‘Not Simple,Not Pure’: Revisioning of Mythical Wicked Women in the Stories of Sara Maitland

The British novelist, feminist and religious thinker Sara Maitland (b.1950) is renowned for her short stories, many of which involve the rewriting of fairy tale and classical and biblical myth. This article situates Maitland's retellings within the contemporary feminist tradition of literary revisioning, but emphasises that her retelling of old tales is distinguished by a deep—and often discomforting—engagement with questions of morality. This is rooted in Maitland's political commitment and Christian faith, and is particularly evident in her treatment of mythical female evil. Her short stories take a morally ambiguous approach, paying attention to the moral and psychological complexities of the wicked stepmothers in fairy tale, gorgons and child-killers of classical myth, and temptresses of the Hebrew Bible. Maitland's feminist revisioning of mythical wicked women does not flinch from their darkness, or impose simple ethical lessons, but at the same time she is (sometimes horribly) aware of their moral significance. This article examines the portrayal of feminist theology's concept of the ‘female sin’ of passivity in Maitland's revisioning of Delilah (in Daughter of Jerusalem, 1978) and ‘Helen of Troy's Aerobics Class’ (in On Becoming A Fairy Godmother, 2003); how the crimes of mythical wicked women are retold as being motivated by revenge against men in ‘Deborah and Jael’ (Daughter of Jerusalem), ‘Siren Song’ and ‘The Swallow and the Nightingale’ (Far North and Other Dark Tales, 2008). The latter of these raises issues of women's conflicting loyalties, which is also considered in ‘The Swans’ (2008). The taboos of incest and child abuse are explored powerfully and sensitively in ‘Jocasta’ (2003) and ‘The Wicked Stepmother's Lament’ (A Book of Spells, 1987), and resistance to simplistic moralising is encapsulated in the story of a menopausal Eve, in ‘Choosing Paradise’ (2003).     

How to live precariously: Lygia Clark's Caminhando and Tropicalism in 1960s Brazil

Economic booms and busts, major social upheavals, brutal military dictatorships: precariousness has been a feature of everyday life in Latin America since its independence. But what does it mean to “propose precariousness as a new idea of existence,” as Brazilian artist Lygia Clark did in 1966? This essay focuses on one specific work by Clark, her 1963 Caminhando, in order to explore the ways in which the very status of performative practices can respond to their social and political conditions and thus offer a model for a subjective experience of precariousness in everyday life. A close study of the process that led Clark to create precarious works will be further supplemented by a contextual analysis of debates about precariousness and adversity within the Tropicalist movement that emerged in late-1960s Brazil, which included artist Hélio Oiticica as well as singers and film-makers.     

Women's political participation in inter-war Poland: opportunities and limitations

Abstract

This article analyses women's participation in public lifewithin the framework of the democratic-parliamentarian Polish state (Poland's Second Republic), rebuilt in the wake of the First World War. It examines the activity of women in parliamentary elections in connection with obtaining political rights equal to those enjoyed by men, as well as the role of women's representation in the two male-dominated chambers of Parliament (the Sejm and the Senate). The minimal presence of women in the state apparatus and in political parties and professional organisations is explained in relation to male hostility towards women's active participation in political life, religious opposition (especially from the Catholic Church) and the unwillingness of women themselves to become engaged in ‘pure politics’. Finally, it examines the rapid growth of women's associations (cultural, educational, cooperative, and professional) which, whilst weakly linked to feminism, bonded with competing political parties and blocks. The associations were divided along the lines of national allegiances within the multiethnic state and, during the 1930s in particular (the era of the authoritarian rule of Pi?sudski and the socalled sanacja camp), succumbed to nationalistic tendencies. Nevertheless, it is possible to see women's growing involvement in education and professional careers as a form of participation in public life.     

The Missing Democratic Revolution and Serbia's Anti-European Choice: 1989–2008

In 1989, as the countries of the Soviet bloc took a turn toward democracy and Europe, Yugoslavia and Serbia plunged into a bloody war and moved in the opposite direction. This article argues that the legacy of that era is still strongly felt in postwar and post-Milosevic Serbia. Now, like then, the choice is not simply for or against Europe. By holding on to the nationalism of the Kosovo myth, which territorializes both the Serbian ethnos and the opposition between Christianity and Islam, Serbia is tracing a tortuous path toward democratization and European integration. In the contemporary context, the Kosovo myth impedes Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo as an independent state; it continues to fuel the rhetoric of fractious elites that never cease to tap its capacity for rallying the public; and it provides room for “pro-European” leaders to negotiate EU integration, straddling the fence between Europe’s Atlantic propensities and the resurgent power of Russia. This nationalist myth thus plays a normative and an instrumental role, both domestically and internationally. Outside Serbia, it also engages with a narrow and “thick” notion of Europe, which gained traction within Europe itself in the post-9/11 climate of heightened fear of Islam, where cultural identity trumps the values of liberal democracy.     

Frenzies of the Visible

Hard Core is initially a historical study showing how the sexual explicitness of hardcore is located within cinema's initial promise of the visually real. The book is informed by a Foucauldian perspective on this 'will to truth; but also utilizes psychoanalytic and Marxist concepts of fetishsm and its discussion of the main hardcore films is through genre.Its aim is to show how a seemingly male-oriented discourse actually exhibits ambiguities and polymorphously perverse pleasures, therefore making it possible for women to gain some erotic purchase on pornography. However, there are a number of problems with this analysis; In its use of foucault, which promises a setting of pornography in more of a socio-political formation than is given: in the arguments on truth and fetishism, in the treatment of hardcore as a genre, which uses a restricted body of films to make a more general argument. A deeper attention to the institutional and social settings of varieties of pornography is therefore needed to give a more nuanced picture.     

Do Candidates Matter? Constituency-specific Vote Changes for Incumbent MPs, 1983–1987

The assumption that candidates make a difference to electoral outcomes in British general elections is tested through a comparison of the 1983 and 1987 general elections. Incumbent's Constituency-specific Vote Change (ICVC) between the June 1983 and June 1987 British general elections is measured by subtracting the average regional vote change for the incumbent's party from the constituency vote change registered by the incumbent. Regression analysis finds ICVC to be most significantly influenced in both the Labour and Conservative parties by the incumbent's length of tenure, displayed especially in the higher ICVC registered by first-term incumbents than by more senior incumbents. Variables indicating the security or insecurity of the seat in electoral terms are significantly related to ICVC in the Conservative but not in the Labour case. The findings for Labour indicate ICVC to be greater where electoral security is greater. This finding might be explained by successful Conservative party concentration on constituencies in which Labour incumbents appear to be vulnerable.