Subaltern Women’s Narratives : Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies 2020039451, 2020039452, 9780367638993, 9781003121220

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Subaltern Women’s Narratives

Subaltern Women’s Narratives brings together intersectional feminist scholarship from the Humanities and Social Sciences and explores subaltern women’s narratives of resistance and subversion. Interdisciplinary in nature, the collection focuses on fictional texts, archival records, and ethnographic research to explore the lived experiences of subaltern women in different marginalised communities across a wide geographical landscape, as they negotiate their way through modes of labour and activism. Thematically grouped, the focus of this book is two-fold: to look at the lived experiences of subaltern women as they negotiate their lives in a world of political flux and conflicts; and to examine subaltern women’s dissenting practices as recorded in texts and archives. This collection will push the boundaries of scholarship on decolonial and postcolonial feminism and subaltern studies, reading women’s subversive practices especially in the themes of epistemology and embodiment. This book is aimed primarily at scholars, postgraduates, and undergraduates working in the fields of colonial and postcolonial studies. It will appeal to both historians and scholars of the nineteenth century and contemporary literature. Specifically scholars working on subaltern theory, feminist theory, indigenous cultures, anticolonial resistance, and the Global South will find this book particularly relevant. Samraghni Bonnerjee is Wellcome ISSF Fellow at the School of English, University of Leeds, and Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for LifeWriting at Wolfson College, Oxford. She was a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of Sheffield, where she read for a PhD in English Literature.

Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality

Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality is committed to the development of new feminist and pro-feminist perspectives on changing gender relations, with special attention to: • Intersections between gender and power differentials based on age, class, dis/abilities, ethnicity, nationality, racialisation, sexuality, violence, and other social divisions. • Intersections of societal dimensions and processes of continuity and change: culture, economy, generativity, polity, sexuality, science and technology; • Embodiment: Intersections of discourse and materiality, and of sex and gender. • Transdisciplinarity: intersections of humanities, social sciences, medical, technical and natural sciences. • Intersections of different branches of feminist theorizing, including: historical materialist feminisms, postcolonial and anti-racist feminisms, radical feminisms, sexual difference feminisms, queer feminisms, cyber feminisms, post-human feminisms, critical studies on men and masculinities. • A critical analysis of the travelling of ideas, theories and concepts. • A politics of location, reflexivity and transnational contextualising that reflects the basis of the Series framed within European diversity and transnational power relations. Core editorial group Professor Jeff Hearn (managing editor; Örebro University, Sweden; Hanken School of Economics, Finland; University of Huddersfield, UK) Dr Kathy Davis (Institute for History and Culture, Utrecht, The Netherlands) Professor Anna G. Jónasdóttir (Örebro University, Sweden) Professor Nina Lykke (managing editor; Linköping University, Sweden) Professor Elżbieta H. Oleksy (University of Łódź, Poland) Dr Andrea Petö (Central European University, Hungary) Professor Ann Phoenix (Institute of Education, University of London, UK) Professor Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Syracuse University, USA) Gender, Sexuality and Identities of the Borderlands Queering the Margins Edited by Suzanne Clisby Sojourner Truth and Intersectionality Travelling Truths in Feminist Scholarship Katrine Smiet Subaltern Women’s Narratives Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies Edited by Samraghni Bonnerjee For more information about the series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Feminist-Studies-and-Intersectionality/book-series/ RAIFSAI

Subaltern Women’s Narratives

Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies

Edited by Samraghni Bonnerjee

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Samraghni Bonnerjee; individual chapters, the contributors. The right of Samraghni Bonnerjee to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bonnerjee, Samraghni, editor. Title: Subaltern women's narratives : strident voices, dissenting bodies / edited by Samraghni Bonnerjee. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge advances in feminist studies and intersectionality | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039451 (print) | LCCN 2020039452 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367638993 (hbk) | ISBN 9781003121220 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Women--Social conditions. | Marginality, Social. | Intersectionality (Sociology) | Postcolonialism. | Feminism. Classification: LCC HQ1150 .S83 2021 (print) | LCC HQ1150 (ebook) | DDC 305.42--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039451 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039452 ISBN: 978-0-367-63899-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-12122-0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Global, India

Contents

Notes on Contributors   1 Introduction: Subaltern women’s resistance

vii 1

SAMRAGHNI BONNERJEE

PART I

Epistemological Dissent

15

  2 Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji

17

ELIZABETH LAURA YOMANTAS

  3 Insulting the modesty of a woman?!: Examining the language of protest in Malawi

34

ASANTE MTENJE

  4 Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia: Novels as fictional intervention

43

SILVIA MAYASARI-HOFFERT

  5 Unhomed knowledge: The diasporic family as site of subaltern pedagogy

60

MRINALINI GREEDHARRY

  6 Searching in the shadows: Aboriginal women in early colonial New South Wales

71

ANNEMARIE MCLAREN AND SHINO KONISHI

  7 Feminist voice(s) in South African curriculum-making and dissemination BERNICE BADAL

88

vi Contents PART II

Embodying Resistance

105

  8 Touching the “untouchable”: Depiction of body and sexuality in select Dalit women’s autobiographies

107

BIDISHA PAL

  9 Rethinking subalternity through posthuman and feminist entanglements: Violence, displacement, exile and the woman subject in contemporary Turkish literature

122

DENIZ GÜNDOĞAN İBRIŞIM

10 Conjuring up a shadow: A case of castration in a Colonial archive

135

NIYATI MISRA-SHENOY

11 Voicing sexual and social resistance in seventeenth-century Manila

151

SUSAN BROOMHALL

PART III

Practicing Subversion

165

12 Survival and resilience: Rohingya refugee women’s narratives of life, loss, and hope

167

FARHANA RAHMAN

13 Translating into other identities: Bama and her writing

178

NANDITA GHOSH

14 Thriving, surviving, and hanging on: Domestic workers in Harare suburbs

195

RUDO GAIDZANWA

15 Restitution of conjugal rights and the dissenting female body: The Rukhmabai case

210

KANIKA SHARMA

16 Subaltern’s resistance against rape and sexual assault: An Aporia?

225

SABUJKOLI BANDOPADHYAY

Index

239

Notes on Contributors

Samraghni Bonnerjee is Wellcome ISSF Fellow at the School of English, University of Leeds, and Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for LifeWriting at Wolfson College, Oxford. Formerly, she was a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholar at the University of Sheffield, where she read for a PhD in English Literature. Her peer-reviewed journal articles have been published (or are forthcoming) in Australian Journal of Politics and History, Studies in Travel Writing, Women’s History Review, and Endeavour; and her book chapters have been published in edited collections by Palgrave Macmillan, University of North Georgia Press, de Gruyter and Manchester University Press. She has also co-edited an open-access special journal issue entitled ‘Literature, Law and Psychoanalysis 1890–1950’ with Open Library Humanities. She is a Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Elizabeth Laura Yomantas earned her Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis in cultural and curricular studies from Chapman University in Orange, California. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Teaching for the teacher preparation program at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. She conducted her dissertation research in rural Fiji to understand the complexities of traditionalism and modernity in school curriculum as the nation rapidly modernizes. Elizabeth now travels to Fiji with Pepperdine students to decolonize the service learning experience and critically consider the role and responsibilities of allyship to indigenous peoples. Her research interests include: rural Fijian education, culturally responsive curricula, and teacher education. Asante Lucy Mtenje holds a PhD in English studies from Stellenbosch University. She currently teaches courses in African literature in the Department of English at the University of Malawi. Her research interests include gender and sexualities, Afro-diasporic literature, religion and gender, popular culture and Malawian oral literature. She has published in journals such as Hecate: International Journal of Women’s Liberation, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa, Matatu Journal for African Culture and Society and Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies. She is also an African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellow and a published poet and fiction writer.

viii  Notes on Contributors

Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert is a PhD candidate in Southeast Asian Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt. She is currently conducting a doctoral research on the notion of cosmopolitanism in Indonesia. Her research interests concern the role of literature and culture in socio-political life, power relations, and post-colonialism. She holds a Master in British Studies from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, a Joint-Bachelor in English and German Studies from Darmstadt University of Technology, and a Bachelor in Architecture from Tarumanagara University. She spent three years teaching English and New English Literature courses at the university level in Indonesia (2014–2017), and regularly publishes academic articles. One of her most recent publications is a book chapter on literature education in Indonesia, published in Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education series. Mrinalini Greedharry is Associate Professor of English at Laurentian University, Canada. Her research focuses on postcolonial theory and histories of colonialism in diverse contexts, from literature to organization studies. She is the author of Postcolonial Theory and Psychoanalysis (Palgrave 2008). Currently, she is working on a project that explores how the practices, organization and theories of studying English literature engender postcolonial subjects. Annemarie McLaren is an Endeavour Postdoctoral Fellow at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. She was awarded the 2017 Hakluyt Society Essay Prize and her work has been published in Ethnohistory, Australian Historical Studies, and Aboriginal History. She has held fellowships at the Omohundro Institute and Griffith University, and has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Australian Government. She is review editor of Aboriginal History. Shino Konishi is an Aboriginal historian based at the University of Western Australia. She has a long-standing interest in Western representation of Aboriginal gender relations, and is now leading a collaborative research project on Indigenous Australian biography. Her books include The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World (2012) and with Maria Nugent and Tiffany Shellam, the edited collections Indigenous Intermediaries: New Perspectives on Exploration Archives (2015) and Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory (2016). Shino identifies with the Yawuru people of Broome, Western Australia. Bernice Badal is a lecturer at the University of South Africa in the Department of English Studies. She teaches undergraduate and honours’ courses in both language and literature. She completed her PhD from the University of Pretoria and her thesis was entitled: Teacher voice in the context of educational change. Her research interests are in issues of voice, gender, agency and the curriculum. She has published articles in Journal for language teaching and English Academic Review.

Notes on Contributors  ix

Bidisha Pal is a research scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (English), Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Her area of interests are Translation Studies, Dalit literature, Indian writing in English, Subaltern Studies, Modern and Postmodern Literature. She is presently working on her dissertation, entitled Role of Translation in Mainstreaming Dalit Literature: A Study of Bengali Dalit Writings. She has presented papers at various national and international conferences on literature and language and has published in international journals and book chapters. Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim is a Fulbright scholar and a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature Department at Washington University (St. Louis). In her dissertation, she works on ecologies of trauma and memory in global Anglophone literatures. Her research and areas of interest include contemporary Anglo-African literatures, postcolonial theory, modern Turkish literature, trauma and memory studies, posthumanism and new materialism. Gundogan Ibrisim’s recent publication includes “Rethinking the Subject, Reimagining Worlds in Bilge Karasu’s A Long Day’s Evening and Sema Kaygusuz’s The Sultan and the Poet in Animals, Plants, and Landscape: An Ecology of Turkish Literature and Film (New York: Routledge), edited by Hande Gürses and Irmak Ertuna-Howison. Her chapter contribution entitled “New Materialism, Trauma Theory and the Subject” is forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma edited by Colin Davis and Hanna Meretoja. She is currently teaching contemporary literature and co-editing a collection on feminist literary criticism in Turkish literature (with the contemporary Turkish writer Sema Kaygusuz). Niyati Misra-Shenoy is a doctoral student in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and a certificate candidate at the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality at Columbia University. A native of Bombay, she holds a BA in History and Politics from Pomona College, California, has studied at SOAS, and has been a Princeton in Asia Fellow and a Young India Fellow. She aims to research the origins and causes of sexual violence in northern India as questions of concept history. Her broader interests include sexuality and masculinity studies, archive theory, affect theory and victimhood, early modern Persianate histories and cultures, life-writing and autobiography, and political thought as it relates to the imagination of caste and gender difference. Susan Broomhall is Professor of History at The University of Western Australia, and holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow. She was formerly Co-Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. Her research explores women and gender, emotions, and material culture in early modern European history, including its global

x  Notes on Contributors

interactions, and especially contact with Asia in the period. In this vein, she has published on historical, gendered emotional engagements with East Asian ceramics; on Asian women as converts to Christianity; and Asian sexual and labour migration in the pre-modern world. She is currently completing Gender and the Dutch East India Company for Amsterdam University Press and developing Gender and agency in Jesuit circulations across East Asia, 1580–1650, for ARC Humanities Press. Farhana Rahman is a Cambridge International Trust Scholar and PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies. Her doctoral research focuses on Rohingya refugee women’s narratives and everyday lived experiences of conflict and forced migration. Farhana is also co-founder of Silkpath Relief Organization, a non-profit that provides humanitarian assistance to individuals devastated by calamities – in Afghanistan, and with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia. Since 2014, she has been a consultant providing technical expertise and trainings for projects in Asia and Africa on gender equality, social policy, and human rights. In 2015, Farhana helped establish the first academic program in gender studies in Afghanistan, based at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, where she was also a lecturer. Her peer-reviewed articles are published (or forthcoming) in various journals, including Journal of Refugee Studies, Feminist Review, and Journal of International Women’s Studies. Nandita Ghosh is an Associate Professor of English at Fairleigh Dickinson University, USA. Her work focuses on postcolonial studies. She has published articles in journals: Language in India, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Review, Working USA, Deep Focus: A Film Quarterly, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics as well as book chapters in the Routledge Handbook on Contemporary India and an anthology published by Palgrave Macmillan. She currently teaches courses on imperialism, postcolonialism, globalization, environment, gender, and South Asian literatures at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Rudo Gaidzanwa is Professor of Sociology and former Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies, University of Zimbabwe. She is also Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. Her recent publications include A Beautiful Strength: A journal of 80 years of women’s rights, movements and activism in Zimbabwe (Co-edited with Matambanadzo, B) and “Zimbabwe Women’s Mass Movement and Violence” in the Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Rights. Kanika Sharma is a lecturer in law at SOAS University of London. Her research focuses on the relation between law and culture and the formation of the legal subject in colonial and post-colonial contexts. She is currently exploring the ways in which notions of female ‘consent’ were understood and articulated in the age of consent debates in India

Notes on Contributors  xi

from the late nineteenth century onward. She is the co-editor of a forthcoming special issue of Law and History Review on age of consent and child marriage in the British Empire. Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay is a teacher and scholar of global Anglophone literature and culture with a special focus on the narratives of the indigenous people, the working-class, subaltern members and refugees. She received her doctoral training at the University of Alberta and graduated with a PhD in 2016. Currently, she teaches composition and literature at the University of Regina and its federated institute, Campion College. She has presented and published (or is scheduled to publish) on topics including representations of the working-class in literature and film, testimonials, subaltern resistances, interwar literary imagination of the British Empire, and literary cosmopolitanism.

Chapter 1

Introduction Subaltern women’s resistance Samraghni Bonnerjee

In the domain of a specifically feminist politics, such Subaltern Studies would require an engagement with global feminism. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 20001

The scope of this edited collection springs from this statement, rooted in the engagement of global feminism with subaltern feminism—a branch of Subaltern Studies that had remained nascent in the collective’s original work beyond the writings of Susie Tharu and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. The title of our book, Subaltern Women’s Narratives: Strident Voices, Dissenting Bodies, is capacious enough to enable scholars to engage in global feminist approaches to subaltern women’s modes of subversion. We are interested in the ideological construction of subaltern women’s resistance. Subaltern Studies developed from the premise of subaltern resistance—from aspects of peasant insurgency to a philosophical resistance against being erased by elite historiography. Rosalind O’Hanlon asks us to consider “what kind of practice, we would be justified in calling a resistant one.”2 This question becomes more critical when we aim it specifically at subaltern women, because as Chandra Talpade Mohanty reminds us, “not all feminist struggles can be understood within the framework of ‘organized’ movements.”3 This volume’s aim is to highlight instances and methods of resistance that have developed outside of organised movements and practices, the forms of subversion enacted quietly over time, through quotidian activities, against hegemonic narratives. Formed in South Asia in the early 1980s and initially conceived as a threevolume series of books, the Subaltern Studies collective published ten volumes in the decade, and achieved the status of a global academic institution, influencing numerous similar research groups across the globe. In his Preface to the first volume, Ranajit Guha, founder member of the collective, laid down the groundwork for its rationale: to help rectify the elitist bias of much research and academic work in this particular area [South Asian studies]. [. . .] Indeed, it will be very much a

2  Samraghni Bonnerjee

part of our endeavour to make sure that our emphasis on the subaltern functions both as a measure of objective assessment of the role of the elite and as a critique of elitist interpretations of that role.4 Critiquing this elitism in history writing was central to the formation of the Subaltern Studies collective. In his essay in the first volume, Guha explained how the approaches of the Cambridge School and of the nationalist historians were inadequate as historical writing of Indian nationalism, noting that these approaches failed to include “the contributions made by people on their own, that is, independent of the elite to the making and development of this nationalism.”5 Returning again to this entrenched elitism in history writing in his Preface to the third volume, Guha asserts that the objective of Subaltern Studies is “oppose[d]” to the “prevailing academic practice in historiography and the social sciences for its failure to acknowledge the subaltern as the maker of his own destiny. This critique lies at the very heart of our project.”6 The conception of the collective owed some inspiration to Gramsci’s “six-point project” laid out in his Notes on Italian History, and in the early years other members continued to clarify their methodological approach to the subaltern project through publications in these volumes and elsewhere.7 One of the most prominent clarifications was set out by Partha Chatterjee in his response to Javeed Alam’s discussion of Subaltern Studies I in the journal Social Scientist.8 Chatterjee explored the binary of domination and subjugation and argued that for domination to function as a “relation,” there has to be a functional “opposition,” and therefore to dismiss the subaltern classes as “deeply subjugated” not only denied them their “autonomy,” but also offered an incomplete historical discourse.9 He offered a correction to this form of history writing, laying out at the same time the vision and methodology of the Subaltern Studies collective in the two volumes published until then: It would not do merely to add as a caveat that the oppressed too sometimes rise in “sporadic” revolts or that they are “not always manipulated” by dominant groups. The point is to conceptualise a whole aspect of human history as a history, i.e., as a movement which flows from the opposition between two distinct social forces. Here to deny autonomy to the subaltern classes is to petrify this aspect of the historical process, to reduce it to an immobility, indeed to destroy its history. This precisely is what is done in elitist historiography, for there history moves either in terms of a unique bourgeois-feudal opposition or, in countries like ours, a unique national-colonial contradiction. Nothing else matters.10 At this juncture, it is important to dwell on the term “subaltern” as it was initially conceived by the collective, and to consider how the definition has

Introduction 3

evolved over the years, and how we have defined it in this book.11 In his Preface, Guha clearly sets out the scope encompassed by the term as: The word “subaltern” in the title stands for the meaning as given in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, that is, “of inferior rank.” It will be used in these pages as a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way.12 “Subordination” in this passage is central to the conception of the “subaltern,” and here he and subsequently other members of the collective drew from a Gramscian concept of the dichotomous relation between subordination and domination. Guha clarified later that the “subordination” of the subaltern here is “one of the constitutive terms in a binary relationship of which the other is dominance”; Partha Chatterjee too, as discussed above, viewed subordination and dominance as active dichotomies, one leading to the other, instead of one (subjugation) existing in an “emptiness”; and Gyan Prakash noted that the term “subaltern” signifies the “centrality of dominant/dominated relationships in history.”13 However, the binary of domination and subjugation carries with it several pitfalls in the conception of the figure of the subaltern—a critique formulated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, whose deconstructivist readings of Indian society and criticism of the classic Marxist models employed by the Subaltern Studies collective provided a nuanced formulation of the figure of the subaltern.14 Spivak argues that in the collective’s criticism of elite historiography, there lies an inherent discrepancy: when David Arnold notes that in the context of the Madras famine (1876–8), “peasant solidarity and peasant power were seldom sufficient or sustained enough to do more than produce a limited response,” Spivak points out that Arnold “lays the blame” on “peasant consciousness,” thus contradicting the “general politics” of the collective, which “sees the elite’s hegemonic access to “consciousness” as an interpretable construct” and revealing an essentialism in their construct of subaltern consciousness, thus “insidiously objectify[ing]” the subaltern.15 She argues that if the collective view Indian society as a “continuous sign-chain” then it is imperative to disrupt this through “breaking and relinking of the chain.”16 Spivak emphasises that subaltern consciousness does not exist outside of the dominant (elite) power structure, and is wary of defining it as a positive and pure state, and instead stresses that subaltern consciousness is part of a discursive framework, a “semiotic chain.”17 Lending this depth to the understanding of subaltern consciousness thus enables the figure of the subaltern to move beyond the collective’s initial conception of it as a male subject of nationalism, to include the lives of women, rural peasantry and indigenous minorities before, during and after Indian independence.18

4  Samraghni Bonnerjee

In an interview about her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” Spivak returns to the discrepancy in the collective’s definition of subalternity and her conception of subaltern consciousness: In the essay I made it clear that I was talking about the space as defined by Ranajit Guha, the space that is cut off from the lines of mobility in a colonized country. You have the foreign elite and the indigenous elite. Below that you will have the vectors of upward, downward, sideward, backward mobility. But then there is a space which is for all practical purposes outside those lines.19 Spivak’s intervention made room for a critical positioning in the understanding and employment of the term “subaltern” and paved the way for a broader definition. As Margery Sabin notes: “‘subalterns’ now include women, ethnic and racial minorities, immigrants, homosexuals, and other groups who, by race, class, gender or other markers can be regarded as the dominant society’s Other.”20 This book focuses specifically on the identity of subaltern women, demonstrating subaltern dissent along ethnic and racial faultlines under the conditions of globalisation. Subaltern identity, as employed in this book, encompasses a wide margin but also remains concentrated in its specificity: in focusing just on subaltern women, it acknowledges women of ethnic minorities, colonised and postcolonial subjects, women subjugated by class and/or caste oppressions and/or racial discrimination. Each of these categories can independently claim subaltern identity and the forms of being can also overlap with each other. This nuanced understanding of identity builds from Spivak’s affirmation of that “space” which is “for all practical purposes outside” the categories of the elite and the non-elite. Constructing a definition for subaltern identity is also nuanced and complex because racial capitalism continues to occlude the sovereignty of subaltern subjects in the postcolony. At the very outset, this collection claims an affinity with global feminism, focusing on subversive forms adopted by subaltern women across the Global South. Global capitalism has lent a certain porosity to state borders in order to enable labour to traverse, leading to what John Beverley calls the “deterritorialization of the nation-state,” and this has made it particularly convenient to adapt the tenets of the Subaltern Studies collective across a global context.21 The Latin American Subaltern Studies collective, formed in the United States in the early 1990s, is a critical case in point. In her Introduction to The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader, Ileana Rodríguez stresses the “politics of location” of the subalternist intervention, which “now means the relations between North–South and South–South. The convergence of Latin American and South Asian subaltern studies is a case of South–South dialogue, but paradoxically it passes through the North.”22 This already makes a case for the global relevance of subaltern theory. Against this background, and with Spivak’s emphasis on the necessity of Subaltern Studies to engage with global feminism in mind, this collection goes beyond focusing on

Introduction 5

one specific geographical location to highlight the heterogeneity of subaltern women’s lives (and thus, their struggles and modes of resistance). The understanding that the challenges of subaltern women in different contexts are multifarious, rooted in a particular historical moment, affected by uneven political, racial, and national contexts, just as their modes of subversion are miscellaneous, shaped by the exigencies of national politics, forms the crux of this collection. In this way, this book echoes what Chandra Talpade Mohanty identified as “the need to forge international links between women’s political struggles.”23 This is, in fact, the greatest originality claim for this book—it forms interdisciplinary pathways between subaltern theory, postcolonial feminism, and global and transnational feminism. Keeping the figure of the subaltern woman at the centre, this book demonstrates how a global approach to the question of feminist subaltern modes of subversion contributes to a better understanding of the lived experiences of subaltern women. The identity of the subaltern woman is crucial here, which is why this Introduction begins by tracing a workable definition for the term, and also why this book sets itself apart from critical works on gender and globalisation or feminist resistance movements.24 Our centring of subaltern women in a global framework is also to ensure that the categories of “subaltern women” and “third world women” do not become interchangeable in the quest to examine women’s subversive struggles—as noted earlier, our aim is to recognise the heterogeneity of women’s lives and because there is always already a nuance in the “structure and functioning of power relations.”25 Ultimately, our global feminist framework is indebted to Mohanty’s adaptation of Benedict Anderson’s notions of “imagined community” and “horizontal comradeship” to describe feminist struggles across borders: “imagined communities of women with divergent histories and social locations, woven together by the political threads of opposition to forms of domination that are not only pervasive but also systemic.”26 By focusing on the gendered aspect of subaltern resistance, this book builds on the work of other recent crucial works on subaltern politics, such as S. Motta and A. Gunvald Nilssen’s collection, Social Movements in the Global South (2011) and James C. Scott’s Decoding Subaltern Politics (2013) among others.27 A number of books in recent years have focused on the plight of subaltern women in India. Prem Misir’s The Subaltern Indian Woman: Domination and Social Degradation (2017) considers specifically the figure of the indentured Indian woman across the colonial landscape.28 In our book, Niyati Misra-Shenoy and Kanika Sharma also turn their attention to the figure of the colonised subaltern Indian woman in their chapters, but they expand on Misir’s focus on degradation by analysing forms of dissent and subversion. Their interventions fit across a larger landscape on thinking about subaltern women’s dissent, by forming a dialogue with Susan Broomhall’s chapter on the life of an enslaved Indian woman in early-modern colonial Philippines, and enabling the reader to acquire a comparative and transnational approach in understanding subversion, by looking at postcolonial

6  Samraghni Bonnerjee

contexts too. Our straddling of colonial and postcolonial contexts also expands on the aims of other edited collections like S. Anandhi and Karin Kapadia’s Dalit Women: Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India (2017), which adopts a contemporary focus.29 Like Dalit Women, Subaltern Women’s Narratives also acknowledge caste-based violence and Dalit women’s mobilisations against it, but adopts a transnational methodology to engage with larger questions underpinning discrimination on the basis of race and/or caste, such as belonging, representation, and silencing. Such a transnational focus highlights the necessity to identify women’s dissent as a global, political movement, which originated as forms of anticolonial struggle but did not recede with decolonisation. Instead, this dissent adopted newer forms in the postcolonial world, addressing contemporary crises and adapting means and methods of dissidence with the passage of time. Hence in our book, reflections on the struggle to find the figure of the indigenous Australian woman in colonial archives (in Annemarie McLaren’s and Shino Konishi’s chapter) sits naturally alongside the search for a personalised idiom of a contemporary Dalit woman writer, Bama (Nandita Ghosh’s chapter). Similarly, while mobilisation against caste violence remains the central form of dissent by Dalit women, such a centring leads to erasure of other forms of dissident work by Dalit women: Bidisha Pal’s chapter, for instance, analyses issues of body and sexuality in Dalit women writers’ fictions and life-writings. Finally, our emphasis on a global context expands on the focus of other recent works reappraising subaltern theory: for example Alf Gunvald Nilsen’s and Srila Roy’s edited collection New Subaltern Politics (2015) and Manisha Desai’s Subaltern Movements in India (2016). These two books offer a new look at resistance and subversion in contemporary India through the lens of subaltern theory.30 Our book takes the critical analysis of subaltern theory beyond South Asia: Rudo Gaidzanwa reads the quest for resistance and self-identification among domestic workers in Harare through the lens of subaltern theory; Asante Mtenje resorts to subaltern theory to read the language of feminist dissidence in Malawi; while Deniz Gundogan Ibrisim adapts subaltern theories in the context of Turkey and women’s dissenting practices to gain more control over legislative decision on their body. This book is concerned with the genealogy of subaltern feminist subversion. While we bring together our arguments in conversation with postcolonial, anti-imperialist, feminist scholarship, the chapters have not been grouped together on essentialist notions of geographical and cultural affinity, but rather, on the basis of thematic similarity—keeping in mind the framework of “imagined communities,” our organising principle is to forge “the political link we choose to make among and between struggles.”31 Our chapters move between both raising larger questions pertaining to subaltern women and dissent, and situating themselves in specific historical and political contexts. Therefore we selected three intellectual themes that emerged from the chapters which organised our focus on the vast and layered scopes of

Introduction 7

“subversion” and “resistance.” These are: “Epistemological Dissent,” “Embodying Resistance,” and “Practising Subversion.” The chapters in each of these sections align with these three thematic areas to articulate how subaltern women, in a global anti-imperial context, practice subversion. The three sections mark this movement in the genealogy of subaltern subversion by beginning with knowledge, then progressing on to embodied forms and finally to practice. The first section on “Epistemological Dissent,” including chapters by Elizabeth Yomantas, Asante Mtenje, Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert, Mrinalini Greedharry, Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi, and Bernice Badal, is interested in dissent as ideology and dissent as methodology. Here we focus not on dissent as organised movements and protests but on dissent as a method of knowledge formation. How do we resist forms of oppression that are embedded in curriculum-policies, leading to generations of children learning a false truth? What methodological practice would it require to undo the systemic erasure of certain voices from the historical archive? The chapters in this section work as case studies anchored in particular geographical locations, but their theoretical frameworks enable us to apply their methodologies across a global, comparative scale. In her chapter entitled “Narratives of Hidden Curriculum in Rural Fiji,” Elizabeth Yomantas conducts a study to explore how rural, indigenous teachers in Fiji use intentional, silent resistance as a way to preserve indigenous values in the contemporary classroom and navigate between modernity and traditionalism, despite heavy government monitoring of the curriculum as well as rapid modernization and globalization leading to the erasure of indigenous culture. Using culturally responsive methodologies, the chapter analyses how indigenous Fijian school teachers used the themes of “agency,” “loyalty,” “courage” and “resilience” to embed a “hidden curriculum of skills for survival” in contemporary Fiji. Yomantas contextualizes her study in a postcolonial framework, acknowledging how indigenous Fijians were othered by their colonizers, the British, and how the modernisation of the curriculum in post-independent Fiji continues to complicate knowledge formation, privileging a Western modernity at the cost of indigenous cultural erosion. Yomantas demonstrates how the reclaiming of indigeneity and indigenous knowledge is possible through critical dialogue embedded in formalised curriculum. Asante Mtenje’s chapter sets off with the incident of the Human Rights activist Beatrice Mateyu’s arrest on the 14th of September 2017, following her protest against patriarchy and gender-based violence during a nationwide march in Malawi. Mtenje draws attention to the uproar against Mateyu’s particular use of indigenous language in her protest placard and the labelling of her as “vulgar.” Combining Foucault’s discourses on power and sexuality with postcolonial theory, Mtenje argues that the internalisation of certain discourses of knowledge and truth by the hegemonic classes lead to their complicated and limiting reactions against feminist protest in Malawi.

8  Samraghni Bonnerjee

Untangling the “outrage” behind Mateyu’s use of the vernacular for “vagina” in her placard, Mtenje explores the place of respectability and class behind the hegemonic consensus of what is deemed the appropriate mode for feminist protest and for engendering useful public discourse. Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert analyses the fate of the Gerwani—left-wing women’s mass organisation—in authoritarian and post-authoritarian Indonesia. Close-reading fictional texts like Laksmi Pamuntjak’s Amba and Leila Chudori’s Home along with the memoirs of Ibarruri Aidit, the exiled daughter of the PKI leader, Mayasari-Hoffert demonstrates how the women members of the PKI were triply subjugated—first by patriarchy, then by President Suharto’s authoritarian regime and finally by the anti-leftist propaganda, which Mayasari-Hoffert argues, was part of a grand narrative to expunge the values of former President Sukarno’s socialist nationalism. Mayasari-Hoffert calls for an examination of the petit recit of Indonesian leftist women who had been subjugated and whose voices had been stifled for decades. Launching an autobiographical investigation into her own family, Mrinalini Greedharry begins her chapter by distinguishing between postcolonial life-writing and a subaltern studies project, by demonstrating the former’s propensity to foreground (often lost) narrative voices while the latter is preoccupied with exposing the structures that stifle those voices. Greedharry then dwells on the fluid, non-useful but symbolic nature of the girmit—referring to both indentured labourers from colonial India as well as the noncontract that the colonial recruiting officer drew up—to compare it with the women’s lack of individual choice in terms of marriage and reproductive labour. Tracing subaltern pedagogy in the site of a diasporic family, Greedharry argues that for a racialised, colonised diasporic subaltern family always on the move, it is challenging to find and preserve life-writing—the family has already been displaced and erased from the annals of the nation’s hegemonic narratives. Greedharry ultimately advances that this subaltern diasporic family’s pedagogy is imparted and preserved through the quotidian activities that form a part of living and migrating (the double-diaspora), challenging each time the mother-country’s weaving of narratives through the subaltern-elite dynamic, until after successive generations and migrations, the diasporic subaltern family eventually becomes elite. In their article “Between Subalternity and Indigeneity: Critical Categories for Postcolonial Studies,” Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg draw attention to the question of “fit” between the postcolonial studies model in South Asia and Africa and indigenous studies in the settler-colonial states of the US, Australia and New Zealand.32 Byrd and Rothberg call for a translatability and resonance between the categories—a problematic endeavour because of the “incommensurability” of scope between the two fields.33 Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi’s chapter in this volume aims to bridge the two fields and to begin a dialogue about their different priorities. Their project is to search for Aboriginal women in the colonial archives—voices that have been erased completely by settler-colonial patriarchy. McLaren and Konishi

Introduction 9

push for a methodological change in the search for Aboriginal women, calling for a turn to material objects and extra-archival approaches.34 Their methodology provides an important epistemological contribution to the resonance of indigenous studies in subaltern studies. In the final chapter of this section, Bernice Badal conducts a study to examine how female teachers in South Africa interrogate questions of identity, unequal power relations and gender in their curriculum-making, as a means to disrupting the hegemonic power structures of curriculum policies which strive to silence them. Badal’s focus on curriculum rounds off this section which began with Yomantas’s study of the silent resistance of indigenous teachers against the national curriculum. Each of the chapters in the “Epistemological Dissent” section thus contributes to the question of subaltern dissent as knowledge formation, interpreting the “epistemy” critically and creatively to reflect on how dissent can be enacted when the oppressor holds power over the construction and dissemination of a certain kind of knowledge and the erasure of marginal voices in pedagogy. The section begins and ends with a chapter each on curriculum making, thus engaging with epistemological knowledge production quite literally, and in the intervening chapters, reflects on subaltern pedagogy that is not strictly based in a classroom—as interpreted by Mtenje, Greedharry and Mayasari-Hoffert—highlighting that erasure of marginal voices can be structural and systemic in a grand scale, spanning decades, generations and continents, and considers how it is possible to retain and pass on that knowledge. We move from epistemology to embodiment in the next section on “Embodying Resistance” because if knowledge and pedagogy are the first steps in the process of learning about oppression, our bodies are the sites where the resistance is enacted. The chapters in this section by Bidisha Pal, Deniz Gundogan Ibrisim, Niyati Misra-Roy and Susan Broomhall, span geographies and time frames to demonstrate how subaltern women subvert power relations by asserting their bodily autonomy and subjectivity, and the order of the chapters are made on the basis of genres, with the first two focusing on literary texts dealing with political issues, while the final two chapters are based on critically reading the historical archive. In her chapter, Bidisha Pal close-reads contemporary Dalit life-writings Karukku (2000) by Bama, The Prisons We Broke (2008) by Baby Kamble, and the semi-autobiographical novel The Grip of Change (2006) by P. Sivakami and argues that Dalit women in India are subjected to three-fold subjugation: for being women, for being Dalit, and for being Dalit women. However in the course of the chapter, Pal demonstrates how these texts subvert the binary of purity (upper-caste)—pollution (Dalit) by depicting Dalit women’s desires, bodies and sexuality, and complicating casteist notions of touchability and untouchability. Deniz Gundogan Ibrisim’s chapter explores feminist subaltern subjectivity in the midst of state violence, displacement and exile in contemporary Turkish fictional texts. The texts Gundogan Ibrisim analyses are Çiler

10  Samraghni Bonnerjee

İlhan’s short story collection Exile (Turkish 2010; English 2015) and Aslı Erdoğan’s The Stone Building and Other Places (Turkish 2009; English 2017). Drawing on posthuman and new materialist approaches, Ibrisim argues that a planetary notion of subjectivity exposes the limits of the binaries of Western humanism (body–mind, human-animal) and makes it possible to imagine a non-hierarchical space as an alternative to the oppressive hegemony of the state. Niyati Misra-Shenoy uncovers a nineteenth century court case in colonial India, where a twelve year old enslaved girl, Jye Munnee, cut off her enslaver’s penis, confessed to the crime, and later retracted her confession in the Mofussil Circuit Court. Ultimately acquitted in Calcutta on grounds that the specifications of the case were beyond the competence of the judges, the case prompted the East India Company to introduce a new regulation that would assert the state’s right to prosecute serious crimes such as murder or mutilation, irrespective of the victim’s absolution. Misra-Shenoy makes it clear that her objective is not to simply “recover” the voice of Jye Munnee: the subaltern woman’s spectral presence in the realm of the colonial law and her influence on colonial administrators, decipherable only through the ultimate change in regulation, disrupts straightforward assumptions about marginality and victimhood. The final chapter in this section, by Susan Broomhall, follows an enslaved woman, María, from the Indian subcontinent to Spanish-controlled Philippines in the seventeenth century. Broomhall traces and reconstructs María’s life and self-assertion through archival records and ecclesiastical documents, reading them against the grain. While there is a complete absence of the enslaved migrant woman’s voice in the texts, there are fragments hinting at her presence in documents about powerful men, with a note on her death for rejecting sexual contact. Using postcolonial, subaltern and anthropological alterity studies, Broomhall argues for a broadening of historical narratives of agency, voice and forms of resistance. Broomhall ends her chapter by noting that María’s story does not have a happy ending. In fact, most of the narratives analysed in the chapters in this section do not have happy endings. As the contributors argue, it is important to identify and recognise how subaltern women continue to use their bodies to resist patriarchal hegemony, and how often the instances of resistance do not involve protest marches, but rather nuanced means of subverting power relations. Now that the place of knowledge and the body in the realm of subaltern women’s resistance have been addressed, in the final section of the volume we dissect what precisely constitutes resistant practices. This section, entitled “Practicing Subversion,” includes chapters by Farhana Rahman, Nandita Ghosh, Rudo Gaidzanwa, Kanika Sharma, and Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay. Since we stated at the beginning that when considering subaltern women’s resistance, it is necessary to also look beyond organized movements, in this section we argue for reading resistance against the grain—for dissenting practices encoded in the quotidian acts of living on and everything that entails for

Introduction 11

a subaltern woman, through remembering, especially remembering in spite of hegemonic history, and as Mohanty reminds us, resistance through “locating the silences and the struggle to assert knowledge that is outside the parameters of the dominant.”35 Such a reading has also given us the scope to radically and critically read different genres together, and this is reflected in the ordering of the chapters: beginning with ethnographic research to a reflection on Dalit Studies, to sociological research followed by reassessing the archive, and ending with world literary texts engaging in political questions. Farhana Rahman conducts feminist ethnographic research among Rohingya refugee women in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and employs feminist research through “stories” (as exemplified by Marita Eastmond) to reveal subjectivity and agency. Rahman argues that the everyday acts of survival such as taleem and creativity like thanaka are tactics of resilience for Rohingya refugee women that challenge embedded ideologies about women’s forced migration and their lives in such settings. Nandita Ghosh’s chapter focuses on contemporary Dalit writer Bama and gendered subaltern subjecthood in neoliberal India. Ghosh concentrates particularly on the complications inherent in the case of Bama, a Dalit writer writing in Tamil and translated into English—moving from the mothertongue that not only denotes familial bonds but also at the same time is symbolic of Brahminical violence, to English, a postcolonial language that has been effacing regional vernacular in India while also exposing the Dalit writer to a global audience. Ghosh offers a complex analysis of this complication by considering the past and future of Bhasa literatures in India, Dalit politics embedded in life-writing, and demonstrates how Bama continues to subvert expectations of Dalit literature by complicating understandings of caste, gender and class in her writings, as well as of empowerment by her welcoming of English translations. Rudo Gaidzanwa’s chapter looks at the everyday lived experiences of Black, female domestic workers in Harare. Drawing on fieldwork among Black women employed as domestic workers, Gaidzanwa first reveals the living conditions of these women and then analyses how they use religiosity, building alliances and means of efficiency as strategies to subvert their subjugation in lived-in employment while also crafting sustainable forms of livelihood. Kanika Sharma’s essay explores the conflict surrounding the age of consent in colonial India by focusing on the Rukhmabai case—that of an eleven year old girl married to a nineteen year old man, who after puberty refused to live with her husband and consummate their marriage, and instead decided to defend herself in court. Sharma meticulously analyses Rukhmabai’s legal case and argues that as a lower-caste woman with no legal rights, Rukhmabai’s greatest act of dissidence was her persistent efforts to register her dissent despite her lack of institutional validation. Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay’s chapter engages with three texts, NigerianBritish writer Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi, Indian (Bengali) author Mahasweta Devi’s short story “Draupadi” and Guatemalan indigenous

12  Samraghni Bonnerjee

activist Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonio I, Rigoberta Menchú, to demonstrate how subaltern women resist patriarchal, colonial, and neoliberal-capitalist oppression in their individual contexts. In these transnational texts, Bandopadhyay analyses how these women subvert expected forms of victimisation by reconstructing moments of violence as transformative experiences and assert their subaltern subjectivities. As the chapters in this section demonstrate, what constitutes subaltern women’s resistance is after all specific to context, struggle, and subjectivity against particular national politics. Yet the narratives and their methods of analysis are universally significant, offering a global comparative framework without erasing particular complexities. I would like to end this Introduction with some reflection on this book’s efficacy in the field, and with some self-reflection as a literary scholar editing this work. John Beverley discusses at length the discrepancy in writing about the subaltern from the “institutional position of the dominant culture,” how we, in elite institutions in the West, are often complicit in producing power relations, even as we continue to produce “scholarship” on the subaltern from within our specific, abstract disciplinary boundaries.36 The irony is not lost on me—the multifarious theoretical frameworks we employ to analyse the different modes of subversion practised by subaltern women in this book would not even be accessible to them; many of the women discussed here would not even be able to read this book, written in English, that postcolonial language that provides a unique global currency to its speaker while simultaneously and violently erasing vernacular languages. In fact, in her testimonio, Rigoberta Menchú—whose disempowering of sexual violence is elegantly discussed in this book by Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay—warns “I’m still keeping secret what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets.”37 Scholars from Gayatri Spivak to Florencia Mallon have expressed scepticism about the representation of the subaltern in theory, as Spivak famously noted, “The subaltern cannot speak.”38 What, then, can this book hope to achieve? Literary scholar Margery Sabin offers some perspective: accepting the failure of scholarship to represent the subaltern in scholarship at the very beginning makes “interpretation more dramatic, more speculative.”39 Literary texts allow us to adopt a radical approach towards cultural and political analyses that might not always be possible in the historical or sociological disciplines. Literary criticism is generative of theoretical multiplicity, making space for uncertainty and sensitivity in reading, and lacks and ellipses in the text, and Sabin states that this uncertainly helps us in our “search for knowledge of society’s Other.”40 As a literary scholar, I have embraced both this theoretical multiplicity and textual uncertainty in editing this collection: reading fiction, life-writing, ethnographic research, and archival texts, with the authors I have confronted the hegemony and have thought about what constitutes subversive practices for subaltern women.

Introduction 13

Notes 1 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The New Subaltern: A Silent Interview” in Vinayak Chaturvedi (ed) Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London: Verso, 2000), 327. 2 Rosalind O’Hanlon, “Recovering the Subject: Subaltern Studies and Histories of Resistance in Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 1 (1988): 219. 3 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 76. 4 Ranajit Guha, “Preface”, in Ranajit Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies I: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), vii. 5 Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Guha (ed) Subaltern Studies I, 3. 6 Ranajit Guha, “Preface” in Ranajit Guha (ed) Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), vi. 7 Guha himself pays homage to Gramsci in his Preface in the first volume. Several scholars have since studied the influence of Gramscian theory on the Subaltern Studies collective. See: Marcus E. Green, “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern,” in Marcus E. Green (ed.) Rethinking Gramsci (New York: Routledge, 2011); Cosimo Zene (ed.), The Political Philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and B. R. Ambedkar: Itineraries of Dalits and Subalterns (New York: Routledge, 2013). 8 Partha Chatterjee, “Peasants, Politics and Historiography: A Response”, Social Scientist 11, no. 5 (1983): 58–65. 9 Ibid., 59. 10 Ibid. 11 Nilsen and Roy offer a rich discussion on the definition of the ‘subaltern’. See: Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy (eds), New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2015), 5–13. 12 Guha, “Preface” in Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies I, vii. 13 Guha, “Preface” in Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies I, vii; Chatterjee, “Peasants, Politics and Historiography”, 62; Gyan Prakash, “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism”, The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1477. 14 See: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Words: Essays in Cultural Politics (Methuen: New York and London, 1987). 15 David Arnold, “Famine in Peasant Consciousness and Peasant Action: Madras 1876–8,” in Ranajit Guha (ed.) Subaltern Studies III: Writings on South Asian History and Society (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), 115; Spivak, In Other Worlds, 199, 201. 16 Spivak, In Other Worlds, 198. 17 Ibid. 18 The figure of the woman in pre- and post-independent India is explored by Spivak in greater depth in her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” For reasons of scope and space, it has not been possible to dwell on Spivak’s deconstructivist reading of the subaltern consciousness in greater detail. This has received considerable critical attention elsewhere. See: Sangeeta Ray, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: In Other Words (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); Stephen Morton, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (London: Routledge, 2004); Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). 19 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Donna Landry and Gerald M. McLean, “Subaltern Talk: Interviews with the Editors (1993–94),” in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Donna Landry and Gerald M. McLean (eds) The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York: Routledge, 1996), 288–89.

14  Samraghni Bonnerjee 20 Margery Sabin, “In Search of Subaltern Consciousness,” Prose Studies 30, no. 2 (2008): 179. 21 John Beverley, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 7. 22 Ileana Rodríguez, “Reading Subaltern across Texts, Disciplines, and Theories: From Representation to Recognition,” in Ileana Rodríguez (ed.) The Latin American Subaltern Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 5. 23 Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 20. 24 For some crucial works on gender and globalisation and feminist resistance movements, see: Manisha Desai, Gender and the Politics of Possibilities: Rethinking Globalization (New York: Rowman and Littleman, 2009). Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt, The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Gul Caliskan, Gendering Globalization, Globalizing Gender: Postcolonial Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Srila Roy, Remembering Revolution: Gender, Violence and Subjectivity in India’s Naxalbari Movement (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012). 25 Mohanty, Feminism without Borders, 38. My use of the term ‘third world women’ here is propelled by Mohanty’s theorisation of the term in Feminism without Borders. 26 Ibid., 46–47. 27 S. Motta and A. Gunvald Nilsen (eds), Social Movements in the Global South: Dispossession, Development and Resistance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); James C. Scott, Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics (London: Routledge, 2013). 28 Prem Misir, The Subaltern Indian Woman: Domination and Social Degradation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 29 S. Anandhi and Karin Kapadia (eds) Dalit Women: Vanguard of an Alternative Politics in India (London: Routledge, 2017). 30 Manisha Desai, Subaltern Movements in India: Gender Geographies of Struggle against Neoliberal Development (New York: Routledge, 2016). 31 Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 46. 32 Jodi A. Byrd and Michael Rothberg, “Between Subalternity and Indigeniety: Critical Categories for Postcolonial Studies,” Interventions 13, no. 1 (2011). 33 Ibid., 4. 34 See also: Samia Khatun, Australianama (London: Hurst, 2018). McLaren’s and Konishi’s critical methodological intervention of reading archival sources against the grain and look at extra-archival objects to recover the voice of the erased Aboriginal woman fits into this new work being undertaken to locate Aboriginal lives annihilated by the settler colony. This decolonial methodological praxis asks us to look beyond colonial documents, into archaeological sources, oral narratives, songs and folklore to listen to the voice. 35 Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 83. 36 Beverley, Subalternity and Representation, 20; 10. 37 Rigoberta Menchú, with Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, trans. Ann Wright (London: Verso, 1994), 247. 38 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 308. 39 Sabin, “In Search of Subaltern Consciousness,” 179. 40 Ibid.

Part I

Epistemological Dissent

Chapter 2

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

Introduction The purpose of this research study was to understand the curriculum of rural Fijian schoolteachers and, in particular, how they choose to navigate modernity and traditionalism. As Fiji rapidly modernises and continues the westernisation of the school curriculum system, this study aimed to understand the complexity of teaching in remote areas where schools wish to modernise and also desire to preserve traditional culture.1 Additionally, the purpose was not only to explain what curriculum was employed, but also to analyse and assess the narratives behind curricular decisions, tensions, and vision as teachers prepare Fijian students for the 21st century. This research study focused on iTaukei Fijian teachers. Fiji is a multicultural nation in the South Pacific, comprising many different ethnic groups. Fijian is the word used to describe anyone who lives in Fiji. This study seeks to understand the stories of iTaukei, meaning native or indigenous, teachers. This chapter can be read from a subaltern lens as it aims to centre participant voices who have been excluded from the literature and are traditionally marginalised. According to Hernandez, “the use of voice is a political act, in that it can serve in the interests of the oppressed and/or act as a weaponized form of control.”2 This chapter aims to serve in the interests of the subaltern. It is the objective of the author to leverage her positionality (i.e., access to publishing) so that the participant voices can be centred in the academic literature in order to reveal critical consciousness of the subaltern. This objective drove the research methodology and methods; the researcher employed careful culturally responsive methodologies as outlined by Berryman, SooHoo, and Nevin3 in order to embody principles from critical pedagogy, avoid reinforcing hegemonic power structures, and pay careful attention to decolonising research methodologies4 throughout the research process.5 Learning to work in Indigenous spaces as a non-Indigenous scholar requires cultural humility,6 continual studies in allyship theories and practices,7 decolonising methodologies,8 and continual, cyclical praxis.9

18  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

Theoretical framework & contextualisation for the study This study is contextualised in a postcolonial framework that recognises the Western world’s history of colonisation, domination, and conquest.10 In Fiji’s postcolonial present, it is important to acknowledge that Fijians have a history of colonisation. Indigenous Fijians were treated as other in their own land by British settlers, were viewed as lower class under British rule.11 This study is also contextualised using modernisation theory.12 While this theory is a stark contrast to postcolonial theory, both theories are needed in this study to first acknowledge modernisation as a national trend and consequently critique the value, cost, and tensions as a result of modernisation. There is a fundamental gap in the literature on rural iTaukei teaching experiences. Although there is adequate quantitative information available about Fiji’s education system in regard to test scores, exam procedures, and current events, there is a qualitative gap in documenting the experiences, voices, and stories of the schoolteachers. The available literature reveals an abiding concern regarding Fiji’s education: namely, the growing gap between the quality of its rural and urban schooling experiences. Urban schools offer more material resources and technology for students. In contrast, rural schools commonly have untrained teachers and few opportunities for students to exceed educational expectations.13 There is more information available on urban schools compared to rural schools; however, there is still not a substantial amount of literature on Fijian schooling experiences.14 Furthermore, the goals of rural schooling are often conflicting; some schools are preparing students for life away from the village, instead of a life in the village.15 The tensions and complexity of modernisation and traditionalism can be seen in the literature, but there is no information on how rural schoolteachers navigate this terrain, or express through their teaching their dreams, hopes, and long-term goals for their students. This study provides an important contribution to rural education in Melanesia and is ripe for comparative analysis with other South Pacific islands.

Methodology In order to best understand the stories of iTaukei schoolteachers, the researcher used arts based research16 specifically narrative inquiry17 framed with culturally responsive methodology.18 Without first learning about and showing respect the participants’ culture, ways of knowing, rituals, life experiences, and values, the researcher risked further advancing a heartbreaking trend of Western domination in research. Through employing a culturally responsive methodology, the researcher strove to decolonise the study by waiting to be invited to conduct research, sharing power and knowledge, and co-constructing both the research question and the research study. Humility is also a core quality that must be reflected in the stance of the researcher.19

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Methods Data collection took place in Fiji in July 2017. After presenting each participant the research letter of approval from the Ministry of Education, the researcher then formally invited them to be a part of this research study. Each teacher was interviewed a minimum of three times, and each interview lasted for as long as the participant wished. The interviews typically lasted in the range from 45 minutes to 2 hours in duration. The interviews took place at the participant’s preferred time and location. Interviews took place in the participants’ classrooms or outside on the school property at a location of their choosing. The researcher also spent time observing each participant in their classroom and also fostered relationships beyond the research project.

Data analysis Upon the completion of data collection, the interviews were coded using the coding cycles as outlined in Saldaña.20 The table below explains the cycles of coding that were used to analyse the interview data.

Table 2.1  The coding cycles of the data analysis process Type of coding

Active engagement

Cycle 1A

Concept Coding

Tabletop Organization

Cycle 1B

Narrative Coding Theoretical Coding

Story Arch Building Memo Writing

Cycle 2B

Theoretical Coding

Memo Analysis

Cycle 2C

Thematic Coding

Identify Themes in Stories & Memos

Cycle 2A

Central questions What codes are the most common? Which codes are the least common? How do the codes connect to one another? How do they disconnect from each other? What are the stories of my participants? What can I learn from each story? What do the individual stories tell me? What do the collection of a participant’s stories tell me? What can I learn from all the collective stories? What do these memos reveal about survival? How do these memos exemplify Fijian values? What themes emerge from the stories and memos?

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Coding cycles Using Saldaña’s narrative coding protocol, the following elements of plot structure were identified in the transcriptions and then brought together to form stand-alone stories: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Abstract: what is this story about? Orientation: who, when, where? Complicating action: then what happened? Evaluation: so what? Result: what finally happened? Coda: a sign off (conclusion or closing message) of the narrative.

In using narrative coding, the stories were brought together in several different ways. Some of the stories were straightforward and given as responses to the interview questions. Other stories were collected through a dialogue between the participant and myself. However, only the participants’ words were brought together to form their stories. The third way that the stories were created was through the participants returning to a narrative throughout our conversations; pieces of a single story were shared over the duration of the interviews. The elements of narrative inquiry may have been out of the traditional order listed previously, but nonetheless, the stories included these elements and then could be reformatted into the plot structure format. These are the stories that the researcher initially did not hear when conducting interviews; rather, these were stories that came to life through narrative coding. These stories were often fragmented and embedded in other stories or responses to questions, and only came into existence through data analysis (Table 2.1). In presenting complete stories, the researcher attempted to preserve as much as the participants’ words without interference or addition. Rural iTaukei teachers’ voices are not commonly found in the literature, so one of the aims of this study was to include the participants’ voices so their stories are widely accessible. Therefore, the researcher attempted to use as many of their original words as possible. In order to do clarify which words are original to the participant, in the stories presented subsequently, each participant’s words are italicised. The words in parentheses are added to explain the meaning of the word or phrase to English readers. If words or phrases were added, they are included in standard non-italicised font. This was done so the reader may see which words are original and which are added for clarity or to make the quote more cohesive. Before beginning each story, a short summary of the story is included to introduce the participant and highlight the main finding that the story exemplifies. The short introduction is included in an effort to humanise each participant. This section presents the participants’ stories in terms of the main findings: agency, loyalty, courage and resilience. While this study included many participant stories, only one story for each theme will be included here to serve as an example for each of the main findings. A discussion of the four main themes will follow each narrative.

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Theme: Agency Lee: Lee is a young iTaukei teacher. This is her second teaching position, and she is passionate about religious education. Lee is newly married and teaches classes 7 and 8 in a remote island school. She became a teacher to follow in her mother’s footsteps, as her mother was also a teacher. Lee is professional, gentle, and soft spoken. She has powerful ideas, but presents them in a calm matter-of-fact way. In this story, Lee describes why she has deviated from the current edition of the standardised curriculum and has returned to using a previous edition. While using an older edition of a textbook would likely not be a problem in the U.S., in Fiji, teachers are expected to use the latest versions of the curriculum. Therefore, this story reveals a daring act that Lee has chosen to do on behalf of her students.

I am using the old math textbook. I like the old one. The new ones are mostly wrong questions for math. For example, if I have it, they give the wrong questions. Three times we saw the error, so I said to the students, “Let’s leave the new book aside and let’s use the old one.” The measurement for calculating the area for rectangles was wrongly typed. It was nothing. I got so frustrated that I told the children, “Close this textbook.” The Ministry kept on changing the version of the book they provided and then they say, “Revised edition, revised edition.” And then the revised edition has the error. In this story, Lee makes a curricular change that serves as an act of agency. Because the curriculum in Fiji is nationally standardised and all teachers are expected to follow the curriculum closely, it is a daring act that Lee is willing to deviate from the latest textbook. Because Lee is willing to examine the latest version of the textbook with a critical lens, this shows that she is willing to question what is in print. Varani-Norton stated that the ability for iTaukei educators to transmit, scrutinise, filter, and select appropriate curriculum “to produce a valuable end product should be recognised by educationists as important for meeting the learner’s needs.”21 In her story, Lee does just this; she scrutinises and filters the materials so that she can meet her learners’ needs. Lee made a comment about the revised editions of the textbook. She explained, “They kept on changing and then they say ‘revised edition, revised edition.’ And then the revised edition has the error.” This perhaps shows that Lee believes the revisions are not in the best interest of students if they are publishing incorrect formulas and answers. Lee’s act of returning to the old version of the textbook highlights her ability to filter and select based on the needs of her students. Through her act of agency, Lee models two important lessons for her students. First, Lee models that they must not blindly accept the things that are in front of them. It is important to test material, concepts, and new ideas

22  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

against your own knowledge. Varani-Norton echoed this idea. She wrote, “In the Natewan dialect, viroci means to retrace or revisit. In pedagogical terms, the concept can mean to review, re-examine, re-analyse, re-assess, re-evaluate or just simply reduplicate.”22 Lee is teaching her students how to do this. Although the learners did not create the textbook, they need to re-examine if the material is to their satisfaction opposed to being blind consumers of the book. Through telling her students to “close this textbook,” she is modelling how to re-evaluate and re-examine a material that has been set forth as an official curriculum document. Teaching students this strategy is a way to help them achieve an understanding of how to proceed with culturally embedded agency. Lee also models how to put aside incorrect material. The Ministry of Education’s curricular expectations require Lee to use the latest edition of the textbook provided; however, through her examination, she understands that this is not the best option for her students. She simply switches back to the old version of the text quietly. She does not make a fuss, bring the issue to the head teacher, or contact the Ministry with her concerns. Rather, she models for her students how to put the book aside quietly and use the tool that is best for learning. This was not simply passive taciturnity; rather, it was an intentional and purposeful act. As Wagner stated, silence is not a stance polar to speech, but instead is a performative act.23 Bhattacharya conducted a feminist ethnography to study women’s narratives of violence, marriage, and culture among the tribal community of the Lahulas in India.24 She found that her participants used their silence in different ways. While they did use silence for political resistance, this was not the only way. She stated that her participants’ silence is “compromised, negotiated, and yet powerful enough that within it is contained the possibility of activism, feminist critique of honor and sexuality, and actual practical changes.” In this story, Lee performs silence to make, as Bhattacharya found, an “actual practical change.” Silence is also connected to culturally embedded agency. Meo-Sewabu conducted a qualitative research study with 23 participants who were Indigenous Fijian women.25 Although her study focused on the impact that women’s agency has on their wellbeing, Meo-Sewabu used the term culturally embedded agency. She explained that “culturally embedded agency calls for social policy that incorporates full participation of women in society, which is inclusive of indigeneity goals, cultural wellbeing, and fairness.” Although MeoSewabu used this term to focus on women’s participation in society, culturally embedded agency is what the teachers demonstrate in this study’s data, as exemplified in Lee’s story. The agency they exhibit acknowledges their place and time, and fits within the context of what is acceptable and permissible given society’s constraints and expectations. Their stories show how they used their own agency in a way that is culturally appropriate and meaningful. Lee models culturally embedded agency as she walks on the delicate line of showing respect for curricular rules while quietly modifying them so she can

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  23

best serve her students. Her act of agency is culturally embedded because she acts in a way that is appropriate within her local context. Her agency is quiet and yet powerful. She quietly puts the book aside, and shows her students how to make an actual, practical change embedded in their cultural context.

Theme: Loyalty Estar: Estar is the sole teacher at a stand-alone kinde, which means that she is the only teacher at the village kindergarten. Estar, an iTaukei woman, is unmarried and does not have any children. She refers to her students as her children, and is firm, clever, and animated in her interactions with the students. Estar has a sense of humour that was easily able to cross cultural barriers. In this story, Estar describes some of the challenges she faces as an educator. She also states how she has overcome the challenges in order to be a successful educator. This is the first village I go to that we have the (living) quarters for the teacher. At the old school, I stay (live) with a manager of the school. I stay there. It’s a bit hard because we don’t get pay well we stay like that. We stay alone and we don’t have much money. In this school, I have a bit of a challenge because I don’t know their language. The students and I don’t have the same dialect. Sometimes I talk in Bauan, they don’t understand, so I have to go somewhere and listen very carefully what this one’s saying and see what this one’s doing. Then I understand; I think, “Oh, this is for that word. I have to use that word here.” Then they understand. That’s why I teach the most in Fijian (Bauan), because I have to teach them to know our common language first. Then I can teach English. These children in my class speak a village dialect. I have to be alert for using anything, because I don’t know what they’re talking about. Even they are talking about myself (me), I don’t know. I have to listen very attentively to what they say. I have to understand that. Sometimes I have to know their language first. Then I bring it to the Bauan language first then to English. Sometimes I feel happier because what I’ve taught the children, they understand. They understand and once I ask the question they answer it in the new language. [I don’t like living in this village.] But, when I focus my mind to the children, I have to enjoy. You know? I have to change my mindset and everything here, because I’ve been here for just for my duty, just to teach the children and nothing else. That’s why I have to stay, I have to learn about this village and of their ways of living. We teachers only contract for just 3 years. For us teachers, once we go to a new school, it’s only for 3 years. This decision depends on the committee too. Once you apply, it’s up to them whether they recommend you’re going

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out here or you stay. Myself, I really like to go to the rural areas. In town, the children there they knew everything, but the one from the rural areas, they’re a bit late (behind). That’s why, once I noticed they are a bit late, and they can know what’s going on out there. I really hate this work. I quit it three times. The first time I quit it, I just quit it all, numerous times. The third time I resign, I wrote my letter to the Ministry of Education. I just go and leave my letter to the Ministry of Education, and I don’t know why they really just put me again to the field. I realized maybe this is the work that I should do. I have a feeling for small children. I really love those. Most of them, they don’t have father. I remember what it was like not having a father but having others in the community care for me. I teach so I can care for them. Most of the teachers they want the better place. Once they go to the rural areas, they just see that the total despair, the houses, they complain about that. Myself, I just don’t care about that because my focus on the child. The children, they really need us. Once I came here, the first thing, I don’t know what they’re talking about because of the language differences. That was hard. I remind myself, “No, no, I have to focus on the children,” because they really do know a lot. That’s why I just wanted to stay, and I learned their language and culture. Estar is loyal to the children and her responsibilities that the Ministry of Education has given her, despite the continual self-interrogation of her professional path. When she says, “I really hate this work,” she says it with a humorous, ironic tone. Even though this is not the work she wants to do, it is the work she has done and the work she continues to do. Estar seems to wrestle with vocation in this story as she questions why she does the work she does; the pay is low, the journey has been tumultuous, and she has tried to exit the profession. And yet, she is back teaching again. Estar parallels her own story with the children; they, too, need a loving adult during challenging times. When Estar reflects back upon her early childhood, she speaks fondly of the people she still honours. Interestingly, Estar also displayed loyalty to the Ministry of Education when she accepted that they have posted her again. When they rejected her resignation, she accepted that she must stay in this profession. She resigned herself to the fact that this is “maybe the work” she should do, and she trusted the Ministry’s decision to post her again. She accepted her fate as an educator and was willing to take this new post: a minimum 3 year commitment. In her stories, Estar chooses loyalty despite the professional injustices that she sees. Estar willingly overrides her social actions for the children’s benefit. Her desire to quit is outweighed by what she believes her students need. She is only able to be loyal to the children by creating a tool for survival. This complex concept of loyalty was echoed throughout the participants’ narratives.

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  25

While participants remained loyal to the Ministry of Education, they found ways to be loyal to the students and to advocate for their specific needs.

Theme: Courage Salote: Salote is an iTaukei educator who is in her first post. She is only in her third year of teaching, but her classroom management, engaging pedagogy, and interactions with students revealed wisdom and grace that made learning feel magical and alive. Salote is the mother of two children, and she has a husband who has health issues. She is driven, passionate, and excited. In this story, Salote highlights a critical tension she sees in her curriculum; she wants to teach the children to read and write, but according to Salote, the curriculum wants the children to learn exclusively through play. The “they” she refers to is the Ministry of Education.

They just like what they tell us to do. They want us to do free writing, free play, whatever they come up with, but not reading. You know what? I find it’s boring. Mostly they’re concerned about this, playing. That’s it. Playing is where they get everything, their learning, through play. It’s boring. They students ask “Oh, what is that?” when they see writing. We are not allowed to give them blackboard writing or to teach them blackboard writing. We are not allowed to give them formal instruction. Counting them for things to know, like just teach them singing the numbers, A, B, C. Then I said, “How can we teach them to recognize the letters if we are not doing anything? What’s the use of writing the curriculum when you’re expecting more from the curriculum and you’re not allowing us to do this?” Everything is just, “No. No this, no this, no this, no that.” Even if it’s serious, they can just pull me out. Some of the head teachers when they come, even the parents, they’re expecting the teacher when the children finish from Kinde, they know their name, their ABCs. Then I sit with my head teacher and I told my head teacher, “What you people expect is this and what the Ministry of Education expect is not this.” The head teacher always listens to what the Ministry says. But, he doesn’t really say anything in response to me because her daughter is learning all this with me. She’s in my class. Man, it’s really, I just don’t know if I go to another school, I don’t know what I’m doing now. I have to listen. But the thing is that I need to help the children. I wanted to help them. From that comfort zone where they are, I just pull them out from there and, “Do this.” They’re really interested in it. They just can’t wait every morning. They run in and say “Teacher, Jolly Phonics? Teacher, Jolly Phonics?” I’m not worried about getting in trouble, not at all. It’s worth it. The Kinde, when they, I told them. “See, my aim for this year when you go out from this classroom, I want you to read.”

26  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

Salote faced an ethical dilemma in her story. Salote explained that the current kinde curriculum is play-based and is not focused on reading or writing. She stated, “They just like for what they say? It’s a free writing, free play, whatever they come up with, but not reading.” This is not satisfactory to Salote as she exclaimed, “You know what? I find it’s boring. Mostly they’re concerned about this, playing. That’s it. Playing is where they get everything, their learning through play,” and, “We are not allowed to give them formal instruction.” Salote shares a sense of extreme frustration. In this story, Salote activates Paulo Freire’s26 concept of problem posing. She follows her problem posing by reimagining her curriculum and ways of teaching. Salote demonstrates courage when questioning the kinde curriculum. Even though Salote is not supposed to teach reading to her kinde students, she believes teaching reading to the kinde students is important. She explained the tension between what the parents expect and what the ministry wants, and brought this tension to her head teacher. She stated, “What you people expect is this, and what the education expect is not this.” This tension remains unresolved. However, Salote faces an ethical dilemma; should she teach the students to read or should she honour the Ministry’s curricular standards that do not involve reading? Salote did not reach a conclusion on this topic. Rather, she stated that the risk of teaching the students to read is “worth it,” because she feels compelled to “help the children.” However, she also feels the weight and seriousness of not honouring the Ministry’s expectation. Salote did not directly disclose her decision and explicitly clarify if she taught the children to read or not. It is important to note that silence on this topic, and other topics, is an intentional choice that, as both SooHoo27 and Wagner28 articulated, is performed. In a research study examining Chinese students who are a part of the me generation (born in the 1980s), Ha and Li stated that Chinese students’ silence in class is often viewed from a deficit model.29 Students are viewed as lacking critical thinking skills, failing to participate spontaneously, sitting quietly, or having no questions or answers. However, they had specific reasons for not speaking up and for remaining silent. In the same way the students in the study had intentional reasons for silence, Salote has purposeful intention in her silence. In fact, silence can function as a shield.30 Repetition can plan an important role in connection to silence. The repetition of the problem and repetition of wanting to help the children is also intentional as well. MacLure et al. stated, “Repetition is itself the central dynamic of each individual tale—inexorably repeated resistance prompting serial responses.”31 MacLure et al. concluded by stating, “We suggest that the ambiguous, perverse, and obstructive energies that issue from such silences carry traces of voices that have the power to affect us, precisely because they exceed the limits of the spoken word.”32 Our silence had the power to both affect us and say more than words can offer. The participants’ stories in this section are supported by the work of Rodriguez33 as he stated that educators need to be courageous. He explained

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  27

“by (re)defining our roles as cultural warriors, we will find the courage to manage the risks and the resistance to change we will most certainly encounter once the ruling hegemony is challenged.”34Although being a cultural warrior means different things in different cultures, Rodriguez’s concept of the courageous cultural warrior was evident in this study, as the participants were courageous in the way they asked for resources, revealed their individual identity, and offered opinions.

