Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories: Feminist Conversations on War, Genocide and Political Violence (The Feminist Imagination - Europe and Beyond) [1 ed.] 1472442857, 9781472442857

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GENDERED WARS, GENDERED MEMORIES

The twentieth century has been a century of wars, genocides and violent political conflict; a century of militarization and massive destruction. It has simultaneously been a century of feminist creativity and struggle worldwide, witnessing fundamental changes in the conceptions and everyday practices of gender and sexuality. What are some of the connections between these two seemingly disparate characteristics of the past century? And how do collective memories figure into these connections? Exploring the ways in which wars and their memories are gendered, this book contributes to the feminist search for new words and new methods in understanding the intricacies of war and memory. From the Italian and Spanish Civil Wars to military regimes in Turkey and Greece, from the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to the wars in Abhazia, East Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Israel and Palestine, the chapters in this book address a rare selection of contexts and geographies from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. In recent years, feminist scholarship has fundamentally changed the ways in which pasts, particularly violent pasts, have been conceptualized and narrated. Discussing the participation of women in war, sexual violence in times of conflict, the use of visual and dramatic representations in memory research, and the creative challenges to research and writing posed by feminist scholarship, Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories will appeal to scholars working at the intersection of military/ war, memory, and gender studies, seeking to chart this emerging territory with ‘feminist curiosity’. Ayşe Gül Altınay is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University and author of The Myth of the Military-Nation and co-author of The Grandchildren: The Hidden Legacy of ‘Lost’ Armenians in Turkey. Andrea Pető is a professor in the Department of Gender Studies at the Central European University, Hungary and author of Women in Hungarian Politics, 1945–1951.

The Feminist Imagination – Europe and Beyond Series Editors: Kathy Davis, Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Mary Evans, London School of Economics, UK With a specific focus on the notion of ‘cultural translation’ and ‘travelling theory’, this series operates on the assumption that ideas are shaped by the contexts in which they emerge, as well as by the ways that they ‘travel’ across borders and are received and re-articulated in new contexts. In demonstrating the complexity of the differences (and similarities) in feminist thought throughout Europe and between Europe and other parts of the world, the books in this series highlight the ways in which intellectual and political traditions, often read as homogeneous, are more often heterogeneous. It therefore provides a forum for the latest work that engages with the European experience, illuminating the various exchanges (from the USA as well as Europe) that have informed European feminism. The series thus allows for an international discussion about the history and imaginary of Europe from perspectives within and outside Europe, examining not only Europe’s colonial legacy, but also the various forms of ‘cultural imperialism’ that have shaped societies outside Europe. Considering aspects of Europe ‘abroad’ as well as Europe ‘at home’, this series is committed to publishing work that reveals the central and continued importance of the genealogy of feminist ideas to feminism and all those interested in questions of gender. Also in this series Postcolonial Masculinities Emotions, Histories and Ethics Amal Treacher Kabesh Repudiating Feminism Young Women in a Neoliberal World Christina Scharf Transatlantic Conversations Feminism as Travelling Theory Edited by Kathy Davis and Mary Evans

Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories

Feminist Conversations on War, Genocide and Political Violence

Edited by AYŞE GÜL ALTINAY Sabancı University, Turkey ANDREA PETŐ Central European University, Hungary

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 selection and editorial matter, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető 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: Altınay, Ayşe Gül, 1971– editor. | Pető, Andrea, editor. Title: Gendered wars, gendered memories : feminist conversations on war, genocide and political violence / edited by Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető. Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: The feminist imagination – Europe and beyond | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016005691 | ISBN 9781472442857 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315584225 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Women and war. | Women—Violence against. | Rape as a weapon of war. | Feminism. Classification: LCC JZ6405.W66 G474 2016b | DDC 303.6082—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005691 ISBN: 9781472442857 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315584225 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword by Cynthia Enloe Introduction: Uncomfortable Connections: Gender, Memory, War Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető PART I

ix xi xvii xix 1

SEXUAL VIOLENCE: SILENCE, NARRATION, RESISTANCE

Commentary Andrea Pető

23

1

The Historicity of Denial: Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the War of Annihilation, 1941–1945 Regina Mühlhäuser

29

2

Between Silence and Narration: European and Asian Women on War Brutalities in Japanese-Occupied Territories Felicia Yap

