``Is Alec a Rapist?' – Cultural Connotations of `Rape' and `Seduction' – A Reply to Professor John Sutherland

This article is a response to an essay written by an academic in English Literature, Professor John Sutherland. Through close textual analysis,Sutherland purports to resolve a well-known literary question: whether the sexual encounter outlined in the Victorian novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles should be classified as rape or seduction. The present article rejects his conclusion on the matter. An(equally) close analysis of the fictional text in question and of Sutherland's gloss, demonstrates the partiality of his critique, both in literary-critical and critical-legal terms. In addition, examination of the conceptual and historico-legal context regarding the notions of rape and seduction on both sides of the Atlantic highlights parallels between Sutherland's own partiality and that of the law. In short, the apparent objectivity of the textual analysis and subsequent critique undertaken by Sutherland is revealed as a continuation of legal and patriarchal prejudices defining rape and seduction. The use of close textual analysis as the key critical device promotes the apparent probity of his findings. Locating them in an essay collection designed for mass lay public consumption completes the circle – from partisan scholarship to `informed' popular prejudice. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Uniform Civil Code: The Politics of the Universal in Postcolonial India

This article speaks of a debate in contemporary India: that surrounding the validity of enacting a civil code that applies uniformly to all communities and religions in the state. In certain feminist arguments, such a code is seen as possibly providing a sphere of rights to Indian women that is alternative to the rights – or wrongs – given to them by the plural religious laws, which form the basis of the civil law in India. India, however, is a heterogeneous polity, encompassing a diversity of cultures and religions, some dominant and others forming minorities. Given these differences, some critics see the feminist call for a Uniform Civil Code as an essentialist move that prioritises gender over other agendas and politics. They argue that the site of the ‚universal’ in this feminist move is a liberal site that inherently excludes marginalised Others and benefits the dominant subjects in India. In my article, I contest this critique and question whether the site of the universal and its authorial subject in postcolonial India is, in fact, an exclusionary liberal ruse of power. I draw insights from the history of the formation of the postcolonial nation-state in India to posit an experience of the state and the universal within it, which is alternative to the Western liberal model. The aim of this article is, therefore, not so much to debate the in/validity of a Uniform Civil Code, as to address certain contemporary post-structuralist critiques of the site of the universal in postcolonial India and posit a departure from them, based on perspectives drawn from history.     

Gender and Feminism in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Feminist scholarship has been central to the success and prominence of the Australian social sciences. The impact and significance of the work of sociologists such as Raewyn Connell and Rosemary Pringle, historians Barbara Caine and Marilyn Lake, philosophers Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens and political scientists Carol Bacchi and Louise Chappell are recognised internationally. But how effective has feminist critique been in reshaping what counts as authoritative knowledge and research excellence in the disciplines? And what is the relationship between the disciplines' varying incorporation of feminist perspectives and their progress towards organisational gender equity goals?     

‘Went into raptures’: reading emotion in the ordinary wartime diary, 1941–1946

Despite the emergence of studies attentive to the difference between discourses about emotion and the experience of emotion, particularly within histories of gender and sexuality, social class has been a neglected category. Those historical sources which enable engagement with a subject's emotional life have been largely produced by the elite and middle-classes; it remains notoriously difficult to gain access to the interior lives of ‘ordinary’ people. This article asserts the significance of the ‘ordinary’ diary in enabling exploration of the emotional lives of non-elite women and girls. It focuses on expressions of romantic love and sexual interest, anger and disappointment in the pocket diaries of a working-class scholarship girl from the English East Midlands during the years of the Second World War, to argue that ordinary diaries can help us to move beyond cultural directives concerning appropriate female emotional expression to develop a greater understanding of the daily crafting of the modern self.     

‘Great Expectations’: Rehabilitating the Recalcitrant War Poets

Formulating a definition of ‘good’ poetry is, and should be, impossible. Yet women's poetry of the First World War seems generally to have been condemned as ‘bad’. It inspires an ambiguous response from readers who recognize the value of its historical, social and psychological content, but shudder at the limitations of its form. However, I believe that a much more fruitful reading of these ‘recalcitrant’ texts is possible. It is not my intention to deny either their problematic nature, or the diversity and complexity of male responses to the war, but rather to emphasize that women's experience of the First World War was radically different from that of men, and we should not therefore be constrained by the traditional parameters of 1914-18 criticism when we explore these works. This article examines a selection of this poetry in the light of the psychological processes of grief and bereavement, and in so doing indicates other areas in which constructive readings of these texts might be made.Why do we expect the articulation of a radically new and uniformly consistent poetic voice from what was a large and diverse group of women? The expectations of modernism ironically have created a literary ‘mainstream’ out of a selection of experimental, and largely male, writing. I hope to show that the ‘failure’ of these women to conform to our textual ‘great expectations’ is irrelevant. The single most characteristic feature of these women's experience of war was isolation. Their position had neither the homogeneity of the trenches, nor the intense intellectualism of experimental circles. Predominantly middle class, alienated by absence and bereavement, they attempted to articulate the unprecedented nature of their experience. That their experiments were not wholly successful is perhaps indicative of the near impossibility of the task they undertook.     