Theme: Resilience Sia: Sia is the mother of three children, and she is married to a teacher. Sia is teaching in the school where she grew up. In fact, her and her siblings’ birth led to the inception of the school where she now teaches. Sia is warm, friendly, and a creative problem solver. She leads without self-promotion, and she is wise. Sia shared this story to explain why hard work is such an important value in Fiji. When she spoke these words, they had a lyric quality. In order to honour the cadence and rhythm of his story, this story was rearranged in order to read as a poem. To honour her poignancy and powerful explanation, her words and phrases are illuminated by standing alone on the page.

What I believe is that Western people, they have a special way of treating mistakes and everything. To us, the pacific people, we are so different. If we are not harshly treated, I would say we are so lazy. We are so lazy. If somebody doesn’t talk to us, or say it’s okay to do it. I think we would just be drifting off. In a Fijian setting, I could say if somebody, for now, if somebody doesn’t work, that means he’s so lazy. So lazy. But before, that’s okay. That’s changed. I believe many people back then when I was a kid, lots of people just hanging around, sitting at the tree, talking, telling stories, but as I grew up, now as a mom, as a parent, if somebody doesn’t work,

28  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

because everybody needs to eat, they need to work and get something, so we are teaching our children you need to work to get some money. You need to work very hard. Yeah because life is hard now. It’s not like before-. That was kind of hard. You need to work hard. The rule changed. People had to change. You need to work hard.

The word “resilience” does not appear in the values listed in Fiji’s Education Sector Strategic Development Plan 2015–2018 but many of the values that are listed indeed contribute to the character trait of resilience.35 Qualities listed that are embedded in resiliency include integrity and perseverance. Within the attributes listed in the Major Learning Outcomes of the Fiji National Curriculum Framework, several also relate to resiliency, including “critical thinking, being innovative, openness to new ideas, problem solvers, and entrepreneurial driven.”36 Although the Ministry of Education seeks these values for their students, these values are also being practiced by the teachers, as evidenced by the data. Sia’s story echoes the idea that Fijians need to be critical thinkers, innovative, open to new ideas, problem solvers, and entrepreneurially driven because “they need to work and get something to eat.” According to Sia, not only do Fijians need to work, but they also need to pass this value on to the next generation. This is an important component of modernisation: preparing actively for the future. Sia continued, “So we are teaching our children you need to work to get some money.” New emergent skills, particularly entrepreneurial efforts, are embedded in the trait of resilience. Significant scholarly work has been done to understand the concept of resilience. According to a literature review by Fleming and Ledogar, resilience has gone through many stages of study.37 Fleming and Ledogar explained, Psychologists began to recognize that much of what seems to promote resilience originates outside of the individual. This led to a search for resilience factors at the individual, family, community—and most recently, cultural—levels. In addition to the efforts that community and culture have on resilience in individuals, there is growing interest in resilience as a feature of entire communities and cultural groups. Contemporary researchers have found that resilience factors vary in different risk contexts and this has contributed to the notion that resilience is a process.38

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  29

This is important for this research study, and particularly the data collected, because resilience must be considered within the cultural context. A widely accepted definition of resilience, according to Luthar,39 is positive adaptation despite adversity. According to Fleming and Ledogar, a common condition to help identify resilience is the presence of “demonstrable, substantial risk facing the individual.”40 Healey studied the concept of cultural resilience. Fleming and Ledogar clearly defined Healey’s concept of cultural resilience as follows: “community or cultural resilience is the capacity of a distinct community or cultural system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain key elements of structure and identity that preserve its distinctness.”41 This definition connects to the research of Varani-Norton,42 as she explained what cultural resilience looks like in the cultural context of Indigenous Fijians. She explained, “The impact of globalisation in the Pacific Islands has often been rapid and powerful, creating a dilemma for Indigenous youths to deal with conflicting values of tradition and modernity.”43 Additionally, Varani-Norton explained that the iTaukei position of privilege in their homeland has changed, noting that, Many iTaukei believe that their privileged position is now in question. Under the 2013 constitution and the various decrees imposed by the coup-based regime during 2006–2014 to quell resistance––mainly from Indigenous Fijians––the political situation is at present calm and stable. Ironically, however, the current predominantly iTaukei government is viewed by many iTaukei as being biased towards non-Indigenous people. Mandatory teaching of vernacular language has not dampened the iTaukei perception of such bias. Yet, aside from rhetoric about the importance of “preservation,” Indigenous Fijians themselves have not made much effort to preserve Indigenous knowledge.44 Sia’s story explains how resiliency is needed in order to survive in the 21st century. She stated, “You need to work very hard. Yeah because life is hard now. It’s not like before – that was kind of hard. You need to work hard. The rules changed. The people had to change. You need to work hard.” Participants demonstrated resilience in the way they modified curriculum, reframed challenging situations, learned new skills, and accepted hardships as sacrifice. Because the rules have changed, Fijians have had to change the way they exist in the world and overcome both the regular struggles of life and this unique struggle to survive in a changing nation.

Themes in connection to hidden curriculum The data revealed four main findings including themes of agency, loyalty, courage, and resilience. Courage was exhibited in participant willingness to reveal opinions, speak up for themselves, express countercultural viewpoints, and in the questioning of curricular materials. Loyalty was indicated through

30  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas

intentional silences; as SooHoo explained that silence in certain contexts is “not the inevitable consequence of oppression but a language of choice.”45 Loyalty was also expressed to the Ministry of Education, familial responsibilities, local community, and to the profession of education. The participants also indicated a strong commitment to learning and experienced ethical dilemmas in choosing to follow the curricular rules or do what they believed to be best for the students. The participants told stories of agency in the way they secured resources for the school, beautified school properties, made important curricular decisions, and made sacrifices for the good of the others. These acts of culturally embedded agency46 are ways to preserve indigeneity goals, cultural wellbeing, and fairness as they exhibit acknowledges their place and time and fit within the context of what is acceptable and permissible given society’s constraints and expectations. Resilience was exhibited in participant decisions to modify curriculum, reframe negative situations to be processed as positive, a willingness to learn new skills, and accepting hardships as important sacrifices. These traits were not a part of the explicit, prescribed curriculum; rather, they were as a part of the hidden curriculum as tools for survival in a changing nation. The following themes will be discussed in their connection to modernisation as exhibited in the data. Through the data analysis of this study, the traits that the participants embodied––agency, loyalty, courage, and resilience––were modelled purposefully and intentionally for the students. As the iTaukei teachers walk the line between traditionalism and modernity, as they stand in the deep cavern between these two concepts, they are actively modelling what the Ministry of Education aims for the students to gain: “skills for survival in the 21st century Fiji.”47 While the Ministry’s definition of “skills for survival” does not expand or clarify beyond this phrase, the skills that the participants modelled are those that they perceive are needed for survival in Fiji. The formal curriculum addresses both modern and traditional content, but the real content of what it means to survive in this nation is not found in the lines of the curriculum books. It cannot be found in the words on the page or cannot be ordered by any policy or mandate. Rather, these traits––agency, loyalty, courage, and resilience—are modelled as a part of the hidden curriculum. The teachers model these traits as a way to participate in the struggle to survive in 21st century Fiji under weighty governmental oppression, the pulls of modernity that may threaten indigeneity, and the nation’s history of colonisation. Not only did the participants in this study model these traits for survival, but they also maintain a spirit of hope for the future of the nation. The findings of this study suggest that modernisation is an inescapable aspect of life in Fiji. Although modernisation theory is inherently a neutral theory, the use of postcolonial theory challenges the notion of modernisation to be examined both critically and ethically. Postcolonial theory argues that the impact that modernisation has had on Fiji is not neutral and in fact has had many negative impacts on the country, including the erosion of cultural values. Modernisation and Fiji’s history of colonisation are closely tied

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  31

together, as colonisation marks the inception of Western values in the nation. Colonisation is the origin of Western modernity’s presence and importance in Fiji. However, rather than simply accepting the past, present, and future as they are, a postcolonial lens offers hope to reimagine a future of Fiji that reclaims indigeneity. The change to reclaim indigeneity can begin with the teachers through spaces of critical dialogue and a reimagination of reclaiming indigenous knowledge as a part of the formalised curriculum.48 This is one way that Fiji can preserve cultural values and indigenous knowledge despite changes of modernisation and globalisation.

Notes 1 Ministry of Economy, “5-Year & 20-Year National Development Plan,” 1–135. 2 Kortney Hernandez, “Centering the Subaltern Voice,” in Decolonizing Interpretive Research: A Subaltern Methodology for Social Change ed. Antonia Darder (New York: Routledge, 2019), 43. 3 Mere Berryman, Suzanne SooHoo, and Ann Nevin (eds), Culturally Responsive Methodologies (London: Emerald, 2013). 4 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2012), 208. 5 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association in 2019. 6 Suzanne SooHoo, “Humility Within Culturally Responsive Methodologies,” in Berryman, SooHoo, and Nevin (eds), Culturally Responsive Methodologies, 190. 7 Vanessa Anthony-Stevens, “Cultivating alliances: Reflections on the role of nonindigenous collaborators in indigenous educational sovereignty,” Journal of American Indian Education 56 (Spring 2007): 81–104. 8 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 208 9 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press, 1968). 10 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1978); Homi K. Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis 28 (Spring 1984)125–133; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988). 11 Unaisi Nabobo-Baba, Knowing and Learning: An Indigenous Fijian Approach (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 2006). 12 Colin Brock and Nafsika Alexiadou, Education Around the World: A Comparative Introduction (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013); Deepak Paliwal and Rajesh Paliwal, “Youth, Modernization and Social Transformation: A Study of Rural and Hill Society in Uttarakhand, India,” Language in India 11, no.4 (April 2011): 57–66 13 Carmen Voigt-Graf, “Fijian Teachers on the Move: Causes, Implications and Policies,” Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 44, no. 2 (August 2003): 163–175. 14 Ibid.; White, “Rurality, Urbanity, and Indigeneity and Schooling in Fiji,” International Education, Vol. 44, no. 2, (2015): 69–85. 15 Janis Bullock, “Early Care, Education, and Family Life in Rural Fiji: Experiences and Reflections”, Early Childhood Education Journal 33 (Jan. 2005): 47–52.; Pam Nilan, Paula Cavu, Isimeli W. Tagicakiverata, & Emily Hazelman, “‘Whitecollar’ Work or a “Technical” Career? The Ambitions of Fiji Final-Year School Students” in International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work, ed. Rupert Maclean and David Wilson, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 2329–2342. 16 Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice, (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2015).

32  Elizabeth Laura Yomantas 17 Michael F. Connelly & D. Jean Clandinin, “On Narrative Method, Personal Philosophy, and Narrative Unites the Story of Teaching,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching 23 (Dec. 1986): 293–310; Michael F. Connelly & D. Jean Clandinin, “Stories of Experience and Narrative Research,” Educational Researcher 19 (1990): 2–14; Michael F. Connelly & D. Jean Clandinin, “Narrative Understandings of Teacher Knowledge. Journal of Curriculum & Supervision 15(2000): 315–331. 18 Berryman, SooHoo, and Nevin, Culturally Responsive Methodologies. 19 SooHoo, “Humility Within Culturally Responsive Methodologies,” 190. 20 Johnny Saldaña, The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. (3rd ed.). London, UK: SAGE, 2016. 21 Eta Emele Varani-Norton, “iTaukei Indigenous Fijian Masi as an Education Framework: Retaining and Adapting Tradition in Epistemology and Pedagogy for a Globalised Culture”, International Education Journal 16 (2017): 131–145. 22 Ibid. 141. 23 Roi Wagner, “Silence as Resistance before the Subject, or could the Subaltern Remain Silent?” Theory, Culture, and Society 29 (2012): 99–124. 24 Himika Bhattacharya, “Performing Silence gender, Violence, and Resistance in Women’s Narratives from Lahaul, India”, Qualitative Inquiry 15 (Mar. 2009): 359–371. 25 Litea Meo-Sewabu, “‘Na Marama iTaukei Kei Na Vanua:’ Culturally Embedded Agency of Indigenous Fijian Women: Opportunities and Constraints”, New Zealand Sociology 31 (2016): 96. 26 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 27 SooHoo, Talking Leaves: Narratives of Otherness. 28 Wagner, “Silence as Resistance” 99–124. 29 Phan Le Ha and Binghui Li, “Silence as Right, Choice, Resistance and Strategy among Chinese ‘Me Generation’ Students: Implications for Pedagogy.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 35 (2014): 233–248. 30 Timothy J. San Pedro, “Silence as Shields: Agency and Resistances Among Native American Students in the Urban Southwest.” Research in the Teaching of English 50 (2015): 132–153. 31 Maggie MacLure, Rachel Holmes, Liz Jones and Christina MacRae “Silence as Resistance to Analysis: Or, on Not Opening One’s Mouth Properly”, Qualitative Inquiry 16 (2010): 495. 32 Ibid. 498. 33 Alberto J. Rodriguez, “Courage and the Researcher’s Gaze:(Re) Defining our Roles as Cultural Warriors for Social Change.” Journal of Science Teacher Education 12 (2001): 277–294. 34 Ibid. 278. 35 Ministry of Education, “Education Sector Strategic Development Plan 2015– 18”. Fijian Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts. 36 Ibid. 37 John Fleming and Robert J. Ledogar, “Resilience, an Evolving Concept: A Review of Literature Relevant to Aboriginal Research”, Pimatisiwin 6 (2008): 7–23. 38 Ibid. p. 7. 39 Suniya S. Luthar, “Resilience in Development: A Synthesis of Research Across Five Decades” in Developmental Psychopathology: Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation, eds. Dante Cicchetti and Donald J. Cohen (New York, NY: Wiley, 2006), 740–795. 40 Fleming and Ledogar, “Resilience,” 22. 41 Ibid. 42 Varani-Norton, “iTaukei Indigenous Fijian Masi” 131–145.

Narratives of hidden curriculum in rural Fiji  33 43 Ibid. 133. 44 Ibid. 45 SooHoo, Talking Leaves: Narratives of Otherness. 46 Meo-Sewabu, “‘Na Marama iTaukei Kei Na Vanua,” 96–122. 47 Ministry of Education, “Education Sector Strategic Development Plan.” 48 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 208.

Chapter 3

Insulting the modesty of a woman?! Examining the language of protest in Malawi Asante Mtenje

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”1

“It is against our culture” and “Malawi is a God-fearing country” are two statements which are usually invoked when advancing a certain kind of “Malawian” morality which is endorsed by a dominant group of people at the expense of other people’s freedoms and rights. Categories of people who are usually at the receiving end of these moralising statements are usually women and sexual minorities. In most instances, these two statements are reiterated concurrently to reproach women who transgress boundaries placed on their bodies and their sexualities, those who challenge the expected modes of feminine conduct as well as individuals who embody non-normative genders and sexualities. In Malawi, the issue of “appropriate” dressing for women has especially remained contentious despite the repeal of the Decency in Dress Act (1973) which made the wearing of trousers and miniskirts for women a criminal act as it was perceived as inimical to the so-called Malawian cultural values.2 The fact that women are expected to represent Malawian culture corroborates notions of women’s bodies as symbolic of traditions. Ulrika Ribhon elaborates on the Malawian situation: Official arguments (on human rights) have been met by sets of counterarguments stressing cultural values even when practices based on these values appear to deny certain groups (particularly women) their rights. Cultural practices are gendered in human rights discourses when, for example, official statements identify local cultural practices as threats to women’s rights, while the general public identify women as carriers of “traditions.” The categories of “women” and “cultural practices” are thus often reified—made abstract and absolute—in current discourses on human rights in Malawi.3 Indeed the two statements were invoked by the Malawian public on various platforms including social media and state media to reprimand Beatrice Mateyu, a human rights defender and gender activist, for carrying a placard with the following statement: “kubadwa ndi nyini sichimo (being born with a

Insulting the modesty of a woman?!  35

vagina is not a sin): my pussy, my pride” during a nationwide march against gender-based violence (GBV) on 14 September 2017. The march sought to expose patriarchy and to put to an end to the gender-based violence that continues to be inflicted on Malawian women’s bodies. However, the public uproar against Mateyu’s “vulgar” use of language sought to nullify the intended discourse against gender-based violence that the organisers had sought to initiate and address. Mateyu was immediately arrested during the march under the charge of “insulting the modesty of a woman,” contrary to Section 137 (3) of the penal code. The section in question reads: “Whoever, intending to insult the modesty of any woman, utters any word, makes any sound or gesture or exhibits any object intending that such word or sound shall be heard, or that such gesture of object shall be seen, by such woman or intrudes upon the privacy of such woman, shall be guilty of misdemeanor and shall be liable for imprisonment for one year.”4 Focusing on the discourses that surrounded the placard that Mateyu purposely carried, I argue, in this chapter, that the public and the state’s reactions against Mateyu’s naming and reclaiming of her body and sexuality through the term “nyini,” revealed deep-seated patriarchal and misogynistic views coimplicated in postcolonial, religious and cultural discourses about who owns women’s bodies, who is entitled access to the female body and the extent to which women can voice out their protest. I further argue that Mateyu’s placard and the subsequent reactions gives us access to glimpse into the possibilities and limitations offered by language in unsettling norms which (re)produce discourses that inflect women’s sexualities, mobilities, and freedoms. The chapter makes questioning use of Foucauldian theory on sexualities, discourse, and power. Considering that sexuality exceeds the locations of the individual self, being discursively and systemically constructed, Michel Foucault argues that sexuality has “been taken charge of, tracked down, as it were, by a discourse that aims to allow... no obscurity, no respite.”5 Often concealed in discourses are layers of signification that inform what is said, why and how it is said, what is not said and why.6 Foucault argues that discourse involves power because it is about knowledge and language and narratives are key vehicles for producing knowledge. Power is thus a multiplicity of force relations of which discourse and knowledge are key elements. As such, language is not merely an explicitly directed, repressive power, but productive of knowledge in more dispersed forms––and in the case of the present chapter––of the nature of sexuality, respectability and “proper” feminine conduct. Power, in this chapter, is viewed not simply as a coercive tool of control, superimposed from outside but a pervasive, diffuse and complexly embodied series of relationships which come into play through the production and circulation of discourse, knowledge and regimes of truth which are differentially internalised. In the chapter, I also purposely re-contextualise Foucault’s ideas within the context of Africa and African scholarship, using the framework of African Feminisms. In examining African sexualities, Sylvia Tamale, for example,

36  Asante Mtenje

draws on Foucault’s understanding that power is not simply a coercive tool of control, superimposed from outside but unevenly diffused through the production and circulation of different discourses and regimes of truths, race, culture, and gender among them. Tamale’s use of Foucault within African scholarship develops “a contextualised framework of response which accommodates the myriad factors which inflect African genders and sexualities,” among them authoritarianism, religion, imperialism, ethnicity, culture and (neo) colonialism, “all considered as contributing factors not only to the outright oppression of African subjects, but also to the ways in which they constantly mediate identity, rephrasing and re-configuring received norms.”7 Reports in the National Plan to combat Gender based violence from 2014– 2020 indicate that all the four main types of gender-based violence, namely physical, sexual, emotional or psycho-social and economic are quite prevalent in Malawi in varying degrees and that women mostly bear the brunt of such violence. For example, data obtained from National Statistics survey indicate that two in five women, representing 41%, experience either physical or sexual violence. Gender violence, as Jessica Murray argues, “extends beyond physical abuse: indeed, physical gender violence is enabled by a much more pervasive problem, a kind of structural gender violence that arranges our societies at institutional, discursive and epistemic levels.”8 It is, thus, important to understand how Malawi’s political history and economic landscape organises questions of gender and sexualities. As Sylvia Tamale reminds us, “the historical, social, cultural, political and legal meanings and interpretations attached to the human body largely translate into sexuality and systematically infuse our relationship to desire, politics, religion, identity, dress, movement, kinship structures, disease, social roles and language.”9 Traditionally, in Malawi, the role of a woman has been constructed as subordinate to that of men, and this extends to how female sexualities have been culturally and historically framed as inferior and subordinate to the sexual desires, behaviours, and needs of men. Malawian sociologist, Jubilee Tizifa, posits that patriarchy, embedded in multiple structures such as the state, religion, and culture, influences the way women are treated and it is the underlying factor in female oppression and cases of sexual abuse. Furthermore, as a country which emerged from 30 years of dictatorial rule by a regime which closely surveilled and controlled any discourse on sexuality and imposed strict dress codes on women, Malawians still hold highly conservative notions regarding sexualities, especially female sexuality. Economically, it is also women who are mostly underprivileged and therefore more vulnerable to GBV because of the gendered power dynamics which favours those that have access to economic power. Over the years, there have been a number of activist initiatives by Malawians in various forms which aim to transform gendered inequalities and injustices. The 14 September 2017 national march against GBV is an example of such activism which arose out of the need to address and condemn the numerous cases of GBV especially towards women. In 2017, many frowned at the

Insulting the modesty of a woman?!  37

alarming rate at which GBV cases, which included intimate partner violence and sexual violence against young girls and women, were being reported in the media. For example, between August and September 2017, within a space of two weeks a 25-year-old woman from Salima, a lakeshore district in Malawi, was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend simply because she had decided that she did not want to be with him anymore. In Lilongwe, a 31-year-old woman was beaten to a pulp by her policeman-husband apparently because she had come home late after a night out with her friends. These were just some of the reported cases among countless others which had not been reported to the police. In the same month, there were also numerous cases of sexual abuse of female children and the rape of women reported in the media. The September march galvanised women and men in all major cities of the country to demonstrate against such injustices. Beatrice Mateyu, happened to be part of the march in Lilongwe when she carried the “offensive” placard in protest against GBV. Within a few hours of the march, reports on social media indicated that Mateyu had been arrested and as expected there was a polyphony of discourses surrounding Mateyu’s defiant actions, some supportive, some contradictory, some oppositional, and some indifferent. The majority on social media opposed her use of “vulgar” language especially for using the term “nyini,” a Chichewa word for vagina to protest GBV.10 Here are some of the reactions from Malawian men and women captured from social media and online news sites translated in English: Even though we agree with the cause of the march, the message was overshadowed by the use of vulgar language that she used. Zauhule basi (That’s prostitute-like behavior)! As women we need to respect ourselves. The language that she used was unchristian and the kind that somebody from the bar would use. What will our children say when they hear and use such words? Would you tell your children that a vagina is “nyini”? That word is very vulgar. There were better ways to send the message.11 There are many issues that can be interpreted from the public uproar and the complex discourse surrounding the language used in the placard. It is important to note that for most Malawians, it is the initial part of the placard in vernacular that mostly offended a lot of Malawians and less, the English, “urban” version. I want to argue that the discourse of the placard raises questions about the use of language and how it mediates issues of respectability, class, protest, sexuality. At the same time, I grapple with the following questions: Are indigenous languages perceived as (in)appropriate mediums to express certain concepts/ideas regarding sexualities? Are they necessary for the dismantling of patriarchal hegemonic codes? The placard spurred debates on Facebook groups by women which centred around the appropriateness of the vernacular term which names female private parts. The word “nyini” was termed vulgar and dismissed as too “heavy” and dirty, a term to be used in

38  Asante Mtenje

public and with the potential to corrupt children should it be heard and consequently appropriated by them. Perhaps the initial part of the placard which sets to collapse biology and gender was deliberately inscribed in vernacular to depict the complex entanglements of socio-political, linguistic histories which have shaped our understandings of gender and sexuality. Like many in postcolonial African countries, indigenous languages continue to be pitted against European languages which were inherited through the process of colonialism. While the use and the mastery of the English language accords one “remarkable power” as Frantz Fanon argues, indigenous languages are inscribed with an inferiority that dispossesses it of the power to be used in any kind of meaningful and empowering public discourse. In the case of the placard, the Chichewa language was pathologised and inscribed with an inappropriateness to mediate any positive discourse on gendered sexualities. According to most people who were offended by the placard, the use of “nyini” amounted to “kutukwana” which can be loosely translated as swearing or verbally insulting or abusing someone. In this case, the placard was interpreted as verbally abusive towards women and, by extension, to the whole nation since women are symbolic of the nation. On the other hand, the term “pussy” was dismissed by many as a frivolous term used by modern women who want to mimic western cultural practices and modes of speech. The English version did not present as serious a threat as the vernacular perhaps because many are unfamiliar with the term and also because in urban popular culture especially among the youth in Malawi, the term is unevenly used as a term for the sexually liberated. So, for Mateyu to hoist such a placard signified that she was opening up a productive space for the discourse of gender and female sexualities which is often suppressed in Malawi. As Mateyu herself admits in a later interview with one of weekend national newspapers, the placard achieved the intended effect: If you look at our community we are a very silent one. We don’t call a spade a spade. We like going around issues. That is one of the reasons why we have a high prevalence rate of HIV and Aids in the country. People like to divert. When I carried the placard I wanted to provoke people to openly discuss the issues that affect the society. When you look at the message that was carried, it was talking about how women are reduced to their private parts and should not be treated as lesser mortals.12 However, Mateyu transgressed several boundaries that are placed on women’s bodies and sexualities by her actions. She defied conventions of politeness and respectability that are expected of women by publicly “mentioning” the word nyini (vagina), a taboo word which denotes a place of shame and disgust which is meant to be hidden. However, mentioning vagina in public was uncovering the hidden place and therefore undressing the Malawian woman. The desired effect initiated by Mateyu’s strategy was achieved because as

Insulting the modesty of a woman?!  39

Sylvia Tamale argues, the (imagined) naked body “speaks” the language of spectacle, of rebellion, of subversion and is guaranteed to draw immediate attention.13 The word nyini/vagina is so culturally invested with many negative meanings other than being a referent to a biological part of the female body. Elisabeth Grosz explains in her seminal book, Volatile Bodies, that “the female body has been constructed not only as a lack or absence but with more complexity, as a leaking, uncontrollable, seeping liquid; as formless flow; as viscosity, entrapping, secreting; as lacking not so much or simply a phallus but self-containment – not a cracked or porous vessel, like a leaking ship, but a formlessness that engulfs all form, a disorder that threatens all order.”14 As a result, the vagina is inscribed with images of filth and other undesirable elements. In Malawi, “nyini” has been construed as a derogatory and pejorative term which is used to debase and shame women. The usage of the term is a male preserve. It is not uncommon to hear the word thrown carelessly by men to violate women’s integrity and to put them in their place. This perceived privilege which permeates various social classes, entitles men to the usage of the term and as a result it has been normalised for men to hurl insults at women using the same term. Paradoxically, this usage of nyini has never elicited public uproar like in the way it did for Mateyu. “Nyini ya a mako (your mother’s vagina),” “pa nyini pako” (your vagina!) are popular insults that are hurled at women to shame them when they reject male advances, to incite fear in them and to remind them of their subordinate place as women. Here, Pumla Gqola’s concept of the “female fear factory” comes to mind. The female fear factory, Gqola argues, is “spectacular in its reliance on visible, audible and other recognisable cues to transmit fear and to control.”15 The use of nyini as an insult towards women reminds them of their vulnerability to gender-based violence. I have personally been at the receiving end of these insults a number of times including an instance whereby the initiators of this violence were fellow university students who happened to be male, during my undergraduate studies. This resonates with Naomi Wolf’s observations in her book, Vagina: A New Biography. Wolf notes “how repeated verbal attacks and cultural denigration of female genitals shape our engagements in a world where we know that these genitals are regarded as fair game for violence.”16 Making reference to “the shame and disrespect that we assign to the feminine” she argues that the shame “does not just converge on the vagina, though that is its archetypal center; it washes over the whole world, with a darkness or wrongness that colors our perception of it, and our relationship to it.”17 By reclaiming the vagina as her own and associating it with pride contrary to patriarchal cultural constructions of associating shame with the vagina, Mateyu subverted discourses of male entitlement to the female body that patriarchy upholds. “The message was to encourage women to own their bodies and to ably defend their rights” Mateyu stated in an interview.18 As Patricia McFadden reminds us “[a] fundamental premise of patriarchal power and impunity is the denial and suppression of women’s naming and

40  Asante Mtenje

controlling their bodies for their own joy and nurturing.”19 Mateyu unsettled many norms by reappropriating the term through the placard, hence the public uproar. How dare she lay claim of ownership on a body which patriarchy has granted men entitlement and access to? How dare she name and take pride of that “shameful” “hidden” part, that body part that is invested with so many degrading meanings? How dare she claim it with pride when it is a male prerogative to utter it with the intention to hurt, to shame and to use it to abuse her and remind her of her place? How dare she step out of place, speaking out of turn when she is supposed to know her place as a woman? How dare she speak for herself instead of listening to the powers that be on how she is supposed to protest against the injustices on her body? In protecting the status quo, the state which usually works in conjunction with other patriarchal institutions such as religion arrested her in a quest to enforce an uncodified moral norm which paradoxically violated her rights which are enshrined in the constitution. An arrest right at the location of the march was facilitated and Mateyu was charged with “insulting the modesty of a woman.” Danwood Chirwa argues that the suggestion that the arrest was made to protect the dignity of women exposes the usual paternalistic pretext used to suppress women’s voices and freedoms.20 The arrest which reflected the workings of a patriarchal state was meant to silence the woman who had transgressed the moral boundaries for her sex. The spectacle of the arrest symbolically sent out a message to women who might also have considered subverting patriarchal edicts, that this was the punishment meted out to women who stepped out of their place as women. Furthermore, the fact that she was removed from the public space of the march, where she had made herself visible by hoisting a controversial placard, and taken into an obscure place out of the public eye, also spoke volumes about women’s access to public spaces which are conventionally considered male domains, and the violence they encounter in such spaces should they attempt to occupy them. The arrest, which also entailed restrictions on her mobility, was therefore both literally and symbolically putting her back in her rightful place as a woman. Because of this challenge against patriarchy, Mateyu was labelled a “hule” (prostitute). Again, the label of a prostitute is inscribed on the female body upon the act of defying societal conventions. In an interview with a weekend paper soon after the controversy, Mateyu denied being a prostitute but declared her support for the rights of women who make a living through sex work. In the interview she reiterated her defiance by stating that she would carry the placard again if the opportunity presented itself. She further asserted, “In our society women have been reduced to their private parts, that is why for me, I felt that the message was appropriate in the context of GBV. Our society has the tendency to sugar coat and skirt around issues, but I think it’s high time we start to talk openly about these issues.”21 Mateyu’s statement is reminiscent of Gqola’s remarks on rape as a form of genderbased violence in South Africa.22 Even though the contexts are different, the need for urgency and aggression when dealing with gender-based violence

Insulting the modesty of a woman?!  41

rings true in both contexts. Gqola asserts: “[w]e are not speaking these truths enough, and until we are able to address them as well as the long histories we come from, approach them with imaginative new ways to break the patterns, we will continue to live with the scourge of gender-based violence.”23 Mateyu’s bold act however demonstrated the agency that is required to deal with an issue as pervasive as gender-based violence. Indeed the language of protest used in the placard opened up spaces of productivity in the way it provoked debates and brought about awareness about GBV against women and the fact that one of the most common forms of violence against women is actually verbal. I conclude the chapter by arguing that since certain behaviours are not usually considered respectable, this potentially positions such behaviours as purposefully transgressive for women, a locus of resistance to hegemonic codes. The implication is that some forms of supposedly undesirable femaleness may be willfully premised on denigrated notions of unrespectability in order to subvert categories of approved femaleness and the associated normative behaviours. Mateyu’s use of ostensibly “vulgar” language subverts the protocols of female respectability which usually suppresses women’s agency to voice out their protests against the injustices they suffer because of their gender. Contrary to societal expectations of femaleness, she defied patriarchal edicts by reappropriating a term that has conventionally been reserved for men to abuse, shame, and denigrate women. Her resistance opened up productive spaces whereby conversations about gender-based violence and women’s experiences in Malawian society that are usually clothed in taboo could take place. More importantly, it exposed the persistence of patriarchy and the complicity of the postcolonial state, culture, and organised religion in the way they work in tandem to ensure the subordination of women, hence making it more apparent for most women that there is more work to be done in fighting against gender-based violence and in achieving the equality of men and women. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this chapter, Mateyu’s case was still in court awaiting judicial review.

Notes 1 Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 1. 2 For instance, there have been several incidents where women have been publicly stripped by male street vendors for dressing ‘provocatively’ and in an ‘un-Malawian’ manner. January 2012 became the climax, as street vendors from all the major cities of Malawi ‘decided’ to strip down all women in the streets and markets, regardless of age or class, for wearing trousers and short dresses and skirts. In all this, the notion of bringing back ‘honour’ to ‘Malawian’ culture was also conflated with the argument that this type of ‘indecent’ dressing was sexually provocative to the vendors as men, therefore women needed to be taught a lesson by being stripped. 3 Ulrika Robhn, “Human Rights and Multiparty System Have Swallowed Our Traditions: Conceiving Women and Culture in the New Malawi,” in A Democracy of Chameleons: Democracy and Culture in the New Malawi, ed. Harri Englund (Stockholm: Elanders Gotab, 2005),166.

42  Asante Mtenje 4 Malawi Penal Code, Section 137 (3). 5 Foucault, History of Sexuality, 20. 6 Otutubike Izugbara, “Patriarchal Ideology and Discourses of Sexuality in Nigeria,” in Understanding Human Sexuality Seminar Series No.2, (Lagos: Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre, 2005), 3. 7 Asante Mtenje, “Contemporary Fictional Representations of Sexualities in Authoritarian African Contexts” (PhD Diss., Stellenbosch University, 2016), 26–27. 8 Jessica Murray, “‘And They Never Spoke to Each Other of It’: Contemporary Southern African Representations of Silence, Shame and Gender Violence,” English Academy Review 34, no.1 (2017): 23. 9 Sylvia Tamale, “Researching and Theorising Sexualities in Africa,” in African Sexualities: A Reader, ed. Sylvia Tamale (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011), 16. 10 Chichewa, the language of the Chewas, the largest ethnic group in Malawi, is the national language of the country. As such, despite the diverse ethnic groups that make up the country, a large population of Malawians are able to communicate and converse in Chichewa. It is also the medium of instruction from Standard one to four at primary level. 11 These are comments that were expressed by several Malawians on Nyasatimes, an online news site which also featured the story. See comments at https://www. nyasatimes.com/interview-excerpts-beatrice-mateyu-defiant-pussy-pride-message-activist-not-sex-worker/Similar sentiments were shared by users on Facebook. 12 Aubrey Kapalamula, “I Can Do it Again” The Times Group, September 16, 2017. https://www.times.mw/i-can-do-it-again/ . 13 Sylvia Tamale, “Nudity, Protest and the Law in Uganda,” Feminist Africa 22 (2016): 57. 14 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 203. 15 Pumla Gqola, Rape, A South African Nightmare (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015), 78. 16 Naomi Wolf, Vagina: A New Biography (London: Virago, 2012), 353. 17 Wolf, Vagina, 353. 18 Kapalamula. “I Can Do it Again”. 19 Patricia McFadden, “Sexual Pleasure as Feminist Choice,” Feminist Africa 2 (2003): 55. 20 Danwood Chirwa, “The ‘Offensive’ Placard: Whither Progress on Gender-based Violence in Malawi?” Nyasa Times, September 23, 2017. https://www.nyasatimes.com/offensive-placard-whither-progress-gender-based-violence-malawi/. 21 Nyasa Times Reporter, “Interview Excerpts: Beatrice Mateyu defiant on my pussy, my pride message- “I am an activist, not sex worker,” Nyasa Times, September 16, 2017, https://www.nyasatimes.com/interview-excerpts-beatricemateyu-defiant-pussy-pride-message-activist-not-sex-worker/ 22 Gqola, Rape, 21. 23 Ibid.

Chapter 4

Marginalised women in postauthoritarian Indonesia Novels as fictional intervention Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert

Introduction During the brief period when Indonesia was a socialist country––that is, between the Independence and the anti-leftist purge in 1965––Indonesian women led more liberated lives and were involved in politics. The country declared its Independence in 1945, followed by four years of the War of Independence. Shortly after the end of the war, a left-wing women’s mass organisation, later named Gerwani (Indonesian Women’s Movement), was founded. Sukarno, the nation’s first president who was famous for his staunch anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, enlisted the women’s organisation in his cause. Thus, Gerwani’s priority by the 1950s to 1960s was not only to champion feminism, but also to fight the legacy of colonialism and feudalism alongside the Communist Party of Indonesia (henceforward abbreviated as “PKI”) with the support of Sukarno’s government.1 By 1965, Gerwani was the largest women’s organisation in the country and claimed to have three million members.2 Following the murder of six generals on 1 October claimed afterwards in Indonesia’s official history to be a failed coup staged by the PKI, an antileftist purge and mass killings took place, and Sukarno’s government was stripped of its power. As soon as General (later President) Suharto and his “New Order” government settled into power in 1966, propaganda campaigns against the PKI and its social and cultural affiliates took place. Gerwani members were depicted as hypersexual and accused of having castrated the generals while performing an erotic dance, with the supposed dance being immortalised on a gigantic stone mural at the so-called Crocodile’s Pit Monument. Since the monument’s opening in 1969, Indonesian school children have been sent on a pilgrimage there as part of the anti-leftist propaganda––a tradition which was not automatically discontinued after the end of the New Order regime in 1998. Extreme measures were taken to maintain authoritarian capitalism embraced by the regime, which had turned away from Sukarno’s socialist nationalism.3 The discriminative “Clean Self, Clean Environment” policies dictated that those who (themselves or their family) were associated with the

44  Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert

PKI or with its affiliates were banned from studying and from taking up posts in the government and civil service. In a further attempt to eradicate the Left in the country, Indonesians sent abroad to study in socialist countries could not return home because their passport was revoked, and “leftist” thinking was enough to send anyone to prison.4 Gerwani was disbanded, and those who were accused of being members were imprisoned without trial, with many being subjected to violence.5 Furthermore, women were thenceforth expected to stay out of politics and be a “faithful companion, household manager, producer of children (preferably two), mother and educator, and good citizen”6; the reason behind this is that obedient instead of political women were deemed vital to maintain order through the family as the smallest unit in society.7 After their release from prison in the late 1970s, these women were compelled to keep their ordeal in silence in order to turn over a new leaf, since a PKI-related past would warrant further ostracism in a society which has been brainwashed into demonising alleged left-leaning nationals. For the purposes of this chapter, the women are divided into three categories. The first category is the least-accepted ones, i.e. those who were politically active before the purge and belonged to one of the mass organisations linked to the PKI. The second category is those who were merely affiliated with a PKI member. The third category is the women positioned at the utmost periphery of the political spectrum, i.e. those who were wrongly accused––or affiliated with people wrongly accused––of being communist. The chapter is based on subaltern theory and the theory of grand narrative, and the discussed narratives are the autobiography of Ibarruri “Iba” Aidit (the PKI leader’s exiled daughter), Laksmi Pamuntjak’s critically acclaimed novel Amba: The Question of Red, and Leila Chudori’s bestselling novel Home. Iba’s autobiography, however, is passed as a novel in order to avoid confrontation. Other narratives mentioned in this chapter for comparative purposes are a court report, an academic book, a documentary, a TV interview, and a photography collection depicting the female survivors of Indonesia’s antileftist purge. The conclusion drawn is that the above-mentioned first and second categories of women are still barely given voice in Indonesia, as the effects of the anti-leftist grand narrative, which was systematically induced from 1966 to 1998, still linger in the collective unconscious of many Indonesians. Consequently, narratives which speak on the women’s behalf seldom emerge from within Indonesia or are posed as fictional in order to avoid persecution by society. The chapter closes with a testimonial narrative told by a survivor who belongs to the second category.

Can Indonesian subaltern women speak? In Indonesia, women accused of having a PKI-related past are part of the subaltern social stratum because of the discrimination they suffer from. Subaltern theory was first introduced by the Subaltern Studies in the Indian subcontinent in the 1980s. The term “subaltern” was originally coined by

Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia  45

Antonio Gramsci, who used it to subtly refer to the proletariat in his censored Prison Notebooks, and then it was co-opted by the Subaltern Studies Collective. In its later use in postcolonial studies, the term “subaltern” does not only refer to the proletariat, but also to any oppressed group of people that does not fall under strict class analysis. Gayatri Spivak, a member of the Subaltern Studies Collective, opens her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” with the argument that the abolition of Indian self-immolation ritual sati by the British “has been generally understood as a case of white men saving brown women from brown men.”8 By wording it as “generally understood,” Spivak suggests that there is an underexplored side of the civilising mission, which is none other than the attempt to justify British presence in India. The British, Spivak argues, assumed a superior role by speaking for those who cannot speak, but, despite abolishing sati in order to “rescue” brown women from brown men, they did not improve the living condition of Indian women, who needed “rescuing” in many other ways under the British rule. Spivak concludes that, “[i]f in the context of colonial production, subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.”9 Although Spivak’s article focuses on the “Othering” of the Third World, the gendered subaltern highlighted by Spivak is distinctly reminiscent with the ongoing situation in Indonesia. Indonesian women associated with the PKI were subjected to “triple” colonisation as opposed to the more common “double colonisation”––that is, by the returning patriarchy, the authoritarian regime, and the anti-leftist propaganda. Until today, narratives speaking on behalf of Indonesian women who are discriminated against for being associated with communism seldom emerge from within Indonesia itself or written by the subalterns themselves. Many female survivors are still afraid to speak up for fear of further confrontation even after the end of the regime in 1998. Consequently, they can neither be heard nor read. Subaltern theory, which is applicable to a situation where a group of people is subjugated without the possibility of being heard, is therefore relevant to explain the subjugation of women linked to the PKI.

Grand narrative against Indonesian subaltern women A decree of the Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly was passed on 5 July 1966 to rule that “firm measures should be taken towards the Indonesian Communist Party and also towards their activities to spread CommunistMarxist-Leninist ideology.”10 For the decree to carry weight, its inculcation among the masses was to be aided by a grand narrative. Grand narrative can be defined as a narrative that is supposed to legitimate certain historical knowledge and be accepted as truth.11 In post-1965 Indonesia, a grand narrative was deemed essential to smooth over the transformation of the country’s sociocultural politics from Sukarno’s socialist nationalism to Suharto’s authoritarian capitalism. The ostracism of the PKI was thus systematically induced into

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the everyday lives under the New Order regime, with the grand narrative dictating that the regime was good and the PKI evil. PKI members were called traitors, devils, and whores (if they were women) in official army outlets.12 In short, “mental operations” were systematically conducted to link the PKI with collective guilt, dehumanisation, ongoing threats, and past threats.13 Deeply instilled, the grand narrative has outlived the regime, which ended in 1998 after a monetary crisis. Although most Indonesians have since agreed that the New Order regime was corrupt, many still believe that the defunct PKI––and, by faulty generalisation, all alleged left-leaning nationalists––still need to be eradicated in order to preserve the nation. Against any authoritarian universalising narratives, Jean-François Lyotard proposes what he calls petit récit, also known as local narrative.14 Petit récit can take form in a fragmented or disjointed text of marginalised groups, which disputes the official version presented in a grand narrative. The production of petit récit about (as well as by) Indonesian subaltern women might help paving the way for more acceptance in Indonesia. However, many of these little narratives are caught in a vicious circle: they attempt to free the Indonesian reader from the grip of the Red Scare, but they cannot find their way to this audience, who have been conditioned to reject these narratives. Petit récit from outside Indonesia Since 1998, survivors of the purge have started to come forward to share their stories. IPT (International People’s Tribunal) 1965 was also formed in 2015 by the Indonesian diaspora to raise the issue of crime against humanity in 1965. The IPT was held like a formal court proceeding and aimed at putting pressure on the Indonesian government to deal with the human rights violations committed in 1965 and beyond. The verdict holds Indonesia responsible with the complicity of the U.S., the U.K., and Australia; the court report also includes a testimony on the sexual violence suffered by an alleged Gerwani member, Kinkin Rahayu.15 Testimonies from women who have been persecuted for their alleged affiliation with the PKI are also published in Soe Tjen Marching’s The End of Silence: Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia, a collection of autobiographical narratives, which includes a testimony by the author herself. Marching’s father was a member of the PKI in 1965; he was arrested in 1966 and became mentally unstable after his release. Marching, like all children of alleged PKI members, was discriminated against at school.16 Now living in London, she wanted to share her story, but was sworn to silence by her cautious mother, who finally relented, but only on condition of the account being written in English.17 Other similar collections are Saskia Wieringa’s Sexual Politics in Indonesia (2002) and Annie Pohlman’s Women, Sexual Violence and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66 (2017). Both include interviews with women survivors and in-depth analysis of sexual violence against women in relation to Indonesia’s anti-leftist purge.

Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia  47

Another platform to speak up is documentary films, such as Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killings (2012) and its sequel, The Look of Silence (2014). A lesser-known documentary, The Unremembered: Salawati Daud (2018) was premiered at the Makassar International Writers Festival and later screened at the University of Melbourne. Daud was a revolutionary fighter, Indonesia’s first female mayor, Member of Parliament, and senior leader of Gerwani. Despite her contributions to the country, she was imprisoned without trial because of her affiliation with Gerwani. It should be noted that the IPT 1965 took place in the Hague, with witnesses testifying using pseudonym behind a curtain out of concern for the repercussions in Indonesia, and the court report, which is published online, is written in English. Likewise, the above-mentioned academic books were compiled in English by academics abroad and published by foreign academic publishers. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer’s documentaries cannot be screened in Indonesia out of fear for social unrest. Thus, these little narratives guarantee a very limited audience inside Indonesia itself. Petit récit from inside Indonesia The term “PKI” is still sensitive in Indonesia, and (or because) it can easily lead to mass mobilisations. In 2014, the popular presidential candidate Joko Widodo was rumoured to be a PKI member to sway voters. In 2017, thousands of mobilised Indonesians held protests in the capital, claiming that there was a rise in communism, which forced the incumbent President Widodo to state that he would trash the PKI, should it ever rise again, in order to calm down the masses. In 2018, a year before another election, the President was again forced to deny the accusation that he was a PKI member. In this atmosphere, it is not surprising that victims of the anti-leftist purge are still not acknowledged in Indonesia. With post-authoritarian governments continuing to demonise the PKI out of fear of mobilised riots, survivors of the purge remain voiceless. London-based Marching has been very outspoken in her efforts of giving the survivors voice. On her social media account, she stated that her Gerwani novel Dari Dalam Kubur (From Beyond the Grave) was reviewed by Gramedia, a major Indonesian publisher.18 Shortly thereafter, however, she expressed her dismay of Gramedia’s censorship, and mentioned that several persons had even suggested that she publish her novel abroad instead.19 She disagrees with this, because she would prefer to write the novel in Indonesian for it to be read by as many Indonesians as possible.20 Eventually, Marching announced that she had withdrawn the novel from Gramedia in order to retain censored parts which criticise the “death squads” responsible for murdering thousands of alleged PKI members under the New Order regime.21 On the same post, she also announced that she had re-submitted the novel to a left-leaning publisher, Marjin Kiri (Left Margin).22 In a follow-up post, Marching states that she does not blame the publishing house for its

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censorship policy, because Gramedia has received threats for publishing novels about 1965 in the past; she also mentions that the government should have offered more protections for publishers.23 The autobiography of Ibarruri “Iba” Putri Alam Aidit, the daughter of the PKI leader, D. N. Aidit, was similarly written in Indonesian. It was published in 2006 by a local publisher, Hasta Mitra, which––being founded by three former political prisoners––does not shy away from printing the Literature of the Left. The editor, however, duly mentions in the foreword that the publisher does not sympathise or support communism, let alone attempt to revive the PKI.24 Furthermore, the book’s title, which translates to “biographical novel” in English, suggests that it is a work of fiction. In the second edition, published in 2015 by another publisher Ledalero, the title is changed from “biographical novel” to “tale of wanderings,” thus further reducing the autobiographical traits of the text. Iba’s uncle, Sobron Aidit, also calls his autobiographical narratives “tale,” “story,” and “short story.”25 This suggests that writers of texts about the PKI must tread on eggshells––by passing their texts as fictional––as not to provoke backlash from inside Indonesia.

Cosmopolitan novels as fictional intervention So far, only small publishers printed Iba’s and Marching’s texts without censoring them. Consequently, Iba’s autobiography interests only foreign scholars focusing on Indonesian studies, but it remains obscure among the audience in Indonesia itself. As of 2020, it has received only nine ratings on the social reading site Goodreads. Unlike Amba and Home, the novel’s publication earned no media mentions either, missing from the book-review sections of major local newspapers, such as Kompas and The Jakarta Post, hence generating low publicity and not popular enough to be able to challenge the grand narrative. In 2018, a major local news channel, Metro TV, surprisingly aired an interview featuring women who were imprisoned because the male members in their family were in the PKI.26 The women were already featured in Adrian Mulya’s bilingual photo collection.27 The collection itself, now out of print, can be found in local second-hand online shops and the National Library of Australia. While the women’s male relatives are generally still not discussed in order to avoid confrontations, it is obvious that the women were not affiliated with the PKI, so that even a society fearful of leftist ideologies can sympathise with them, albeit cautiously. One of the women, Katri, agreed to be interviewed in relation to this chapter; the interview was conducted in Indonesian, and the English version of her life-story is put on the Appendix.28 Writers who speak up for the victims of the purge through novels generally depict this category of women––or, more often, women who are only affiliated with people wrongly accused of being a PKI member––as a compromise. One of the novels, Amba, was published by Gramedia in 2012.

Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia  49

Two months later, Home was released by the same publisher. Both have been well-received by important figures in the literary world. Goenawan Mohamad, the founder of a prominent literary community in Indonesia, announced the publication of Amba on his Twitter account.29 His endorsement––that Amba “will join the pantheon of the all-time greats in Indonesian literature”––can also be found on the author’s website.30 Mohamad also praises Home, together with Amba, in his famous column, Sidelines, for the novels’ mention of the anti-leftist purge: “The novel Amba,” he claims, “portrays people who have been removed from the records of 1965, as does the novel Pulang [Home].”31 Bambang Sugiharto, a professor at the prestigious Parahyangan University, also praises Amba, stating that the novel is more profound than the writings of Pramoedya––the only Indonesian writer who has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature––and similarly commends the novel’s mention of the forgotten victims of the purge.32 In contrast to Iba’s obscure autobiography, the novels were nominated for Indonesia’s prestigious Khatulistiwa Literary Award in 2013, with Home winning the prize. They were duly presented in the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015, where Indonesia was the guest of honour. Facing criticism of supposed favouritism, Mohamad––in his role as the chairman of the national committee for the Frankfurt Book Fair 2015–– defends the high publicity of Amba and Home on two grounds: first, unlike other Asian countries, Indonesia does not produce a multitude of literary texts; second, he argues that Germans attach importance to literary texts mentioning mass killings due to their own history of the Holocaust.33 Following the success at the prestigious book fair, Amba was awarded the Liberaturpreis, a German prize honouring women writers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world, whereas Home was longlisted for the Oppenheimer Funds Emerging Voices Awards. Both novels are similar with regards to two points. Firstly, they talk about a well-read man who is exiled because of an alleged affiliation with the PKI, and their story is seen from the perspective of a cosmopolitan-minded woman in their life, who also take the brunt of the allegation. Secondly, they repeatedly reference the Mahabharata. Because of the two similarities, Amba and Home are often mentioned together. Their theme is indeed identical, namely an enforced black-and-white way of thinking in a grey world, or specifically, the politics of the New Order regime, which demonised the PKI and ordered Indonesians to do the same. Both writers disagree with this politics: Pamuntjak states that she is “extremely uncomfortable with any one-sided perspective on history”34; she duly quotes Novalis on the epitaph to the novel, that “[n]ovels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” Likewise, Chudori regrets that “[o]ur generation only knew the official history.”35 The muchreferred Mahabharata itself is often credited with encouraging its audience–– notably through complex characters like Karna––to refrain from judging others in terms of black and white.36 As shown in the close reading of the texts below, the persecuted characters in the novels are not left-leaning, let alone a PKI member––instead, they are

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cosmopolitans who show open-mindedness and concerns for human rights. However, they are accused of being communist for not seeing the leftist ideology as outright reprehensible. The novels appear to suggest that such people do not deserve the persecution they have been subjected to. This seems to be the furthest the writers could go in speaking for the victims of the anti-leftist purge without provoking a backlash. The title of both novels also emphasises the fictionality of the text. Pamuntjak’s novel in Indonesian is titled Amba: Sebuah Novel (Amba, A novel), the English edition being Amba: The Question of Red––red being a colour associated with communism. Likewise, Chudori’s novel in Indonesian is titled Pulang: Sebuah Novel (Home, A novel), the English edition being simply Home. Further precautions are also taken when it comes to susceptible issues in Indonesia. In the English edition of Amba, for example, there is a passage about how Marxist teachings are often misunderstood,37 but the passage is omitted in the Indonesian version.38 Similarly, the cosmopolitan-minded Amba in the English edition disapproves of the discrimination against homosexuals in Indonesia,39 but there is no such mention in the Indonesian edition.40 Pamuntjak explains that, in translating her own novel from English into Indonesian, she was largely guided by “creative impulses,” resulting in recreation rather than simply translation.41 It seems that the recreation must also take the local socio-political contexts into account. The novels do not go too far in defending any leftist sympathiser either. Only Home depicts a leftist, but not only the character depicted as an unfaithful womaniser, but he is also killed off early on in the action. Many characters sympathise only with his wife and children, who are unfairly mistreated after his death. Both authors seem to have tactfully negotiated a neutral position in a society gripped by the Red Scare by scaling halfway first, considering that not many local publishers are willing to take the risk of publishing texts that can be deemed too left-leaning. As such, the novels can represent at least a part of the victims of the purge.

Ibarurri Aidit’s autobiography-turned-novel Many narratives by Indonesian exiles are difficult to find in the Indonesian book market.42 Paris-based Iba has been living abroad since 1965, and her autobiography too remains marginal and is already out of print. Nonetheless, the less-celebrated narrative seems to have inspired the more famous Amba and Home in matters of plot and characters. The autobiography traces Iba’s life since she was a school boarder in Moscow. Following the murder of her father, the PKI leader D. N. Aidit, she wandered to China, Myanmar, Macao, and France. Iba explains that, as a child, she was a bookworm who adored wayang stories, particularly the Mahabharata.43 Knowing it by heart, she often refers to the Javanese adaptation of the epic in her autobiography. The epic chronicles the struggle between five Pandawa brothers and their cousins for power, with the ill-fated

Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia  51

Karna––the unknown brother of the Pandawa––caught in the middle. The epic, where kin are killing each other, is often alluded to in connection with Indonesia’s mass killings, where Indonesians were killing Indonesians. Iba duly likens the fall of the PKI at the peak of its power and its subsequent demonisation to the treacheries suffered by the powerful Pandawa brothers at the hands of their cousins in the Mahabharata.44 She also likens the impossibility for her to return home to the exile endured by the Pandawa.45 The fictitious heroines in Amba and Home are also weaned on a regular diet of wayang stories, and they often refer to the Mahabharata as well, although, befitting a romantic novel, specifically to the epic’s lesser-known romantic subplots. Iba’s autobiography also mentions her uncle, Sobron, who, in 1965, was working as a journalist for the Peking Review and teaching at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute. Sobron could not return to Indonesia after 1965, and later migrated to France, where he opened Restaurant Indonesia with three other exiles in Paris. The four founders of the restaurant are replaced by four fictitious characters in Home, although with a difference: the fictitious characters are not left leaning at all. There are particularly many similarities between the Iba’s story and the plot of the novel Home. For example, Iba practises acupuncture, and so does one of the fictitious restaurant founders in Home. Three of the four restaurant founders in the novel also work as journalists for the Peking Review. Like Sobron and Iba, the characters are sent down to the Chinese countryside to work as farmers. The daughter of the alleged leftist in Home, like Iba, is also not welcomed at the Indonesian embassy in Paris. The son of the executed leftist in the novel is called Alam, a unisex Indonesian name which happens to be one of Iba’s middle names. Thus, although Iba’s autobiography is merely a little-known petit récit, it has inspired bestselling novels which command wider readership in Indonesia.

Laksmi Pamuntjak’s Amba Amba, published almost a half-century after the purge, is the first high-profile novel which sympathises with the victims of the purge. Ahmad Tohari’s The Dancer (1982), which recounts the fate of a naïve village dancer who becomes a victim of the anti-leftist purge, was published three decades earlier, but the novel rose to prominence only after the stellar success of Amba and Home. In Amba, the eponymous heroine of the novel leaves her village to study English literature at a prestigious university in Jogjakarta. After rejecting her dull suitor Salwa, she has a love affair with Bhisma, a well-read Europeaneducated doctor. In 1965, Amba and Bhisma are separated amidst chaos in Jogjakarta. Pregnant with Bhisma’s child, she marries a visiting German American scholar to avoid social stigma. Forty years later, widowed, she tries to discover Bhisma’s fate, only to find out that he died on Buru Island, a prison camp for leftist dissidents. The novel closes with the appearance of their daughter, a globetrotting artist named Srikandi. The sequel of Amba,

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titled Kekasih Musim Gugur (Autumn Lover), was released in Indonesian by Gramedia in June 2020, featuring Amba and Bhisma’s cosmopolitan daughter, while the English version was released earlier by Penguin Random House under the title Fall Baby. Amba invites the reader to see from the perspective of the victims of the purge. Bhisma is a cultured man who has read writings by leftist thinkers, but also by Voltaire, a forerunner of liberal pluralism. Passages in the novel provide hints that he has never been a communist, as shown by the testimony of a former inmate, who says that Bhisma “was the best Communist, for he never took anything for himself. To them, Bhisma was also the worst Communist, for he liked to write poems with a dark, doubting lyricism that bore no mission, no message to better the world, poems that did not serve the revolution.”46 While it is a bit feeble to classify one as a communist only because he shares and shares alike, Bhisma’s belles-lettres poems suggest that he does not embrace the leftist slogan “Art for People’s Sake.” Furthermore, Bhisma’s arrest is depicted as a matter of infortune, because he is neither a PKI member nor a member of any of the Party affiliates, but, unfortunately, “he always surrounded himself with people from the Left [and] he just happened to be a graduate from a university in East Germany.”47 Another hint that he does not support left-wing politics is his waning admiration toward the socialist President Sukarno.48 As physician, Bhisma treats his patients indiscriminately, an act symbolised by his colour-blindness, a recurring theme in the novel, as he “can’t tell if the berets worn by the soldiers who come to the hospital are red or green.”49 His colour blindness, implying neutrality, seals his fate; seeing grey instead of red (a colour associated with communism), he loses sight of Amba, who wears a red blouse at the memorial-turned-chaos of a PKI member, and they are separated forever. The novel suggests that, during the New Order regime, people who see undesired ideologies as grey would be persecuted, and their loved ones––like Amba and many Indonesian women in that turbulent period––must pay the price. As Amba sums up, “[t]he reason the world is so fraught with violence is because Black and White are cast as enemies, as absolutes: Us & Them.”50 Amba has exactly the same worldview as Bhisma. She reads many books, including those written by leftist thinkers, but there is no hint that she embraces their ideology. Her early admiration toward the Left is depicted as resulting from the naivety of an impressionable 18-year-old student, fresh from a village school. For example, when “[s]he heard the name Che Guevara spoken, followed by a quote, something about oppression and justice, Amba couldn’t help it but there she was, relentlessly impressed” (emphasis mine)51; it is implied, however, that she does not fully comprehend the speech. Amba also tails Bhisma to see his leftist friends, but she is often bored by their conversation. As she matures, Amba becomes less impressed with the Left. For instance, at the height of President Sukarno’s socialist nationalism, “Art for People’s

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Sake” was endorsed by the left-leaning LEKRA (the Institute of People’s Culture), the cultural wing of the PKI; Amba, on the other hand, is more inclined toward the opposite philosophy, “Art for Art’s sake.”52 Likewise, she paints an unfavourable view of the socialist Land Reform regulation carried out in 1960.53 She also regrets “the President’s increasingly hostile stance toward the West,”54 as well as his support for the PKI.55 After Bhisma’s disappearance, she undergoes a self-imposing exile to protect her family, although neither she nor Bhisma is communist. If anything, they are simply well-read and cosmopolitan, so that that their falling victim to the purge seems underserved. Although they are fictitious, the novel seems to convey to the Indonesian readers that there are many Indonesian subaltern women like Amba who do not deserve discrimination and social stigma.

Leila Chudori’s Home Home is the second high-profile novel depicting the victims of the purge. The fact that the English translation was published by Deep Vellum Publishing, whose mission is to publish “under-represented, marginalized, and vital literary voices”,56 seals its status as a novel which represents Indonesia’s marginal voice abroad. Like Amba, the depicted marginal voice seems to come from the Left. The protagonist, Dimas, and his three friends are abroad in 1965; accused of being communist and unable to return home, they are stranded in Santiago, Havana, Peking, and finally Paris, where they open an Indonesian restaurant. Years later, Dimas’s daughter, Lintang, goes to Indonesia to make a documentary as part of her studies, and, while there, meets the children of her father’s leftist friends. The youngsters are caught up in the riots of 1998, which mark the end of the New Order regime, and the novel closes with an optimistic note. By the time the novel was published in 2012, however, nothing much had changed about the Red Scare in the country. Like Amba’s Bhisma, the exile in Home, Dimas, is well-read. Although he reads books written by leftist intelligentsias, Dimas does not embrace the ideology. On the contrary, he does not believe in “Art for People’s Sake,” and criticises Gorky’s novel by stating that “if the only thing a writer is concerned with is social issues, then he had better not write novels or poetry; he’d best stick to writing speeches or propaganda essays instead.”57 Dimas also favours universal humanism over proletariat universalism, stating that they are supposed to “defend all of humanity, not just proletariat.”58 Like Amba, Dimas is rather an impressionable youth than a leftist, as shown in his remark early in the novel: “I supported Marxist ideals and enjoyed reading all the books that Mas Hananto gave me on the subject… Even so, I also liked, and take much comfort in, talking to Bang Amir about things of a more religious and spiritual nature.59 The novel describes Dimas and his friends as being “[p]awns on the chess board or, to say it differently, fans on the edge of the playing field who didn’t quite know the rules of the game that was being played.”60 Dimas himself

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enjoys being politically neutral––in his words, “a free cell [who] reside[s] in a kind of Swiss neutral zone.”61 Although close with Hananto, a leftist, he keeps himself apart from the latter’s political activities, which he deems subversive at times. For instance, when Hananto wants to discuss about a correspondence with a Chilean Marxist, Dimas remains silent, feeling “leery of knowing (or not wanting to know) what their correspondence was about.”62 His neutrality is confirmed by Hananto, who criticises him: “You don’t belong to a political party. You’re not a member of any of the mass organisations. You always refuse to take sides.”63 The neutrality even evolves into disillusionment toward the Left after his sojourn in China during the Cultural Revolution.64 Yet, this “neutrality” earns Dimas the label “grey.” As in Bhisma’s case, he is seen as communist and exiled. In a reflective moment reminiscent of the one in Amba, Dimas imparts the lesson with his daughter Lintang (before the latter departs to Indonesia) that “[t]here was no grey: you were black or white, either with “us,” or “them’.”65 Dimas’s Eurasian daughter, Lintang, is well-read in both Western and Eastern cultures. She identifies herself with Srikandi, a female warrior in the Javanese Mahabharata after which the cosmopolitan daughter in Amba is also named. Indeed, both cosmopolitan daughters in Amba and Home relate to this gender-bender character to symbolise their hybrid identity as both Indonesian and citizen of the world. At the outset, Lintang is similar to the daughter of a wealthy Indonesian family in the novel, who travels around Europe (but mainly to buy branded goods), speaks English, and adores Indonesian food. Unlike her, however, Lintang shuns consumerism, is aware of human rights, and develops rootedness toward each of her parents’ cultures. Yet, despite her cosmopolitan worldview, Lintang suffers discrimination for being associated with an alleged communist. Thus, like Amba, Home seems to encourage fewer hostilities toward the cosmopolitan-minded victims of the purge who stand only at the outmost periphery of the ideological clash.

Conclusion This chapter discusses three categories of women in Indonesia in connection with the anti-leftist purge and the intervention of “little narratives” on their behalf. The first category refers to women who were active members of the PKI’s social and cultural affiliates before the purge, such as Kinkin Rahayu and Salawati Daud. The second category refers to women related to a PKI member, such as Soe Tjen Marching and Iba Aidit. The third category refers to women related to people falsely accused of being communist, such as fictitious Amba and Lintang. From the above-mentioned “little narratives,” only Rahayu’s and Marching’s testimonies are addressed to the audience outside Indonesia; the others are originally addressed to Indonesians. However, except for the romance novels, which portrays characters with the most tenuous connection to the PKI, the narratives have garnered more attention

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outside Indonesia. In other words, only a part of the victims––those who are apolitical or only mistaken to be a leftist––could be given voice in Indonesia, a country which is still plagued by the Red Scare. As for most of the survivors, like all subalterns, their voice can hardly be heard. However, there are more survivors who speak up compared to the early postauthoritarian days. While it is true that their narratives garner more attention abroad, more Indonesians are going abroad and have more chances of being exposed to these narratives. Furthermore, the fact that female novelists have taken up their pens to write about the mass killings, albeit without going too far in defending any leftist sympathiser, helps paving the way for more acceptance. The novels have shown through fictitious cosmopolitan characters that many survivors of the purge have been persecuted only because they put humanity above political differences and refrain from thinking in terms of black and white; thus, they do not deserve discrimination. Since the novels have been well-accepted in Indonesia, the similar-fated survivors have more chance to be heard and accepted. Moreover, the novels might help to ignite interests in researching about the other side of the purge. There is still hope, therefore, that more local narratives on Indonesian subaltern women will emerge following the fictional intervention, and, as Lyotard argues, become a “series of truths” that might finally contest the New Order’s lingering grand narrative.

APPENDIX Katri’s récit Since the end of the New Order regime in 1998, Katri, a survivor of the antileftist purge, has started to speak up about her experience. Katri’s petit récit is one of many which shows that thinking in terms of black and white, as the New Order regime relentlessly dictated, has led to unnecessary sufferings for Indonesian women. Sukatri, or Katri, was born in 1947 in Klaten, a suburb of Yogyakarta, as the youngest of six children. Before 1965, her eldest brother, Sukasno, was active in the PKI as a sub-district party leader. “My brother always organised social welfare programs to aid the poor,” she recalled. “The programs included home renovations, rice distribution, rodent control on farms, farm labour assistance, and eradication of illiteracy. My parents also opened their home to help providing free reading and writing lessons.” In 1965, Katri was married to Agus, a member of LEKRA, the cultural wing of the PKI. As the treasurer, Agus helped organising folk festivities, such as theatrical performances called ketoprak, choirs, and dances, whose aims were to entertain and to provide political education for the villagers. Katri recalled that the atmosphere in the village was harmonious and peaceful. However, the peace was disturbed after September 30, 1965. Following the murder of high-ranking generals, the PKI was deemed responsible, and its members were arrested.

