Helpless Victims Research Articles

Nou Mande Jistis! (We Demand Justice!) : Reconstituting Community and Victimhood in Raboteau, Haiti

On November 9, 2000, sixteen of twenty-two defendants were convicted in Gonai'ves, Haiti, for their participation in an April 1994 massacre at Raboteau, poor seaside community in Gonaives. A week later, thirtyseven more defendants were convicted in absentia, including leaders of 1991-94 military dictatorship, which followed military coup, and heads of paramilitary group FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for Haitian Advancement and Progress, later renamed Revolutionary Armed Front for Progress of Haiti). The United Nations lauded Raboteau trial as landmark, longest and most complex [trial] in Haiti's history, and a huge step forward for Haitian justice system (United Nations Commission on Human Rights 2000). Scholars have also described Raboteau trial as most important human rights trial in Haiti (Farmer 2005, 80) and the single successful attempt to partially cleanse country of terror of 1991 coup d'etat (Fatton 2002, 155). During trial, two massacre survivors, Rosiane Profil and Deborah Charles, provided some of most spectacular testimony for prosecution, their eyewitness descriptions of events on day of massacre and display of their dramatically visible scars compelling counterevidence against defendants' accounts of massacre. Their testimony also buttressed prosecution's contention that junta violently attacked entire community as part of their campaign of systematic repression. Drawing from research for documentary on trial that I coproduced, in this essay I examine women's court testimony alongside alternative, communal testimony, especially in protest songs circulating in less authorized sites: demonstrations, sit-ins, and commemoration marches (Cynn and Hirshorn 2003). I argue that failing to supplement Charles and Profil's gendered representation as political in official record with this alternative testimony risks reinforcing gendering of women as passive and helpless individual victims, ignoring radical dimensions of their claims, and reproducing violent erasures that women sought to resist. Haitian women had participated in revolution and occasionally had been targets of state violence, but prior to Duvaliers' regime (1957-86) they were regarded, like children and elderly, as dependents-political innocents subject to special protection (Trouillot 1989, 166-67). Not permitted to vote until 1950 and classified as legal minors until 1979, women contributed to nation as reproducers of male national subjects, as mothers and wives, with legal marriage and economic dependence on husbands operating as markers of class and social status that were closely linked with national identity (Schiller and Fouron 2001, 134-35). Violence instituted by Francois Duvalier during his 1957-71 dictatorship transformed social and family relations and redefined conceptions of women as political innocents. Women were no longer protected qua women from state repression, but subjected to indiscriminate gendered violence-rape and sexualized torture-in retribution for their own activism, as well as that of their male relatives and acquaintances (Trouillot 1989,166-67; Charles 1995,139). The system of violent repression and terror implemented by Duvalier and his paramilitary force, Tonton Makout, has become emblematic; in context of Africa, Achille Mbembe uses term tonton makoutization to index excesses of corruption and coercion of new institutions charged with administering to found or shore up authoritarian regimes (2001, 83). However, as Carolle Charles argues, Duvalierist violence directed against women had paradoxical effect of politicizing women. Duvalierism effectively suppressed any independent women's movement, but Haitian women who were exiled in diaspora formed organizations influenced by anti-imperialist struggles and North American women's movement (1995, 140, 146-47). …

How Young People with Disabilities Conceptualize The Body, Sex and Marriage in Urban India: Four Case Studies

Historically in India as elsewhere in the world, there has been a deep-rooted cultural antipathy to persons with disabilities. They have been portrayed as medical anomalies, helpless victims and a lifelong burden for family and society. While today there is a general recognition in India of the need to enhance educational and employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in order to promote economic self-reliance and independent living, their sexual needs, dreams and aspirations are more or less invisible. Sexual and reproductive rights are considered irrelevant for persons with disabilities. Using qualitative data, this paper discusses notions of sexual identity among urban Indian youth through four case studies of college students in Delhi. Gender emerges as a key analytical category in perceptions of sexuality among young men and women with visual and loco-motor disabilities. The paper does not claim to capture the complex reality of disabled sexuality in India, but highlights some key issues in a hitherto largely under-research domain. But the author’s analysis carries added value, since she herself has low vision; thus conferring a reflexive angle to the research.

