voicing the non-place: precarious theatre in a women's prison

Based on the personal experience of the author, who is involved in theatre projects with women convicts, the article moves across issues of detention, migration, and precarity. Foucault's concept of governmentality is instrumental in describing the arbitrary exercise of power on incarcerated people and their precarious living conditions. Life in jail is especially uncertain for clandestine migrants. In the article, recollections from the rehearsals of the show I racconti del corpo (Tales of the body) alternate with images and quotes from the play, poems by women convicts, and reflections on detention as the ultimate condition of precarity for migrant women.     

the feminization of labour in cognitive capitalism

The article starts with a definition of the concept feminization of labour. It aims to signal how, at both the Italian and the global level, precarity, together with certain qualitative characteristics historically present in female work, have become decisive factors for current productive processes, to the point of progressively transforming women into a strategic pool of labour. Since the early 1990s, Italy has seen a massive increase in the employment of women, within the wave of legislation that has introduced various flexible contracts – so-called atypical work. I show how cognitive capitalism tends to prioritize extracting value from relational and emotional elements, which are more likely to be part of women's experiential baggage. The results of a study conducted in November 2006 among freelance workers of the Rizzoli Corriere della sera group, the largest publishing group in Italy, will be used to show how women are able to move more easily on the shifting sands of precarity, within the context of cognitive work.     

In Love with <Emphasis Type="Italic">Inspector Morse</Emphasis>: Feminist Subculture and Quality Television

This article consists of textual analysis of a highly successful television series, Inspector Morse, combined with qualitative audience study. The study of Morse and the fan culture surrounding it is presented in the context of a discussion of recent feminist work on the texts and audiences of popular culture. The textual analysis focuses on those elements of the programmes which contribute to its success as ‘quality’ television, and particularly on Morse as an example of the role played by nostalgic representations of Englishness in ‘quality’ media texts of the 1980s. The article goes on to discuss whether the presence of such representations in these programmes leads inevitably to a convergence of ‘quality’ and conservative ideology. The discussion of the ideological subtexts of the programmes then focuses on the area of gender representation, and on the extent to which feminist influences are discernible in this example of quality popular culture, particularly in its representations of masculinity. The second part of the article presents an analysis of a discussion group involving fans of the series, which was organized as part of a larger qualitative study of the fan culture surrounding the programmes. There is a detailed discussion of the impact of the social dynamics of the group on their readings of Morse. The analysis also focuses on the ways in which the discourses identified in the textual analysis, such as gender representation, quality and Englishness, are mobilized in talk about the programmes. Finally, the nature of the group made it possible to discuss the construction of a feminist subcultural identity in talk about a mainstream media text, and to identify irony and critical distance as key components of that identity, particularly in the discussion of the pleasures offered by the romance narratives of the programmes.     

What a Difference a Decade Makes: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Coming to Power</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Second Coming</Emphasis>

A critical look at two books, Coming to Power – Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M, published in 1981, and its ‘long awaited sequel’, The Second Coming – A Leatherdyke Reader, published in 1996, yields many differences and similarities. Both books have been judged negatively or positively on the basis of their sadomasochistic content and in line with knee-jerk positions around the lesbian ‘sex wars’ of the 1980s. The feminist politics represented in each book and the connections to more general lesbian feminist concerns and developments of either the late 1970s (Coming to Power) or the late 1980s and early 1990s (The Second Coming) are often overlooked or dismissed. Comparing the kind of sex acts and personas fetishized in each book as well as the claims made for lesbian sm by its adherents often reveals more than the writers may have intended. A more nuanced reading of both books also reveals connections between lesbian feminism, particularly lesbian radical feminism and the sm dykes. Rather than being the ‘illegitimate children’ of lesbian feminism, as Coming to Power maintained in 1981, it is clear now that sm dykes and lesbian feminists are strange sisters who needed each other to define their particular politicized identities.     

