fMaria has 10 post(s)

Lila Abu-Lughod examines the justifications for the “War on Terrorism” launched by the US post-9/11 in her compelling and well-argued piece, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others.” She begins by refuting the notion that the US military bombing of Afghanistan had anything to do with bringing liberation to women supposedly oppressed by their culture – despite the overwhelming narrative led by Western women in powerful positions proclaiming feminist motivations for the devastating attack on one of the world’s poorest countries. Indeed, Abu-Lughod makes a strong case that the discussion about “culture” actually works to mask a real discussion about the political objectives and the long history of US support for some of the most egregious and brutal regimes throughout the region.

Abu-Lughod also shows that this western obsession with Muslim women, in particular, isn’t new and has served in the past as justification for earlier western intervention in the region, as was the case with England into Egypt. The rhetoric of saving women and the championing of women’s rights is old hat for the west when those in power seek colonial domination. The point is to portray Muslim women as one-dimensional, sad figures who need someone else – someone who knows what they want and need better than they do – to save them from the men who oppress them who supposedly force them into wearing veils. The hope is that people don’t ask how exactly bombing their country can help women achieve any kind of liberation. And that people will accept the caricatures of the liberated western woman vs. the enslaved eastern woman.

A long-standing myth that Abu-Lughod’s critique helps to destroy is the notion that wearing a veil is the reflection of some form of oppression. Aside from going through the myriad reasons that different women wear different kinds of veils – history, social class, region, religious affiliations – she also reminds western readers that there are all kinds of cultural norms when it comes to how people dress in different parts of the west that nobody would ever think to question. Why then is there a different standard for Muslim women?

Abu-Lughod’s piece underscores the importance of questioning the motivations of the US (and other governments) when “culture” is used as an explanation for military intervention. Rather, we should look at the historical relationship of our own government in the region and understand that all people have the capacity for self-determination. That is, “we” do not know what is “best” for everyone else, and we certainly cannot dictate the way that people in different countries with different histories should express their own freedom.

Sally Engle Merry’s essay, “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence,” attempts to examine the ways in which people who did not necessarily previously see themselves as entitled to rights (civil, human, or any other) come to see themselves as such. To make the argument, Merry employs her research with battered women (and abusers) in Hilo, Hawai’i in the 90s and concludes that this transition occurs within and is based upon an individual’s interaction with the legal system – or, some might say, the state.

Merry’s interviews seem to show that a battered woman’s experiences, from the time she calls for legal intervention to put a stop to the abuse to her interactions with court officials and then long-term services to prevent further abuse, are what begin to shape her (usually) new notion that she should have autonomy (bodily and otherwise) and is entitled to a set of rights to protect and preserve that autonomy. Many of the women interviewed experienced police officers displaying more sympathy towards the abusers than towards them. Some of them even described the police as “cold” and entirely unsympathetic to their horrible ordeals. This experience can lead to what she discusses in the introduction of her essay – many women dropping their initial complaints and refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.

Centrally, what she seems to be putting forward, however, is that positive interactions with the court system can help women to develop a strong sense of their rights. The ideal conditions, one imagines, begin with sympathetic police officers who recognize the dangers that women in abusive relationships face and immediately implement ways to protect the woman and keep her separated from her abuser. Then, a sympathetic Judge who understands the power dynamic and the influence that he or she can play within it to get the abuser to stop his behavior (in at least one of the interviews, a woman described being quite satisfied with a Judge’s lecture to her abuser, but less impressed by the police’s actions or his experience in the jail system). Finally, and what seems to be a crucial component, is the long-term follow up preventative measures of ATV classes that both partners attend.

So, when all the components seem to come into place, a battered woman’s identity can shift from seeing themselves as someone who must tolerate abuse to someone who has rights AND can implement those rights. But, evidence based on Merry’s interviews shows that these experiences can vary quite a bit and, thus, if a woman’s rights are not taken seriously by the state (i.e. the legal system), then there is no guarantee, really, of a woman understanding her identity as entitled to rights.

