods. Finally, it admits the long term historical perspective and the multiple timings as a way of perceiving the history of women and of feminism throughout its continuities and breakdowns.

Feminizing Lesbians, Degendering Transgender Men: A Model for Building Lesbian Feminist Thinkers and Leaders in Africa?

This essay looks at the recent lesbian feminist leadership institute held in February 2008 in Mozambique, aimed at developing African lesbian feminist thinkers and leaders. More than sixty participants from many African countries attended the weeklong institute. Many of the attendees identified as lesbian, others as not lesbian in same-sex relationships; there were a few transgender men as well as heterosexual women. The diversity of the participants allowed for a platform to interrogate African feminism and at the same time highlight issues around sexuality, particularly same-sex sexuality as well as the contentious issues on gender. A reading of such an institute allows for an analysis of feminist models applicable to the diversity of African and Black activists, scholars, and researchers. Reflecting on this institute foregrounds many of the contentions around a model of African feminism used to negotiate sexual orientation, race, class, and gender. Furthermore, this reflection aims to generate increasing sensitivity to the diversities of lesbian, feminist, and transgender experiences.

Institutional Barriers to Doing Public Sociology: Experiences of Feminists in the Academy

In recent years, the discipline of sociology has seen an increased discussion of public sociology, but the discussion has focused on whether or not it is a good idea for sociologists to become more engaged with their various publics. A different question motivates this research: What are the institutional arrangements that make doing public sociology difficult, and thus less likely? Following Dorothy Smith, we start from the perspective of frontline actors and ask them about their experiences. We combine data from two sources: individual interviews with a sample of 50 academic feminists, a group that has theoretical motivation to be interested in public sociology and group interviews with 15 feminists engaged in some form of public sociology. These informants tell us about two related institutional barriers to doing public sociology: the culture of professional sociology and the standards we use for evaluating scholarship. The impact of these disciplinary barriers probably varies by institution type and career stage but there is reason to suspect they generate costs not just for individuals but for the discipline. Taking steps to break down these barriers would ameliorate concerns some have raised about public sociology.

The first wave of international women's movements from a Japanese perspective: Western outreach and Japanese women activists during the interwar years

Rumi Yasutake's article shifts westward in space and forward in time to add the Pan Pacific Women's Association to the better known trans-Atlantic organizations that flourished in what has been called the “first wave” of international feminism. The PPWA was initiated in 1928 in Hawaii by Anglo–American women and drew on nineteenth century discourses and practices of “advanced” nations uplifting “backward” ones. Yasutake demonstrates how participation in the PPWA and by extension other international organizations became an important prize for feminist activists outside the west and helped them to organize at a national level. By focusing on the perspective and experiences of Japanese feminists, Yasutake illustrates how the PPWA became an important venue for Asian nations and insurgent nationalisms. Japanese feminists' international activism prior to the Second World War forces an awareness that the distinction between West and East did not map simply onto the inequalities of Empire and Colony. Yasutake demonstrates that Japan's imperial aspirations and powers grew substantially in the 1930s. Nonetheless, Japanese boldness and challenge to Europe inspired anticolonial nationalists and feminists from India to the African diaspora.

Translation and the Poet's Life: The Ethics of Translating in English Culture, 1646–1726 by Paul Davis