That’s One Heck of an “Unruly Horse” Riding Roughshod overr Autonomy in Wrongful Conception

The case of Rees v. Darlington Memorial Hospital N.H.S. Trustarises from a lower court backlash against the a prior decision of the British House of Lords in McFarlane v. Tayside Health Board. McFarlane holding that healthy children brought about by negligence in family planning procedures are blessings, and parents should therefore be denied the costs of child maintenance. But, would the House agree with the Court of Appeal in Reesthat the factual variation in that case of a disabled parent with a healthy child should form an exception? In tracing the appeal of Reesto the House of Lords, this note explores their Lordships’ refusal in principle to depart from McFarlane, as well as the invocation of an autonomy-based approach to address the harm of unsolicited parenthood. In reflecting on the extent to which the wrongful conception action can be said to reinforce the value of reproductive autonomy, this note argues, nevertheless, that Reesillustrates in another way a significant departure from McFarlane, but that this is still a turn in the wrong direction. Far from resonating with women’s diverse experiences of reproduction, the law of negligence continues to illustrate little respect for reproductive choice. Therefore, this note calls for a deeper understanding of autonomy, one that recognises and embraces the diversity of individuals’ reproductive lives.     

Simone Téry (1897–1967): writing the history of the present in inter-war France

Simone Téry (1897–1967), French journalist and novelist, joined the French Communist Party in the mid-1930s after visiting the Soviet Union. She worked as a correspondent for L'Humanité, Vendredi and Regards; the latter post took her to Spain during the Civil War. The resulting texts, Front de la liberté: Espagne 1937–1938 (1938) and Où l'aube se lève (1945), form the basis of my analysis of Téry's desire to write the history of the present in inter-war France. These texts, a work of reportage and a novel respectively, illustrate the relationship between the poetic, or imaginative, and the historical, or factual, in historical fiction. This relationship is particularly relevant to the literary history of 1930s France, given the highly politicized nature of literary production in the period and the resulting debates over the nature and future of the realist novel. Téry's rejection of modernism in favour of socialist realism suggests a conversion, common in left-wing writers of the period, to the notion that the modernist text is incapable of ‘containing’ history. The essay raises the question of French women writers’ relationship to committed literature in the 1930s, and demonstrates that women were active in this domain.     

remembering home: nation and identity in the recent writing of Doris Lessing

In the UK, the writing of Doris Lessing has frequently been associated with left-wing politics and the second-wave feminist movement. Critics have concentrated primarily on issues of class and gender and have focused their attention on novels published in the 1950s and 1960s. This essay suggests that Lessing's work is over-ripe for reassessment in relation to ideas from post-colonial theory. Her writing repeatedly addresses questions about national identity and its imbrications with ‘race’. These ideas intersect in complex ways with her more familiar analysis of gender and class. This essay discusses Lessing's recent novel The Sweetest Dream (2001), which was widely read as an attack on the political idealism of the 1960s. It relates the novel to her collection of essays, African Laughter (1992), her recent essay on the situation in Zimbabwe, ‘The Jewel of Africa’ (2003) and the second volume of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade (1997). Zimbabwe (previously Southern Rhodesia) is of crucial importance in these works. The article explores how Lessing makes use of notions of city, home and memory that can be instructively compared with some of Toni Morrison's ideas in her novel Beloved (1987) and the essays ‘Home’ (1998) and ‘The Site of Memory’ (1990). Lessing revises the notion of ‘home’ so that it becomes capable of both recognizing racial and national differences and moving outside them. She also interprets memory as productive for the individual and the nation only when it becomes, as Morrison would say, ‘rememory’: when it can acknowledge the importance of imagination in dealing with trauma and thus suggest the fluctuating, mobile status of identity. The article demonstrates that similar ideas about home and memory are present in her fiction, essay and autobiography, indicating that her intention is to explore generic classification and blur the boundaries between different methods of writing personal and political history. Lessing's work strongly suggests the possibility that apparently ‘fictional’ writings may be more fruitful than ostensibly factual ones in allowing individuals and nations to make sense of their immediate pasts.     

