Oppressive Situations Research Articles

Collective ethics of resistance: The organization of survival in the Warsaw Ghetto

This article aims to shed light on how ‘powerless’ people can organize to survive in situations of mass oppression. Research on powerlessness often explains compliance and political inaction by a culture of silence, generated from the sedimentation of numerous experiences of defeat. We question this assertion by drawing from an illustration of certain inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto, who managed to create a micro-society and reclaim the social relations the Nazis sought to destroy. Building on the work of Schaffer, we explain these collective ethics of resistance as the view that people should actively participate in the creation and maintenance of their own social relations. Through this lens, we argue that ethics and resistance are intertwined.

Beauvoir on Women's Complicity in Their Own Unfreedom

InThe Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir argues that women are often complicit in reinforcing their own unfreedom. But why women become complicit remains an open question. The aim of this article is to offer a systematic analysis of complicity by focusing on the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's account. I begin by evaluating Susan James's interpretation of complicity qua republican freedom, which emphasizes the dependent situation of women as the primary cause of their complicity. I argue that James's analysis is compelling as far as it goes, but that it implies complicity is the inevitable outcome of women's current existence and fails to adequately account for Beauvoir's claim that women actively embrace their own unfreedom. I then draw out the Heideggerian strands of Beauvoir's analysis, demonstrating how this enables us to systematize Beauvoir's account of women's oppressive situation with her claims regarding the active role women can play in reinforcing their own unfreedom. I argue that this approach preserves the strengths of the republican interpretation, but provides a better account of cases where complicity may not be inevitable and yet some women still act to reinforce rather than resist their own unfreedom.

Language Danger: Metal Gear Solid V and the Weaponization of English

In the final installment of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series, 2015’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, language takes on a function entirely outside of its longstanding role in constructing artistic worlds. Even as it is used to build the world around protagonist Punished “Venom” Snake, spoken language becomes a weapon in the hands of nemesis Skull Face, who deploys a species of deadly parasite that attacks its host’s vocal cords, with the eventual aim of destroying the English language and all who speak it. This paper explores both how language is used to construct, in Marie-Laure Ryan’s terms, the “storyworld” of MGSV, and how the spoken word comes, through Skull Face, to threaten that world (2014). By applying the rhetorical approach to videogame analysis of Ian Bogost, this project investigates the interpretive potentialities for spoken English as a lingua franca (ELF) made possible by MGSV’s “procedural representation” of language, especially regarding English as a weaponizable force ([2007] 2010). In extending Skull Face’s implications of English as a destructive power into real-world situations of language-based oppression, the paper shows how MGSV creates opportunities for interrogating the role of the English language in constructing reallife colonial worlds. To contextualize these concerns, the project incorporates other “worlds” that share MGSV’s language-based concerns, particularly that of George Orwell’s 1984. ELF scholarship, as well as the anti-colonialist work of Paulo Freire and Edward Said, are applied in an exploration of language as a tool for both totalitarianism and revolution, and the article concludes by gesturing toward means of ideological and linguistic decolonization. Through this approach to MGSV, the project conveys the real-world dangers of English as a lingua franca, and theorizes how we might move from media theory to real-world action. “Words can kill” -Skull Face

Raízes de ébano: educação como caminho da liberdade no cinema

Este trabalho procura analisar os significados da educação a partir de um conjunto de filmes protagonizados por personagens afrodescendentes, nos Estados Unidos e no Brasil. O texto defende que a palavra escrita tem muita força, agindo como instrumento de transformação na experiência de homens e mulheres em situações de opressão. No que se refere aos aportes teóricos, o artigo dialoga com as contribuições de Davis (2016; 2017; 2018), Hooks (2017; 1995), Ferro (1992), dentre outros. E conclui que a educação e os usos da palavra escrita são caminhos para a emancipação. Assim, em tempos de relações fluídas, permeadas pela virtualidade e pela égide das redes sociais e da superficialidade, a História da Educação tem importante papel ao promover a reflexão crítica, além de combater preconceitos e estereótipos na luta por um mundo mais justo e igualitário. Nesse contexto de resistência, o cinema é um aliado e fonte de conhecimento.

Intersectionality and public health in the field of erotic-affective relationships among adolescents in Colombia

The erotic affective relationships between adolescents are not only influenced by gender, but also by race, age, social class, sexuality and functional diversity, locating people according to the context, in places of privilege, subordination, discrimination and inequities that influence health disease processes. This essay aims to present intersectionality as an analytical tool for the understanding of violence in these relationships, in the understanding of how different situations of oppression and resistance cross the body of people, thus normalizing their relationships. These intersections of axes of subordination in public health become inequities in health, and must be identified and addressed in primary health care programs and public policies against the prevention of violence.

