Theme: Making us Modern: Australian Writing in Modernity

‘Making us Modern’ brings together articles concerned with the scene of Australian writing and the relevance of ‘modernity/ies’ and ‘modernism/s’ for contemporary writing and reading practices. What is the ‘modern’, who are its subjects, and how has the modern made us—as ‘postmodern’, perhaps? And, who is this ‘us’, anyway? Attempts to theorise modernity and its aesthetics have often taken the white Western male as their subject. Intervening in these theories, however, are the efforts of feminist critics, among others, who seek to install those troubled terms ‘gender’ and ‘race’ at the centre of their considerations of modernity, modernism, and reading and writing subjects. The articles in ‘Making us Modern’ contribute to these debates. Twentieth-century Australian modernities have been seen as holding together a mix of trauma and pleasure, constraint and release, sometimes represented in literary texts in seemingly impossible relation. For Esther Faye, writing on the short stories of Australian-Jewish writer Rosa Safransky, the subjective experiences of post-war Australian modernity are characterised by the traumatic dislocation of human subjects in time and space. In Safransky's stories of family and domesticity is seen the trauma experienced by gendered and racialised subjects in the particular context of the Shoah and its aftermath. Although, as she says, ‘the canonical status of the Shoah as the paradigmatic modernist event is increasingly contested’, through a Lacanian reading of Safransky's texts, Esther Faye shows the ways that the Holocaust's radical disruption of time and its dislocation of the Jewish subject in history echoes in its logic the wider deracination of the subject in modernity. It testifies ‘to the traumatic structure of subjectivity itself’, and it testifies, too, to the particular kind of ‘pleasure’ that is constituted in inextricable relation to trauma. In this way, as Esther Faye argues, being Jewish after Auschwitz is a question for all of us.     

Destroyed by Love: nation,memory, and humanity in South Asia

Remembered experiences of violence, humiliation, and loss suffered in the 1971 war of Bangladesh offer a site for writing a new contemporary history in South Asia. Love, not for humanity but for nation, in survivors' memories was the site of violence in the war. The state's history-writing project cultivated hate against neighbors deemed enemies and encouraged violence against them. More than four decades later, the awareness of intersubjective relationships leads survivors—victims and perpetrators—to search for meaning beyond their national labels. The quest leads to the renewal of insāniyat, a South Asian concept of humanity, which survivors suggest is the site of human freedom from violence.     

‘A Witness in My Own Case’: Victim–Survivors’ Views on the Criminal Justice Process in Iceland

Arguments in favour of strengthening the rights of victim–survivors in the criminal justice process have largely been made within the framework of a human rights perspective and with a view to meeting their procedural needs and minimising their experiences of secondary victimisation. In this article, however, I ask whether the prevalent legal arrangement, whereby victim–survivors are assigned the legal status of witnesses in criminal cases, with limited if any rights, is a just arrangement. In order to answer this question, the article draws on interviews with 35 victim–survivors of sexual violence in Iceland. The interviews are presented against the backdrop of Nordic legal thinking and are interpreted in the context of Nancy Fraser’s democratic theory of justice. On the basis of the findings, I argue that assigning complainants the role of witnesses constitutes a case of misframing that results in misrecognition throughout the criminal justice process.     

Giving Afghan Women a Voice: women's writing in Afghanistan

This article considers how far women's rights have improved in Afghanistan since the intervention by the international community in 2001. It examines this question through the author's experience of working with an Afghan women's writing group. It looks at the tension between allowing Afghan women to voice their experiences, and the danger of their writing embracing depictions of the female as ‘victim’. It concludes that while depictions of Afghan womanhood may appear to promote ‘negative’ images, the women themselves offer positive role models.     

Defining Female Subjectivities in Italy: motherhood and abortion in the individual and collective memories of the 1970s women's movement in Bologna

In Italy, women have long been stereotypically marked as either objects of sexual desire or as producers of new life. This changed radically in the 1970s, when second-wave feminism redefined gender relations and experimented with new paths of life not determined by matrimony and maternity. The legalisation of abortion, during the second half of the decade, is now hailed as one of the primary achievements of the women's movement. A theme closely connected to abortion such as motherhood, on the other hand, seems to have been excluded from the public memory of 1970s feminism. Drawing on the outcomes of an oral history project, this article unearths the dominant discourses and individual and collective silences within the public memory of the 1970s women's movement in the Italian city of Bologna, and explores the processes of creating ‘composure’ among women as they remember their experiences of motherhood and abortion.     