Adventures of Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir's Autobiographies,Women's Liberation,and Self-Fashioning

While The Second Sex is usually taken as Simone de Beauvoir's major theoretical contribution to feminism, in the 1960s and 1970s it was very often through her autobiographies – especially Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, and Force of Circumstance, along with novels such as She Came to Stay and The Mandarins – that her feminist ideas were most thoroughly absorbed. The autobiographies became nothing less than a guide for the fashioning of a new kind of feminine self. Where The Second Sex had intimated that a significant aspect of human liberation lay in women not losing their identity or their sense of self in those of men, it was the autobiographies which suggested and demonstrated in great detail how this might be done. In them, the rejection of conventional marriage and children was no mere slogan, but the foundation of what seemed to young female readers to be a fascinating and challenging life. In this paper, I reflect on de Beauvoir and her historical and contemporary relevance: first through reminiscence and re-reading of the autobiographies themselves; then with an historical examination of how they were read, taking Sydney, Australia, as my example; and finally by offering some reflections on subsequent feminist critique.     

the ambivalence of colonial desire in Marguerite Duras's <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Lover</Emphasis>

This paper analyses the notions of desire and metissage that circulate in The Lover, Marguerite Duras's autobiographical novel about an illicit and scandalous sexual relationship between an adolescent French girl and a wealthy Chinese man set in 1920s French colonial Siagon. Rather than celebrate The Lover as a tale of a young French girl's resistance to colonial sexual mores and regulations, this paper seeks to excavate how that resistance both affirms and challenges the racializing and racist dynamics of colonial society. In particular, I explore the intertwining discourses of colonial sexuality, gender, race, and Orientalism that both produced and constrained the specific forms of desire and subjectivities available to and taken up by European women in French Indochina, and that circumscribe the story that Duras is able to tell about the French girl's love affair in The Lover. I suggest that Duras's portrayal of the French girl as a sexually autonomous female subject – one whose erotic relations are not bound by the dictates of colonial patriarchy – is made possible only by the ambivalent structure of the girl's desire, by her simultaneous attraction to and repulsion of the racialized others of the French colonies.     

interview with Sarah Waters (CWWN conference,University of Wales,Bangor, 22nd April 2006)

Sarah Waters was born in Pembrokeshire in South Wales in 1966. She is the author of four novels, Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), Fingersmith (2003) and The Night Watch (2006). Among her many awards and nominations one can include the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year (2000), Author of the Year at the British Book Awards (2003), and the South Bank Award for Literature (2003). Most recently, The Night Watch has been short-listed for the Orange Prize. It was my great pleasure to have the opportunity to interview her at the inaugural conference of the Contemporary Women's Writing Network (CWWN), ‘For Love or Money? Contemporary Women's Writing in the Marketplace’, which was held at the University of Wales, Bangor, in April 2006.     

sexyshock: networks that matter

Sexyshock emerged out of a huge demonstration in defence of the Italian abortion law in June 2001. It is a laboratory of communication on gender issues, managed by women but directed towards all genders. It is a public space that gives visibility to women's issues as well as being a permanent workshop on sexuality, a network of women involved in pink/queer activism within a communicative laboratory. As such, Sexyshock is a ‘space of contamination’ between transversal projects which exist among different political institutions and subjects all over Italy and Europe. Her challenge lies in ‘playing with’ and ‘deconstructing’ sexual and identity issues through an ‘open-border’ conception of politics.     

Not all the time … But Mostly…

Not all the time … but mostly … is the outcome of collaboration across the genres of ethnographic research, and visual and performing arts. In exploring renewed methodologies for social research Maggie sought to develop a methodological model (ethno-mimesis) rooted in feminist thought and practice, that represented in visual artistic forms the multiple standpoints of women working in prostitution. Ethno-mimesis is a combination of ethnographic research and the representation of this work in visual/artistic form. Introduced by a mutual friend in 1997 our collaborative work began with Sara reading and interpreting the ethnographic work with a view to developing a performance text, as an exemplar of ethno-mimesis. In the collaborative work presented here the hybrid texts that emerge are an outcome of the inter-relationship between ethnographic research and the re-presentation of women's life stories through live art forms – video, and two movement based performances. Through this work we hope to reach a wider audience, beyond academic communities, facilitating understanding, interpretation and maybe even action/praxis in relation to prostitution as a social issue. In representing ethnographic data in artistic form it is hoped that we can access a richer understanding of the complexities of women's lived experiences that can throw light on broader social structures and processes. Such hybrid work may also help audiences to see that women working in prostitution are ordinary women; and that ‘prostitutes’ are indices for all women.     

Do Family and Parenting Factors in Adolescence Influence Condom Use in Early Adulthood in a Multiethnic Sample of Young Adults?

