Heresies’ Heresies: Collaboration and Dispute in a Feminist Publication on Art and Politics

Abstract

In the 1970s magazines, journals and periodicals constituted an alternative public sphere for second wave feminism. These publications provide an index—and at times the only documentation—of the activities of the women’s art movement as well as its many iterations and divisions. This article addresses this imbalance, arguing that Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics (1977–1992) was exemplar of the radical political challenge feminism posed to the art world and culture more broadly. Launched in 1977 by the Heresies mother collective, which included Joan Braderman, Mary Beth Edelson, Lucy R. Lippard, Harmony Hammond and May Stevens among others, the magazine had thematic issues edited by different collectives and was comprised of material from an open call. Content ranged from poetry, to academic essays, to artworks both original and reproduced. This article considers the collaborative process of producing the magazine, which attempted to be inclusive, but in fact came to mirror the divisions—as well as political investments—of the broader women’s movement, alongside the dissensus the publication provoked and attempted to confront.     

Buying Amendments? Lobbyists' Campaign Contributions and Microlegislation in the Creation of the Affordable Care Act

When do campaign contributions matter? This article advances the claim that a group that gives campaign contributions to US Members of Congress is more likely to achieve legislative success when (1) a single legislator can deliver to the group (2) a private benefit (3) without attracting negative attention. Using an original data set based on the written comments of nearly 900 interest groups lobbying the US Senate Finance Committee on health reform legislation in 2009, I link group requests to corresponding legislation. The analysis shows a significant relationship between lobby groups' campaign contributions and their legislative success, and at distinct units of analysis—the group, the side, and the group-senator dyad. The relationship is particularly strong in predicting senators’ amendments in committee. The rare data presented here offer compelling evidence that interest groups' legislative victories are sometimes connected to campaign contributions in a way that previous studies could not identify.     

Jail Calls: What Do Kids Have to Do with It?

For many domestic violence victims, witness tampering continues throughout an abuser’s detention while awaiting court appearance and sentencing, often via phone calls made from jail. A common question we are asked when leading an investigation and providing expert testimony is how abusers involve their children (directly or indirectly) during jail calls. In this commentary, we use three case examples to illustrate how abusers involve their children (directly or indirectly) to further manipulate and tamper with their victim. As the three case examples illustrate, domestic abusers tend to use similar strategies with children during the jail calls as they do with their primary victim (e.g., minimizing the abuse, calling up images of a broken family due to impending charges and sentencing), and tend to triangulate their children against the victim.     

Active in Not Being Active (AINBA): how East Asian powers accept R2P

This article explores and compares the positions of two major powers in East Asia—China and Japan—towards the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) norm. R2P calls for collective international responsibility in the event that states are unwilling or unable to protect their people. Evaluating the mainstream argument in the literature that China and Japan have recently been welcoming the R2P norm, we ask the following questions: To what extent have China and Japan aligned themselves with R2P? How do international and national factors play out to influence their R2P stance? To summarize our findings up front: unlike what much of the current literature says, China and Japan's acceptance and practice of the R2P norm are largely pro forma. We argue that they both appear active in participating in the debates but only in order to remain inactive. In other words, they are active participants in the debates and discussions on R2P, but their aim is not to further its usage but to contain its effects. Their current stance on R2P is characterized by what we will call ‘Active in Not Being Active’ (AINBA). The article discusses the key sources and rationale for their AINBA policy with regard to R2P.     

The boundaries of belonging: gender,human trafficking and embodied citizenship

A ‘victim of trafficking’ is an identity that an individual can adopt to access legal resources that would otherwise not be open to them. However, this identity contains certain implicit assumptions about that individual and their experiences. This article analyses 12 applications for a one-year visa, written by women from the former Soviet Union who were trafficked to Israel and forced to sell sex. To apply for a visa as a ‘victim of trafficking’ applicants assert certain narrative tropes to emphasise their desire to belong in Israel. These tropes obscure the complexities of their experiences by emphasising themes of naivety and innocence, a commitment to familial obligations and a lack of agency. They reject the alternative identity of a migrant sex worker and distance themselves from any implication of a desire to illegally cross national borders. When they describe their hopes for the future, they assert normative gendered desires to marry and have children. This article argues that by closely aligning themselves with gender norms, these women seek to respond to conceptualisations of individuals who transgress gender and moral norms and who pose a threat to national borders and integrity.     

Defining Defamation: Community in the Age of the Internet

The ability to instantly communicate with a global audience has created numerous legal uncertainties as jurists struggle to adapt age-old jurisprudence to modern-day technologies —and defamation jurisprudence is no exception. The definition of a plaintiff's community is critical to his or her ability to succeed in a defamation lawsuit, often determining whether the plaintiff is a public figure or whether the plaintiff's reputation has been injured in his or her community. This article examines federal and state defamation jurisprudence to compare the factors courts have used to define community in both traditional print and broadcast cases with the factors used in more recent Internet defamation cases. It then suggests three possible rubrics courts could employ to more uniformly define community in Internet defamation cases.