55

3

The Female and Political Body in Pain: Sexual Torture and Gendered Trauma during the Greek Military Dictatorship (1967–1974) Katerina Stefatos

4

Silencing Sexual Violence and Vulnerability: Women’s Narratives of Incarceration during the 1980–1983 Military Junta in Turkey Bürge Abiral

69

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PART II

GENDERING MEMORIES OF WAR, SOLDIERING AND RESISTANCE

Commentary: Women’s Memories of Soldiering: An Intersectionality Perspective Orna Sasson-Levy

109

5

Militarizing the Nation: Gender Politics of the Warsaw Uprising Weronika Grzebalska

121

6

The Italian Civil War in the Memoirs of Female Fascist Soldiers Gianluca Schiavo

135

7

“We Left Our Skirts to Men as We Went to the Front”: The Participation of Abkhazian Women from Turkey in the Abkhazian War Setenay Nil Doğan

8

Militarized US Women from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Citizenship, Homelessness, and the Construction of Public Memory in a Time of War Stephanie E. Yuhl

PART III

145

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FICTIONALIZING AND VISUALIZING GENDERED MEMORIES

Commentary: Unsettling Accounts: Fictionalizing and Visualizing Memories of War Banu Karaca

181

9

Women’s Memory of the Spanish Civil War: The Power of Words Sophie Milquet

189

10

Forgotten Perpetrators: Photographs of Female Perpetrators after WWII Andrea Pető

11

Testimonies of War and Love: The Work of the Witnessing Imagination in Eve Ensler’s Play Necessary Targets and Jasmila Žbanić’s Film Grbavica Kornelia Slavova

203

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Contents

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“Conversations in Silence”: Ceramic Installations Shaping the Visual and Political Imagination of Gendered Tsunami and Conflict Reconstruction Landscapes in Aceh Marjaana Jauhola

PART IV

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229

FEMINIST REIMAGININGS

Commentary: Interrogating Memory and Evidence: An Intersectional Feminist Perspective Arlene Avakian

251

13

Narrating Women’s Bodies: Storying Silences and Secrets in the Aftermath of Genocide Hourig Attarian

257

14

Women Living and Re-living Armed Conflict: Exploring a Methodology for Spanning Time and Place Cynthia Cockburn

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Index

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List of Figures 7.1 7.2 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 12.1 12.2 12.3

Birgül relaxing with a militant woman from Abkhazia during a break in hostilities. Personal archive of yeşim “The girls” posing for news. “Cepheden selam Var,” Yeni Günaydın, December 2, 1992, 1 Meeting at the House of Loyalty. Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 1511–1954 Portrait of the wife of Szálasi. Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum Women participating as audience at the people’s tribunal. Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum 64–730 Massacre in Maros utca. Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 00002916 Manci. Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 83–766 Conversation in Silence ( percakapan dalam senyap) Forbidden to Tread on the Grass (Dilarang menginjak rumput / Beek Gilho Na Leung) City Lost in Words (Kota yang hilang dalam kata)

151 155 206 208 209 209 210 234 239 243

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Notes on Contributors Bürge Abiral is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Williams College, USA, with Honors in Anthropology, and her Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from Sabancı University, Turkey. Her MA thesis is titled “Catastrophic Futures, Anxious Presents: Lifestyle Activism and Hope in the Permaculture Movement in Turkey”. Her research interests include political violence, gender and sexuality, social movements, and human-environment relations. Ayşe Gül Altınay is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University. She is the author of The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender and Education (2004); coauthor of Violence Against Women in Turkey: A Nationwide Survey (with Yeşim Arat, 2009,) and The Grandchildren: The Hidden Legacy of “Lost” Armenians in Turkey (with Fethiye Çetin, translated by Maureen Freely, 2014); and editor of Vatan, Millet, Kadınlar (2000) and Ebru: Reflections on Cultural Diversity in Turkey, a photography project by Attila Durak (2007). She coordinates the Hrant Dink Foundation History and Memory Research Fund and serves as an associate editor for the European Journal of Women’s Studies. Hourig Attarian has obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Education at McGill University. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Education, Concordia University and an affiliate of the university’s internationally renowned Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS). Anchored in the blurred genre of life history and autobiographical inquiry, her work focuses on storying memory and identity through visual and narrative explorations. Arlene Avakian (Professor Emeritus) is a founder and former Chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her areas of interest include: social constructions of identities through an intersectional lens which she has explored through autobiography and memory studies as well as whiteness, and food studies. Recent and forthcoming publications include: “A Different Future?: Armenian Identity Through the Prism of Trauma, Nationalism, and Gender” (New Perspectives on Turkey, 2010); Open Forum Section—with Hourig Attarian, “Imagining our Foremothers: Memory and Evidence of Women Victims and Survivors of the Armenian Genocide—A Dialogue” (European Journal of Women’s Studies, Special Issue on Gendering Genocide, forthcoming), “Cooking Up Lives: Feminist Food Memoirs” (Feminist Studies, 2014). Her books