Poslolitismo: el legado de Lolita en el cine indie del siglo XXI = Post-lolitism: the Lolita’s Legacy in the XXI’s Indie Cinema

Resumen. En este trabajo realizo un recorrido a la inversa desde las películas La Belle Personne (Christophe Honoré, 2008), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009) y The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marielle Heller, 2015), hasta llegar a su germen: Lolita (1955), novela escrita por Vladimir Nabokov y adaptada a la gran pantalla por Stanley Kubrick en 1962. A partir de esta conexión, analizo los aspectos definitorios de esta nueva poslolita, enmarcando el personaje en un viaje narrativo concreto y un discurso feminista consciente. El viaje consta de tres momentos clave: una primera toma de contacto, el encuentro sexual y la liberación de la situación de opresión. En cuanto al discurso feminista, este revisa la figura de las poslolitas como objeto de deseo, además de la relación con el adulto y la iniciación sexual de las jóvenes. Estas tres películas suponen la reinterpretación del mito que Kubrick crea en su filme. Asimismo, esta nueva lectura del lolitismo se entiende a partir de la apropiación femenina de un discurso que ha sido explotado casi en exclusivo por hombres. Esto, sumado a la manifestación de no depender de la figura masculina para alcanzar la felicidad, hacen de The Diary of a Teenage Girl la máxima expresión de esta nueva poslolita. Palabras clave: Feminismo, cine, indie, Lolita, Nabokov. Abstract. La Belle Personne (Christophe Honoré, 2008), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009) and The Diary of a Teenager (Marielle Heller, 2015), up to its germ: Lolita (1955), a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov and adapted to the great screen by Stanley Kubrick in 1962. From this connection, I analyze the final aspects of this new postlolita, framing the character in a concrete narrative journey and a conscious feminist discourse. The trip consists of three key moments: a first contact, the sexual encounter and the liberation from the situation of oppression. As for the feminist discourse, it reviews the figure of the postlitas as an object of desire, in addition to the relationship with the adult and the sexual initiation of young people. These three movies suppose the reinterpretation of the myth that Kubrick creates in his film. Also, this new reading of lolistism refers to the feminine appropriation of a discourse that has been exploited almost exclusively by men. This, added to the manifestation of not depending on the male figure to achieve happiness make The Diary of a teenager the ultimate expression of this new postlolita. Keywords: Feminism, film, indie, Lolita, Nabokov.

Faculty and Graduate Peer Mentors Online Experiences in Teaching and Mentoring

AbstractFor both Sophomore Inquiry (SINQ) faculty and graduate peer mentors, online education offers a chance to explore pedagogical approaches and adapt to new or different technology solutions to communicate with students. The purpose of this article is to explore how online SINQ faculty and graduate peer mentors instruct, build relationships, and interrupt oppressive situations while delivering an online course. The research examined how SINQ faculty and graduate peer mentors' pedagogy and practices evolved when translated from brick and mortar classrooms to online contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted. Transcripts were coded and thematic analysis was done. Critical hope was used as the conceptual framework. Four themes were identified: online instruction, SINQ faculty and graduate peer mentor relationships, interrupting oppressive language and behaviors, and online strategies. The last theme is presented as a table of participants' online strategies that highlights the effective practices in creating, nurturing, and sustaining equitable online learning environments.

An exploratory study on prejudice based on gender identity or sexual orientation perceived by users in social networks

Although research in HCI has been increasingly covering gender and sexuality, the experience of lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender (LGBT) people is still underexplored. We aimed to inquiry whether digital systems user interfaces reproduce or not oppressions based on gender identity or sexual orientation. By conducting a survey, we gathered some oppressive situations that LGBT people have faced online. Our results suggest that not only the user interfaces reproduce such prejudice, but that the LGBT community perceives it in the social network interfaces and content there posted. Also, current tools fail fighting and preventing oppressions, which impacts the decision of using a network and users’ comfort.

Black November (2012) and its social-change potential: reactions from the audience

This article examines, through multiple film screenings and Focus Group Discussions, the potential of Black November (2012) to initiate social change in the 20th anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death. Current research on African film is skewed towards broad representations of urban and rural lives, thus making the reception of indigenous popular films an understudied area. Virtually absent in African film scholarship is the reception of the films as agents of potential social change. The nexus between popular films and social change is examined here in the aftermath of failed formalized processes of conflict resolution. Recent popular film reception studies have transnational foci, which focus on African emigrants’ conditions of life in foreign localities. The paper, therefore, evaluates the impact of popular films on viewers and how they interpret the film as being instrumental in changing oppressive situations in the Niger Delta. It deploys the theory that the arts function as peace-builders and tools for social change among conflicting parties in the light of the Niger Delta struggles, particularly those championed by Ken Saro-Wiwa, which are revisited two decades after his internationally condemned murder. Findings include that Black November cannot function in isolation to produce social change but must work within a broad framework of strategies serving the same goal.