UN Resolution 1325, unanimously passed by the UN Security Council on October 31, 2000, is centered around the security of women and girls during war and the post-war rehabilitation period. Authors Felicity Hill, Mikele Aboitiz and Sarah Poehlman-Doumbouy write glowingly about the ambitious aims of Resolution 1325, yet are relatively vague about the details – horrific as they no doubt are – of the victimization of women and girls when the inherent lawlessness and chaos of war takes hold.

The objectives of the resolution, as per the authors of the essay, range from a basic acknowledgement that women and girls suffer a specific kind of violence during war-time to providing women (who have been victims of gender-based violence) a voice at Security Council meetings to providing sensitivity trainings to key actors in war zones as well as to aim for a more gender-balanced Security Council.

This UN resolution – like so many other UN resolutions – has set some lofty goals for itself but is relatively meaningless because there is no way to actually force its implementation. It is hard to argue that demanding accountability from countries involved armed conflict should pay special attention to the protection and security of women is a bad thing. But, if it is merely words written on paper, then it’s hard to argue that it’s too much of a good thing, either.

When one considers that the US military which is involved directly or indirectly in nearly every armed conflict in the world (currently, the US is bombing 7 different countries, though, few Americans are aware of it) also has a notoriously (and shockingly) high incidence of sexual violence against women in its own ranks, it’s difficult to imagine that “sensitivity training” is going to do much when it comes to the people that the soldiers are supposed to consider the enemy. Beyond this, it is well-known that the US is the most powerful country in the Security Council and, thus, it is nearly impossible to keep the US in check.

I think the main implications of a UN resolution like this is providing political cover for the ongoing violence women, girls, and, really, everyone else endures during armed conflict – fights that are seldom waged for the benefit of the vast majority of society. The other implication that I see is that there could be some headway in terms of more gender-balance within the security council and tacit acknowledgment of women’s particular suffering. But, this, too, serves as political cover.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s From Military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism argues that after the shift from military Keynesianism – an economic policy that relied on the production of war-related goods to boost the economy – came another shift that resulted in what Gilmore (and others) refer to as the carceral state.

There is a “common sense” notion that has been propagated by the media and political elites, as Gilmore discusses, which assumes that the exponential growth of the US prison population was tied to an increase in crime. But, Gilmore demonstrates that this massive expansion (from some 600,000 people to nearly 2 million in less than 20 years) is due, in reality, to a political imperative rather than anything having to do with a rise in seemingly collective “bad behavior.” Indeed, she shows that the expansion of the carceral state was initiated as crime rates were on the decline.

It’s necessary, then, for Gilmore to take readers back to the social and economic crises that came to a head in one of the most infamous years in social struggle history: 1968. It was the height of the Black Power movement, a time of mass upheaval (1968 was the year that MLK, jr. was assassinated sparking an explosion of street rebellions in hundreds of cities across the country. As Gilmore points out, before this era, riots were generally started by white people) that political elites were able to utilize to paint a picture of a black community out of control. Gilmore explains that this social crisis was compounded by an economic crisis of capitalist profitability – largely a response to earlier Keynesian economic policies.

While it may seem counterintuitive, Gilmore points to a marxist understanding of crisis to explain how crisis and surplus are actually linked up. Once the productive forces of society are stalled, a transformation of some kind is forced to resolve this crisis. Gilmore posits that the surplus was in the form of human labor – i.e. all those cut off from legitimate wage-labor as a result of racist marginalization – as well as in the form of land – i.e. agriculture lands that were no longer being utilized for productive purposes.

Essentially, the solution to these crises was to utilize the surplus that derived from it to, as in all cases, the benefit of capitalism. It is here where Gilmore, using the State of California as her example, demonstrates that this land and labor was used to physically construct the carceral state – both the land used to build extraordinarily large prisons and a population to then fill the prisons with.

The first chapter of Silvia Federici’s highly acclaimed work, The Caliban and the Witch, examines the myriad implications of the transition from a feudal system of production over to capitalism – for women, in particular. This world historic shift, which first occurred in Europe, did not take place swiftly, nor without immense – and highly organized, as Federici demonstrates – levels of resistance.