Repairing a 'Ripped Torah': Repairing Jewish Life in the Former Soviet Union

We can write the next chapter of the Torah: we are called Am HaSefer, The People of the Book. The metaphor of our lives as a book is a central image of Unetaneh Tokef. ' Atah ... kotev v'chotem v'sofer umoneh, v'tizkor kol hanishkachot, v'tiftach et sefer ha zikhronot .' 'You write and seal, You record and recount. You remember deeds forgotten. You open the book of our days' {Gate of Repentance , p. 107). Unetaneh Tokef teaches: our lives are like a book but not a book completed, one that is still in progress. We can affect, by how we live, what ultimately will be written. Understood in this way, Unetaneh Tokef is not about our being helpless victims of fate; rather it is a prayer that we might understand that there are realms in which we can be active and our activities can make a difference.

Mixed Messages: The Problem of Class in Mary Norton’s Borrowers Series

Scholars have posited various theories as to which sector of society Mary Norton’s Borrowers most closely reflect, from exploitative aristocrats to helpless victims. Through social and literary contextualization, this article highlights the ways in which Norton represents social class in the series and explores the competing ideologies embedded in the texts.

Borderline Attributions

Borderline personality disorder is characterized as an identity disturbance or pathology of the self-structure. The author employs concepts from deconstruction philosophy and object relations theory to explore how persons with borderline personality disorder attempt to generate meaning, eliminate ambiguity, and maintain idealizations by assigning polarized attributions of value, agency, and motivation to their experiences. The author proposes that these binary attributions interact to form multiple, discrete self-structures or states of being. Each state is characterized by stereotyped expectations for self and other and patterns of relatedness that are self-perpetuating. The author delineates four common states, labeled as helpless victim, guilty perpetrator, angry victim, and demigod perpetrator, and suggests treatment strategies to deconstruct each state and to facilitate the development of an integrated and differentiated self.

The Child With a Disability: Parental Acceptance, Management and Coping

Research indicates that family reaction to the birth of a disabled child changes according to the type of disability and the child's diagnostic category. The differences are probably an indirect consequence of anticipated or actual reactions by those surrounding the disabled child and the family, in addition to parental reactions. Many researchers have recently mentioned the positive coping and functioning of many families with developmentally disabled children. In the past there was a tendency to emphasize issues of illness and pressures, spousal strain and maladjustment within the family, while presently they are replaced with questions concerning positive adjustment, satisfaction, acceptance, and spousal harmony. Rather than perceiving the family as a helpless victim, it is perceived as a unit that adapts by a process of structuring. Professionals must acknowledge the importance of the family, this change towards a positive attitude towards disability and that the controls decisions concerning the disabled child and the family.

Breast reconstruction: a patient's story

This presentation will aim to show the effect of breast reconstructive surgery on the life of a young woman and her family. Diagnosed at the age of 29 with breast cancer, I was totally petrified at the thought of losing a breast and could not imagine going through life after a mastectomy. A first subcutaneous mastectomy with a simultaneous implant went disastrously wrong and I was left badly scarred. Fortunately, this was followed by a successful latissimus dorsi breast reconstruction, which gave me back some sort of shape and, in time, my confidence. However, this was not an easy passage with emotions on a perpetual roller coaster. Learning to live with both the fact that I had had breast cancer at such an early age, and having to get used to a new body image (when I was quite happy with the old one) took some time. When, 20 years later, another breast cancer diagnosis was made, it was a very different patient who decided straightaway to have a mastectomy and reconstruction. This time the idea of a mastectomy was no longer terrifying although the diagnosis was still a shock. It would have been very simple to have reverted back to the "helpless victim" feeling I had experienced the first time around. The second reconstruction went very well and as the cancer was caught early no other treatment was necessary. Although not so frightening this time, there was still a period of adjustment and grief as I was faced with yet another body image change.