An Exceptional Choice?

Building on Penelope Deutscher's analysis of the biopolitical implications of abortion being regulated by a framework of exceptionalism, this article explores discursive constructions of abortion as an exceptional choice that is only justifiable in ‘worthy’ cases. In so doing, it extends our understanding of exceptionalism and neo-liberalism as ways for thinking about abortion. Through an analysis of interviews with New Zealand women about their views on abortion, I contend that exceptionalism operates not only as a dominant framework for talking about abortion but that it structures a hierarchy of worthiness in abortion discourse. I argue that the exceptionalism framework both obscures the ways that abortion is an ordinary and common part of many women's reproductive experiences and raises questions for how challenges to prevailing legislative regimes might be organised.     

Freelancers,Temporary Wives,and Beach-Boys: Researching Sex Work in the Caribbean

This article presents insights from a research project on sex work that took place in the Caribbean region during 1997–8. First it briefly summarizes common themes in historical and contemporary studies of sex work in the region, then describes the aims, methodology, and main trends of the project. It pays particular attention to the differences between definitions and experiences of sex work by female and male sex workers and of male and female sex tourists, as well as describing conditions in the Caribbean sex trade. Finally the article identifies some implications of the complexity in the region that were uncovered through the research project for feminist theorizing about sex work.     

What's Love Got to Do with It? Dynastic Politics and Motherhood in the Letters of Eleonora of Aragon and her Daughters

This article analyses interpretations of motherhood in letters from the duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora d'Aragona, to her daughters, Isabella and Beatrice d'Este. Following the girls’ marriages in 1490 and 1491, the duchess used letters to maintain a close surveillance and authority over them, as well as to offer advice and direction as they established intimacy with their spouses, faced the rigours of childbirth and took on new political responsibilities. In their side of the correspondence, Isabella and Beatrice reveal their anxieties about marriage and transfer to a new environment. The author argues that despite the constraints of writing mainly through secretaries and according to formulaic epistolary conventions, the women communicated effectively, revealing both their struggle to adhere to conventional interpretations of filial and maternal duty and the personal costs borne by them for the sake of their family's dynastic and political survival.     

Kiss and Tell: ‘The Writing Cure’ in Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss (1997)

The article challenges conventional assumptions regarding the question of incest survival within contemporary discourses. A textual analysis of Kathryn Harrison's autobiographical novel tracing her consensual sexual relationship with her father is used to address the issue of failed or unresolved mourning as a prototypically ‘modern’ cultural phenomenon. Psychoanalytically informed feminist literary criticism is used to explore the parallels between the cultural construction of femininity and failed or postponed mourning in western historical and philosophical traditions. Following the work of Juliana Schiesari and Kathleen Woodward, the article contends that melancholia is a gendered discourse that has historically privileged male theorists and film-makers, such as Barthes and Fassbinder. The article suggests that contemporary women writers, such as Harrison, are engaged in a revisionary approach to the construction of loss within their writing. By situating themselves at the heart of the contemporary family narrative, instead of the ‘melancholic’ margins, they are able to produce a counter-discourse that dispels the conventional dynamics of the traditional family romance. By using the ‘writing cure’ to overcome ideological loss, the desiring daughter is able to challenge misogynist constructions of femininity within contemporary literature.     

The value of narrative in understanding Mongolian and Australian women's journeys of survival recovery and remaking of self,through and beyond domestic violence

In this article I argue that a narrative method and analysis may work across cultures to aid in the understanding of women's experiences of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic violence. This article draws on a cross-cultural narrative analysis of eleven Mongolian and eleven Australian women's stories of survival, recovery and remaking of self following domestic/intimate partner violence. The very diversity of the Mongolian and Australian women offers a case for the value of narrative method. The focus of the article is the rationale for and explanation of feminist, qualitative, cross-cultural and narrative research methods which underpinned the study. Interspersed throughout the discussion are illustrative excerpts from the women's stories which support the argument that there are some deep similarities between the experiences of Mongolian and Australian women.     