The reason for this resistance, if it can be boiled down to one thing, rested on the question of land and the autonomy – however limited – it afforded those who toiled it. Because the everyday functioning of the feudal economy depended on the peasantry and its ability to procure foodstuffs and all manner of goods from the land on which it worked, the shift over to capitalism, which required the privatization of that land, upended the way of life of the peasantry and threatened its very survival. In short, it separated them from their land which had previously allowed them to perform subsistence farming to feed and otherwise provide for themselves and, oftentimes, their lords.

The shift to capitalism meant that land became privatized. This is what Federici is describing when she talks about “enclosures” in the initial pages of the chapter. The capitalists, in order to secure the land they were essentially seizing from its previous owners (or, more accurately, toilers), put up fences around it to keep the peasants out.

For women peasants this had a specific and, according to Federici, more detrimental impact than it did on men. This is why, as Federici discusses, women played such a central role in the struggles against the privatization of land. Women (and children) as well as men worked the land under the feudal mode of production. This shouldn’t be too highly romanticized as the labor was brutally intense and a bad crop could mean starvation, disease, and death. But, the shift to capitalism forced women more and more to work inside the home (or domestic sphere) to be relegated solely to reproductive labor. That is, to reproducing the next generation of workers – literally, by birthing them, but also by taking care of and tending to all of their needs as well as their husbands. As men moved into wage-labor (as they no longer had access to their own land, they had to work for someone else on someone else’s property), women were denied entrance to this type of work and were forced either into the home or into prostitution. This complete denial of any autonomy and forced dependence on men, made women much more vulnerable to all manner of abuse.

In their essay, “Are women human? It’s not an academic question,” V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi begin to probe just what we mean when we use the words “women” and “human.” While it is a relatively elementary feminist critique, they argue, that what we now think of as “human rights” tends to be male-centered (i.e. male is considered the normative qualifier), less examined is the tacit acceptance of the gender binary – and all that comes with it – when we limit our critique of human rights law to these narrow terms.
For Peterson and Parisi, understanding human rights theory as heterosexist rather than merely androcentric allows a more holistic criticism of human rights as exclusionary and does so without implicitly agreeing to the norms as set forth by the dominant power structure. After all, to say that international human rights law are only concerned with “men’s rights” begs the question of how to define “men.” The very concept of “men” is deeply enveloped in what the authors view as the dominant interpretation forced upon society of “masculine vs. feminine,” which is something they understand as immersed with the institutionalization of the modern state.
What’s at stake, it seems, for the authors is primarily a broadening of the critique of international human rights law with an argument that is more in sync with the feminist view that rejects the dominant notions of gender. Rather than critiquing human rights law on the basis that it centers on men, the authors are hoping to challenge it with a lens that allows all the variations of gender to come into focus. The pitfalls of a critique that focuses exclusively on androcentrism are multi-layered as once this acceptance of the gender binary is taken for granted, theoretical boundaries are limited to the dominant narrative – the archetypal Man v. Woman which, again, has its origins in the very structures of the state machinery.
If instead, the authors suggest, we take a view that understands and critiques human rights law as heterosexist, we allow ourselves to set the terms of the debate to one which includes a wide spectrum of gender and which refuses to accept concepts of masculinity or femininity. This seems a fundamental place to begin, otherwise we are incapable of incorporating a view that comprehensively challenges the myths that our society enforces about how human beings “ought” to identify and behave.