Cindy Sherman in a New Millennium: Fashion,Feminism, Art and Ageing

ABSTRACT

If feminism and the fashion industry were once seen as adversaries, given how the strictures of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) permeated so much of second wave feminism, a consideration of ‘fashion’ is now central to contemporary feminist scholarship. But just as the earlier critique of fashion seemed finally to have been supplanted, certain basic arguments around dress and makeup nevertheless resurfaced within contemporary feminism. The current neoliberal climate has led to the ever-increasing consumption of ‘fashionable’ goods, provoking unease and encouraging the contested ‘protectionist discourse’ within feminism to shield young women from just such excesses. Meanwhile, the fashion world itself, arguably more powerful than ever, has across the last twenty years continued a process of legitimising itself through its various modes of alliance with the art world; it has even hijacked elements of feminist practice in the pursuit of publicity. This article suggests that the fashion industry and contemporary feminism are nonetheless alike in one significant respect: neither have properly engaged with the needs of an ageing population. It is an omission that this article will seek to examine through a discussion of the recent ‘portraits‘ of Cindy Sherman, an artist of great interest to feminist scholars, in whose earlier work there was a discernible ‘anti-fashion’ element. Now ‘fashionable’ herself, a leading figure in the global art world, she has collaborated with the fashion industry in rather different ways. Her ‘portraits’ of 2012, in which she reconfigured herself as imaginary Manhattan socialites in or beyond middle age, and a later series, exhibited in 2016, where she appears as a series of ageing, anonymous ‘movie stars’, reveal more general ideological tensions surrounding the representation of women, the ageing process and the fashionable ideal. It is the dissection of these tensions that underpin this article, for while Sherman’s work has been the subject of academic debate across a forty year period, her use and critique of the ‘fashionable ‘ image has not been examined alongside an exploration of the expanding activities of the fashion industry itself; nor have her recent images of ageing women been examined within this more general context.     

Pain,pleasure and bridal beauty: mapping postfeminist bridal perfection

Despite renewed media attention on the wedding, and the emphasis that this pays to bridal performance, feminist analysis of wedding culture has made few inroads. Accounts are needed that understand women's experience of the wedding day, the narrative of becoming the bride, and the way this takes place against a backdrop of postfeminist ambivalence, where traditional wedding practices are re-fashioned through discourses of (consumer) choice and empowerment. In this article, we draw on qualitative data collected with five married women from the Netherlands, who spoke to us about their wedding day and their experience of being/becoming brides. We show how retraditionalisation shapes a new romaticisation of wedding day storytelling, constructed through transformation and the experience of beauty. In analysing these narratives, we show how postfeminist bridal perfection comes to anchor the subjective and affective power of ‘the wedding’ in contemporary culture.     

resistance at the limits: feminist activism and conscientious objection in Israel

This article investigates the relationship between feminism and conscientious objection in Israel, evaluating the efficacy of feminist resistance in the organised refusal movement. While recent feminist scholarship on peace, anti-occupation and anti-militarism activism in Israel largely highlights women's collective action, it does so at the risk of eliding the relations of power within these groups. Expanding the scope of consideration, I look to the experiences of individual feminist conscientious objectors who make visible significant tensions through their accounts of military refusal and participation in the organised conscientious objection movement. Drawing on original ethnographic research, this article problematises feminist activism in the organised Israeli refusal movement through three primary issues: political voice; privilege; and the realisation of gender agendas. Using Michel Foucault's conceptualisation of power as it has been critiqued and qualified by feminist scholars, I consider the ways in which resistance may be both multiple and a diagnostic of power, allowing activists and academics not only to envision new avenues for social change, but also to recognise their constraints. Critically, feminist theories of intersectionality enrich and complicate this Foucauldian approach to power, providing further modes of critique and strategy in the context of feminist activism in Israel. Ultimately, I argue not only for engagement with the limits of power, but also attention to their function, as in theory and praxis these boundaries critically inform our theorising on gender and resistance.     

rethinking the interplay of feminism and secularism in a neo-secular age

The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis’. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions. The ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize ‘democracy’ and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neo-secular age.     