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“Upon learning on the radio that an anti-leftist purge was in full swing, my husband fled the village,” Katri explained. Agus’s fate remains unclear until today. As for the fate of her brother, she would later learn it from a fellow prisoner, when she was imprisoned herself. “One of my brother’s friends was arrested and put in the same prison as me. That’s how I learnt that my brother had been hiding on the slope of Mount Merapi, but in 1969 he was caught. His friend told me the chronology of how he was murdered there.” Katri’s family was severely affected by the purge, as she recounted, “Apart from my eldest brother, two of my siblings were kidnapped and killed, one was on the run, leaving only one sibling and myself, until I was finally arrested as well.” The arrest happened in November 1965. Katri, who was seven-month-pregnant, was visited at home by seven soldiers, who came to look for her husband. “Suddenly I was shot through the cheeks,” she remembered. She was taken to the hospital, where she gave birth prematurely to a son. Her ordeals did not stop there. After spending 40 days in the hospital, she came home to a house plundered by the soldiers, only to be picked up a day later in a truck and taken to a camp, together with her new-born baby. As Katri also recounted in the TV interview, she decided to take her baby with her, thinking that the soldiers would not lay a hand on a mother cradling a new-born baby. “I was nevertheless beaten up,” she mused. Katri was detained there, without further examinations, until April 1968. Again, she did not stay home very long. In December 1968, she was rearrested under suspicion of being in contact with Agus and Sukasno. During the interrogation, she was tortured––beaten and electrocuted. Katri was so weakened by the tortures that she could not wash her own bloodied clothes, which were sent home to be washed by her grieving father. “For the next eight years, I was transferred from one prison to another, such as Bulu in Semarang and Plantungan in Kendal,” Katri remembered. She was finally released in December 1976 and put under house arrest until 1978. At this point, she finally received an official statement from the government, which states that there is no indication of her involvement with the PKI. The statement was released only after she had spent around twelve years in prison without trial. Upon Katri’s release, many people avoided her for fear of being accused of supporting the PKI, and some even insulted her. “Those who came to visit were generally those whose family members also fell victim to the anti-leftist purge,” Katri explained. In that atmosphere, she was used to hiding her past from new acquaintances and to refrain from talking about politics when the New Order regime was in power. “I was afraid of being called up and interrogated again,” she added. Since her release, Katri has remarried and had three more children. She concluded her petit récit by saying, “Nowadays people have relatively more freedom in expressing their opinions as well as political differences. Things are getting better now.”

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Notes 1 Elizabeth Martyn, The Women’s Movement in Post-Colonial Indonesia: Gender and Nation in a New Democracy (New York: Routledge, 2005), 64. 2 Saskia Wieringa, Sexual Politics in Indonesia (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 140. 3 Saskia Wieringa, “Ibu or the Beast: Gender Interests in Two Indonesian Women’s Organizations,” Feminist Review 41, no. 1 (Summer 1992), 103–4; Kate McGregor and Vannessa Hearman, “Challenges of Political Rehabilitation in Post-New Order Indonesia: The Case of Gerwani,” Southeast Asia Research, 15, no. 3 (2007), 358; Suzanne Brenner, “On the Public Intimacy of the New Order: Images of Women in the Popular Indonesian Print Media.” Indonesia, 67 (April 1999), 13–38. 4 Henri Chambert-Loir, “Locked out: Literature of the Indonesian Exiles Post1965,” Archipel 91 (May 2016), 120. 5 Elizabeth Martyn, The Women’s Movement, 65; Annie Pohlman, “Sexual Violence as Torture: Crimes against Humanity during the 1965–66 Killings in Indonesia,” Journal of Genocide Research 19, no. 4: 574–593; Saskia Wieringa, Sexual Politics, 140. 6 Patrick Guinness, “Local Society and Culture,” in Indonesia’s New Order: The Dynamic of Socio-economic Transformation, ed. Hal Hill (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994), 283. 7 Saskia Wieringa, “Ibu or the Beast”, 103; Kate McGregor and Vannessa Hearman, “Challenges of Political Rehabilitation”, 358. 8 Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 93. 9 Ibid, 83. 10 Terima kasih anda telah mengunduh, Ketetapan MPRS No.XXV/MPRS/1966 Tahun 1966. www.hukumonline.com/pusatdata/download/lt50768aac11ee6/ node/lt50768a41ad5ab. 11 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiv. 12 Geoffrey Robinson, “Down to the Very Roots: The Indonesian Army’s Role in the Mass Killings of 1965–66.” Journal of Genocide Research 19, no. 4 (December 2017), 277. 13 John Roosa, Buried Histories: The Anti-Communist Massacres of 1965–1966 in Indonesia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), 63. 14 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 60. 15 “Final report of the IPT 1965: Findings and documents of the International People’s Tribunal on crimes against humanity Indonesia 1965,” IPT 1965 Foundation, accessed June 21, 2020, https://www.tribunal1965.org/en/ final-report-of-the-ipt-1965/ 16 Soe Tjen Marching, The End of Silence: Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 173. 17 Ibid. 185. 18 Soe Tjen Marching, “Sebentar lagi bakal ngobrol dengan Gramedia” [Soonto-be discussion with Gramedia],” Facebook, June 13, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/Soetjenmarching. 19 Soe Tjen Marching, “Ada beberapa orang yang menyarankan novel saya “Dari Dalam Kubur” diterbitkan di luar saja” [Some people suggested that I publish my novel “From Beyond the Grave” abroad],” Facebook, July 8, 2019, https:// www.facebook.com/soetjen.full.

58  Silvia Mayasari-Hoffert 20 Ibid. 21 Soe Tjen Marching, “Naskah novel saya “Dari Dalam Kubur” sudah saya tarik dari Gramedia [I withdrew the script of my novel “From Beyond the Grave” from Gramedia],” Facebook, September 6, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/ soetjen.full. 22 Soe Tjen Marching, “Akhirnya, saya kirim naskah novel saya tentang Gerwani “Dari Dalam Kubur” ke Marjin Kiri” [Finally I sent the script of my novel about Gerwani “From Beyond the Grave” to the Left Margin],” Facebook, September 8, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/soetjen.full. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibarruri Aidit, Roman Biografis Ibarruri Putri Alam, Anak Sulung D.N. Aidit [Biographical Novel of Ibarruri Putri Alam, Eldest Child of D.N. Aidit] (Jakarta: Hasta Mitra, 2006), vi. 25 Henri Chambert-Loir, “Ideology as a Transmitted Disease: The World of Asahan Alham,” Archipel 91 (May 2016), 159. 26 Melawan lupa [Lest we forget]. “Pemenang Kehidupan [Winners in Life].” Metro TV video, 30:54, December 22, 2018, https://www.metrotvnews.com/play/ kM3UzRXr-para-pemenang-kehidupan-2. 27 Adrian Mulya, Pemenang kehidupan/Winners in life (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2016). 28 Sukatri, interview by author, March 16, 2020. 29 Goenawan Mohamad (@gm_gm), “Kabar baik: “Amba”, novel Laksmi Pamuntjak, segera terbit [Good news: “Amba”, Laksmi Pamuntjak’s novel, will be out soon],” Twitter, September 8, 2012, https://twitter.com/gm_gm/ status/244298282904473600 30 Goenawan Mohamad, “This novel will join the pantheon of the all-time greats in Indonesian literature,” accessed June 21, 2020, http://laksmipamuntjak.com / books/the-question-of-red. 31 Goenawan Mohamad, “Sidelines: 1965”, Tempo, January 6, 2013. 32 Sonia Fitri and Eni S, “Novel Amba dibedah di Bandung [Novel Amba discussed in Bandung],” Tempo, October 23, 2013, https://seleb.tempo.co/ read/437455/novel-amba-laksmi-pamuntjak-dibedah-di-bandung. 33 Vega Probo, “Isu Indonesia di Frankfurt Book Fair [Indonesia’s Issues at Frankfurt Book Fair],” CNN, July 1, 2015, cnn.id/63740. 34 “Interview with Laksmi Pamuntjak,” Youtube, accessed June 21, 2020, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMhGiJdbyHU 35 Leila Chudori, “Seeking Identity, Seeking Indonesia,” Inside Indonesia, January 4, 2014, https://www.insideindonesia.org/seeking-identity-seeking-indonesia-2. 36 See: Magnis Suseno, “The People and the Wayang,” trans. Verena Meyer, International Journal of Dharma Studies 4, 3 (March 2016). 37 Laksmi Pamuntjak, Amba: The Question of Red (Seattle: Amazon Crossing, 2015), 206. 38 Laksmi Pamuntjak, Amba: Sebuah Novel (Jakarta: Gramedia, 2012), 291. 39 Laksmi Pamuntjak, Question of Red, 319. 40 Laksmi Pamuntjak, Sebuah Novel, 421. 41 Ibid., 13. 42 Henri Chambert-Loir, “Locked out,” 126. 43 Aidit, Ibarruri, Roman Biografis, 34. 44 Ibid., 304. 45 Ibid., 109, 151, 272–73, 304. 46 Laksmi Pamuntjak, Question of Red, 33. 47 Ibid., 304. 48 Ibid., 158. 49 Ibid., 166. 50 Ibid., 272.

Marginalised women in post-authoritarian Indonesia  59 51 Ibid., 241. 52 Ibid., 259. 53 Ibid., 101. 54 Ibid., 107, 158. 55 Ibid., 107. 56 See: https://deepvellum.org/about/ 57 Leila Chudori, Home, trans. John McGlynn. (Dallas: Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015), 25 58 Ibid., 26 59 Ibid., 23 60 Ibid., 314 61 Ibid., 26, 64 62 Ibid., 31 63 Ibid., 39 64 Ibid., 71 65 Ibid., 245

Chapter 5

Unhomed knowledge The diasporic family as site of subaltern pedagogy Mrinalini Greedharry

The diasporic woman is a figure whose life has the potential to disrupt subaltern-elite relations, and yet we have very few accounts of how diasporic life itself might provide the conditions for subaltern pedagogies. How does the diasporic woman make sense of the shifts and recursions of her subalternity across national borders; and how does she teach her daughters and granddaughters how dissent is possible? Beverley suggests that there is an inevitable tension between the existence of subaltern knowledge and the structures and institutions of Western knowledge production. But might there be a way that subaltern knowledges and practices can and do persist within the affective communities of diasporic families? In a persuasive account of how we might read the relations between racism and capitalism otherwise, Gargi Bhattacharyya poses a critical question: “It is worth for a moment considering whether reproduction of the means of life must necessarily lead to the reproduction of the social relations of exploitation.”1 She poses this question specifically in relation to our understanding of reproductive labour, the labour that is normally considered to be necessary for the continuation of productive labour, but kept invisible, unwaged, and private. Insofar as we understand reproductive labour as only the supplement to productive labour, she observes we do not allow ourselves to imagine “the range of reproductive practices that go beyond merely making the waged worker … the other ways of being that exist at the edge of or alongside capitalist formations.”2 It is not easy either to imagine or theorise the work that many women, usually subaltern, do as anything other than the work that makes “real” (other) work and “valuable” (other) lives possible, because this account fits so neatly into narratives of progress, development, and mobility. In narratives of progress, women do reproductive labour until the conditions of their lives, whether structural, educational, or psychological, are changed thereby enabling them to productive labour. We know, for example, that the rise and success of certain middle- and upper-class women depends on the labour of working-class women who take care of their homes and children, not only so that their bosses can progress, but so that, in theory, the working-class woman can, through her labour, provide the conditions of that life to her own daughter. It is for exactly this reason that Bhattacharyya’s question is so important.

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What are the conditions in which the reproduction of life does not simply reproduce racist, sexist, colonial, and capitalocentric relations? In this chapter I pursue some answers to this question through an autobiographical investigation into my own family. On the paternal side, my family is composed mostly of descendants of Bihari farmers who were indentured in Mauritius in the nineteenth century. On the maternal side, my family is composed entirely of Tamil farmers, who moved from rural to urban Tamil Nadu during India’s pre-Independence years. Taken together they constitute a useful case for thinking about the nuances of transition from subaltern to elite because the ways in which they fit into narratives of progress, development, and mobility vary. Although the different trajectories of these Mauritian and Indian families are not especially unusual in themselves, the convergence of those trajectories in one family is not commonplace, which means my lived experience as a member of this family gives me a useful vantage point from which to think about how the conditions of subalternity might be lived, produced, and reproduced. My aim, however, as described below, is not to describe my experience of this family, but rather to think differently, in a subaltern way, about what a family does. As Didier Eribon puts it in his memoir, “only an epistemological break with the way in which people spontaneously think about themselves renders possible the description of the mechanisms by which the social order reproduces itself.”3

Subaltern autobiography As scholars of subaltern studies and postcolonial life-writing remind us, the autobiographical impulse often camouflages the elite’s desire to recover and restore a subaltern subject that the coloniser’s history or anthropology proper cannot achieve. For example, my initial aim in writing this was to recover something of the life of Shanti Moonsasing,4 my paternal grandmother, because I wanted to do justice to the reproductive labour she did that made first my life and eventually my productive labour possible. However, as Bhattacharyya’s analysis suggests, believing that Shanti Moonsasing’s labour had value only insofar as it could be used or exchanged into productive labour is thinking imbued with elite logic. To speak about her in order to turn her life, retrospectively, into something useful to racial capitalism would not be a subaltern studies project at all. As John Beverley characterises it, the aim of subaltern studies is actually not to speak “about” the subaltern, however intimately one might think one knows them. Instead a subaltern studies approach “registers rather how the knowledge we construct and impart as academics is structured by the absence, difficulty, or impossibility of representation of the subaltern’.5 Keeping Beverley’s characterisation in mind, my aim here must differ from what a postcolonial life-writer sets out to do, which is to craft a narrative form and style that “sutures a social and conceptual gap.”6 Although postcolonial life-writing is frequently characterised by narrative styles that foreground gaps and disjunctures, it also has recourse to

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narrative strategies that incite emotion for or on behalf of the subaltern. Inciting empathy for the subaltern functions as another way of assembling the fragments in subjectivity that are produced by power/knowledge, evoking feeling for a subject who cannot be represented. Although a subaltern studies approach is committed to the subaltern, it must do so by focusing on exposing these gaps rather than recovering a voice. Instead of seeking to produce a narrative about the subaltern women in my family, then, I want to register the absences and difficulties of thinking about their lives, by thinking about them in relation to each other as quite differently positioned and enabled social actors. In doing so I am also drawing on my own experience as a diasporic woman who was supposed to either reproduce or ignore their example in her own life as their direct descendent. This reflection draws on the lives of four women: my paternal great-grandmother, Chinta Bundhoo, my paternal grandmother, Shanti Moonsasing, my maternal great-grandmother Sellammah Samuel, and my maternal grandmother, Mercy Yesudasan. As will become clear in what follows these women were not all subaltern in the same way or to the same degree, but it is the fundamental “conception of subalternity as relational and fluid rather than as an absolute category”7 that frames my attempt to think about their lives. Although it is not my intention to write an autobiography here, it is autobiography as a genre that provides a grid for thinking about some of the silences and absences that construct my ancestors’ subalternity. As one of the foundational critics of autobiography himself observes “this conscious awareness of the singularity of each individual life is the late product of a specific civilization,”8 namely modern European civilisation. Gusdorf’s argument is that only Western individuals are capable of thinking and writing autobiography, but postcolonial scholarship has revealed instead the many ways in which autobiography is a crucial genre for producing normative definitions of both self and valuable life in Western knowledge systems. The canonical autobiography “prioritizes authenticity, autonomy, self-realization, and transcendence—Western Enlightenment values that … associate autobiography with essentialist or romantic notions of selfhood and the sovereign subject.”9 In fact, Lisa Lowe argues that autobiography could be considered “the liberal genre par excellence. It is the modern narrative expression of the individual subject providing evidence of not only the imperatives and privileges of subjects, but also its aesthetic form.”10 The self that chooses to and is successful in transcending their circumstances is the proper autobiographical subject; and their conformity to certain autobiographical criteria gives us the proper form for a life. In addition to the clear importance of criteria such as autonomy and transcendence one further criterion is a self-defined within the context of a nation. Although an autobiography may not necessarily foreground the nation, it is frequently through reference to a nation’s past and future that an individual life becomes understandable and valuable, a circumstance that brings the genre into a productive tension with the Enlightenment drive towards

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universals. One way in which this becomes obvious in canonical Western autobiography is the preponderance of nationally important figures who write the story of their lives, such as statesmen, explorers, scientists, and artists as contributions to the nation. Autobiography as a genre, thus plays an important role in creating and populating histories of the nation itself. In the case of postcolonial writing, again, this question of nation is vexed, since colonial subjects often struggle to articulate their subjectivity in terms of a nation that has yet to come into being. But since autobiography also does important nation-building work, the autobiographies of anti-colonial figures such as M K Gandhi’s The Story of my Experiments With Truth have an important discursive role in constructing the post-colonial nation. Although consideration of a number of other criteria for autobiography could illuminate the question of whether the reproduction of life must necessarily reproduce relations of exploitation, given the scope of this chapter the focus is more narrowly on autonomous choice, nation-building, and transformation from subaltern to elite. In the sections that follow I will reflect on the presence and absence of these three themes in the lives of subaltern women in my family in order to sketch out some possibilities for a subaltern pedagogy.

In place of a choice Amitav Ghosh’s historical novel The Sea of Poppies follows the pathways to and from indenture out of India with close attention to the historical conditions of possibility. Nandini Dhar argues that Ghosh’s skill lies in his dramatisation of what would otherwise be lost in a sheer description of the indenture contract. Indenture did involve a contract, an agreement to undertake specified work, but it was not, according to Sudesh Mishra, a contract in the sense that liberal contract law would have it. This is because although it was enacted through paper and involved a proper name, it did not constitute a signature but was simply a name entered as text into a contract. As Mishra puts it, the indentured labourer was, thus, not “in agreement or disagreement, but girmit,”11 and as Dhar highlights “the act of signing a girmit never quite becomes the moment of signing an agreement wherein the Indian labourer enters into an equal, conscious, and contractual relationship with the plantation authorities.”12 Ghosh’s use of the word girmit in his novel is thus highly deliberate, one that places the subaltern subject’s ability to choose into question, both in the novel and in history. He is careful, in other words, not to create a narrative of choices retrospectively and thereby subjectify the subaltern through the mode of literature. As an emblem of subaltern life, the girmit foregrounds the fundamental difficulty in describing most of the lives of the women in my family, on both maternal and paternal sides though only the paternal side is actually descended from indentured labourers. It is arguable, however, that in a historical context where marriage was not an individual choice to enter into a contract, it also functioned as a kind of girmit. Thus, my maternal greatgrandmother, Sellammah Samuel, who was born at the end of the nineteenth

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century in Tindivanam, South India, had a marriage arranged by her father. As the family grew and her husband’s work as a government official took him to bigger, urban centres, she moved with him to Ranipet, and eventually ended her days in Madras (now Chennai) in her son-in-law’s home. By contrast, her daughter, Mercy Yesudasan, stands out among the other women I describe here because her life seems to be marked by pure, individual choice. She married for love, she chose her own career in medicine, she pursued her education travelling alone to Edinburgh, Scotland to train as a post-graduate in the 1950s, and then worked and lived with her two youngest children in Jaffna, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) apart from her husband during the 1960s. Shanti Moonsasing’s life was almost completely devoid of the choices that characterised Mercy Yesudasan’s life. Her marriage was arranged for her by her father when she was only fifteen years old. She had no secondary education and never worked outside the home, having three children during the first ten years of her marriage. When she was in her 40s, her husband decided to move the family to England in the late 1960s. Her husband died very soon after the family emigrated, leaving her without a means of supporting herself in a foreign country, and from this point onwards, she was dependent on her children to provide her with a home. There was almost nothing, from an elite way of thinking, that Shanti decided about her own life. But Shanti’s mother, Chinta Bundhoo, though so little is known of her,13 is another kind of exception. She left the marital home shortly after giving birth to Shanti and never returned to the family or appears to have done anything else that might be historically noteworthy. One can describe this as a choice, but unlike Mercy Yesudasan’s life, it is almost impossible to say what this choice expressed. Did she decide that married life and motherhood were simply not for her? What were the conditions under which it was possible for her to choose not to do her reproductive labour in 1920s Mauritius as a woman without education or other relationships, sexual or familial, to provide a means of living? Sellammah Samuel and Chinta Bundhoo were contemporaries, but the ways in which they negotiated girmit in their lives had very different consequences. Samuel Sellammah was a rural, uneducated, woman, and a Christian by birth, but she lived her life within the normative form of the family. One cannot describe her life as filled with autonomous choices, but it certainly seems to be one that made choices possible for her daughters. Just as I initially sought to retrieve my paternal grandmother, Sellammah Samuel can be assimilated into quite legible autobiographical accounts of her daughters. Chinta Bundhoo was also a rural, uneducated, woman, but belonged to the Hindu religious majority. Her life actually seems to be marked by something more than girmit, but it does not, like Sellammah, progress into greater choices for her daughter as the contrast between Mercy Yesudasan and Shanti Moonsasing makes clear. Is the conversion of girmit into choice across the generations thus only possible through properly, normative reproductive labour? What did Chinta’s refusal of reproductive labour do?

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Nation and nurture In 1965, three years before Mauritius finally acceded to independence from British rule, Shanti Moonsasing’s husband decided to emigrate to England. The timing of this migration is, in several ways, unexpected since Shanti and her children were exactly the type of Indo-Mauritian family who could have benefited significantly from independence if they had stayed on the island. Independence meant the rise of the Indo-Mauritian majority into positions of governmental and social power on the island, so much so that there was a panic about what this shift in majority-minority relations would mean postIndependence. Having worked a respectable job as a teacher all of his working life, with his eldest son already studying for a medical degree in India, it is an open question why Shanti’s husband decided to move the family to England, but what is curious is the decided disinterest in the work of building the new island nation. Shanti’s oldest son did return to Mauritius upon qualification as a doctor, but within a year decided to rejoin the rest of the family in England. Her youngest son never sought to return to Mauritius. The significance of this decision to leave the country before Independence is even more pronounced in a context where, for example, one of the witnesses at Shanti’s wedding was Dr. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, the future first prime minister of independent Mauritius. Or that the Bissoondoyals, of whom Basdeo and Sookdeo were leading figures in anti-colonial resistance and the Mauritian Labour Party, were longstanding family friends. None of the men or women on the paternal side of my family was engaged in or notable for any kind of paid or unpaid work that furthered anti-colonial resistance or helped to build the independent nation of Mauritius. At the same time, neither were they staunchly imperial loyalists who helped to defend or build the colony or the empire. Not untypically for this first wave of indentured diasporic Indians, there was not a strong attachment to the India their ancestors had left, despite the firm retention of many cultural practices and values. Shanti’s father was born in a village in the Punjab and had migrated alone as an adult to Mauritius to work on the sugar mills. Shanti’s husband’s parents, a labourer and housewife, were both born in Mauritius, but they died when he was a child, leaving him to be raised by distant relatives. During her lifetime Shanti and her family travelled to India just once, stopping in the port of Bombay (Mumbai) on the ship voyage out from Mauritius to England. Her eldest son’s years studying in South India did not modify this attachment to the homeland either. Though it was not the part of India his ancestors had come from, the mere fact of living and working in India did not change these cultural affiliations. There were few people or institutions to keep Shanti, her husband, or their children attached to any nation. Their generational counterparts in the Samuel and Yesudasan families were deeply involved in the project of building the independent nation of India, both before and long after 1947. As Christians, rather than Hindus or Muslims, the Samuels and Yesudasans were also enrolled in the nation-building project in a particularly deliberate way, working through Christian mission organisations,

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for example, to advance the lives of their fellow citizens and cultivate transnational relations.14 Several male members of the immediate and extended family also had long, active careers in the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force. Since most members of the Samuel and Yesudasan families remained within easy distance of their ancestral land, living in one of three points that formed a roughly equidistant triangle between Madras (Chennai), Vellore, and Tindivanam, this nation-building work was also profoundly regional. If they were invested in nation-building projects, this was also partly, perhaps, because they were never far from a place in which they immediately recognised themselves as belonging. The diasporic nature of the Moonsasing family, in contrast to the strongly local-national character of the Yesudasan family, highlights the way in which national capital, rather than nationality as a legal status, entrenches subalternity. What I mean by national capital is that the succession of displacements and detachments from the nation––India, Mauritius, or England––in a diasporic family like the Moonsasings makes it more complicated for any member within that family to use the nation’s capacity to reproduce valuable lives. Mercy Yesudasan’s descendants, when they leave India, certainly become subaltern in a new way, which is the way that migrants are subalterns within the nation in which they arrive. But both Shanti Moonsasing’s ancestors and descendants, are arguably even more deeply subaltern since they always seem to be in the process of leaving a nation to which they never really belonged, for another nation where they will not belong. Shanti was born in one country (Mauritius) and died in another (England), which was also true of her father (born in India and died in Mauritius) as well as her eldest son (born in Mauritius and died in Canada). Earlier, I argued that autobiography only becomes legible in relation to a nation, which has always made postcolonial and migrant life-writing a particular challenge but makes this kind of diasporic life—one in which there is a new migration in every generation––almost impossible to write. One could argue, from a more conventionally individualist perspective, that the two sides of this family represent people with more or less psychological capacity for effective socialisation, cooperation with others to accomplish goals, or building collective identity. While this would not necessarily be inaccurate, I think it does not fully capture how the continuation of subaltern-elite dynamics of power relies on reproducing people with normative attachments to nations. Can you reproduce the social relations of exploitation when you and your family are not and cannot be written into the story of the nation? Transformation As suggested within the logic of transfer from the subaltern to the elite, the value of the reproductive labour a woman performs inevitably rises in estimation in direct proportion to the capitalocentric success of the children and grandchildren she raises. Sellammah Samuel raised six sons and daughters

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who, without exception, all became highly productive workers and securely national citizens. For example, her youngest daughter, Sulochana, Mercy Yesudasan’s youngest sister, became the first woman in India to earn a doctoral degree in nursing, travelling alone to Columbia University to pursue her studies, and eventually becoming a professor of nursing in Delhi as well as a national representative for India in organisations such as the World Health Organization. On the paternal side of my family, by contrast, Chinta Bundhoo, gave birth to Shanti Moonsasing in 1924, and then left the marital home. By all accounts, Chinta did not enter into any other relationships or bear any more children, neither did she express an interest in the three grandchildren who were born during the 1940s. The success of Mercy Yesudasan’s reproductive labour was certainly complicated by her own process of transformation from subaltern to elite. She spent several years of her life separated from her oldest two children while studying and then working abroad in order to advance her career prospects in India. She gave birth to four children, two of whom became educated professionals, somewhat like their mother, and two of whom did not complete tertiary education or become employed in skilled professions. Among Mercy’s ten grandchildren, their paths through education and employment closely resemble that of their respective parents. Shanti’s reproductive labour was also complicated, but in her case the complications arose because of diasporic life, as described in the previous section. Once she had migrated to England and become widowed, she was highly dependent on her eldest and youngest child, neither of whom married or had children. She was the centre of the household until her death, but it was a household that did not expand far beyond its original size. Although both of her grandchildren completed tertiary education in England and became professionals, like their father, neither one of them have children. The Bundhoos and Moonsasings, at least through this branch of the family,15 will come to an end with the current generation. The Samuels and Yesudasans, by contrast, have not only successful reproduced, but in doing have firmly established their position as elite, rather than subaltern. If autobiography as a form depends upon a successful transcendence of circumstances, then the Samuels and Yesudasans, in their constellation as family, are clearly proper autobiographical subjects. It is much less clear what narrative one can make from the lives of the Bundhoos and Moonsasings, which brings me back to the limit of how we can write the subaltern life and the question of a subaltern pedagogy.

The diasporic family as subaltern pedagogy What is puzzling for me, as a scholar as much as a granddaughter, is that it would not be straightforward to say what I learned from my paternal grandmother, Shanti Moonsasing, though she was the person who shaped my everyday life from the time I was born to my early teenage years. And yet, neither would it be straightforward to say that my maternal grandmother

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Mercy Yesudasan taught me by her example, because I never encountered her as a live person. But in some sense, her live presence was not necessary because she was already legible within the elite order of things as someone I ought to emulate. Just as her eldest children learned to become professionals; live and work within established familial, religious, and national frameworks; and maintain their transfer to the elite in the lives of their children, without her everyday presence in their early lives, so did I. Is there, nevertheless, something that one learns about subalternity from the living presence of subalterns in the midst of an elite life? In fact, there are many things that I learned from my Mauritian grandmother, but they are hard to articulate and describe precisely because they were of little use to me in securing or sustaining my ongoing transfer to the elite. Like almost all Mauritians, the language we spoke at home was Mauritian Creole, a French-based language that includes words borrowed from African and Indian languages as well as English. On the island, the ongoing legacy of colonialism manifests in the fact that you will have to learn English to become educated and French to be represented in media and public discourse. People continue to speak creole to their children, but they will have to learn standardised European languages to effect or maintain their transfer to the elite. The persistence of creole as an everyday language is in fact a remarkable instance of subaltern life, since it retains its vigour as a practice without standardisation or institutionalisation (though recently, both have been attempted). What is required for this is subaltern presence; you have to be there with your children to speak creole because it is not something that can be learned other than from other living beings. A subaltern pedagogy, then, may not be an alternative to elite pedagogy, imagined as a set of strategies for surviving domination or overthrowing the oppressors, but a way of living with others that cannot be extracted from the relationships themselves. Whatever set of conditions and understanding that enabled Chinta Bundhoo, for example, to refuse her reproductive labour was not something that she could or did teach her daughter, simply because she had no relationship with her or her grandchildren. In Chinta Bundhoo’s absence, her daughter could not learn about subalternity; whereas in the absence of Mercy Yesudasan, her children and grandchildren could learn about and even reproduce the elite order. It is through this kind of presence that I would argue the diasporic family becomes a particularly rich site of subaltern pedagogy, not because it is a family but because through its relations it distributes and preserves subaltern knowledges that would be gradually dissolved by the transformation of the family, over successive generations, into the elite. In this sense, a diasporic family is not the kind of Bourdieusian family that functions as a set of strategies of social reproduction; instead, it is more like the colonised family Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks. As he notes, in European psychoanalytic circles “the family represents in effect a certain fashion in which the world presents itself to the child. There are close connections between the structure of the

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family and the structure of the nation.”16 The analyst’s focus on the family as both the foundation and the context of the individual is thus justifiable. In the case of colonised and racialised people, however, Fanon argues that the presumed alignment between family, society, and nation does not so obviously secure the analysis. Instead, he argues quite categorically “A normal Negro child, having grown up within a normal family, will become abnormal on the slightest contact with the white world.”17 Even in Fanon’s text it is not clear what happens inside the subaltern family that allows it to function as a space that is organised differently from the society and nation around it, but his critique opens a space to reconsider the colonised family as something other than inevitably reproducing the racist, colonialist relations of exploitation in which its members exist. The absence of strategising for social reproduction becomes particularly pronounced when the colonial or racialised family is also on the move and becomes a diasporic family. Diasporic life, as distinct from transnational lives where transfer to the elite is the aim of being on the move18 acquires and develops knowledge about what Dai Kojima calls “mobilities-in-difference.”19 Diaspora subjects are typically either seen as fully agentic in their movement from one place to another, such as choosing to make a better life through carefully planned migration; or completely dependent on dominating structures, such as being forced to migrate for political or economic reasons. Kojima proposes the concept of “mobilities-in-difference” in order to think about diaspora experience as something that is not just about escaping subalternity. In doing so, he captures fleeting moments in which his subjects make queer, diasporic life in imaginative and unexpected ways. One man, an East Asian migrant whose body does not conform to any of the prevailing gay ideals in urban Canada, develops relationships with men in Asia by broadcasting his everyday life in his Canadian apartment over the Internet. Such actions might not be recognizable as building “real” relationships, but they allow queer diasporic subjects to find and build relationships with others in which they do not have to relinquish their subalternity. They also allow the knowledge of being on the move to retain its own value, not of being from one place or settling successfully in another but knowing how to live with others beyond the normative forms of family, society, or nation. The subaltern pedagogy to be found in the diasporic family is neither a secret set of tactics about how to resist elite power, nor a strategy for reproducing itself otherwise. Instead, it may be the small, ordinary things we learn by living together without wondering what use they will be in the future or whether the family will go on beyond us.

Postscript Shortly after I was born my father went in search of Chinta Bundhoo, the absent grandmother he had never met before, to see if she might be interested in her prospective great-granddaughter. She consented, it seems, to have a

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photograph taken of her holding me in her arms, and then, once again, returned to her unreproductive life.

Notes 1 Gargi Bhattacharyya, Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of reproduction and survival (London, Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), 55. 2 Ibid., 55. 3 Didier Eribon, Returning to Reims (London, Allen Lane, 2018), 47. 4 I have elected to refer to the women in my family by the names they were given at birth to clearly distinguish the different generations within one family from each other. 5 John Beverley, Subalternity and Representation: Arguments in Cultural Theory (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999), 40. 6 Ibid., 36. 7 Anuradha Ramanujan, ‘The Subaltern, the text and the critic: Reading Phoolan Devi,’ Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 44, no. 4 (2008): 368. 8 Georges Gusdorf, ‘Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,’ in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, trans James Olney (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980), 29. 9 Gillian Whitlock, Postcolonial Life-Narratives: Testimonial Transactions (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015), 3. 10 Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents (Durham, Duke University Press, 2015), 46. 11 Nandini Dhar, ‘Shadows of Slavery, Discourses of Choice, and Indian Indentureship in Amitav Ghosh’s The Sea of Poppies,’ Ariel: a review of international English literature, 48, no. 1 (2017): 26. 12 Dhar, 26. See also Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (London, Hurst and Company, 2013) for an account that also offers a very careful analysis of what kind of choice, materially and historically, indenture represented for women in particular. 13 Chinta’s parentage is not known because my genealogical research has not yet uncovered her birth certificate. It is thus not possible to say whether she was born in Mauritius or how her parents came to be on the island. She does not seem to have had any other family on the island because she did not return to her parents after she left her marital home. 14 I have not explored the question of religion in greater depth here for reasons of space, but it is worth observing that the Samuels and Yesudasans were religious minority subjects within India and never having been members of a high caste remained subaltern in this respect. The Bundhoos and Moonsasings belonged to the Hindu majority in Mauritius. 15 Shanti Moonsasing had an elder half-sister, who also married, had children, and has great-grandchildren still living in Mauritius. 16 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans Charles Lam Markmann (New York, Grove Press, 1967), 141. 17 Ibid. 143. 18 Lily Cho, ‘Asian Canadian Futures: Diasporic Passages and the Routes of Indenture,’ Canadian Literature, 199 (Winter 2008): 185. 19 Dai Kojima,‘Migrant Intimacies: Mobilities-in-Difference and Basue Tactics in Queer Asian Diasporas,’ Anthropologica, 56, no. 1 (2014): 34.

Chapter 6

Searching in the shadows Aboriginal women in early colonial New South Wales Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi

In May 1844, Cora Gooseberry and her son walked through the gate and up the path to the turreted sandstone of the new Government House. It was the birthday of the young Queen Victoria and the whole town of Sydney was honouring the occasion. There was a military parade with a band, the royal standard was hoisted, and there was a royal salute as well as a feux de joie.1 For the more common folk, the convicts, ex-convicts, their children, and the lesser sorts of merchants, there was the excitement of fireworks in the evening.2 But the day brought a levee or ball for the elite, the leading military officers and civil officials, and it was amongst this distinguished gathering that Cora Gooseberry was present.3 We know this because she attracted press attention: along with a half-moon breastplate on her chest marking her as a “Queen,” she had a fashionable bonnet on her head, a rose in her hair, and a “new pink robe of very curious workmanship”; dress being but one of many sites of negotiation in this new colonial world.4 Cora Gooseberry is one of the most prominent Aboriginal women of early Sydney as well as the earliest women in Australia’s National Dictionary of Biography (ADB).5 While the source of surname is unknown, her first name is variously spelled Kaaroo, Carra and Caroo, though Ba-ran-gan, meaning goat-fish was another name.6 Her biographer, Keith Vincent Smith, estimates that she was born around 1777, eleven years before the establishment of a penal colony by the British in 1788 and the resulting steady incursion into Sydney and its surrounds. Cora Gooseberry was the daughter of Moorooboora, a prominent clan leader of the Murro-ore-dial south of Sydney, and she was the wife of Bungaree of the Kuringgai, the flamboyant “chief,” “king” and diplomat with early colonists at Sydney Cove. Scholars have discovered still more by examining her material possessions. Along with a clay pipe that Cora Gooseberry regularly smoked and a bronze mug, her two brass breastplates are still in existence.7 Her breastplates are

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Figure 6.1  With her eyes on her husband who wears a breastplate, Cora Gooseberry, puffs tobacco and covers herself in a blanket. Bungaree, a native chief of New South Wales, Accessed July 30, 2019, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj135290595 Augustus Earle & Charles Joseph Hullmandel, (1830).

extremely unusual not only because she was one of only eleven Indigenous women to-date known to have received one across Australia, but also because upon these worn and well-used objects are vivid hints of moment and activity: one breastplate depicts a fish “alive and swimming’ and the other depicts two fish ‘dangling on a carrying line, ready for cooking or for sale.”8 The evident wear on these unevenly polished objects point to both the active life of Cora Gooseberry, and the ongoing place of fishing for Eora women as they made lives in a world with increasing colonial disruption. These details about Cora Goosberry’s breastplates have been put forward by historians over the past decade to make a larger point about the survival

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of Aboriginal women. Woman survived the diseases of the early years of the colony as well as men, Grace Karskens has stressed, while Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow have argued that “invasion and dispossession were not just conducted by men over land, water and resources,” and that woman, “more quietly but just as tenaciously, sustained culture and teaching,” passing this onto their children.9 Given that Aboriginal women were long-overlooked in histories of the “foundational” first Australia colony, these unassuming statements point not only to a renewed search for women in the archives, but also to methodological shifts––the turn to material objects and extra-archival approaches more generally––along with conceptual changes. It is increasingly recognised that even when the records of Aboriginal women are slim or absent in the archives, that women’s lives continued on, and that long-held settler fantasies about all Aboriginal people fading away were patently untrue: in the 1890s, for instance, Aboriginal women continued to sing the cycle of songs necessary to begin, continue and complete the initiation or Būnăn ceremonies of the Yuin of the south coast despite immense transformations.10 It is also increasingly clear that women experienced and endured colonisation in culturally distinct and gendered ways, with particular economic and social patterns of life forming. In what follows, we trace some of the threads behind a broad yet understated shift in the recovery and interpretation of Aboriginal women’s lives in early colonial NSW. While this historical shift is still unfolding, there are enough tantalising hints to flesh out some women as individuals, with distinct personalities, drives, and interests and enough insights to make broader interpretations. We begin by exploring why Aboriginal women have been so marginalised. We then trace some of the conceptual and methodological threads, influences and trajectories behind the recovery and interpretation of Aboriginal women’s lives and experiences in early colonial NSW. Finally, we describe how cross-disciplinary approaches, drawing not only on colonial archives, but a diverse range of voices, objects, and sources will continue elucidating the lived experiences of Aboriginal women during these turbulent early decades. *** However little purchase Subaltern studies has had in field of Aboriginal and Australian history, Gayatri Spivak’s pointed observation, “if … the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow,” certainly rings in the Australian context.11 Aboriginal women have long been considered challenging subjects for historians due to the general paucity of colonial documentary evidence. Partly, this was an artefact of the gendered dynamics of Australia’s early colonial history and Indigenous cultural practices. The early colonial vanguard was overwhelmingly male in almost all cross-cultural encounters: the exploration of New South Wales was largely conducted by European men, and the First Fleet which

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established the first colony comprised approximately 1500 people, of which only 220 or so were women––marine wives and convicts––who rarely ventured beyond the borders of the colony.12 The first formalised encounters between the Eora and British were also often between men, with Aboriginal women not infrequently keeping their distance or even hiding from the strangers. Eora men, who largely went naked, were also visibly confused by the perceived lack of women amongst the clothed British, and even resorted to kidnapping some of the younger or beardless men to investigate whether they were in fact women.13 This is not to say that British men never encountered Eora women in the early period, but that often their interactions were fleeting, and as Ann McGrath observed, accounts of these meetings were mediated by British men’s fanciful projections of Eora women’s ostensible coquettishness and their own chivalry.14 The skewed gender dynamics of many cross-cultural interactions in the early colony meant that the names of Aboriginal men were also more likely to be recorded by the British male observers than those of women, making it more difficult to trace the lives of individual women over time.15 Even Boorong, the first female Eora to have sustained contact with the British and act as a translator and intermediary, is still little known today, her life story obscured because she was a girl, and further complicated because she was also known to the British as Abaroo, Araboo, and Abarough.16 The difficulties historians face in recovering the lives of early Aboriginal women are compounded by the dismissive tropes about Aboriginal women that were reiterated in colonial written and visual genres over long periods of time.17 The general assessment by the officers of the colony––whose writings remain key sources for early NSW history––was that women’s occupations such as fishing were little more than a form of drudgery, and that women were little more than chattels within Aboriginal society.18 The colony’s first judge-advocate David Collins, reported that if the women returned from fishing in their canoes “without sufficient quantity to make a meal for their tyrants, who were asleep at their ease, they would meet but a rude reception on their landing.”19 Titillating descriptions of Aboriginal men and women’s sexual relationships also circulated in colonial accounts, and indigenous marriage ceremonies were often seen as little more than “wife capture,” or, as Nicholas Riddick argues, “courtship with a club.”20 The marine lieutenant Watkin Tench for example, pronounced that Eora men would simply “seize [a woman] and drag her away to complete his purposes.”21 Such colonial tropes pervaded all quarters of colonial society: even William Noah, a rare convict voice in the written archive, reported that Aboriginal men were “Desperate Cruil to their Woman.”22 In short, many colonial accounts depicted Eora women as tragic victims of sexual violence, exploited by Aboriginal men for their labour. Another complexity for historians is the fact that the early records are more plentiful and accessible for the Sydney region than elsewhere, so that insights from this region can dominate despite the need for regional

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specificity. Yet the Hawkesbury River with its population of freed convicts, the grand agricultural estate at Camden and its steady stream of baptised aboriginal infants born to convict fathers, and Wiradjuri and Ngunnawal country west of the Blue Mountains with its population of convicts, stock and absentee landlords, all created separate conditions for cross-cultural interaction, and so, the experiences of Aboriginal women.23 Despite the challenges inherent in colonial sources, there has been a gradual shift since the 1990s in interpreting the lives of Aboriginal women in early NSW.24 While the early colony at Sydney had been viewed as a space for “convict history,” a landmark article in 1901 challenged this. Gender, Ann McGrath insisted, was integral to both Indigenous and Colonial society, and to say that the early sources were insufficient sources was not strictly true. By closely-reading other early officer’s writings, it was clear that Aboriginal women were approached in the cultural terms of British gentility: they were Venues and Eves, and flirtation and sexual attraction were present from both sides. That is, Aboriginal women were showing agency too––however unclear the rules and motives for engagement were.25 Within these chivalric, primitivist discourse within which the officers were writing, officers did include contrary points, but as McGrath argued, “evidence [which] did not fit the shape of the dominant discourse . . . was marginalised and soon forgotten.”26 McGrath’s article was not only prompted by the new wave of women’s history that emerged globally in the 1970s, but by the influx of new histories that emerged at the same time that ended what early Australian anthropologist W. E. Stanner famously described in the 1968 Boyer Lectures as “the Great Australian Silence” ––a “cult of forgetfulness practiced on a national scale” ––surrounding Australia’s Indigenous history.27 The first of these new histories emphasised the destruction and decimation of Indigenous society following colonisation. Narratives of resistance soon emerged, and then arguments about Indigenous strategy, agency and accommodation in their engagements with colonists and the colonial world.28 It was not until the publication of Henry Reynold’s seismic The Other Side of the Frontier that Aboriginal perspectives were seen to be possible to retrieve from archival sources for the first time.29 Significant insights on gendered experiences of colonialism began to emerge too: Lyndall Ryan’s book the Aboriginal Tasmanians wrote against a narrative of complete decimation to one of cultural persistence, and she explored some of the ways in which “Tasmanian Aboriginal women sought alliances with European whalers as a response to the new and desperate situation colonisation presented.”30 Similarly, Ann McGrath’s Born in the Cattle, a history set in the Northern Territory and drawing upon oral histories, had a strongly gendered analysis of women’s labour.31 These were some of the powerful new interpretations that created new concepts and threads in understanding the history of Australian history and race-relations. Nonetheless, in spite of periodic laments about the absence of Aboriginal women in histories of NSW, even after the new wave of women’s

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history that emerged globally in the 1970s, surprisingly little had still been undertaken in the early decades of the first and “foundational” colony of New South Wales.32 This was due to very particular circumstances and debates within Australia at the time. In 1992 the Mabo decision brought attention to the false legal claim of “terra nullius” and in 1997 the Bringing Them Home report, the final document of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, brought knowledge of what became known as the “Stolen Generation” to light.33 These entailed the renegotiation of the national discourse and narrative and much of the historiography of the 1990s and early 2000s was absorbed in synthesising findings to date and in the polarising public debates known as History Wars: heated confrontations over the extent of frontier violence, what constituted sound historical methodology, and over the use of terms like “invasion” and “genocide.”34 *** In 2000 the “mother” of Australian archaeology, Isabel McBryde, observed that “reciprocal courtesies and relationships” underlay the cross-cultural social world that developed in Sydney and spread with the growing footprint of the colonists. She argued that historians had neglected both these exchange relationships and the place of women within them.35 McBryde’s observation was in keeping with her wider archaeological practice. Against a methodology of stratified excavation in the 1960s––the digging of deep pits and an analysis of layers and dates––McBryde had conducted regional field surveys.36 Rock-art, axe-grinding grooves, shell middens, scattered tools, and ceremonial grounds all fell under her notice, and by using early word lists and photographs, a powerful new historical paradigm came into view. McBryde found Aboriginal trade routes and ceremonial social worlds, and realised she “could glimpse webs of connections and interactions, past social affinities and mythology.”37 As historian Billy Griffiths observed, McBryde “had found the shade of complex systems of exchange that was intimately entwined with the symbolic construction of the landscape.”38 Strikingly, it has been both expertise in disciplines outside of history, along and with research foci outside of early NSW, that have been key in delivering insights.39 Just as Ann McGrath had approached the early sources for Sydney with a background in oral histories from another place, McBryde had been reading sources for early Sydney with deep knowledge of the broader sorts of networks, exchanges and sociabilities that underlay Aboriginal society across the continent.40 It is no coincidence then that another historian who has delivered rich insights into the lives of Aboriginal women in early NSW is a trained and published archaeologist.41 In The Rocks, a book largely on convict Sydney, Grace Karskens challenged prevailing notions that Aboriginal people had largely disappeared from Sydney in the nineteenth century, and revealed the persistence of Aboriginal people and practices by augmenting archival

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records with archaeological data. An excavation in 1994 had uncovered a shard “of Chinese porcelain which had been flaked at its edges by Aboriginal hands to make a sharp useful tool … . An exchange of material culture had taken place, something was appropriated and deftly adapted to an entirely different purpose.”42 Her materialist impulse and training led Karskens to include archaeological research in her deeply influential text The Colony: a History of Sydney, and with it, a significant shift in understandings of Aboriginal women of early colonial Sydney and NSW. It was only women who fished with hook, Karskens noted, and having read the archaeological literature that reveals that fish hooks or burra, crafted from turban shells, are only 500 to 12,000 years old on the south-east coast, she surmised along with others that fishing revealed a women’s story: infants and children accompanied their mothers on the nowies (small crafts) as their mother fished, chewing cockle as burley and listening to the song of their mother tempting fish onto their line with persistence and skill.43 Perhaps, too, it was this fishing, now a staple food, that enabled women to carve out a larger place in economic and ceremonial life. Karskens argued that the balance of food control and all that went with it were threatened by the colonists and their fishing technologies as fishing had largely become a matter between men, both colonial and Indigenous.44 A further clue was the place-name Birrabirragalleon from 1790–91, a reef off the entrance to Sydney Harbour where the suffix “galleon” meant women and where “Dharawal women today still know as ‘Birra Birra’ or ‘Borra Birra’, place of waters, surf and fish, as a woman’s teaching place.”45 Even malgun, a practice in which the two top joints of the smallest finger of the hands was removed in infancy, and long shrouded in uncertainty, had a likely fishing explanation: “perhaps it denoted Eora women’s special status as both fishers and future wives.”46 With this conceptual thread, Grace Karskens was able to broaden the “deeply human” portrait of “the rebel” Barangaroo begun by Inga Clendinnen, though whether she truly was a “rebel” as Clendinnen asserted is, perhaps, less certain.47 Karskens noted that Barangaroo was older than other women the officers knew, around forty, and so “more mature, and possessing wisdom, status and influence.”48 With smallpox having significantly reduced the population and causing immeasurable disorientation, it was likely she was “was one of a reduced number who had the knowledge of Law, teaching and women’s rituals.” She married Bennelong, younger than her and the most significant broker with the colonists of early Sydney, following the death of her husband and two children to smallpox. Barangaroo seemed to have a very clear view of the world and how things should be: she tried to persuade Boorong, when she still lived with the Johnsons to return to her people, and she grew angry at the gift of fish by the colonists to Bennelong to distribute to Eora people as this was a clear overstep and threat to the women’s terrain.49 It was also Barangaroo who broke her husbands’ fishing spears to prevent him travelling with the colonists in 1791, who refused to wear clothing, and who tried to grab the whip off a flogger as he punished the back

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of a convict.50 Aboriginal women had their own priorities and acted upon them, much to the surprise of early colonists. *** It has been through rereading well-known sources, recovering new sources, and by rethinking assumptions and understandings of Aboriginal cultural practices and mores, that new insights into Aboriginal women have been gained. Amidst all the stereotypes in the colonial accounts of Aboriginal women as drudges, at other times these accounts provide precious detail of social life away from the colonists. Lieutenant Collins, for instance, noted that while the women were “out procur[ing] fish” on the harbour, they dipped their paddles in the water in time to the songs they sung together “with much good humour and harmony.”51 British accounts also reveal instances where men and women were more collaborative in their distribution of work, for example Collin’s observation of Bennelong’s “family party,” where he saw Bennelong’s sister Carangarang fishing and singing with his wife, probably Boorong, in a canoe while Bennelong looked after his sister’s child Kah-dierrang and his other sister War-re-weer napped. Upon their return to shore they distributed the fish, and while the women napped and ate rick-oysters Bennelong dressed and prepared the fish.52 Along with re-readings of well-known sources and new insights drawn from material culture, there has been an increase in findings of a cosmological and anthropological nature surrounding the lives and experiences of Aboriginal women in early NSW. Some of this research has been deductive in nature, where complete saturation in archival material and the steady accumulation of fragments has yielded insights. As early as 2002, intensive research and transcription of the archives of the Wellington Valley Mission, led to a finding about Indigenous cosmological interventions that is thought impossible: amongst the Wiradjuri who were known to these missionaries, there is evidence that Aboriginal men wanted their women to renew the practice of piercing septums and of taking part in ceremonies as part of resisting colonial (convict) men and the devastations of smallpox. Increasingly, there are other strong strands and conceptual and positioning points for research. These include an increasing dialogue between anthropological and historical approaches within colonial histories. Interpretive strands include the importance of exchange relationships and “right behaviour,” the centrality of gender and kin relationships and values, and the ways in which Indigenous society was a knowledge economy in which the exchange of knowledge along with its accumulation and hierarchical gradation is key.53 Another strand has been an increase in circulation of key concepts in colonial “contact zones” with dynamics of “co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices often within radically asymmetrical relations of power” and the recognition that to break the social world into colonial agents and enemies is far too simple.54 These ideas about the translation of goods and practices underlie the research of Pacific scholars like Nicholas Thomas and Tony Ballantyne, the ethnohistorical or action-centred readings of scholars

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like Inga Clendinnen, and the careful readings of Joshua Piker and Kate Fullagar.55 In doing so, there has been a shift away from ideas of change in Aboriginal society as a sign of cultural weakness and degradation and ideas of always superior colonial good and cultural values.56 More broadly still, there has been a revolution in the extent of historical writing grounded in the idea that the historic actions and decisions of Aboriginal individuals and communities made sense, even if that meaning is now obscured. If women are looked for in areas to do with cross-cultural relations, what also emerges is that they engaged with the colonists on their own terms as circumstances allowed. Rather than taking their children to the school instituted for Aboriginal Children in 1814 by Governor Macquarie where they could be ostensibly “civilised,” many women refused, and only thirty-seven children were enrolled during its seven year tenure despite the social pressures applied by many colonists.57 Many mothers prevented their children from attending the annual assembly with the Governor for over a decade where it was thought he would coerce them into leaving their children or take them, and for the same reason, they ran into the cover of bush and trees when clergymen came calling.58 Furthermore, there are instances of Aboriginal men having to negotiate with their wives and put in a plan for their care while absent to enable them to travel with colonists.59 Far from begin naïve about the cost of their engagements with the colonists, then, women emerge as highly conscious and strategic interlocutors. The unexpected ways in which Aboriginal women responded to colonial goods and values can also be seen in the realm of material culture, where historical, archaeological and anthropological approaches meet.60 Rather than comprehend the superiority and warmth of clothing either immediately or over time, it was incorporated in a variety of ways, many of which had little to do with the colonist’s expectations. Sometimes clothing was highly desired by Aboriginal women, and the cut, material and the origin of the object were central.61 Yet clothing was also abandoned when it was hot, dresses seem to have been worn with breasts well-exposed, and rather than wear rugs sewn into cloaks for reasons of modesty in 1837, stitches were unpicked: Aboriginal women along with men did not want to look as if they were wearing “Irish” cloaks.62 When bodies were covered, as they were increasingly from the 1830s, there seem to have been a mix of motivations: to enter into an economic relationship in which clothing was necessary, to escape the prurient or judging eyes of colonists in the urban areas, or as a measure of politeness by meeting sartorial expectations.63 Nonetheless, even Cora Gooseberry who well knew the colonist’s sensibilities about covered bodies seems to have been found north of Sydney as late as 1841 with “little on beyond an old straw bonnet.”64 *** Some of the most successful recoveries of the lives and experiences of Aboriginal women have taken biographical form. Within these approaches the development of itineraries has been a key feature, and the ways in which

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women––despite marriages or in fact because of them––maintained ties to country and created “a viable social network for the mid-nineteenth century by drawing on earlier traditional values and strategies.”65Consider Cora Gooseberry who, after the death of her husband Bungaree in 1830, became a leader amongst a regrouped band. In 1845 she told visiting painter and naturalist George French Angas not only that her father had seen the First Fleet arrive and his impressions, but also that her now-dead husband, Bungaree, headed the Sydney tribe in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived––a claim which was certainly false but that, once more, shored up her authority in time and place.66 This did not mean all knowledge and skill was for trade. While Cora Gooseberry did guide Angas and the police commissioner W. A Miles to some of the rock engraving sites that she said were “forbidden ground” and reserved for “koradji” or medicine men, the account she gave of them––what she said her father had told her––was of a “very vague and legendary kind.”67 Moreover, when another Aboriginal guide who was with her offered more information than she seemed to have thought warranted, “a look of anger” from Cora Gooseberry was said to have silenced him.68 We know, then, that Cora Gooseberry developed techniques to get on in the increasingly populous port city of Sydney. Centipede Rock, probably a large sandstone overhang in what became pleasure-ground connected to the Governor’s house at Sydney, was one of these places she could often be found.69 She also frequented Camp Cove, a sheltered beach off one of the headlands off Sydney Cove with a fresh-water source, excellent fishing grounds and nearby, extensive rock art of immense significance.70 The location of this camp site pre-existed colonial settlement, but it also became part of what Denis Byrne and Maria Nugent have described as a Sydney Town’s “backyard zone,” or a place Indigenous individuals could travel to and from in the space of a day.71 When Cora Gooseberry did visit Sydney, she had also developed a network of relationships she could rely upon. The ex-convict turned publican Edward Borton (1795–1867) who ran the Sydney Arms Hotel was just one of the people who extended hospitality. More than once he seems to have allowed her to sleep in his kitchen, and this is where she was found to have died during the night from natural causes in 1852. Edward Borton even arranged for her burial and tombstone at the Sydney Burial Ground on which he had inscribed “Queen of Sydney Tribe,” a gesture pointing to the two brass breastplates, also known as gorgets or king-plates, that Cora Gooseberry had in the possession marking her as “Queen” of Sydney (Figure 6.1).72 Biddy Giles or Bi-ya-rung (c. 1820–1890s), had ongoing connections with the full extent of Dharawal country throughout her life. She was unhappily married to Cooman, “King” of the Georges River, before marrying a Five Islands man, Paddy Burragalang, in the south. Following his death, she married the Englishman Biddy Giles and returned north to live near the Georges River.73 As Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow have explained, Biddy offered “hospitality and local knowledge to white travellers and adventurers,” and along with her reputation for knowing how to hunt and cook a goanna

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and knowing when and where to fish, she drew authority from her first marriage to the “King” Cooman––just as Cora Gooseberry’s authority (for the colonists) was built upon her marriage to Bungaree and family stories of Captain Cook, the now-famous navigator who charted part of the Australian coastline and so led to the founding of the penal colony.74 Such resilience can also be seen in the life of Maria Lock (c.1805–1878), a Dharug woman of western Sydney and the daughter of the “chief of the Richmond Tribes,” Yarramundi.75 One of the first pupils of the Native Institution in 1814, Maria won the school examination in 1819 against all the other students of the colony, indigenous and non-indigenous. She married Dicky, the son of one of the leading Indigenous intermediaries and brokers, Bennelong, in 1822 and after his death, married Robert Lock, a convict carpenter in 1824. In 1831 she successfully petitioned Governor Darling for the land granted to her brother, Nurragingy, in 1816 saying that she and her husband deserved “an honest livelihood, and provide a comfortable home for themselves, and their increasing family.”76 Though they soon removed to Liverpool with Reverend Robert Cartwright, they later returned to this land, land that historians have demonstrated was significant: it lay on a ridge above sea level and contained red silicrete outcrops, a raw material used for producing spears and tools and that was traded with coastal groups, and some of it was used as a camp site and some as a burial site into the 1920s.77 These sorts of details highlight the fact that Aboriginal women were far more likely to marry into the settler community than Aboriginal men, but that this did not mean they were simply acculturated into colonial society. Many women forged new patterns of life instead, incorporating both Indigenous and settler social relations, cultural practices and economies in complex, gendered ways, protecting knowledge and practices that the colonists had no right to or that they would try to alter. In the less-disturbed country of the Wiradjuri to the west of Sydney, one of the far colonial “frontiers” of the early NSW colony, there are glimpses of the lives and experiences of other Aboriginal women. Turandurey was a widow, approximately thirty years of age, who was persuaded by one of her elders to accompany and guide the surveyor Major Mitchell as he travelled their country to survey to the lower Darling River in 1836. She took along her daughter Ballandella, who was about four years old and soon after the expedition began, was maimed by a cart. Along with mothering her child–– the second in command on the expedition noted that in relation to her child that Turandurey’s “language of endearment and soothing is peculiarly soft and musical”––Turandurey had an expert knowledge of her country, and as a woman was able to speak freely to other Aboriginal men they met along the way when cultural protocols prevented Mitchell’s professional male guide Piper from speaking.78 Turandurey was also very forthright and resourceful, scorning the Aboriginal people they met who appeared ignorant of the colonists and their stock, and determined to try and ensure the safety and wellbeing of her daughter, even attempting to leave the expedition at one point by crossing a river, floating her daughter in front of her on a bark sheet.79

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Turandurey’s actions reveal the centrality of motherhood as well as the dangers that associating with the colonists at this time could provoke, both from the British expeditioners and from other Aboriginal clans suspicious of strangers travelling through their lands. *** In 2018, the need to improve the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community’s knowledge of Aboriginal women’s lives was recognised by the National Aboriginal and Islander Day of Observance Committee in their annual theme, “Because of her we can.”80 Yet it remains true that the lives and roles of Aboriginal women in Australia’s early colonial history remain sketchy, despite beginnings of a sea change detailed in this paper. One of the ways the absence of Aboriginal histories of Aboriginal women is being addressed, is through the new “Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography” which seeks to double the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander biographies in Australia’s national dictionary of biography, the ADB, over the next few years. Currently Indigenous people only represent 1.5% of all entries, even though today the indigenous population represents approximately 3% of the population, although prior to the 1840s, the Indigenous population of course represented the majority. This project is especially focused on including more Indigenous women, who are especially under-represented and only represent 21% of all Indigenous entries, and comprise a mere 48 out of more than 13,000 biographies in the ADB.81 In the future more Aboriginal women from colonial NSW will feature in the dictionary alongside Cora Gooseberry and Maria Locke, such as the aforementioned Barangaroo, Patyegarang, Boorong, Turandurey and Ballandella, whose experiences, in their diversity and in their resonances, throw light on the various patterns of the colonial world.

Conclusion The colonists had expected that Aboriginal men and women would quickly integrate into colonial society at its lowest levels: they were to be “useful serviceable” people, easily conciliated, who would perform necessary lowly laborious tasks to do with stocks, boats, water and timber.82 Yet, as is clear from the examples outlined above, Aboriginal women repeatedly defied the expectations of the colonists. From the first tentative exchanges around Sydney Cove, where Aboriginal women were perceived as “bashful” “Venuses and Eves,” as well as some surprising “lewd tricks,” women were involved in the frontier conflict, sometimes acting as a beguiling lure to the colonists, as warriors hid waiting to attack.83 They continued to defy expectations over time. Many would not assimilate or incorporate into the new cultural order, but selectively manoeuvred and responded to the pressures and opportunities wrought by the presence of colonists. Women were cultural mediators and brokers who fostered new strategies to survive, but they were also tenacious cultural protectors and transmitters––and this quiet continuity was subversive in itself.

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For all these diverse directions in scholarship on Aboriginal women in early New South Wales, many aspects about the lives and experiences of Indigenous women remain opaque. These range from “pragmatic” questions, such as the meanings of teeth gummed in hair and the songs of Aboriginal women, to larger issues about marriage, patterns of child rearing and colonial coercion as settlement progressed.84 Some of these questions may never be answered, and other questions remain to be asked. Yet if these subaltern women are going to be rescued from “the enormous condescension of posterity,” we suggest that it will not only be through detailed, expansive archival accumulation but through oral histories and the continued integration of insights drawn from other disciplines; material culture studies, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, ecology and more.85 Scholars and community members will need to continue to search outside of the written archival grain, and not just “against” or “along” it, if more insights into the lives of Aboriginal women in early NSW are to be found.86

Notes







With thanks to Maria Nugent and Ann Curthoys for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1 The Australian, 25 May 1838, 2, 2 This description is extrapolated from newspaper reports over several years. The Australian, 14 May 1840, 2; The Sydney Herald, 21 May 1841, 2. 3 Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser, 25 May 1844, 2. 4 Keith Vincent Smith, “Gooseberry, Cora (1777–1852),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gooseberry-cora-12,942/text23389, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 6 March 2019; The Australian, 27 May 1844, 3. For more on Queen Victoria and imperial relations, see Maria Nugent and Sarah Carter eds., Mistress of Everything: Queen Victoria in Indigenous Worlds (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 5 Until the 2019 publication of an entry on Mungo Lady (c. 42,000BP), Cora Gooseberry had the earliest estimated birth date of all Aboriginal women included in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, so is a rare inclusion in the ADB. Malcolm Allbrook, “Mungo Lady,” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu. edu.au/biography/mungo-lady-27,703/text35292, published online 2019, accessed online 21 June 2020. 6 Keith Vincent Smith, “Gooseberry, Cora (1777–1852),“Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gooseberry-cora-12,942/text23389, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 6 March 2019. 7 “Queen Gooseberry’s rum mug”, [ca. 1800], held at State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), R 252. 8 Troy counted nine own breastplates given to Aboriginal women, including Cora Gooseberry’s two, in addition to two in photographs. Ibid., 129–139. Heather Goodall and Allison Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience: Aboriginal People on Sydney’s Georges River (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009), 62. See also Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2009), 439. The first plate is held by the Mitchell Library, and the second by the Australian Museum.

84  Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi 9 Goodall and Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience, 63. 10 R. H. Mathews, “The Būnăn Ceremony of New South Wales,” American Anthropologist 9, no. 10 (1896): 327–44. On Aboriginal persistence, see Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2017), 90–93; Maria Nugent, Botany Bay; Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy Land in Aboriginal politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972, (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1996); see also Peter Read and Suzana Sukovic, “Pieces of a Thousand Stories: Repatriation of the History of Aboriginal Sydney,” Cosmopolitan Civil Societies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 2, no. 3 (2010): 40–54; Maria Nugent, ‘“You really only made it because you needed the money”: Aboriginal women and shellwork production, 1870s to 1970s,” Labour History, vol. 101, (2011), 71–89; Maria Nugent, Botany Bay: where histories meet, (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2005).dv. 11 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, (London: Macmillan, 1988), 287. For a discussion on why Subaltern Studies was not fully received in the Australian context, see Tony Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge,” in The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives, ed. Sarah Stockwell (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 184–87. 12 Grace Karskens, “The Early Colonial Presence, 1788–1822,” in The Cambridge History of Australia, eds. Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 91. 13 See, for instance, Shino Konishi, Maria Nugent, and Tiffany Shellam eds., Indigenous Intermediaries: New Perspectives on Exploration Archives (Acton: ANU Press, 2015); Tiffany Shellam, Maria Nugent, Shino Konishi, and Allison Cadzow, eds. Brokers and Boundaries: Colonial Exploration in Indigenous Territory. Acton: ANU Press, 2016; Tiffany Shellam, Meeting the Waylo: Aboriginal Encounters in the Archipelago, Crawley: UWA Press, 2020. 14 Ann McGrath, “The White Man’s Looking Glass’—Aboriginal-Colonial Gender Relations at Port Jackson”, Australian Historical Studies 24, no. 95 (1990): 189–206. 15 Goodall and Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience, 87, 91. 16 An exception here is Victoria Haskins, “The Chaplain’s Wife and the Native girl,” Australian Feminist Studies, 27, 73, (2012): 259–268. 17 Liz Conor, Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women (Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2016), 37. 18 Konishi, The Aboriginal Male in the Enlightenment World, 130–6. 19 Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales I, 499. 20 Shino Konishi, The Aboriginal male in the Enlightenment World, (Pickering & Chatto London, 2012), 73. 21 Tench, cited in Konishi, The Aboriginal male in the Enlightenment World, 73. 22 William Noah, Voyage to Sydney in the Ship Hillsborough [1798–1799] and a Description of the Colony [1799], (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1978), 73. 23 T. M Perry, Australia’s First Frontier: The Spread of Settlement in New South Wales, 1788–1829 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963), 17–42; Lisa Ford and David Andrew Roberts, “Expansion, 1820–50,” in Alison Bashford and Stuart McIntyre eds., The Cambridge History of Australia: Volume 1. Indigenous and Colonial Australia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 121–48; David Andrew Roberts, “Beyond ‘the Crossing’: The Restless Frontier at Bathurst in the 1820s,” Journal of Australian Colonial History 16 (2014): 244–259; Alan Atkinson, Camden: Farm and Village Life in Early New South Wales, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988), 228–232. 24 See, for example, Nancy M Williams and Lesley Jolly, “From time immemorial: gender relations in Aboriginal societies before white contact”, in Gender relations in Australia; domination and negotiation, eds., Kay Saunders and Raymond

Searching in the shadows  85 Evans (Sydney; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 9–19; Judy Atkinson, “Violence in Aboriginal Australia: Colonisation and Gender,” Aboriginal and Islander Health Worker Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, (1990): 5–21. 25 Ann McGrath, “‘The White Man’s Looking Glass’—Aboriginal-Colonial Gender Relations at Port Jackson,” Australian Historical Studies 24, no. 95 (1990): 189–206. 26 Ann McGrath, “‘Modern Stone-Age Slavery”: Images of Aboriginal Labour and Sexuality,” Labour History 69 (1995), 35; see also Shino Konishi “‘Wanton with Plenty’ Questioning Ethno-Historical Constructions of Sexual Savagery in Aboriginal Societies, 1788–1803,” Australian Historical Studies 39, no. 3 (2008): 356–72. 27 W. E. H. Stanner, The Dreaming and Other Essays, (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009), 188–89. 28 For a detailed discussion see Lorenzo Veracini, “A Prehistory of Australia’s History Wars: The Evolution of Aboriginal History during the 1970s and 1980s,” Australian Journal of Politics & History 52, no. 3 (2006): 439–54; Ann Curthoys, “Aboriginal History”, in The Oxford companion to Australian history, eds., G Davison, J Hirst, and S Macintyre, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998). 29 Though C.D. Rowley preceded Reynolds his Aboriginals in Australian Society, (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1969), it was Reynolds work that brought about a seismic shift. R. Broome, “Historians, Aborigines and Australia: Writing the National Past,” in In the Age of Mabo: History, Aborigines and Australia, ed. B. Attwood, (Sydney: 1996), 69; Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia, (Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1981); Andrew Markus cited in Bain Attwood, “Historiography on the Australian Frontier,” in Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, ed. Bain Attwood and S. G. Foster (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2003), 171. 30 Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1981); Ann Curthoys and Clive Moore, “Working for the White People: An Historiographic Essay on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Labour,” Labour History, no. 69, Special issue: Aboriginal Workers (1995), 12. 31 Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987); Curthoys and Moore, “Working for the White People”, 104. 32 For instance, Curthoys and Moore, “Working for the White People”. Significantly, histories of Aboriginal women in Canada were developing at this time. See Sarah Carter and Patricia A. McCormack eds, Recollecting: lives of Aboriginal women of the Canadian northwest and borderlands, (Edmonton: Athabasca University, 2011). 33 Lorenzo Veracini, “Of a ‘Contested Ground’ and an ‘Indelible Stain’: A Difficult Reconciliation Between Australia and its Aboriginal History During the 1990s and 2000s,” Aboriginal History, 27 (2003): 224–239. 34 Ibid.; Attwood, In the Age of Mabo; Ann McGrath ed., Contested ground. 35 McBryde, “‘Barter... immediately Commenced to the Satisfaction of Both Parties”, 245–284. 36 Isabel McBryde, Aboriginal prehistory in New England: an archaeological survey of northeastern New South Wales, (Sydney: Sydney University Press 1974); Isabel McBryde, “Travellers in Storied Landscapes: A Case Study in Exchanges and Heritage,” Aboriginal History (2000), 24: 152–74. 37 Billy Griffiths, Deep Time Dreaming, (Melbourne, Black Inc.: 2018), 47. 38 Ibid. 39 For a discussion of some of these shifts, Nugent and Carter, “Introduction: Indigenous Histories, Settler Colonies and Queen Victoria,” in Mistress of Everything, 11.