Community-Centered Globalization

The retreat of the state from the development process throughout Latin America has placed added responsibility on local communities to improve local living conditions. Research on the impacts of globalization and tourism has tended to highlight the negative repercussions of such engagements, often portraying the hosts as helpless victims of savage capitalism and overbearing tourists. Examination of the introduction of small-scale development initiatives into a small rural community in Costa Rica reveals that the local community is anything but a passive recipient and may actively manage the very modest inclusion of tourism into its overall development strategy. Drawing on the theoretical contributions of Max-Neef, Escobar, and others, this research provides further evidence that integrated small-scale rural development initiatives can achieve modest success by capitalizing on existing resources, gradually broadening the economic mix and collaborating with similarly situated communities.

The Threat from Havana: Southern Public Health, Yellow Fever, and the U.S. Intervention in the Cuban Struggle for Independence, 1878-1898

IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 1897 THE SOUTHERN UNITED STATES WAS gripped by a terror that shuttered businesses, paralyzed trade, and caused tens of thousands of people to abandon their homes and flee for their lives: the dreaded fever had returned. Southerners had good reason to be afraid. It began with a high fever that lasted three or four days, with throbbing headaches and body aches, nausea, and chills. In most cases the fever would then subside, and the victim would slowly recover over the next few weeks. Many times, however, the break in the fever was, like the eye of a hurricane, a deceptive calm. The fever soon returned, and the body began to break down. The disease attacked vital internal organs, and, as the liver failed, the patient's skin and eyes turned yellow. The eyes, nose, mouth, and stomach started to bleed. The helpless victim then began to vomit repeatedly, the liquid black with digested blood. This last terrifying symptom signaled that death was near. The disease struck the young and strong as well as the old and infirm, afflicted rich and poor, visited well-kept households along with filthy ones, attacked blacks and whites, and, once present in a city, often spread from one neighborhood to the next in ways that defied prediction. Even a rumor of yellow jack inspired panic. Decades of experience had taught southern health officials the source of this dreaded disease. The 1897 fever epidemic, like many outbreaks before it, was of Cuban origin. Unlike previous episodes of infection, however, by the end of 1897 the U.S. government was determined to end the ongoing threat that fever in Cuba posed to the health and economy of the southern states. The island would be invaded and the disease stamped out at its source. This article traces the ongoing concerns in the United States with fever in Cuba. The impact of the periodic epidemics of fever that plagued the U.S. South during the latter half of the nineteenth century has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Some historians have extensively described the devastation caused by fever epidemics. (1) The disease has also been found to be the central concern of public health officials in the South and the principal motivation for creating a nationalized board of health. (2) Additionally, scholars have explored the effects of fever on interclass relationships and on the reconciliation of Civil War animosities. (3) However, historians have failed to note the influence of fever in the South on U.S. international relations. The historiography on the motivations for the entry of the United States into the war against Spain in Cuba is even more extensive than that on fever. Most early works viewed the war as a humanitarian crusade to liberate Cubans from the chains of Spanish tyranny. (4) Cubans had been fighting the Spanish in various ways for decades. Stories about the despair of Cubans held in Spanish concentration camps moved ordinary Americans, but by the time of U.S. intervention the Spanish had ceased the forced movement of the population and had recalled to Spain the vilified General Valeriano Weyler, the architect of the reconcentration policy. The destruction of the oft-remembered Maine in Havana's harbor was once frequently cited as the event that led to the U.S. entry into the war between Spain and Cuba, but recent scholarship has debunked the importance of the ship in the turn of events. (5) As will be explained in more detail below, months before the explosion of the Maine, the U.S. minister to Spain had already met with European leaders to discuss the United States' intention to declare war against Spain. Other recent historians have pointed to the extensive and growing economic ties between the United States and Cuba and the long-standing fascination of many U.S. government officials with the idea of annexing the island, and there is convincing evidence that the negative effects of the ongoing Cuban struggle for independence on U. …