Samuel Moyn’s fascinating first chapter from his book, The Last Utopia, traces the emergence of the modern notion and politics of human rights. What he uncovers is that the route to this conception – still, a relatively abstract one – was by no means linear and is fraught with more than a few contradictions to untangle. The very question of the differences between today’s “human rights” and yesterday’s “rights of man” gets at the heart of these contradictions.
Moyn helps readers to place this ideological development (the “rights of man,” as we have discussed, was the precursor to “human rights”) in their context. It was an era of democratic revolution which, by definition, meant the replacement of monarchical systems or autocratic rule in both the US and in France. From these revolutionary demands for the rights of man – again, it is a revolutionary notion that mere mortals, not just the nobility, should have anything afforded to them – emerged the modern state, a codified system of laws and institutions governed by elected and appointed officials. Moyn shows that the notion of “the rights of man” was intimately connected to and tied up with the emergence of the state. It was the threat of collective, or democratic, action (27) that could be used as leverage to ensure that rights were respected. The rights of man, then, were more about collective rights of “peoples” seen previously as subjects of a brutal autocracy that acted with complete and utter impunity. It’s rule was supreme and unmitigated.
By contrast, today’s “human rights” are tied to deeply embedded notions of individual rights – as set up against state power. While, in some ways, “individual rights” seem almost entirely unobjectionable, Moyn shows that the most persistent individual right that has been propagated through the years is that of “property rights.” Further, he includes revolutionary criticism of human rights as a farce to uphold the powers of the capitalist state and the propertied class. While Moyn speaks only briefly of Marx, it is interesting – and important – how he shows the very profound connection between the notion of collective rights (emerging from the rights of man) and that of workers rights. Marx saw those things in opposition to individual rights, though, as Moyn explains, he was not a proponent of the state either.
While the “rights of man” laid the ground work in important ways for the emergence of today’s modern notion of “human rights,” the path has gone largely in the opposite direction from where it initially seemed to be leading – collective struggle against a powerful minority vs. individual rights set up against state institutions (though, as Marx argued, they help to hold up the very institutions that they seem to be set against). While Moyn doesn’t say it explicitly, at least not in the first chapter, human rights may be less about empowering the powerless than one might think.

Wendy Brown’s essay, “‘The Most We Can Hope For…’: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” is a decidedly scathing – and compelling – critique of the prevailing Human Rights discourse articulated by establishment liberalism and embodied, in this case, by Michael Ignatieff. Brown had much to criticize considering that Ignatieff had been the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, yet also supported the massive bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of Iraq headed by the US military in 2003.

Ignatieff’s position on the Iraq war is, perhaps, Brown’s strongest piece of evidence against the notion that Human Rights work – at least, of the type promoted by the likes of Ignatieff – has much to do with defending those who can’t defend themselves against the powerful. Brown is certainly justified in pointing this out. Indeed, the US bombing campaign against Iraq, nicknamed “shock and awe,” was the most devastating in world history. Estimates of the dead reach into the millions – including nearly 500,000 children – and the utter destruction of multiple towns and cities created what was, at the time, the largest refugee crisis the world had ever seen. Of course, the US was (and remains) the largest, most powerful military force in the world. If the world standard for human rights discourse does not even deem it necessary to defend those on the receiving end of that most massive and powerful of bombing campaigns by trying to prevent it, does it really adhere to any minimal standards as it claims? By almost all accounts, the war in Iraq did not help anyone, most certainly not those who were killed, lost loved ones, or left without a home or even a neighborhood. To do all of this under the mantle of humanitarian intervention only makes it more hypocritical.

Brown also challenges Ignatieff’s arguments about the primacy of, for example, freedom of speech over more basic rights like food, shelter, and healthcare (456). Clearly, the latter three basic necessities form the foundation for human survival. Brown aptly demonstrates that Ignatieff’s insistence on ignoring what should be the most basic of human rights and instead focusing on the lofty and uber-democratic sounding freedom of speech is suspect. First, she makes the rather salient point that, given the political order of a world dominated by corporations and their mouthpieces, “freedom of speech” takes on an almost sinister dimension. She then uses Ignatieff’s own words to show that his real concern has very little to do with defending the defenseless and much more to do with maintaining the ideals of a free market economy – i.e. the ability to pursue profits unimpeded.

Here too, I agree with Brown. That the head of a human rights agency can not concern himself with making sure first and foremost that everyone in the world is properly nourished – a totally attainable goal, in my opinion, if profit didn’t stand in the way – says something deeply troubling about the real agenda of such an agency.