Feminist legal theory and practice: rethinking the relationship

This article aims to contribute to the question of how to conceptualise the relationship between theory and practice in feminist scholarship in law. It looks in detail at the implications of different issues raised in a recent debate between Anne Bottomley and Ngaire Naffine on the existence of a “legal feminist orthodoxy”. I critique the dominance of ethics over politics and join Bottomley in her attack upon “the ethics of respect for the other”, albeit from a different position. I then look at the ways in which the problem of “essentialism” is being rethought from a feminist perspective.     

Compulsory heterosexuality and psych/atrophy: Some thoughts on lesbian feminist theory

The patriarchal features of psychiatric practice have received scant attention by feminists today. This paper presents a critique of psychiatry and places this critique within lesbian feminist theory. Drawing on Mary Daly's ideas as elaborated in her ‘ovular’ work Gyn/Ecology (1979), the methodology I use is an unearthing of feminist meanings and an exposition of feminist practices which are necessary to understand the role of Psych/Atrophy vis à vis lesbianism today. I argue that for lesbians, as for all women, self-healing is a feminist process which exists in opposition to psychiatry's functioning as the primary male, social injunction to heal souls. With a view to challenging this psychiatric conception of healing souls, we are able to create five specific strategies which direct Lesbian energy to a more creative view of ourselves as women. Discarding the sexual label (1); resisting ‘reversal’ (2); erasing the Victim Role (3); working towards social change and not individual solutions (4) and delivering themselves through the ‘Amazonian Asylum’ (5), lesbians will help to work for lesbian liberation. These strategies will help them/us not only to create new images of themselves/ourselves as women, but also to challenge the heterosexist structure of society upon which psychiatric practice is based.     

Orwell's despair,Burdekin's hope: Gender and power in dystopia

George Orwell's 1984 bears a striking resemblance to a little-known anti-fascist dystopia, Swastika Night, that was published twelve years earlier. While the similarities between the two books are in some cases remarkable, of even greater interest is the different treatment of political domination and gender ideology in the two novels. Orwell's critique of power worship is inherently limited by his inability to perceive that preoccupations with power and domination are specifically associated with the male gender role. By contrast, Katherine Burdekin, a feminist writer who published Swastika Night using the pseudonym ‘Murray Constantine’, focuses her critique on the ‘cult of masculinity’ and the fascist dictatorship to which it can lead. Her novel is set 700 years in the future, after Hitlerism has been established in Europe as the official creed, and with it a ‘Reduction of Women’ to an animal level. This essay analyses the relationship between gender and power as understood by these two writers, one world-famous, the other forgotten.     

A communist perspective on development strategy for rural India

This article examines the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s strategy for ‘developing’ rural India. The term ‘development strategy’ is, of course, not one that the CPI(M) itself uses to characterise its plans for maturing the revolution in India's countryside. As a matter of fact, its use in the title of this paper is intended primarily to emphasise the point that ‘development’ can mean many different things. It is not the intention of this paper to endorse or deny either the merits of the CPI(M)'s purposes or the sincerity of its revolutionary intent. The limited purpose is to portray, and attempt to understand, Us positions. While differences with these positions are duly recorded, the critique is intended to be ‘immanent’, rather than ‘transcendental’, that is, is intended to be a critique from within the given frame of reference, rather than a critique of its ‘validity’.     

Does Feminist History have a future?

Abstract

Contemporary shifts in scholarship and institutional agendas, I argue, have created new sets of challenges for feminist history. While these do not undermine the paradigms of this scholarly endeavour, there has been an inevitable shift in how feminist history is now written, conceptualised and undertaken. A hallmark of dynamic and innovative scholarship is a capacity to evolve and respond to intellectual challenges and developments. There is much to be positive about in the future, as I believe feminist history at its best has not remained a passive or static body of knowledge, but continues to be reformulated and reconceptualised, but with this dynamism comes uncertainties which institutional change can bring. While I do not believe these are systemic enough to pose a challenge to the enterprise, I suggest they do create cause for wider discussion, especially about the place of the humanities more generally in the corporate university of the twenty-first century.     