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include: Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir (1992); Through the Kitchen Window: Women Explore the Intimate Meaning of Food and Cooking (1997, 2005); From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food (co-editor, 2005), African American Women and the Vote 1837–1965 (co-editor, 1997). Cynthia Cockburn is a feminist researcher and writer, living in London, where she is active in Women in Black against War and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology at City University London, and Honorary Professor in the Centre for the Study of Women and Gender at the University of Warwick. Her two most recent books, products of action-research on gender in processes of war and peace, are From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (2007) and Antimilitarism: Political and Gender Dynamics of Peace Movements (2012). Setenay Nil Doğan is a course instructor in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Yıldız Technical University. After completing her PhD dissertation “Formations of Diaspora Nationalism: The Case of Circassians in Turkey” at the Department of Political Science at Sabancı University, she has published on Circassians in Turkey, gender, nationalism and diaspora. She is currently working on gender, innovation and technology. Cynthia Enloe is Research Professor of International Development, Political Science and Women’s Studies at Clark University (Massachusetts). Among the editorial boards on which she serves is that of the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Her most recent books include Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010), Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered (2013), and the thoroughly revised and updated edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases (2014). Weronika Grzebalska is a sociologist currently pursuing a PhD at the Graduate School for Social Research, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Her research focuses on Polish militarism as seen from a gender perspective. In 2013, she published a book Płeć powstania warszawskiego (Gender of the Warsaw Uprising). She is also a member of FEPS Young Academics Network and a research team “Literature and Gender” affiliated with the Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. Marjaana Jauhola is a Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Gender Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland and holds a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University, UK (2010). She writes on gendered politics and normativity of post-disaster and conflict contexts and has conducted research on Aceh, Indonesia but also on post-war reconstruction and “respectability”

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in the Finnish Lapland. Her publications include the monograph Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives in Aceh (Routledge 2013), “On ‘Being Bored’—Street Ethnography on Emotions in Banda Aceh after the Tsunami and Conflict” (in Emotions, Politics and War, ed. Linda Ahall and Thomas Gregory, 2015), and an article co-written with Ermina Martini, “Journeys in Aidland: An Autobiographic Exploration of Resistance to Development Aid” (Journal of Narrative Politics, 2014). She is currently one of the Editors-in-Chief of the Finnish Journal of Gender Studies (Sukupuolentutkimus–Genusforskning) and works on digital monograph with documentary films, Scraps of Hope, coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Aceh peace process. Banu Karaca (Ph.D. The Graduate Center, The City University of New York) is a sociocultural anthropologist working at the intersection of political anthropology, art and aesthetics, nationalism and cultural policy, museums and commemorative practices. She is currently a Fellow at the Art Histories and Aesthetic Practices Research Program (Berlin), and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Critical Inquiry, ICI Berlin. Some of her recent and forthcoming publications examine the entrenchment of art in state violence in Germany and Turkey, the politics of intercultural exchange programs in the EU, freedom of expression, and visual literacy. Banu is the co-founder of Siyah Bant, a research platform that documents censorship in the arts, and continues her research on the possibilities and limitations of art in reconciliation processes. Sophie Milquet is currently a teacher and a postdoctoral researcher at Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and Université Paris IV Sorbonne (France). She has published papers in international journals and co-edited (with Madeleine Frédéric) the book Femmes en guerres (Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2011). She holds a PhD in comparative literature and history from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Université Rennes 2 (France). Her thesis, “Writing Trauma. Women’s Memory in the Spanish Civil War Fiction: Representations, Forms, Issues (1975–2010),” will be published by the Presses Universitaires de Rennes (2016). This work received the Royal Academy of Belgium Suzanne Tassier Prize in 2013. Her research fields cover contemporary French and Spanish literature, specifically literary writings on wars, women’s literature, trauma studies and the affective power of literature. Regina Mühlhäuser, PhD, historian, is a guest fellow at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and a contact person for the Working Group “War and Gender” as well as the “International Research Group ‘Sexual Violence in Armed Conflicts’”(www.warandgender.net). Her main research interests are situated in the field of sexual violence in conflict zones; gender and sexuality during National Socialism; the history of International Law; and memory politics in Germany and Japan. Her publications include: Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime

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Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion, 1941–1945 (Hamburg 2010);“Cultural History and the Holocaust [Forum],” with Monica Black et al., German History 31:1 (2013): 61–85. Andrea Pető DSC is a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University. She has edited fourteen volumes in English, seven volumes in Hungarian and two in Russian. Her works have appeared in 13 different languages. Her books include: Women in Hungarian Politics 1945–1951 (Columbia University Press/East European Monographs New York, 2003), Geschlecht, Politik und Stalinismus in Ungarn. Eine Biographie von Júlia Rajk. Studien zur Geschichte Ungarns, Bd. 12. (Gabriele Schäfer Verlag, 2007) and Political Justice in Budapest after WWII (with Ildikó Barna, Politikai igazságszolgáltatás a II. világháború utáni Budapesten. Gondolat, Budapest, CEU Press, 2012 and 2015). She is working on gendered memories of WWII and political extremisms. She was awarded by the President of the Hungarian Republic with the Officer’s Cross Order of Merit of The Republic of Hungary in 2005 and Bolyai Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2006. Orna Sasson-Levy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in Gender Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her research interests include militarism and gender, new social movements, and Israeli ethnicities. Her work has been published widely, including “Women Breaking the Silence: Military Service, Gender and Anti-war Protest” (with Yagil Levy and Edna Lomsky-Feder) in Gender & Society (2011), and “The Military in a Globalized Environment: Perpetuating an ‘Extremely Gendered’ Organization,” in the Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization (2011). Additional articles have appeared in journals such as The Sociological Quarterly (2013), Sociological Forum (2013), Signs (2007), and British Journal of Sociology (2015). Sasson-Levy serves on the International Advisory Board of the journals Men and Masculinities and Gender & Society. Gianluca Schiavo holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the IULM University of Milan (Italy) and a PhD in Italian Studies from the University of Turku (Finland). He is currently a Lecturer in the department of Letters at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He is the author of Dal Signor Maestro al prof in crisi. L’insegnante di scuola attraverso la letteratura italiana contemporanea (2013) and numerous articles published in national and international scientific reviews. The main field of his research activity is the literary representation of social processes and of the main historical events in modern Italy. Katerina Stefatos holds a PhD in Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MSc in Gender and the Media from the London School of Economics. She has studied Politics and International Relations in Greece and the US. She is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology

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at Lehman College, CUNY and the Hellenic Studies Program Coordinator at Columbia University. She has published papers in international journals, and has contributed book chapters for edited volumes by Palgrave-Macmillan, Payot, and University of Pennsylvania Press. She is currently co-editing (with Victoria Sanford and Cecilia Salvi) a volume entitled Gender Violence, Conflict & the State (2015) and revising her doctoral dissertation, “Engendering the Nation: Women, State Oppression, and Political Violence in Postwar Greece (1946–1974)” towards publication. Kornelia Slavova is Associate Professor of American literature and culture in the Department of English and American Studies at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Her publications are in the field of American drama and literature, cultural translation and feminist issues in Eastern Europe. Her most recent book is The Traumatic Re/Turn of History in Postmodern American Drama (2010). She has edited and co-edited several books on gender theory and cultural studies including Gender/Genre (2010) and Identities in Transition: Gender, Popular Culture and the Media in Bulgaria after 1989 (2011). She has been awarded the Christo G. Danov National Prize in the humanities and the Paul Celan International Award. Since 2008, she has served as Associate Editor of the European Journal of Women’s Studies. Felicia Yap is an Associate of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics. Her research focuses on the Japanese occupation of East and Southeast Asia, chiefly the impact of the Pacific War on Europeans, Eurasians, Asians, third nationals and other colonial communities. Stephanie E. Yuhl is Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. She earned her PhD and MA from Duke University, and her BA from Georgetown University. Yuhl specializes in twentiethcentury United States’ cultural and social history, with a particular emphasis on the politics of collective memory. Her research and teaching fields include US southern history, public history, and gender history. In addition to her prizewinning book, A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston, she is the author of numerous essays and articles and her work has most recently appeared in The Journal of Southern History and The Public Historian. Yuhl has served on professional committees for the American Historical Association, the National Council on Public History, and the Worcester Women’s History Project, and has been a longtime participant in the US Department of Education’s “Teaching American History” grants.