1114 Reviews Duet (1998) and Robert Lepage's Elsinore (1995-96). These Canadian adaptations are shown to be political productions rooted in contemporary social issues and problems. Shakespearian content allows these plays to address questions of identity and cultural history: 'Sears entered Canadian theatre history as the first black play wright to have her work performed at the prestigious Stratford Festival of Canada' (p. 71). Adapted from Shakespeare's Othello, Sears's Harlem Duet unsettles the strongwhite colonial history of Canadian drama, offering a chance formarginal ized voices to be heard on its stages and forCanadian theatre audiences towitness the dramatization ofmodern black feminist experiences. Lepage's adaptation of Hamlet, his one-man production Elsinore, leaves Shakespeare's text alone in order to allow one actor visually and verbally to shiftbetween all the characters. This highly technical, masterful vision of theatre, which played around the globe, 'is less about releasing or revealing the passion of Hamlet [but] about watching an actor grapple with amonolithic, yet unstable, cultural icon: Shakespeare's Hamlet' (p. 101). Kidnie tackles great examples from several points of origin, including Shakespea rian adaptation across media formats,while maintaining a focus of close reading on some key contemporary texts that have received little academic investigation. Her book concludes with a discussion of the textual origins of Shakespeare's plays and encourages amore widespread acquaintance with the editorial work required by printed versions of drama in order to assist with uncovering further levels of adaptation in practice. This book adds important ideas to the current debates on Shakespeare and adaptation, reminding Shakespearian purists that 'effortsto re cover "what happened" can only be pursued alongside effort to shape "what is happening" in terms of work recognition and the ever-shifting boundaries that separate work from adaptation' (p. 164). University of New Brunswick Peter Kuling Translation and thePoet's Life: The Ethics of Translating inEnglish Culture, 1646 1726. By Paul Davis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xi+324 pp. ?50. ISBN 978-0-19-929783-2. Paul Davis explores the translation activity offivemen who were also acknowledged poets in their own right: JohnDenham, Henry Vaughan, Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Alexander Pope. His focus isnot on their translation techniques, but rather their particular understanding of the task and its significance within their society. Each of these poets turned to translation at a critical point in their per sonal and literarycareers, and fixed upon one of the conceptual metaphors for this process current in their culture in order tomake sense of theirpredicament. Davis provides a historical context for themetaphors by showing how each of the poets in this survey (with the possible exception of Pope, who represents a special case) lived at a time when all literary publication was seen as a political act, to be interpreted as either supporting the regime in power or opposing it, so MLR, 104.4, 2009 1115 that the poet's creative lifewas strongly constrained by his involvement in public affairs.During theCommonwealth, Denham and Cowley were under observation as known Royalists, while some three decades laterDryden, as a Catholic convert opposed to the rule ofWilliam ofOrange, was deprived of his office as Poet Lau reate. In such cases, thewidely despised task of translation provided a safer outlet for literaryexpression, since the poet had the excuse thathe was only representing theviews of another, usually long dead. It is against thisbackground thatquestions of loyalty* in translation and discussions of the status of the translator need to be seen. But it is also Davis's claim that in addition the choice ofmetaphor helped, consciously or subconsciously, todetermine the choice of relevant texts to translate. To take the example of Dryden, towhose evolving concept by far the longest chapter is devoted, Davis represents him as exploring the borderline between lib erty and slavery. Far from being the champion of free translation, which is the reputation thatmodern translation theorists have attached to him based on his preface to Ovid's 'Epistles', he first subjects himself to a phase of rigour, reacting against both Restoration libertinism and his own public disgrace, so thatby trans lating Lucretius he engages with the Epicurean philosophy of achieving stability through self-control. Then, since by...

Contextualising Late-Nineteenth-Century Feminism: Problems and Comparisons

Histories of feminism since the 1970s have generally observed national and regional boundaries. In view of the international character of women's movements in western countries since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the neglect of comparative approaches has been unfortunate. The outcome is parochialism and inwardness, as feminist historians evaluate feminists of the past according to current preoccupations, in a cycle of identification and repudiation. An Anglo-American hegemony in the field is identified as is the consequent and pervasive “Northern Hemispherism” it ordains (notwithstanding an almost invariable omission of Canadian feminist experience). Advantages of comparative, international approaches to the history of feminism are not confined to the virtues of representativeness and comprehensiveness. Rather, major causal and chronological schema generalised from Anglo-American experience stand to beproblematised and revised in more useful directions. Most significantly, comparative studies of feminism permit due recognition of the fact that feminism emerged relatively contiguously across western countries in response to relatively common international characteristics of transformations in sexual patternings and sexual cultures.

Women and Men in Early Modern Venice: Reassessing History (review)