Unmarried motherhood in twentieth-century England

This article explores the experiences of unmarried mothers who kept and tried to raise their children between World War One and the end of the twentieth century. It argues that there has not been a simple progression from their experiencing social stigma and ostracism to more enlightened attitudes since the 1970s. Rather there is a great deal that has hitherto been unknown about what the evidence suggests were very diverse experiences and attitudes throughout the period. A major change since the 1970s has been from pervasive secrecy about unmarried motherhood, cohabitation, adultery and similar 'irregular' practices, especially among the middle classes, to greater openness. The article uses a variety of sources, including the records of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child (founded in 1918, now One Parent Families), oral histories, contemporary interviews and official and unofficial investigations.     

Is thin a feminist issue?

Anorexia nervosa and similar disorders preponderate in women and therefore seem particularly suited to feminist models of understanding. Boskind-Lodahl (1976) and Orbach (1979, 1982) have put forward similar views on the subject, and their work is well known.This article explores the assumptions behind the Boskind-Lodahl/Orbach hypothesis, and argues that the most fundamental of these lies in a problematic distinction between the concepts of nature and culture. Some implications of the hypothesis are discussed with emphasis on the extent to which these authors normalize anorectic behaviour. The question is raised as to whether this normalizing approach may be read as legitimating symptoms. Feminist, anthropological, and other writing is used to examine the potential for alternative models of understanding anorexia nervosa which do not rely on a nature/culture split and which address the issue of the social function of anorectic symptoms. These models point towards a more general concern in feminist theory with the relationship between culture and psychological disorder.     

A Letter Sent,Waiting to be Received: Queer Correspondence,Feminism and Black British Art

Abstract

This article examines what the published letter does as a form that is both intimate and public, and how it is particularly resonant when dealing with the silences and absences around queer and feminist artist of colour histories. Connections are made between three letters published in feminist and queer journals and books, written for readers who may include the writers’ loved ones, friends, contemporaries, and future readers. These three letters are contained within the following publications: Surviving Art School (2016) by the group Collective Creativity, a QTIPOC artist group who made the publication as part of a wider project examining the history of Black British Art (members are: Evan Ifekoya, Raisa Kabur, Rudy Lowe and Raju Rage); a special issue of FAN (Feminist Arts News) edited by Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter in 1988, the precursor to the more well-known collection Passion, edited by Sulter in 1990; ending with Himid's recent reflections on her curation in the 1980s through a series of ‘Letters to Susan’ published in the 2011 catalogue for the exhibition Thin Black Line(s) at Tate Britain. Through close examination of these examples, this article explores the particularities of the letter form, asking if it allows feminist and queer artists of colour to present their experiences in a manner that encourages all their readers to take part in the conversation, whilst prioritizing calls for other people of colour to respond. The article proposes that the published letter form keeps feminist histories alive and creates a counterpublic that speaks to and for a community that is imagined as both geographically and temporally diffuse.     

Age and changing masculinities in gay–straight male workplace friendships

Abstract

Drawing on interview data gathered from 35 gay men in the UK, this article explores how age influences the negotiation of masculinity within gay–straight male workplace friendships. Study findings show that gay–straight workplace friendships between younger men appear to be framed in terms of equality, not homophobia. Older gay men also report similar experiences, some suggesting how these friendships were not possible in their youth. Gay and straight men of a similar age are also united in friendship by their experiences of ageing and its implications for carrying out work. Interview data also reveal how gay–straight male friendships are constrained at work, thus limiting the opportunities for emotional openness and physical tactility. Overall, the study reveals how younger and older gay men, and their straight male friends, variously align themselves to inclusive masculinities within friendship. This article contributes to inclusive masculinity theory by extending the types of contexts currently studied, both relational and work-related, and adding further emphasis to the contextually contingent nature of inclusive masculinities. It also advances the limited literature on gay–straight friendships by highlighting how they might challenge and reshape the heteronormative contours of work contexts.     