86  Annemarie McLaren and Shino Konishi 40 See, for example, Isabel McBryde, “Goods from another country: Exchange networks and the people of the Lake Eyre Basin,” in Australians to 1788 eds., D.J. Mulvaney and J.P. White (Broadway, NSW: Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates), 1987: 252–273. 41 For a discussion of Karskens’ training, see Tom Griffiths, The Art of Time Travel: Historians and their Craft (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2016), 273–302. See also Meg Foster, “Drawing the historian back into history: creativity, writing, and The Art of Time Travel,” Rethinking History, 22:12018: 137–153. 10.1080/13642529.2017.1421119. Paul Irish, whose research has uncovered much about Cora Goosberry, is also a practicing archaeologist. 42 Grace Karskens, The Rocks, 17. 43 Here, Karskens was influenced by archaeologists Sandra Bowdler and Ian Walters. See Karsken, the Colony, 407. 44 Karskens, The Colony, 401–408. 45 Ibid., 44. 46 Karskens, The Colony, 38. 47 Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2005, 222–24. Karskens, the Colony, 401–421. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 403. 50 Ibid., 51 Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 492. 52 Ibid. Collins does not name Bennelong’s wife, but describes her as young suggesting this was Boorong, as the British often commented that Barangaroo was older than Bennelong, and approximately forty when they first met her. 53 Richard Broome, “‘There Were Vegetables Every Year Mr. Green was Here’: Right Behaviour and the Struggle for Autonomy at Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve”, History Australia, 3:2, (2006), 43.1–43. See, for instance, “‘Barter... immediately Commenced to the Satisfaction of Both Parties”; Libby Connors, Warrior: A Legendary Leader’s Dramatic Life and Violent Death on the Colonial Frontier, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015); Annemarie McLaren, “Reading the Entangled Life of Goggey, an Aboriginal Man on the Fringes of Early Colonial Sydney”, Ethnohistory 65, no. 2 (2018): 439–515. 54 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992, 7; see also Lynette Russell, “‘Either, Or, Neither Nor’: Resisting the Production of Gender, Race and Class Dichotomies in the Pre-Colonial Period,” in The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities, eds E.C. Casella and C. Fowler, (Boston: Springer, 2005): 33–51. 55 See, for instance, Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific, (Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press, 1991); Inga Clendinnen, “Spearing the Governor,” Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 118, (2002): 157–74. 56 See, for instance, Grace Karskens, “Red Coat, Blue Jacket, Black Skin: Aboriginal Men and Clothing in Early New South Wales,” Aboriginal History 35 (2011): 1–36. 57 Jack Brook and Jim Kohen, The Parramatta Native Institution and the Black Town: A History, (Kensington: New South Wales University Press, 1991). 58 Jane Lydon, “Men in black: the Blacktown Native Institution and the Origins of the stolen generation” in Object Lessons: Archaeology and Heritage in Australia (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2005), 201–224; Brook and Kohen, the Parramatta Native Institution, 223. 59 Annemarie McLaren, “No Fish, No House, No Melons: the Earliest Aboriginal Guides in Colonial New South Wales”, Aboriginal History, vol. 43", (forthcoming, 2020).

Searching in the shadows  87 60 Ballantyne, “Colonial Knowledge,”’ 185. 61 Annemarie McLaren, “Negotiating Entanglement: Reading AboriginalColonial Exchanges in Early New South Wales, 1788–1835”, PhD Diss., Australian National University, 2018. 62 Hilary M. Carey and David Andrew Roberts, eds., The Wellington Valley Project. Letters and Journals Relating to the Church Missionary Society Mission to Wellington Valley, NSW, 1830–45. A Critical Electronic Edition, 2002, viewed 30 March 2020, https://downloads.newcastle.edu.au/library/cultural%20collections/the-wellington-valley-project/gunther/gunther-journals/ 63 McLaren, “Negotiating Entanglement”, 97–142. 64 Smith, “Gooseberry, Cora (1777–1852)”. 65 For instance, Irish, Hidden in Plain View; Goodall and Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience, 87. 66 Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 88; Smith, “Gooseberry, Cora (1777–1852)”. 67 George French Angas, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 July 1877, 2. 68 Ibid., 2. 69 Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View: Nineteenth-Century Aboriginal People and Places in Coastal Sydney, PhD Diss, University of New South Wales, 2014, 107. 70 Ibid, 99–103; Keith Vincent Smith, King Bungaree, a Sydney Aborigine meets the Great South Pacific Explorers, 1799–1830, Kenthurst; Kangaroo Press, 1992, 145–148. 71 D. Byrne and M. Nugent, Mapping Attachment: A spatial approach to Aboriginal post-contact heritage (Sydney: Department of Environment and Conservation, 2004), 126. 72 Irish, Hidden in Plain View, PhD Thesis, 147; Jakelin Troy, King Plates: A History of Aboriginal Gorgets (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1993). 73 For more on some of these complex and interwoven lives, see Jim Kohen, Daruganora: Darug Country—the Place and the People (Darug Tribal Aboriginal Corporation, 2006), 41–58. 74 Goodall and Cadzow, Rivers and Resilience, 92; Nugent, Botany Bay, 39–40. 75 Naomi Parry, “Lock, Maria (1805–1878)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu. edu.au/biography/lock-maria-13,050/text23599, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 23 July 2019. 76 Ibid. 77 Brook and Kohen, The Native Institution, 46. 78 Jack Brook, “The Widow and the Child”, Aboriginal History 12, 1998, 5. 79 Allison Cadzow, “Guided by Her: Aboriginal Women’s Participation in Australian Expeditions,” in Brokers and Boundaries, 102–6. 80 Verass, Sophie Matthew Webb and Amelia Gilbert., “Because of Her, We Can: Local Women Leaving Legacies,” National Indigenous Television, Digital Photo Album, 8 July 2018, https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/feature/because-her-we-canlocal-women-leaving-legacies, accessed 20 July 2019. 81 Shino Konishi, “An Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography,” in True Biographies of Nations’: the Cultural Journeys of Dictionaries of Biography edited by Karen Fox, (Canberra: ANU Press, 2019), 39–158. 82 Grace Karskens, “Red Coat, Blue Jacket, Black Skin,” 20. 83 Karskens, The Colony, 402. 84 Cited in Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, “Comment: Generational Turns.” The American Historical Review 117, no. 3 (2012): 804–13. 85 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1980 [1963]), 12. 86 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the archival grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Chapter 7

Feminist voice(s) in South African curriculum-making and dissemination Bernice Badal

Introduction Postcolonial Marxist theorist Gramsci views subalterns as those who are “subordinated by hegemony and excluded from any meaningful role in regimes of power.”1 On the other hand, Spivak’s version of postcolonial theory offers breeding ground for feminist perspectives on the position of the subaltern within frameworks of power.2 Commonly, these prominent theorists argue that subaltern classes are those individuals or groups that are subject to domination and control subordinated by dominant worldviews, and excluded from having any meaningful positions from which to speak. However, they propose that subalterns have opportunities to gain “voice” through conflict and contestation which allows them opportunities to subvert the authority of those who hold hegemonic power over them. This possibility promotes the view that there are opportunities for reimagined voice in terrains that subordinate, marginalise, and restrain people’s ability to speak or act. It is well-known that the educational arena is a space that operates within discourses of power and marginalisation of teacher voice.3 Amongst others, these theorists (like Michael Apple and Stephen Ball) have exposed certain practices that seek to control the curriculum and its intended effects on teachers and learners. Teachers are expected to follow the mandates of external authority, accepting external pronouncements as the truth. Belenky et al., call this phenomenon, “silent knowing” as teachers return the words of authority from curriculum texts which feed into their pedagogy.4 This brings to the fore questions of the sociology of schooling and the silences that external constructions of identity and knowledge convey with homogenisation of the curriculum and teachers. Sociology in this sense refers to notions of diversity which is fundamental to the creation, and maintenance of democratic societies. Yet, these traditions are still given limited attention in the school space, creating a need for spaces that disrupt traditional and hierarchical power structures that dilute the organic processes of teaching by suppressing teacher’s voice.5 In light of this phenomenon, the chapter foregrounds the effects of historically marginalised voices on teachers’ construction and dissemination of knowledge. Selected South African female teachers’ experiences

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of curriculum construction, development, and dissemination of knowledge are explored with particular implications for issues of gender awareness as a democratic ideal for future societies. It is well known in the educational field that beliefs, reflective judgement, ways of knowing and epistemological theories play important roles in the development of self.6 For this chapter, fundamental enquiry relating to construction and dissemination of knowledge within frameworks of social power is concerned with women’s ways of knowing. Emancipation for female teachers is about gaining voice and using it in the contexts they are placed to raise awareness and to continue to agitate on behalf of themselves and those who cannot speak. This key role must be investigated on a continuous basis to evaluate the extent to which women have been empowered to speak out or use their emancipated freedom to empower others. For this chapter, the notion of voice is viewed as the valuing of women’s ways of knowing as a means to the disruption of power structures which serve to silence women.7 As a recurring motif, voice provides the framework to suggest that for women, finding voice symbolically involves a journey that women take to “put the knower back into the known” and to reclaim the power of their own minds.8 It is therefore expected that female teachers’ values and beliefs emerging from their own histories would shape their ways of knowing. This knowledge would allow them to bring to light certain established patterns in order to create awareness among learners of certain bias and prejudice and unjust patterns. Female teachers whose lived experiences construct their gendered identities have a responsibility towards the interrogation of curriculum texts, and theories that explicate how feminine identity and gender have been conceptualised in the curriculum. This knowledge would rouse awareness of omissions in the curriculum related to issues of social change and allow them to reflect on the implications of their own roles in developing strategies for social change. Constructed knowledge that is disseminated by teachers, needs to be accompanied by an understanding of the unequal relationships in the construction and dissemination of knowledge. This conceptualisation would instil a need to validate the voice of those that are marginalised, of the need for social change through constructed knowledge of human nature, and of unequal power relationship that are maintained by institutions such as schools. Differences that exist in power relationships between males and females, if left unchallenged, enable the dominant gender to perpetuate existing oppressive structures. This occurrence creates behaviour patterns such as gender bias which emerge from gender norms that they are exposed to in their everyday lives. As crucial agents in the teaching space, female teachers need to steer the vehicle of change opening up spaces for enlightenment, transformation, cognitive development, and progressive thinking. Women who have been educated within the past and current systems are emblems of the system of education through which they have traversed. Therefore, it provides a starting point for further discussions on the degree to which education has empowered women and continues to do so. As a building

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block, it may offer reasons why educated women do not agitate for more gender-related issues or become activists for transformative pedagogy.

History and background to the study South Africa is renowned for its multicultural diversity and emancipat­ion from an oppressive regime. The ushering of democracy and emancipation from oppres­sion created hopes for democratic ideals in all spheres of public life. However, teacher professional training, not overtly grounded in progressive philosophy, still promotes traditional philosophies and practices. This phenomenon has resulted in historic control over teachers’ knowledge construction and dissemination. Historically, curriculum policies were prejudiced, static, and sexist and not receptive to the needs of learners irrespective of race and ethnic diversity.9 The rigidity of the apartheid governments’ curriculum construction geared towards suppression of any form of activism or creative thought shaped perspectives and behaviour that still emerges today in teachers’ pedagogy. In consideration of this dogmatic indoctrination, the new government, after the dismantling of apartheid, attempted to construct progressive curriculum policies that were in contrast to the previous regime. Intent on rejuvenating a curriculum based on inequality, the South African government focused primarily on addressing issues of equity and content delivery. The government’s desire for a national curriculum premised on the need for consistency across race, class, and context, promoted the creation of a standardised curriculum and offerings in each subject. The apartheid ideology promoting the interest of the minority is extensively researched and quoted but its back to basics approach is said to mirror current fundamental policy constructions. Currently, the National Curriculum and Assessment policy (CAPS) document for English home languages grades 10–12 states that the following should be considered, Human rights, inclusivity, environmental and social justice: infusing the principles and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The National curriculum policy is sensitive to issues of diversity such as poverty, inequality, race, gender, language, age, disability and other factors.10 As an appendix in a National Policy document the cruciality of gender bias is overlooked and therefore remains a rhetoric. While there is no overt gender discrimination in educational policies in South Africa, there does not seem to be any real commitment to raising awareness of women’s empowerment or addressing gender bias. Moreover, the decision-makers still remain largely male in an occupation dominated by female teachers. As a field of study, the curriculum has produced contentious issues relating to the sociology of education. Globally, scholars have raised many questions

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about curriculum knowledge, dissemination, and development. While there has been much research on teachers’ responses and attitudes to curriculum change, how gender influences teachers’ views of themselves in response to the curriculum is under-researched, particularly in South Africa. Notions of teachers’ beliefs about gender would indicate how they negotiate the curriculum addressing omissions in structured content in situations of mandated change.

Literature review Foucault has stated that specific discourses embedded with historical meanings serve particular interests in society.11 These meanings endure as people are born into these cultures and inherit them from birth. There are specific ways of acquiring knowledge and each way is power laden. Foucault suggests that historical meanings influence the way that we organise knowledge about the world and behave accordingly.12 He aptly proposes that the problem with being normatvitised in a particular ordered way of thinking is that the order becomes invisible after a while and people stop questioning and accept the status quo. He advocates that people inherit historical meanings that serve as a normalising function thus, becoming naturalised as a result of power and domination. Africa and elsewhere is known for patriarchal suppression of women especially in terms of male centric hierarchies that promote the interests of men. Binary categorisations of women by societal institutions create certain expectations of men and women. These role creations embed certain beliefs to which individuals conform. Stromquist argued that among social structures, hierarchies are produced which become internalised in belief systems that are seldom contested─hence, educational systems play a crucial role in unveiling these dominant structures.13 In Education still under siege, Aronowitz and Giroux point out that school structures are known to sustain teachers’ positions as subalterns.14 Therefore, the question posed by Spivak has relevance in this context. She asks, “Can the subaltern speak?”15 This question, which has reverberated in the texts of scholars concerned with issues of voice, power and silencing, draws our attention to the perceptions of voice in its form and absence foregrounding the struggle for voice in the field of education. The educational system has certain norms that pattern people’s behaviour. While there are several formal rules that all teachers need to adhere to, there are certain hidden expectations that go unnoticed unless one is critically aware of them. The problem with hidden social norms is that they are so deeply buried in the system that people may be unaware of the effects on their own behaviour and those of others. Social norms prevalent in the schooling system construct homogenised views of teachers through universal definitions which neutralises gender specifications. An understanding of how teachers’ gender influences their relationship with knowledge, is crucial under these conditions. Constructed and standardised images which ensures compliance is maintained by bureaucratic

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machinery that includes a system of whole school and individual teacher monitoring. Thus, teachers learn that being a good civil servant means pleasing external voices and working towards the preferred image. Badal found that teachers who act according to the script were rewarded and those who do not were often reprimanded.16 This often creates the space for teachers to suppress their own voice to please external bureaucrats thus, surrendering their right to emancipatory behaviour. Dislocation and disjuncture between official norms of teacher images and their own policy behaviour have been studied at length. However, in the South African context the dichotomy between teachers’ official roles and their practices has been linked to contextual variation.17 These scholars and other international critics of educational policy focus on the political construct of the teacher, and reference to social power is often related to race, histories, and disparate contexts. Therefore, the literature offers limited critique on how standardisation of teacher roles influence gender awareness and social power related to teachers’ gendered identities. Current global discourse overshadows the need to advocate gender sensitivity. In light of this, it becomes apparent that female teachers, as products of their own histories, should become their own activists to address the omission. This kind of voice development is, according to Stromquist, a political process which produces “consciousness among policy makers” to bring about societal change about women to neutralise standardisation.18 Pilcher and Whelehan aptly point out that gender uniformity attempts “to extend to women the same rights and privileges that men have through identifying areas of unequal treatment and eliminating them via legal reforms.”19 Lorber problematises this occurrence by revealing that when sameness is promoted in terms of social status and legal rights, this is commonly associated with gender equality.20 Placing women in masculine patterns of life assumes that equality can be achieved through gender neutrality.21 This chapter argues that sameness creates conditions where teachers become unconscious of gender issues and technical in the dissemination of knowledge. These conditions promote gender opaqueness. By contrast, acknowledging diversity is a fundamental feature of the curriculum. Diversity in broad terms includes aspects of race, gender, sexuality, and class.22 However, for the purposes of this chapter, I have focused on diversity and difference as variances in terms of gender. The chapter intends to show how experiences construct a person and how patriarchal education systems create patterned behaviour. Framing the discourse in terms of female’s ways of knowing demonstrates its impact on women’s practices. Hence, the discussion does not necessarily focus on feminism in general but on how teachers approach content in terms of diversity and the value of this awareness in terms of socialising their learners for future behaviour in society. Language orders the social world and constructs the society that we live in. Hence, Alvesson and Kärreman argue that “the stuff beyond the text function[s] as a powerful ordering force.”23 By looking at language constructions, teachers

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can expose power relations hidden in discourses. In canonical literature and other texts, gender representation acquires intricate and multifarious meanings through discourses of power. Gender enacted in textual representations is informed by notions of male and female positioning in society. Teachers’ and learners’ interactions with the text make it a narrative site of struggle. Thus, the issue of representation, reimagining, and reproduction takes a critical role in the analysis of the text.

Theoretical moorings Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule discuss women’s ways of knowing that emerged from a conducted study with women from various contexts.24 Arising out of a concern over why women experience themselves as peripheral to “central interests and development” they explored female alienation in academic institutions. Based on reports from their female participants the authors have identified specific ways of knowing that women have cultivated and constructed knowledge within contexts that have denigrated and neglected their intellectual capital and growth. Consequently, Belenky et al’s participants constructed five epistemological stances or ways of knowing from which women viewed reality that shaped their perspectives about truth, knowledge, and authority.25 The contribution of these theorists lies in explication of the struggle that women experience in claiming the power of their own ways of thinking. In the context of this study this claim is especially significant in the light of the absence of female activist voices in the field of education; characterised as traditionally male-dominated spaces. Ways of knowing have the potential to enable or constrain individuals as it is dependent on individual’s construction of the world. The five stances are stated as: silence, subjective knowing, received knowing, procedural knowing, and constructed knowing. This framework was very important to this study as it provided images or metaphors for the paths that women take in the construction and dissemination of knowledge. A range of terms related to seeking, acquiring, and being heard were used to describe the silence in and of their lives. Thus, the metaphor of voice becomes emblematic of a journey that should be undertaken to reclaim the power of one’s own cognitive domain to find individual voices. As knowers, teachers’ ways of knowing connect with various layers of the mandated curriculum. Belenky et al’s., theory allows the construction of positions that emerge from subjective perspectives or life experiences.26 It therefore illuminates how meaning is constructed by female teachers in context-specific situations such as classrooms and curriculum making. Teachers as agents of transformation, are mediators and transmitters of knowledge. As suppliers of knowledge they are producers and constructors of realities. The history of curriculum-making, development, and dissemination reveals that the role of gender stereotyping in texts and in classroom discourse has been either sequestered or skewed in favour of patriarchal constructions of gender. The

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positioning of women in texts has the potential to produce meanings related to gender that can become naturalised and normative in the classroom. As a microcosm of society these attitudes and norms are therefore ingrained and later reproduced. The perspectives that the authors describe as women’s ways of knowing provide an organising framework for the ways that the beliefs and actions of the candidates in my study reveal how women navigate contested spaces to find voice.

Research methodology This chapter aims to foreground female teachers’ voices in what Creswell calls a three-dimensional space that articulates complex intricacies of individuals’ interaction, continuity, and situation.27 From a methodological point this qualitative case study, based in the constructivist/interpretative paradigm, proceeds hermeneutically by examining individual ways of knowing as organically as possible, aiming to compare findings dialectically before reaching consensus. Meanings derived from teachers’ narratives relating to their experiences of the potential to find voice validate the notion that individuals construct knowledge through their own perceptions of constraints and challenges in their environments. Recorded data collected from semi-structured interviews enabled an exploration of complex and subtle phenomena that were discursively constructed by the participants. Open-ended questions related to their experiences in the educational space led them to select the experiences they wanted to share in their evaluations of their capacity for voice in the current paradigm of educational change. Teachers were purposefully selected because of their positions in the urban school context in South Africa. Equity is a perennial problem in South Africa because of apartheid’s legacy of racial prejudice, hence, the schools and teachers’ systemic and economic experiences also differed. However, what they had in common was their status as English teachers, teaching learners between the ages of 14–18 years using the same curriculum in the same school district. This means that they had similar experiences with curriculum development and external prescription which influenced their pedagogy. Teachers’ status as English teachers was crucial as they taught a discipline that involved engagement with selected texts that incorporated gender representations. These teachers lead learners to interrogate texts with which they also have prior experience. The themes and topics that emerge in their pedagogical practices would reflect the worldview of the teacher and their capacity to encourage voice and gender sensitivities. Hermeneutics has become “an intellectual touchstone for contemporary human sciences research”28 despite its earlier literary traditions. Its tenet that the reader and the text are engaged in close collaboration has implications for teacher’s involvement with the texts that they teach and for interpretation of the data. It has allowed the researcher to arrive at holistic interpretation of the data through a cyclical

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movement of interpretation. Therefore, it enabled an examination of female teachers’ voices by exploring underlying assumptions, tacit beliefs, and capacity to see beyond the immediate content in the policy environment. Feminist theoretical lens made possible attention to the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of power and options for voice within structures that suppress voice. Listening and watching intently with feminist theoretical lens, I listened for articulations of unheard and unimagined voice and silences pertaining to their practices.

Findings This section presents the findings of my study from research data that was accumulated over a period of 8 months. Teachers’ spoken voices (italicised within the body of the text) comingles with mine to authenticate the themes and arguments discussed. Their’ discourses revealed that teachers were critically aware of injustice and prejudice in the government-appointed policy designers’ efforts to suppress teacher voice. Notably, none of the candidates referred to gender in their raised voices on external constructions and control of their work. However, when the conversation turned to their own efforts, their anger and strident voices which started with a “bang” gradually became a “whimper” of compliance. Their chosen compliant position revealed that awareness did not necessarily spark activism or movements for change. Findings indicated that female teachers reported similar experiences of oppression and silencing in their pedagogies and professional roles as teachers. First, they expressed disappointment over their given homogenous identity in the prescribed curriculum, but they made weak or no attempts to construct their own social and political identity. Second, as silenced receivers of knowledge they did not challenge mainstream hegemonic constructions of the homogenised curriculum. Third, they showed a lack of awareness for the need to foreground issues related to gender in their classroom practices. The data therefore distilled three main themes that were interpreted as i) The prescribed curriculum as conflict and contestation; ii) Teacher status within systemic structures; iii) Lack of awareness for the need to become activists for social justice. The prescribed curriculum as conflict and contestation Commonly, the candidates’ beliefs converged around bureaucratic orientations of the policy paradigm that mandated them to follow the polyphonic voices of others while disregarding their own accumulated histories. Consequently, they reported experiencing objectification and reduced authority. Lack of space to influence their own practices made them dependent on external constructions and received knowledge. In this regard, Melisiwe’s voice is most strident,

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I get comfortable with a new policy that is given then I will have to throw away everything … and start again. Identification of lack of opportunity to contribute to knowledge construction encouraged conflict and contestation, which created a dichotomy between policymakers’ aims and teachers’ beliefs about the dissemination of knowledge. However, teachers’ beliefs about their contribution to knowledge creation centred on their proximity to the learner and knowledge of contextual dynamics only. It became clear that teachers indicated a strong reliance on experiential knowledge that was not grounded in theoretical foundations: You cannot include your own knowledge, beliefs and feelings… You are just an empty box waiting to be filled with knowledge. The teacher has better knowledge because we have knowledge of what works and what does not. We should be the ones deciding and not those who do not stand in the classroom. We may not know the theory, but we have knowledge of actual teaching. (Melisiwe) Teacher status within systemic structures Teachers’ discourses reveal that both macro-political and micro-social power structures converge to suppress their capacity for transformative teaching. Discourses in this theme relates to external constructions of teacher status and the influence of patriarchal structures on teachers’ voices. I was struck by the similarity in all the candidates’ responses to constructions of teacher identity as candidates introduced themselves as, “I am a teacher.” Silence on the feature relating to their gender signalled that teacher is a homogenised construction. Any reference to breaking the mould of sameness and uniformity linked to homogenised instruction rather than speaking in terms of voicing their authority as female voices. Teachers’ discourses revealed that the language of the current reform entrenched their positions as subjects of the state. As loyal subjects, they were compelled to comply with external prescriptions. They therefore viewed all instructions and guidance from above as mandated by the government. This perception influenced their capacity for voice as they believed that non-compliance would be tantamount to dereliction of duty. Their subaltern positions were reflected in the repetitive use of the terms follow, comply, and force. These words became a recurring motif of loss and compliance. Although Melisiwe was very vocal in her criticism of external constructions of her role, she has come to accept that she is compelled to submit without challenging: “You must just follow here. They say its policy, so we cannot challenge.” She expresses concerns that if she did not follow then she would be viewed as dereliction of duty: “…they would say I am a non-compliant teacher and I am not doing my job.”

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Nevertheless, their responses indicated that they did not have embedded beliefs of theories that guided their decisions. Melisiwe admitted, “I can just go into the classroom and teach.” While Nene reported that her philosophy was “not to resist.” On the other hand, the other four candidates stated teaching philosophies linked to learners’ acquisition of “knowledge for success in the real world.” Thus, indicating that they did not necessarily think about theories relating to knowledge acquisition but focus on policy goals or outcomes. Teachers’ responses indicated that hierarchical power relations in the school space converged to increase and maintain their sense of powerlessness. Suppressed by external bureaucrats such as policymakers, officials from the district and school management, they come to realise that they do not need to be a part of knowledge creation. However, all the teachers in the sample failed to notice or mention the dominance of patriarchal structures in their personal or work lives. Even when hierarchy is mentioned their discourses reveal that they have been socialised into accepting that the heads of the school had to be male. They did not challenge the lack of female leadership even when it was startlingly obvious that the upper rungs of the ladder were occupied by males with females positioned in middle management. When they mentioned domineering principals, who ruled with authority and enforced policy strictures, they did not bring up gender parity or gender conflict. They indicated that they were aware that power was reserved for upper structures and that their job was merely to deliver the content. Teachers admitted that the “management makes all the decisions related to tuition” and “we just follow.” Fear for authority figures came through strongly in Salome’s voice, We just learn that authority figures are there, and we just obey them and listen to what they say. It is not the culture to approach the higher structures. Top down structure of knowledge dissemination in developmental workshops created distance and distrust of their own potential. Contested are the hierarchical structure of the workshops and the fact that they received knowledge instead of being involved in knowledge creation. However, they realised that they needed to adopt the prescription in order to “survive.” Melisiwe indicated that homogenisation of the method of development ignored teacher initiatives, “they did not care that we have our own way of thinking.” Salome stated that they were “negative” towards “received knowledge” but felt compelled to attend “because the information is crucial to ‘survive’.” She also highlighted their subaltern positions when she admits, “It was top down just like the school. We are so used to being told what to do so we just do it as they instruct us.” Sadly, when teachers were asked about their own efforts to acquire knowledge all the candidates reported that they “did not read the whole document”

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hence, they were unaware of the option available to challenge external interpretations of its philosophy. This occurrence revealed a strong dependency on acquisition of knowledge from the workshops, and the policy document. Lack of awareness for the need to become activists for feminist voice No teachers’ response revealed that gender-related discourses featured in curriculum implementation or in their engagement with literary texts. They adopt value-free positions in line with the equity position of the policy environment. Any deviations from the prescribed content or approach involved relating textual happenings with learners’ own experiences or related experiences. In this way, learners’ experiences of the text were contextualised. Triangulation of teachers’ lesson planning, and classroom observation of the teaching of canonical and South African literature revealed that teachers focused on structural and linguistic elements, plot, themes, and characters and did not encourage learners to challenge certain textual constructions of gender roles nor did they promote alternate interpretations of the text. Patriarchal dominance, power, and subordination that come through vividly in these texts, were overlooked. Moreover, neither did they use the texts to unlock epistemological orientations nor challenge epistemological validity of knowledge. Prolonged obedience to authority has created a culture of dependence and an atrophy of their own cognitive processes and voice in the teaching space. Nene, using her experiential knowledge of teaching states, “Teaching is just about books that must be covered so that the learners write the common exams,” while Anochengeta talks about “summarising the book” and “looking for themes, characters and plot,” and “ensuring that they are able to answer questions.” It becomes apparent that teachers cannot even voice matters above their immediate scripted lessons. Alternative approaches are still related to merely delivering the content: We would like to take our time and teach the book slowly for understanding. They should not rush us to cover the content. (Nene) By contrast, Salome and Thuli attempt to give the learners more than what is expected. However, their discourses revealed that they failed to engage in efforts that inculcate in learner’s awareness about gender inequities or bias that is so prevalent in texts and daily life. Salome and Thuli’s responses indicate that even though they are compliant and work towards pleasing external authorities, they try to instil social values in their learners. Salome prioritises situating learners’ experiences in broader dimensions of contextual experiences while Thuli’s concerns relate to citizenry and moral values. When Salome teaches literature, she attempts to contextualise the themes to learners’ own life experiences: “When I teach literature, I make them relate

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to the poem or story in terms of how the content affects them. They learn to identify with certain experiences.” While Salome states that she “goes beyond the text,” she is mindful not to go too far: “I take them on journeys, but we don’t deviate too much because I have to always wws -remember to cover what is in the curriculum.” In the same vein, Thuli also states that deviations must be restricted because of the mandated focus on content coverage. She, however, tries to include values and moral lessons from which they can learn to become better citizens: “I want the kids to come out of here and be good citizens. That is more important for their future.” She also tends to deal with matters of diversity and religious tolerance when the need arises: “when I teach poems that involve religion, I ensure that I include a discussion on the different religions including atheists so that one religion is not valued over another.” When she teaches the text and themes such as love come up, she relates it to their own experiences: “I try to give them the lesson in the text like when I teach a book about love like Romeo and Juliet. I want them to be able to share their beliefs about love. For example, we spoke about the maturity of the couple in terms of the appropriate maturity level for marriage.” Unfortunately, both teachers who show promise in attempting to go beyond the text do not raise issues of empowerment and gender constructions in the texts they interrogate.

Discussion The unifying connection between Belenky et al.’s, women’s voices and those of the candidates in my study reverberated in their narratives of silence.29 However, the most deafening silence or absence was observed in their omissions about aspects of social justice, particularly those related to gender issues. All the women in this study in alignment with Belenky et al’s findings experienced the curriculum as challenging to their own ways of knowing.30 In the same vein, they revealed that authorities constructed their roles as receivers of knowledge within domains that they believed to be their own. Boundaries were drawn between external constructions of knowledge and their own authority as practioners in the curriculum space. They therefore experienced tension with attempts to subordinate their inner voices but could not see opportunity for challenge. The language of teachers’ discourse revealed that they were “compelled” to deliver the content to align with assessments. The external voices that constructed teacher’s knowledge were disseminated through acts of ventriloquism. Freire aptly states that “banking education anesthetizes” moreover, it “attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness.”31 He further suggests that when teachers play the banker’s role, they don’t involve the learner in creative thinking.32 Numbed by hegemonic power structures that exclude teacher’s voice from cognitively shaping their knowledge, they accept that they have nothing to contribute to knowledge creation or raising critical awareness in themselves or in others.

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As silenced women who do not experience gender as a crucial construct of their status as teachers, they also fail to realise that “the quest for the self and voice plays a central role in transformations in women’s ways of knowing.”33 The issue of voice should arise from their own perspectives of their authority as female teachers bent on challenging the rhetoric that subordinate them. However, they submerge their power under a guise of practiced hopelessness shifting the blame to eternal agents instead of looking inwards. As spectators in the theatre of teaching they fold their arms and become onlookers who wait for the next mandate or command. In keeping with the findings of Belenky et al’s studies, they “see blind obedience to authorities” as extremely important to their state of being as it ensures their survival.34 Teachers’ selfimage is thus linked to external affirmation and validation. Ironically their acknowledgement of the importance for shared meanings does not lead them to rock the educational boat or find the roar on the other side of silence. Cut off from their own internal cognitive processes they fail to be guided by their own intuition. Essentially, female teachers need to become more conscious of the various effects of homogenisation beginning with constructions of their identity as female educators with their own experiences, beliefs, and histories that are differentiated from men. If this is the starting point, then they could, through the acquisition of more knowledge, find platforms to raise their voice in a rallying cry for change; starting in their own classrooms would be preferable. Once they have become fully aware themselves of the need to highlight gender bias embedded in curriculum content and structure, they can start conversations for change in a more informed manner. The study showed that the gender-neutral attitude promoted and sustained by bureaucratic orientations of the policy environment has created a space where prejudice against women teachers go unchallenged and is sustained by the women themselves when they do not encourage learners to notice or challenge gender constructions in the text or in daily school life. If teachers prioritise transformative teaching practices, gender equity as a democratic ideal can be fostered. The challenge for teachers revolves around disseminating knowledge in such a way that content knowledge is integrated with the art of looking for absence, presupposition, and promotion of dominant ideologies. To do this, educators must be fully aware of the state’s role in shaping and constructing school curricula and policies. They should be able to “analyze state and non-state agencies as important sites involved in the production of dominant culture and ideologies.”35 Awareness of these factors would enable them to interrogate their roles as educators. Being transformative intellectuals’ means that they have to interrogate their own histories and connectivity with the world. The opportunity to rescue the situation by creating opportunities for learners to notice gender constructions and delve into and challenge it cannot be overestimated. Apple, therefore suggests that questions should be asked about how selected offerings embed these configurations and how these ideologies connect to the perspectives of teachers who use the materials to guide

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their teaching practice.36 If teachers are to succeed in developing their students into critical thinkers and responsible citizens in the democratic process, they have to think about issues that involve more than the lesson plan and the related assessment which is the current focus in schools. The major task of teachers is to identify issues that work against the purpose of developing citizens that would take their rightful place in a democratic society. To achieve this purpose, teachers would have to interrogate the curriculum materials and identify ideological messages that contradict the democratic purposes of schooling. Their responsibilities should also be geared towards empowering female learners. According to Haigwood, teachers have the responsibility for “cultivating students’ ability to identify and understand women’s contributions to human knowledge and achievement; to recognise cultural constructions of gender; to reflect analytically on their experience as women; and to analyze the forms and effects of gender prejudice and evaluate strategies for responding to it.”37 Raising awareness, careful not to elevate women’s rights in reverse, they should create opportunities to encourage young female minds of their potential to overcome bias and patriarchal dominance over their lives.

Conclusion Using gender and feminist theory perspectives to unlock the female teachers’ experiences an attempt was made to explore the possibility for female teachers to act as transformative agents who promote gender awareness as a democratic ideal. Sadly, none of the females were able to “gain a sense of voice and the power of their own minds against all odds.”38 It is concluded that teachers need to have courage, knowledge, and commitment to depart from traditional discourses and expectations and engage in conversations towards social transformation. They need to take ownership of discursive spaces by questioning, dissecting, and reconstructing truths that do not include their histories.

Recommendations Gendered power/knowledge structures within the schooling system affects how teachers are likely to react and affect the proposed curriculum. “Can the Subaltern Speak? The question asked at the end of Spivak’s seminal essay has implications for research in the field of the feminist teacher voice.39 The question points to whether those that occupy positions on the fringes of society (subalterns) can use their voices and if they do speak will they have ways of knowing that supports democratic schooling? After her treatise and ruminations on the topic Spivak concludes that women, especially the most economically disenfranchised, cannot speak. It is important to revisit this question in post-apartheid South Africa where contest and contestation arises over the notion of democracy in opposition to the State’s influence in teaching arenas.

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Notes 1 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: ElecBook, 1999), 19–20. 2 Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. Ed., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Urbana University of Illinois Press, 1988). 271–313 3 Michael Apple, Educating the right way: markets, standards, God, and inequality (New York: Routledge, 2006), xvii. 4 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 114. 5 Rose, M. Ylimaki, “Curriculum leadership in a conservative era,” Educational Administration Quarterly 48, (2012): 304–346. 6 Andy Hargreaves and Shawn Moore, “Voice, Nostalgia, and Teachers’ Experiences of Change,” Counterpoints 275 (2005):129–140. 7 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 114. 8 Ibid. 9 Jonathan Jansen and Pam Christie, Changing Curriculum Studies on Outcomebased Education in South Africa (South Africa: Juta & Co, 1999). 10 Department of Basic Education, The National Curriculum and Assessment policy (CAPS) document for English home languages grades 10–12 (South Africa: DBE, 2012), 10. 11 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings (New York: Pantheon Books 1977). 12 Ibid. 13 Nelly P.Stromquist, The Theoretical and Practical Bases for Empowerment, in Women, Education and Empowerment Report of International Seminar (UNESCO: 1995). 14 Henry Giroux and Stanley Aronowitz, Education still under Siege (Toronto: OISE Press, 1993). 15 Gayatri,C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Carey Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988). 16 Bernice Badal, “The influence of teacher voice on educational change”(PhD diss., University of Pretoria, 2018). 17 Yusuf Sayed and Jonathan Jansen, Implementing Education Policies: The South African Experience (Cape Town: UCT, 2001). 18 Nelly P.Stromquist, The Theoretical and Practical Bases for Empowerment, in Women, Education and Empowerment Report of International Seminar (UNESCO: 1995), 14. 19 Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan, 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies (London: SAGE, 2004). 20 Judith Lorber, Gender inequality: Feminist theories and politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 21 Christina Hughes, Key concepts in feminist theory and research (London: SAGE, 2002). 22 Maurianne Adams, Readings for Diversity and Social Justice (New York: Routledge, 2000). 23 Mats Alvesson and Dan Kärreman, “Varieties of discourse: On the study of organizations through discourse analysis,” Human Relations 53 (2000):1125–1149. 24 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 114. 25 Ibid.

Feminist voice(s) in South African  103 26 Ibid. 27 John, W Creswell, Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research (Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012). 28 Jonathan, A. Smith, “Hermeneutics, human sciences and health: linking theory and practice,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Wellbeing 2 (2007): 03. 29 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 114. 30 Ibid. 31 Paolo Freire, “Circular Letter: To the Coordinator of a Cultural Circle,” Convergence 4 (1971): 61–62. 32 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed (London: Penguin Education, 1970). 33 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 133. 34 Ibid, 28. 35 Ibid, 154. 36 Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (London: Routledge, and Kegan Paul, 1975). 37 Laura Haigwood, “Hearing Women’s Voices in General Education,” Feminist Teacher 23, no. 1(2012):3. 38 Mary, F. Belenky et al., Women’s ways of knowing: The development of self, voice and mind (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 14. 39 Gayatri,C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Carey Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1988).

Part II

Embodying Resistance

Chapter 8

Touching the “untouchable” Depiction of body and sexuality in select Dalit women’s autobiographies Bidisha Pal

Introduction: Purity-pollution and untouchability The purity-pollution dyad has been ingrained early in the Hindu socioreligious system. There are structured layers of purity and impurity that act very much in the formation of the association one shares by remaining within the society. Forms and nature of purity and pollution change relatively according to the position and the situation of a person: “There are degrees of pollution. Any person may become polluted temporarily while defecating; perspiring during work has the same effect. Women become polluted during menstruation.”1 The homo hierarchichus2 Hindu society, which tends to maintain a sweeping homogenisation of purity-pollution for all the layers of society, carries within it the stigmatising roots of touchability and untouchability according to caste-based politics: The discursive logic of untouchability as it proposes a theory of caste (i) as extraditions that are revised and renewed by a brahminism that is constantly updating its patriarchy; (ii) as desire in the scene of the family; and (iii) as bodies that are compelled by, but disallowed contract into the feminine or masculine; bodies, therefore, that shuttle, always deficient, always in excess.3 Untouchability is the keyword on which the very caste system of the Hindu society is based. Dumont (1966) has pointed out how the logic of touch and untouchability propound separatism and binarisation of purity and impurity where pure is in the “superiority” and because of that “the pure and the impure must be kept separate.”4 The separatist philosophy is aimed at Dalits who are hailed as the “untouchable” castes of India. Standing on the lowest stratum of the hierarchical society, the Dalits are the victims of the puritypollution dyad whose touch can pollute and thus should be separated. Dalit residences, as Dalit writer Bama shows in her autobiography, are segregated from the caste Hindus. Bama says, “I don’t know how it came about that the upper caste communities and the lower caste communities were separated like this into different parts of the village and we stayed in ours.”5

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Bodily functions corroborate the purity-pollution dyad of the Hindu society. The purity-pollution ideology has been in a relational aspect with the concept of touch and bodily functions, especially of the female body. The female body has been epitomised as an embodiment of purity, chastity, and sanctity that must remain intact within. But the bodies of higher caste Hindu women and lower caste Dalit women contain different representational signs and actions. “Endogamy and purity require that strict sexual rules be enforced on high caste women”6 whereas these “strict sexual roles” cannot be applied to Dalit women where they are the victims of thrice-fold dominations: for being a lower caste Dalit, and for being a woman both to the upper caste men and to her own community, both of whom subject her to sexual abuse. Thus Dalit women bear the brunt of “untouchability practices” against their own bodies and “within their own communities.”7 The autobiographies Karukku (2000) by Bama (trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom), The Prisons We Broke (2008) by Baby Kamble (trans. Maya Pandit), and the semi-autobiographical novel The Grip of Change (2006) by Palani Sivakami (trans. Palani Sivakami) are some narratives that envisage the forms of “graded patriarchy” in depicting sexual abuse and bodily violence perpetrated against Dalit women. These autobiographies also showcase the operating forces of the purity-pollution dyad that unfold on Dalit women’s bodies, with a view to re-appropriating the notion that, Dalit women’s bodies and sexualities do possess a considerable ground for discussion, something that is often forgotten in scholarship. The narratives thus tend to reject and eradicate “bodily illiteracy.”8 As poet Hira Bansode elucidates: High caste women are established, but Dalit women must struggle for very basic needs. In the Brahmin community, widow burning and such things existed, but this did not happen in the Dalit community. We have different problems. Our women don’t even know the meaning of Stri Mukti. Therefore, the movements are different.9 This chapter embarks on the depiction of Dalit female body and sexuality as well as sexploitation of Dalit women through close-reading the autobiographies of Baby Kamble, Bama, and P. Sivakami. While The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble and The Grip of Change by Sivakami make a direct representation of the exploitations done on female bodies and selves and venture on the minute detailing of female bodies in broader scape, Karukku subtly brings out references of corporeality and corporeal labour of Dalit women and their position and situation within their communities. This chapter will also show how the act of writing about Dalit women and their bodies holds significance because it depicts how writing provides the liberty to express and paves the way for freedom from the confinement of stigmatisation.

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(S)exploitation: Being a woman, being a Dalit Ruth Manorama, an active member of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights and the National Alliance of Women points out that in a male-dominated society “Dalit women face a triple burden of caste, class and gender”, and highlights that Dalit women are a distinct social group and cannot be masked under the general categories of “Women” or “Dalits.”10 The distinctness of the category of “Dalit women” lies in the sub-subaltern category, doubly othered, as Maya Pandit explains with reference to Baby Kamble’s autobiography, “If the Mahar community is the “other” for the Brahmins, Mahar women become the “other” for the Mahar men.”11 Intersectional feminism has been increasingly considered as an important part of critical feminist studies since the 1990s. Feminist theorists such as Kimberle Crenshaw (1989), Rebecca Walker (1992), and Patricia Hill Collins (2015), have criticised the sweeping generalisation of the earlier feminist movements and laid focus on the emancipation of women who not only have to fight the violence of patriarchy but also have to cope with the associative obstacles of sexism, racism, and classism. In India too, the failure of intersectional feminism through a mere replication of second-wave feminism, favours only upper-caste Savarna women, ignoring the lived experiences of Dalit women. Dalit women’s plights and problems are different from uppercaste Savarna women, hence their lived experiences are also in marked contrast to Savarna women. African-American women writers initiated the Black feminist movement to usher in a new era of feminism. Just like race for Black women, caste is the prima facie factor for Dalit women. The concept of touch is a common thread to both Black and Dalit women because this contributes significantly to their bodies being considered both untouchable and non-normative. Dalit writers generate awareness against the coercive treatment meted out to Dalit women. Limbale states, “For Dalit women, the problem is grave. Their Dalit identity gives them a different set of problems. They experience a total lack of social status; they are not even considered dignified human beings.”12 Notably, the untouchable bodies of Dalit women are vulnerable because of their easy accessibility to “graded patriarchy.” In this connection Susan Hekman’s commentary is pertinent: Dalit “[w]oman is always defined as that which is not men … she is a “minus male” who is identified by the qualities that she lacks.”13 In The Prisons We Broke Baby Kamble shows an extreme form of exploitation from the patriarchy, forms of brutality on mental and physical health. Kamble’s autobiography projects how Mahar women are objects of sex both to the upper caste and the lower caste men, the upper caste lures the lower caste men with benefits in exchange for the Mahar women’s bodies and sexual satisfaction. Bama (2000) has also pointed out that “Man can humiliate woman many times, he can disrespect a woman, and it is very normal.”14 In The Grip of Change Sivakami has presented the character Thangam to project the views of sexploitation and violence on a woman’s

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body: “Weeping, she removed the sari wrapped around her head. The whole of her torso, visible because she was not wearing a blouse, bore terrible bruises. Dried blood marked the flesh of her back.”15 Thangam is a prey to the sexploitation by both the upper caste Udayar as well as by her own people: “They pulled me by my hair and dragged me out to the street. They hit me, and flogged me with a stick stout as a hand. They nearly killed me.”16 The physical violence acts as the form of dominance over her sexuality from even her own community. Shivkumar shows that in The Grip of Change, “Body and misuses of the bodily pleasures become a central motif of the novel and yet the novelist does not glamorize sexuality by smattering the text of the novel with careless elopements and gauche marriages.”17 Thangam’s body is the site of territorialising dominance. Her husband’s land is equivalent to that of her own body. “My husband’s brothers tried to force me, but I never gave in. They wouldn’t give me my husband’s land, but wanted me to be a whore for them! I wouldn’t give in.”18 In Kancha Ilaiah’s essay, “Of Land and Dalit Women,” Ilaiah emphasises on Dalit people’s lack of access to land and property, rather than their conditions of labouring, noting a heroic attempt by women in the village of Maddur in Andhra Pradesh, to establish their right to common land at all costs. These women had risked physical violence at the hands of the dominant castes of the village who were operating in cahoots with the police establishment. In The Grip of Change, both the land and the body of Thangam are in an intertwined relationship with each other and both symbolise her existential struggle and identity crisis. Keshavamurthy (2013–14) has made a detailed examination of caste and gender nexus that is operated upon Thangam’s body: By relocating Thangam’s body from the secret confines of sexual assault to a caste encoded space like the upper caste street, Kathamuthu’s distorted petition strategically diffuses Thangam’s victimhood to implicate the entire Dalit community. Thangam’s sexed body is thus displaced by her caste body that materializes the brutal effects of an unsolicited expression of upper caste violence. In what follows, Thangam’s caste body becomes the site where the inter-caste struggle for political power plays out.19 Sivakami herself clarifies patriarchal violence beyond caste: “It is not only upper caste men who prey upon lower caste women. Men like Kathamuthu are perfectly capable of taking advantage of vulnerable women.”20 The narrative dwells on how Kathamuthu, the lower caste advocate to whom Thangam comes to solicit her case, tries to take undue advantage of Thangam’s body: “He smoothed her hair and snaked his palms through her armpits and pressed her breasts. She turned over and he fell on her”.21 The intersectionality between caste and gender is stark here: Dalit women are already always lower than men irrespective of the latter’s caste. The personality of “Kathamuthu is an embodiment of all the vices of Dalit patriarchy.”22

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To Kathamuthu, Thangam poses to be a vulnerable female body, an object that arouses desire and one that can be possessed. The Constitution of India amends against positive discrimination and empowers the state to make special provisions in favour of oppressed and marginalised groups, including women.23 However, there is little room for discussion about the double-exploitation and violence of women who are marginalised Dalit. In The Prisons We Broke Baby Kamble narrates how a Dalit woman’s own family tortures her: In those days, at least one woman in a hundred would have her nose chopped off. You may well ask why. It is because of the sasu, who would poison her son’s mind. These sasus ruined the lives of innocent women forever.24 The married Dalit woman feels caged within the in-law’s house where she is treated like a prisoner. The women endure gendered discrimination and violence and often cannot escape for being vulnerable and lacking independent means of living. Kamble poignantly lays this bare: The other world had bound us with chains of slavery. But we too were human beings. And we too desired to dominate, to wield power. But who would let us do that? So we made our own arrangements to find slaves— our very own daughters-in-law! If nobody else, then we could at least enslave them.25 Thus the younger Dalit woman is supposedly an outlet for violence for her in-laws. This might owe its origin both to the intergenerational trauma and internalised patriarchy that lies deeply entrenched in the family. It is the mothers-in-law in the family who have also suffered horrific abuse as Dalit women, who then feel the need to pass on the abuse and the trauma on their young daughters-in-law, and thus they uphold the same patriarchal norm which had earlier made them suffer. Instances of such tortures and abuses are frequent in the narrative: Meanwhile, the son would keep ready a razor sharpened to an edge. At night, he would sit on her chest and taking his own time, cut off her nose. Then they would drive the poor girl out of the house, with blood pouring from the mutilation.26 Indeed, Kamble stresses the hold of internalised patriarchy here: “The hold of patriarchy was so strong! In fact, not sending the women out was considered to be a mark of real manhood. A man who didn’t allow his wife to go out earned respect from the people.”27 It is this patriarchal abuse in varied forms that “inflicted deep psychological pain, leaving a scar of humiliation in the minds of dalit women.”28

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The extent of exploitation is so grave that it reduces them from the status of a human being by turning them into lifeless objects. “She was not a human being for her in-laws, but just another piece of wood.”29 Karukku does not make a bland or direct representation of Dalit women’s condition yet the narrative of Karukku unsettles the readers. As Chandran (2020) describes, “While Bama records the atrocities faced by a community she takes time to specifically draw the pathetic situation of Dalit women too; the denials and muted experiences which made them voice their issues at a system where they were subjugated.”30 Similarly, Thangam in The Grip of Change is physically punished by upper-caste men for being beautiful: “‘They beat her up. Good! Why did they leave her alive? That whore thinks too much of herself. She thinks that she’s very beautiful. That’s why she went after that Udayar. When she loses her shape, he’ll throw her out, and she’ll be in a state worse than a dog’s.’”31 Female bodies are turned into metaphors of cartographic landscapes or territories on which sexual violence is mapped and projected. In her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) Spivak argues how rape as the instrument of sexual exploitation symbolises acquisition over the female body: “The group rape perpetrated by the conquerors is a metonymic celebration of territorial acquisition.”32 In the narratives, female bodies and exploitations over them act as the prime movers. For Dalit women, the bodies and the exploitation on them are one way to de-territorialise the acceptability and inclusion to equality but it is again a re-territorialisation of femininity and masochist patriarchy.

Body, sexuality, and Dalit women Feminist scholars and phenomenologists have focused on the materialistic aspects of the body where the body is posed as “the point of view towards the world.”33 Female bodies often have the material experiences that incur certain marks and significance for their beings and existences. A woman lives through her body to designate her identity within society. The body carries imprints of the society in which she lives and within which she has to perform according to certain rules. Women’s sexuality is often regarded as a subservient tool that is subject to control by the hegemonic society that exerts influence upon them. Linda Alcoff (2006) in her discussion of racialised and gendered bodies argues, “Both race and sex […] are most definitely physical, marked on and through the body, lived as a material experience, visible as surface phenomena and determinant of economic and political status.”34 The social position of a woman is measured against various parameters such as gender, caste, race, and class. Anupama Rao has discussed the lopsided relationship of gender and caste in her analysis of Dalit feminism.35 Rao has shown how the mainstream feminism in India teeters on a sweeping generalisation of women’s causes where the notion of caste is ignored and pushed aside. “We must understand the

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multiple and changing manifestations of caste in Indian society if we are to understand the particular forms in which the gender inequality and sexed subordination are produced.”36 According to them, both caste and gender have a deterministic role in framing the identities of Dalit women which cannot be ignored. Gender and caste are entangled within a curious question of body politics. Das and Chaudhury (1997) postulate that Dalit women are the first victims in case of any caste conflict and this can be seen as “a political lesson of subjugation.”37 Certainly, Dalit women are victims of the “politics of the body”38 in society. The politics that is perpetrated on the bodies of the Dalit women hold characteristic particularities. The irony lies in the fact that the bodies that are castigated and abandoned as untouchable and polluted publicly, are the very bodies that are used for extracting the value of corporeal labour and fulfilling sexual libido. Upper caste men take undue advantages of the poor economic condition of Dalit women and unleash sexual assaults whenever they want. Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi has shown such exploitative acts on Dalit women in her anthology Breast Stories (2016) through the characters of Draupadi, Gangor, and Jashoda. Domination and power politics of upper caste patriarchy wield enormous influence on their subjugated bodies. They are depicted as objects of exploitation both at home and in the public spheres. The three autobiographical novels that I discuss here, address the curious relationship between caste and the gendered body through the depiction of the characters whose actions are informed by these two parameters. Throughout the narratives the curious question makes its presence prominent, whether caste prevails over gender or vice versa. According to Sivakami, “The novel, The Grip of Change, is a process of understanding the dynamics of caste and the “woman” who was inextricably involved in the process.”39 The protagonist Gowri, who is modeled after the author herself, ruminates, “‘I belong to the same caste as that woman. How can I be sure that I won’t be beaten black and blue like her’” when she sees Thangam in her tragic condition.40 That she is also from the same lower caste which Thangam belongs to, makes her shudder when she thinks about the impending and inevitable outcome that would befall her due to her caste and gender. Notably, the central tenet of the narrative revolves around the body; there are contexts where the body reenters the text. Touching and vandalising the body of Thangam, the lower caste labourer woman is a way of manipulating and imposing caste politics by the upper caste Udayar: “‘A Parachi could have never dreamt of being touched by a man like me! My touch was a boon granted for penance performed in her earlier births! And then the dirty bitch betrays me! How can I face the world with my name thus polluted?’”41 To him, Thangam is such a body that can be pounced upon anytime and is subject to punishment when it tends to act to the contrary: “‘The Paraya bitch who was working for me had misbehaved, so my men punished her. She went to Athur and took Kathamuthu’s help to register a police complaint.’ ‘You should have hacked her to pieces and buried

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her!’”42 Kiran Keshavamurthy has pointed out that the devastated and bruised body of Thangam foregrounds the narrative frame and her position as being a widow makes her a “‘surplus’ woman”: “The harassment by her brothers-in-law when she refuses to submit to them; the sexploitation by her caste Hindu landlord and the assault on her by caste Hindu men owing to her apparent sexual misdemeanor only reinforce her abject status.”43 Ramalinga Reddiar and Paranjothi Udayar press upon the caste-gender relation that seems resulting from the suave politics of the upper caste psychology when they justify the moulding of the real fact of cruelties unleashed on Thangam’s body in favour of their narrow selves: “They beat her up because we are lower caste, poor, and have no protection. That’s why I have changed the whole story. If this case results in a caste clash, the punishment will be heavy and they can’t get our votes.”44 In Karukku, Bama depicts the tragic circumstances under which a Dalit girl child is positioned where “in the face of such poverty, the girl children cannot see the sense in schooling, and stay at home, collecting firewood, looking after the house, caring for the babies, and doing household chores.”45 The question of caste and gender forge the identity and fate of the girl child when she endures a life of deprivation. As K.A. Geetha notes: Karukku eschews the confessional mode and avoids a linear narrative, while presenting a painful, open-ended journey at the end of which many questions are left unanswered. It is, in many ways, a revelation of the bitter reality of the social ills that a Dalit woman is obliged, by virtue of her caste and gender, to confront.46 A Dalit woman has to undertake many menial and corporeal jobs that tend to diminish the human attributes from her, reducing her to be a labouring body for her family. In The Prisons We Broke Kamble elucidates how caste creates a relegated position and “sexed subordination”47 for her when she experiences casteist insult regarding her “untouchable” body: “Our classmates were all upper caste girls and they too used to be afraid of us, constantly worried about our touching and polluting them. They used to scorn us as if we were some kind of despicable creatures.”48 This incident clearly shows the well-ingrained and deeply entrenched casteist politics being nurtured inside Kamble’s upper caste classmates that focuses largely on body politics and the divisionary views of purity and impurity. However, a different aspect of the female body is drawn out by Kamble in another portion of the narrative. While presenting an anthropological study of marriage, birth, religious rituals, and culture of Kamble’s community, the narrative delves deep into a certain ritual of the wedding ceremony where lewd marriage songs are sung that mostly deal with the body and sexuality of young Dalit couples and Dalit people in general.

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Here comes the rukhwat, come and watch, Our Inibai’s got an itch in her crotch. Give her a couch, she’s on heat, Our brother is so mad, he says, You know what? Get a he-buffalo from the jatra to fuck her, That’s the only thing that can please her. Get up, Iwan, take off her clothes, Show her the house, give her a bath.49 In this song, the bride is addressed with sexual innuendos and the groom is provoked to initiate sexual intercourse with her; the bride’s sexuality is referred to in a light-hearted manner replete with lewd jokes and satirical connotations. In another song, sung at the start of the wedding ceremony, there is a connotation of sexual provocation in order to titillate the sensitive minds and bodies of young couples. Such songs contribute significantly to the sexualisation of women’s bodies. Here comes the rukhwat, covered with sugarcane leaves. When our Inibai gets hot, you know what she needs. Not less than fifty-six horses! That’s what she must have, So get them for her for that’s what she wants!50 While the earlier song comes from the bride’s side, this song is sung by the groom’s family. Both the songs make provocative references to the bride’s sexual prowess. Nevertheless, such depictions are rarely observed in uppercaste women’s narratives where sexual purity is tantamount. Such licentiousness and frequent deliberations of Dalit women’s bodies and sexualities drive out what Heebs (2016) mentions as “bodily illiteracy.”51 Hibbs uses the term to remark on the lack and restriction of education regarding female sexuality and body in Maharashtra that tends to produce “female shame and ignorance regarding their own bodies”52 and where a woman’s body that is mostly seen as a coveted issue excluding any medium for expression and discussion. It happens due to two-fold reasons. Firstly, Dalit women are often reduced to impure bodies and her sexuality is often considered as the insatiable sexual appetite, unlike the upper caste women who are regarded as the epitomes of chastity and virtue. Secondly, Dalit women’s subjectivity is neglected in favour of framing her into objects of sexual appetite. Dalit literature acts on alternative aesthetics and life-affirming values. The aesthetics lie in realistic representation. Limbale (2004) advocates that the primary aesthetics of Dalit literature is expressed through the rejection of

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spiritualism and abstractism that characterise universal literature.53 Dalit literature works on materialistic aesthetics and hence the body is projected as a materialistic concept bereft of any traditional notion of aesthetic beauty and spiritual essence. Female bodies are thus not idolised in deified parameters but are drawn as the embedding repository of the intertwined casteist ideology and gender relation which Rao has discussed.

Writing about Dalit women’s body: Resistant ideology Writing meant resisting the taunts of contemporaneous intel-lectuals about Dalits’ language usage; …it also meant recognition, honour, and immensely gratifying friendships with other Dalit women writers and activists.54

The narratives about Dalit lives gain life-affirming values because they deal with the real materialistic aspect of life. Dalit women write for re-asserting their existences in the social backdrop. Their writing is resistance because through their writing, they “criticize the masculine register of dalit sahitya,”55 and thus build “a strong body of women’s writing.”56 Language is the vehicle to express one’s thoughts and to analyse one’s mind. The narrative spaces in the three autobiographical narratives I have discussed, propel to think about the particularities of language usage that have been employed in writing bodies and selves. The very resistance of Dalit women’s writings opposes to the mainstream women’s narratives in both narrative pattern and structure. “The conceptual frames deployed by Dalit women writers pertaining to issues like domestic violence, sexuality, suicide and body are radically different from the way upper-caste, middle-class women writers approach them in their literary writings.”57 In representing these aspects, the narratives become testimonies to the unforeseen experiences that Dalit women are subjected to, and the process of writing gives them the vent to articulate subsumed voice(s). The issues deal with many tabooed aspects of life that have hitherto been ignored. According to Gopal Guru, male Dalit literature does not focus on female characters or portray them as subservient and suffering but female Dalit writers depict strong, intelligent, compassionate, and rebellious women. Dalit women writers and activists boldly criticise the patriarchy within their community.58 In The Grip of Change, Thangam’s vandalised body is also a source of desire and sexualised gaze for the upper caste Udayar’s mind: “Though her face was swollen from crying, it was still attractive.”59 Even in his sexual attraction for her, Udayar manages to actively other Thangam’s body: “Though Thangam was just average looking, her well-arranged, clean teeth and the naive smile that brought forth dimples on her cheeks, attracted Udayar. Thangam appeared attractively different to him.”60 Again, Thangam’s oppressed and tormented body is also a source of power and exercising control that enables her “to gain ascendancy in Kattamuthu’s house granting her dominance over his wives.”61 There is a moment when

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Thangam seems to caress and nurture the beauty within her when she observes Gowri. This scene serves as an object petit a as Gowri’s nourishing of the body causes an unusual sexual desire in Thangam’s mind and the bodily longing that have gone long past: She hated the memory of Udayar’s sexual use of her body. Once she used to plait her long hair, but she no longer bothered with that. She pinned it up without any care and covered her head with her sari. When she saw Gowri plaiting her hair, wearing jasmine, painting a perfect circle of red kungumam on her brow and humming along with duets broadcast on the radio, a lightness spread through Thangam’s body.62 Sivakami does not deny the pervading role of the body in determining feminine beauty and sexuality in her narrative. Contrarily, the narrative provides an outlet to make the women perform desire: “Santha’s lust could have also been inspired by his beauty and youth.”63 This sentence again tends to reject the notion of sexual purity that upper caste women are confined to, in its particular form of jouissance that Santha encapsulates in her body. In her notes on the novel, the author finds a fine expression to explain the essence of Thangam’s body and its corollary position which the narrative purports to bring into light: The rare beauty and honesty of the narrative arises from its bodycentricity. Thangam’s body bears testimony to the difficulties faced by Dalit women. On a closer reading, it looks like a major, defining part of the novel was entirely played out on the Dalit woman Thangam’s body…the same body, through which she was oppressed and subjugated, also grants her the power to gain ascendancy in Kathamuthu’s house and gives her dominance over his wives.64 Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke presents not only minute references to women’s bodies but also unusual similes that symbolise the dehumanisation of Dalit women: “Just as the farmer pierces his bullock’s nose and inserts a string through the nostrils to control it, you have pierced the Mahar nose with the string of ignorance. And you have been flogging us with the whip of pollution.”65 Here Kamble refers to how Mahar women emulate the upper caste Brahmin women, and in doing so, the former makes fun of the puritypollution custom. “One moment she would drape it around her shoulder like a Brahmin kaki and imitate her accent, “Hey you, Mahar women, shoo, shoo, stand at a distance. Don’t touch anything. You will pollute us and our gods and religion.”66 Kamble cites another moment of mockery and subversion when the Dalit women make taunting gestures to the upper caste women in an overt purity-pollution game. “At least one of us would then run towards them, touch them from behind and come back running. Touching them would make us feel as if we were in the seventh heaven.”67 In another

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description regarding the school atmosphere and the position of the lower caste girls amidst the upper caste ones the narrative again focuses on the body: “For the first time in their lives, they had girls like us — who could pollute them — studying with them. They treated us like lepers, as if our bodies dripped with dirty blood or as if pus oozed out of our rotten flesh.”68 The narratives of enacting caste-difference are quite common in Dalit life-writings, but here, their starkest expression is visceral. Kamble’s narrative provides descriptions which are often shocking and compromise with the decorum of artistry and thus render on the rhetoric of alternative aestheticism. It thus refuses to be confined and obliterated as “to the extent that woman represses the body, erasing her sexual desire and individual identity.”69 Although Karukku lacks such minute detailing about women’s body and sexuality, it nevertheless silhouettes female emancipation through the power of writing; corporeal labour holds the central focus of the narrative here: “Many Dalit women, for whom toil is their very life-breath, who led vigorous lives in spite of all their weariness and anxieties, have been a great inspiration as well as a constant help to me.”70 Yogisha and Kumar argue that there have been debates and scholarly discussions on aspects of caste, caste-based prejudice and the impact of those on the Dalit folks. Yet, there is a lack of constructive research on the writings of Dalit women with particular reflections on their personal narratives “with their standpoint approach.”71 The writings make the women vent out their inherent and integrated philosophy of life. The women break out the shackles and express bodily desire, they are not just victims of bodily exploitation but they cherish their femininity. It is the body that lets them possess an unflinching faith in their significant existence and thus make them empowered as strident individuals. The manner of representation within the narratives also displays the “splitted and fragmented consciousness of these Dalit Mahar women who always feel traumatised and tortured by their day-to-day humiliating experiences.”72

Conclusion Sivakami (2006) points out that “caste purity is not protected only through control of caste Hindu women, but also through the absence of social sanction to certain inter-caste relationships.”73 This chapter analyses the three autobiographical narratives of Baby Kamble, Bama, and Sivakami to discuss the purity-pollution dyad and the touchability-untouchability binary of the Hindu hierarchical society. The question of purity-pollution and touchability-untouchability pertains to the body. Dalit people are still considered untouchables in various parts of India and Dalit women (the sub-subaltern category) are subject to various forms of (s)exploitation for being the tripartite victims of patriarchy. Alongside this, the chapter throws light on the so far subsumed aspects of Dalit women’s body and sexuality and investigates the particular ways of expressing those in the narrative frames, echoing what

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Aishwariya G. notes, “Dalit women writers reveal a sexually repressive and oppressive social structure that prevails over the social/public space and invades the domestic/private space.”74 In writing about the body and sexuality of Dalit women, the writers subvert and thwart the purity-pollution associated with the body politics of caste, and redefine the touchability and untouchability binary, where untouchable bodies come into focus in the narratives. Thus, untouchable bodies are made touchable through the shedding of caste body politics and the “outlawed” womanly desire.