Reviewed by: Women and Men in Early Modern Venice: Reassessing History Sally Parkin Datta, Satya , Women and Men in Early Modern Venice: Reassessing History, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003; hardback; pp. vii, 272; 1 b&w illustration; RRP £45; ISBN 0754633470. This careful and meticulous book is written in a personalised style, giving it an accessibility which the considerable methodological analysis would otherwise have made very weighty. Nevertheless, the continuous side-tracking down avenues of complex methodology can render the reader somewhat confused, losing sight of the women and men in early modern Venice who are the subject of the book. The long introductory chapter is a reflection on the nature of historical discourse with theoretical considerations which encompass epistemological considerations, descriptive gender studies, the Scott-Tilly-Varikas controversy on gender/experience/discursive reality, and the determination of meaning and experience through intellectual history after 'the linguistic turn'. By this is meant that intellectual history's major concern should be the semiological orientation [End Page 217] of the history of meaning, which is then viewed from the perspective of a realist epistemological position. Essentially, the remit of the work is to make the common people of Venice, the popolani, major historical subjects. Each of the five sections begins with a detailed analysis of historical discourse and, true to the sub-title 'Reassessing History', each is a presentation of the subject matter within the constructs of the historical discourse. However, the discourse itself is sometimes limited by the cut-off point of research, pre 1998. Each chapter highlights one crucial aspect of the human experience: the social experiences of commoners who were male and female artisans; the cultural experience of art-related artisans; the feminist experience of three Venetian intellectual women; and the invisibility of women explored through a gender perspective on the working experiences of ordinary women, lacemakers. Chapter 2 examines the social experiences of artisans and is contextualised within the ruler-ruled relationship, citing the conceptualisation of the early modern state in the case of Venice, the dialectics of the patrician and popolani relations, patrician hegemony as expressed through the state, popular consent in civil society and anti-hegemonic tendencies. Datta concludes that the social life of men and women was constrained by the ruler-ruled dynamics but, through guilds and confraternities, they experienced an autonomous social life. However, they failed to capitalise on this by not undertaking the cultivation of any political vision and working towards their own betterment. In part, this was because of the enlightened pragmatists who ruled them, and the artisans' inability to harness their own experience to develop a socio-political consciousness. Chapter 3, the cultural experience of Venetian artisans in the Renaissance, begins with an analysis of culture, popular culture and historical studies. In setting the historical parameters, most of the discussion is limited to texts published prior to the 1990s. Renaissance artisans were as essential to the Venetian art community as they had been in pre-Renaissance times but the artisan community contributed far more to art patronage and the promotion of new art works in the early modern period. The chapter ends with a brief evaluation of the living costs and valuation of Venetian monies in this era. Chapter 4 examines three Venetian writers and their feminist experiences. Datta relates the emergence of early feminism in sixteenth century Venice to two main circumstances: Venice was an epicentre for the growth of women's writing in the sixteenth century, and the Counter-Reformation's negative portrayal of women provoked a backlash from Venetian women, specifically Moderata Fonte, [End Page 218] Lucrezia Marinella, and Arcangela Tarabotti. All three women were successful in articulating their personal experiences but only at the personal-intellectual level. Their work and feminist experiences did not connect with society as a whole. Chapter 5 is perhaps the most informative of all the chapters as it considers 'invisible women', the working experiences of Venetian lacemakers. Lacemakers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not officially recognised as a highly skilled artisan trade despite the fact that their endeavours contributed significant economic wealth to Venice. The Venetian state refused to allow them to form guilds or confraternities, which makes them historically invisible because...

`Marriage' Special Issues

This is the first of two special issues of Feminism & Psychology focusing on marriage. Significant portions of the special issues are two special features (edited by Sara-Jane Finlay and Victoria Clarke) that consider the personal and political experiences of heterosexual feminists (and their male partners) and lesbians and gay men in relation to marriage. This issue contains a special feature entitled ‘A Marriage of Inconvenience’ that explores the personal experience of marriage for heterosexual feminists and their partners. The next issue (February 2004) contains the special feature, ‘For Better or Worse’, focusing on debates around, and experiences of, marriage for lesbians and gay men.

INTERFACING FEMINISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES IN HONG KONG: A CASE OF EVERYDAY LIFE POLITICS

Cultural studies, as a cultural and political re-articulation of common sense, knowledge and community practices, aims at opening up new cultural space for criticisms, reflections and action. Originating from the women' movement and later flourishing in the academy as well, feminism espouses similar aims to cultural studies. Both cultural studies and feminist/gender studies have a strong sense of intervening into everyday life politics. This paper is an attempt to discuss how feminism and cultural studies interface with each other, largely based on examples of gender-related everyday life politics taken from the feminist movement in Hong Kong. It will examine issues concerning the conflict of consumption and female subjectivities, the reconceptualization of home and housewives, and the representation of everyday life for women and history writing. It is argued that by blurring, negotiating or deconstructing the boundary or division between positions, identities and domains–such as subject and object, housewives and workers, private and public, personal and political, consumption and production–the re-articulation of knowledge about ‘victim’, ‘exploitation’, ‘home’ and ‘history’ in the feminist movement will not only provide the movement with new impetus and insight to reconsider its strategies in fighting for more cultural, social and economic space for women and other marginal groups at large in Hong Kong, but will also ‘metabolize’ the newly developed discipline of cultural studies in Hong Kong by providing a platform to strengthen the dynamic arm of cultural studies education and research. Based on her feminist and teaching experiences in Hong Kong, the author has highlighted activism and pedagogy as the two important dimensions of feminism and cultural studies in this paper.