The Narrative of Persecution

The Narrative of Persecution Gershon Shaked I The touchstone and point of departure of narratives of persecution, as of most narratives of catastrophe, is a violated state of equilibrium. Persecution is a disruption of the regular movement of history and the norms and ceremonies of any given social body or state of mind. In a passage from his major post World War I novel A Guest for the Night (published 1939), anticipating World War II and the Holocaust, S. Y Agnon describes this transition from normalcy to the insecure, frightened state of the victim of a historic catastrophe in the following terms: I wanted to ask about her children, but I said to myself: I will not ask, in case —heaven forbid —they are dead. Since the war overwhelmed us you do not know whether your friend is alive, and if he is alive whether his life is worth living. The good years have passed when you used to ask about a man and they would tell you: He has had a wedding in his house, he has had a circumcision in his house, his grand-son has celebrated bar mitzvah, his son-in-law is adding a third storey to his house. Thou art righteous, O Lord and Thy judgments are upright. The sufferings Thou hast sent to Israel, Thou alone knowest whether they are for good or for ill. (1968: 231) Agnon confronts the potentially idyllic normative narrative of bourgeois and Jewish life with the real state of affairs after the catastrophe: the narrative of normalcy is disrupted by the crisis of war and persecution (see also Shaked 1989: 137-46). In narratives of persecution the time is out of joint and life does not run according to the major stages of human development. The narratives have two permanent actants: the persecutor (singular or plural) as victimizer and the persecuted (singular or plural) as victim. [End Page 239] The struggle between them creates diverse typologies of persecution, but basically it is a conflict between the powerful and the weak. The moral evaluation of the two sides is not uniform: in the pairing of policeman and criminal, the conflict is sometimes presented not as resistance to criminal persecution, but, on the contrary, as cruel and unjustified persecution of an innocent victim (e.g., Jean Valjean in Hugo's Les Miserables) by the police. In some instances the same plot could be interpreted by different witnesses in opposite ways. The roles of cat and mouse can be seen as reversed. Obviously, the diversity of staged interpretations of, say, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, in different times, under different social circumstances, and by different directors is a good example. The archetypes of Cain and Ahasuerus, criminals or victims of their sins and refugees, are reinterpreted positively in Byron's tragedy and in Stephan Heym's novel, respectively. This, however, is only one aspect of the potential diversity in the understanding of the relationship between the persecuted and the persecutor. II One major spokesman for the persecuted was, of course, Franz Kafka, who bestowed a metaphysical dimension on the narrative of persecution and immigration. The plots of The Trial and The Castle are those of uprooting and persecution by the irrational powers of the Uncanny. The persecuted are helpless victims of the demoniac anonymous forces whose possible real referents are totalitarian regimes.1 Narratives of persecution most often display intertextual connections to a canonical mastertext; they reconstitute the topos of persecution on the basis of patterns, schemes, genres, and myths that are "always already there" (Rimmon-Kenan 15). The present is illuminated by the light of the past: from within the present crisis one discovers a hidden power in the past and its potential for affecting the future. The ambiguity of the persecution topos emerges in the following [End Page 240] passage from the 1890 short story "Shem and Japhet on the Train" by one of the major Hebrew and Yiddish authors of the late nineteenth century, Shalom Yakov Abramovits (1838-1917), who wrote under the pen-name of Mendele Mokher Seforim. The story starts with a group of Jews in a train station trying to board the train —a scene...

Afghan Women in Exile and Repatriation

In-depth interviews with 60 repatriated Afghan refugee women on their experiences before and duringwar and exile revealed their significant roles and responsibilities. Thewomen were active in protection, safety, survival, and the reestablishment of their families during this time. Contrary to media presentations of Afghan women as helpless victims, they were social actors who used their networks to face the challenges of war, supported their families during exile, and participated in repatriation. Themes that emerged included the significance of cultural and religious norms and expectations, the social entitlement to receive support, and the obligation to provide support within the family and within their ethnic community. The women's stories reflect resilience in times of stress and optimism for the future that were based on their religious faith. Religion and culture are two important elements in developing social work practice with Afghan women in the aftermath of war and during repatriation.