Liberal family law in the making: Nordic and European harmonisation

This paper discusses the past and contemporary legal harmonisation exercises of family law in the Nordic countries and Europe. The critique is that the harmonised ‹European family law’ only entrenches the status quo and reiterates traditional family patterns, the male norm, heteronormativity, and a public/private divide represented in the neutral guise of a liberal rights discourse. Furthermore, the critics point out that the political economy of legal harmonisation is, to a large extent, ignored. In the Nordic countries, egalitarianism and broad political deliberation characterised much of the previous legal harmonisation, whereas rights discourse in its liberal sense is a novelty, more or less triggered by the European integration. This paper discusses the gendered implications of the emerging rights discourse in the Nordic countries and the linkages between family law, the labour market and social welfare. The paper argues that the harmonisation exercise cannot be regarded as one consisting only of legal norms and reasoning, but rather it should be discussed from the perspective of a political and epistemological challenge to the prevailing ‹truths’ about marriage, family and sexuality.     

The Spinster in the Garden: Joy and Transcendence in Elizabeth von Arnim’s Father and Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther

Abstract

This article proposes an original reading of Father (1931) and Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907), two texts by Elizabeth von Arnim that centre on a young single woman. It will examine how female autonomy is spatially imagined in the form of a garden and poses significant challenges to the patriarchal societies presented in the texts. Many scholars have detailed the recurring motif of the garden in Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) and The Solitary Summer (1899). The two texts this article addresses were published later than those that have been discussed in relation to the garden, and signal a move away from the married female towards an examination of the independent or single female. Significantly, they disrupt the traditional ‘marriage plot’ novel by tracing two single women’s movement into the garden as a retreat from the societies in which they live. In both texts, von Arnim presents a distinctively beautiful, transcendent garden experience for her female protagonists that contrasts with the oppressive expectations placed on them by urban society. These texts turn on dichotomies—city/country, built/organic environments, repression/freedom—to expose the central characters’ repression and their attempts to gain some degree of independence. Each central character experiences joy as a result of her interaction with the organic environment and the power the protagonist exercises over this space.     

Nonfeminist and feminist students at risk: The use of case study analysis while transforming the postsecondary curriculum

Recent events at the University of Washington and at Fresno State University, where male students disrupted Women's Studies classes, serve as background to discuss some problems faced by nonfeminist and feminist students. These problems may be seen as one result of current attempts to integrate Women's Studies scholarship into the U.S. higher education's mainstream curriculum. Through illustrative case studies, the author analyzes the causes and effects of some of the complex problems faced by a diverse student population. In this paper, the case study approach itself is recommended as a methodology compatible with feminist theory and pedagogy. It serves as a vehicle to anticipate and to understand the concerns of different constituencies in the large Women's Studies core courses and in the courses in which feminist scholarship has been mainstreamed into the curriculum.     

Open admissions,orality,aand literacy

Open admissions students tend to be highly oral. Their modes of thinking are different from the modes of thinking demanded in the highly literate (i.e., detached, objective, and scientific) world of college. They can learn the more literate modes of thinking, however, but this requires special awareness and effort on the part of their teachers. Some assumptions and instructional approaches made with traditional students cannot be made with highly oral students in a community college. Moreover, the effort to move the students into the more literate modes of thought cannot be limited to a couple of remedial courses in reading and writing. The promise of the open door can be realized for highly oral students only as more and more teachers change their assumptions about student learning and modify their instructional practices accordingly.He received an M.A. in English and a Ph.D. in higher education from Saint Louis University.     

Frontiers of imagination: Feminist worlds

New Feminist scholarship in diverse disciplines, including the social sciences, suggests a distinctive female reality which finds itsbesr literary expression in contemporary speculative fiction by women. Feminist utopias, in particular, delineate alternative societies in which ‘female’ values predominate. In novels by Marge Piercy, Doris Lessing, Ursula Le Guin and many other women, readers may discover holistic and dynamic worlds different from both our current reality and the patriarchal tradition of utopian speculation. When women imagine the ‘good society’, dualistic divisions, often ranked hierarchically in current power structures, tend to disappear, Feminist speculative fiction heals such schisms as those between male and female, matter and spirit, public and private rights, ends and means, even technology and ecology. Although these ‘utopias’ are not perfect, nor intended to be, their depiction of more balanced and integrated societies affords a fresh perspective on traditional political and cultural problems. Ultimately, then, the newly released female imagination may provide us not only a fascinating literature but substantive directions for actual change.     

Radical formalism

The question of formalism often gives rise to well-rehearsed notions of political indifference, autonomy, and ahistoricity. Yet what if a radical formalism was deployed––against these normative understandings––as a contextual practice and subversive method of critique? Mobilized into action, “Radical Formalism” proposes that institutionalized understandings of form may be hijacked from within as an alternative strategy of resistance. Examining the work of Charlotte Poseneske as one practitioner of radical formalism, this essay offers ways of considering formalist art objects as carriers of the political. By welcoming contextual readings of form, we move past the superficial and facile readings of the relation between aesthetics and politics, enabling ourselves to understand what form can perform.