Moreover, Brown’s point about the obsession with individual over collective rights – a throwback to the ridiculous hysteria of cold war anti-communism – is well taken. This, too, seems like a classic bait and switch. Put in the starkest terms, why shouldn’t the right to healthy food be a collective one? I cannot think of an argument against that. Least of all any argument that claims to speak in defense of human rights.

Women’s role in society at large has always been explained away as somehow “natural” – a term, we should keep in mind, whose meaning is largely derived from the ideology of whoever happens to be employing it. Of course, if something is “natural” then how can anyone question it? In the case of women, “natural” also seems to implies something that should be taken for granted and not terribly important. They are unquestionable truths with which we should barely even bother to reckon. But, Carole Pateman’s The Sexual Contract begins to reckon with these seemingly common sense ideas and challenges the notions about women that society holds so dear.
To break down some of the ways that we can begin to understand this, Pateman offers up the yin and yang of private vs. public or, as they tend to be described by theorists, natural vs. civil. Pateman reminds us that the terms are actually defined in opposition to each other. That is, what defines the private is precisely that it is not public and vice versa. If we agree with that supposition (and, it does seem nearly impossible to argue against) then, this has implications for the way private – generally, defined by what happens within the bounds of domesticity – and the public – generally, defined by what happens in the world outside of the home – both depend on and interact with one another.
What we find is that all sorts of antiquated ideas about how women should contribute to society are deeply ingrained, even today. And, according to Pateman, the questions of the relationship of the private to the public are not sufficiently grappled with even by political theorists who should have something to say about it. But, because this private (i.e. within the home) is generally thought of as the domain of women it is consistently undervalued. This, despite the fact that, in general terms, the raising of children – all of the responsibility that the word “raise” entails – the general maintenance of the household – all of the responsibility that the word “maintenance” entails – is thought of, at best, as playing a supporting role.
Yet, if we go back to the notion that the public and private cannot exist without the other, we are then forced to say that women – accepting that this is an antiquated version of the role of women – make possible the existence of the public. Whatever happens, then, in civil society is only possible because of the private. In this sense, while the private is separate, it bleeds into and creates the conditions for the public.

My name is Maria D’Amelio and this will be my second to last semester at CWE. I am grateful for the variety of classes and the dedication of the professors and students, here but I am also very much looking forward to graduating. I was delighted to learn about this class as I have been an activist around various issues – including women’s rights – for over a decade and am always interested to read and learn more about political and theoretical debates so that I can be as informed as possible. Currently, I’m involved in a group to defend women’s reproductive rights, which is something that has been steadily eroded ever since the right to safe, legal abortion was won in 1973. Women’s issues have always been a centerpiece for me in terms of my involvement and my study. I believe very strongly that we need to learn the lessons of the past and build a grassroots movement that takes into account and fights around the issues that affect all races, gender expression, religions, and economic statuses. I actually still have a lot of hope that this is possible. I’m hoping that this class will help me to learn more about issues that are deeply important to me.
The language in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 – one of the precursors to the Universal Declaration for Human Rights of 1948 that Lynn Hunt discusses in Inventing Human Rights (2007) – is so familiar to so many by now, that it is almost taken for granted. But, the questions raised by Hunt, in particular whether or not something that is supposedly “self-evident” needs to be explained, force a critical examination as to what the actual drafters of the document meant. The irony of a well-known slaveowner penning lines about the equality of all human beings may still be lost on some, but is an act that is nonetheless difficult to defend. It seems rather obvious today, that Jefferson’s vision of “man” was a supremely narrow one. Certainly, as Hunt points out, the word “man” as a term was a stand-in for “people,” though, even this is cause for pause. Jefferson did not intend for women to be part of the category of “all men,” nor did he intend for men of a darker hue to join in the celebration of the equality of “all men.” He spoke to a specific demographic: his own. Those who owned property (slaves were the most profitable form of property in Jefferson’s day), those who were male, and, of course, white. This version of equality or notion of human rights does not jibe with the standard – or the perceived standard – that exists today. What’s interesting, however, is how, even today, human beings are quickly demoted from that category under a variety of circumstances. Hunt points to a few in her essay, including immigrants, but it’s worth talking about prisoners, as well.