The Power of the Displaced

This essay makes a case against representations of internally displaced persons as helpless victims or mere survivors of wars without denying their horrendous experience of being caught in armed conflicts. In recognizing human agency, I examined the persistence and creativity of the displaced in dealing with 35 years of on and off displacement in Central Mindanao. The displaced produced new relations in and beyond their respective communities, including negotiating and collaborating with government, military and rebels during the time when humanitarian organizations were not present in conflict areas. In dealing with displacement, displaced persons continuously reordered their lives and social relations, ushering in new socio-political arrangements that enabled them to evacuate, return and rebuild their communities. Their actions in transforming difficult conditions to new realities can be viewed as the power of the displaced.

Moral Stance and Agency in Schooling Narratives

In this paper I employ conversational narrative analysis to show how linguistic resources are used to convey agency and moral stance in two women's narratives. I analyze how they progress from dropping-out narratives to first-days narratives while negotiating returning-to-school narratives. Results indicate that these women's narratives changed from portraying themselves as helpless victims in which they did not orient to goodness due to someone else's action (dropping-out narratives) to perceiving themselves as active, ergative agents. The episodes analyzed were selected from life history interviews conducted in July, 2003

Not through women's eyes: photo‐essays and the construction of a gendered tsunami disaster

PurposeThis paper aims to critically appraise the representation of women through photo‐essays used immediately following the December 26, 2004 tsunami disaster. Through analysis of photo‐essay images published online, the author argues that women were largely represented in the samples as helpless victims who are passive, prone and inhabiting domestic or quasi‐domestic settings. The paper argues that a “disaster genre” has emerged, and that disaster images matter. The disaster community needs to care about the “ethics of seeing”, so that the viewer can “see” women, not simply as domesticated, vulnerable, passive and prone but in their diverse and complex lives and roles.Design/methodology/approachThis paper utilizes methodology developed within the emerging discipline of visual sociology, as applied to a sample of photo‐essays published online by international aid agencies in the weeks following the tsunami disaster. Data sorting of the four visual essays was done in response to three interpretative questions. In total, 65 images were interpreted across four visual essays.FindingsA total of 26 images included women, and in these “the look” of the women suggested passivity, distress, and being in a state of being “cared for”. Relationally, women were represented in terms of domestic or quasi‐domestic locales. About 60 percent of the images included men, whereas 35.5 percent included women. There were no images in the 65 surveyed showing women actively involved in the physical labor of disaster response. In comparison, 35 percent of the images showed men involved in physical labor associated with disaster recovery.Practical implicationsThe participation of women in pre‐ and post‐disaster planning and recovery is complex, and this complexity should not be made invisible by the visual representation of their lived experience. Agencies should actively develop policies and practices to ensure that women's diverse participation in disaster recovery is reflected in their choice of photographic materials published online.Originality/valueHigh originality. The gendered nature of visual representation following a disaster is explored through the interpretation of four photo‐essays published online. An argument is put that disaster images matter, and that aid agencies have a responsibility to ensure that the complexity and diversity of women's disaster experiences are represented.