“My Kids,They Safe.”: Lived Experiences of Parents Receiving Child Neglect Allegations

Abstract

This study aims to explore parents’ lived experiences of receiving child neglect allegations and how they make sense of these experiences. The sample consists of parents who participated in a family preservation program following allegations of child neglect. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The findings suggest that parents resist neglect allegations, both by denial and minimization, partly due to their lack of clear understanding of what constitutes child neglect. Further, parents in this study tended to be reactive to meanings ascribed to the label of child neglect rather than the allegations per se. They seemed to experience internal conflict between their positive evaluations of their own parenting and what their neglect allegations might imply about their parenting. Parents also experienced emotional distress, such as concern about social stigma and fear of losing their parental rights, as they tried to make sense of their current situations. Suggested implications for practice include exploring parents’ subjective understanding of their allegations and considering their unique familial and sociocultural contexts from the outset of their involvement with child protective services (CPS) in order to build a collaborative working alliance.     

Gender and power in the research process

This article explores the gender dynamics in a multidisciplinary research team, focussing particularly on the way gendered power struggles affect the production of knowledge. Gender-based conflicts over the relevance of gender to the research process threatened to silence all the women involved in the research: the researchers, the participants and the woman on the management team. As the research was exploring the under-representation of women in senior positions in organisations and their experiences of gendered processes at work, this silencing would have had particularly serious implications for the outcome of the project. During this conflict, power resources were mobilised by both women and men. The eventual resolution of the conflict ensured that women's voices were heard and their experiences made visible. This had a crucial effect on both the research process and the outcome of the research project and demonstrates the critical effect of gender on the knowledge that can be produced by research.     

Silences: Irish Women and Abortion

This article considers the forces which act to prevent women in Ireland from speaking about their experiences of abortion. It considers the various forms such silencing can take and the complexity of feelings and circumstance which women who have had abortions are subject to. In so doing it raises important questions about the way public debate about abortion between pro-choice and pro-life arguments - couched in terms of rights - acts to further silence women. Finally, the article calls for the creation of a new public and intellectual space in which the complexities of the issues can be realized. A new public space such as this could then facilitate the enactment of permissive legislation which in turn could enable women to decide the best pregnancy option available for them at any particular moment in their lives.     

“I made myself small like a cat and ran away”: workplace sexual harassment,precarious immigration status and legal violence

This article examines the intersection between workplace sexual harassment, immigration status, and insecure employment status (‘precarious work’). Although a rich body of literature explores how gender impacts all three fields independently, less is known about how they interact. Drawing on narratives from migrant women with precarious immigration status in Toronto, Canada, I propose that experiences of sexual harassment illuminate the workings of migrant illegalization through ‘legal violence’. Furthermore, findings demonstrate that precarious status migrant women do not experience sexual harassment in isolation; other axes of oppression interlock to exacerbate it. Despite this, precarious status migrant women negotiate their experiences, sometimes enduring sexual harassment; referred to here as aguantar, and sometimes resisting it explicitly.     

The death of machothink: Feminist research and the transformation of peace studies

When the life of every creature on this planet is in danger, as it is today, we all have a vested interest in peace research. But peace research tends to be male-biased and does not take into account the experiences and interests of women. Because it is skewed, it is weakened. Feminist research offers a badly needed corrective, and a transformative vision. Data on violence against women, on the links between violence against women and male violence in general, on the nature and experience of power and powerlessness, on mothering, and moral development, have significant implications for peace research. A feminist peace researvh would reground discussions of war and violence in the lived experiences of women, men and children. It would speak about and to all of us.     

Some problems of constructing and reconstructing a suffragette's life: Mary Richardson,suffragette, socialist and fascist

Abstract

Drawing on recent work on feminist autobiography, this article discusses the ways in which a range of autobiographical writing was used by Mary Richardson, a former suffragette, at different stages of her life. It considers the ways in which autobiography was rewritten to fit various political circumstances and to suggest political continuity and cohesion. The article explores the role of the historian in analysing her writing and raises questions about the use of autobiography in history.