Studies show that positive family factors help protect adolescents from engaging in risky sexual activities, but do they continue to protect adolescents as they transition to late adolescence/early adulthood? Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examined whether family support, parent–child closeness, parental control/monitoring of adolescent behaviors and parent–child communication about sex, assessed in adolescence, were related to condom use in late adolescence/early adulthood among African American (n = 1,986), Chinese American (n = 163), Mexican American (n = 1,011) and White (n = 6,971) youth. Controlling for demographic variables and number of sex partners, the results showed that family support was positively related and parent–child communication was negatively related to condom use for the sample as a whole and for the white sample, but not for the other groups. Parent–child communication about sex and parental control were negatively related to condom use in the Chinese American sample. None of the family factors was related to condom use in the African American or Mexican American samples. Overall, parents talked more with daughters than sons about sexual matters. Condom use was most common among African Americans and among males. Greater attention to cultural expectations regarding sex and gender roles, as well as the causal ordering of effects, are important directions for future research.     

inhabiting or occupying the web?: virtual communities and feminist cyberactivism in online Spanish feminist theory and praxis

This article examines the relationships between gender and technology in Spanish feminist praxis online and argues that different perspectives on online feminist community-building offer distinct responses to cyberactivism, which is considered central to sustaining efforts for social change. To ascertain whether Spanish virtual communities and cyberactivism have the potential to address the challenges posed by the relations between gender and technology, we analyse feminist scholar Remedios Zafra's theoretical proposals, and the different ways in which this theory intersects with the cyberactivism put forth by two feminist web portals, Ciudad de Mujeres and Mujeres en Red. We will discuss to what degree particular Spanish feminist theory and practice online adapts to or challenges utopianism regarding the liberating potential of technology. We will also examine how, in the face of critical arguments about such liberatory possibilities, two options present themselves for women's effective use of technology: inhabiting or occupying the web through the construction of feminist communities online.     

‘Settled in mobility’: engendering post-wall migration in Europe

The end of the bi-polar world and the collapse of communist regimes triggered an unprecedented mobility of people and heralded a new phase in European migrations. Eastern Europeans were now not only ‘free to leave’ to the West but more exactly ‘free to leave and to come back’. In this text I will focus on gendered transnational, cross-border practices and capabilities of Central and Eastern Europeans on the move, who use their spatial mobility to adapt to the new context of post-communist transition. We are dealing here with practices that are very different from those which the literature on ‘immigrant transnationalism’ is mostly about. Rather than relying on transnational networking for improving their condition in the country of their settlement, they tend to ‘settle within mobility,’ staying mobile ‘as long as they can’ in order to improve or maintain the quality of life at home. Their experience of migration thus becomes their lifestyle, their leaving home and going away, paradoxically, a strategy of staying at home, and, thus, an alternative to what migration is usually considered to be – emigration/immigration. Access to and management of mobility is gendered and dependent on institutional context. Mobility as a strategy can be empowering, a resource, a tool for social innovation and agency and an important dimension of social capital – if under the migrants' own control. However, mobility may reflect increased dependencies, proliferation of precarious jobs and, as in the case of trafficking in women, lack of mobility and freedom.     

Nancy Cunard's English Journey

This essay analyses Nancy Cunard's contribution to the struggle for racial justice in England and her work with the black communities in Liverpool and London (whose histories and experiences differ radically from their counterparts in the United States) in the 1940s. It chronicles for the first time her campaign to safeguard the African collections in the Liverpool Museum and her specific contribution to the archive of black British history. This includes not only the monumental the Negro Anthology (1934) but also the tract, The White Man's Duty (1943) arguing for an end to British imperialism and for race relations legislation. Cunard is situated within a history of the Communist left in Britain and the United States. Her insistence on the primacy of race differentiates her from other white left activists in her day for whom issues of gender and race were or secondary importance compared to those of class (Cunard, 1944). Using unpublished archive material from the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas I show that Cunard's work constitutes one segment in the rich and varied mosaic of black cultural activity in the 1930s and 1940s and discuss how Cunard knew and worked alongside some of the key figures in the black British politics of her day including Una Marson, Learie Constantine, John Carter, Harold Moody, Rudolph Dunbar and Paul Robeson. A prolific writer, publisher and political activist, Cunard presented a white readership with documentation which prompted them to question their own prejudice and rendered problematic the imaging of black people as fixed embodiments of a Eurocentric sense of reality. Cunard's work in the 1930s and 1940s predates the sailing of the Empire Windrush and the accelerated immigration to Britain from the Commonwealth after the Nationality Act of 1948. It adds to our knowledge of earlier black history, narratives, settlements, and anti-racist struggles.     