Notes 1 Mark Juergensmeyer, Religious Rebels in the Punjab: The Ad Dhaarm Challenge to Caste. (New Delhi: Navayana, 2009), 12. 2 Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 69. 3 Susie Tharu, “The Impossible Subject: Caste and the Gendered Body,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 22 (Jun. 1996): 1315, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/4404206 4 Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications, 135. 5 Bama Faustina Soosairaj, Karukku, trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom. (Pune: Macmillan India LTD, 2000), 7. 6 Christian Novetzche, “TWICE DALIT: The Poetry of Hira Bansode,” Journal of South Asian Literature 28, no. 1/2 (Spring, Fall 1993): 280, http://www.jstor. org/stable/40873345. 7 Carolyn Hibbs, “Polluting the Page: Dalit Women’s Bodies in Autobiographical Literature,” in Dalit Literatures in India, eds. Joshil K Abraham and Judith Misrahi-Barak. (New York: Routledge, 2016), 267. 8 Ibid., 274. 9 Novetzche, “TWICE DALIT: The Poetry of Hira Bansode”, 280. 10 Vidyut Bhagawat, “Some Critical Reflections,” in Dalit Women in India; Issues and Perspectives, ed. P.G Jogdond. (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1995), 5. 11 Baby Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, trans. Maya Pandit. (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2008), xv. 12 Sarankumar Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature, trans. Alok Mukherjee. (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2004), 116. 13 Yogisha and Nagendra Kumar, “Resistance and Recuperation: Developing a Dalit Feminist Standpoint in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke,” Contemporary Voice of Dalit 9, no. 2 (2017): 219. https://doi.org/10.1177/24553 28X17722683. 14 Bama, Karukku, 70. 15 Palani Sivakami, The Grip of Change, trans. Palani Sivakami. (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2006), n. p. 16 Ibid. 17 Vaishali Shivkumar, “A Dalit Woman under a Strong Clutch of Patriarchy: A Comprehensive Study of The Grip of Change,” Language in India 13, no. 4 (April 2013): 359. 18 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 19 Kiran Keshavamurthy, “P. Sivakami: The Caste and Gendered Body,” Journal of the Department of English Vidyasagar University 11, (2013–2014):128. 20 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 21 Ibid.

120  Bidisha Pal 22 Aiswariya G, “Being a Woman and a Dalit: A Study of Sivakami’s The Grip of Change,” Journal of The Gujarat Society 21, no. 10 (Nov. 2019): 165. 23 Mahabir Prasad Jain, Indian Constitutional Law (5th ed.). (New Delhi: Wadhwa, 2003), 1060–61. 24 Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, n. p. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Anila Chandran, “Traumatic Memories of a Community: Experiencing and Understanding Bama’s Karukku,” Purakala 31, no. 15 (April 2020): 399. 31 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 32 Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, (Illinois: University of Illinois Press,1988), 303. 33 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Howard Madison Parshley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 39. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962); Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes. (New York: Pocket Books, 1943/1956). 34 Linda Martin Alcoff, Visible Identities, Race, Gender, and the Self. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 102. 35 Anupama Rao, “Introduction: Caste, Gender and Indian Feminism,” in Gender and Caste, ed. Anupama Rao. (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2003), 1–46. 36 Ibid., 5. 37 Hari Hara Das and B.C. Chaudhury, Introduction to Political Sociology. (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1997), 261. 38 Lakshmi Holmström, “Introduction,” in Wild Girls Wicked Words: Poems of Malathi Maithri, Salma, Kutti Revathi and Sukirtharani, ed. and trans. Lakshmi Holmstrom, (Bangalore: Sangam House, 2012), 26. 39 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Keshavamurthy, “P. Sivakami: The Caste and Gendered Body”, 124. 44 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 45 Bama, Karukku, 68. 46 K.A. Geetha, “Representation and resistance: Strategies in Bama’s Karukku and Raj Gautaman’s Siluvai Raj Sarithiram,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47, no. 3 (March 2011): 324. 47 Rao, “Introduction: Caste, Gender and Indian Feminism”, 5. 48 Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, n. p. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Hibbs, “Polluting the Page: Dalit Women’s Bodies in Autobiographical Literature”, 274. 52 Ibid. 53 Limbale, Towards an Aesthetic of Dalit Literature,116. 54 Shoma Sen, “The Village and the City: Dalit Feminism in the Autobiographies of Baby Kamble and Urmila Pawar.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 54, no. 1 (March 2019): 42. 55 Rao, “Introduction: Caste, Gender and Indian Feminism”, 30.

Touching the “untouchable”  121 56 Ibid. 57 Bharati Arora, “Democratising the Language of Feminist Expression: English and Bhasha Contexts of Indian Women’s Writing,” in English Studies in India: Contemporary and Evolving Paradigms, eds. Banibrata Mahanta and Rajesh Babu Sharma. (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2019), 112. 58 Gopal Guru, “Afterword,” in The Prisons We Broke. Trans. Maya Pandit. (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2008), n. p. 59 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 60 Ibid. 61 Keshavamurthy, “P. Sivakami: The Caste and Gendered Body”, 124. 62 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Kamble, The Prisons We Broke, n. p. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Sidonie Smith, Subjectivity, Identity and the Body: Women’s Autobiographical Practices in the Twentieth Century. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 16. 70 Bama, Karukku, 106. 71 Yogisha and Nagendra Kumar, “Resistance and Recuperation: Developing a Dalit Feminist Standpoint in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke”, 221. 72 Ibid. 73 Sivakami, The Grip of Change, n. p. 74 Aiswariya G, “Being a Woman and a Dalit: A Study of Sivakami’s The Grip of Change”, 164.

Chapter 9

Rethinking subalternity through posthuman and feminist entanglements Violence, displacement, exile and the woman subject in contemporary Turkish literature Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim In the land of voiceless woman: Subalternity and contemporary Turkish literature In his engagement with “the geography of self,” Erik Erikson proposes that there is nothing inherently traumatic about traumatic events, but rather how people survive, exchange, and react to such events. Erikson considers how individuals suffer, endure, and cope with certain traumatisation, and create imaginative resources for themselves.1 Erikson’s insightful and provocative observation reminds us of the power of literature, the magic of language. Stories that are interpreted, reviewed, told, reshuffled, reshaped, and shared manifest how enchantment of language works upon the world. Narratives that are produced and circulated across geographies, time, and space solicit action within us by arousing awareness and passion. We are always moved by words; our lives, grievances, wounds, and anticipations are catalysed by words. This chapter then seeks to explore this kind of imaginative way to endure and cope with authoritarian repression, displacement, and exile in contemporary Turkish literature. Çiler İlhan’s Exile (Turkish 2010, English 2016) in its cross-cultural moves, features short stories about the plight of both human and nonhuman lives that are subjected to state-sanctioned violence and global capital injustice, such as the harsh state-led gentrification in İstanbul’s Sulukule neighborhood, the suicidal women of Batman, a city in the South-Eastern Diyarbakır province, the Iraq occupation, the murder of the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, the tragedy of the Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, the massacre-torn Srebrenica as well as the abuse of animals in scientific experimentations and in war economy, especially in the U.S. Exile is divided into five sections: “Exile,” “Crime,” “Revenge,” “Cry” and “Return.” Each story, set in its own vertex, intersects with each other, forming interconnected short stories. İlhan manifests difficult subjects such as death, honor killings, child marriages, rape, terrorism, hopelessness, injustice, and global exploitation of human and nonhuman lives. In this chapter, I explore two short stories from the collection in its engagement with vitality of matter that complicates the notion of

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subjectivity, which is not merely restricted to bound individuals but is rather a co-operative phenomenon. In a similar vein, Aslı Erdoğan attracts the reader’s attention to the voices uprooted from the comforts of unharassed lives. Erdoğan is a renowned, prize-winning author, journalist, and human rights activist who has published collections of short stories, novels and poetic prose, and selections from her political essays. As a journalist, she has covered topics such as state violence, and human rights abuses and discrimination. Her book The Stone Building (Turkish 2009, English 2017) brings together narratives of exile, suffering, and isolation. The protagonist, A., reappears in most of the chapters as a character who has suffered torture and imprisonment in the stone building. The stone building, whose name and whereabouts is unclear, renders a metaphoric space for torture and its traumatic aftermath. As such, it entraps, paralyses, and haunts people who are repressed by a variety of oppressive measures. The characters are brutally wounded and forced to exist in their fragmentary consciousness. In this chapter, I focus on the story “Wooden Birds” in its engagement with possibility of posthuman subjectivity in order to blur the representation of the self that is predicated on docility, silence, and victimhood. As it will be further analysed, authoritarian repression caused by stateviolence, displacement, and exile create subaltern positions and subaltern subjectivities in Ilhan and Erdoğan’s texts. Acknowledging the rich history of the concept of subalternity, originally coined by Gramsci in the Prison notebooks (1971), and its subsequent development by the Subaltern Studies Group in South Asia (1982–1987), Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay Can the subaltern speak? (1988, revised in Spivak 1999) has become a canonical text in postcolonial studies and continued to influence scholarly work reflecting on subalternity. Spivak’s concept of the subaltern manifests an experience that can only be defined through negativity, namely via its inherent status as an experience of non-subject, non-agent or simply the shadow. Spivak repeatedly turns to “the shadow” as the location of the female subaltern in Can the subaltern speak? The subaltern woman is “even more deeply in shadow”2 compared to her male counterpart. And, the female subaltern is “doubly in […] shadow” compared to the metropolitan feminist pursuing the obstinate goal of a feminist global alliance. In Spivak’s definition of what she later calls the “old subaltern,” subalternity is directly associated with removals from all lines of social mobility. Thereby, as a position without identity, subalternity designates both the status of subject and the space of confinement and foreclosure. However, in her more recent writings, Spivak reformulates the figure of the “new subaltern,” who is “no longer cut off from the lines of access to the centre,” but corresponds to “the rural and indigenous subaltern,” incorporated by the centre as “source of trade-related intellectual property.”3 Spivak’s new subaltern is still designated by an absence of access. At the same time, this new subaltern, as I argue, is more prone to seek alternative inscriptions within new temporal and spatial dynamics.

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Drawing on the subaltern woman’s shadow existence, İlhan and Erdoğan’s texts reflect on and expand the foreclosure of subalternity. These texts re-situate the subaltern woman subject within what I call “feminist entanglements.” In this chapter, I conceive of feminist entanglements as joining of different entities (both human and nonhuman) and the way bodies, things, and objects are intertwined with each other beyond the Western conceptualisation of the human. Building on new materialist approach and particularly feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s conceptualisation of human subject as “an enlarged sense of inter-connection between self and others, including the non-human or ‘earth’ others.”4 my reading makes the claim for vibrant and animist interactions between human characters and nonhuman animals, between humans and the various substances, physical matter and organisms as well as narrative performances and stories that inhabit their local environments, such as landscapes and places. In this way, I argue that both İlhan and Erdoğan advocate for a planetary notion of subjectivity that disrupts the predominant binaries of Western humanism, such as mind/body, nature/culture, human/animal, animate/inanimate, born/made. More significantly, this orientation, as I argue, rewrites the unspeakability of the gendered subaltern subject and questions the limits of hegemonic thought as well as open up a non-hierarchical space into another mode of life in Exile and The Stone Building’s unrelentingly oppressive environment, which constantly marks the structural exclusion of the Other.

Expanding subalternity: Posthuman and new material approaches It is illuminating to present a brief theoretical framework to contextualise İlhan and Erdoğan’s texts in their subversion of the traditional referents of marginalised voices; of Otherness, including woman and nonhuman beings. In doing so, I draw on Rosi Braidotti’s notion of subjectivity that criticises the universalist image of “Man” and feminist new materialist theoretician Jane Bennett’s conceptualisation of vibrant materiality that rejects human exceptionalism. Braidotti argues that the humanistic ideal of the “self-regulating and intrinsically moral powers of human reason” have mutated into a “hegemonic cultural model.”5 For her, while championing freedom and equality, humanism has limited what counts as human and reduced sexualised, racialised, and naturalised all “others” to disposable bodies. Braidotti’s critique and her rejection of self-centered individualism overrule the mind/matter and culture/nature divide of transcendental humanist thought, complicating agency, and causality. In this context, Braidotti argues for zoe—the generic animating life force or the nonhuman vital force of life which is a property not of an individual or species, but rather of the universe of matter. Braidotti defines zoe-centric world as the “dynamic, self-organising structure of life itself ” of which anthropos or bios is just a thin segment.6 Indeed, Braidotti argues that subjectivity can then be re-defined as an

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expanded self that includes non-anthropomorphic elements of zoe, which effectively decenters bios and the “Man” as the measure of all things. Braidotti’s rejection of the Man as the measure of all things, as I propose, also complicates the very logic of subalternity by attempting to liberate from the status quo. In this context, one can consider subalternity as a space of entanglement where several competing processes of subjectivation may take place. Put another way, Braidotti’s formulation is insightful for rethinking multilayered and nonhomogeneous constellation of agency and non-agency in the space of subalternity. Jane Bennett also undergirds relational and expanded self, whose mere capacity is not confined within the human realm but immersed in a complex web of active entities, bodies, and materials. Bennett’s commitment to the nonhuman challenges the instrumental and passive conception of nature as an entity that is designed for human use. Her Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things is an account on “direct sensory, linguistic, and imaginative attention toward a material vitality.”7 She describes vitality as “the capacity of things—edibles, commodities, storms, metals—not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans, but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own.”8 For Bennett, vitality is beyond objects because they are marked by the ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects, dramatic and subtle. In this way, within spontaneous structural formation matter becomes much more variable and creative than we have ever imagined. Bennett notes that the terms “agent” and “agency” are not the property of persons or things; rather, for her, agency is an enactment, a matter of possibilities for reconfiguring entanglements. In this context, she advances the concept of distributive agency which “does not posit a subject as the root cause of an effect.”9 Bennett then turns our attention to actions that can be either human or nonhuman. In distributive agency humans are not at the ontological center or hierarchical apex but situated within an open space for forms of ethical practice that do not rely upon the image of an intrinsically hierarchical order of things. Moreover, Bennett’s argument on the Chinese concept of shi. The mood or style of an open whole in which both the agency changes over time, points to presence of impersonal affect receptivity. Shi is the “mobile configuration of people, insects, odors, ink, electrical flows, air currents, caffeine, tables, chairs, fluids, and sounds. Shi might at one time consist in the mild and ephemeral effluence of good vibes, and at another in a more dramatic force.”10 In this way, Bennett advances her ethical intervention and establishes an alternative to the established idea that the so-called inanimate is isolate and is always already designed for sovereign and autonomous human actors. From this perspective, by destabilising the human who is supposedly at the apex of the social pyramid, Exile and The Stone Building rethink agency and advocate for the affective capacities of the planetary and the posthuman realm to open a space for subalternity, such as the woman, the colonised, and the nonhuman Other.

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Exile, pain, and dissenting bodies Julia Kristeva argues that “our present age is one of exile. Exile is already in itself a form of dissidence, since it involves uprooting oneself from a family, a country or a landscape,” adding that, “Writing is impossible without some kind of exile.”11 Writing and exile, then, become both disturbing and extraordinary because of their potential to open up new possibilities and challenges when speaking about the self and the other; the self and the foreigner. Exile is the dominant theme in İlhan’s text, dramatising the intricate relationship between the self and the foreigner; the homeland and the exile. Indeed, Exile re-conceptualises the wounded psyche and rethinks the embodied structure of human subjectivity. What is at stake in Exile is the shift, both rhetorically and strategically, from the discursive realm (the world of words) to the embedded and embodied ground that is, in Braidottian lexicon, a negotiable, transversal, affective space.12 Thereby, the text rejects the modernist subject/ object divide and attempts to present more inclusive narrative about the suppressed voices of the Other. I would like to start this discussion of embodiment with the female bodyin-pain and her relationships with materiality and lived spaces such as home. The body-in-pain cuts across several stories in the book such as “My Daughter,” “My Brother,” and “My Sister,” all of which recount the unabated violence exerted upon a young woman’s body in Batman region in South Eastern Turkey. The unnamed young woman is brutally raped by several villagers and yet because of this fact she becomes the harbinger of shame in the family. The stories are told from the perspective of different narrators: first, the mother, secondly the sister and, lastly the brother who committed the murder. “My Brother” is read through the eyes of the young woman who, uncannily, witnesses her own murder: The three of them suddenly came into my room one night. I saw that my favorite brother, the youngest of my big brothers, had a cable in his hand! He wrapped it around my throat before I could ask what was going on.[…] My death came quickly and quietly but I was undaunted. Ever since my first night in the next world I haunted my eldest brother’s dreams every night, persistently each night, until they appeared in the newspapers. Yesterday, he finally went to the police and blurted it all out: ‘we killed our sister!’13 The representation of violence and pain in this scene is ambivalent, and this ambivalence rests on two grounds. First, it underscores the idea that pain is completely incommunicable when it occurs in a setting that refuses to register in an imaginative understanding. The moment that the young girl witnesses her own murder associates with a sense of pain’s singular and isolating nature. Elaine Scarry in The Body in Pain claims that physical pain “does not simply resist language but actively destroys it, bringing about an immediate reversion to a state anterior to language, to the sounds and cries a human makes

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before language is learned.”14 She notes that pain’s “resistance to language is not simply one of its incidental or accidental attributes but is essential to what it is.”15 Hence, pain, as Scarry suggests, is the utmost technical challenge for literature. The alienation and anomie of the modern subject become pervasive because ordinary utterances and sensations escape depiction. In this regard, while bearing witness to her own murder, the victim/sister is put in a linguistic vacuum in which pain exists. The sister can be best understood without her own vocabulary since the death comes so unexpectedly and quickly. On the other hand, the fact that the sister is undaunted resists Scarry’s claim that the pain is singular, resistant to expression, and insistently isolates suffering from others. The sister haunts the elder brother’s dreams and compels him to acknowledge what he has done. Here, İlhan’s use of pain as a narrative strategy turns the female subject-in-pain into a dynamic being in and out of the world and not a passive victim. Moreover, the sister’s persistence in asking for justice and her connection to the next world, and thus her ghostly presence pave the way for possibility of an interaction with a number of external forces, not all of them human, social or historical forces. Even though the above scene could be read in its dreamy and metaphorical sense of reincarnation, such existence renders a creative production of affective modulations that allow for repositioning the dead young woman as an embodied subject, whose voice could be represented at the level of the narrative through her suffering body. Thus, the pain emerges as kind of buffer zone for justice to arrive. Pain delivers a transformation both in its victim and its perpetrator, and more significantly creates a shared experience that unites sufferer and torturer. In this way, the entrenched male domination and selfcentered individualism of the Man, at the very least, unleash a sense of interconnection, an embodiment that is a relation to what is not itself. This narrative gesture marks a transgressive movement from one form of subjectivity to another precisely because the brother ceases to be the utmost sovereign subject due to the force of the haunting. İlhan’s narrative gesture does not take violence and death as a limit but rather a threshold to be surpassed for reclaiming the disposable bodies. Thus, death is not understood in its mere inanimate state of matter but an entanglement of material and spiritual forces. The death and the haunting, in some sense, are elevated to the status of a protagonist, interpenetrating and exceeding one’s power. Elsewhere in the book, this same story is also told by the brother who pleads guilty. He acknowledges the utmost violence exerted upon his sister. Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (9 December 1974–31 March 2008), also known as Pippa Bacca, was an Italian artist who, together with a fellow artist, was hitchhiking from Milan to the Middle East (first Israel and the Palestinian territories then to Turkey and Lebanon) to promote world peace with their project “Brides on Tour.” Before setting out on the trip, Bacca had suggested that “hitchhiking is choosing to have faith in other cultures and human beings” and yet arriving in Gebze, Turkey on 31 March 2008, she was

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raped and killed by a driver who offered her a ride. Her murder echoes throughout İlhan’s book with the story entitled “Pippa,” neatly compelling the reader to acknowledge this gendered violence and the oppression toward the Other, as is seen in the previous story. Pippa’s mother becomes the narrator of the story as she tells the reader the following: Her big sister and fiancée found out from the friend with whom she had set on her journey that she was in Turkey last and called the police. Apparently, she had been missing for twelve days. The Turkish police found her. Somewhere near Istanbul, a lorry driver who had given her a lift has raped her and then strangled her. He dumped her in the forest.”16 Pippa’s real-time tragedy in Istanbul narrated by the fictionalised Pippa’s mother in Italy creates an in-betweenness; a threshold that refers to the ethics of interpersonal relations, the interface between self and the other. At this moment, the reader is confronted with an entangled tragedy that is organised around the discursive and the affective. As seen, this threshold cuts across geographies, cultures, and societies as well as times, and, I suggest, becomes a porous fictive space to demand a call for ethics on the part of the reader. This ethics reminds us of Braidotti’s reading of Deleuze and Guattari on the power of art: Art, not unlike critical philosophy, is for Deleuze an intensive practice that aims at creating new ways of thinking, perceiving and sensing Life’s infinite possibilities. By transposing us beyond the confines of bound identities, art becomes necessarily inhuman in the sense of non-human in that it connects to the animal, the vegetable, earthy and planetary forces that surround us.17 Braidotti’s emphasis on art becoming inhuman and more importantly vital force indicate that art connects the reader to other worlds, identities, and emotions. One can argue that İlhan’s critical engagement with the power of art and literature creates interactive interference of many bodies (readers) and forces (circulation of emotions in and out of the reader, translation and publication). This is clearly observed in Pippa’s story that bridges the temporal structure of the relationship of the plot (Pippa’s murder) to the implied readers that may affect them in certain ways. In Exile, the ethical relations not only rely on human values but also rest on an expanded planetary vision that accommodates animals, plants and the earth. The reader is always encouraged to think beyond fixed identities and content in which violence, wounded and violated bodies are not solely limited to human lives. In the story “Srebrenica” this aspect is telling: The water cried, the fire cried, the cloud cried, the cinders cried on eleven July. I am Srebrenica! What happened to the safeguarding of my land that that was declared “secure” by the United Nations in 1993? […]

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Billions of lives sheltered on and beneath my soil shook in their boots. Neither my reptiles nor my winged animals could find themselves a place to hide […] I still feel their pain, I still hear their screams. Can you not hear them over there?18 At this moment, mind/matter and culture/nature divides of transcendental humanist thought can no longer hold. This moment encourages the reader to think of the concept of distributive agency in which the idea of nature that is isolated and specifically designed for autonomous human actors dissolves. Srebrenica as a wounded body, as an embodied being, speaks through her pain. The landscape is brutually altered by human and nonhuman materialities and is turned into a wasteland. The landscape is situated within an open space populated by different swarms of foreigners, such as bullets, dead bodies, dead animals. The reader might become much mobilised and flexible to think against the grain of the dominant representations of Bosnian Muslim identities. The Bosnian Muslims were victimised, oppressed, and fueled a sense of “subaltern” identity. As a group, their voices might never get accepted as meaningful as İlhan highlights above. However, the subalterns, or the indigenous peoples in Exile neither remain the invisible Others. Nor they are excluded from the conversation, or the dialogue. Here, they demand and seek alliances and new processes of meaning for the self, culture, politics, ecology, and everyday life. By handing in the agency to the affective capacities of the nonhuman, İlhan critically questions the notion of agency, which is in fact no longer considered to be the distinguishing quality unique to humans. In this way, İlhan opens an insistent mobile space where the human and the nonhuman are associated in affective networks and evolve and perhaps cope with the effects of war and atrocity in a non-oppositional and non-hierarchical way. This condition, at the very least, renders the nonhuman realm as vibrant and active, and thereby recasts subjectivity.

The Stone Building and women songs echoing the black forest Erdoğan dramatises how mental and physical wounds play into women’s agencies in her stories. The recurring motifs of the forest, abyss, swamps, nightmares, darkness, and the overt emphasis on bodily wounds makes the reader to question the philosophy of the subject, survival, and the imbrication of the human, and the nonhuman. The stories foreground the movement and dynamic change between subject and object, self and other, compelling us to consider the woman subject as a multilayered force and more significantly as relations between different forms of sites and locations. In this way, Erdoğan’s writing enables the reader to get critically engaged with the alienated and fragmented human mind under severe repressive conditions. “Wooden Birds” exemplifies this gesture and foregrounds mind and body, nature and culture as entangled composites of various material and affective

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forces. Indeed, nature renders lively materiality that is self-transformative and already saturated with the agentic capacities for women resistance and a way to futurity under dire social circumstances. “Wooden Birds” is a story about six intersecting lives in a medical institution in Germany, near the Black Forest. The six women who come from very different backgrounds share fragile psyches and bodily wounds: Dijiana, who is from Bosnia, is heavily traumatised by the Bosnian War (1992–1995) and does not say a word about the violence she and her family had witnessed; Filiz or “Felicita,” who is a Turkish political refugee due to the state-sanctioned violence in her home country bears the physical traces of torture in her body. Moreover, she has pneumonia and chronic asthma. Martha and Gerda, the two tall blonde Germans have tuberculosis; Beatrice, a young German woman who is an introverted heroin addict carries the burden of Nazi Germany in her memory. Lastly, Graciela is an enigmatic Argentinian woman refugee whose whereabouts is unknown. These women, in their own cultural contexts, appear as the silenced subjects, or more specifically those who are in a position of Other to a dominant group or status-quo. Their voices are subsumed by the discursive power of patriarchy, nationalism, and militarism. The story opens with Dijana’s call to hurry up to catch “The Amazon Express” which is an imaginative Dionysian escapade that these women create in order to cope with their illness-bound condition in the sanatorium. Once a week, these women are allowed to go out and spend a day according to their will. They usually walk along the small villages (the nearby T. village) and sometimes the steep roads and valleys surrounding the sanatorium: The true forest journey had begun. Thorns greeted the forest travelers, irritating them at first, but then becoming increasingly aggressive. […] This was much more than a simple introduction; it was the sudden encounter of two beings who had been completely unaware of each other’s existence. Which is why Filiz was shaken. She was suddenly face to face with a pure, primitive, magnificent oceanic spirit. It had propelled her from her dusty, sterile, nutshell of a world and bade her listen to the chords of an altogether different existence. The forest had a wild, vibrant, pulsing rhythm.19 At this moment, the forest possesses an efficacy of its own. The forest becomes more than a geo-physical surface upon which the characters’ imagination and events play out. Put another way, the forest unfolds its vibrancy and makes Filiz to delve into another kind of subjectivity that is fascinated in the presence of something wild and generative. Moreover, it is at this point Filiz begins to sing the Brazilian Paolinho, “Vida e bonita” (Meaning “life is beautiful”) along with the other women, who navigate their way through mountain paths. As they continue walking, these women sing songs, shouting at the top of their voices, letting their wounds touch each other as well as the earth in its planetary vibrancy. They embody what Rebecca Solnit reminds us

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about walking, which is a state the mind, the body, and the world are aligned.20 For characters, walking paves the way for an experience of agency that is the effect of a certain configuration of human and nonhuman forces; a humannonhuman collective that aims to defy illness-bound and debilitating condition. The more they walk, the harder the trail gets with steep cliffs and rocks, a tangle of tree roots, a rushing river that should be crossed so that the “Amazon Express” fulfills its mission. These women journey through woods drenched in sweat, grabbing at thorn bushes and roots. It is not an easy trail. Nor it is a dystopian condition for them. On the contrary, the journey is soothing and affirmative, and to a great extent aims at recovery: Filiz, too […] submitted to the urgent momentum and joined in the descent down the narrow, slippery line between life and death. The danger stimulated her, arousing all her senses. How deeply she loved life right now, feeling the joy of existence in the very marrow of her bones. It wasn’t a simply a rock or a bush she grabbed onto with her hand but life itself. […] The tree extended one of its tired arms to Filiz, and for a brief moment they held hands.21 It can be argued that Filiz is moved by the awareness of matter’s singularity. She captures a glimpse of Bennettian conceptualisation of shi as the source of reconfiguration of human bodies as an aesthetic-affective openness to vitality of materiality to overcome the status-quo. As previously mentioned, shi refers to the composition of human and nonhuman forces, allied elements being able to move together affectively. From this perspective, in their struggle to cope with their fragile condition, the subaltern women subjects open up a space between past and present, human and nonhuman, subject and object. These in-between states defy the logic of the negative and aim at the production of joyful or affirmative values and become a dramatic force capable of engendering a cure to their psychic wounds, if not their physical scars. Moreover, as is seen, bodies continuously affect and are being affected by other entities such as trees. At this moment, the power of a body to affect other bodies, reject the binary idea that the forest as a landscape is a passive context and the human life is an active source. In this way, materiality induces certain positive effects in women characters and allows them to be more open to themselves in a planetary sense, exceeding a mere survival. It defies Otherness and illness-bound existence. The forest scene thus marks the woman subject’s complex ties with plants, matter, objects, and landscapes not to mention other humans. It reinvents the connection to the nonhuman, similar to what Braidotti argues as posthuman ethics which refers to the subjects’ “relational capacity to elaborate adequate understanding of the inter-connection to all matter, at a historical time when our science and technology have revolutionised our knowledge of matter in a multi-scale manner.”22 This relational orientation is empowering for Filiz and becomes affirmative as she enters a dynamic view of all affects including the

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painful ones and the oceanic feeling (referring to the sensation of being one with the universe). In the end, she extends into a tree, reworking and transforming negative emotions that she carries within herself at the sanatorium. The ending of the story, however, renders this relational and affirmative orientation ambivalent. On their way for “The Amazon Express,” the women come across a university’s rowing men’s team. The men row by every Saturday and the women know the exact spot to watch these men from. At the same time, these pain-stricken women enjoy being watched by the rowing team as they strategically perform nude poses for the male gaze: Felicita had posed herself, motionless, not a thought in her head, remembering, feeling nothing, unable to shift her eyes from Graciela’s scars, and the breasts she offered up. At last, as the canoe was about to disappear from view, Filiz’s arms slowly lifted to the sky. They spread out rigidly, haltingly, like the wings of a wooden bird that had never learned how to take to the sky, but then they fell, exhausted collapsing upon her head. One atop another, like broken wings. Graciela’s otherworldly voice rose, wavering among the river’s roar and the receding shouts: Vide e bonita.”23 This dramatic ending can be read in its subjugation of female voices and the priority of the male gaze as well as the non-identity of the subaltern, despite the contradictions in the moment of their posing for the young men. However, one can argue that this scene also underlines how these female characters strategically negotiate the past, the present, and the future, constantly trying to be the ethical agents of their own lives. What is at stake here is the ability and willingness to cope with the opportunities and challenges of the sanatorium life at large in which these characters must exist. Indeed, the female characters covertly challenge the idea of sacrificial death, in which the subaltern subject has to die or be suppressed in the exercise of power. In this existential fragility, Filiz’s short-lived flight is poignant. Nevertheless, Filiz’s metaphorical proximity to a wooden bird is not completely predicated on loss and tragedy. In the end, Graciela’s otherworldly voice singing “Life is beautiful” in the middle of the Black Forest and its rushing waters renders life as the desire to endure, to continue by becoming other-than-itself. This narrative move highlights sensory, linguistic, and imaginative attention toward a material vitality of the world. In this light, it can be argued that Filiz tries to construct a new form of subjectivity and knowledge through transversal alliances between multiple human and nonhuman entities and actors in the middle of the Black forest. I suggest that she tries to come to terms with what she ceases to be. This new existence is open-ended, inter-relational, trans-species. It is emergent and entangled rather than designated. Those previously deemed non-humans (the colonised indigenous peoples/the subaltern, animals, landscapes, plants) help fuel the crisis of the border (s) of subalternity. More significantly, this crisis, I propose, entails a posthumanist space in which Filiz inhabits in the end. This renders a new entangled space of

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learning and meaning making to build knowledge with the knowledge of others (the colonised, animals, plants, fungi etc. and machines). The sociologist Andrew Pickering defines posthumanist space as an interstice where “human and nonhuman agents are associated in networks and evolve together in those networks.”24 For Pickering, posthumanism demands a space in which the human actors are still there, but inextricably entangled with the nonhuman including animals, plants, bacteria, in short, matter, and technology. Pickering’s emphasis on the material networks critically underlines the idea that materiality leaks into our lives in substantial ways. This leakage is clearly seen in Filiz’s engagement with the landscape, especially with the nonhuman realm precisely because Filiz finds the locus of her agency in the oceanic spirit or the planetary sensation. Put another way, the material forces surrounding her have their ability to induce effects in her mind and body (which is in alignment), opening her to an impressive, dynamic, and incalculable subjectivity. “The Amazon Express” thus defies the exclusive human and maledominated institutional power in the sanatorium, where these women are being treated. It brings to the fore mood or affect that circulates between human bodies and the forces they encounter (plants, rocks, animals and so forth), expanding the locus of agency that is always a human-nonhuman collective. The material-discursive practices are constitutive in “The Amazon Express,” and they are engaged in uncovering other ways of being. There is a counter-intuitive reality posited through different and divergent strategic uses that challenge the subaltern’s aporetic specificity. To conclude, Exile and The Stone Building call for a new ethical-political ground for the configuration of the subaltern subject. These texts display the contingent, positional and non-essential characters of how we might reinsert the self into subalternity. More significantly, they encourage the reader to imagine the possibility of bringing to life the pluriverse, or a world where many worlds fit. In this light, the ethical task that we might find in Exile and The Stone Building underscores the importance of posthuman and feminist entanglements. Concurrently, these texts manifest a dissident language that is critically sensitive to the way how writing atrocity, violence, and exile is itself enabled and infused with nonhuman inscription, expanding the contexts for women’s speakability and action. In other words, it is in the entanglements and in the interstices of human and nonhuman narrative voices that we may find subaltern agency. Thereby, both Exile and The Stone Building relocate the subaltern outside the hegemonic and destroy generalisations pertinent to the concept of subaltern.

Notes 1 Eric Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton Company, 1968), 236–37. 2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in In Other Worlds (New York: Routledge, 1988), 287–88.

134  Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim 3 Spivak, “The new subaltern: a silent interview,” in Vinayak Chaturvedi (ed.) Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (New York: Verso, 2000), 326. 4 Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (Oxford: Polity Press, 2013), 48. 5 Ibid., 13. 6 Ibid., 60. 7 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 19. 8 Ibid., vii. 9 Ibid., 30–31. 10 Ibid., 35. 11 Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 2. 12 Rosi Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities,” Theory, Society and Culture (May 2018): 21–22. 13 Çiler İlhan, Exile (London: Istros Books, 2015), 69. 14 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4. 15 Ibid., 5. 16 Ibid., 30–31. 17 Braidotti, The Posthuman, 107. 18 İlhan, Exile, 79. 19 Aslı Erdoğan, The Stone Building and other Places (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2018), 33–34. 20 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Penguin Books, 2018), 5. 21 Erdoğan, The Stone Building, 44. 22 Braidotti, “Posthuman, All Too Human: the Memoirs and Aspirations of a Posthumanist,” 26. 23 Erdoğan, The Stone Building, 47–48. 24 Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1995), 11.

Chapter 10

Conjuring up a shadow A case of castration in a colonial archive Niyati Misra-Shenoy

One day in March 1820, in an undisclosed North Indian town under the jurisdiction of the Bengal Presidency, a 12-year-old slave named Jye Munnee took her master and husband Juttee Ram to the local river, where, claiming she could cure his impotence, she blindfolded him, brandished a knife, chopped off his penis, and threw both it and her blade into the water. Leaving him prostrate on the riverbank, she returned to her family home and told the brother who had sold her a lie: her husband was suffering from dysentery. When her brother went to the river and saw Juttee Ram sitting on its bank with his pants soaked in blood, Jye Munnee was apprehended and taken to the police thana, where a “confession” of guilt was obtained and afterward repeated by her at the district magistrate’s office. When the case moved to trial in the mofussil Circuit Court, however, Jye Munnee retracted this confession, and contended that the victim had mutilated himself. Meanwhile, Juttee Ram withdrew, refusing to prosecute, and submitted a razinamah, claiming that he had forgiven the girl’s offense and desired no punishment. Four months later, the Nizamat Adalat, the East India Company’s top court in Calcutta, acquitted Jye Munnee. Its judges had found that it was not within their competence to pass a sentence upon her; they asked for greater discretionary power to try such cases in the future. The government at Fort William obliged, using the dissenting arguments drafted by the judges in Jye Munnee and Juttee Ram’s case as the text of a new Regulation asserting the state’s right to prosecute serious crimes—such as murder, dismemberment, and mutilation—regardless of the absolution of a victim or next of kin.1 In so doing, they explicitly affirmed the genesis of this law in the desire to cast an entire perceived realm of racialised and feminised transgressive resistance into the sphere of state-monopolised public interest, well before either criminal law was codified in British India or a native public sphere emerged. This leaves us with a fragment of the colonial episteme that unabashedly reinscribes castration anxiety into law’s origin—an almost comically prescriptive scene of white male fear transmuted into heterocolonial universals of justice, equity, and good conscience.

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Sarcasm can be a kind of jubilance: we may now set Jye Munnee down in history as the shadow-archon of an entire sub-clause of a section of one of several hundred laws the Company instituted during its rule over India. She’s “made it.” If most archives “are the bitter aftertaste of empire, the morsels left for us,” surely none can deny that this morsel is a tasty one. Three pages of reportage that excise all reference to district, village, caste, or circumstance—a genuine amuse bouche.2 There is no further body of sources pursued here; there can be no synoptic ambition or claim. Certainly there is not even an emotional path to this past, which, as we know, can only arise from a state of archival immersion—of hard, intensive, forensic work upon hundreds of documents—that inspires a kind of sensorial devotion, a faith in resurrection. But the shock of archival discovery comes to one and all with “an intense jolt of recognition,” “a peculiarly fitting fact”—and surely, surely this jolt is the material of which one might bivouac oneself upon a hermeneutic gap.3 It reenacts the substitutional logic of victimhood within a systemic operation of violence where such a text may hardly be expected to appear so summarily, so readably: the knifewielding girl, law’s muse du jour, is erased even as she speaks. And yet, as the seal upon multiple, prior absences—the penis sunk in the river, the missing knife, and the husband, mutilated, indifferent, who recuses himself and vanishes from sight—she is beyond abundant. She makes it clear that it is one matter to make a person or thing disappear, and another matter entirely “to make the disappearance itself disappear.”4 She emblematises the willed exercise of differential consequence upon an existence that must be subordinated and stigmatised.5 Her case comes to us from a body of colonial law reports that document twenty-three unremarked-upon cases of rape and thirty-one cases of “justifiable homicide” committed by men upon the bodies of women.6 Even so, it is this girl, alone, who provides her adjudicators an opportunity to justify the formal extension of judicial discretion; she alone produces a substantive precedent, and generates a procedural regulation that appears to critically expand the colonial exercise of criminal jurisdiction. And yet she is not alone—she is not even she. She might show us that one does not actually need a scandalous crime, a wayward event, to reduce the figure of the subaltern woman to her dangerous sexuality, her disorder, her madness, because history has already vanished her into this culpability. But she also shows us that if the Weberian paradigm posits that a system of governance, with its mechanical regularity, should make it possible to represent the consequences of actions as exactly calculable, a chopped-off penis is precisely the kind of object that throws a wrench of excess into these works—it is a certain kind of act upon a certain kind of body that manifests this ghost in the machine. Should this apparition—this fleeting appearance, in media res—affect our understanding of the evolution and consolidation of colonial knowledge formation in India of this period? Theory and narrative have both foundered and “recovered”; both have undone some absences by intensifying

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others. Theorists like Anjali Arondekar warn against giving rein to scholarly titillation—the lure of the recalcitrant event, the gratifying “surprise,” the reading through sensation to grasp that which “eschews and solicits interpretative seduction” in a text that appears like a talisman, complete in itself, loaded with mythical prepossession.7 That very lure throws up pointed questions: did Jye Munnee really get away with it when the colonial judiciary released her—or was it only the archive from which she was released, the record granting her a kind of false manumission? Do we really want her to fall into our clutches? Do we really wish for her to get free? Is it even her we care about?

Man, woman, subject, and exchange Let us content ourselves with a standard ambiguity for now: a subversive figure confounds the law; something might be done with such a figure. If this case, out of many, seems to proceed from within its archive as an event in spite of itself, it is because it showcases the law’s power to arbitrarily transform a contingent and specific circumstance into an abstract, general, and summary rule.8 The fact that this three-page legal entry does not speak for itself, does not explain—at a time when the colonial “state” is instantiating a role for itself that is far from settled or fixed—is what proves decisive. To read such a text as reaching for something like a self-evidence—an emblematic, a shorthand—is to recognise in the patterns of one’s own thought the exclusions through which modern subjects are constituted: patterns that are overlain upon “a domain of deauthorized subjects, presubjects, figures of abjection, populations erased from view.”9 Rachel Sturman has noted that “the constitutive power of the law to define and demarcate the human, the nonhuman and the not-quite-human cannot be overestimated”: law’s presubjects are the bodies upon which these demarcations proceeded, in the colonial nineteenth century, as jurispathic experiments.10 The native woman was, unsurprisingly, among those who vanished into these experiments. In British India, the law’s “relentless interest in crimes of intimacy” was articulated from the 1850s onward through a scrutiny of the woman perpetrator, who was set apart from kin and community not as a rights-bearing individual, but as a nonhuman, a deluded yet culpable object.11 It seems to follow that in this fragment, thirty years earlier, we see the figure that preludes such developments, that exceeds and escapes the occasion of her production. Her presence demonstrates “a libidinal investment in violence …everywhere apparent in the documents, statements and institutions that decide our knowledge of the past”—an investment that outstrips historiographical denial.12 The problem, however, is not only that this fact alone cannot contribute much to a conventional or general history of the law, but that it cannot even necessarily offer ingress into the dozens of other, unexceptional, female victimhoods that the law, as it attempts to colonise everyday life, captures, and organises. One is only able to “jeopardize the status of the

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event,” as Saidiya Hartman insists, when the event actually has a status—“to displace the received or authorized account, and to imagine what might have happened or might have been said or might have been done.”13 That is why the task of this essay is not to recover a woman, or to recuperate a woman’s dissent: it is to show how displacement already operates within this text’s representation of deviance, within the gendering of law. This fragment, in presenting a back door into the frustrations that inspire a colonial administrator to recommend a new regulation, locates his claims and commands in a regime squarely predicated upon “the relational construction of masculinity and the anxieties percolating within its norms.”14 It is not simply that the gendered investments of colonial discourse were permeated, as is known, by “an underlying script of homosocial eroticism…figured in the encounter between hypermasculinised British men and effeminate Indian men”—it is that in the ordinary course of things, women were profoundly marginal, relegated to serve as grounds of contention, as abstract referents, in an exchange “essentially between men.”15 When Jye Munnee’s master renounces his lost penis, however, and falls back out of the record, it becomes clear how much of this exchange-between-men is not quite yet transparent, or even legible, to those subject before it. In Juttee Ram’s unwillingness to prosecute his mutilator, the law is confronted, ironically, by a non-separation: an undifferentiated, composite subject, a relationality between sexed bodies—degenerate female and emasculate male—that do not pit against one another, that escape the binary and punitive logic of gender difference. Such a disastrous prospect splits—even doubles—the roles of scapegoat and victim that are often conjoined in marginalised, gendered bodies. Jye Munnee’s status as subject before the law is therefore hardly queried, the “facts” of the case are barely articulated, before these are everywhere substituted and sutured together by the missing penis. We see, then, that the native woman’s subjection is provisioned-for by an entirely different reading and interpolation into gendered social relations. Her transgressive action, figured outside the Orientalist trope of her extreme suffering, ignorance, and degradation, seems to reorient the standing upon which the volition of native men and their custom is incorporated into their construction as political subjects governed under a rule of colonial difference. What complications might this offer to the discursive coherence of gendered victimhood, particularly the victimhoods recognised and articulated by men as men—taking as given that the moral selfhoods and sovereignties of most polities are undergirded by the faulting and controlling of feminised others? What does it mean, to repeat the famous phrase of colonial governance, for the rule of law to take the place of the rule of men? Is this replacement the final ground of any exchange between men—or is it the search for any means to contain the prospect of resistance from all victims of the social and political order, however so designated? What pre-history—of law, of gender, of right—marks out the case of Jye Munnee? Is it in fact able to be read as a kind of prehistory of the rights of men?

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Translating mutilation The text of Juttee Ram against Jye Munnee begins with the words “the prisoner,” followed by her charge—“cutting off the prosecutor’s membrum virile”—and her plea—not guilty. Jye Munnee is in the custody of the state, but her interpellation in its court is swiftly qualified by a twofold ownership: in the month of March 1820, the prosecutor bought the prisoner of her brother for 20 rupees, with the intention of subsequently marrying her. The prisoner, finding that he was impotent, induced him to follow her to a neighboring river, where she undertook to find a remedy for his disorder. On arriving there, she persuaded him to submit to having his eyes covered with a cloth, upon which she cut off his penis with a knife… The acknowledgement of marriage-purchase, as opposed to simply “wife,” operates here to foreground two clarifications.16 First, Juttee Ram will not prosecute the girl, but he still owns her: he must, the text seems to plead, apprehend damage to himself in some form. Second, in the statement that she found Juttee Ram “impotent,” Jye Munnee’s function as a wife is conceived as a duty to provide sexual enjoyment, to satisfy sexual needs. She might even have been purchased to make Juttee Ram not impotent; it is a common belief that intercourse with young virgins is the antidote to various indispositions. In other words, the girl who later wields a knife is in fact herself an instrument: a pharmakon, a pleasure device, a human commodity—in that she embodies the institutions of slavery and patriarchy, she is a socio-sexual technology. She is, in fact, the measure of him. The genesis of her crime, her malfunction, is her offer of a cure: instead of giving and restoring, she takes and destroys. Purchased for sexual satisfaction, she chops off the penis that attempts to penetrate her; she travesties her one job. Not only was it given to her, it was one that she also offered to do, after luring her husband into accepting her help, making him submit to blindfolding his own eyes, persuading him to trust her. To the colonial adjudicator, such a crime is not merely audacious or insubordinate. As a premeditated, willed mutilation, it threatens the foundation of domestic intimacy—the order of gender itself. The colonial regime of gender imposes sexual difference along the lines of violence, along a partitioning of bodies. Bodies are forced into place in “a binary anatomical cartography”: the masculine body and subject is defined by its possession of a penis, the feminine body and subject is defined by the penis’ absence, and “outside of this binary, there are only pathology and disability.”17 Violent patriarchy reifies the rape of any body as an irrevocable appropriation, a permanent loss of value, because “a single sexual organ identifies the self, that organ is conceived of as an object that can be taken or lost, and such a loss dissolves the self.”18 Castration, however, terminates this logic at its very limit: it literalises the theft and almost uniquely inverts it upon the thief—just as when the girl’s

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body, a captive plaything, a pleasurable implement, wields an instrument of its own, it inverts its relation to its possessors. For it to then become evident—as it does, to the British judges’ epistemic horror— that the fear of castration is not operant here in any conventional way—that the man who has been violently divested of his penis relinquishes his right to be avenged in this forum, almost as if losing a penis is not so very great a loss—in such a moment, when the universal is begging so transparently to be reaffirmed as originary that the exercise practically transcends cliché, we see that gender is not simply performative within various historical and cultural contingencies: it is exposed as a category that is, in Paul Preciado’s words, first and foremost prosthetic.19 The body is illegible not just without other bodies around it, but without the things that make it what it is, be they human or not, be they separate or supplement. Gender inheres in these attachments, these dependencies and anxieties, these stand-ins and substitutions.

Girl-woman, slave-wife, and cipher It is gender’s very “inventedness”—its status as one of many techniques arising from “the generalised instrumentalization of human existence” before power—that makes it inventive, indeed prolific, of various indices of moral and civilisational threat.20 One might speculate that an aspect of this case that particularly disturbed its judges was Jye Munnee’s intervention into this particular register of gender’s productive symbology. She inflicted an injury upon Juttee Ram that was undoubtedly quite widely known, even by children, as a legal judgement and penalty: its commission enacts a displaced and part-discredited state power, a haunting with deep psychic resonances. Genital mutilation, in particular, was also an archival entry point for another population category: gender nonconforming people and communities, whose criminalisation was marked by a charge of forcible castration. In this context, Jye Munnee’s castrating of Juttee Ram is particularly transgressive because it associates her with gender-deviants, thereby cementing her criminalisation: she is a woman, a bad woman, and also a not-woman. The gendering of crime and punishment, by translating into “a potential for pornotroping,” can slide in this way into “a more general “powerlessness,” resonating through various centres of human and social meaning.”21 Here, that pornotroping allows for the extension from the body of the criminal woman of a generalised helpless moral degradation, a blurring between human, instrument, and thing. A child bride, the record tells us, is purchased for twenty rupees for sexual enjoyment—purchased from her own brother— by a man who might potentially have been permanently impotent to begin with.22 The luridness of this situation—even before it leads to a castration— is stressed as a manner of making its actors stand in for one another, because they must be made to submit to the most intimate forms of governance. How, then, do we extricate that conversion of figures and terms from the overdeterminations of this legal judgement?

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One venture might be to continue in thinking of the domestic figure as both wife and slave. In a cultural context in which parents and uncles sold, rented, or mortgaged their birth kin, especially in times of war, famine, or economic hardship, any variety of reasons might have prompted Jye Munnee’s brother Jye Ram to sell rather than “give” her as a bride, including that he lacked the ability to pay for a dowry, or had too many other dependents to care for. In light of his subsequent surrender of her to the colonial court, however, and his willingness to testify against her, it is likely the reasons were not positive ones. Additionally, if Ranajit Guha was able to show an “interplay of solidarity and fear” between subaltern women in his important analysis of a legal fragment in “Chandra’s Death,” Jye Munnee seems to have had no woman relatives to speak for her either, brother aside.23 A significant element of the obligation imposed by slavery—the price of redemption from this status—was assimilation to the slave’s host lineage and household: the success of this assimilation enabled slaves to achieve status as “measures of the power and dignity of others.”24 In this context, a lack of sympathetic witnesses might have arisen from the fact that Jye Munnee destroyed all possibility of the kinship-assimilation mandated by her wife-role by chopping off the penis that might have borne her children (even if, allegedly, it was an “impotent” one). That alone might be why the crime has become incontrovertible—to the extent that a local darogha or police officer, for instance, might have forced or blackmailed the parties involved to approach the magistrates. The only thing that is conclusive is that if this was not Jye Munnee’s first “crime,” we can only speculatively access the operation of the thriving informal institutions of adjudication that might have intervened in her life long before she appeared in the record of the Company’s “hegemonic judicature,” and long after she disappeared from it.25 And yet, precisely because this is all the record offers, because the details that are available are springboards into realms of conspiracy across the vast illegibility between this page and us, speculation makes space for the sad likelihoods, the salaciousness, the carefully-repressed paranoias, that mark this case’s entry into a founding legal archive. Why did Jye Munnee go back to her brother, for instance? She could have run away; this archive is full of escaped slaves and servants. Could it be that her brother commissioned this crime? That this castration is perhaps a gamble taken too far in some kind of secret feud? Why the penis, anyway—surely not just to titillate us? Jye Munnee may simply be getting back at her husband for forcing sex upon her—but what if, additionally, he had had sexual relations with someone he should not have? The record tells us that Juttee Ram was impotent, but this could mean anything: that he had a venereal disease, for example, or even that he was homosexual. Was this simply a freak accident? Where did Jye Munnee get her knife? Was there even a knife, if it was supposedly thrown in the river and no one was around to see this happen? Was this a religious rite gone wrong? A misfired circumcision, perhaps? A profound misunderstanding of birth control?

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The subaltern before the law This poking of holes into absence—this dense cloud of merry scepticisms, spinning in the head like so many koans—turns upon one, axial question: the question of Jye Munnee’s speech, her changing story of things. Can Jye Munnee be said to speak? She says she did it, and then she says she didn’t; Juttee Ram had dysentery; Juttee Ram mutilated himself. What else did she say to facilitate her escape? How quickly did she hit the required threshold of self-contradiction, the lowest bar of a liar? What was skimmed off, misheard, excised, pronounced incoherent thereon? What was used against her? What can we use her against? When we recall who gives law in this historical period—the white men who are supposedly saving brown women from brown men—can we say that Jye Munnee shows that one extant and influential critical-theoretic explanation of women’s role in South Asian history falls significantly short of being able to assert that it is possible to know who is against who, who is saving who, and why? Can we save Jye Munnee, in the end, from ourselves? Let us reconsider another aspect of Gayatri Spivak’s formulation. If the history of sexuality in the West conceives of absence as a simple repression, a sentence to disappear and be silent, then sati—a spectacular act into which a woman chooses to vanish herself—refigures this absolute opposition between subject-law and object-repression by marking the place of disappearance with “something other than silence and nonexistence, a violent aporia between subject and object status.”26 Does Jye Munnee’s vanishing act come across as a little more appealing, a little more pleasurable, than self-immolation? Does that violent aporia become a little less alien, a little more welcoming to our desire for the past? Can we pour rage into it, or glee, or vicarious satisfaction? To have satisfaction as a point of entry into posterity, we know, is the mark of a “passionate” or “consumptive” modernity, in which identities and allegiances read into history let “the political engagements of the present override the imagination and investigation of the past.”27 But the truth of subalternity lies—and has always lain—outside this modernity, outside a claim to read or recognise it as a concern of the present. If the most general postcolonial counter-representation of the subaltern in South Asian history has been enshrined in the figure of the heroic male instigator of peasant uprisings and agrarian revolts who possesses his own history and consciousness, the kind of “agency” this construction valorises—“the demand for a spectacular demonstration of the subaltern’s independent will and selfdetermining power”—only rarely and temporarily inhabits this figure of the marginal woman, and often ends up telling us nothing about her.28 As Rosalind O’Hanlon has noted, reading such a notion of agency into speech recorded in the archive is liable to fall into the trap of a modern essentialist humanism: this means “not only that the recuperation of the subject-agency imposes real limitations on our ability to comprehend the workings of power upon its object, but that its unguarded pursuit produces a diminution in the

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only constant feature of the subaltern’s “nature” which we can identify with any certainty, which is its alienness from our own.”29 The subaltern woman’s centrality to the law, then—as deviant instrument, as slave-wife, as a talking cipher—does not resurrect her: it merely passes the baton on to us to govern our desires, to conserve for ourselves the right of death upon her—to choose how, and whether, she lived or died.30 In its negotiations with this right of death, colonial lawmaking demurred, till the last, from admitting the woman’s voice. It developed “a hermeneutics of deciphering women’s physical signs, gestures, and emotions” for the purposes of the law.31 One might speculate that this vocabulary of interpretation may have arisen not only because women’s speech was restricted by both community and state, and emerged under highly regulated conditions in court, but because the absolutism of the community’s sovereignty over the woman’s body and mind might have been impressive to colonial administrators in some way, even as they decried the incompetence of the exercise of that sovereignty.32 As the subject of an absolute and totalising law of discretion before and beyond mere political right, the subaltern woman would have posed a figure of fascination to colonial law—an object it learned to desire and appropriate—as she does to us, by inheritance. It falls to us, then, to read her better, regardless of how or what we might see her to speak, or wish her to mean. When she was apprehended by agents of the Company, Jye Munnee was first taken to the police thana, or subdivision; from there, she was transferred to a Mofussil Diwani Adalut, the district-level court, and made to confess before its magistrate, a Company civil servant who had combined civil and criminal powers to try petty offenses. From here her trial, being a serious crime, was referred to a Circuit Court on the level of four divisions within the Bengal Presidency, and when that trial ended in confusion about the jurisdiction to punish after Juttee Ram’s absolution, it went to the final Court of Appeal, the Nizamat Adawlut.33 Under reforms in the 1790s, native Hindu and Muslim religious scholars—pandits and qazis—had been assigned as “law officers” to assist British judges at all court levels. It is because the native Law Officers at the Circuit level and those at the Nizamut level issued decisions (or fatwas) that contradicted each other—while all the while seeming to bar British magistrates from exercising their own discretion—that Jye Munnee’s case produced a new law. By the time the story reaches Justices Goad, Leycester, and Smith, then, the girl’s body, her conduct in court, and the question of ascertaining her criminal intent are assumed known—completely and totally. The case turns instead on the question of why or how Juttee Ram, the self-recusing male victim, has the ability to refuse and disrupt the punishment of the crime, and why or how the law cannot supersede him. Scott Kugle has documented how the East India Company of this period slowly developed and practised a reconstituted “Anglo-Muhammadan” form of law based on tazir, which can be described as an overriding judicial discretion—the taking of wider powers

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to extend the punitive arm of the state through law. Company judges appropriated tazir by resort to an extant indigenous concept, namely siyaasa, the political right of the former Mughal rulers to side-step the formal procedures of Islamic jurisprudence and exercise exemplary justice without ostensibly admitting any change to the Sharia.34 Before Law Commissions later established a fully codified law largely excised of indigenous legal origins, AngloMuhammadan law carved out a swathe of discretion that enabled that later systematisation. This law was conceived and practised antagonistically, as a way of excising untrustworthy native experts from its operation.35 For much of the early colonial period qazis had been instrumental in keeping the peace, and English judges were not recognised at the local level as equivalent authorities. An emergent state creed of racialised distrust configured the challenge of translation as a matter of deliberate knowledge-constriction: if the British judge didn’t understand what was going on, then the qazi would have to be hobbled in other, procedural ways. To this end a magistrate, after hearing the litigants through translation, would unilaterally decide what issue the case centred on, choose only the facts he felt were pertinent or material to it, and have the rest excised from the record as “inadmissible.” A “processed” case would be handed over to the qazi only once the magistrate had restricted the facts it contained in this manner. The qazi’s job was then to use these facts only to determine whether a defendant was “guilty” and indicate what punishment was proper to a crime under Islamic law; he could not suggest settlements, compromises, or community mediation, and was forbidden to engage in any interpretation or deduction that might challenge the procedural straitjacket so set.36 Prior to Company rule, cases had not been subject to an absolute separation between civil and criminal wrongs, and parties to the case represented themselves; the object was to determine the cause of the dispute, deliver satisfaction to the injured party, and to uphold community standards.37 The East India Company’s justice, however, revolved “around distinctly colonial perceptions about the deceit and dishonesty inherent in Indian culture”—a quality that was unchangeable, and had to be assumed “as a rule.”38 One instance of this is that the evidence that Company courts relied on in the dispensation of justice was not merely obtained: it was produced, extorted, often by well-documented torture.39 However, none of that doubt, we are told, applies to Jye Munnee: On her trial before the Circuit Court, she behaved with the greatest simplicity. She was ignorant of her age, and of the names of her parents… and it was satisfactorily established that no coercion or undue influence had been used to extort her former confessions. She appeared to be about 12 years old, and her brother did not think that she could be more, but was unable to specify her exact age. The evidence of her brother Jye Ram, and the circumstances of the case, left little doubt respecting the truth of the fact.

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It seems unnecessary to linger gratuitously on the glaring contradiction inherent in the credit given here to the criminal confession of a child that is otherwise unable to produce basic information about herself. Elizabeth Kolsky has shown that women who had suffered rape were cast in the Nizamat Adalat less as victims than as a special class of witnesses to whom singular standards of truth or verifiability applied.40 This practice displaced judicial attention from the need to establish commission or criminal intention, actus reus or mens rea: instead, the woman was always at the heart of the trial. This particular jurisprudential conceptualisation of women victims has a special usefulness, of course, to their construction as perpetrators. A discretionary approach to adjudicating rape—based entirely on the woman’s body, sexual history, and perceived modesty—cordons off Jye Munnee’s access to a claim of victimhood. Her speech, rich in multiple, overlapping, contradictory truths, can only strengthen so viciously permissive a mode of criminal authentication. The idea that Oriental women matured early, Radhika Singha notes, was frequently used by British magistrates to overqualify them as offenders and underqualify them as victims, especially for crimes such as rape and other forms of sexual violation.41 Therefore, when upon “finding” that Juttee Ram is “impotent,” a young girl is portrayed as hoodwinking him and leading him astray, we perceive clearly “the processes of subjectification made possible (and desirable) through the very idiom of the archive”—the archive that, in South Asia, has never not somehow vilified women.42 She initiated sexual contact—she humiliated his manhood, and precipitated its failure: this scheme of castration was hatched upon a foiled impulse precisely of priapic desire. The qazis of the Circuit and Nizamut courts are therefore queried: what would have happened if he had not forgiven her? Their answers to this question are ambivalent. The officers of the lower court, disregarding her confessions, write that her tender age makes it unreasonable to suppose a willed act. They convict her of accidental crime, and prescribe a payment of blood money. In the higher—where they have not seen her—they take her recorded confessions at face value and state that if Juttee Ram had not renounced prosecution, the girl would have been subject to the judges’legal discretion—punishments like imprisonment or lashes. However, they both caution that because Juttee Ram has withdrawn his case, it has ended in a release from responsibility; this counterfactual should have no legal weight. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the right of native men within this law ends at the threshold of gender. The privilege of internal contradiction is not the given role of the judge; the desire for pardon, in turn, “was not the legitimate role of a victim.”43 The Nizamut’s judges demand whether any principle can be found which entitles them to exercise their tazir. The response is startling: A minor does not incur punishment by reason of her violation of the divine law, or for the sake of public example, which in fact amount to one

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and the same thing; and exclusive of divine or human rights, there is no cause which can legally induce Tazeer. What does it mean for divine law to equal public example in a colonial regime? Does this statement arise out of the recognition of a total substitution, a swapping-out of the imprisoned soul for the imprisoned body? If a minor—a category that can include child, slave, and woman—cannot incur punishment either for the purpose of divine law or upon a conception of the human, what does it mean to hold such a figure within a total and absolute discretion, at total and absolute mercy? I have no answer; I can only claim here an instance of the hunch that “subjugated knowledge erupts in contested ontologies of peoples and things.”44 It certainly baffles the presiding judges: “I am not sure,” one of them observes, “but that we are conjuring up a shadow to defeat our competency to punish in this case.” The shadow eventually dissipates; the counterfactual is deemed adequate to legal business. In the commentary to the draft of the 4th Regulation of 1822, the chief judge of Jye Munnee’s case, Mr. Leycester, wrote that the Court released the prisoner “not from an idea that she was not deserving of punishment, nor in mercy, but from the want of competency to punish.” The law is “corrected”: it is harsher, more public, more exemplary. One girl slips from its grip.

Conclusion A story such as this one offers no easy summary. What I have particularly hoped to suggest in these pages, however, is a gendered construction of the feminine that is, in fact, irreducible either to marginality or to victimhood. Anupama Rao and Steven Pierce have noted that the emergence of the human as a political subject was “intimately tied to its emergence as an injured subject.” It seems to me that—at least in the South Asian instance—a violence that is disorderly, chaotic, unreasoning and feminine can occasionally be observed to shape and constitute this injured subject.45 The judges presiding over this crime are in that moment unable to prosecute it—but it is this crime, precisely this one, that they choose as exemplary of what they want the power to prosecute. It is not simply that a law has not yet been written for a trajectory of crime that resists subsumption, if only temporarily, into the general operation of power. Rather it is that sovereignty makes itself known in the seeming capriciousness of its logic: certain social facts, certain acts, become a matter of security and concern, and the law swarms to them, continually posing “the question of what forms and quantities of value are equivalent to, or adequate for, what forms of suffering, loss, or damages.”46 Whether an act is a personal affront or a political subversion; to whom attachment can be expressed and to whom pity, contempt, indifference, or disdain must be shown; all these inhere in inequitably conferred degrees of social license that are sensed and not calculated, and which constitute cultural and legal proof of one’s own position in the colonial order of things.47

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Notes 1 Namely, Section 3 of the 4th Regulation of 1822, the draft of which was submitted by Mr. Leycester, one of the judges of Jye Munnee’s case, to the Government at Fort William on January 261,821. Juttee Ram against Jye Munnee, July 20th, 1820, in Reports of Cases Determined in the Court of Nizamut Adawlut. Vol. IV, p. 29–31. The full text of the new section of the Regulation is as follows: “In all cases of murder, mutilation, or severe personal injury, in which the heir of the slain, or the person injured, may refuse to prosecute, the law officers of the Nizamut Adawlut shall be called on to declare what the futwah would have been in the event of their having prosecuted; and the judge or judges sitting on such trial shall pass sentence under the general Regulations, and on a consideration of all circumstances of the case, the same as if the parties had come forward to prosecute.” Richard Clarke, Digest, or Consolidated Arrangement, of the Regulations and Acts of the Bengal Government, from 1793 to 1854. 2 Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 19. 3 Emily Robinson, ‘Touching the void’, Rethinking History 14, no. 4 (December 2003), 514. 4 Thomas Keenan, ‘Getting the dead to tell me what happened’, Kronos 44, no. 1 (2018), 102. 5 Rey Chow, ‘Sacrifice’, Representations 94, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 136. 6 See Elizabeth Kolsky, ‘The Rule of Colonial Indifference’, The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 4 (November 2010): 1093–1117, for the numbers, and for a more comprehensive and extensive survey of these cases than I will attempt here. 7 Anjali Arondekar, For The Record (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009), 3. 8 The consensus of most historians on colonial law, Ashwini Tambe has noted, is that “the law achieved the expression of imperial interests in timeless, universal terms. Disputes concerning law were expressed in terms of general statements of principle rather than particular statements of private interest. This made the law an especially powerful form of discourse and an important instrument of domination.” Codes of Misconduct, 6. 9 Judith Butler, ‘Contingent Foundations’, in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), 13. 10 Rachel Sturman, ‘Gender and the Human’, Gender and History 23, no. 2 (August 2011), 230. 11 Saurabh Dube and Anupama Rao, Crime Through Time (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013), xxxvi. Padma Anagol has shown how the prosecution and trial of infanticidal women in Western India under established criminal codes in the 1860s and 70s “generated a compelling body of knowledge about Indian female sexuality” that cemented native women’s subjection to the absolute sovereignty of their communities. ‘The Emergence of the Female Criminal in India’, History Workshop Journal 53 (Spring 2002), 78. 12 Saidiya Hartman, ‘Venus in Two Acts’, Small Axe 26, no. 2 (June 2008), 5. Gyan Pandey has noted that the history of violence “has been treated in the historiography of modern India as aberration and as absence: aberration in the sense that violence is seen as something removed from the general run of Indian history: a distorted form, an exceptional moment, not the ‘real’ history of India at all. Violence also appears as an absence…because historical discourse has been able to capture and represent the moment of violence only with great difficulty. The ‘history’ of violence is, therefore, almost always about context—about everything that happens around violence. The violence itself is taken as ‘known’.