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Acknowledgements From Baku to Goteborg, Bochum to Lodz, and of course, Budapest to Istanbul, this book came out of many years of collaboration, conversations and travel across a vast geography woven with feminist webs of networking and sharing, for which we remain grateful. Between 2011 and 2014, the CEU-Sabancı University Joint Academic Initiative provided a solid framework to turn these conversations into a multi-faceted project that involved developing a syllabus together, co-teaching a graduate course, conducting collaborative research, and organizing two conferences in 2012, one in Istanbul, the other in Budapest. It was with great excitement that we participated in a third conference on the same topic in 2013, independently organized by Bürge Abiral, İrem Az, Doğu Durgun, Marhabo Saparova, Sertaç Kaya Şen, and Ezgi Şeref, who had taken the course the year before. The project that led to this volume and supported its production process, Gendered Memories of Political Violence and War, was supported and enabled by many colleagues and administrators at Sabancı University and Central European University. Noemi Kovacs (CEU), Özge Şahin, Çisem Kallek, Sezen Sefayi, Viket Galimidi and İnci Ceydeli (SU) provided valuable administrative support and Olcay Özer, Armanc Yıldız and Ayşe Yüksel from the Sabancı University Gender and Women’s Studies Forum were always there when we needed them. Borbala Klacsman and Çicek IIengiz started as project assistants and continued as colleagues and co-organizers of the conferences, providing immaculate support in the editing process of this book. Bori walked the whole road with us, up until the copyediting and indexing process. It was a joy to work with them and to learn from them. For the conferences in Istanbul and Budapest, we received generous support from Nihat Berker (President, SU), Mehmet Baç (Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, SU), Fuat Keyman (Director, Istanbul Policy Center), and Hasan Mandal (Director of Research and Graduate Policy, SU). The additional funding for the conferences came from Sabancı University, Central European University, Istanbul Policy Center and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. The colleagial support and contributions of Ayşe Öncü, Banu Karaca, Hülya Adak, Sibel Irzık, Ayfer Bartu Candan, and Kathy Davis to the Istanbul conference, and of Karoly Bard, Tijana Krstic, Jasmina Lukic, István Majoros, Anna Menyhert, Ursula Mindler, Balázs Sipos, Andrea Szőnyi, Judit Takács, Eszter Varsa, and Teréz Vince to the Budapest conference were invaluable.

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Cynthia Enloe, not only opened the Istanbul conference with a stimulating set of critical questions, starting with her title “Which Wartime Women are Remembered in Post-Wartime and Which Forgotten? And Why Should Feminists Care?,” but also awarded this volume with an inspiring and generous Foreword. The authors who have contributed articles and thoughtful commentaries to this book were tremendously responsive and supportive throughout the long editing and production process, making our job not only easier but also joyful. It was a privilege to work with such a creative and collegial community of feminist thinkers and writers. The series The Feminist Imagination—Europe and Beyond has been a precious home for the book. We were very fortunate to receive the invaluable editorial support and contributions of Kathy Davis and Mary Evans at every step of the way, and the extremely professional, and at the same time friendly, support of the editorial and production team led by Neil Jordan. The language editing of the volume was done with great care and punctuality by Andrew Gane. Artist Endang Lestari not only gave permission for the use of her impressive work in Marjaana Jauhola’s chapter, but also allowed us to modify one for the cover of the book. Regina Mühlhäuser kindly agreed to contribute to the book with a previously published chapter and secured the copyrights for the reprinting. To each and every one who has contributed to making this book possible, including the unnamed participants of the Istanbul and Budapest conferences, the Associate Editors of the European Journal of Women’s Studies, and the students of the Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence seminars at CEU and SU, we are deeply grateful. Thank you all for sharing this beautiful journey of learning and co-creating.