Ahmad Tohari’s The dancer: Revisited

As with many post-colonial countries, Indonesia has suffered from a long conflict between the military and civil society since its independence in 1945. This struggle is reflected in Ahmad Tohari’s novel entitled The dancer (2012), which has been largely credited as being critical towards the military regime. Using the theories of depoliticisation, I argue that the novel is 1) largely supportive of the military regime due to the oppressive situation as well as the author’s own political line, and 2) influenced by other powers besides the government. The fact that the novel dares to touch the once suppressed subjects of the Indonesian Communist Party (the arch enemy of the regime) and the anti-communist persecution shows a drive for politicisation. Nevertheless, further analysis shows that, by portraying it as highly political, The dancer actually depoliticises the party in that it only reinforces what has been said of the party and removes any alternative points of view. It also represses and depoliticises the military’s persecution and killing of the suspected communists through the pretexts of self-defence, ignorance, and guilt.

Pedagogies of indignation andThe Lives of Others

Neel Mukherjee’s novel, The Lives of Others, which depicts characters dealing with a situation of extreme and violent oppression, is used as the basis for looking more closely at some of the theoretical assumptions about hope, agency and critical consciousness that underpin Critical Pedagogy. It is suggested that it may be educationally and philosophically valuable to reflect on the ethically troubling choices that individuals in extreme situations make in their fight against oppression, and to ask questions about the risks and the costs involved when people, through a process of critical consciousness, become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.

Empire, Deep Solidarity, and the Future of Liberation Theology

In recent years the term empire has been used to describe an oppressive global situation. Empires are marked by their efforts to control all of life, not only politics and economics, but also society, culture, and religion. Since their inception, liberation theologies have addressed this oppressive global situation by focusing on its various manifestations in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, and class. As the oppressive global situation tightens and contemporary liberation movements increasingly bring together its various manifestations, liberation theologies need to devise common strategies and models for resistance without abandoning their diverse legacies.

Learning with immigrant children, families and communities: the imperative of early childhood teacher education

This article reports on a longitudinal study spanning over 5 years, involving the design and implementation of an early childhood teacher education program model that engages a critical-ecological theoretical approach, a funds of knowledge perspective, and design-based methodology. This project aimed to promote equitable education for all children, and especially for young immigrant children encountering situations of oppression within the national and local educational contexts in Arizona. In this teacher education program, families, community members, researchers, pre-service teachers and teachers worked together to develop new modes of curricular activity, new spaces, new relationships, and new forms of movement among participants, as well as new circulations of literacy artefacts.

Escravidão por Dívida e as Raízes do Trabalho Escravo na Esfera Rural: Uma Análise à Luz das Lacunas de Criticidade no Direito Agrário Brasileiro

As relações entre o Direito Agrário e o fenômeno do trabalho escravo derivam de situações de opressão no trabalho rural por vezes invisibilizadas pelo debate acadêmico agrário. Faz-se necessário analisar a identidade brasileira do latifúndio para uma abordagem interconectada do enfrentamento da escravidão por dívida. Sair da bolha legalista para reconhecer sua relação com a gênese e a manutenção do trabalho escravo é nosso foco. Outras legislações, tampouco a CF 1988 foram capazes de exterminar a escravidão, “atualizada” em moldes contemporâneos. O trabalhar acrítico dos institutos agrários provocam falsa assepsia de realidades do contexto brasileiro, que abordamos aqui.