Explicating Acculturation Strategies among Asian American Youth: Subtypes and Correlates across Filipino and Korean Americans

Acculturation strategy, a varying combination of heritage and mainstream cultural orientations and one of the significant determinants of youth development, has been understudied with Asian American youth and particularly at a subgroup-specific level. This study used person-oriented latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify acculturation strategy subtypes among Filipino American and Korean American adolescents living in the Midwest. Associations between the subtypes and numerous correlates including demographics, family process and youth outcomes were also examined. Using large scale survey data (N?=?1580; 379 Filipino American youth and 377 parents, and 410 Korean American youth and 414 parents; M_AGE of youth?=?15.01), the study found three acculturation subtypes for Filipino American youth: High Assimilation with Ethnic Identity, Integrated Bicultural with Strongest Ethnic Identity, and Modest Bicultural with Strong Ethnic Identity; and three acculturation subtypes for Korean American youth: Separation, Integrated Bicultural, and Modest Bicultural with Strong Ethnic Identity. Both Filipino American and Korean American youth exhibited immersion in the host culture while retaining a strong heritage identity. Although bicultural strategies appear most favorable, the results varied by gender and ethnicity, e.g., integrated bicultural Filipino Americans, comprised of more girls, might do well at school but were at risk of poor mental health. Korean American separation, comprised of more boys, demonstrated a small but significant risk in family process and substance use behaviors that merits in-depth examination. The findings deepen the understanding of heterogeneous acculturation strategies among Asian American youth and provide implications for future research.     

The Benefit Cap and the Complexity of Discrimination: <Emphasis Type="Italic">R</Emphasis> (<Emphasis Type="Italic">SG and others</Emphasis>) <Emphasis Type="Italic">v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions</Emphasis>

In R [on the application of SG and others (previously JS and others)] v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the United Kingdom Supreme Court evaluated the legality of the benefit cap. The Court was sharply divided but decided by a narrow margin that the benefit cap did not amount to a violation of the claimants’ human rights. While the majority accepted that the gender discrimination was justified, the Court noted that the current measures fell short of the United Kingdom’s responsibilities under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This could prove of the outmost importance as the government elected in May 2015 has announced further reductions to the existing benefit cap. The case comment evaluates whether the Court paid enough attention to the multifaceted nature of poverty and discrimination, and argues that the impact the benefit cap has had specifically on women from black and ethnic minorities should have been considered.     

Examining the Protective Effect of Ethnic Identity on Drug Attitudes and Use Among a Diverse Youth Population

Ethnic identity is an important buffer against drug use among minority youth. However, limited work has examined pathways through which ethnic identity mitigates risk. School-aged youth (N?=?34,708; 52?% female) of diverse backgrounds (i.e., African American (n?=?5333), Asian (n?=?392), Hispanic (n?=?662), Multiracial (n?=?2129), Native American (n?=?474), and White (n?=?25718) in grades 4–12 provided data on ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use. After controlling for gender and grade, higher ethnic identity was associated with lower past month drug use for African American, Hispanic, and Multiracial youth. Conversely, high ethnic identity was associated with increased risk for White youth. An indirect pathway between ethnic identity, drug attitudes, and drug use was also found for African American, Hispanic, and Asian youth. Among White youth the path model was also significant, but in the opposite direction. These findings confirm the importance of ethnic identity for most minority youth. Further research is needed to better understand the association between ethnic identity and drug use for Multiracial and Hispanic youth, best ways to facilitate healthy ethnic identity development for minority youth, and how to moderate the risk of identity development for White youth.     

Texts in context: Afro-Colombian women's activism in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia

This paper speaks across the divide between feminist theorists and praxis-oriented gender experts to argue for a more enabling reading of postcolonial feminist critiques of gender and development. Drawing on the activism of Afro-Colombian women in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia – most especially Matamba y Guasá, a network of black women's organizations from the state of Cauca – it brings attention to the independent ability of women in these locations to reflect and act on their own realities and claims.