Mapping Feminist Histories of Religious Traditions

In the past several decades, feminist historians of religious traditions have challenged settled assumptions about women's roles in historical societies. Feminist histories of religious traditions investigate a complex usually neglected even by women's histories, namely, the intricately imbricated effects of religion, gender, and culture. Indeed, attention to the gendered discourses of historical societies alters the questions historians ask and the evidence they seek, as well as their reconstruction of those societies Feminist history developed rapidly in the last decades of the twentieth century. It began with exposing the inadequacies and distortions of historical accounts that uncritically study males, the organizers and administrators of public life in their societies. Historians of women's experience added invaluable detailed studies of women's roles, writings, and activities. But the larger task of reconstructing inclusive histories remains to be done. This roundtable discussion focuses a conversation among feminist historians of several religious traditions on the topic of how inclusive histories of these traditions can best be achieved. It raises several fundamental questions about terms and methods. To mention just one example: in the text that follows, I use the terms feminist history, women's history, and inclusive history in slightly nuanced ways in relation to Christian traditions. These (and perhaps other) terms need to be defined more precisely in the context of different religious traditions Historians routinely read the writings of other historians working in different historical contexts for methodological suggestions. Some of these suggestions may indeed be detachable from the contexts in which they have been applied and may be usable in quite other inquiries; some may not. The conversation that follows will help to identify the advantages and problems entailed in [End Page 45] adopting and adapting methodological suggestions for feminist interpretations of religious traditions My contribution to the discussion takes as its starting point my own recent effort to construct an inclusive history of Christian thought. Writing The Word Made Flesh: A History of Christian Thought (Blackwell, 2005), I quickly learned that simply adding interesting and influential women was not sufficient to convey the complexity of the history I set out to develop. Rather, basic assumptions about historiography needed to be questioned. If women's experiences in Christian communities are taken seriously, for example, a triumphal narrative of Christianity's emergence from a small local cult within Judaism to a world religion and empire does not provide an adequate or accurate framework. In the past twenty-five years, many scholars have discussed Christian (male) leaders' ambivalence in regard to women. On the one hand, Christian women who acted on their commitment to their faith were considered exemplary and admired, and the few extant writings written by women testify that some women experienced authorization and empowerment in Christian movements. On the other hand, there is no dearth of evidence of hostility toward women, along with (largely successful) efforts by male leaders to control and constrain women's activities and to speak for them. At the very least, evidence from the first centuries of the Common Era demonstrates the existence of a vivid and complex debate over women's roles in Christian movements Feminist historians have usually found it impossible to claim exclusively either that women in these early Christian communities were helpless victims of a pervasive misogyny or that their faith provided new roles and opportunities; rather, both must be acknowledged and described. A feminist historian's task is further complicated by the ultimate impossibility of generalizations across geographical locations and centuries. Gillian Clark's Women in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1993) exposes the bewildering and irreducibly local variations of legal, medical, and religious attitudes toward women in the Roman Empire. We do not yet have similarly detailed studies for women in societies outside the Roman world Thus notions of "progress" and "development," the traditional interpretive lenses of historical theology, elide the fundamental ambiguity of Christian women's experience. In fact, once the inadequacy of ideas of progress...