148  Niyati Misra-Shenoy Its contours and character are simply assumed; its forms need no investigation.” ‘In Defense of the Fragment’, Representations 37, Special Issue: Imperial Fantasies and Postcolonial Histories (Winter, 1992), 27. 13 Hartman, ‘Venus in Two Acts’, 11. 14 Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Giving Masculinity a History’, in Gendering Colonial India: Reforms, Print, Caste,and Communalism, edited by Charu Gupta (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012), 44. 15 Sinha, ‘Giving Masculinity a History’, 41. 16 Radhika Singha has argued that the characterization of slavery in India was “informed by a notion of civilizational particularity which continued to affect the legal status of married women and daughters long after men had been ‘liberated’ into the realm of ‘voluntary contract’.” In 1834, about a decade after this case, the East India Company’s Court of Directors instructed the newly formed Law Commission—which was tasked with producing a formal law code for India—to exclude a variety of social forms from the ambit of slavery, particularly those that qualified as types of marriage or quasi-marriage. This was in keeping with the view of most colonial magistrates that household heads had a right of restraint and chastisement with regard to their dependents, slave or not. ‘Making the Domestic More Domestic’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 33, no. 3 (1996), 318; Also see Indrani Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999). 17 Paul Preciado, Countersexual Manifesto, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 5. 18 Sharon Marcus, ‘Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words’, in Feminists Theorize the Political, ed. Judith Butler and Joan Wallach Scott (New York: Routledge, 1992), 398. 19 Preciado, Countersexual Manifesto, 27–28. 20 Achille Mbembe, ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (Winter 2003), 14. 21 Hortense Spillers, ‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe’, Diacritics 17, no. 2, Culture and Countermemory: The “American Connection” (Summer 1987), 67. 22 Impotence was an important marker of failed masculinity within the nineteenthcentury British regime of sexuality: a lack of virility was, Jessica Hinchy has tried to show, central to British criticism of Indian society and rule. It was represented as “rife due to the youthful sexual excesses of Indian men, while native rulers were disparaged as incurably impotent as a result of their ‘debauched’ lifestyle. From the British perspective, ‘impotent man’ made sense as a catch-all term for Indian gender/sexual deviants, describing both a failure of masculinity and ‘perverse’ sexual behaviour.” ‘Troubling bodies’, South Asian History and Culture 4, no. 2 (2013), 201. 23 See Guha, “Chandra’s Death”. 24 Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and Law, 19–20. 25 Guha, “Chandra’s Death”, 146. Guha treats the operation of caste panchayats and other informal patriarchal legal entities in this vital essay, describing the invisible and inexorable cultural force of “a tribunal that functioned independently of and parallel to the network of colonial courts. Constituted at the village level of Brahmin priests acting individually or collectively, or by the leadership of a caste or sub-caste, it operated by ‘a system of rules defining the permitted and forbidden, the licit and the illicit’, in a manner that had little to do with the codes and procedures of the sarkar’s a’in and adalat (government’s law and courts).” 26 See Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Colonial Discourses and PostColonial Theory: a reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 102. 27 Indrani Chatterjee, ‘When “Sexuality” Floated Free’, The Journal of Asian Studies 71, no. 4 (November 2012), 953.

Conjuring up a shadow  149 28 Rosalind O’Hanlon, ‘Recovering the Subject’, Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 1 (1988): 213. 29 Ibid., 211. 30 Tanika Sarkar, ‘A Prehistory of Rights’, The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal’, Feminist Studies 26, no. 3, Points of Departure: India and the South Asian Diaspora (Autumn 2000): 602. 31 Ibid., 612. 32 Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 21 33 Under the old Mughal system, a ruler possessed the right of Diwan (revenue collection and administration) and the right of Nizamat (executive powers and control of criminal courts). The former had been ceded to the Company in 1764, but the latter had never been officially conferred on it: this did not deter it from simply assuming that power without seeking a Mughal grant. Scott Kugle, ‘Framed, Blamed and Renamed’, Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 2 (May 2001): 264. The Adawlut’s chief justice was a member of the Company’s executive governing council. It was established in 1772 by then Governor-General Warren Hastings’ Scheme for the Administration of Justice to judge criminal cases involving the native population of Bengal in anticipation of the full military conquest of the province, which was completed by around 1790. Its civil parallel was the Sadr Diwani Adwlut, which dealt mostly with revenue cases but also administered ‘personal law’. For a very clear outline of the legal structure and the timeline of codification in India at this period, see Appendixes A and B of Hussain, The Jurisprudence of Emergency (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), 145–151. We do not know which district or division of Circuit Court Jye Munnee’s case was referred from; unusually, this information is not provided in the law reporter. The four divisions were Calcutta, Murshidabad, Patna, and Dacca. 34 Kugle, ‘Framed, Blamed and Renamed’, 264. 35 Ibid., 271. 36 Ibid., 284–7. 37 Radhika Singha, A Despotism of Law (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8. 38 Elizabeth Kolsky, ‘The Body Evidencing the Crime’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2002), 15. In a letter from the Bengal Government to the Court of Directors in 1827, for example, the Company blamed judicial backlogs and disarray on native corruption and deceit: “the notorious disregard for truth, so generally displayed by the natives in giving evidence, and from their want of moral principle, evils which cannot be mitigated or remedied by any direct or immediate modification of our judicial institutions.” Kolsky, ‘The Body Evidencing the Crime’, 20. 39 As early as 1832, a Select Committee on East India Affairs had examined the prevalence of torture and suggested that the colonial police force be reformed and modernized to curtail the use of corporeal violence. The Company’s Court of Directors would issue a “Judicial Despatch” regarding the prevalence of torture in the Bombay Presidency in 1826; Bombay’s highest criminal court, the Faujdari Adalat, had issued over ten circulars regarding the rules governing the extraction of confessions by native police. These reports spoke of “brutal acts committed by native officials in utter secrecy, unknown to their European superiors”. Anupama Rao has highlighted some of the practices they documented: a church official from Mangalore noted that chilli pepper was applied to women’s bodies to extract confessions from them; a joint magistrate of Nellore mentioned the case of a woman named Subbee, who upon being accused of having stolen a sepoy’s knapsack was subsequently hung by one arm from the branch of a tree,

150  Niyati Misra-Shenoy suspended above the ground, and “whipt with tamarind switches on her private parts.” Anupama Rao, ‘Problems of Violence, States of Terror’, in Discipline and the Other Body (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 164–67. 40 In English law, the prominent jurist Matthew Hale instituted influential, strict evidentiary requirements in rape cases that concentrated on the victim. Elizabeth Kolsky writes: “a woman’s prior sexual history, fresh complaint (an immediate police report), and marks of physical violence were all crucial pieces of evidence required by Hale to dispel the presumption that the victim had consented to sex and then lied about it.” This had an impact on colonial adjudication as well. “In the final analysis,” Kolsky concludes, “the colonial legal treatment of the “unsensational” crime of rape was itself rather unsensational. It largely reflected contemporary trends back home in England, which raises important questions as to what, if anything, was distinctively colonial about it. In the case of rape, it was the rule of colonial indifference that prevailed.” ‘The Rule of Colonial Indifference’, 1095–97. 41 Singha, A Despotism of Law, 139. 42 Arondekar, For The Record, 3. 43 Kugle, ‘Framed, Blamed and Renamed’, 290. 44 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 51. 45 Rao and Pierce, Discipline and the Other Body, 22. 46 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 26; Rachel Sturman, The Government of Social Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 28. 47 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain, 40.

Chapter 11

Voicing sexual and social resistance in seventeenth-century Manila Susan Broomhall

Historical studies of migration around Asia in the early modern period are scarce, but we know that women as well as men were involved in the movement of peoples around this region at the time. These movements, some of which were forced and others voluntary, occurred as a result of war, slavery, trade and faith. For the sixteenth and seventeenth century, rich life narratives and other detailed historical documentation is rarely available, especially for women who were displaced involuntarily as slaves. Nonetheless, this essay explores the remaining textual presentations and representations of one enslaved woman named María, who came from the Indian subcontinent and was living in the Spanish-controlled Philippines in the early seventeenth century. To do so, I assess historical materials in which we must “read against the grain” and into the “cracks” of the documents’ original purposes within colonial and ecclesiastical communication networks in order to uncover information about a enslaved woman’s displacement across the Asian region and her capacity for agency, self-determination, and identity construction. The slim available document about her life provides intriguing hints about these features, as well as about her possibilities for integration into the Catholic culture of the new colony in which she found herself.

The enslaved girl and the dispute between men The case that is our focus here has been documented multiple times, termed “one of the most memorable disputes that have occurred in the islands.”1 Most often it has been employed to highlight the intense and long-running rivalries between ecclesiastical and secular authorities in the developing Spanish colony at Manila.2 1635 marked the installation of both the new governor Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera and the archbishop of Manila, the Augustinian Fray Hernando Guerrero.3 Each was keen to establish

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their superior status within the growing community in which a range of religious orders was rapidly taking root.4 One Sunday morning in August 1635, a Spanish artilleryman murdered a woman who was in the streets with the carriage procession of one of the city’s most elite women. He escaped into the nearby San Agustin church seeking right of sanctuary. The Augustinian brothers refused to release him to the secular authorities who were led by the governor Corcuera. According to contemporary accounts, Corcuera had the church surrounded but his soldiers feared to enter the ecclesiastical building as a crime against God. In an assertion of his authority over religious authorities in Manila, Corcuera however was heard to claim that “that if an order were given to him to arrest the pontiff, he would arrest him, and even drag him along by one foot.”5 He rode his horse into the church and seized Nava. When archdiocesan officials came to his residence to request Nava’s release, they were refused an audience.6 Nava was summarily executed within a few days, in a court case presided over by the commander of artillery at Corcuera’s request. The same day, in protest, the archbishop Don Hernando Guerrero suspended religious services and issued an interdict.7 This was one of many disputes that would engage the governor and archbishop, the latter being temporarily exiled to Marivales Island in May 1636 by the governor, and the former in 1644 incarcerated for five years by the combined effort of some of Manila’s religious orders in the process of Corcuera’s residencia by his successor Diego Fajardo.8 These were events that shook the small colonial community. The city’s spiritual orders fractured in their support: the Jesuits fell behind the governor, the Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustinians behind the archbishop. Soon afterwards, a popular partisan ditty circulated about the rivalry between city’s leadership, and a copy was affixed to the door of the governor’s house. One verse lamented the execution that had crystallised so many of the tensions between these men:

Who was hanged from a beam?—An artilleryman. On what was that action based?—On the slave-girl. Of what did the homicide deprive him?—His life. Unjustly lost It was; but still I lament That he should lose in one moment— That artilleryman—his slave-girl and his life. … Not in vain do I lament, Seeing the sincere Church Become otherwise because of Corcuera.9

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In this verse, in the contemporary documentation, and in the conventional historical narrative of the early Spanish colony presented above, it is the fate of the artilleryman and of the Church that is primarily at stake. Far less attention has been placed on the woman whose life and death had sparked the events. For the authors of the ditty, she was little more than the murderer’s property, “his slave-girl,” an item that he lost. The same is true of historical approaches to these events. The early twentieth-century historian John Foreman went as far to say that the dispute between Church and state “arose from a circumstance of little concern to the Colony.”10 This essay seeks to broaden historical narratives of agency, voice and forms of resistance in light with insights of postcolonial, subaltern, and anthropological alterity studies.11 It must be acknowledged that what we do know about this woman––whose name is given as María––comes from documents created by European colonial authorities. More specifically, it stems from documentation created by Nava’s crime, and the tensions that unfolded as a result of it, both directly written by governor Corcuera and his Jesuit supporters, as well as other authors from different orders who were historians of the early Christian church and missions in the Philippines. These texts must thus be read in the context of their partisan politics of competing spiritual and secular objectives, both at the time and in control of the historical narratives that were written about it afterwards.12 By the turn of the seventeenth century, there were over four hundred members of orders in the islands.13 However, a close reading of, and between, these can reveal far more than simply a dispute between leading men, including much about the expectations, experiences and agency of an enslaved migrant woman in early seventeenth-century Manila. To do so, we can fruitfully apply the historian William Henry Scott’s methodology of reading through the unintended “cracks” of the “parchment curtain” of colonial dominance in early sources of this period, through which other experiences and voices might be seen and heard.14 This can be combined with the feminist historical methodology of reading “against the grain,” which early modern historians Patricia Crawford and Sara Mendelson argue involves considering textual silences and “asking where women are absent as well as present in the documents.”15 Finally, I complement these approaches with the application of a kaleidoscopic lens, drawing upon the scattered evidence of the experiences of other enslaved individuals who were María’s contemporaries whose voices can be heard in the records, to make sense of her circumstances and possible options.

The sexual politics of slavery María enters the historical records as an enslaved woman owned by an artilleryman named Francisco de Nava in 1635. Nava had come to the attention of the city’s archbishop, Hernando Guerrero, after it was rumoured that “she had been his and had bad friendship with her.”16 Guerrero set out to investigate. Nava explained, according to one report, that he understood that the two

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had a marital understanding: “he had brought [María] from Yndia, saying that he was going to marry her, as he had taken her while she was a maiden.”17 This was, in his eyes at least it seems, a contract for her virginity. The French traveler Francois Pyrard reported on witnessing a slave market in Goa on his travels from 1602 to 1607, that “[g]irls that are virgins are sold as such, … a girl’s master being the man who marries her, she may not be used after a man has plighted his troth to her.”18 Nava argued that María could gain a respectable marriage in exchange for her sexual labour. However, the sexual contact observed between María and Nava may well have been non-consensual. María likely numbered among the many women and men whom Portuguese traders brought from what were termed by the Spanish Portuguese India, “Estado da India,” into the Philippines in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The detailed analyses of Tatiana Seijas and Déborah Oropeza Keresey has revealed that a majority of those Asian slaves taken from the Philippines to Acapulco in New Spain whose origins were recorded, appear to have come from the states of India. Here Portuguese regulations regarding slavery were more permissive, including such territories as Goa, Cochin and Gujarat but also Colombo, Bengal; Malacca; Macassar, Tidore, Ternate; East Timor among them.19 Spanish regulations that prevented colonial settlers from enslaving native populations made the Philippines a ready market for Portuguese slave importation, and also their trans-Pacific transportation attractive to Spanish officials. An Augustinian history recounts that, following the archbishop’s investigation, Maria de Francia, an influential woman who was the wife of the governor’s nephew and sargento-mayor, Don Pedro de Corcuera, used her influence to help buy María from Nava, with support from the archbishop.20 Enslaved women such as María were vulnerable to the sexual expectations of their masters and as migrants, they generally had few familial or other social networks to assist or protect them. How did María attract the attention and sympathy of powerful local citizens to assist her? Local authorities were not only critical of the sexual behaviours of their rivals, the Portuguese, but also their own. Manila was a known trading centre for enslaved people in the seventeenth century. When the Jesuit Pedro Chirino, procurator of the islands, sent to Superior General Claudio Aquaviva a summary account of the work of the Jesuits there, he noted the rich diversity of the city, not least as a result of its enslaved populations: “From India, Malaca, and Maluco come to Manila male and female slaves, white and black, children and adults.”21 The women, he thought, made “excellent seamstresses, cooks, and preparers of conserves, and are neat and clean in service.”22 Slaves there were also cheaper to purchase than at other places in the Spanish empire. Déborah Oropeza Keresey estimates that the average purchase price of an individual for sale in the Philippines was around 57 to 180 pesos, whereas elsewhere Asian slaves cost between 200 and 420 pesos.23 In 1572, Felipe II raised the prospect of whether slaves from the Philippines might be taken to work the mines in the Americas and by the 1590s, the relatively inexpensive purchase price of slaves soon saw the trans-Pacific traffic regularised.24 Enslaved Asian

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women were an attractive part of the market. Colonial leaders actively sought them out as “slaves of good looks and grace.”25 One such woman of possible Indian origin who later gained renown as a beata in Puebla, New Spain, Catarina de San Juan, had served as a domestic to captain Miguel de Sosa, who sought, her confessors wrote, “a modest, graceful Chinita in her house, who served as a comfort to him and his spouse of consolation.”26 However, in 1608, Felipe III outlawed the “evil” that arose from “passengers and sailors of the trading ships of Filipinas transport and carry female slaves, the cause of very great offenses to God and other troubles; this should be forbidden and remedied (and with more reason given navigation so long and dangerous), suppressing all occasions for offending God.” A senior auditor was to inspect each ship at launch.27 However, the practice continued. Historians suggest that about a fifth to quarter of those Asian slaves crossing the Pacific for Acapulco were women.28 From the accounts we have, sexual violence featured as a regular occurrence. The confessor of Catarina de San Juan, an enslaved woman transported from India to the Philippines and then on to New Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, recorded her experiences of sexual abuse: “In the house where they hid her... a lascivious and cruel man attacked her honesty... blind to the offense of harming a slave... [she] one time found herself naked, tied, and tormented with shame and by the blows of this brute.”29 She had dressed as a man “to protect herself with this disguise.”30 The same and further concerns preoccupied the procurator-general of the Philippine Islands, Hernando de los Rios Coronel, who wrote of the “evil” of enslaved women aboard vessels, “a practice which gives rise to very great offenses against God.”31 That slave women be not conveyed in the ships, by which many acts offensive to God will be avoided. Although that is prohibited by your royal decree, and it is also entrusted to the archbishop to place upon them the penalty of excommunication and to punish them, this evil has not been checked; and many sailors—and even others, who should furnish a good example—take slave women and keep them as concubines. He knew a certain prominent official who carried with him fifteen of these women; and some were delivered of children by him, while others were pregnant, which made a great scandal.32 Hernando de los Rios Coronel feared God’s punishment of the immorality of these actions: “It is not right that there be any occasion for angering God when there is so great risk in the voyage, as I dare to affirm; and it is certain that, in the last ten years, while this has been so prevalent, many disasters have happened.”33 However, Spanish authorities were anxious about the “many offenses to God” that took place between enslaved women, in particular, and men in the city. Not only was the city a trade port for enslaved people, but they made up a large proportion of Manila’s population. In 1621, the intramural enslaved population of the capital was estimated to be 1970 individuals, a third of the

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total population.34 The sexual morality of women and men residing in Manila was also of great concern to the Spanish secular and ecclesiastical officials. In particular, procurator-general of the Philippine Islands, Hernando de los Rios Coronel, writing around 1619–20, identified soldiers as a key population who “The garrison soldiers of Manila are a cause [of the ruin of the country], for many are killed, and they are lessened in numbers; and they commit many vile acts, by which the Spanish nation suffers great loss of reputation among those pagans.”35 Corcuera too railed about his concerns about the “great license and looseness of life in both men and women.”36 Spanish Dominican friar Diego Aduarte lamented the poor morals of Spanish by comparison to native Christians in his history of missions in the region, recording: There was one poor Indian slave woman whom a Spaniard, who had communicated a few days before in that village, tried to violate. She resisted him with spirit; and, as if horrified at the lack of respect which by his actions he showed to the Lord, whom he had received, she said to him: “How is it that, being a communicant, you dare to commit such a sin?” In this way may be seen how some of the new Christians surpass others who are old in the faith, going beyond them in virtue, devotion, and the fear of God.37 None of the remaining documents that mention the case reveal who it was that brought the case to the attention of the archbishop. Could María have done so through religious or female communication networks in the households of Manila? Her case came to the attention of spiritual authorities in Manila at a time when the archbishop was keen to establish himself in the city. Guerrero had in fact arrived in the city in 1632, but he had not been able to assume his post because the municipal authority, the cabildo (council), insisted on awaiting the official papal documentation of his appointment. In 1635 came news that the required bull and pallium were in preparation in Rome. Guerrero asked again to be installed but the cabildo still hesitated for this still only constituted notice of the official documents. After lengthy debates, they determined to allow Guerrero to take possession of the archbishopric on June 25, 1635.38 Guerrero had thus sat, diminished, in the city for some time and was likely keen to assert his newly recognised authority. His intervention in María’s household enabled him to signal his intention to address a matter of pressing concern to church officials, the sexual morals of Spanish and slave populations. The case may thus have offered Guerrero an opportunity to discipline the wider population and reinforce moral expectations, and to assert himself against the incoming governor, Corcuera, who arrived having previously been Governor of Panamá. At the same time, the city’s small female colonial elite of Maria de Francia and her friends were also involved in the removal of María from Nava’s household. Did they sympathise with her plight? After all, the sexual

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morality of the city’s men and their interest in enslaved women also could also have been said to affect, and reflect on, them. Was there perhaps a closer personal relationship between the women? Maria de Francia is said to have grown fond of María, sufficient, it seems, to have sought her purchase. She also seems to have kept her close by her person. Maria de Francia was riding in the carriage that Sunday morning with María close by and in public view as her attendant, when the latter was stabbed. Or was having María “come into her possession” and showing off her gain in the streets of Manila on a Sunday morning an opportunity for one of the city’s most elite women to assert and demonstrate her social power over a lower-class artilleryman who stood little change of opposing the strong forces of female civic elite and the archbishop? When Nava attempted to contact the household into which María had been placed, he was beaten and placed in the stocks.39 What is clear is that María’s case become something of a cause célèbre in the town and engaged a range of the colony’s elites in removing her from Nava’s household.

María’s emotional and legal ties The extant sources also suggest that María’s removal was something that María herself sought to achieve. At first glance, this might seem surprising as legitimate marriage would appear to have offered some legal protections to her that being enslaved did not. Nava’s promise of marriage may have been a significant hope for María. Did she seek initially to force his hand and move along the promised wedding? Or, was a rumour that was recorded in the governor’s account of these events crucial to changing the pair’s relationship? He reported that Nava “had said the year before that he had been married in Nueva España.”40 This rumour circulating in Manila rather complicated Nava’s official narrative. Was he even legally able to marry María? Nava himself may have understood that he could have María as a “temporary wife,” a common practice among Europeans as well as Asian men in the Asian region at this period. As Anthony Reid has noted of Muslim ports in south-east Asia, slave wives “could be sold by one ‘husband’ to another and had few rights over children.”41 Seijas notes that “[m]uch research remains to be done regarding manumission patterns in Manila, but present evidence suggests that most slaves/concubines were not enfranchised or favoured with marriage.”42 The remaining sources suggest that María was, or became, adamant that she did not want to marry Nava. One anonymous report recorded that “she became angry and left the house,” but does not give the cause for her anger.43 When Nava declared that he wished to marry María, Corcuera tells us that she “answered that she preferred to be the slave of another than his wife.”44 Was the relationship exploitative and/or violent, or had María determined that she would be better looked after as the household property of an elite woman than the wife of a lower-status artilleryman?

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The sources indicate María’s feelings through these brief glimpses and through her reported actions. They also suggest her emotional power over Nava, who is repeatedly and universally documented as distraught and passionate about her departure. He refused money for her, said the governor, and “answered that he did not keep her for sale.” Asked again a few days later, he responded “that he did not wish to sell her, as he was keeping her in order to marry her.”45 Contemporaries saw his behaviour as the irrational product of a romantic attachment. A further Jesuit account, sympathetic to the governor and at times adopting the very same sentences as his own account, describes Nava as “very angry and vexed …, and his love drew him so powerfully that he said that he wished to marry the slave-girl.”46 This framed Nava’s subsequent violence as somehow understandable. His murderous behaviour was cast not as the loss of a possession, but as the loss of a love. In these accounts, María became a powerful protagonist in what would be her own demise. Maria’s autonomy María passed from one owner to another but that does not seem the complete picture. The sources hint at intermittent acts of agency and autonomy by this enslaved migrant woman. One report suggests that María, angry, “left the house, going to that of Juan de Aller, a kinsman of Doña Maria de Franzia, wife of Don Pedro de Corquera, whom she asked to buy her.”47 Was shifting to the household of a powerful woman the best prospect María could expect? Could she have hoped for manumission or emancipation? Some enslaved individuals did appear to know about their rights and pathways to freedom. Following Crown decrees made and reinforced in 1581, 1631, 1675, 1676, 1682 and 1692, native peoples of the Philippines, indios, were not to be enslaved at all.48 An official embedded in the colonial bureaucracy of Manila, Antonio de Morga, a slave-owner himself––he took six Asian slaves with him to his next appointment in Mexico—49 appeared critical of native enslavement traditions in his 1609 work: “all these enslavements have violent and unjust beginnings, and most of the native’s lawsuits have to do with these, which consequently keep the judges in the civil courts busy and exercise the confessors in the sacrament of penance,” “they are sold, exchanged and traded, just like any other article of merchandise … thus, too, in order to avoid the many lawsuits that would arise if this system were questioned, and its origins investigated, these enslavements are allowed to continue as in former times.”50 However, despite his criticisms of such slavery, Morga did not reflect specifically on Spanish participation in the trade more broadly. Some individuals in close proximity to María would go on to claim their freedom, and have their claims upheld. In 1655 and 1656, two cases came before the General Council of the Indies from two men and a woman who had been slaves of the governor Corcuera. In 1655, Pedro de Mendoza claimed that he had been unfairly and cruelly enslaved by Corcuera after a 1637 Spanish attack on his home, Joló, the capital of the Sulu archipelago,

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then in the hands of a Muslim sultan.51 As such, he argued that he was an Indios of the Philippines, and cited knowledge of Spanish law that “according to royal decree, all Indians are free.”52 Corcuera, on the other hand, claimed that he was entitled to enslave such peoples as he had beaten in a “just war.”53 Against Pedro’s claims of mistreatment, Corcuera described Pedro as disobedient but insisted that he treated all his slaves “with love and taught them as his own children.”54 Significantly, Corcuera cast Pedro as a child, lacking the kind of autonomy that he granted María in his narrative some twenty years earlier. While the outcome to Pedro’s case is unknown, the similar terms in which another case was pursued in the following year might suggest his success. In 1656, two more of Corcuera’s slaves applied in Spain for their freedom, and these individuals were successful in their rights. Mariana de la Cruz and her husband, Manuel de San Juan, argued that as Indios of Tidore (an island they called one of the Philippines), they were not legally allowed to be enslaved. The Council recognised their claim and awarded them their freedom.55 However, Mariana and Manuel went further in their legal pursuit, demanding compensation for the twenty years that they had worked without remuneration for Corcuera. Despite accepting their claims as free indigenous people, the Council did not award them payment. Mariana and Manuel went further, appealing the case, but lost again.56 All three of these individuals would appear to have entered Corcuera’s household at the time of, or just after, María’s death. María, as we have seen, lived in the household of Corcuera’s nephew and his wife. It is probable that, if they did not know her, in the close-knit elite colonial households of Manila they knew about the events of her death. What is more important here is that these examples reveal that enslaved individuals in the community of these elite Spanish officials, if not also elsewhere, did not necessarily accept their fate without canvassing other options. Some at least were determined to fight for what they perceived as their rights and for a better quality of life.57 These cases may also hint at the exchange of knowledge and ideas about rights among enslaved people in this environment. In María’s case, there was no evidence that she was not enslaved under the terms recognised as lawful by Spanish authorities. At no point was she termed anything other than a slave, and never as an indigenous native. Instead, she was specifically termed a slave from India by Corcuera, who may not necessarily have hidden her identity as an “Indios” since he believed he had justification for enslaving some such people as booty in his conflicts with local Muslim leaders. The Spanish held the position that although no native subject of their king could be enslaved, there was no such prohibition on owning those from outside his dominions. As Antonio de Morga observed in 1609, “kaffirs and negroes [are] brought thither by the Portuguese by way of India, and these are legally held in slavery in accordance with the decrees of the provincial councils and the permission of prelates and magistrates of those parts.”58 Yet, in 1629, the crown explicitly ordered the liberation of the Indian slaves from Portuguese possessions living in their Spanish

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possessions.59 However, evidence on the ground suggests little was done to enforce these new regulations and even that individuals’ enslavement was upheld by local authorities in the Philippines. For example, authorities legitimised the slavery of subjects from the States of India.60 Thus, in 1635, the mayor of Manila confirmed the slavery of individuals who testified through an interpreter, owned by a Portuguese captain Manuel Jorge da Silva.61 There was even evidence that officials actively helped fellow colonial community members to keep individuals enslaved beyond the stipulation of regulations. In a case of 1597 of another enslaved woman seeking freedom in New Spain, it emerged that the bishop of Manila, Domingo de Salazar, had allowed a certain captain Sarmiento to keep a woman stolen as a child from Brunei (whom he had declared “a free woman and not a slave”) to “use her for ten years” and then release her.62 María could not assume that the official religious or secular would support any claim for her emancipation. Perhaps this is what she was wanting in breaking away from Nava, but, if so, the European sources are silent about it. If then María had no claims to put before a court in Spain, New Spain, or Manila, moving to the household of an elite woman, who appeared disposed to her, might well have seemed an option that could have promised the prospect of greater freedom and perhaps safety. Depending on what she experienced in Nava’s home, something that made all accounts insisted on her adamant refusal to remain there, the prospects of some kind of betterment elsewhere may well have been worth attempting. Rejection, assertion, violence María’s transfer to a new household in Manila was not the final evidence of her self-assertion. On Sunday, 8 August 1635, at three in the afternoon, she was passing by in the street before the San Agustin Church in a carriage with her new mistress and the governor himself. Nava approached them, asking María if she recognised him as her master. One account narrates that the governor was going to the residence of the Society, to see the comedy which the fathers there were presenting; and with him was riding Doña Maria de Franzia, the wife of his nephew the sargento-mayor, in a coach, having the slave woman behind. When they arrived at the corner of the Augustinian church, the artilleryman came out to meet them; and, seizing the slave woman by the arm, struck her with a dagger so that she died straightway.63 Corcuera’s report likewise emphasises the speed and surprise of the attack: Nava “deliberately and very securely approached her by stealth”; and, “embracing her from behind, he stabbed and killed her treacherously.”64 Importantly, both these versions leave no option open to prevent the terrible crime, Nava’s action left no time for reaction.

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In so doing, these accounts suggest some of the heightened emotions that may have guided his next actions in pursuit of Nava. The Augustinian account notably attributes emotional causes to the subsequent behaviour of both Corcuera and his nephew, Don Pedro, suggesting that their perceived loss of honour and inability to protect their female partners, households and possessions was important. Its authors write that Corcuera’s action arose mainly from the anger that he felt that what had happened was in the presence of his nephew, Don Pedro de Corcuera—who, also being angered at what concerned his wife, made use of his commission with less prudence than he ought to exercise in executing such orders from his superiors.65 Nava’s summary trial at the hands of the artillery commander and his rapid execution are thus shaped here by Corcuera’s loss of authority at his failure to prevent the tragedy himself. María’s agency This is not a celebratory history, for María’s life ended violently and abruptly. In the accounts in which we find her story, María’s life and death were secondary to these men’s concerns for their own self-presentation and self-preservation as leading officials. Their authors held vested interests in the narration of these events and their re-telling of her story was shaped by the small elite community of Manila and framed by tensions already evident between the varied spiritual and secular groupings there. But they nonetheless provide small insights into the experiences of displaced and marginal women who are typically among the most silent in the archives. These documents leave us hints of a woman attempting to take control of her life in the ways open to her. They reveal María’s forms of agency and resistance––not only in her access to support mechanisms among the city’s powerful Catholic elite, but also in her most basic impulse to refuse to accept her situation and to seek a better life within the limited choices before her. Agency can be difficult to discern in the case of an enslaved individual, and it is notable that none of these accounts recorded any of María’s own words. But through these remaining archival sources, we can analyse some of the opportunities for expression of a displaced and marginal woman. These sources allow us to consider the lived experience of intersections between gender, race, and place as they reveal not only María’s forms of agency and resistance to determinations about her identity and fate made by others, but also her access to support mechanisms, including legal protection, among the elite of colonial Manila. As a migrant to the Spanish-controlled Philippines, María was nonetheless able to enact survival strategies by engaging ecclesiastical authorities and local elite women in her case: individuals who were prepared to step into a lower-class household in order to instil Catholic moral

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values. In these senses, one may thus consider whether this most marginalised of individuals is to be considered subaltern at all. What it does tell us, however, is that these officials thought it was viable for an enslaved woman to have that kind of agency and for the Church authorities to respond to her desire. Their actions integrated her into a Catholic colonial social community, which was advantageous to her. These accounts appear willing to recognise an enslaved woman’s capacity to resist sexual exploitation, although not, it seems, a right to freedom from slavery itself. We have little remaining evidence of unusual situations such as María’s in which an enslaved migrant woman appears herself to have rejected continued sexual contact with her legal owner, which may or may not have been framed with a proposal of marriage. However, we must remember that María’s story was to end tragically, violently murdered in the street by the man whose sexual advances she had resisted. Her choice to stake a claim for autonomy and personal agency, through the rejection of her subordination to him, would also sadly lead to her death.

Notes 1 San Agustín and Diaz, “Conquests of the Filipinas Islands,” 25:163. 2 The broader context of this dispute is outlined in Montero y Vidal, Historia general de Filipinas, 1:193–4; Zaide, Philippine Political and Cultural History, 1:213–4; Constantino and Constantino, A History of the Philippines, 73–80. 3 Some analysis of Corcuera can be found in Costa, The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581–1768, 337–403, Nava case discussed, 338; McCarthy, “Cashiering the Last Conquistador.” 4 On the different mendicant orders, see Campos y Fernández de Sevilla, “Las órdenes mendicants en Filipinas.” 5 San Agustín and Diaz, “Conquests of the Filipinas Islands,” 25:168. 6 Ibid., 25:165–6. 7 Ibid., 25:166. 8 Ibid., chap. 17; justification of Corcuera in Retana, Aparato bibliográfico de la historia general de Filipinas, 107–110. 9 “Relation, 1635–1636,” 26:45. 10 Foreman, The Philippine Islands, 58. 11 I have found important the work of Connell, “Rethinking Gender from the South,” and Connell, Collyer, Maia, and Morell, “Toward a global sociology of knowledge.” 12 For Jesuit narratives, see Descalzo Yuste, “Las crónicas oficales de la Compañía de Jesús en Filipinas (1581–1768)” and Cano, “Evidence for the Deliberate Distortion of the Spanish Philippine Colonial Historical Record.” 13 Barrows, A History of the Philippines, 168–9; For wider contexts of church-state relations in the colonial period, see Schumacher, Growth and decline. 14 Scott, Cracks in the Parchment Curtain. 15 Crawford and Mendelson, Women in early modern England, 9. 16 ‘quelo auia sido suya ytenido mala amistad conella,’ Letter of Corcuera, June 1636, Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Filipinas, 21, R.10, N.46, fol. 1. See also AGI, Filipinas, 8, R.3, N.36, fol. 1. 17 “Relation, 1635–1636,” 26:24. 18 Cited in Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 26.

Voicing sexual and social resistance  163 19 Oropeza Keresey, “La Escalvitud Asiática,” 19–20; 27, table 1; 50. See also Scott, Slavery in the Spanish Philippines. 20 San Agustín and Diaz, “Conquests of the Filipinas Islands,” 25:164. 21 “De la India, de Malaca, i de Maluco, le vienen a Manila: los esclavos, i esclavas, blancos, i negros, niños pequeños, i de mayor edad,” Chirino, Relation of the Filipinas Islands, 10. 22 “ellas grandes costureras, cozineras, i conserveras, i de servicio mui aseado, i limpio,” Ibid., 10. 23 Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 17. 24 Ibid., 7. 25 “esclavas de buen parecer y gracia,” Ibid., 39 and Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 34. 26 “tener en su casa una Chinita modesta, y agraciada, que le sirviese a él, y a su consorte de consuelo”, Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 41 and Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 34. 27 “Hase entendido que los pasajeros y marineros de las naos de contratacion de Filipinas, traen y llevan escalvas, que son causa de muy grandes ofensas de Dios y otros inconvenientes, que se deben prohibir y remediar y con mas razon en navegacion tan larga y peligrosa, quitando todas las ocasiones de ofenderle”, Ley LVI, Felipe III, San Lorenzo, April 22, 1608, Book 9, Title 45, in Recopilación de leyes, 4:130. 28 Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico, 79; Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 15. 29 Cited in Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 25. There may have been some dramatic embellishment, as Catarina also styled herself a Mughal princess, 19. 30 “para asegurarla con este disfraz,” Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 15, see also Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” and García Aguilar, “Catarina de San Juan”. 31 los Rios Coronel, “Reforms,” 18:311–2. On this soldier and priest, see Crossley, Hernando de los Ríos Coronel. 32 los Rios Coronel, “Reforms,” 18:287–8. 33 Ibid., 311–2. 34 Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 21. 35 los Rios Coronel, “Reforms,” 18:323. 36 “gran libertad y rotura de vida en hombres y mugeres,” AGI, Filipinas, 8, R.3, N.40, fol. 1. 37 “A una pobre India esclava quiso forçar un Español, que pocos dias antes a via comulgado enaquel pueblo, restitio ella varonilmente, y como espantada del poco respecto, que en el via al Señor, que avia recebido, le dixo, como siendo hombre, que comulgas, te atreves a hacer tal peccado? para que se vea, lo que se aventajan algunos nuevos en la fe a otros antinguos en ella, y los dexan atras en virtud, devocion, y temer de Dios.” Aduarte, Historia de la Provincia, 174. 38 San Agustín and Diaz, “Conquests of the Filipinas Islands,” 25:160; Cunningham, The Audiencia in the Spanish Colonies, 375–6. 39 “Relation, 1535–1636,” 26:24. 40 “ano antes hecho informacion de cassado en la nueva espana,” AGI, Filipinas, 8, R.3, N.40, fol. 1. 41 Reid, “Female Roles in Pre-colonial Southeast Asia,” 633. 42 Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 26. 43 “Relation, 1535–1636,” 26:24. 44 “dixo que mas queria sen esclava de otro que su muger,” AGI, Filipinas, 21, R.10, N.46, fol. 1. 45 “Relation, 1535–1636,” 26:24.

164  Susan Broomhall 46 “Letter Written,” 25:201. 47 “Relation, 1535–1636,” 26:24. 48 Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 18; Seijas. “Native Vessels,” 153, 156. 49 Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 39. 50 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609, 274. 51 Interestingly, Oropeza Keresey’s analaysis of Asian slaves imported from the Philippines to Acapulco shows 1637 to be the highest number (186) of any year of those she documents, perhaps related to Corcuera’s aggressive activities at that period, 33. The financial value of the individuals Corcuera captured and sold as slaves from Joló is given in a Manila cabildo account for the king from 2 August 1638, presented as “Value of Corcuera’s Seizures in Jolo.” 52 “que por cedulas de V[uestra] m[ajesta]d son libres todos los yndios,” AGI, Filipinas, 4, N.40, fol. 4 repeated fol. 5. 53 On slavery and the idea of just war and slavery see González Claverán, “Un document colonial sobre esclavos asiáticos.” 54 “tratados con el amor y ensenance que si fueran hijos,” AGI, Filipinas, 4, N.40, fol. 9. See also Seijas, “Native Vessels.” 55 Seijas, “Native Vessels,” 160–61. 56 Ibid., 161. 57 This also matches the conclusion of Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 51, and Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 28. 58 Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 298. 59 Ley IV, 1629, Book 6, Title 2, “De la libertad de los Indios,” in Recopilación de leyes, 2:224–228. 60 Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 25. 61 Ibid., 25; Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 28. 62 “mujer libre y no esclava,” and “se sirviese de ella diez años’ Cited in Oropeza Keresey, “La Esclavitud Asiática,” 43–45. The capture of other slaves by Portuguese traders is attested in Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade,” 24, 27–8. 63 “Letter Written,” 25:202. 64 “de pensado y sobre seguro, salio ynsidiossamente,” “abrasandosse con ella … la dio puñalados y mato alevossamente,” Letter of Corcuera, June 1636, AGI, Filipinas, 21, R.10, N.46, fol. 1; AGI, Filipinas, 8, R.3, N.36, fol. 1. 65 San Agustín and Diaz, “Conquests of the Filipinas Islands,” 25:165.

Part III

Practicing Subversion

Chapter 12

Survival and resilience Rohingya refugee women’s narratives of life, loss, and hope Farhana Rahman

Introduction A February 2017 flash report released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found that an ongoing military crackdown by Myanmar’s armed forces and police on Rohingya Muslims caused extrajudicial killings, burning of homes, and most disturbingly, “massive and systematic” sexual violence against Rohingya women, including gang rapes, and mass killing of children.1 On 25 August 2017, an escalation of violence again took place in Rakhine State, including rape, gang rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation, and sexual slavery by military captivity directed against Rohingya women and girls. This resulted in a humanitarian disaster that forced over 700,000 Rohingyas to flee their native land and seek refuge in the makeshift and overpopulated refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, making it the largest refugee crisis in the world. The concentration of refugees in the camp is amongst the densest in the world, with tarpaulin and bamboo shelters precariously built on sharply sloped hillsides. There are now an estimated over 900,000 Rohingya refugees living in the overcrowded and squalid camps as the influx continued steadily over the subsequent months, the majority of whom are women and girls. Despite these horrific circumstances, the voices and narratives of Rohingya refugees––particularly Rohingya women––are virtually non-existent in the wider academic debates and literature on the gendered effects of forced migration. This chapter aims to shed light on an oft-forgotten story––the story of Rohingya women creating a life of normality and familiarity in their everyday lives within the refugee camps in Bangladesh. Seemingly mundane everyday “tactics” and practices reveal Rohingya women’s incredible resilience and agency in the face of profound trauma and suffering.2 Unlike most debate surrounding refugees which focuses on larger structural needs of refugees, in this chapter, I take as my starting point Rohingya women. Discussions of power relations and the reproduction of power asymmetries are often neglected in the dominant literature on refugee

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women’s everyday subjectivities. I use the notion of subjectivity as employed in feminist research through “stories” as ways to understand lived experience, since such an approach, according to Marita Eastmond, can reveal how forced migrants understand their sense of self, and “seek to make sense of displacement, re-establish identity in ruptured life courses and communities, or bear witness to violence and repression.”3 Rohingya women’s lives do not fit neatly into the simplified media discourses of lacking agency and understanding of their predicament. Rather, despite their lives being marked by trauma and constraints, their everyday tactics, creativity, and contestations challenge and overturn deeply held embedded gender ideologies regarding women’s place in settings after forced migration. Using two ethnographic vignettes, I highlight women’s narratives and their subversive, everyday strategies to make a life for themselves within these difficult circumstances.

Gender and resilience in forced migration The effects of forced migration on selfhood and subjectivity are integral for understanding the way in which women renegotiate their gender identity. Scholars such as Beatrice Hackett, Ewa Morawska, and Rogaia Abusharaf have written seminal ethnographies exploring the implications of forced migration and displacement on the formation––and transformation––of selfhood and subjectivity.4 It is in the context of profound war and violence that a “creative shaping” of notions of self and society takes place, thereby illuminating the ways in which women enact their gender identity. Loss of identity and social belonging entails a loss of culture in its broadest sense.5 During times of conflict and forced migration, “war abolishes individual and collective access to cultural life.”6 But the nature of culture is that it is not static and unchangeable––in many ways, it is constantly on the move along with the refugee.7 In her ethnography of violence and displacement in Mozambique, Carolyn Nordstrom talks of loss and what it means for culture and identity, as she writes: What happens to people when the landscapes of their lives––personal, social, and cultural––are landmined, when the maps of meaning that order people’s lives are blown apart? What happens to people when what they believe makes them human––home, hearth, family and tradition–– has been wrenched from their grasp?8 Resilience in the face of profound suffering has been used in various contexts to define the ways in which people withstand, recover, and employ “strategies for survival and to reorganize…ways of life to fit new contexts”.9 In many ways, it is the possibility of “returning” to a state one previously existed in prior to a “challenging” or harrowing experience.10 Gren’s “tactics of resilience” takes from Scheper-Hughes’ research which contends that there is

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tremendous human capacity to not only survive, but also “thrive” despite experiences of violence, deprivation, and profound trauma.11 Rohingya refugees, despite remaining in a precarious existence, are constantly finding and negotiating ways to survive and thrive.

Rohingya women and the refugee crisis Since the 1970s, the Rohingya have faced decades of persecution in Myanmar with no formal legal residency, rights, or access to education and employment, and are presently stateless. As a Muslim minority in the country, the Rohingya are widely believed to be victims of genocide and are presently “the most persecuted minority in the world.”12 A wave of deadly anti-Muslim violence by the Burmese Buddhists in 2012 in Rakhine state resulted in increased displacement of the Rohingyas into inhumane settlements and camps within Myanmar. Many also left their homeland in the hopes of finding safety in neighbouring countries. Much of the exodus resulted in prolonged and dangerous boat journeys across the Andaman Sea to Malaysia, and by foot across the border into Bangladesh. It is important to note that refugee arrival––and Rohingya refugees in particular––into Bangladesh is not a new phenomenon. Rohingyas have sought refuge in Bangladesh since the beginning of Rohingya persecution in Myanmar during the 1970s, when the Rohingya were stripped of citizenship.13 After the 25 August 2017 attacks in Rakhine State, the Government of Bangladesh yielded to the mass exodus of Rohingyas. Until very recently, Rohingyas making the perilous trek by boat and foot across the border into Bangladesh were predominantly male, as they were not only denied citizenship and legal rights in Myanmar but they also lacked economic opportunities within the country to support their families and communities.14 The recent attacks in Rakhine state, however, resulted in a drastic increase of women and girls undertaking these dangerous journeys to escape intense violence––including mass sexual violence––in Myanmar, with nearly thirty thousand women making the journey to Bangladesh while pregnant (UNFPA 2018). However, for Rohingya women now living in Bangladesh’s dismal, over-crowded makeshift camps and rudimentary settlements, life remains bleak. Many Rohingya refugee women in Bangladesh not only bring with them experiences of torture and rape from Myanmar, but also all too frequently they face a variety of issues that are further compounded within the refugee camp. Safety and security risks remain a deep issue for women and girls, including gender-based violence as well as the constant fear of being sexually exploited and trafficked. Beyond fears about safety, women also face increased risks with regard to female health and the access to and availability of female health services. This is especially of concern to those who suffered physical and sexual violence.

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Feminist ethnographic fieldwork in the refugee camp My ethnographic research took place in the Balukhali Rohingya refugee camp an hour outside of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. This research was carried out as part of a larger doctoral project, for which I conducted 14 months of feminist ethnographic fieldwork from August 2017 to September 2018 amongst Rohingya women in the refugee camps in Bangladesh. I conducted over fifty semi-structured, open-ended interviews with Rohingya women in order to understand the ways in which gender relations transformed as a result of forced migration; all of the interviews were conducted in the Rohingya language and in Bangla. All of my interlocutors had arrived during or after the August 2017 exodus of Rohingyas to the refugee camps in the country. Moreover, a large portion of the fieldwork consisted of participant observation––spending time with Rohingya women in their homes, sharing meals and cooking together, and observing and participating in their daily routines and interactions––noting the moments of solitude, silence, and the sometimes mundane parts of everyday life. All names within this article are pseudonyms. Underlying my research was a feminist methodology that informed the ethics of my fieldwork process by interrogating the power of knowledge claims through the questions I asked my interlocutors, the various silences and moments that were “unspoken,” and by paying attention to marginalised narratives. Feminist ethnography in cases of forced migration, as Rogaia Abusharaf suggests, “is an essential tool for narrating the experiences and perspectives of people living with the unspeakable consequences of mass atrocities.”15 There is “urgency” in defining how the experiences of displaced women as gendered bodies have been widely ignored and “glossed over” from discussions on conflict and forced migration. A feminist ethnographic methodology was thus an essential tool for narrating the experiences and perspectives of Rohingya women by positioning my interlocutors’ voices, narratives, and ordeals at the center of the analysis. But beyond simply collecting and documenting the devastating effects of violence and Rohingya women’s articulation of their own lives, more importantly, this approach provides a lens for those affected to “emerge as agents of change” to develop sound human rights policies around the crisis.16 Part of the ethics of feminist research is to maintain a commitment to producing well-informed research by being self-reflexive and having an acute awareness of my positionality as a researcher, and the ways in which my privileges shape my approach to conducting this research. Thus, my own identity cannot be abstracted from the context of my research, though in many ways, aspects of my identity helped me to build trust and rapport with my interlocutors and a long-term relationship with them. Successfully studying the intricacies of gender relations in the Rohingya community required access to women’s spaces and their inner lives––the Rohingyas are a particularly conservative community, and thus it would only be feasible for a woman to enter

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these spaces to conduct interviews with Rohingya women. Beyond simply being a woman, other aspects of my identity––being a Canadian of ethnic Bangladeshi descent, as well as a Muslim from a religiously conservative background were points of commonality and made a positive difference in the way I was received by my interlocutors. I took great care to ensure that my interlocutors felt comfortable sharing with me their personal narratives and their inner lives. My prolonged interactions often made our conversations feel like that of close friends rather than interviewer-interviewee. What became very clear throughout the course of my fieldwork as well, and which allowed me to build a strong bond of trust and friendships with my interlocutors, was my willingness to listen. One of my interlocutors, 28-year-old Sakina, said to me: You are not like the others that come here. So many people just come here for a short time and write our difficult experiences down. They take our information and we never see them again. You are the only one here with us for many days and listening to our stories. Nobody is spending time with us like you. Shukoriya [thank you]. Eventually, I too had to leave one day, and I was acutely aware and mindful of this reality (though I do return every few months to continue supporting the community). But throughout my fieldwork, I worked to constantly selfreflect on the power relationships that formed and my privileges as someone who could easily leave and move while my interlocutors could not, and it was this constant reflection that guided me during my writing process. What was particularly valuable in the process of writing this feminist ethnography, was reminding myself of the importance of “making a difference” through this research, which Patricia McNamara suggests should go beyond simply remaining within the purview of academic scholarship.17 Rather, this “storytelling” should work to make a strong impact in policy and development initiatives that works to advance the welfare of Rohingya refugee women. In the sections that follow, using two vignettes, I lay out the rich ethnographic narratives that emerged from the fieldwork, revealing Rohingya refugee women’s everyday “tactics of resilience”, their refusal to be seen as mere victims, and their powerful stories of hope in the midst of profound suffering, ultimately illustrating their strategies of survival.

Happiness in Thanaka In January 2018, on the top of a high hill in the Balukhali settlement, I sat inside the dwelling of my 19-year-old interlocutor, Zannat Ara, with her friend, and two aunts who joined us from a neighbouring hut. The older women sat in a semi-circle, their legs outstretched chewing on paan (betel leaves) and watched as Zannat and her friend went into their sleeping area

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and brought out a small metal tin. Having completed their tasks for the afternoon, Zannat and her friend were excited to finally have some time to herself for their favourite activity––putting on thanaka. It is a common sight all across the camps––faces of Rohingya women and girls are adorned with elaborately drawn makeup; particularly, the cheeks are decorated with swirls of thanaka, which is a yellow paste made from ground tree bark dating back centuries. The use of thanaka is believed to keep skin smooth, cool, and safe from exposure to the sun, as well as “to protect my face from insects that always bite me,” as noted by Sajeda, Zannat’s younger sister. As we talked, the sisters carefully applied the paste on their cheeks, nose, and foreheads, and finished the look with bright red lipstick, pink eyeshadow, and kajol (kohl). I asked Zannat why thanaka is so special to her; she replied: Wearing thanaka is a big part of our tradition as Rohingyas. I’m sure you see everywhere in the camps most women and girls wear this. For me, it is a part of me––of who I am as a Rohingya. You know, when the mog is killing us and calling us Bengali and then we come to this country [Bangladesh] and here also we have no status, rights, and identity, it makes me realize how important it is to hold on to our own culture. We are made to believe we are not human. But here, look at me, I am human. I have a culture, I have traditions, I have beliefs. And one of our traditions is to wear thanaka––we have been using this for thousands of years. The world can take away everything from me, but nobody can take this away from me. Wearing it makes me feel proud to be Rohingya, and it makes me feel better––it makes me feel beautiful. Whenever I feel sad, or think about the bad times, I wear this and I put on my lipstick and this eye powder [pointing to her eyeshadow]––it makes me feel elegant and happy again. Nobody can take away this feeling of happiness. Zannat’s statement highlights the importance of thanaka as an identity marker of what it means to be Rohingya and a coping mechanism. Nina Gren’s concept of a “tactic of resilience” is particularly useful here in evidencing Rohingya women’s creative ways to deal with their circumstance, despite a life marked by “ambivalence and constraints”.18 In the face of profound transformation and dislocation, refugee women like Zannat search for a sense of normality and continuity in their everyday lives––something that applying makeup provides. Life in the refugee camps can become “unbearable” (as emphasised by one of my interlocutors, Hasna)––being able to find happiness and joy in traditions provides a sense of relief. In many ways, the very act of putting on thanaka and makeup brings a sense of self-worth and dignity into Rohingya women’s lives––as well as a point of resistance. To elaborate on this point, one of my interlocutors, 22-year-old Juhara Begum, echoed something similar when I met her one day

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sitting inside her shack applying lipstick as she peered into her small, handheld mirror. She remarked: I remember the time when I was humiliated and abused. He was going to rape me [silence… tears rolled down her cheeks, as she spoke of the soldiers that entered her village] The man was coming for me and he started touching me aggressively. I didn’t know what to do––he was putting his hand inside my shirt here [pointing to her chest]. I felt dirty and disgusting. But now, whenever I feel sad, or think about the bad times, I wear thanaka and I put on my lipstick and this eye powder [she showed me her pink eyeshadow]––it makes me feel beautiful and happy again… even if only for a short time. Nobody can take away this feeling. I only wear it when nobody else is around, but that’s why––I do it for myself. Even if some days we have no rice to eat, and even no wood to cook the rice, I can live with that. But I can’t live without this. Juhara’s proclamation of not being able to “live” without lipstick is a direct resistance against the abuse she experienced in Myanmar. Her resolve to deal with the traumatic experiences and a determination to survive is evident in the everyday joys of wearing lipstick and makeup. It is this resilience, as Gren suggests in her work with Palestinian refugees, “[expands] their sense of agency despite constraints,” and provides a sense of “normalcy” to their lives.19 Refugees––particularly refugee women––are often portrayed as devoid and deprived of their dignity and of beauty. For Rohingya women, their humanity is stripped of them in the social imaginary. Yet, Zannat and Juhara’s stories reveal that these seemingly innocuous and mundane aspects of everyday life can be a powerful tool of personhood to reclaim one’s dignity and self-worth.

The Taleem: A simple sanctuary It was a sunny Friday afternoon in late June 2018 as me and my friend (and gatekeeper), Munni, walked past rows of bamboo shelters carved into the steep, sandy hillside, carefully climbing up doughy clay steps still damp from flashes of heavy rain earlier that morning. The jumu’ah prayer (Friday afternoon congregational prayer) had just ended, and in the distance, a group of men could be seen hurrying out of a makeshift mosque at the bottom of the hill. Munni and I were making our way to the taleem––a women’s prayer space––that was being held at the shelter of one of my interlocutors, Zomila. The taleem at Zomila’s shelter on that Friday afternoon in July ended once the alima (learned woman/teacher of Islam and Arabic) finished the supplication––not a dry eye remained in the room. The heat of the afternoon summer sun made the room increasingly stuffy and so, once she finished her prayer, Zomila quickly drew open the curtain in the middle of the room to allow air

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to flow in. Some women lingered on a while longer, taking a few moments to pray on their own; others sat in quiet solitude. A few of the women began to quickly disperse out of the space and into the late-afternoon sun to carry on with their daily activities, hurrying along with their children in their arms. I noticed that one of my interlocutors, 22-year-old Ismat Ara, walked up to shake my hand and say her goodbye salaam before quickly rushing off with her 1-year-old son. I later met Ismat Ara in her shelter one day and we spoke at length on many topics, mostly regarding her life in Myanmar, the arduous journey to Bangladesh and her family. The topic of her husband came up––whom she had married in June 2017, right before the mass exodus when she arrived in September at the camps with him. During our conversation about her marriage, she asked me about my own marriage and was curious to know more. I shared. At one point, Ismat Ara stopped speaking and did not say anything for a few moments before blurting out: “Do you know why I always leave so quickly from the taleem?” she asked me. Before I could say anything, she continued: I go there [to the taleem] as early as possible, but I have to leave quickly because I know my husband does not like for me to stay on longer than necessary. So I go home as fast as possible. My husband does not let me go anywhere. But I told him I have to go to the taleem because it is only for women and we are doing religious things. You know, we used to have taleem in Burma? It reminds me of better times in Burma. It is hard for us Rohingya women––we don’t have any opportunities and nothing to do here in the camp. When I sit here [in the tent] I feel depressed––there is no comfort in this place. This is not a home, it is only a box made out of bamboo and tarp. Ismat Ara’s powerful narrative reveals two important aspects of the connection to the taleem. First, it is clear that the “gendering of place relates to feeling at home,” as noted by Sampson and Gifford.20 Due to cultural practices of gender segregation in the Rohingya community, women are often relegated to spaces in the home and movement around the camp is greatly restricted. The taleem is viewed as a space exclusively for women, and even Ismat Ara’s husband will only allow her to attend because no men will be present. Second, for Ismat Ara, not having a “home,” but rather having only a dwelling made out of bamboo and tarp––the physical space of the taleem–– does not so much provide a sense of “home,” but rather it is through the “personal dimension” that gives meaning to it that is affected by experience and culture.21 There was an overwhelming feeling of comfort I sensed from the women who attended the taleems. This “temporary space” that the women created provided a momentary microcosm of a home that once was, as Zomila powerfully articulated the evening after the taleem at her home ended and as I

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helped her tidy up the room, rolling some of the bamboo mats and putting them away: I hope you are enjoying this [the taleem] with us. [She continued before I could reply] In your book [she referred to my PhD dissertation as a book] you must write that I really wanted to hold it here because in Burma we used to have these gatherings. I know other areas here in the camps are also doing it. I informed the majhi about it and set it up. It felt it was important to have something like this here in the camps. When I was growing up, in our house in our village in Burma my mother used to hold taleems. It was just a few people––the women in my family that lived with us––me, my mother, my sisters, aunt, and a few female cousins. [She held my hand and began crying] Though we have experienced so much suffering and pain, when I think of those memories now I still look back fondly. My heart aches for my village. This gathering I hold here is just a small reminder of those happy times when my whole family used to be together––us girls we used to laugh, pray, and have lots of fun together. [She was crying uncontrollably now, using her pink shawl to wipe her tears] It’s not the same here, but I am trying my best. Zomila’s words were a poignant revelation of the deep emotional, cognitive, and psychological attachment to a space like the taleem. The place attachment to the taleem for Rohingya women like Zomila evokes positive memories of life in Myanmar––the nostalgia they remember for the “happy times” is closely attached to the bond they hold to the taleem. Similarly, TwiggerRoss and Uzzell suggest that the act of trying to replicate such a space in displacement is a deliberate attempt at place-making, to maintain “a link with a place [that] provides a sense of continuity to a person’s identity.”22 Rohingya women’s identity is strongly attached to this place––it was always a gendered space in Myanmar, reserved exclusively for women; to be able to replicate that in displacement is significant.23 Ultimately, these feelings evolve out of the complex, dynamic experience and attachment to place and space particularly of the taleem for Rohingya women in Bangladesh’s refugee camps.24

Conclusion The Rohingya women I got to know during the course of my fieldwork spoke of their lives in Myanmar where they were imprisoned within village carefully watched by the military, the perilous rickety boat journeys they took across the border, and their new lives in dismal, over-crowded makeshift camps and rudimentary settlements in Bangladesh. The constant fear of being trafficked into sex slavery is also deeply present as Rohingya women and girls often suffer severe sexual assault and rape at the hands of human traffickers on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. But Rohingya women also spoke of their

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hopes, dreams, and everyday negotiations––their strategies of survival within and against their precarious environment. Through thanaka and inhabiting spaces like the taleem––and employing these various “tactics of resilience”–– Rohingya women living in the refugee camps outside of Cox’s Bazar reveal their refusal to be categorised as mere victims. Rather, by creatively reshaping and reorganising their lives, they have become active social agents despite the limiting constraints on their lives. Their resilience becomes visible through their intense will to survive, thrive, and remain steadfast––all of which serves as a means of resisting their condition. It may not be outward or public resistance, but nonetheless reveals an innovative and meaningful manner of catalysing social change through the memories, narratives, and meanings that shape their social world.

Notes 1 OHCHR. “Interviews with Rohingyas Fleeing from Myanmar Since 9 October 2016.” Accessed July 16, 2018. https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/ MM/FlashReport3Feb2017.pdf. 2 Nina Gren, Occupied Lives: Maintaining Integrity in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in the West Bank (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press) 2015. 3 Marita Eastmond, “Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research.” Journal of Refugee Studies 20, no. 2 (2007): 248. 4 Beatrice N. Hackett, Pray God and Keep Walking: Stories of Women Refugees (London: McFarland, 1996); Ewa Morawska, “Intended and Unintended Consequences of Forced Migrations: A Neglected Aspect of East Europe’s Twentieth Century History.” International Migration Review 34, no. 4 (2000): 1049–1087; Rogaia M. Abusharaf “Smoke Bath: Renegotiating Self and the World in a Sudanese Shantytown.” Anthropology and Humanism 30, no. 1 (2005): 1–21. 5 Carolyn Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story (The Ethnography of Political Violence) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997); Sideris, Tina. “Rape in War and Peace: Social context, Gender, Power, and Identity,” in The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation, ed. Anu Pillay, Sheila Meintjes, and Meredeth Turshen, 46–62. London: Zed Books, 2001; Rogaia M. Abusharaf, Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 6 Abusharaf, “Smoke Bath,” 8. 7 Ibid. 8 Nordstrom, Ethnography of Political Violence, 184. 9 Laura Simich and Lisa Andermann, eds. Refuge and Resilience: Promoting Resilience and Mental Health Among Resettled Refugees and Forced Migrants, (New York: Springer, 2014). 10 Gren, Occupied Lives. 11 Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “A Talent for Life: Reflections on Human Vulnerability and Resilience.” Ethnos 73, no. 1 (2008): 25–56. 12 Ian G. Robinson and Iffat S. Rahman, “The Unknown Fate of the Stateless Rohingya.” Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration 2, no. 2 (2012): 16–20; Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley. “The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya,” Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal 23, no. 3 (2014): 681–752; Green, Penny, Thomas MacManus, and Alicia de la Cour Venning. “Countdown to

Survival and resilience  177 Annihilation: Genocide in Myanmar.” Accessed July 02, 2017. http://statecrime.org/state-crime-research/isci-report-countdown-to-annihilation-genocidein-myanmar/. 13 Zarni and Cowley, “Slow-Burning Genocide.” 14 Yu Kojima, “Rohingya Women in Migration: Lost Voices.” Accessed January 22, 2018. https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/rohingya-women-in-migration-lost-voices. 15 Rogaia M. Abusharaf, Transforming Displaced Women in Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 16 Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz, and Kay B. Warren, eds. Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002; Elizabeth Colson, “Forced Migration and the Anthropological Response.” Journal of Refugee Studies 16, no. 1 (2003): 1–18; Abusharaf, Transforming Displaced Women. 17 Patricia McNamara, “Feminist Ethnography: Storytelling that Makes a Difference.” Qualitative Social Work 8, no. 2 (2009): 161–177. 18 Gren, Occupied Lives. 19 Ibid. 20 Haideh Moghissi, “Away from Home: Iranian Women, Displacement, Cultural Resistance and Change.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 30, no. 2 (1999): 207–217.; Robyn Sampson and Sandra M. Gifford. “Place-Making, Settlement and Well-Being: The Therapeutic Landscapes of Recently Arrived Youth with Refugee Backgrounds.” Health and Place 16, no. 1 (2010), 117. 21 Ibid. 22 Clare L. Twigger-Ross and David L. Uzzell. “Place and Identity Processes.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 16, no. 3 (1996): 205–220. 23 Nancy C. M. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground from a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism.” In Discovering Reality, edited by Sandra Harding and Merrill B. Hintikka, 283–310. London: D. Riedel Publishing, 1983. 24 Gren, Occupied Lives.

Chapter 13

Translating into other identities Bama and her writing Nandita Ghosh

Introduction: The problem This paper developed from my listening into a conversation between Faustina Bama, G.N. Devy, & Ritu Menon at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC on 12 March 2011. The panel titled “The Majority on the Margins” was at a festival of India called Maximum India. On that panel, Devy and Bama expressed distinctly different points of view regarding the translation of Dalit literature into English. As a Dalit Christian, Bama writes her stories in Tamil; her stories are then translated into English, the language of the pan-Indian, urban, middle-class. In seeking a wider audience, Bama expresses her comfort in and acceptance of being translated into English: J.S.:  How about BAMA:  Most of

translation of your works into English? my works have been translated into English and has been published by Oxford University Press – India. My translators tried their level best to keep the spirit and flavour of my writings. I do appreciate their hard work and I’m happy with them. (Bama, Interview by Sarangi)

In so doing, she wishes to choose for herself the identity of an Englishspeaking writer and intellectual who is also a part of India’s cosmopolitan, secular culture associated with late modernity. Therefore, she seeks to escape to an extent the fixity of her regional, ethnic, caste identity while creating alternative spaces where she can imagine other identities. This is in contrast to the tensions represented in the discourses, articulated by scholars like Devy, on translating local and regional (bhasha) literatures1 into English where the gaining of a wider audience is accompanied by the loss of alternative, pluralistic literary traditions that cannot really be articulated outside of their languages. This difference of opinion opens a window onto a series of paradoxes that this paper wishes to examine: on translation, the position of English versus vernacular languages, and the emergence of Dalit writing as a distinct genre unsettling literary canons. Of course, both Devy & Bama speak from distinctly different subject positions. One of the ways in which we can understand their differences is to

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understand their contexts. Devy and Bama share certain similarities. Both grew up in villages: Devy in Maharashtra & Bama in Tamil Nadu. Both completed their elementary, middle, & high school in the vernacular (Devy in Marathi & Bama in Tamil). Both learnt English in college. Both experienced poverty while growing up. Devy undertook manual labor and menial jobs when his father’s business failed. Bama’s family were poor and worked intergenerationally as manual laborers in agriculture even though Bama’s father joined the army. However, here are their differences. Devy’s family are middle-caste, Gujarati business people. Bama’s family are of the Peraiyar/Dalit community. Bama’s grandfather converted to Catholicism in order to escape caste oppression. The Church educated Bama through college. Bama trained as a teacher and became a nun to help educate poor, lower-caste girls. Devy was educated at Shivaji University, Kolhapur, and the University of Leeds, UK. He held fellowships at Leeds, Yale, Trent, & Jawaharlal Nehru universities. He was Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. In 1996, he left academia to become a cultural activist. He created the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre at Baroda, the Adivasi Academy at Tejgadh, the DNT-Rights Action Group and the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (the largest-ever survey of languages in Indian history). Bama too left the nunnery after seven years because she was disillusioned with the casteism of the Church. She completed her training as a teacher and taught at a Catholic school but was further disillusioned by the nuns’ discrimination of Dalit children. She left teaching at that school and later started her own school with funds from friends and well-wishers. Her experiences spurred her into writing her life experiences as a Dalit woman. She wrote three novels (Karukku, 1992; Sangati, 1994; and Vanmam, 2002), two collections of short stories (Kusumbukkaran,1996; Oru Tattvum Erumaiyum, 2003) and twenty short stories. She writes in colloquial Tamil but has been translated into regional Indian, English, and other world languages. Devy published his literary theoretical work After Amnesia (1992) in English. He also writes in Marathi and Gujarati. He has since written and edited many works in literary criticism, anthropology, education, linguistics, and philosophy. Both Devy and Bama have won awards and recognition nationally and internationally. Devy is respected as a scholar advocate of adivasi (tribal) cultural rights. Bama is hailed as the first female Tamil Dalit writer whose stories are taught in schools, colleges, and universities across the world as representations of her community. As a scholar committed to preserving and reviving India’s multilingual folk heritage, Devy bemoans the fact that British colonisation has imposed Anglo forms of knowledge on Indian scholars and caused a break in the study of these vernacular/regional language traditions. Post-independence, this imbalance continues in India with the ongoing silencing of indigenous literary traditions because vernacular languages lose out to English. His objection to the translation of vernacular, Dalit, adivasi languages to English stems from these grounds. Bama, on the other hand, writes to publicise

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knowledge of her community, of their untouchability, of their work as bonded laborers, of their being denied education & other fundamental human rights. She accepts the idea of English translations on grounds that these will advertise the condition of her community to a wider audience, which, hopefully, will lead to more awareness and a lessening of the indignities suffered by Dalits. Once again, this paper seeks to examine a series of paradoxes that underlay the differences of opinion between Bama and Devy regarding English language translations. It undertakes this task by scrutinising the scholarly discourse on the rise of Dalit politics and writing, the position of English vis a vis vernacular languages, and on Bama as a gendered subaltern subject. In so doing, it attempts to show case how these paradoxes expose the contradictions and limitations inherent in the gendered discourse of inclusion offered to minority cultures by the developmental, neo-liberal state.2 Neoliberalism, as an ideology and a set of policies, upholds the following practices as the most-efficient way to achieve human progress: deregulation of markets, free trade, sustained economic growth, less bureaucracy, minimal state intervention in socio-economic affairs, privatisation of public services, and vigorous entrepreneurship. India adopted such neoliberal policies from the early 1990s in response to the balance of payments crisis of 1989. Economists, bureaucrats, and policy makers perceived this crisis to be a result of centralised economic planning adopted from the 1950s onwards as the dominant mode of developing the nation. They perceived this system to be unsustainable and propagated that it be abandoned. Since then, a structural adjustment program evolved over two decades. This enabled a globalised, competitive market system that gave primacy to the products and services consumer or producer whose decision-making would influence overall competition to generate efficient economic outcomes. Bama started writing well within this context and her conversation with Devy in 2011 also happened during the promotion of a new “rising and shining India” as a market for multinational capital investments.3 Her life experiences as a Dalit writer and intellectual as well as the gaps in her conversation with G.N. Devy also showcase the gaps between what neoliberals expected a market-dominated economy to deliver and what was actually delivered to various communities within India.