(Love Is) The Ability of Not Knowing: Feminist Experience of the Impossible in Ethical Singularity

In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

La ideología nacional de Clorinda Matto de Turner

This article attempts an understanding of the nationalist ideologies of the Peruvian author Clorinda Matto de Turner. These foundational ideologies can only be appreciated in the context of the societies in which she wrote her works and in light of the philological investigation she fostered. This reading of Clorinda Matto takes into account the two principal types of influences on her work, the societal and the literacy. Her nationalist considerations are examined in the context of three types of societies, the Andes, the Peruvian cost, and cosmopolitan Argentina. Her philological research must be understood in terms of ethnicity. Two very important sources in her thought can be found in the colonial authors Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan de Espinosa Medrano. Through them Matto comes to define a national identity based on cultural hybridization, achieved through the philological and historical study of pre-Colombian and colonial Peru. This nationalist view of things is watered down when it comes in contact with Matto's feminist experience in Buenos Aires which suggested the importance of an internationalist approach to humanity.

(Love is) the Ability of Not Knowing: Feminist Experience of the Impossible in Ethical Singularity

In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

(Love Is) The Ability of Not Knowing: Feminist Experience of the Impossible in Ethical Singularity

In neocolonial contexts of globalization, the epistemological terrain of radical diversity poses significant ethical challenges to transnational feminisms. In view of historical associations between knowledge and discourses of love which were conditioned by imperialist brands of humanism and benevolence under colonialism, this paper argues for a deconstructionist approach to conceptualizing love in relation to knowledge and for an ethics that severs the association with benevolence, instead making alterity the basis for its account.

Multigendering Pa: Anti-Administration, Anti-Blues

The modernist administrative ethos does not permit space for a radical reconstruction of gender–restricting and thereby oppressing the articulation of a radical feminist project in public administration. This paper addresses gender discourse in anti-administration, suggesting that multigendering is one remedy for the pervasive melancholy that afflicts women, men and organizations–the oppressed and the oppressors, alike. The feminist experience and perspective, largely absent in public administration discourse, brings radically different and new insights to old problems in theory and praxis. The paper concludes with a plea for a “new enlightenment” that resists the “urges to power” which undermine prospects for anti-administration and anti-melancholy.

Jane Addams and a Politics of Embodied Care

In Reweaving the Social Fabric: Pragmatism and Feminism, Charlene Haddock Seigfried claims that, [i]t is this pervasive concern with the most pressing issues of the day, with the intention of radically trans forming the conditions responsible for suffering and oppression, that contribute to the attraction pragmatism holds for feminism (1996, 233-34). Seigfried's sentiment aptly describes the relationship between ethics and pragmatism. Care ethics is named and evolved from feminist experience, but has often been criticized for a lack of a viable social dimension that addresses the contentious issues that grip the national and international arena: war, hunger, inequitable power systems, and so on. Pragmatism, and in particular, as I will argue, the work of Jane Addams, can infuse into ethics a means for confronting social and political issues while maintaining the emotive and relational dimen sions that make it such an important contribution to moral philosophy. I contend that the writings and activism of the American pragmatist Jane Addams (1860-1935) not only exemplify modern feminist ethics but also contribute particular practices necessary for a political philosophy of caring. Care is less concerned with the adjudication of individual acts and more concerned with the maintenance of right rela tionships in particular contexts. Care is both complex, because it is unlike other theories of morality in that it does not delineate universal norms, and a common disposition that pervades the human condition. Although she predates the contemporary feminist discourse on by a half century, Addams employed what I refer to as care. The term embodied care is an acknowledgment of the central role played by the body in the process of caring. Addams's continuity with ethicists can be seen in her notions of sympathetic knowledge, her rela

Interacting with the State: Feminist Strategies and Political Opportunities

In recent years feminists have been engaged in new debates about gender and the state. Instead of adopting either a purely structural or agential approach, the emphasis in these debates is on the interactive relationship between the two. Feminists in political science have not been immune to this trend. Work is emerging in this field which dissaggregates the state to consider the way different political institutions shape and are shaped by engagement with feminist actors. This article contributes to these efforts by providing a detailed comparative analysis of feminist strategies and political opportunities in two similar political systems - Australia and Canada. A number of key points emerge from this study. First, similar institutions in different countries provide varying opportunities for feminists. As a result, it is not possible to make emphatic claims about certain institutions being more or less beneficial for feminists. Second, feminists respond to these opportunities by adopting certain strategies over others. Through these strategies, feminists can have a direct bearing on the opportunity structure open to them. What the experiences of Canadian and Australian feminists tell us is that the relationship between feminists and political institutions changes over both time and place; that it is interactive and dynamic, rather than predictable and permanent.