An Extra Pair of Eyes

i came upon the following lines in a recent poem by the Israeli poet Uzi Bahar:A land where you need an extra pair of eyesTo see beyond this everyday.Writing about Hebrew poetry within the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip demands that one find an extra pair of eyes able to see beyond the concealing blur of daily routine to the deeper structures of an occupying culture. The experience of the occupation, its terminology and symbols, have become part of the Israeli landscape, not only for those who, like Meron Benvenisti, see it as an irreversible process, but even for those who still hope for the day when Israeli society will free itself from the burden of the occupation.The closing of a college, the imposition of Draconian punishments on children for the crime of rock-throwing, . . . the banning of hundreds of books in the occupied territories, the arrest of an artist for using the forbidden colors of the Palestinian flag: such everyday news items, if they appear at all, are reported under the separate category of “news from the territories” and buried in the inside pages of the newspaper. If one steps out of the flow of events to look at daily life in Israel from a more distant perspective, one discovers that the ideology of occupation has almost completely penetrated Israeli society. . . .There is a central dividing line in this poetry, demarcating the possibilities from the limitations inherent in Hebrew poetry written during the occupation. This line delineates a dual picture, where hope alternates with condemnation. To the extent that hope is forthcoming at all, it derives for the most part from a dispassionate awareness of the poet’s own limitations in his capacity as conqueror. The striving for undistorted insight into reality, coupled with the willingness to pay the price for such insight, can itself constitute a seductive option for a literature caught in the kind of complex and oppressive situation typified by the occupation. There are Hebrew poets who come to terms with these limitations by making their poems into metapoetry, examining the hidden assumptions implicit in the discourse within which and for which they are being written. . . .One of the most sophisticated expressions of the struggle between moral empathy and responsibility can be found in the poem “While Hovering at Low Altitudes,” by Dalia Ravikovitch. She describes a small shepherd girl who dies cruelly in “wild and terrible mountain ranges / To the East.” The speaker’s fixed, measured distance from the horror of the event evoked the following remarks from the critic Nissim Kalderon: “For she writes, over and over again, ‘I am not here.’ All of her is there, beside the victims. But not together with them. Near them; but not treading the same ground as they, with no expectation of the evils which befell them.” She is not there; but in fact she is also here, in her Israeli homeland. Dalia Ravikovitch has crafted a poetic voice which, suspended between heaven and earth, is both intimate and remote, thus mirroring the multifaceted ambiguity of daily life in Israel. . . .Ravikovitch’s poem includes closeness as much as distance. Through the insistent and troubled refrain, “I am not here,” the speaker in the poem reveals her closeness to the “here” she denies so strongly. A similar effect is achieved in the poem through litotes, in the descriptions of the shepherd girl: She does not turn to God for help in Jewish formulaic language, she does not have the cosmetic beauty of the women of Jerusalem condemned by the Prophets. As a litotes, this formulation of the central opposition between here and there gives at least as much weight to the familiar Israeli homeland as to the distant danger zone “to the East”:And the little girl awakened thus, to go out to the pastureHer neck is not outstretchedHer eyes are not painted with mascara, they do not flirtShe does not ask, Whence cometh my help.I am not here.I have already been many days in the mountainsSunlight will not burn me. Frost shall not touch me.Nor again have I reason to be smitten with dismay. . . .There is an instructive lesson to be learned from all of these poets: Almost any literary-spiritual stance adopted by a Hebrew poet writing on the occupation can be evaluated in terms of its degree of distancing or estrangement from the occupiers. Both universalization and a solipsistic particularization are characterized by the salient loss of any feeling of national identity as something continuous and tangible.

An Epistemology of Incarceration: Constructing Knowing on the Inside

An Epistemology of Incarceration: Constructing Knowing on the Inside The LoCI and Wittenberg University Writing Group1 In a situation of oppression, epistemic relations are screwed up. —José Medina 2013, 27 There is a psychology to doing time. —Member of the LoCI and Wittenberg University Working Group We write from the perspective and insights of people who are currently incarcerated as well as people who have been in a working relationship with them for the past two years. Many of us began working together in the fall semester of 2014 through an Inside-Out Prison Exchange course and have continued working together through additional coursework and reading groups.2 The writers in our group who are incarcerated are theorizing from the perspective of people who have served at least five years in prison, with approximately half of us having served more than ten years, and some having served more than twenty years. The vast majority of the incarcerated portion of our group has served time in multiple prisons, as well as prisons of a higher security level than our current level-one and -two prison. Furthermore, we are working from inside of a men’s prison. Though our working group includes outside women as well as two outside men, we are primarily writing from the experiences of men who are incarcerated. We believe that many of our [End Page 9] arguments are applicable to a broad range of people who are incarcerated, but acknowledge that gender plays a role in our perspective. The arguments in this paper reflect our collective position on the subversive lucidity that can be generated by people who are incarcerated. We call this type of subversive lucidity an epistemology of incarceration. We explore the limitations and achievements of the epistemic structure of the lives of incarcerated people and put forth the ways that an epistemology of incarceration is formed as a strategic epistemology such that people make knowledge and meaning for themselves even under conditions of incarceration. A Carceral Way of Knowing In his book The Epistemology of Resistance, José Medina argues that subversive lucidity is a critical achievement of oppressed people that results from the development of key epistemic virtues: humility, diligence/curiosity, and open-mindedness.3 These epistemic virtues are developed when oppressed subjects critically assess and engage positive epistemic resistance—one that is both generated through an internal oppositional push that is “critical, unmasks prejudices and biases, reacts to bodies of ignorance,” and through an external oppositional force that requires “one to be self-critical, to compare and contrast one’s beliefs to meet justificatory demands, to recognize cognitive gaps” (Medina 2013, 50). When the above epistemic virtues emerge out of this critical, self-reflexive work of people who are oppressed and marginalized, “then the lucidity of the [epistemically] virtuous subject can have a subversive character, having the potential to question widely held assumptions and prejudices, to see things afresh and redirect our perceptual habits, to find a way out or an alternative to epistemic blind alleys, and so on” (Medina 2013, 45). Thus, subversive lucidity is not something that every oppressed person has, but oppression and positive responsive engagement with epistemic resistance are necessary for the development of a subversive lucidity. The subversive lucidity that can be developed by a person situated within the walls of prison takes on a unique character because, unlike the subversive lucidity that can be acquired by people who have always lived on the outside, prison walls create a distinct physical barrier, with epistemic, emotional, and material consequences, between people who are incarcerated and the rest of the population, between inside and outside. This results in at least three primary characteristics that make the subversive nature of an epistemology of incarceration unique. First, for many people who are incarcerated these walls present such a strong physical and emotional dichotomy between inside and outside—the world they live in that is managed and shaped by others and the world that is inaccessible to them but perceives and observes them—that this results in a type of liminal consciousness that exists in a space situated between a Du Boisian double [End Page 10] consciousness and...