English, bhasha, and the problem of translation The topic of the panel discussion in 2011 – the status of English in India and its relations to other languages – has been embedded in the pre-to-post independence discourses underlying the construct of the nation-state. The States Reorganization Act in 1956 reconstructed state boundaries along linguistic lines. Such reorganisation empowered some of 18 languages,4 whose boundaries coincided with state borders; these then are referred to as regional languages. These regional languages operating in the linguistic states of India and scheduled in the Indian Constitution form one power-cluster, according

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to Kothari (28–30). Languages brushed aside as minor or as dialects by the state remain outside this cluster and form another bigger group, Kothari further asserts. These do not always enjoy the patronage of educational, official, or business institutions; they may not have written scripts or printing presses. Thus, she concludes, the linguistic map of India is rife with inequalities that are exacerbated by the place of English. Further, it may be noted that India’s official policy regarding English has been riddled with contradictory attitudes for and against its retention. Although Hindi is the national language, English has remained central to public discourses in India. While all primary & secondary educational institutions promote the three-language formula favoring English, Hindi, and another regional language, English functions on a different level than most other languages. It is the language of international labor and capital, communication, law, & diplomacy. The new technology accelerates its circulation. It functions as a universal language. Its dominance is visible in the global marketing of English language books, the mushrooming of spoken English classes, the proliferation of books published in English in India and the international markets enjoyed by those Indian writers published by foreign presses. The Indian government created the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Literature) in 1954 to commission and publish translations of the most well regarded regional Indian literature into other Indian languages and into English. Every year it honors authors and translators in twenty-four languages with awards. It initiated a translation prize for English in the eighties. In the 1990s, Katha (a non-profit private publishing house) was formed dedicated to translation in English and instituted the A.K. Ramanujan Award for translation. Both Penguin and Picador India have attempted to tap the Indian market for books written in and translated into English. Butalia (108–110) points to specific changes within the Indian book publishing industry that led to a spate of presses engaging in English and bhasha translations. The devaluation of the rupee caused the Indian market to resist the high prices of imported books. Smaller, independent publishers made their tentative beginnings around this time and Indian books began to be more visible. However, these developments were restricted to Englishlanguage translations, causing writers and publishers in other Indian languages to complain that their work remained somewhat invisible among the mainstream reading public. In the early 1990s, India began the process of opening up its economy to foreign capital. With globalisation, economic change led to the rise of a large and wealthy middle class who offer a market for translations in English and in bhasha. Issues of translation in India are intricately connected with the conflicts that emerged in the linguistic faultlines within a post-independence landscape – conflicts richly represented by scholarly debates. Jana (“The Significance of Translation …”) insists on the importance of translating writing from one Indian language to another to facilitate mutual understanding and appreciation in a multicultural, multilingual nation. In that regard, Indian writers have gained wider popularity and recognition through the

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translation of their works, she asserts. According to Iyer and Zare (xii), because the so-called global marketplace is Western-dominated, only a tiny percentage of non-English works trickle into English translation, and are circulated if deemed user-friendly to Western readers. Kothari (61–62) and Chatterjee (378–379) note the disproportionate importance attached to English translations when compared with translations between bhasa literatures. Chatterjee further opines that Indian Anglophone writing dominates and largely ignores other vernacular literary traditions. The latter’s marginalisation in relation to metropolitan English rests on a somewhat unexpected paradox, she points out: the vernacular is the site where world-historical paradigms are fleshed out through the uneven interaction between the global and the local. Therefore, the erasure of vernacular traditions erases diversity in these conceptual paradigms. Akhtar (311–312) and Devy (9–11) link this erasure to modern imperialism, which seeks to totally dominate people’s lives through one language. They spell out the consequences: British imperialism introduced English literature and language as a way of civilising “inferior colonized cultures”; English became a world language through which the colonial educational system was designed to make the colonised forget their own culture and suffer cultural amnesia. Consequently, Devy elaborates, Indian critics did not develop indigenous tools of analyses based upon links to multiple living literary traditions. In such conditions, when vernacular literatures and languages are translated into English, whole cultural systems of knowledge and their relationships to the living environment are lost. For Devy and Akhtar, this is linguistic genocide. In an interview with Zare (121–123), editors of Katha publications sum up this paradox with translations. Translation can be either a threat or a godsend to a minority language. On the one hand, it may strengthen the range of a language and promote diversity by making more information available to any one individual. Yet, translation into a dominant monoculture such as English can lead to an eventual situation of fewer works being composed in tongues other than English. Yildiz (1–29) and Mizamura (175–178) endorse this critique by asserting that monolingualism is a key structuring principle of modern life often lying at the core of a homogenous nation-state. Where the state is multilingual, it results in the privileging of one language as the national language, which dominates but may also be subverted and resisted by other languages. These tensions between re-emergent multilingualism and a persistent monolingualism set the paradigm for deep-seated transformations in global capital, they believe. According to Aniket Jaaware (188), the opening of markets in India translate traditional caste hierarchies into capitalist class hierarchies – processes by which symbolic capital is translated into economic capital. One can say in response to Jaaware that, in general, upper-caste, middle-class writers have fared well in such exchanges. However, the emergence of Dalit writing and its translation into national and international landscapes complicates any simplistic discussion of hierarchies. For instance, in contemporary India a number of trends are noteworthy.

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The processes of urbanisation and migration from villages to cities or across national borders make the possibility of retaining anything other than a dominant language difficult. Most middle-class Indians slip back and forth between English, the regional language, and Hindi as well. At one level, English has the upper hand in this process. Its dominance makes it the only choice for expressing and promoting regional languages and cultures. At a different level, English itself is internalised, Indianised, and appropriated by the middle-class.5 According to Kothari (52–53), the process maybe neo-colonial and subversive, but the situation is neither one of a confrontational neutrality, nor of an unequivocal totalitarianism. Kothari opines, English translation “carries the story of English’s reconfigured relationship with Indian languages today” (34). Bama’s openness to being translated into English must also be understood in terms of the paradoxes of this context, wherein English and vernacular Indian languages displace and are displaced by each other; their relationship is simultaneously one of conflict and coexistence. Since, Bama writes in Tamil and no discussion on translation can be complete without also examining the history and politics of the language. Tamil is one of the oldest languages in India and has the longest surviving literary history. As a non-Aryan, living language it is different from Sanskrit and is used by Tamil speakers to distinguish themselves from a North Indian identity––as unique, as anterior to other languages, as pure (Prasad, 17). It is often also used by lower-caste speakers to assert a non-Brahmanic identity by distinguishing classical Tamil from not only Sanskrit but also from more colloquial versions (Prasad, 18). For centuries, it has held its own against the incursions of Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, English, Urdu, Hindi, and other regional languages (Prasad, 26).6 According to Prasad (21), it has done so through a process of internal translation, by strategically borrowing, appropriating, and then discarding terminology from these other languages. Prasad (26) advocates further translations from English to Tamil in order for the latter to withstand the threat posed by the former where Tamil scholars and writers will have to translate English texts and make them available in Tamil. However, Bama does the opposite in being translated into English. As Nicole Thiara (256) points out, Bama reaches “three distinct sets of readers: dalit, non-dalit subcontinental, and global”; these English translations inform the widest group of people about Dalits, allow bonds between other oppressed peoples, and “re-code the texts” to fulfill the expectations of differing markets. Thiara is correct in underlining the need to study transregional Dalit writing for it is important to locate its common features while analysing the challenges of Dalit writers in confronting a world of English; this is not possible without English language translations. However, when Bama is translated from Tamil to English, other tensions erupt. English may be at once a tool of empowerment and of alienation from grassroot culture. This is evident in the association of the vernacular (read Tamil) with the notion of a mother tongue (associated with the mother, with unique irreplaceable biological origins, and with the nation as mother). A mother tongue situates the

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individual in an affective and authentic network of kinship relations rooted to the community. But, for Dalit writers what are such affective relationships to national and regional communities if not fraught with violence and nonbelonging? Bama’s work remains poised on the paradox between English and Tamil language translations as erasures and possibilities of such minority politics.

Dalit politics & Dalit writing The differences in Devy’s and Bama’s experiences of translating bhasa literatures into English stem from an ambivalence inherent in the term “Dalit.” The Sanskrit word “Dalit” means oppressed, downtrodden, or the underclass. Before 1935, the term denoted those groups classified as depressed classes by the British colonial census. Since then, B. R. Ambedkar popularised the term to include all depressed people irrespective of their caste. His use of the term is certainly more wide-ranging than and includes more than the list of scheduled castes and tribes (SCs/STs) and other backward classes (OBCs) referenced by the Indian Constitution.7 Dalits are scattered across India and therefore not unified geographically, linguistically, culturally, or politically. For instance, many scheduled tribes have rich oral, folkloric cultures, which get endangered by the dominance of English, as Devy (10) points out. However Bama, a Tamil Dalit writer, has benefitted from being translated into English. These contradictions inherent in Devy’s and Bama’s positions are better understood in the context of the following debates on the growth of Dalit identity politics and writing in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Some scholars8 trace the rise of Dalit identity politics back to the 19th century. Patil references the Mahar movement in Maharashtra, in which Soyrabai and Nirmala––women belonging to the untouchable caste of Mahars––cogently articulated critical reflections on caste, class, and gender. Clearly, these early Dalit feminist activists precede Bama in politicising the conditions of their communities. But, Dalit activism can also be attributed to other sources. For instance, A. Rao (12–18) points to the Satyashodhak Samaj (established by Jyotirao Phule in 1873 Maharashtra) that not only critiqued caste as the political unconscious of Hindu society, but also the consolidation of Brahminical privileges under British rule. Also, it influenced Dalit activists like Valangkar & Kamble, who sought to recuperate Dalit history. Valangkar founded the first Dalit organisation in Bombay Presidency in 1894. Further, Rao asserts, the Samaj influenced Ambedkar’s politico-economic thought and tireless activism in the early-to-mid 20th century. Another important Dalit philosopher who subverted mainstream culture was Pandit Ayotidasar by founding the Dravida Pantiyan in 1881 (Ramanathan). To these 19th century movements may be added certain social reformist movements––the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal and the Arya Samaj in Punjab ––that greatly critiqued caste discrimination and untouchability and so helped strengthen the development of Dalit identity politics at the end of

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the 19th and early 20th centuries. All of these movements through the 19th century became parts of the intellectual, cultural, and political legacies that underlay and inform Bama’s and Devy’s debate, in the 21st century, about the efficacy of English translations and erasure of bhasa languages. Bama and Devy have also inherited other legacies through the 20th century. For instance, in 1920s and 1930s the “Periyar” or the Self Respect Movement was started by E.V. Ramasamy.9 This movement critiqued Brahminical culture, advocated Dravidian agency, espoused equal rights for all castes, and upheld rights for women and widows, while promoting inter-caste marriages. In the 1940s, Ramaswamy established the Dravida Kazhagam, the organisation that created the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), the two parties that have controlled political power in Tamil Nadu for the past half century. Bama as a Tamil Dalit writer is certainly influenced by the pro-Dravidian, anti-Brahminical policies promoted by these parties. By the middle of the 20th century, B.R. Ambedkar exerted a major influence on the movements regarding the assertion of Dalit identity and liberation; he questioned the very construct of the caste system because it ratified centuries of oppressive ideologies attached to Hindu law. He advocated a complete overhaul of the system in order to create an egalitarian society.10 Ambedkar’s ideas became the bedrock of the Indian Constitution and several reformist and liberatory movements later in the 20th century. For instance, the Dalit Panther Party was founded in 197211; it was influenced by Ambedkar in fostering revolutionary rigor among the Dalits and other oppressed sections in Maharashtra (Shankar, 68). The Dalit Panthers, in turn, influenced other groups like the National Dalit Women’s Federation (NDWF) in 1995 and the Tamil Nadu Dalit Women’s Movement (TDWM) in 1998 (Anandi, 83; Ciotti, 70). Both organisations were formed by networks of Dalit women activists and signaled the inauguration of a new politics of gendered difference: they raised concerns about how Dalit political parties marginalised violence against women; they asserted that Dalit women’s needs are different from that of Dalit men; that Dalit women are not a simplified, homogenised category as perceived by non-Dalits; and that Dalit women are subject to their community patriarchies (Anandhi, 83, 96–97; Ciotti 70). Very obviously, Bama’s writing engages with all of these issues. Further, the Mandal Commission Report12 in the late 1980s had an impact on Dalit struggles for identity. Caste and gender, hitherto pursued as two separate systems of stratification in the sociological scholarship on India, became saliently linked into one object of inquiry in the period following the Mandal agitations; thus, re-joining of the two categories of caste and gender reinstated the need for retrieving and comprehending Dalit women’s difference (Ciotti, 71). This need was fulfilled in the early 1990s, when Dalit feminists challenged the categories of “genderless caste” and “casteless gender” (Rege, 3). Dalit feminists also asserted their need to be represented differently from those upper-caste “third world women subjects” within India whom postcolonial feminists had endeavored to retrieve

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out of Western universalising representations, Rege declares (5). There is no doubt that Bama aligns herself with such feminist activism in her work: Feminism in India emphasises the empowerment of women in general in terms of equality in all its dimensions. It is true that all women all over the world suffer because they are women. In India the problems faced by Dalit women are entirely different from that of non-Dalit women. In the Indian context, women suffer a lot in the family because it is man-centred; in the society because it is patriarchal and male-chauvinistic, and religion justifies and legitimises both these unjust institutions and mind-sets favouring men alone. In addition to these, Dalit women face other problems because our society is not only a male-dominated society, but it is an upper-caste maledominated society. Due to untouchability and caste based violence and atrocities Dalit women are tortured and humiliated even by upper-caste women. So, the term “feminism” in India is not enough to encompass the liberative perspectives, aspirations, values, convictions and dreams of Dalit women. How can any ideology of emancipation and empowerment that does not include the annihilation of caste in its agenda and is not committed to the task of restoring the self-esteem and self-respect of Dalit women who do not have equal social status like other non-Dalit women, make any sense to us? Therefore I feel we need separate term “Dalit feminism.” (Bama, Interview by Sarangi) Dalit writing, already in existence through the 20th century, came into its own across India in differing languages during the 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s as consequences of such organic political struggles over Dalit identity. Dalit writing, obviously forged by and through issues emerging from Dalit political struggles, has been the subject of scholarly debates. One of these issues, according to Shankar (33–36), is the politics of the “varna”-“jati” complex when translated into English. “Varna” and “jati” are closely related but distinct words. In English, “varna” and “jati” are translated as “caste”; thus important distinctions are lost in translation.13 For Gajarawala (576) and Ramanathan (“Situating Dalit Literature …”), this body of literature provides an alternative, self-generated history that challenges the current upper-caste monopoly of mainstream rhetoric. In so doing, Gajarawala (588) believes, it presents a humanism hostile to deep casteist structures of understanding; it challenges postcolonial, leftist critiques, and Nehruvian/ Gandhian politics. It neither glorifies the past, nor revises it; it is not strictly revolutionary. Gajarawala (577) further asserts Dalit literature is to be read as posthistoricist realism because it is not ahistorical or apolitical nor individual identity-driven; in fact, such writing insists on a collectivity while presenting a radical singularity. According to Geetha and Srilatha (97), such literature centralises Dalit experiences and instills in Dalits self-pride and confidence. Balakrishnan and Robinson (10, 14) note that not only does Dalit literature showcase the difficulties Dalits face in society but it also

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showcases the arduous process by which Dalit writers, especially women, get translated and published despite upper-caste disdain for their content, style, and vision. For A. Rao (11), the term “Dalit” is a field of contestation and significance; Dalits emerge as new political, ethical subjects challenging existing accounts of history, politics, and culture. Dalit selfhood illuminates two issues simultaneously: first, that the horizon of emancipation cannot happen within existing social relations; second, that caste subalternity exceeds the enumerative logic of reformed Hinduism and the ameliorative logic of liberal democracy. For Sahota (“The Paradoxes of Dalit Cultural Politics,” 198–200), Dalit selfhood in literature reflects an ambivalence towards Hinduism and the liberal discourse of the postcolonial state. It connects the precolonial and colonial past to the postcolonial present by questioning their discourses. The paradoxes of Dalit identity politics, therefore, can only be understood by studying Dalit political and aesthetic ideologies over a long sweep of time. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Dalit literature in the form of poetry, short fiction, novels, dramas, autobiography, and prose tracts exploded as a distinct category unsettling various literary canons. A plethora of writers were published in a number of regional languages but acquired a pan-Indian presence after being translated into English.14 For instance, they were interviewed in little magazines, seminars, conferences, radio, television, and newspapers. Also, organisations such as the Bharatiya Dalit Sahitya Akademy, Center for Alternative Dalit Media (CADM), and the Dalit Lekhak Sangh (DLS) were established (Brueck, 153). Out of all the genres, first-person life writing, autobiographies, and memoirs were more popular and possibly attributable to Dalit writers’ exposure to black slave narratives as well as autobiographical novels, and indigenous testimonial accounts worldwide. Some scholars have actually been engaged in defining a list of characteristics that symptomatise such writing.15 First, these accounts are based on the writers’ ability to evoke, from a Dalit perspective, personal experiences with systemic injustice. Therefore, these accounts open up new worlds of experience to larger audiences, functioning as social epiphanies within their envisioned world. Second, such epiphanies may provide a radical call to action where the experience of reading these narratives creates possibilities for solidarity and affiliations among readers, critics, interviewers, translators, and the subject who speaks. In fact, it targets multiple audiences: it attempts to promote solidarity with other Dalits, it attempts to promote a sense of the reality of caste struggle among Indian non-Dalits, and it also expresses solidarity with a transnational audience some of whom may be oppressed. Third, such radicalisation is possible when these readers, critics, publishers, translators, and interviewers confront Dalit consciousness or “chetna,” which is articulated in the expressive and interpretive practices of reading and writing about Dalit experiences. Dalit consciousness showcases representations of Dalit personhood which offer effective counterpoints to dominant Anglophone and postcolonial cultural production of subjects. Fourth, Dalit vernacular literature in India is poised between specific local/regional experiences and a broad universalism

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that invokes global protests regarding human rights violations. It therefore continues to offer a powerful platform for the critique of capitalist modernity in embracing and articulating the experiences of the most marginalised and disenfranchised populations. Fifth, the key concern is over caste. Despite sweeping changes wrought by industrialisation, urbanisation, and migration, caste conventions show no sign of slackening. Also, affirmative action policies have led to further distillation of caste identities. Paradoxically, the process of Sanskritisation permits some caste groups or members within a group upward social mobility, further increasing inter- & intra-caste tensions. In Dalit lifewriting, the writer mounts a thematic and formal critique of nationalist culture and its normative citizen-subject—the individual, upper-caste, bourgeois male—positing instead a radical, transformatory narrative that questions both the dominant ideology of Hindu nationalism and the material basis of its sustained hegemony. Seventh, the veracity of the autobiographical narrative functions like fiction but has a credibility that is powerful when exposing the extremities of exploitation in Dalit lives that to non-Dalits may come across as bizarre, absurd, and unbelievable. Finally, Dalit writers’ use language distinctively. They may use only dialect and reject standard literary language or mix the two and so manipulate multiple languages and idioms. Their tone is angry. They break grammar, syntax, spelling, and join words differently. This use of heteroglossia16 and the fragmented, complex narrative structure shows up the interplay of caste, class, rural–urban politics, experimentally validates Dalit history and identity, and radically envisions a world free of caste discrimination. By the end of the 1990s, Dalit writing had acquired its own distinctive generic characteristics. It did so around the same time when Indian writing in English and in translation was also acquiring its own distinct identity nationally and internationally. Dalit literature unsettled the assumptions of any upper-caste dominated literary genre by adding its own style and vision. In unsettling generic assumptions it not only dismantled any upper-caste dominated idea of India but it also simultaneously put forward another dynamic, complex, fractured idea of India and Indian literature. Many Dalit writers have also become urban, middle-class, educated, and cosmopolitan. Their trajectory reveals a new visibility for their various communities and not erasure, as Devy fears, through their works being translated. Yet, indeed, there are many regional languages and dialects that continue to suffer with the reign of English. Devy’s objections at the panel discussion to the translation of tribal and other minority cultures into English is at once disproved and reified by these paradoxes. Let us examine the specificities of Bama’s situation to understand the ramifications of such paradoxes.

In conclusion, a case for Bama Bama is the first female Tamil Dalit writer to have published her autobiography and fiction. She was first published in Tamil and later translated into English by Lakshmi Holstrom and Malini Seshadri. She has also been

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translated into other Indian regional and European languages. She has won critical acclaim nationally and internationally. As a writer, she is widely taught in schools, colleges, and universities in India and abroad. She has also been the subject of much scholarship. Karukku came out as a Macmillan publication, translated into English by Lakshmi Holmstrom. Following this, Karukku came to the attention of a national and then international readership. The next year it won the Crossword Award. Then it was translated into other languages such as Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada, in all of which it was well received. Students from different disciplines studied it, both in English and Tamil; they continue to do so. Now 25 years have passed. During these 25 years, Karukku has journeyed widely. Many universities and colleges have used it as a textbook for different subjects such as Marginal Literature, Literature in Translation, Autobiography, Feminist Literature, Subaltern Literature and Dalit Literature. Many students have used it as research material for a number of different topics. (Bama, “Karukku Was My Healing”) In a sense, Bama has arrived; she is a phenomenon within another phenomenon – the genre of Dalit writing. She is interviewed, invited as guest of honor at conferences, and therefore partakes of the life of a cosmopolitan, urban, intellectual – an identity at variance with being a voiceless, Dalit subaltern, but also paradoxically enabled by her life experiences as Dalit. Yes, that is incredible! Born in a remote village in South Tamil Nadu, I had never even dreamt that I will go around the world one day. Like my first book Karukku, I too am invited and celebrated in many places, and I have no words to express the boundless joy, variety of thrilling experiences and the moments of exhilaration in such travels. (Bama, Interview by Badrinath) She is able to choose, to some extent, and create for herself other identities through this translation and publication of her work. J.S.:  You

are a teacher, a writer, a Dalit Christian, a Tamil woman. How do you look at your identity? BAMA:  All these describe my identity. What I value and cherish most is my identity as a human being. (Bama, Interview by Sarangi) It is the fact that she has won for herself this choice, this freedom of being able to create and translate herself into a new identity that she celebrated on the panel at the 2011 Maximum India festival in Washington, DC.

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So what makes Bama so special? Scholars17 list the number of ways in which Bama is a path breaker. For instance, her narratives extend and reconstruct the question of Dalit identity in Tamil literature: One thing that gives me most satisfaction is that I used the language of my people––a language that was not recognized by the pundits of literature, was not accepted by any literary circle in Tamil Nadu, was not included in the norms of Tamil literature. But after my book Karukku was published, the attention it drew and the way it was talked about all over the state forced the critics to accept the users of the dialect into their fold. The grammar has become a part of the language. It makes me feel proud. The fact that I was instrumental in bringing about this change in Tamil literature. (Bama, Interview by Nair) These narratives do not name the first person narrator and so the “I” remains on the periphery, learning by listening to others’ stories. The focus is then on a communal consciousness, which is invested in the larger Dalit liberatory project; this is in sync with the 1990s resurgence of Dalit subjectivity at the center of Dalit Tamil literature. The story told in Karukku was not my story alone. It was the depiction of a collective trauma––of my community––whose length cannot be measured in time. I just tried to freeze it forever in one book so that there will be something physical to remind people of the atrocities committed on a section of the society for ages. I could not build a monument, I could not build a sculpture. I wrote a book. And luckily it did not vanish into obscurity. My community thus found a place in the mainstream media. Their history had no place in Tamil history. It was never recorded. All that has changed. I am happy. (Bama, Interview by Nair) Bama’s Dalit women characters possess agency despite the many indignities that they face: they have no childhood; they are overburdened with menial labor at little or no pay; they suffer malnutrition, poor health, and early marriages; they lack education; and they face social, psychological, physical, and sexual violence. Despite these circumstances, women characters speak out against humiliation, fight indignity, weave songs, and tell stories; their efforts evoke a triple sisterhood between female characters, Dalit women, and female readers. “Dalit women” is the main theme of Sangathi. It reveals their protest and. strategical ways and means of resistance in times of oppress­ion and rejection. It celebrates their resilient nature and builds up hope. It talks about the strength that enables them to swim against the current and live with zeal and zest. (Bama, Interview by Sarangi)

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This is significant in light of the fact that Dalit interventions within the scholarly field have been largely male. Bama complicates understandings of caste, gender, and class formations in her society that refuse easy generalisations. For instance, her stories show violence involving not just upper castes against Dalits but various Dalit groups against each other. She takes on the Catholic Church to show how caste hierarchy is reproduced in Christian villages. Dalits have separate chapels, seating arrangements, queues for receiving Holy Communion, liturgical services, cemeteries and funeral biers. This contradicts some of the egalitarian teachings of the Gospel. Stylistically, Bama crosses borders by writing story collections that subvert the genre of bildungsroman. These are digressive, dialogically fluid, and variously described as testimony, confession, manifesto, and autobiography. She juxtaposes a colloquial, non-literary, working-class Tamil with the literary language. She uses folklore, myth, ethnography, prophesy, and flashback to narrate stories about those denied the right to tell stories. These strategies create a critical consciousness among her readers who then are forced to engage with the prospect of Dalit emancipation as well as the reality of the secular state’s failure to offer all its citizens equal opportunities for advancement. J.S.:  Please mention some of your works of resistance. What do you resist? BAMA:  ... I resist all kinds of social injustices, oppressions and atrocities

in any form that dehumanises and humiliates a person – it may be based on caste, class or gender. J.S.:  Do you consider your writing “militant”? BAMA:  To a certain extent, yes. The language that I use, the content that I write, the characters that I create in my writings and the values and convictions that I advocate through these characters are all of militant nature. I strongly believe that writing itself is a political act and it is one of the weapons that I use to fight against this dehumanising caste practice. (Bama, Interview by Sarangi) Clearly, Bama is more than her Dalitness. She moves outside the script given to her by choosing to stay single, becoming a nun and then a teacher, leaving the Church, living outside her village community, and becoming a writer. In so doing, she also changes the script for Dalit women. However, changing the script is a huge project. It entails eradicating untouchability, overhauling all social institutions that ignore, condone, and perpetuate untouchability, and recognising the need to rewire our ideological framework with fresh, ethical relationships of equality. Here Bama faces a conundrum. How is this to happen within a national landscape of contradictions and paradoxes? This is a landscape where bond slavery amongst Dalits and rapes against Dalit women are normalised at the same time as certain Dalit groups have advanced as a consequence of affirmative action policies. This is a landscape where the mainstreaming of Dalit literature in translation not only spreads its influence among non-Dalit readers but also makes this literature vulnerable to non-Dalit

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appropriation. This is a landscape where being translated into English allows Bama to become an internationally acclaimed writer and don a different identity; yet this identity is empowered by her Dalitness. Further, this process of empowerment is facilitated by English, a language pregnant with the violence of its past history of imperialism as well as its current context of neoimperialism. This is the paradox of the postcolonial, neo-liberal state. This paradox cannot be erased or obliterated; hence it surges up as aporetic moments in the conversation between Bama and Devy at the 2011 panel of the Festival of India. Bama and Devy speak their truths that cannot be reconciled.

Notes 1 Scholars, critics, and writers refer to texts written in Indian languages other than English as bhasha (a word that means language in several Indian tongues) writing. They use this term interchangeably with other terms like ‘regional language’ or even the ‘vernacular’. 2 Neoliberalism (articulated in the works of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman) arose as a response against the increasing economic stagnation and public debt of the 1970s. It is distinct from modern liberalism, although both can be traced back to the classical liberalism (championing economic laissez-faire and the freedom of individuals against the excessive power of government) of the 19th century. Modern liberalism focuses on impediments to individual freedom (i.e. poverty, inequality, disease, discrimination, and ignorance) that were exacerbated by unfettered capitalism and ameliorated through direct state intervention. Such measures began in the late 19th century with workers’ compensation schemes, the public funding of schools and hospitals, and regulations on working hours and conditions and eventually, by the mid-20th century, encompassed the broad range of social services and benefits characteristic of the welfare state. Those who advocate neoliberalism argue that the post 1950s welfare state is in crises, burdened as it is by excessive taxation and cyclical inflation. Hence, they attempt to roll back the state’s involvement in socio-economic affairs. Neoliberals insist that individuals, including politicians and civil servants, act to optimize their power and career prospects by increasing the size of their fiefdoms even when doing so is unnecessary. Indeed, they assert that public interest is the aggregate interests of individuals. For more on neoliberalism see articles by Mark Bevir (“Governance”) and Nicola Smith (“Neoliberalism”) in Encyclopedia Brittannica. 3 “India Shining” was a marketing slogan popularized by the then-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the 2004 Indian general elections. The slogan was initially developed as a part of a government campaign intended to promote India internationally. Similarly, the Maximum India festival at the Kennedy Center aimed to advertise Indian art, culture, as a bid to promote Indian tourism and markets amongst an international audience. 4 There are 114 languages officially recognized by the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (although about 400-odd languages are spoken in India). 5 For more details on the use of English by the Indian urban middle class, see (in addition to the above-mentioned references), the following: Prakash Karat, “The Role of the English-Educated in Indian Politics,” Social Scientist 1, no. 4 (1972): 25–46; S. Rao, “India’s language debates and the education of the linguistic minorities,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 36 (September 2008);

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6

7

8

9

10 11

NCERT 2006 pamphlet; Harish Trivedi, “The Politics of Postcolonial Translation,” in Avadhesh K. Singh (ed.) Translation: Its Theory and Practice (New Delhi: Creative Books, 1996), 46–55; P.K. Varma, The Great Indian Middle Class (New Delhi: Viking, 1998); and Gauri Vishwanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and the British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). For more details on debates on Tamil’s history and its relationship to other languages, see Vaiyapuri Pillai, History of Tamil Language and Literature (Madras: New Century Book House Pvt. Ltd., 1988); M. Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1972); Kamil Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of South India (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); Sumati Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891– 1970 (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1998); and Anashuya Sivanarayanan, “Translation and Globalization: Translation and Bama’s Karukku,” in Nalini Iyer and Bonnie Zare (eds) Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 135–154. Raj Gowthaman, in the August 1991 issue of Melum (Also), argues that Dalit literature is not the province of only those born within castes defined as Dalit but belongs to any “literature that critiques the politics of caste, religion, familial, and sexually exploitative economic formulations.” He goes even further to claim that “any literature that undertakes such politically motivated writing, anyone who is ideologically Dalit, can produce Dalit literature.” In other words, he portrays being Dalit as a subject position available to anyone involved in liberatory activities. See Smita W. Patil, “Reading Caste, Gender, and Sexuality in Dalit Writings,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in the Asia and the Pacific 34 (March 2014); Toral J. Gajarawala, “Some Time between Revisionist and Revolutionary: Unreading History in Dalit Literature,” PMLA 126, no. 3 (May 2011): 575; S. Ramanathan, “Situating Dalit Literature in Indian Writing in English,” Language in India 14, no. 12 (December 2014): 326–338; and A. Rao, “Who is the Dalit?: The Emergence of a New Political Subject,” in Manu Bhagwan and Anne Feldhaus (eds) Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008), 12–16. Patil, however, traces the rise of such identity politics to the 13th and 14th centuries. She refers to the Varkari or the Bhakti movement, which started in Maharashtra but spread to Bengal and other regions. Its noted saints were from all caste groups. One such saint, Chokhamela, was an untouchable. The practices and philosophies of the Bhakti movement questioned the premises underlying caste distinctions of touchability/untouchability. See Subramanian Shankar, Flesh and Fish Blood: Postcolonialism, Translation, and the Vernacular (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 34–35; V.V. Balakrishnan and C.S. Robinson, “‘Planetarity’ as the Armature for Comparing Alice Walker and Bama Faustina,” New Global Studies 5, no.3 (2011): 15–16; and Roger McNamara, “Dalit Writing,” in Secularism and the Crises of Minority Identity in Postcolonial Literature, 131–133. See A. Rao, 16–19; Shankar, 67–70; Geetha & Srilatha, “From Subjugation to Celebration,” 85–86; and Balakrishnan and Robinson, 3,14. This party was founded by Manohar Namdeo Wankhade and modelled after the Black Panther party in the United States. According to Merrill (“Crafting a Feminist Dalit Consciousness in Translation,” 52–56), Wankhade’s reading of African-American literature identified a double consciousness requiring a narrative strategy that mobilized both awareness and rage. This double consciousness can be seen in the works of Bama and other Dalit writers.

194  Nandita Ghosh 12 This commission, headed by B.P. Mandal, was established by the government in 1979 to consider the question of reservations in order to redress caste discrimination. In 1980, the Commission recommended bringing the total number of government job reservations for scheduled castes and tribes and other backward castes upto 49%. When the government declared its intent to implement its recommendations in 1990, there were widespread riots and student protests across college campuses. This report became a symbol of the volatile relations between differing caste groups. 13 As defined by Shankar, “varna” is the fourfold caste classification beyond which, as a paradoxical caste of outcastes, are located the untouchables; the system of caste as it functions today bears little resemblance to this fourfold classification. There are thousands of castes across India, many of them unique to specific regions or subregions. Each one of these castes is a “jati”. A particular “jati” belongs to a particular “varna”, but where “varna” is a more abstract classification mostly found in texts, “jati” is an actual socially and culturally delimited community to which an individual belongs. So, in the contradictory everyday life of Indians, “jati” carries more importance than “varna”. 14 Daya Pawar’s Baluta (initially published in 1978, later translated into Hindi as Achut or Untouchable in 1980), Laxman Mane’s Upara (initially published in 1980, later translated into English as Upara: An Outsider in 1997), Vasant Moon’s Vasti (initially published in 1995, later translated into English as Growing Up Untouchable in India in 2000), Naimishray’s Apne Apne Pinjare (2008), Valmiki’s Joothan (2003), Limbale’s The Outcast (2007). 15 See McNamara, 125–127, 141–151; Thiara, “Subaltern Experimental Writing,” 256–264; Merrill, 52–56; Brueck, “Mainstreaming Marginalized Voices…” 155– 163; Ciotti, ““For Another Difference,” 75–76; Latha, “Double Oppression …” 131–134; Chandran and Suliza, “When Feminism Overpowers Caste Marginalization,“385–387; Sivanarayanan, 135–136, 139–140, 152–153; and Gajarawala, 575–591. 16 The use of this term here leans heavily on Mikhail Bakhtin’s coinage of the term (in The Dialogic Imagination) to mean a diversity of voices, styles of discourse, or points of view in a literary work. 17 See Geetha and Srilatha, 97; Naik “Baby Kamble to Bama”; Latha, 119–121; Chandran and Suliza, 383, 384, 387; Dhanlakshmi “Ostracized Beings”; Christopher, “Between Two Worlds,” 7,13,22; Joseph, “Indictment of Caste Consciousness…” 97–99; and Balakrishnan and Robinson, 20.

Chapter 14

Thriving, surviving, and hanging on Domestic workers in Harare suburbs Rudo Gaidzanwa

Introduction The chapter examines the work-based narratives of female domestic workers in Zimbabwe. In the context of the deepening economic crisis in Zimbabwe, domestic work remains one of the few options left for women who lack scarce skills, training, and schooling. The chapter analyses the shifts in self-identification, modes of silencing and emerging strategies of dissent, subversion, resistance, and negotiation with employers, family members, and kin by female domestic workers as they attempt to survive, access better skills and jobs, and protect their incomes while crafting more sustainable livelihoods in Harare. This study describes and analyses the subaltern experiences of domestic workers in Harare, Zimbabwe. Domestic work is one of the most feminised and lowly paid forms of wage work in contemporary Zimbabwe. Pape noted that domestic work in Zimbabwe was masculinised until well after independence in 1980 and it remains so, especially amongst the higher income households in contemporary Zimbabwe.1 However, the majority of black, lower middle, and middle income households prefer female domestic workers, especially child minders whereas the higher income white households still employ some male workers in the specialised roles of cooks and gardeners. In the middling, predominantly black households, cooking, cleaning, and child care are feminised and usually undertaken by women with little formal education. Domestic workers in middle and upper income households usually reside on their employers’ premises, resulting in the “merging” of their work and “home” lives. Their non-work lives are usually focused outside their employers’ premises at churches, relatives’ homes, and other places. Mars (1982 and 1984) studied the worlds of waiters, longshoremen, dustmen, and other workers in various occupations. Mars’ studies are useful for understanding the motivations of people in their occupations and workplaces.2 Mars’ studies also helped to understand the agency of the disempowered low level and lowly paid workers such as waiters, dockers, longshoremen, and others. His findings indicated that whilst formal employment situations

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might be formally disempowering to subordinated groups of workers such as waiters and longshoremen, workers attempt to expand their spaces of agency and control in their workplaces and situations. Thus, while formal laws, rules, and systems of remuneration may create hierarchies of status, pay, and authority, workers struggle to expand their spaces of agency and opportunity regardless of the formal rules in which they operate. This study explores the initiatives and agency of female domestic workers in Harare, Zimbabwe. Domestic work in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe has traditionally been lowly paid and perceived to be the province of the least educated workers with few opportunities for employment elsewhere. Domestic work in colonial Zimbabwe was dominated by men, especially foreigners from Malawi, Mozambique, and other colonies in Southern Africa. Local men eschewed domestic work because they had land rights in their rural areas of origin and they resisted wage work as far as possible, preferring to work in the better-paid occupations in factories and other enterprises.3 Schmidt observed that white women in colonial Zimbabwe were conflicted about and fearful of employing black women as live-in domestic workers since black women in waged domestic work would have to neglect their own families and worse still, be accessible for sex with white men in their households. Schmidt also notes that the fear and dread of white men exploiting black women workers sexually in their white households resulted in the colonial practice to employ black males as domestic workers.

Background Routine domestic work in pre-colonial Zimbabwe was traditionally the domain of young, unmarried girls. A newly married woman would normally be accompanied by a young girl who would perform the light domestic chores such as cooking, washing and cleaning the pottery, grinding and pounding grain, and minding babies amongst the Shona, Ndebele, and other groups. Adult women were usually involved in gathering, pottery, house construction, crafts, agricultural and other work related to ensuring survival. An adult woman, on marriage amongst Shona groups, would be assigned a young girl to help her out with lighter chores such as cleaning, minding children, and performing some light agricultural work. Only when a woman was in an irregular relationship with a man would she be involved in routine domestic chores such as dishwashing and cleaning. Amongst the Shona, such a woman would be said to be “involved in cooking pots” (kubikamapoto). Men tended to be more concerned with and involved in the husbandry of larger livestock such as cattle and hunting and the younger men and boys tended livestock and helped adult men in the performance of chores related to house construction, hunting and the defense of their communities against enemy raids and other dangers associated with predation by wild animals. Colonisation in the late nineteenth century reconfigured the roles of native men and women, resulting in the creation of new forms of work and

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reconfiguring the age and gender divisions of labour that existed in the communities of the colonised peoples. The colonisation of Zimbabwe in 1896 created new class and gender divisions of labour within the colonised and colonising groups. The Ndebele, Shona, Kalanga, and other groups lost their autonomy and lands to the colonising white groups which imposed the rule of the British South Africa Company under Cecil John Rhodes and his colleagues. The colonisation of what is contemporary Zimbabwe resulted in the subordination of native populations, the seizure of a significant proportion of their best and most productive lands and the recruitment of black men and women into wage labour on the farms, mines, and households of the colonising groups comprising Europeans, mainly from Britain. Ranchod-Nilsson documented the attempts of the Federation of Women’s Clubs in Zimbabwe, to introduce colonial notions of domesticity to rural women in colonial Zimbabwe.4 Barnes and Win documented the struggles of black women to access the towns and cities as wage workers.5 Barnes and Win also noted that black women were expected to safeguard the land rights of black, colonised men in the rural areas.6 Those women who were caught in the trains, lorries, and other transport going into towns were arrested. In fact, in Shona, women who are mobile beyond their residential locales are termed “pfambi”, denoting one who moves. This is due to the expectation that women would remain within their locales and not venture beyond their villages of residence. Thus, respectability of women was linked to their restricted mobility. Schmidt noted that most young black women prioritised marriage and motherhood and were reluctant to mortgage their chances of marriage to take care of white women’s households and children. Schmidt also noted the isolation, drudgery, poor pay, and strict supervision that characterised domestic work for colonial households as a reason for the low preference for domestic work amongst black women. However, some black orphaned and marginalised women did venture into the towns to seek jobs and brew beer to raise capital for their projects in rural and urban areas. The idea that women should be housewives was novel since pre-colonial Shona and Ndebele societies, where women tilled the land, prepared food and brewed beer for various ceremonies, nursed and reared children, looked after the aged in addition to other duties. Kirkwood (1984) also noted that the idea of domesticating women was a western import modeled on the colonial, Christian women who attempted to extend their customs amongst the colonised peoples.7 The radio homecraft club that used to broadcast in the Rhodesian African service before independence in Zimbabwe used to focus on western recipes for scones, queen cakes, cleaning hints for people living in western type housing despite that the bulk of the black populations lived in dusty rural areas in grass-thatched houses without cement or tiled floors, water, and electricity. The irony of it was that the white women who taught black women all these “western” types of home craft hired black domestic workers to clean their houses and mind their children.8

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Before and after independence in 1980, black households utilised kinship and other networks to secure domestic labour outside the market system. Black households continue to utilise kin networks and obligations to place their daughters and sons in better-off households so that they can acquire fees for these children’s schooling in exchange for the labour of the young. In particular, poor relatives could be fostered and sent to school in exchange for their domestic and agricultural labour. These arrangements are derived from traditional customs whereby young girls are attached to the households of their brothers and sisters on marriage to assist them with lighter household and agricultural tasks. This type of traditional “fostering” continues to date as parents and guardians seek opportunities for children to attain upward mobility through attachment to better-resourced households and kin. In the more affluent suburbs in Zimbabwe, domestic workers are paid the minimum wages and in the better-off households, rations such as maize meal, sugar, salt, and cooking oil. They might also be offered unwanted clothes for their children or themselves in addition to their wages. The current minimum wage for domestic workers staying on their employers’ premises in Zimbabwe is around Z$120 per month. There are allowances of around $20 to $30 for workers staying outside their employers’ premises. In the lower middle class and other households, they hire poorer domestic workers on less favourable terms. Employees in poorer households are fortunate if they are paid the statutory minimum wages of around Z$120 per month. Workers in these households usually do not have their own accommodation separate from their employers’. They might sleep in the lounge or kitchen or share the bedrooms with the employer’s children or relatives. They also share meals with the employers and their family members. With the current high inflation environment in Zimbabwe, the minimum wage is not sufficient to support even one person, let alone a family of four or more people for a month. For domestic workers in colonial, and to some extent, after independence in 1980, holding down a domestic job helps one to register as a wage earner on housing and land entitlement lists in many cities. A person in employment can secure an employer’s reference to get onto housing and residential land waiting lists. This strategy is mentioned by Miles writing on Swazi women who register for self-help housing or secure low-income housing in Manzini, Swaziland.9 Women can generate incomes through renting out rooms in their houses. Therefore, housing is a critical asset which complements other forms of income generation. A house also provides a place to which a woman can retire and live in the city. However, poorer domestic workers living with their employers may not be as fortunate and able to mobilise their employment and employers for support to acquire residential land in urban Zimbabwe. Domestic workers, male and female, have experienced job losses and impoverishment as the employer base has been thinned by the economic crisis which escalated in the new millennium. Wage jobs have been reduced as enterprises closed down due to the economic crisis. Domestic workers have been affected negatively since the ranks of the high wage earners have been

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thinned considerably and employers have cut down on expenditure on domestic workers. In many households, gardeners, predominantly male, and housekeepers, called housemaids, are now employed on part-time, often economically non-viable, rather than full-time bases especially in households without small children who might need assistance with the laundering of clothes, food preparation, and care. In some smaller households, mothers of small children take care of their children and undertake home-based informal businesses rather than poorly paid wage work. This chapter explores the narratives and experiences of ten women who perform domestic work in contemporary Zimbabwe. After independence in 1980, the numbers of black middle-class people who could afford to hire domestic work increased as black economic advancement was accelerated. However, black employers’ hiring and preferences for domestic workers differed from those of the whites. Blacks preferred to hire female domestic workers for work inside their homes while hiring males for gardening and other more physically challenging work outside their houses. White preferences in the hiring of domestic workers remain more varied whereas black Zimbabweans seldom hire males for work inside their homes except in a few instances where the men work as cooks.

Narratives of female domestic workers about their employers Kirkwood noted that there are narratives about domestic workers by employers but hardly any narratives about employers by domestic workers.10 This issue has also been mentioned by Mars.11 This study aims to contribute towards filling that void by providing some narratives from some of the domestic female workers who participated in this study. The study describes the experiences of domestic workers and their perceptions about their employers. The study also indicates continuities and changes in the forms and content of domestic work in Zimbabwe in the context of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Female domestic workers’ narratives about their employers vary depending on the statuses of the employers and their rules and regulations. This study was accomplished by means of referral to domestic workers through church, work, and other contacts to secure a variety of domestic workers who work in households of affluent and middling people. Domestic workers connected the researcher to their friends and colleagues so that a variety of experiences with different types of employers could be obtained. In all, ten female respondents were able to provide sustained narratives and experiences of their work. Their experiences vary according to the levels of affluence of their employers, the numbers of household members serviced by the domestic workers and the types of work they performed in their respective households. The narratives of the domestic workers vary depending on their locations and experiences in the households of employment. Workers also had different

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preferences on issues for discussion. Six of the workers were very interested in and committed to sharing their experiences with the researcher on their negative and positive work experiences while four respondents were more guarded and preferred to discuss only their concerns about wages, employer behaviours, and remuneration. Issues that the respondents were interested in discussing varied but they included their relationships with employers, employers’ spouses and children, rules, and regulations about visitors and their length of stay in the employers’ premises. The analysis is based on research conducted with female domestic workers in Harare in 2018 to 2019. Altogether ten female domestic workers were involved in the study and their views and sentiments are presented below. The depth of their narratives differs depending on their ability and willingness to discuss their experiences, both positive and negative. However, data gleaned from the interviews shed light on significant shifts in domestic workers’ lives and fortunes in contemporary Zimbabwe. The responses also address some of the questions relating to the changes in the form and content of domestic workers’ lives in the context of the unfolding economic and social crises in Zimbabwe.

Accommodation at the employer’s premises and its advantages Interviews with the ten female domestic workers in the study indicated that accommodation at the employer’s premises is critical for reducing living expenses, distancing the domestic workers from needy kin who might want to borrow money or drop in unannounced for meals and other assistance. Domestic workers often use their employers’ sentiments as a reason for not entertaining guests in their rooms. Female domestic worker, April (pseudonym), who works in Mount Pleasant, pointed out that she uses her employer’s sentiments as a reason for not entertaining relatives at her workplace: I tell them that my Madam does not want visitors who come to her home because she is afraid of robberies. I tell them that I get half days off on Saturdays and a whole Sunday off work. That is the time for me to visit my friends and relatives in the township (the former blacks only residential areas in colonial Zimbabwe). That way, April is able to determine when and where to visit her friends and kin and keep them away from prying into her lifestyle, her possessions, and social life by arriving unannounced at her place of work and residence. April is very focused on saving money to purchase residential land to build her own house in one of the high-density areas in Harare. April was very clear about her ambitions and plans to better her life through domestic work and learning as much as she could about how affluent white people live and conduct themselves in managing their homes, relatives, children, and their money.

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Domestic work is like a crash course in rich, white people’s thinking, decision-making and behavior about how to eat, think, and conduct my financial affairs and my life. You know, I have learned so much from my employers about how life should be lived if one wants to improve themselves I asked her what had impressed her and what she had learned from her employers. You know Sisi, I learned not to waste money buying flashy things. My Madam has a very high job in her company but she drives a simple small car which is well maintained. Her children go to private schools but they don’t drive Mercedes Benz cars like our politicians’ children. They playsports but don’t spend their time drinking beer and smoking mbanje. (marijuana/pot) The family goes on holidays all over once a year and those kids have been to England, Australia and everywhere. Our politicians’ children just drink and smoke mbanjeand drop out of school and spend their parents’ money. ChiiichochonhaiSisi? (What is that, my sister?) Thus, April’s decision to keep away her kin from her place of employment was to ensure that they would not see and assess what she possessed and probably, make demands for cash or other assistance from her. April admired and became an avid pupil of her employer’s financial strategies. She bonded with her employer as a strategy to maximise her gains from her employment.

Religiosity as a strategy May, (pseudonym) a female domestic worker who also works in Mt Pleasant attends a Pentecostal church and is very committed to her friends and companions from her church. May is very focused on marrying within her church. She observes her church’s rules, tithes conscientiously, and hopes to attract the attention of a devout God-fearing man within her church. Her employers are happy with her commitments to her church because they consider it a restraining influence against bad habits such as stealing, dishonesty and other bad practices that domestic workers may adopt in the workplace. She, in turn, uses her religiosity to ensure that her male boss never entertains any ideas of making sexual advances at her. May knows that the husband of her “Madam” has a reputation as a “ladies’ man” and she wants to ensure that he does not make any inappropriate advances towards her. She also dislikes the

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husband for his rumoured infidelity and even considered telling his wife about it but was advised against that course of action by her church friends. May subsequently left her job with the family after landing another domestic job with another family in her church. She says she feels more comfortable working for a more “Godly” family with whom she shares similar religious beliefs, ideas, and views about the world. Sisi, my employer’s husband had roving eyes and hands and everybody in this “line” (street) knows it because maids don’t stay long at this house.I heard this from the friends of the maid who had worked for this family before me. She left after my madam’s husband started “eyeing” her and asking to be kissed.Everyone in this “line” knows that this man has “eyes” for women who works here.I did not know this when I took the job at their house. However, when I was working for them, I made sure that I stayed far from him. I also made sure they knew I was a praying woman and I prayed at work during my tea time and lunch break so that the man would be too scared to make a move on me and start groping me or looking at me in a “dirty”way.I was relieved when I found another job with a godly family and left that ungodly man’s house.

Building alliances as a survival mechanism Female domestic workers adopt strategies for survival in the workplace by building alliances with the children of their employers. June, (pseudonym) a young domestic worker in Avondale in Harare, has a good relationship with her employer’s children. She secures their support by hiding their transgressions from their parents. For example, one of the children of her employers, a 15-year-old girl, is not allowed to wear a lot of make-up or to associate with certain girls from her private school because they are known to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. The girl’s mother often questions June about the frequency of the visits of the “forbidden” girls to her home or the frequency of their phone calls and the content of their conversations with her daughter. June sometimes colludes with the teenage daughter to lie to her mother about the frequency of the visits of the “forbidden” girls to her home to spend time with her daughter. June feels guilty about keeping information about her employer’s daughter and her friends from her employer. However, she also uses her position as leverage to ensure that the daughter of her employer treats her well and does not place any undue burdens on her to do a lot of chores for her. For example, June insists that her employer’s daughter clean up after herself and pick up her clothes and place them in the laundry basket when they need to be washed. Thus, June’s leverage on her employer’s teenage children helps her to survive, avoid being overworked, and maintain her employer’s confidence.

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June informed me that sometimes it is the children who become the worker’s advocates to their parents if they like the worker. When I asked her what advice she would give to other domestic workers, she answered I would advise them to bond with the kids if possible because most mothers like domestics who are loved by their children. Be the “lawyer” (advocate) for the children. It pleases the mothers if you as a domestic worker, love and stick up for their children no matter how naughty they are at times. If you stick up for the kids, they will also defend you against attacks by their parents if you do wrong like scorching the clothes when ironing. I once scorched the Madam’s skirt and she was angry with me and threatened to fire me if I did not pay attention to my work. The daughter who is my “lawyer” told her mother that she did not want another maid except me because I was nice and kind to her. She really saved my job that time. That kid is my “lawyer” and I try to make her behave well because she also protects me from her mother’s anger when I make a mistake in the house. Thus, June was adamant that building alliances with the children especially those that talk well about her and can influence their parents’ decisions about her, is a good strategy for keeping one’s job.

Bonding with employers Rose, (pseudonym) a female domestic worker had worked as a temporary teacher in a rural school until she was replaced by a trained teacher. Her cousins secured her a job as a domestic worker in the household of their friend in Harare. Rose worked well and was able to send her two younger daughters and a son through school. Her eldest daughter had completed secondary school and did not have a job. Rose’s employer then offered to help Rose’s daughter to immigrate to the United Kingdom to seek work and enroll in a training course as a nurse. Rose’s daughter was able to acquire a passport and immigrate to the United Kingdom before the imposition of a visa requirement for Zimbabweans. Rose’s daughter established herself in the United Kingdom and paid off the debt for her airfare to her mother’s employer. Rose’s daughter is now settled legally in the United Kingdom and is able to support her mother who has quit her domestic job. Rose now lives in a new Harare suburb in a three bed-roomed house that was constructed through remittances from her daughter. My employment as a domestic worker really helped me to educate my children and acquire a house of my own. When my marriage broke up, I was quite despondent and I had no option but to take up a domestic job. Little

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did I know that the domestic job, though looked down upon by many people, was my route to upward mobility. I used to feel so small when I performed domestic work but it helped me to meet people I would never have met outside my social network. My employer was instrumental in getting my daughter out of Zimbabwe and look what has happened now! My daughter supports me and as I speak, her youngest daughter is here in Zimbabwe staying with me so that her mother can work more hours and send us money to set up her three siblings in business. Rose’s experience indicates the importance of rapport between employees and their employers in facilitating employees’ social mobility. Rose’s case is not unique. In some instances, employers facilitate and pay for residential land for their employees enabling them to retire in comfort. A house is a solid asset in Zimbabwe because it can be used to house the retiree and to generate income through leasing or renting out rooms or outbuildings. However, Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has decimated the stock of domestic workers’ housing since a lot of such housing, allocated to resident domestic workers, has been converted into rental units by economically constrained house owners. This necessitates the hiring of non-resident domestic workers or accommodating resident domestic workers in employers’ family housing.

Efficiency at work Daisy (pseudonym) decided to work efficiently and fast to ensure that her employer’s dependence on her services was sustained.Daisy said she was very thorough and fast in her work and made it difficult for her employer to tolerate another domestic worker who came in to replace her when she takes her annual leave or when Daisy has to attend to emergencies in her family. My Madam is very fussy and I decided to ensure that she would never find anybody else who would perform the housework as well as I do. I quickly learned what she valued and what types of food she liked and I made sure I cooked those foods well. I now know how she likes her clothes ironed and hung up and I do that her way. Now she complains when I take my leave days to go and visit my mother because she does not want any other worker doing her cooking, washing and ironing. It makes things difficult for me and other workers who come to do my work when I am on leave. It also helps me because she makes sure that she does not annoy me or treat me unkindly. I have also ensured that she pays me well so that I do not leave her. Once in a while I hint that I might seek another job that pays better and that makes her increase my salary!” Daisy also ensures that she keeps the couple’s relatives happy when they visit. Daisy feels secure in her job and she has made her employer dependent

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on her, resulting in her employer treating her well and avoiding any conflict with her overworkand salary issues. She feels secure as a female domestic worker in contemporary Zimbabwe where the economy has declined, poverty is rife, and well-remunerated domestic jobs are scarce. Her employer’s dependence on her and dread of “breaking in” a new domestic worker accords Daisy significant leverage to negotiate her salary as soon as she considers it to have been eroded by hyperinflation in Zimbabwe.

Sexual harassment The issue of sexual harassment by men in the households in which women perform domestic work arose during the course of the research study. Flora mentioned that the husband in the households in which they she worked previously had made indirect, inappropriate sexual suggestions to her. Flora said she had pretended not to understand what the man was suggesting and had avoided being near him or being alone with him in the house in which she worked. My rule is that you must stay away from the husband because the Madam will fire you first rather than lose her meal ticket. Iwendiweunochekereswa and haabvunzemurume wake kutizvafambasei.(You are the one who will be sacrificed and she won’t question her husband). If there is a bad, loose husband in the home that you work in, it’s better to just quietly find another job and leave before the husband makes a move on you. That way, you get a good reference from the wife and you escape a dangerous situation. If you have an affair with the husband, you will lose your job and probably a good Madam because even if the wife likes you, she won’t want you around her bad husband. How many bosses do you know who have married their domestic workers? They just use you for sex and they won’t want you in their lives after that! After my employer’s husband started making lewd jokes and trying to get me interested in him, I started looking for another job and left before the man could repeat his advances more overtly. I did not want to be killed or hated for a man I had no interest in! He was such a problem husband and I was glad to leave that job after landing a better one through a friend. Flora chose to avoid her employer’s lecherous husband and eventually left her employment in the household before she could collide with the “Madam” over her husband’s bad behavior. For Flora, it was better for her to make the first move and ask for her accrued benefits rather than leave under a cloud where she could be accused of having seduced or tried to attract the married lecherous man.

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Siphiwe, another domestic worker in Harare said she had a madam who had lots of relatives who visited the home in which she worked. That house was always busy with relatives coming and going. I personally observed which ones were welcomed and which ones were not, then I made sure not to cross or annoy those that were liked. Once you are nice to them, they say nice things about you to their relative, your boss. That way, you get a good reputation with the boss and she can forgive you if you do somethings that annoy her. If you scorch clothes while ironing or burn meat or vegetables, she may overlook it as long as you don’t do it too often.

When I asked her about how to relate to husbands of madams, she told me the following: Husbands are a no-go area. As for me, I don’t even want to havemuch to do with them because I see the things they do and how they behave to their wives and children. I have a relative who was a house girl and she had an affair with the man of the house she worked in. Ehe! She had a hard time I tell you. Class issues became important after the wife found out. The man became slippery after that and did not even defend the house girl. He just accepted his wife’s insults and scolding and then the house girl was fired ipapo(there and then). The man never even contacted her to apologize or even help her out when she lost her job. She was lucky not to be bashed to nothing. Wives can really beat you to nothingness if you touch their men especially when you are in their house all the time. In such situations, the maid never wins because the man just uses the maid as a pass time, a working class thing that he can use and discard when the going gets tough. I don’t like the behavior of these lecherous “baases” (bosses). As for me, I just try to befriend the Madam that I work for and remain humble so that she does not abuse me. I am good to the kids and relatives so that they can put in a good word for me with Madam. In these households, you need to be in good books with the Madam and the children otherwise you won’t last in your job. Unlike Flora, Siphiwe chose to stick to the “Madam” and the relatives that she knew her employer liked so that they could put in a good word for her with her employer. She made sure she remained humble in her employer’s eyes to avoid abuse. She also handled the employer’s children kindly to ensure that they became her advocate to their parents, enabling her to keep her job

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in the difficult economic environment of contemporary Zimbabwe. Siphiwe recognised that class differences between the employers and the domestic workers, the solidarities, and the mutual interests of couples are stronger than any feelings of lust and affection that male employers might have for domestic workers. She felt that ties of affection and class bind husbands and wives, rendering domestic workers dispensable in the eyes of the middle-class employers and their families. Siphiwe counseled humility by the domestic worker as a means of survival and avoiding abuse. She also thought that courtesy and kindness to the children and relatives of her employers was a better strategy for retaining a domestic job. She set out to schmooze the children of her employers and favoured relatives who visited, as a strategy for cementing her ties with the employers and their families.

Domestic work in the distressed sector of poorly paid and informal workers Josephine works in a household with four children, two girls and two boys and their parents, in a high-density township in Harare. The man of the house is a clerk in a company and the wife is a cross-border trader. Josephine is distantly related to her employer through their mothers. Josephine confided that the husband has a “small house” (girlfriend) in another township so he does not stay with his official wife and their two children most of the time. Josephine complained about living, eating, and mingling with her employer’s family members. It’s stressful living with this lady who is really sad because of her husband’s infidelity. If I tell her to leave him, she will probably think I am jealous and want her to lose her marriage. However, listening to her tales of woe all the time is tiresome. I am also struggling to make ends meet and I cannot console her all the time. I need to earn money to support my children

Part timers, casual, and other marginalised domestic workers As indicated in the narratives above, the economic crisis and the scarcity of well-paid jobs has generated a new cohort of part-time, casual, and temporary domestic workers in many low-density suburbs. In many households such as those of single men and women without children, part-time workers are hired to minimise expenses. These workers were not part of this study but they too, merit study and discussion because they constitute a significant proportion of domestic workers in Zimbabwe. The economic crisis in Zimbabwe has thinned the ranks of domestic workers who hold full-time jobs and are paid at or above the statutory wage for full-time domestic workers. In the high-density settlements and townships, rural households and other marginalised poor households, part-time, casual and temporary domestic workers predominate. These part-time workers may perform housework for three or

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so households, usually of single, widowed, or divorced men and women whose children have left home.

Conclusion All these workers’ strategies indicate the presence of agency and initiative amongst people who might be in structurally disempowered situations. Like Mars’ dockworkers, waiters and longshore men and others, the strategies of domestic workers demonstrate that it is seldom that workers, the enslaved and others in subordinated positions to their employers and masters, are totally disempowered. Even in the most disempowering situations such as slavery, colonialism, and class subordination, subaltern populations always explore and expand opportunities for self-expression, survival and advantage for themselves. The strategies used by domestic workers to expand their ‘zones of freedom’ and advantage through manipulation, “schmoozing” employers, bonding with their children, render employers dependent on the domestic workers’ skills and competences, enhancing the leverage of domestic workers in the extraction of some concessions, rewards and favorable treatment by employers. Some employers are also responsive to the conscientiousness of their domestic workers and they reward their domestic workers beyond the legally required boundaries of the employment laws and regulations. This research shows that domestic employees recognise the possibilities and advantages of domestic work in a stressed economy such as that of Zimbabwe. They utilie the opportunities presented by employment in domestic work, to improve their lives and those of their dependents. Their voices and initiatives are worth understanding and analysing to avoid presenting them as disempowered, victimised actors without volition in the workplace. The study also indicates the strategies available to domestic workers to develop agency and volition, amplifying their voices in dissent, manipulation, and active co-operation with their employers and their families, in order to improve their situations in domestic work in Zimbabwe.

The findings of this study In light of subaltern theory and its analysis of the modes of communication and resistance utilised by subordinated groups in various societies, the findings from this study showcase the feelings, thoughts and the strategies adopted by various “subaltern” actors to navigate their way through their work lives, retain their jobs, and to maximise advantages that occur within their workplaces. Sometimes, they deploy “groveling” modes of communication and the “conciliatory” languages of the marginalised groups that convey their acceptance of their subordination to the dominant groups. Thus, even in their discontent, subaltern groups utilise conciliatory language, and express their feelings and demands in ways that are comprehensible, and perceived to be “respectful” and “acceptable” to the dominant groups.

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The “groveling” and “submissive” modes of communication and behavior by domestic workers reassure the employers of the deference and subordination of their workers. Thus, the subalterns “speak” the languages of subordination and “act” out gestures and stances of subordination even when they when they are resisting and undermining their employers’ wishes. Some subalterns do not have high opinions or respect for their employers and their families. Despite their structural subordination, the subalterns “speak” by “schmoozing” their employers, their children, and spouses, by acting “humble”, deferring to them, showing affection to their employers’ children to capture the children’s loyalty and support. These strategies help subalterns to retain some control over the actions of their employers who need their services. By seemingly affirming their employers’ superiority, the subalterns advance their projects in ways that do not alienate their employers. This study focuses on the subalternities of various employees and their modes of “speaking” and agency while depicting their structural marginalisation in contemporary Zimbabwe.

Notes 1 J. Pape “Still Serving the Tea: Domestic Workers in Zimbabwe 1980-90,”Journal of Southern African Studies 19, no. 3 (1993): 387–404 2 G. Mars and Michael Nicod The World of Waiters: An anthropology of an occupation (London: Routledge, 1984); G. Mars, Cheats at Work: an anthropology of workplace crime (London: Routledge, 1994). 3 E. Schmidt, “Race, Sex and Domestic Labour: The question of African female servants in Southern Rhodesia, 1900-1939” in K. T. Hansen (ed) African Encounters with Domesticity (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 221–41. 4 S. Ranchod-Nilsson, “‘Educating Eve’: The women’s club movement and political consciousness among rural African women in Southern Rhodesia, 1900– 1980,” in K. T. Hansen (ed), African Encounters with Domesticity. 5 E. Barnes and E. Win, To Live a Better Life: An Oral History of Women in the City of Harare, 1930–70 (Harare: Baobab Books, 1992). 6 Barnes and Win, To Live a Better Life. 7 D. Kirkwood, “The suitable wife: Preparation for marriage in London and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe” in Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener (eds) The Incorporated Wife (London: Croon Helm, 1984). 8 Ibid. 9 M. Miles, “Housing and domestic work in women’s coping strategies: Evidence from Swaziland,” in A. Larsson, M. Mapetla, and A. Schlyter (eds) Changing Gender Relations in Southern Africa (Lesotho: Institute of Southern African Studies, 1998), 184−205. 10 Kirkwood, “The suitable wife”. 11 Mars, “Cheats at Work”.

Chapter 15

Restitution of conjugal rights and the dissenting female body The Rukhmabai case Kanika Sharma

Colonial laws in late-nineteenth-century India often reduced the native female to her corporeal body, and this was especially the case with laws regarding marriage and a woman’s rights within that marriage. This essay closely examines the Rukhmabai case where intertwined laws on age of consent as well as restitution of conjugal rights focused on the body of the Hindu woman while ignoring her thoughts and desires, thus seeking to render her a mute spectator in her own life.1 This attempt at muting women in their own lives is replicated in mainstream historiography which remains a deeply patriarchal enterprise and largely ignores “what the women were saying.”2 Even when focusing on age of consent women are repeatedly framed as objects rather than subjects, despite the fact that many contemporary women were speaking and writing about these issues. The woman as subaltern is not allowed to speak for herself, instead many influential tracts on the history of age of consent in India focus on the male voices prevalent at the time, with particular emphasis on men such as Behramji Malabari or BG Tilak.3 For the purpose of this essay, I seek to posit Rukhmabai as a subaltern subject and attempt to recover her voice by tracing the defence that was articulated on her behalf in the courtroom and examining the letters that she wrote to The Times of India within the country and The Times in England. Her first-hand accounts of the plight of the child wife married to a man she would have never chosen for herself lent a strident voice against the institution of child marriage and the idea that a Hindu woman must always acquiesce to conjugal relations with her husband even against her own wishes. Rukhmabai’s rigorous public intervention reveals that for brief moments, though always closely circumscribed by the patriarchal norms determined by the elite in the society, the subaltern woman can attempt to have her dissent registered.