Guest Editor's Remarks: Decolonizing Archaeology

Guest Editor's Remarks:Decolonizing Archaeology Sonya Atalay (bio) The Wisdom of Chickens This collection of articles came about as the result of the professional relationships and friendships among a group of archaeologists who collectively call themselves the "Closet Chickens." The organization known as the Closet Chickens formally came into existence after extended e-mail discussions among a group of Native American archaeologists who had participated in a conference at Dartmouth College in 2001. The conference was titled "On the Threshold: Native American Archaeologist Relations in the Twenty-first Century," and it brought together a small group of Indigenous archaeologists from around the United States who were able to share their ideas and perspectives about being Native American archaeologists. The conversation started at this conference was continued via e-mail and resulted in the decision to maintain discussions as a more formal group. In early e-mail correspondence a discussion arose over what to name the group. One participant suggested the name "Funky Chickens," while another scholar suggested including the word "grease" in memory of the movie they were watching while having that original discussion at Dartmouth. Soon the naming suggestions included the word "closet," after one member rejected another's offer of a closet in her small, crowded apartment for temporary lodging. The group was officially titled the Closet Chickens, and members soon began to find appropriate chicken-related names for each other, including Greasy Chicken, Chicken Noodle, Chicken Strips, and Chicken–a-la-Queen. As the group's informal webpage notes: "One of the group's major goals is to ensure that there are too many Native American archaeologists [End Page 269] to fit into ANY closet." Additional members have been added to the Closet Chickens group, which now includes Native American and First Nations archaeologists and supporters. At recent archaeology and anthropology professional conferences, over a number of networking dinners and friendly coffee breaks, members of the group have developed a "secret" Chicken handshake, have been known to sing a Chicken song, and there are even plans to perform the Chicken Dance each year at the Society for American Archaeology professional meetings. Amidst the joking and silliness of the Closet Chickens tales is a profound story of strength and perseverance. As have First Nations and other Indigenous groups globally, Native Americans in this country have faced, as part of the colonial process, the theft, appropriation, and misrepresentation of our history, cultural heritage, and intellectual and cultural property. Even the bodies of our ancestors were not sacred in this assault. As David Hurst Thomas and others have demonstrated so powerfully, the rise of archaeology played an intricate part in the colonization process, and the results of this conflict remain with us to this day.1 However, Native people in North America are not simply helpless victims of colonization; they are people who have actively found ways to work against Western and colonial practices to retain aspects of their traditional knowledge and lifeways. In an effort to regain control of their cultural resources, ancestral remains, and heritage, Indigenous people around the globe have played an active role in creating positive change in the field of archaeology. Scholars and activists have critiqued the discipline and practices of archaeology and anthropology—for example, they have protested such practices as displaying open burials for tourism and the display of human remains and sacred objects in museums. They have also worked with archaeologists and museum professionals to develop NAGPRA, important legislation that has resulted in the reburial and repatriation of thousands of our ancestors and sacred objects.2 In addition to such community activism and academic scholarship focused on making changes in the practice of archaeology from outside the discipline, Indigenous people have also chosen to work actively to improve the discipline of archaeology by advancing change from the inside, as professional archaeologists, excavation monitors, scholars working in tribal or national museums, and academic archaeologists. Each of the Closet Chickens has taken on this charge, and they face the difficult task of learning to facilitate change in a way that is both productive and [End Page 270] effective. As a member of the Closet Chickens myself, I can speak from firsthand experience to...

Remembering in times of misery: can older people in South Africa ‘get through’?

This paper reports a study of the situations of disadvantaged older people in contemporary South African townships. It draws from their own accounts that were collected through ethnographic research in day centres and care homes. Most of the informants had experienced a succession of serious material, psychological, social and cultural losses. Their lives had been characterised by violence, inequality, disruption and poverty. A dominant theme in their accounts is that they can hardly ‘get through’ their lives. Their thankless, even alienated, situations are not only a function of personal losses but also have much to do with the recent political and social history of South Africa. The colonial and Apartheid eras have by and large been excluded from the country's collective memory, with the result that older people's experiences of those times are not valued as affirmational reminiscence or for shaping a kin group's common identity. Expressed recollections have acquired a different function, of being a means of articulating moral judgements on the present. The result is that memories, rather than bringing the generations together, have the opposite effect and widen the gap in understanding between the older and younger generations. This in turn has serious effects on older people's wellbeing. The silencing of memories reflects the society's radical break with the past, which has made it difficult for younger people to mourn or sympathise with older people's losses. While far from helpless victims, many of the older township residents lack meaningful frames by which to locate themselves in contemporary South African society.