Non-violence as respect for all suffering: Thoughts inspired by Eyad El Sarraj

This paper, first presented at a memorial conference for the Palestinian psychiatrist and activist Eyad el-Sarraj, examines the connection between non-violence and acknowledgement of injuries and trauma in the Israel-Palestine context. It explores the complexity of mutual recognition in a situation of actual oppression, suggesting the counter-intuitive value of the victim’s power to humanize the perpetrator. It develops the idea of the third, the witness and the framing opposition ‘only one can live’ versus ‘every life matters,’ drawing on Primo Levi’s evocation of ‘the drowned and the saved’ and placing the issue of dignifying suffering alongside recognition of the ‘monstrousness’ in each subject and in relation to the productivity of the ethos of ‘Ubuntu.’

Reading the Bible Positively – Popular Reading of the Bible with people living with HIV/AIDS in Brazil

In the early ‘60s, it began to emerge, in Latin America and Brazil, political movements that sought to raise awareness about their situation of oppression and the need for ruptures with the dominant society. The Bible had been given to the people and was read from the experience and reality of men and women in situations of oppression. The situations of oppression and exclusion experienced in Latin America broaden the understanding about the poor and the excluded and challenges new readings of the Bible from each context. Prejudice and stigma affects the lives of people with HIV, causing them suffering. The situation of social vulnerability affecting a major portion of this population complicates the lives of these people even further. We seek to read the Bible through the context of lives of women with HIV by using popular bible reading methodology. This article bring some introductions reflection on the method and on the experience of a women group in Brazil.

What we can learn about Psychology from the Maid Narratives: A Case of Cognitive Dissonance

This brief paper explores Festinger’s classic theory of cognitive dissonance as a psychological phenomenon that can be applied to situations of social oppression. This framework is discussed in terms of older white women from the U.S. South who grew up with black women who worked as maids in their home under conditions of racial segregation.

Safe, accessible medical abortion in a rural Tamil Nadu clinic, India, but what about sexual and reproductive rights?

Women’s control over their own bodies and reproduction is a fundamental prerequisite to the achievement of sexual and reproductive health and rights. A woman’s ability to terminate an unwanted pregnancy has been seen as the exercise of her reproductive rights. This study reports on interviews with 15 women in rural South India who had a medical abortion. It examines the circumstances under which they chose to have an abortion and their perspectives on medical abortion. Women in this study decided to have an abortion when multiple factors like lack of spousal support for child care or contraception, hostile in-laws, economic hardship, poor health of the woman herself, spousal violence, lack of access to suitable contraceptive methods, and societal norms regarding reproduction and sexuality converged to oppress them. The availability of an easy and affordable method like medical abortion pills helped the women get out of a difficult situation, albeit temporarily. Medical abortion also fulfilled their special needs by ensuring confidentiality, causing least disruption of their domestic schedule, and dispensing with the need for rest or a caregiver. The study concludes that medical abortion can help women in oppressive situations. However, this will not deliver gender equality or women’s empowerment; social conditions need to change for that.