Marriage and conjugal relations in colonial India In colonial, and indeed post-colonial India, marital laws were based on the religions of the parties involved. Since Rukhmabai and her husband were Hindus, this paper focuses closely on Hindu marital law which relegated the

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woman to a subaltern and subordinate position in relation to her male family members. In particular, I will be examining the legal doctrines of age of consent and restitution of conjugal rights, both of which sought to control a woman and her body without her permission. As the scholarship on the age of consent debate in India has shown, within the country this age was linked entirely to notions of physical maturity of the girl child.4 When the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860 was first introduced it was assumed that by the age of ten the female body had attained the physical maturity to engage in sexual intercourse without sustaining physical harm. As a result, the minimum age of consent for girls was set at ten but the IPC remained silent on the issue of a minimum age of marriage for such girls. Social and religious norms dictated that a Hindu girl was married at a young age––often only a few months or years old––and colonial law intervened to establish that such a marriage could only be consummated after the girl turned ten years old. The IPC also remained silent on a minimum age of consent or marriage for boys. In the early 1880s, certain reformists began to urge the government to raise this age of consent to twelve years old, arguing that twelve marked the age of puberty for most girls and that girls would give birth to healthier offspring after that age.5 The latter being deemed to be beneficial to the Hindu race as whole. On the other hand, members of the Hindu orthodoxy argued that their religious injunctions dictated that a marriage must be consummated immediately after a girl reached menarche. They further argued that in a country with a hot climate such as India, girls were likely to reach puberty before the age of twelve and that under the proposed reform they would be forced to delay consummation, hence, going against their religious duties.6 As we see, for both the reformists as well as the traditionalists, the parameters of the debate were determined by concerns over the physical maturity of the girl with no thought given to her intellectual maturity at the time of consummation of the marriage. As Tanika Sarkar notes of the protection that age of consent laws offered to girls: “The protected person was nothing more than a protected body. Personhood for her did not extend to anything beyond her sheer physical existence.”7 Within this debate, Rukhmabai, ably supported by the Advocate General of Bombay, FL Latham in the courtroom, attempted to articulate the need for marriages to be arranged with a girl’s consent after she had reached a certain level of intellectual maturity. She also supported the increase in the minimum age of consent, but she pleaded with the government to link this age to the intellectual maturity of the girl child and not her supposed physical development alone. To appreciate the uniqueness of Rukhmabai’s stance against an infant marriage arranged without her consent and her husband’s subsequent desire to institute conjugal rights, we must first understand the legal device of the suit for restitution of conjugal rights. Before being transplanted in India, suits for restitution of conjugal rights had originated in English Ecclesiastical law, which aimed to protect monogamy

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and compel the husband and wife to “live together after God’s ordinance.”8 This duty to cohabit was enforced by issuing decrees for restitution of conjugal rights against erring spouses. Failure to obey the decree was punished by excommunication from the faith till the early nineteenth century, after which the Ecclesiastical Courts Act 1813 mandated committal to prison for disobedience of the decree, though erring husbands or wives were only occasionally imprisoned.9 A successful suit for restitution of conjugal rights allowed a man to claim the unwilling body of the female, who would have to cohabit with her husband against her wishes. At a time when marital rape was not recognised as rape, even though the courts only enforced the woman’s return to the marital home and not the marital bed, this distinction was of little use to many women.10 However, it cannot be overlooked that many abandoned women, both in India and England, themselves actively sought decrees for restitution of conjugal rights, usually in order to gain ancillary relief from their husbands. Plaintiff wives hoped that the judges would either order their husbands to take them back or pay them maintenance. Such suits had gradually made its way into Hindu personal law in the decades before Rukhmabai’s case. This incursion had been slow and had arrived by way of the personal laws of other native religions of the country.11 However, the suits were quickly adapted to the Indian situation and were applied regardless of the infancy of the parties to the marriage12 or the polygamy of the husband.13 Usually the courts were only willing to recognise legal cruelty on the part of the husband and his family as a suitable defence against a suit for restitution of conjugal rights, but the threshold for such “cruelty” was set very high.14 The following judgment reveals just how lightly the courts treated physical violence against a wife. In this case, the Calcutta High Court held that a wife who had been threatened by knives and other weapons and had subsequently run away from her husband but had later returned to reconcile with him and bear his child, had condoned his previous behaviour. Her later allegation of cruelty based on a slap by the husband was dismissed as not being cruel enough. The slap on the face was given with the open hand, at a time when the husband was under the influence of drink, and in a moment of irritation, when his wife was worrying him for money––a subject which seems to have been a very frequent cause of discord between them …but, considering the state of temporary excitement under which the husband was labouring, we think it would be taking too serious a view of the circumstances to say that the blow was sufficient to neutralise the effect of the condonation.15 Instead of protecting the wife from domestic violence, the Court admonished her for bringing up “irritating topics” in front of her intoxicated husband and

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asked her to regulate her own behaviour and “deal patiently and judiciously with her husband’s frailties.”16 Once suits for restitution of conjugal rights came to be recognised within non-Christian marriages, the courts also had to decide on adequate punishment for those who refused to obey a decree for restitution. In India following section 200 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CCP) of 1859 the spouse against whom the decree was enacted was to be delivered physically to the abandoned spouse or punished for disobedience through imprisonment or the attachment of their property. Though the wording of this section was gender neutral, and it seemed to imply that a reluctant husband as much as a reluctant wife could be physically delivered to their abandoned spouse, as we shall see below, its enforcement was entirely gender biased. An examination of case law suggests that the colonial judges were strongly divided on how to enforce such a decree against a non-consenting wife, with judges sometimes disagreeing on the punishment to be meted out in the same case.17 Whether she was delivered bodily to her husband against her wishes, or sent to prison for her disobedience, we can see that the punishments for disobedience more often than not were enacted upon and through the female body. In 1875, at the Calcutta High Court Justice Markby vociferously attacked the gendered nature of the enforcement of such decrees and the violence that they perpetuated on the body of the unwilling wife: It appears to be have been at one time thought that, in this country, the duty of cohabitation should be enforced by seizing and making over the recreant party bodily to the claimant; and cases are mentioned in which this has been directed in the case of a wife refusing to return to her husband. I am not aware of any case in which it has been suggested that similar violent measures should be taken against a husband refusing to receive his wife: and the cases in which a wife has so been treated are obviously based upon the notion that the husband purchases the wife at marriage, and that she thereby becomes article of his property.18 The woman was marked as subordinate and subaltern in such cases precisely because of her identity as a wife. In their judgment, Justices Markby and Mitter attempted to end her subordination, in this narrow field at least, by boldly criticising any punishment at all for disobedience of a decree for restitution of conjugal rights, and by attempting to reduce such a decree to a declaration alone. They were particularly critical of courts ordering a wife to be bodily delivered to her husband against her wishes, describing it as “universally condemned” and “shocking to our feelings of humanity.”19 Following this case, section 200 of the CCP was updated in 1871 to note that the “lady” could not be treated as a “specific moveable,” i.e. the courts could not enforce the decree by physically returning the woman to her husband.20 Sadly, however, Justice Markby and Mitter’s progressive intervention was short-lived, and was directly criticised and overturned by the Bombay

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High Court in the very next year.21 Once again, women were firmly the subaltern in cases of restitution of conjugal rights. All the while, such legal wrangling in distant courtrooms had little effect on women’s everyday lives. As the judges debated over the legal nitty-gritties, women who were actually affected by these laws remained largely unaware of their choices; however, limited they may have been. As Padma Anagol notes, lawyers for women who were unable to successfully defend against suits for restitution of conjugal rights rarely apprised them of their options.22 As a result, most women continued to remain unaware that they could choose imprisonment rather than cohabit with their husbands. As a District Judge, Mahipatram Rupram, noted in 1887 it was only the wide coverage of Rukhmabai’s case in the vernacular press that made women of the Bombay Presidency aware of their choices.23

Rukhmabai: The subaltern dissident In the early 1870s, when she was just eleven years old, thus, over the legal minimum age of consent, a prepubescent Rukhmabai was married to 19-yearold Dadaji Bhikaji. Hindu customs of the time dictated that the child bride would continue to live with her natal family till she reached the age of puberty. Upon reaching menarche, in short order the garbadhan (literally gift of the womb) ceremony would be performed, the marriage consummated, and the girl would be sent to live in her marital home. However, Rukhambai’s stepfather was a well-known social reformer in Bombay who stood against the early consummation of child marriages. At his suggestion, Bhikaji came to live with them to receive an education and become a “good man.”24 Variously described in the media as an “ignorant and idle boor” and “little better than a coolie”25 and unfavourably referred to by the Advocate General in the courtroom as “a block head with whom you could do nothing”26 Bhikaji had little interest in his education, and within a few months he began to neglect his studies. Confined to his bed by consumption for three years, after making an unlikely recovery, he went off to live with his uncle and attempted to persuade Rukhmabai’s family to send her to live with him. Missives and visits to the family proved unsuccessful with Rukhmabai finally declining to live with Bhikaji on the grounds that he was not in a position to provide her with a suitable residence and maintenance and that his ill-health would be dangerous for her too if they were to cohabit as a couple. Failing to convince Rukhmabai to join him in the marital home, in 1884 Bhikaji approached the Bombay High Court to file a suit for restitution of conjugal rights against her. When the case was first filed, at twenty-two years old Rukhmabai was not only above the age of consent, she was also significantly older than the age at which Hindu marriages were usually consummated. Rukhmabai believed that Bhikaji did not truly mean to pursue the case or expect her to respond to him in court.27 Instead, she felt that he had hoped that the public scandal of the potential trial as well as pressure from

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their community would have been enough to convince Rukhmabai’s family to immediately send her to live with him or at least allow him access to her wealth. However, Rukhmabai surprised not just her husband, but society at large, when she refused to acquiesce quietly to his demands and sought to defend herself in court. Bhikaji’s supporters attempted to posit Rukhmabai’s refusal to live with her husband as a decision based on their class differences alone. It cannot be denied that Rukhmabai’s wealth, education, and social status not only allowed her access to the courtroom and enabled her to appoint very well-known lawyers for her defence within it, they also facilitated social and economic support for her cause outside the courtroom. However, as much as Rukhmabai was marked by her class, it was her subaltern gender identity that determined her role in the trial. Writing in 1981, in his preface to the first volume of Subaltern Studies, for the purposes of the project Ranajit Guha defined the “subaltern” as “a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or any other way.”28 Under this broad definition all women are subaltern, for while they may enjoy caste or class privileges, their gender accords them a subordinate position in society. In most of the works of subaltern studies, the female is conceptualised as subaltern in a rather blunt manner. As Kamala Visweswaran has noted, there is a central problem in the subaltern studies group’s understanding of gender, i.e. “Either gender is subsumed under the categories of caste and class, or gender is seen to mark a social group apart from other subalterns.”29 Visweswaran draws our attention to the need to distinguish between the figure of “woman as subaltern” on the one hand and the question of “subaltern women” on the other. This is necessary because the category of woman as subaltern comes to rest on the identity of middle-class women and further silences the voice of the subaltern woman. Within this complex identity, Rukhmabai occupies an interesting position. Her gender marks her as subaltern, as does her “lower” caste––her family belonged to the Suttar or carpenter caste. And yet, this case would not have been brought against her if she was not an independently wealthy woman whose husband was using the suit for restitution of conjugal rights as an attempt to access her considerable wealth. Similarly, Rukmabai’s access to the English language, as well as the fact that she was published in leading newspapers of the time are a result of her middle-class status. However, as Gyanendra Pandey amongst others has shown, we must look beyond their privileges to identify the subaltern citizen, for the true subaltern identity remains both relational and situational. “[T]he condition of subalternity, of wretchedness and humiliation, attaches to individuals and groups and who are not obviously poor and downtrodden, and even to some who might be described as subaltern elites.”30 Thus, while she may not be Visweswaran’s “subaltern woman,” for our purposes Rukmabai is inevitably subaltern. She was marked as subaltern both within her marriage due to her relation as a wife, as well as within the colonial legal system where

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the particular developments of the doctrine of conjugal rights and ideas of age of consent within Hindu marriages had created her situational subordination. Indeed, her relational identity as wife compounded her situational subordination in cases of restitution of conjugal rights. This leaves us then with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s defining question, “Can the subaltern (woman) speak?” This question has exerted tremendous influence on both the key disciplines that this paper deals with, namely South Asian history and gender studies.31 Spivak’s answer is an unequivocal “No.” In fact, she argues: “If, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as female is even more deeply in shadow.”32 The subaltern is rendered mute due to the lack of “institutional validation,” which means that even her resistance is not recognised.33 Not only was Rukhmabai’s resistance not legally recognised in her time, it was publicly reviled. However, her persistent efforts to register her dissent have left enough traces of her strident voice in the public sphere for us to recover her views today.

The Rukhmabai case A few months after Bhikaji had filed his suit at the Bombay High Court, the issue of age of consent generated great public debate in India, especially Bombay. The immediate impetus for this was the publication of two pamphlets by the Parsi journalist and social reformer, Behramji Malabari. His vocal critique of infant marriage was based on his belief that such a marriage caused physical and moral harm not only to the participants of the marriage but also the offspring born within it. He argued that infant marriages led to “The giving up of studies on the part of the boy-husband, the birth of sickly children, the necessity of feeding too many mouths, poverty and dependence; a disorganised household leading perhaps to sin.”34 As a result, Malabari suggested that the age of consent for girls should be increased to twelve. Though Malabari’s support for the reform in age of consent is commendable, it is important to note that for him notions of consent continued to be linked to ideas of physical maturity of the girl. Nonetheless, Malabari’s public recommendation for raising the age of consent sparked a widespread public debate on the issue, eliciting responses from social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy alike. It was within this public debate that Rukhmabai’s first publicly written works in English emerged.35 Titled “Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood” and “Enforced Widowhood,” they were published as letters to the editor of the Times of India under the pseudonym “A Hindu Lady” in June and September 1885, respectively. Initially meant to be written as one letter, when the original missive ran too long, the second half was published separately. The titles of the letters reflect Malabari’s influence and Rukhmabai began by thanking him for advocating for the abolition of these “evil customs.” In these letters, Rukhmabai’s position against child marriage was

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quite distinct from Malabari’s, as were the reforms that she sought. While the latter had focused on the damage wreaked by early marriage on the physical health of the infant bride and her children, Rukhmabai was far more concerned with the impact of infant marriage on the intellectual development of the child bride. Rukhmabai mentioned her own plight, and the sorrow that her infant marriage had brought to her, but through the letters she aimed to make a much larger point. She forcibly argued that the misery wrought through infant marriage cut across all classes and sections of Hindus––it affected “the rich and the poor, the old and the young––though women are the greatest victims.”36 She lamented the fact that even the most liberal parents put an end to a girl’s education the moment she was married. She particularly singled out the Hindu religious texts and the orthodoxy for oppressing Hindu women. If we understand feminism to mean the quest for equality of the sexes and a recognition of how society and religion collude with patriarchy to oppress women, Rukhmabai’s writings form one of the earliest feminist writings in India. I have replicated this paragraph from her letter in full to highlight the indigenous feminism that she professed in the late nineteenth century: The treatment which even servants receive from their European masters is far better than falls to the share of us Hindu women. We are regarded as playthings––objects of enjoyment, to be unceremoniously thrown away when the temporary use is over. Our law-givers (i.e. the writers of shastras [religious texts]) being men have painted themselves (like Aesop’s Man and the Lion) noble and pure, and have laid every conceivable sin and impurity at our door. If these worthies are to be trusted, we are a set of unclean animals, created by God for the special service and gratification of man who by right divine can treat, or maltreat, us at his sweet will. Reduced to this state of degradation by the dictum of the shastris, looked down upon for ages by men, we have naturally come to look down upon ourselves. Our condition, therefore, cannot, sir, be improved, unless the practice of early marriage is abolished and higher female education in largely disseminated.37 While addressed to the editor of The Times of India, through the letter Rukhmabai sought to speak directly to her “English readers,” officials of the Indian government as well as men of the Hindu community. Whereas Malabari and other reformers were advocating an increase in the minimum age of consent from ten to twelve years old, Rukhmabai adopted a far more stringent stance. She urged the government to raise the age of marriage to 15 for girls and 20 for men, and to punish parents who married their children below this age. At a time when divorce was not allowed within Hindu marriages and even the dissolution of marriage was extremely difficult to obtain, Rukhmabai advocated that if underage marriages were “disputed within a certain period, [they] shall be [declared] null and void.”38 Though Rukhmabai

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never spoke about a desire to dissolve her own marriage, the thought must have crossed her mind. Trapped by the legal parameters of her religion and her time, the most that she could hope to successfully achieve was the ability to live apart from her husband, but she pressed for greater rights for other women who may find themselves in a similar situation. In the same letter, in what can only be read as an oblique reference to the custom of dowry, Rukhmabai urged the government that “If it is found that the parents have laid a tax on, or in other words sold, their daughters, they shall be punishable by law.” In all the issues that she had raised, Rukhmabai was long ahead of her time. Today, each of the reforms that she had suggested in 1885 are indeed part of the matrimonial laws of the Hindu community in India, but they were introduced piece-meal decades after she had first suggested them.39 Three months after her first letter was published, her second letter appeared in The Times of India, this time on the issue of enforced widowhood. In this letter, Rukhmabai focused on the plight of Hindu widows who were allowed to remarry under colonial law but were prevented from doing so due to religious norms. While critical of the “perpetual widowhood” enforced upon all Hindu women, Rukhmabai was particularly critical of the condition of the child widow, who married in her infancy, may never have even known her husband or lived with him, was by virtue of his death reduced to a life of “rigid austerities” and “unflinching severity.”40 Though critical of infant marriage and the plight that it inflicted on Hindu women, at this stage Rukhmabai did not directly address the fact that a marriage arranged in a girl’s infancy must necessarily be without her consent. Rukhmabai’s second letter was published to coincide with the start of the first trial against her at the Bombay High Court. She had submitted a written statement to the court, where she noted that her marriage had been performed before she had reached the age of discretion, before delineating her reasons for declining to live with Bhikaji.41 These were namely his inability to provide for proper residence and maintenance of the couple, his continuing ill-health due to asthma and tuberculosis, and lastly the character of his uncle who was residing in the house that Bhikaji wished to take her to.42 The fact that this statement differs quite strongly from the other literature written by her, and that this statement was meant for the courts, both strongly indicate that the statement bears the heavy imprint of the defence counsel. In September 1885, the Rukhmabai case was heard by Justice Pinhey of the Bombay High Court. In addition to the defence counsel, KT Telang and JD Inverarity, Rukhmabai’s case was supported in the courtroom by the Advocate General, FL Latham. Aware of the precedent in suits for restitution of conjugal rights, Latham did not attempt to convince the court that Rukhmabai’s marriage was invalid due to lack of consent. He focused instead, more narrowly, on whether the lack of “personal consent” to a marriage could be used as a defence against a suit for restitution of conjugal rights. Latham’s argument proved to be particularly important for framing the trial, because Pinhey gave his judgment without giving the defence a chance to

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present their case. While finding in her favour he noted that suits for restitution of conjugal rights had only recently been recognised in India, and had already fallen into disuse in England, their country of origin. He expressed his regret that such suits were ever allowed within Hindu marriages, when they did not, in fact, have any foundation in Hindu law. At the heart of his judgment lay his distinction between “restitution” and “institution” of conjugal rights, and he held that in an unconsummated marriage, such as that between Rukhmabai and Bhikaji, it was beyond the powers of the court to force an unwilling wife to consummate her marriage. Making his displeasure known at the idea, he noted: “It seems to me that it would be a barbarous, a cruel, a revolting thing to do to compel a young lady under those circumstances to go to a man whom she dislikes, in order that he may cohabit with her against her will.”43 While the reformists rejoiced at Pinhey’s judgment, it faced an immediate backlash from the Hindu orthodoxy. In Maharashtra one of the most vocal critics of the judgment were the newspapers The Mahratta and Kesari, started by the early Indian nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak.44 The crux of the orthodoxy’s concern was that if courts allowed girls to repudiate conjugal relations with husbands chosen for them in their infancy because of lack of consent at the time of marriage, how many millions of Hindu women could potentially leave their husbands on the back of this judgment? This deeply patriarchal objection was presented, however, as a concern for women themselves and their right to maintenance: if consummation was required in order to complete the marriage contract, what would be the future of the girls widowed in childhood before their marriage was ever consummated? It was against this backdrop that Bhikaji’s appeal against Pinhey’s judgment was heard at the Appeal Court by the Chief Justice Sir Charles Sargent and Justice Bayley. Though this time Rukhmabai’s counsel were allowed to present her defence, despite Latham’s offer to the court, the judges declined to give Rukhmabai a chance to speak on her own behalf. The judges stated that Pinhey had misunderstood restitution of conjugal rights as it emerged in Ecclesiastical Law, and held that it could be boiled down to the idea that “married persons are bound to live together.”45 They further held that since a Hindu marriage did not require consummation in order to be held valid, the distinction between restitution and institution of conjugal rights was meaningless. And that lack of consent to the consummation of a marriage could not constitute a valid defence against suits for restitution of conjugal rights. Though the judges hesitantly admitted that “the law should not adopt stringent measures to compel the performance of conjugal duties,”46 they were unwilling to actually enforce this idea in this instance and returned the case to the High Court for a decision based on the facts of the case. When the case returned to the High Court, Justice Pinhey had recently retired, and it fell to Justice Farran to hold the retrial in early 1887. Coincidentally, while a lawyer, Farran had drawn Bhikaji’s original plaint, a fact that Rukhmabai’s counsel did not employ to raise an objection, nor did

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Farran use it in order to recuse himself.47 With the Appellate Court having established the legal parameters of the case with regards to the importance of consent, Farran had to base his judgment on whether or not Bhikaji could financially support his wife. Finding in Bhikaji’s favour, he ordered Rukhmabai to “go or return” to her husband or face the punishment of six months imprisonment for disobeying the court’s decree.48 Since Rukhmabai had already made it known to the court that she would rather go to prison than live with Bhikaji, Farran argued that “it was hard that a husband should be made to pay the costs for restitution of conjugal rights” and ordered Rukhmabai to pay his costs for the original hearing, with the costs of the appeal being borne by each party.49

Rukhmabai: A strident subaltern voice for female consent While so far Rukhmabai had been focusing on the ills of child marriage, from 1887 she began to highlight the desperate need for law to take into account a woman’s consent to her marriage. A couple of weeks after Farran gave his judgment, Rukhmabai’s letter appeared in the The Times in England. Written before Farran began his hearing, this letter was sent by Rukhmabai to the sister of Harvey Goodwin, the Bishop of Carlisle, and the latter had sent it on to the newspaper. In this letter, more so than in any of her other known texts, Rukhmabai forcefully argued for the importance of female consent to a marriage. As her case had been progressing through the courts, many Hindu men––both reformers and the orthodox––were attempting to justify their stance on the issue of raising the female age of consent by offering differing interpretations of the Hindu religious texts. Critics of Rukhmabai argued that it was her “western education” and Europeanised ways that had led her to shun the company of her husband.50 However, Rukhmabai attempted to provide a justification for her stance not through the ideals of Western liberalism but through her own interpretation of the Hindu Shastras. She argued that the Shastras and Hindu laws stated that girls “should be allowed to marry when they became of age and with their own choice…We find in ancient history marriage taking place between the boys and girls of mature ages and with their own liking.”51 She further lamented that these “good laws” had been over taken by the pernicious customs of the time. Through the letter Rukhmabai took the opportunity to petition Queen Victoria in her jubilee year to intervene on behalf of “her millions of Indian daughters” and raise the age of marriage to twenty in boys and 15 in girls.52 Barely 2 weeks after this letter appeared, emboldened by the court’s decision in his favour, Bhikaji immediately set about publishing his “Exposition” in The Times of India. Here he alleged that Rukhmabai had always been sympathetic to his request, but it was her mother and grandfather who convinced her to fight this case as they feared that once in her marital home Rukhmabai would assert her right to the property of her deceased father that they were

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currently enjoying.53 He further argued that since Hindu marriage was a sacrament and not a contract, his marriage to Rukhmabai was complete and binding and that both her “person and her property” belonged as a “right” to him. The fact that she did not consent to the marriage or to its consummation did not bother him in the least, for he believed that her consent was meaningless when her family had already consented to her marriage. “It is both a precept and a divine law to the Hindoos that it is a wicked and undutiful act on the part of girls or women to form matrimonial connections without the consent of their parents and relatives.”54 Completely disregarding his wife’s own will and her intellectual being, Bhikaji sought to reduce her status to property that belonged to him. He had in mind a single objective: establishing ownership over Rukhmabai’s body as a means of establishing ownership over the considerable wealth left to her by her father. In her reply to his exposition, Rukhmabai defended her family against Bhikaji’s accusations and argued that it was she who had to convince them about her dislike for Bhikaji and not the other way around. Once again, she asserted her desire to avoid conjugal relations with a husband that she found distasteful: “Having watched his movements for the last five or six years, I gave him up as irreclaimably lost and made up my mind to wash my hands of him forever.”55 And as mentioned previously, she argued that at the root of the case against her lay “money and property considerations” and Bhikaji’s desire to access her personal wealth. In the aftermath of the trial Rukhmabai and her counsel made it clear that she was both willing to face imprisonment as well as appeal the case all the way to the Privy Council in London if needed. In the first instance, the appeal against Farran’s judgment returned to Sargent and Bayley at the Appellate Court, where they were tasked with enforcing Farran’s decree. Rukhmabai was faced with imprisonment and/or a fine, but at the behest of her counsel, all the parties agreed that for a sum of Rs 2000 Bhikaji would give an undertaking that he would not execute the decree granted by Farran nor make any claims on Rukhmabai’s person or property in the future.56 It was a victory of sorts––Rukhmabai had her freedom, but she remained legally married to a man she detested till his death in 1904. Once the money had exchanged hands, Bhikaji remarried immediately; as Hindu marital laws of the time allowed polygamy this option had been open to him all along. With financial help from her Indian and British supporters, Rukhmabai moved to England to study at the London Female School of Medicine.

Conclusion A strong proponent of female education, after studying in London and Dublin and gaining diplomas in Glasgow and Brussels, Rukhmabai returned to India to work as a house surgeon in Bombay and later practiced medicine in Surat and Rajkot.57 In fact, due to the untimely death of Anandibai Joshi, Rukhmabai was the first practicing Indian female doctor. Having lived a long

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and varied life Rukhmabai died in 1955, coincidentally the same year that divorce was finally allowed for Hindu women under the Hindu Marriage Act. While her court case has been examined at length, and usually credited with bringing the age of consent debate to the public eye in colonial India, which, in turn, led to the passing of the Age of Consent Act 1891, Rukhmabai’s own thoughts on age of consent remain relatively undiscussed. Buried deep within the trial archives and newspaper cuttings lies the subaltern voice of Rukhmabai, one of many “small voices which are drowned in the noise of statist commands” which subaltern studies aims to recover.58 Together, her voice and her story strike an important note of dissent, which may not have received institutional validation in her age but have certainly stood the test of time. Vociferously making a case for recognising the importance of female consent to marriage under the law, Rukhmabai sought to posit the absence of her consent to her marriage as a defence against her husband’s demand for conjugal access. Refusing to let religious edicts or colonial law render her a pliable female body owned against her will by a husband she could not bear, Rukhmabai highlighted the importance of female education and the need for age of consent legislation to not focus on the supposed physical maturity of a girl alone, but also her intellectual development. Taking consent as her starting point, Rukhmabai had a broader view of female emancipation and also urged reform in marital law on disparate issues such as divorce and dowry. In fact, the reforms that she suggested far surpassed the aims of more well-known social reformers, and Indian law did not match her suggestion for the minimum age of marriage for girls for another six decades.

Notes 1 Dadaji Bhikaji v Rukhmabai, ILR 9 Bom 529 (1885); and Dadaji Bhikaji v Rukmabai, ILR 10 Bom 301 (1886). 2 Ranajit Guha, “The Small Voice of History,” in Subaltern Studies IX: Writing on South Asian History and Society, eds., Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakravarty (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11. 3 For instance, see Charles Heimsath, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), Ch 7; and Dagmar Engles, “The Age of Consent Act of 1891,” South Asia Research 3 (1983): 107–131. 4 For instance, see Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation (Sixth impression, New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2017); Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women’s Rights (2nd edn, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2011) and Kanika Sharma, “Withholding consent and conjugal relations within child marriages in colonial India: Rukhmabai’s Fight.” Law and History Review 38, no. 1 (2020): 151–175. 5 For instance, see Behramji Malabari, “Infant marriage in India,” in Infant Marriage and Forced Widowhood in India: Being a collection of opinions, for and against, received by Mr Behramji M Malabari, from Representative Hindu Gentlemen and official and other authorities (Bombay: Voice of India, 1887). 6 For an examination of the two positions see Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation, 194–204. 7 Ibid., 244.

Restitution of conjugal rights  223 8 Stephen Cretney, Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially see ch 4. 9 Ibid., 143. 10 This was changed in UK law only in the last decade of the twentieth century through R v R (1991) 4 All ER 481and marital rape is still not recognised as such in India. 11 Such suits were first recognised in Parsi marriages [see Ardaseer Cursetjee v Perozeboye, 6 MIA 348 (PC) (1856)], then Muslim marriages [see Moonshee Buzloor Ruheem v Shumsoonnissa Begum, 9 MIA 551 (PC) (1867)] and finally in Hindu marriages [See Bai Prem Kuvar v Bhika Kallianji, 5 Bom HCR 259 (1868)]. 12 Kateeram Dokanee v Mussamut Gendhenee, 23 WR 178 (1875). 13 Virasvami Chetti v Appasvami Chetti, 1 Mad HCR 375 (1863). 14 For instance, see Yamunabai v Narayan Moreshvar Pendse, 1 ILR Bom 164 (1876). 15 Jogendronundini Dossee vs Hurry Doss Ghose, ILR 5 Cal (1880), 507–508. 16 Ibid., 508. 17 For instance, see Chotun Bebee v Ameer Chand, 6 WR 105 (1866). 18 Gatha Ram Mistree v Moohita Kochin Atteah Domoonee, 14 BLR 298 (1875), 300. 19 Ibid., 304. 20 L.P. Delves Broughton, The Code of Civil Procedure being Act VIII of 1859 (4th edn, Calcutta, Thacker, Spink and Co., 1871). 21 Yamunabai v Narayan Moreshivar Pendse (1876). 22 Padma Anagol, The Emergence of Feminism in India, 1850–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 194. 23 Quoted in Ibid., 194. 24 Rukhmabai, “A Jubilee for the Women of India,” The Times, April 9, 1887, 8. 25 “A Woman’s Plea for Freedom,” East Aberdeenshire Observer, April 15, 1887; and The Times, March 22, 1886, 5. 26 “Suit by a Hindoo for the Restitution of Conjugal Rights: Dadajee Bikajee vs. Rukmibai,” The Times of India, March 19, 1886, 6. 27 Rukhmabai, “A Jubilee.” 28 Ranajit Guha, “Preface” to Subaltern Studies I: Writing on South Asian History and Society, ed. Ranajit Guha (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), vii. 29 Kamala Visweswaran, “Small Speeches, Subaltern Gender: Nationalist Ideology and its Historiography,” in Subaltern Studies IX: Writing on South Asian History and Society, eds. Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakravarty (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 88. 30 Gyanendra Pandey, “The Subaltern as Subaltern Citizen,” Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 46 (2006): 4738. 31 For a discussion on the impact of Spivak’s essay see Rosalind C. Morris, “Introduction,” to Can the Subaltern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2010). 32 Spivak, “Can the subaltern speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, eds. Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams (New York, N.Y.: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), 83. 33 Spivak, “In Response: Looking Back, Looking Forward,” in Can the Subaltern Speak: Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2010), 228. 34 Malabari, “Infant marriage,” 1. 35 As Anagol notes, Maharashtrian women has been debating these issues in the vernacular press for a few years already, 202–209. 36 Rukhmabai writing as “A Hindu Lady”, “Infant Marriage and Enforced Widowhood,” The Times of India, June 26, 1885, 4.

224  Kanika Sharma 37 Ibid. Emphasis and parenthesis in original. 38 Ibid. 39 The minimum age of marriage in India for both genders was introduced by the Child Marriage Restraint Act 1929. Initially set at 14 for girls, the minimum age of marriage was only raised to 15 in 1940 and today stands at 18 for women and 21 for men in India. Divorce was allowed within Hindu marriages through the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and dowry transactions were finally outlawed by the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961. 40 Rukhmabai writing as “A Hindu Lady”, “Enforced Widowhood,” The Times of India, 19 September 1885, 4. 41 Dadaji Bhikaji v Rukhmabai (1885), 531. 42 Rukhmabai’s allegations against Bhikaji’s uncle, Narayan Dharmaji, led to a separate (ultimately unsuccessful) lawsuit filed by the latter against her and her grandfather, Hurrichundra Yadowjee, for defamation of character. “The Rukhmabai Case: The Case Dismissed,” The Times of India, Sept 26, 1887, 3. 43 Dadaji Bhikaji v Rukhmabai (1885), 534. 44 For an examination of newspaper reports see Chandra, Enslaved Daughters, especially ch2. 45 Dadaji Bhikaji v Rukmabai (1886), 311. 46 Ibid., 313. 47 “The Case of Ruckmibai,” The Times of India, March 4, 1887, 3. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 For a summary of the vilification of Rukhmabai see Chandra, Enslaved Daughters, 121–125. 51 Rukhmabai, “A Jubilee.” 52 Ibid. 53 Dadaji Bhikaji, “An Exposition of Some of the Facts of the Case of Dadaji vs. Rukhmibai,” The Times of India, April 19, 1887, 6. 54 Ibid. 55 Rukhmabai, “Rukhmabai’s reply to Dadajee’s ‘Exposition,’” The Times of India, June 29, 1887, 5. 56 “The Last of the Rukhmabai Case,” The Times of India, July 7, 1888.3. 57 “Rukhmabai,” The Times of India, December 25, 1894, 4. 58 Guha, “Small Voice,” 3.

Chapter 16

Subaltern’s resistance against rape and sexual assault An Aporia? Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay

Introduction In the call for submissions for the Special Issue of the Indian Journal for Gender Studies, on Feminism and Politics of Resistance, Rajeswari Sundar Rajan contemplates that “a discernable recent shift in feminist politics is from the representation of women’s victimization to that of their resistance” which sets the tone for 21st century feminist praxis.1 In the last two decades, feminist praxis has addressed the increasing need to direct public attention towards women’s resistance against capitalist-patriarchy which marks a pedagogic shift in feminist activism as it indicates a departure from the movements’ earlier focus on representations of women’s victimisation. Despite this change in focus, dominant mainstream discourses and creative outlets, continue to frame the “third-word” gendered subaltern as a victim, who is completely incapable of acting as an agent of resistance. Academic scholarship also contributes to such renditions which is reflected on the glossy bookcovers projecting photographs of working women of colour from the global south as objects of compassion rather than agents of transformation; this framing of the “helpless,” poor, women of colour from the “third-world” adds to the narrative of continuous victimisation of women from the disfranchised eco-political provenances. There is no denying that subaltern women of colour from the global south, who operate within and beyond their inherited cultures and societies, are oppressed and victimised by traditions of patriarchy and global capitalism. However, there is also grassroot level resistance from within such quarters where women, who are otherwise subalternised, challenge the hierarches and through their actions successfully ignite an organic change. Exclusive focus on the victimisations, assist in perpetuating the disempowerment of subaltern women because such notions affirm the false idea that these women are inherently unable to claim their rights and are in need of rescue from organised feminist movements of the global north or their counterparts from the urban enclaves of the global south. A true praxis of feminist resistance needs to ensure that international feminist movements continue their struggle for systemic changes to ensure gender equality, alongside registering

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and celebrating the moments of individual resistance from those women who are worst affected by the double oppression of patriarchy and neoliberal capitalism. Only a dialogic relationship between the two forms of resistance can ensure that subaltern women, who are oppressed through the axes of gender, race, class, citizenship, ability, and ethnicity can become agents of change and break free from their conditions of subjugation. This essay sets out to articulate how the subaltern––understood as a position without identity as Spivak summarises in her lecture on “The Trajectory of the Subaltern in My Work”––resists against her oppression within systems of patriarchy, colonialism, and neoliberal- capitalism. Engaging in a comparative study of three texts––Nigerian-British author Buchi Emecheta’s part fable, part novel, The Rape of Shavi, Indian (Bengali) author Mahasweta Devi’s short story “Draupadi” (translated into English by Gayatri Spivak) and Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Mechu’s testimonio I, Rigoberta Menchu, this study demonstrates how the subaltern continuously invents pockets of varying degrees/levels of authority (often at the microlevel) by transgressing within the established social institutions of power and hierarchy that refuses her agency and subjecthood. Each of these three texts represents rape and sexual torture as disciplinary procedures to establish domination of the perpetrator while punishing and taming those who transgress their predetermined boundaries of subalternity. However, in each incident the narrative around rape as torture, punishment, and dominance of traditional social hierarchies over the subaltern is reconstructed as a transformative moment where the subaltern challenges these established norms by deviating from the expected victimisation and claiming subjecthood. The literary characters and settings used in this paper are representative of women of colour from the global south––some poor and disenfranchised while others with significant prestige and status (not power) within their respective societies. Regardless of their social status within their micro-environments, women in all three texts are representatives of the oppressed groups within neo-liberal, global capitalism and are often conceived as voiceless subalterns––victims of local traditions of patriarchy. The narratives historicise the layers of hierarchies and portray how the ideological and oppressive state apparatus use violence––both invisible and visible, to ensure continuing subjugation of the oppressed population. In each of these texts, rape emerges as a pivotal moment in the long-term slow violence against the subaltern; it is the subaltern’s reaction to the rape that constitutes a rupture in the ongoing narrative and offers subjectivity to the victim. In Rape of Shavi, the victim, Ayoko, learns about the fallacy of female genital mutilation and assigns her perpetrator a non-human entity, which destabilises the internalised power hierarchy associated with rape. In “Droupadi” the protagonist refuses to be clothed in the aftermath of her assault and thus challenges the patriarchal semiotics associated with rape. Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonio challenges the effectiveness of rape as a tool of intimidation and subjugation in conflict zones as the narrative demonstrates how the legacy of the lives and

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works of assaulted revolutionaries continue to inspire activism and resistance. These three texts demonstrate that the interpretation and reception of the incidents of rape and sexual violence need to be reconstructed through feminist lenses. The assaults are rendered ineffective when the subaltern victims become interpreters of the incidents and the logic of gendered power hierarchy crumbles. These narratives challenge the stigma associated with rape by deconstructing the semiotics of power inherent in the act. While the rapes are represented as prominent incidents, the texts consciously invest less attention in detailing the action of rape; instead, the narratives focus on the subaltern’s claim to subjecthood in the aftermath of the assaults. By depicting the power hierarchies that culminate in the rapes and the shift in those hierarchies through feminist interpretations of the acts by the victims (and their communities), the narratives demonstrate how the subaltern victims fight for and achieve their subjecthood in the face of institutional oppression and violence. Ultimately, the texts offer new ways of imagining subaltern women, their resistance and resilience on the individual and societal levels.

Feminist reconstruction of rape and sexual violence Literary representations of rape have always been problematic, and criticism has pointed to the challenges of representing sexual violation in fiction. While analysing Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1948), Terry Eagleton has argued that rape remains a narrative impossibility as the semiotic referent cannot ever transform the real-material experience of rape into the fictional space. Literary fictions often risk producing voyeuristic accounts of rape and/or sexual violence which can render pornographic depiction of this violent action. Such approaches are not capable of challenging the social structures that create and perpetuate gender-based hierarchies and normalise violence against women. The Rape of Shavi, “Draupadi” and I, Rigoberta Menchu––three texts from varied literary genres and traditions––offer new approaches towards representing and interpreting rape in literature. These texts contextualise how the state and patriarchy use rape and sexual violence as techniques of domination by assigning specific meanings to such acts where the victim of an assault is disciplined and stigmatised. As a result, the victim suffers both psychologically––as rape carries an intense sense of shame, and socially––as the victim is regarded as being at fault for being raped. The physiological violence experienced by the victim is thus magnified and prolonged through these social and psychological interpretations. Ultimately, the individual incident of sexual violence serves as a cautionary example and discourages women from transgression of their boundaries determined by the existing hierarchies. The literary texts under consideration challenge the patriarchal semiotics associated with rape and successfully create a crisis of meaning for the established structure. Escaping the traditional boundaries of rape narratives that confine

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the violent action within phallocentric discourses and produce a rhetorical binary of guilt and desire, these texts demonstrate that literary narratives can offer exclusive agency to the victims to assign a meaning to the actions of sexual violence and rape. As a result, in each case, rape is reconstructed as an action that dehumanises and disempowers the perpetrator and leaves him in a semiotic crisis––unable to trace the Cartesian coordinates of his former privileged identity. In Buchi Emecheta’s The Rape of Shavi (1984), western civilisation and its values comes in contact with an isolated African kingdom, the kingdom of Shavi, as a result of a plane crash. The eponymous rape, where Ronje, one of the passengers of the crashed airplane rapes Ayoko, the virgin, future queen of Shavi, symbolises the beginning of the destruction of the kingdom, its people and epistemology. In the aftermath of the assault, Ayoko questions the humanity of her perpetrator––“what human being would rape?”2 Ayoko’s interpretation of rape immediately dehumanises the perpetrator as well as the whole race of “albino people” though the incident simultaneously discredits the traditional rational behind female genital mutilation which was ideologically imposed upon her by her society. Through her assault, Ayoko claims a subjecthood that allows her to question the legitimacy of inherited ideology and challenge assumed superiority of Ronje along the patriarchal-racial lines. In the immediate aftermath of Ayoko’s assault, her mother Siegbo, who is also the wife of the head priest, leads a coalition of women along with Shoshovi, the Queen and future Queen Mother, to ensure that the news of Ayoko’s assault does not reach the men. In an act of feminist resistance under the joint leadership of Shoshovi and Siegbo, the “mothers” of the community capture Ronje in a net and leave him in the middle of the desert; though no additional physical harm is inflicted on him, it is clear that he would not have survived without intervention; Ayoko secretly frees him out of kindness and Ronje eventually finds his way back to Britain. During the rape Ronje infects Ayoko with syphilis which ultimately infects her future husband Asogba and his subsequent wives and destroys the family lineage. Ayoko’s rape is symbolic of the colonial and racial violence that the kingdom of Shavi experiences in exchange of their hospitality and kindness to the Anglo-European refugees. In the final scene, Shoshovi tells a confused Asogba: “You allowed the albino people who came begging for help to know our strength, and then you allowed them to rape us, to take all we had and that made us a people. It is now for you to find a place for the New Shavi… We have been raped one, don’t let us be raped twice.”3 Shoshovi’s emphasis on the reconstruction of the victim (in this case the people and culture of Shavi) in the aftermath of the symbolic rape and does not allow the perpetrator (in this case the colonising forces) any chance to interfere with this process and its outcome. Shashovi historicises the rape and interprets the moment as a possibility of a new subject construction. It is important to notice that Shoshovi does not interpret the violent action as a teachable moment, but the

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narrator presents it as a possibility of rupture from the old ways of knowing and doing, indicating the prospect of a new beginning. Critical scholarship has maintained a curious distance from this text, though Buchi Emecheta’s earlier novels, In the Ditch (1972), Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979) and subsequent autobiographical work Head Above Water (1986) had successfully garnered critical attention and acclaim. Eva Hunter has shown how Anglo-European criticism struggles with generic categorisation of The Rape of Shavi, which deviates from the author’s traditional realist narrative style as the fable’s fictional world extends the horizon of expectation for the global Anglophone readers who anticipate “authentic” depictions of the African condition from African writers writing in English for a predominantly western audience. Besides generic ambiguity, Shavi’s timeless traditions remain an enigma and present an ethical quandary for the contemporary feminist readers. While the western presumption of the oppressed women and their primitive traditions are dismantled when Ista, a trained medical doctor from the west, witnesses Shavi women’s skill in administering complicated child birth without any modern medical aide, the narrator doesn’t hesitate to show how gender, age, and status function as social hierarchies. The narrative neither condemns nor endorses the practice of female genital mutilation, but Ayoko’s experience of rape demonstrates the irrelevance of the practice from a practical point of view. After her initial feelings of anger and frustration, Ayoko finally can come to the realisation that she did not need to be cut in order to consummate her marriage to Asogba, the Crown Prince. Though her realisation does not bring any change to the continual practice of genital mutilation of young women and girls of the kingdom, Ayoko becomes a critic of the practice as soon as becomes aware of the biological impertinence of the pontifical custom. Similarly, the symbolic rape of the kingdom of Shavi makes its inhabitants, especially Asogba, understand the cruelty and dehumanisation of racial-colonial exploitation. In both cases, the realisation indicates the possibility of a new agency. Ranajit Guha, one of the founding members of the Subaltern Studies group, argues that “when a victim, however timid, comes to regard herself as an object of injustice, she already steps into the role of a critic of the system that victimizes her. And any action that follows from that critique contains the element of a practice of resistance.”4 In that regard, the narrative interpretation of the rapes allows both victims (Ayoko and the kingdom of Shavi) to become aware of the injustice and theorise the action as a moment of rupture from an oppressive system rather than an affirmation of absolute subjugation to the system. If Rape of Shavi’s protagonists and narrator are subtle and measured in their retheorisation of rape, Mahasweta Devi’s subaltern protagonist Dopdi Mejhen responds to her assault in a grand and profound gesture in the short story “Draupadi.” Draupadi or Dopdi is a Santal (an indigenous community) woman, who alongside her husband Dulna Majhi (latter shot dead

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while he tried to drink water from a watering-hole) were active members in the Naxalite movement, an armed resistance against the continual inequality and state-sponsored feudal violence in the rural sectors of India. The story narrates how feudal oppression and caste hierarchy torments the lives of millions living in very rural parts of India. Caught between the “two deconstructive formulas, the setting of “Draupadi” exposes the legal system “that is fabricated with a view of its own transgression” while also shedding light on the divergence of theory and praxis within the leftist movements in the form of “binary opposition between the intellectual and rural struggles.”5 Landlords and moneylenders have significant political and economic power and they even control resources like water and extract generations of free labour from the people who are situated at the bottom of the hierarchical social structure. Historically, the armed resistance of the Naxalite movement emerged as a response to these atrocities of powerful landowners and moneylenders. Dopdi’s narrative shows how the consistent violence of the rural feudal system is backed by the repressive forces of the democratic state of India. The army is deployed to Dopdi’s village to avenge the death of the money lender who repeatedly denied the villagers any access to water during a drought and was eventually killed by a thirsty mob. Dopdi led the villagers in taking over the well as an act of survival but the state intervenes with its military to punish the subaltern population, who had transgressed their position by claiming their right to drinking water at the expense of the feudal system. When the army open fires and most of the villagers perish, Dopdi and her husband Dulna play dead by lying down with the corpses, pretending to be dead, but they latter escape and operate in separate sub-terrains until Dulna is shot and killed. After escaping the firing squad, she is relentlessly hunted down by the police. The police and intelligence know of Dopdi’s affiliation with the insurgency as she continues to work as a messenger for the resistance group formed by the educated intelligentsia, originating from urban universities and colleges, and the rural landless peasants and sharecroppers, mostly from tribal and peripheral caste origins. The relationship between the state, along with its repressive apparatus, and the subaltern electorate is exposed as a predatory relationship which uses Dulna’s corpse as a bait and Dopdi as a prey to be captured. Eventually, Dopdi is caught and taken into custody and at this point the protagonist transforms into Droupadi from Dopdi. Draupadi is the celebrated heroine of the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and being of a tribal origin, the protagonist of Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” should not have been named after the epic heroine. But this anomaly, situates the protagonist in a situation of uniqueness or singularity which is also reflected in her unique ability to question the episteme forwarded by the patriarchal state. In the epic, Draupadi’s unique status as a woman married to five husbands, assigns her a space of “singularity, while this polyandrous relationship also renders her marital identity pluralised. In her Translator’s Forward, Spivak states that the story “questions [the] “singularity” by placing Dopdi first in a comradely, activist, monogamous marriage and then in a situation of multiple

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rape,” and thus the fictional protagonist of the short story becomes the pluralised epic heroine through the state-sponsored sexual assault.6 At the camp, Senanayak, the officer in charge first carries out a “civilized” questioning for an hour; subsequently, he orders his men to “make her” for the interrogation. Dopdi is transformed into Draupadi in this phase of the story which is a reference to the character’s internal evolution. Throughout the night, Draupadi is raped and tortured: In the muddy moonlight she showers her lightless eye, sees her breasts, and understands that indeed she has been made up right. Her breasts are bitten raw, nipples torn. How many? Four-Five-Six-Seven … Again, the process of making her begins. Goes on. The moon vomits a bit of light and goes to sleep. Only the dark remains…Active pistons of flesh rise and fall, rise and fall over it.7 The day after, the staff order Draupadi to wrap her clothes on to be presented her for “civilized” questioning with Senanayak again. Draupadi’s reaction is revolutionary as she refuses to be clothed and forces Senanayak to see the consequences of his orders: “You asked them to make me up, don’t you want to see how they made me up?”8 This question is also pointed to the readers, who often than not chooses an amnesia about the kinds of Draupadi while chasing a preconstructed notion of a global south, who does not evoke this discomfort that Draupadi inflicts. Instead of being shamed and intimidated by her violation Draupadi chooses to confront Senanayak: Draupadi’s black body comes even closer. Draupadi shakes with an indomitable laughter that Senanayak simply cannot understand. Her ravaged lips bleed as she begins laughing. Draupadi wipes the blood on her palm and says in a voice that is as terrifying, sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation, What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again?9. (emphasis mine) Senanayak stands terrified of his unarmed prey and prisoner, thus destabilising the subject–object relationship between the master and his subjugated. Draupadi’s resistance in exclusively feminist “when she crosses the sexual differential into the field of what could only happen to a woman that she emerges as the most powerful ‘subject,’ who, still using the language of sexual ‘honor,’ can decisively call herself ‘the object of your search,’ whom the author can describe as a terrifying super object –‘an unarmed target’.”10 The title “Draupadi” alludes to the mythological disrobing of the Pandava queen Draupadi, in the epic of Mahabharata, and thus situates the concept of sexual violation and rape of women within the milieu of patriarchy and politics of the subcontinent. In both texts, the characters of Draupadi, are used by the men in power as pawns and their material bodies

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as signifiers of political ideologies and interests. While the menstruating royal Queen of the epic suffers her humiliation in the hands of the rival dynasty inside a courtroom attended only by men, the protagonist Draupadi” is assaulted by policemen as a punishment for her transgression and political affiliation. In the aftermath of her gang rape in police custody, which was carried out under the orders of the attending officer Senanayak, Dopdi ruptures the gender-based power structure inherent in rape and sexual violence; she claims her subjecthood by rejecting the power of patriarchy and state, both being implemented through Senanayak, when she refuses to be shamed and proclaims “there is no man that I should be ashamed of here.”11 This moment renders the oppressive dominant structure dysfunctional and at its limit as the victim becomes the agent, who interprets and assigns meanings to events. If Dopdi Mejhen’s feminist response to her assault leaves the patriarchy in question in an epistemic crisis, then I, Rigoberta Menchu demonstrates how a feminist representation of rape and sexual assault can actually turn the table and challenge the attempted intimidation and victimisation of the oppressed into grandeur and valorisation. Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonio, provides an eye-witness account of the Guatemalan genocide. Menchu’s testimonio appeared in 1983 and the bloodiest years of the massacre were yet to come. Amongst the many, who suffered torture and was eventually killed, was Menchu’s mother, who was physically tortured and raped numerous times by the Guatemalan military and was finally left to die in the elements; her mutilated, dying body was used as a bait in the hope of capturing the other family members. Nobody claimed her over the last four or five days until her death and her dead body remained unclaimed as the soldiers urinated and humiliated whatever was left of her. The narrative maintains an uncanny precision in representing this death: … the army took her to a place near the town where it was very hilly … They put her under a tree and left her there, alive but dying. They didn’t let my mother turn over, and her face was so disfigured, cut and infected; she could barely make any movement by herself. They left her there dying for four or five days, enduring the sun, the rain and the night. My mother was covered in worms, because in the mountains there is a fly which gets straight into any wound, and if the wound isn’t tended in two days, there are worms where the fly has been. Since all my mother’s wounds were open, there were worms in all of them. She was still alive. My mother died in terrible agony.12 The rape, torture, humiliation, and death of Rigoberta’s mother has crucial ramifications because “[t]o rape, torture, and kill a woman especially in front of her family or community, dishonors not only the woman but also her family, community, and ethnic identity. Being raped in Hispanic Roman Catholic or traditional Maya cultures creates profound and traumatic shame and

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guilt. Such violence destroys a woman’s emotional, physical, and mental health; it irrevocably damages familial and communal cohesiveness.”13 By humiliating the dead body and denying the community and the family a chance to mourn the loss of their fellow revolutionary, the state asserts its control over the emotional and cultural lives of the surviving community. The extreme humiliation and degradation of the living and dead being are carried out to ensure lasting fear amongst the civil population and deter further acts of resistance. Instead of lingering over the profound personal and emotional loss associated with the incident, Menchu presents the whole ordeal of her mother’s kidnap, torture, death, and eventual reintegration to nature within just over two pages in a narrative comprising of 289 pages. As a text, emerging from within an ongoing social and political movement where rape and torture are routinely used as instruments of intimidation, Menchu’s short and succinct retelling of her mother’s rape and torture in contrast to the elaborate descriptions of the revolutionary mother’s life and work ultimately disempowers sexual violence as a tool of oppression. Sexual violence against women remains an unfortunate reality in conflict zones where rape is routinely used as weapons of war. The intended victim of such violence is not the individual but the political opponent––the whole community of the opposing group. According to the United Nation’s 2016 report entitled “Background Information on Sexual Violence used as a Tool of War,” politically motivated rape in conflict and war zones are used as tools of torture “intended to terrorize the population, break up families, destroy communities, and, in some instances, change the ethnic makeup of the next generation. Sometimes it is also used to deliberately infect women with HIV or render women from the targeted community incapable of bearing children.”14 In Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide, Carol Rittner and John K. Roth argue that motivation and aspiration behind rape in war zones are comparable to murder and women in such context can be “raped to death.”15 While rape has been used as a weapon and spoil of war throughout recorded history of humanity, the rise of the neoliberal nation state has witnessed a steady surge in the implementation of rape as a disciplinary tool against those members who resist or criticise the state’s policies and ideologies. In such cases, the state uses rape and sexual violence as weapons of punishment against politicised members, especially those from disenfranchised groups. That is why Dopdi Mejhen is assaulted by the police of her own country and Rigoberta’s mother, Juana Tum Kótojait, is assaulted by her own army. Rape instigated by the oppressive state apparatus within the national boundaries, against the subaltern electorate of the countries, aims to ensure that the immediate physical and psychological damage extends to long term demoralisation and intimidation that would prevent the community from further acts of resistance. The hetero-patriarchal semiotics of rape frames the act within a “desire and guilt” framework where the female body becomes an object of desire for

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phallocentric pleasure. Such a discursive framework is unable to analyze the relationship of power between the perpetrator and his victim. Literary narratives can challenge this heteropatriarchal perception by conceptualising rape with new referents. Rajeswari Sundar Rajan has traced the relationship amongst rape, narrative structure, and feminist politics and demonstrated that feminist reconstruction of rape can successfully avoid the hetero-patriarchal binary framework by: representing the raped woman as one who becomes a subject through rape rather than one merely subjected to its violation; by structuring a post-rape narrative that traces her strategies of survival instead of a rape-centered narrative privileges chastity and leads inexorably to “trials” to establish it; by locating the raped woman in structures of oppression other than heterosexual “romantic” relationships; by literalizing instead of mystifying the representations of rape; and finally, by counting the cost of rape for its victims in terms more complex than the extinction of female selfhood in death or silence.16 The three narratives discussed in this essay experiment with a combination of the aforesaid narrative strategies; these texts show that sexual violence is not a narrative impossibility and feminist reconstruction of rape can offer alternative semiotic referents which allows readers to understand the violations as complex power plays. In the cases where the assaulted is socially located in a position of disempowerment through the axes of race, class, caste, and colonialism, the perpetrator often uses sexual assault as a fear tactic to extract compliance from the victim’s community for their ongoing and long-term oppression. In The Rape of Shavi, “Draupadi” and I, Rigoberta Menchu, the protagonists’ reactions and responses to their perpetrators indicate that despite operating within neoliberal hetero-patriarchy, subaltern women retain their ability to resist the dominant discourses that try to justify violence against vulnerable members. A feminist reading of these instances of subaltern resistance reveals how the female body becomes a material symbol through which domination and subjugation of conflicting ideologies are played out.

A subaltern’s resistance: An Aporia? In the fictional and testimonial narratives of Devi, Emecheta, and Menchu, the protagonists not only identify the established systems of injustice but engage in acts of defiance through which the victims register their claim to human rights and subjecthood. Peyman Vahabzadeh has argued that “[within conditions of subalternity] any act of transgression, as it sees a possibility beyond the hegemonic grounding of everyday experience, immediately drives the subject to subalternity.”17 Vahabzadeh further notes that subaltern resistance within conditions of subalternity remains an aporia at best, as the

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pre-existing circumstantial restraints do not allow for any claim to subjecthood for the subaltern. The literary examples selected for this study offer three distinct referential worlds where the female protagonists transgress their conditions of subalterneity and become independent subjects who defy hegemony of the dominant ideologies of the state apparatus and patriarchal traditions in varying degrees. Ayoko’s rape in Emecheta’s fictive world complicates the question of consent by depicting the objectification of women when cultures with presumed hierarchy encounter those deemed “lesser.” As a young woman, Ayoko is hegemonised in her own society which is evident as she is set to undergo clitorectomy despite knowing the invalidity and irrelevance of the process. However, her sexual assault takes place outside of this hegemonised world. Ronje acts upon his internalised racial superiority and hegemony of colonial discourse that dictates it is “the duty of Europeans to impose their culture on whoever they come in contact with” and since “the Shavians were savages and Ayoko was just a servant girl,” she was “an object of use for any white male wonderer.”18 In Ronje’s worldview, Ayoko is a subaltern who is denied agency but in contrast Ayoko does not participate in this worldview, thus is not controlled by the hegemonic discourse. As a result, instead of suffering from shame and guilt, she shares her experience with the elder women, who subsequently take action to correct the wrongdoing by “disappearing” Ronje. The fictive example demonstrates that it is the perpetrator who is hegemonised by the dominant ideology and the subaltern can transcend the limitations imposed upon her by the said ideology if she can find an alternative worldview to operate within. This alternative worldview can ultimately guide the readers to imagine a new semiotics of sexual violence where rape is no longer perceived as a disciplinary tool to stigmatise women but rather treated as criminal offenses like murder and persecuted through the legal system. The rape and destruction of the kingdom of Shavi, on the other hand, happens because of Asogba’s submission to the racial-colonial hegemony that convinces the Crown Prince to adapt western technocentric worldview, as he engages in long-term warfare with the neighboring kingdoms. Ultimately, Asogba’s submission and appropriation of the European ways destroy the kingdom and its people. Since the rape of Shavi happens through hegemony and uninformed cooperation from Asogba, there is a strong sense of shame and guilt. As a subaltern community, the people of Shavi can escape their stigma through a narrative rupture that is suggested by Queen Shashovi. In “Draupadi,” Senanayak operates within a similar discursive hegemony that allows him to use rape as a torture technique and punishment to ensure that his female suspect divulges information about the revolutionary group, who has taken up arms against the government in its demand for economic equality and social justice. As the officer in charge, Senanayak enjoys a superior status which prevents him from carrying out the disciplinary action himself and that is why he instructs his subordinate staff to rape his suspect in custody. The planned gangrape is intended to cause physical pain and shame

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in the “object” who is subsequently expected to act and speak according to Senanayak’s demands. As he would appear to have the authority to stop the violence and humiliation, he expects the victim to cooperate with him in exchange of restoring her dignity. Senanayak’s education and intellect cannot grapple with the idea that a poor, tribal woman from rural India can operate within an alternative semiotic worldview––one that does not stigmatise her as a gangrape victim. When the subaltern protagonist, Dopdi Mejhen, refuses to be clothed after experiencing violent gangrape, the all-male staff renders her insane. The dominant hegemonic ideology of neoliberal patriarchy could only perceive the disenfranchised gangrape victim as a subjugated subaltern, who is supposed to be keen to cover her shame. However, the text invents a pocket for an alternative worldview and a dormant ideology to materialise, which allows Dopdi to laugh at the perpetrator’s face, while her naked, wounded body invites the readers to consciously rupture the patriarchal hegemony that associates shame and humiliation with the victim. The outcome of Dopdi’s transgression remains uncertain as the text alludes to her imminent encounter by the police. Finally, Rigoberta Menchu’s testimonio offers another form of transgression within conditions of subalternity. With the primary purpose of excavating information about the victim’s fellow revolutionaries and family members, the state carries out violent physical, sexual and emotional torture. The continuing degradation of the victim even beyond her death indicates that the violence was perpetrated to cause intimidation, humiliation for the community alongside punishing the individual victim. The testimonio refuses to engage with the state’s action in an emotional way, instead chooses to construct the victim as a resilient, revolutionary subject, a role model for the revolutionary and as a result renders the state-sponsored crime ineffective. By conceiving and constructing subaltern subjecthood through acts of embodied resistance, The Rape of Shavi, “Draupadi” and I, Rigoberta demonstrate that subalternisation is an environmental and external condition rather than an internalised identity of the subject. The social and economic conditions of subalternity refuse to register the subaltern’s ability to resist the oppressive structures while the subjective ability to claim agency and power is retained in the subaltern. The literary representations demonstrate that hegemony of the dominant ideology influences the perpetrator not the targeted victim. In each of the cases, the victim can and does offer an alternative worldview, while their perpetrators attempt to ensure conditions of subalternity through sexual and emotional violence. In other words, the dominant hegemonic structures render the dormant subjectivities absent, though the subaltern retains her ability to challenge and transgress the dormant infrastructure. Since the subaltern never loses her subjecthood, her resistance should not be theorised as an aporia. As members of a counter-hegemonic non-revolutionary working-class of the global south, the literary protagonists of the narratives transgress hegemonic control by offering alternative interpretations of their position, resistance, and resilience.

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Conclusion Irrespective of the political motivation, sexual assault is carried out to establish and impose a power relationship where the assaulted is denied consent. The significance of sexual violence and rape of women remains paramount in ongoing gender inequality and social injustice on a global scale. In the recent times, public imaginations of sexual assault (including rape) have attempted to recognise the act as violence rather than an outcome of desire and suggestions have been made to increase accountability on part of local and transnational institutions that participate (voluntarily or involuntarily) in offering impunity to perpetrators. On the other hand, stigmatisation of victims continues to empower the use of such assaults as effective tools of repression and subjugation. In cases where subaltern women are attacked and assaulted by men empowered through oppressive state apparatus in colonial, postcolonial, and/or neocolonial societies, the actions are carried out to ensure legitimisation of the oppression and intimidation of the oppressed. Literary imaginations of the construction of subaltern subjecthood in the aftermath of a sexual assault rupture the hegemony of heteropatriarchy and allow the readers to engage in a reevaluation of the structures of hierarchy that create and control the relations of power and domination. By highlighting instances of subaltern resistance within dominant structures of oppression, the semiotic interpretants challenge the notion of perpetual non-agency of the subaltern. The female protagonists of The Rape of Shavi, “Draupadi” and I, Rigoberta are chosen to be assaulted in order to ascertain the continual domination of patriarchal violence to benefit the structures of colonialism, racism, internal colonialism, and neoliberal economy. The literary examples demonstrate how the subaltern can challenge the patriarchal discourses of rape and sexual violence and thus rupture the hegemonic conventions (i.e. rape as a disciplinary tool). These narratives of sexual assault radically reconstruct a social semiotics where sexual violence does not stigmatise its victims but rather renders the actions ineffective (in getting the desired outcome). By imagining the possibilities of representing new semiotics surrounding sexual assaults through the embodied and symbolic resistances of subaltern women, these literary texts invite their readers to push the boundary of their cognitive and imaginative horizons. Reflecting on these narratives from the 1980s in the #metoo era, critics and scholars can develop their critical, contemplative, and pedagogic practices by situating the subaltern subject in the intersection of patriarchy, rape culture, and capitalism.

Notes 1 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Introduction: Feminism and the Politics of Resistance,” Indian Journal of Gender Studies 7, no. 2, (Sept. 2000): 153. Accessed June 29, 2020. doi:10.1177/097152150000700201. 2 Buchi Emecheta, Rape of Shavi (New York: George Braziller Publishers, 2000), 94.

238  Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay 3 Emecheta Rape of Shavi, 177. 4 Ranajit Guha, A Subaltern Studies Reader, 1986–1995. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 59. 5 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty. Translator’s Forward. ““Draupadi” by Mahasveta Devi,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter, 1981): 386. https://doi.org/10.1086/448160. 6 Spivak, Translator’s Forward to “Draupadi,” 387. 7 Spivak, “Draupadi” 401. 8 Spivak, “Draupadi” 402. 9 Spivak, “Draupadi” 402. 10 Spivak, “Translator’s Forward” to “Draupadi,” 388. 11 Spivak, “Draupadi” 402. 12 Rigoberta Menchú and Elizabeth Burgos-Debray, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. (London: Verso, 1984), 199. 13 Roth Rittner, Carol Rittner, Carol, and John K. Roth. Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide. 1st ed. (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2012), 121. 14 UN Report. Available at http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/about/ bgsexualviolence.shtml. 15 Roth Rittner, Carol Rittner, Carol, and John K. Roth. Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide. 1st ed. (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2012), xiii. 16 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, “Life after Rape: Narrative, Theory, and Feminism.” Borderwork: Feminist Engagements with Comparative Literature, edited by Margaret R. Higonnet (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt207g6sk.7. Accessed 5 Mar. 2020. 17 Peyman Vahabzadeh, “The conditions of subalternity: reflections on subjectivity, experience and hegemony.” Socialist studies/Études socialistes 3, no. 2 (2007): 98. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18740/S45G6H 18 Emecheta, Rape of Shavi, 106, 94, 106.

Index

Alam, Javeed 2 Anderson, Benedict 5 Arnold, David 3

Kristeva, Julia 126

Bennett, Jane 124–125, 131 Beverley, John 4, 12, 60, 61 Braidotti, Rosi 124–126, 131

Mallon, Florencia 12 Mateyu, Beatrice 34–35, 37, 39–41 Menchu, Rigoberta 12, 226, 232–234, 236, 237 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 1, 5

Cambridge School 1 caste 107–119, 178–192 Chatterjee, Partha 2, 3 Crenshaw, Kimberle 109 Dalit 6, 107–119, 178–192 Devi, Mahasweta 11, 113, 226, 229–237 East India Company 135, 143–144 Emecheta, Buchi 11, 226, 228–229, 234, 235, 237 Fanon, Frantz 38, 68–69 Foucault, Michel 7, 35, 36 Gramsci, Antonio 2, 45, 88 Guha, Ranajit 1–4, 141, 215 Hill Collins, Patricia 109 indigenous: Australia (Aboriginal) 71–83; Fiji 17–31; India (“scheduled tribes”) 184

Latin American Subaltern Studies 4

O’Hanlon, Rosalind 1, 142 Prakash, Gyan 3 Rodriguez, Ileana 4 Sabin, Margery 4, 12 Scarry, Elaine 126–127 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1, 3–4, 12, 45, 73, 88, 91, 101, 112, 123, 142, 216, 226 Suharto 43 Sukarno 43, 52 Tamale, Sylvia 35–36, 39 Tharu, Susie 1 Walker, Rebecca 109