Variations on an Anti-American Theme

Variations on an Anti-American Theme Robert Stam (bio) and Ella Shohat (bio) This essay argues that anti-Americanism is not an invariant essence; it is conjunctural and context-specific. It examines anti-Americanism in diverse national contexts—but especially France and Brazil—to suggest that in every country where it exists—and thanks to Bush unilateralism it now does exist in almost every country in the world—anti-Americanism has distinct historical origins and serves distinct sociopolitical and even psychological functions. While based in legitimate grievances, it can also be put to neurotic and narcissistic uses. Here we will argue for an intelligent political anti-Americanism—one that Americans might share—and against a misconceived cultural anti-Americanism. Above all, we will argue against ethno-essentialist formulations of political positions. But at the outset we have to express our reservations about the term "anti-Americanism" itself. The term is misleading because it implies membership in a paradigmatic club whose primary model is anti-Semitism; it implies that America is a powerless victim analogous to the Jewish community during the Holocaust, and that it is a helpless victim of an irrational, even pathological hatred or prejudice. But in fact the United States [End Page 141] is the most powerful country in the world, and its hawks unashamedly declare their aims of world domination. The United States has seldom been victimized historically—9/11 and Pearl Harbor being rare counterexamples—and it has often been a victimizer, first of Native Americans and Africans, and then Filipinos, Haitians, Chileans, Vietnamese, and countless other targets of imperialist interventions. But "anti-Americanism" unfairly puts any critics of U.S. policies—including U.S.-based critics of U.S. policies—on the defensive. A more accurate term would be "anti-U.S. policyism" or some equally awkward term. We will retain the term "anti-Americanism" as a convenient and generally recognized rubric, but one to be placed sous rature. French Anti-Americanism Despite the fact that the United States and France historically form two sister republics, despite the fact that France rescued the United States during the American Revolution and the United States helped rescue France during two World Wars, and despite the Marshall Plan, which catalyzed French recovery from the devastation of World War II, many commentators have suggested—and polls have confirmed—that France is one of the most anti-American of European countries. Indeed, "anti-Americanism" is the only instance in which the French language joins the prefix "anti" with the name of a country. For many French people, the United States calls to mind savage capitalism, rampant individualism, phobic Puritanism, imperialism, and anti-intellectualism. For the French left, the United States is also seen as orchestrating the globalization that imposes the English language, Hollywood blockbusters, and Big Macs on a reluctant world. In the French case, concrete grievances against the United States come overlaid with the neuroses typical of dysfunctional kinship relations. French anti-Americanism, as has often been pointed out, is very much linked to a rivalry over who owns the concept of "revolution" and whose revolution might serve as a model for the world. Yet the two revolutions were intimately related through deep ideological and personal links. Familial metaphors lurk in the background of this rivalry: are the two [End Page 142] revolutions siblings, as the expression republiques seours suggests, or is it a relation between parent and child, father and son? (We would add "mother" and "daughter," but it would be inappropriate to two revolutions that barred women from full citizenship). And who is the father and who the son? Did the French Enlightenment give birth to the American Revolution, or did the American Revolution, as the first modern revolution, give birth to the French Revolution? Is America the legitimate child or the bastard offspring of Europe? Or is it a Frankenstein monster, the creation that comes to punish its creator? In The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the American Revolution was the child of French thought. While most of Europe saw the American Revolution as merely a novel historical event, French intellectuals saw it as a confirmation of their own theories...

Falstaff and the Problems of Comedy

A review of the Goffmanesque strategies Falstaff employs to make light of his disadvantages is followed in this article by an examination of the way he has always provoked a conflict between moral disapproval and the urge to laugh. This is partly because of a division between the invulnerable ego attributed to him by Freud, and a tendency to depression: what Bloom has characterised as Falstaff’s vitalism and nihilism. Hard, though, for anyone who works in British universities not to forgo the disapproval when, at his rejection, Falstaff not only receives his just desserts but is also the helpless victim of a change of regime.

Face facts: accounting, feminism and the business of beauty

‘Making up’ is an integral component of the rituals of everyday life. Similar to fashion, cosmetics consumption is tightly tied with identity construction and the expression of the self. Feminist critique of cosmetics has sought to explain its prevalence by reference to theories of male domination and capitalist exploitation. This paper considers an alternative account for the popularity of cosmetics, one which favours the recognition of the complex ritual of ‘making up’ in preference to a rather simplistic tale in which women are permanently cast as helpless victims. This discussion is elaborated by considering the common positioning of make-up counters at store entrances. Drawing on the operating results of US store cosmetic departments for the period 1930–1980, the paper investigates the accounting ‘credibility’ of such product placement. The accounting numbers question the plausibility of the feminist rhetoric of exploitation and suggest a reality firmly embedded in feminine practice.