Foreword Cynthia Enloe

The rich and provocative book that you are about to read (and that I have just finished reading in manuscript) comes out of five years of thinking and rethinking, meetings in Istanbul and Budapest, and consuming several gallons of dark coffee. In the process, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető have become a team, a team that has turned a diverse group of scholars into an intellectual feminist community. With this book, all of us now are invited to join their lively and crucial conversation. What Ayşe Gül Altınay, Andrea Pető and their contributors are asking us to do is to invest fresh thought in the gendered politics of gendered silences. That is, they are asking us each to join them in seriously interrogating a double-pronged puzzle. The first prong: Who gains what sorts of power from fostering (or coercing) whose silences about what? And the second prong: Under what conditions is patriarchy rolled back (an inch, occasionally a mile) when which women decide to publicly record which wartime memories? By posing this complicated (that is, realistic) double-pronged challenge, they are guiding us toward a collective investigation that eschews simplistic dichotomies. As each of the grittily engaging case studies and commentaries here reveals, the histories of women’s experiences during and after wars are not divided between just tellings and silences. Instead, those histories are woven out into a fabric of selective tellings, accurate and inaccurate interpretations of those tellings, forgettings, misrememberings, and exploitations of stories told and stories buried. Feminists have been pioneers in exploring silences. They have shown how, in country after country, women’s silences have been made into one of the pillars of sustainable patriarchy. Women of countless cultures for generation upon generation have been told by their culture’s elite men, by their fathers, by their husbands, by their older brothers, and, yes, by their mothers and grandmothers to think first of their status as a “respectable woman.” The guardians of feminized respectability repeatedly tell girls and women that their status as “respectable” is their sole source of security. Yet they also are told that their status as a “respectable woman” is always fragile, forever teetering. Thus, “for their own good,” they must assign priority to maintaining that feminized respectability. To protect that wobbly status, a woman must cultivate silences about anything that others—the bestowers of respectability—deem “shameful.” And because the patriarchal territory of feminized shame is so vast, in practice the careful girl or woman will need to keep silent about myriad experiences.

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In wartime, when societies are in upheaval, when new coping strategies must be devised daily, when community safety nets are being routinely shredded, the feminized status of “respectable woman” can be excruciatingly hard to maintain. Thus, for many girls and women during wartime and in the months and years of post-wartime, silence can seem to be the only failsafe strategy. Nonetheless, as Altınay and Pető also make clear right from the start, both exploring silences and, along the way, breaking silences are risky enterprises. “Never forget!” This has been one of the most common rallying cries from those urging us to prepare our minds, our economies, and our political relationships for the next war. Feminists do not nurture forgetfulness. But they—we—also have become acutely aware of the ways in which selective remembering has privileged militarized forms of masculinity, while it also has coopted militarized forms of femininity. With this risk clearly in mind, Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető have encouraged their contributors to devise explicitly feminist approaches to their investigations of women’s memories of, and silences about the wars that they have directly experienced. Consequently, the researchers who have contributed these fascinating accounts all have written with a consciousness of—and are committed to making us aware of—how militarism can insinuate itself into the keeping of, as well as the breaking of women’s silences about war. This is a brave book.

Introduction

Uncomfortable Connections: Gender, Memory, War Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető1

The twentieth century has been a century of wars, genocides and violent political conflict; a century of militarization and massive destruction. It has simultaneously been a century of feminist creativity and struggle worldwide, witnessing fundamental changes in the conceptions and everyday practices of gender and sexuality. What are some of the connections between these two seemingly disparate characteristics of the past century? And how do collective memories figure into these connections? For Virginia Woolf, who wrote Three Guineas in the aftermath of the first great war of the century, with the second approaching, the connections were quite clear. Not only did Woolf claim that the position of the “educated man’s sister” was different in “the home of freedom” than that of her brother and she questioned his claim to “patriotism;”2 but went further to suggest that women had and should have “no country.” For her, women could best help men prevent war “not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.”3 An essential medium for Woolf herself in her search for new words and new methods was, of course, literature—yet, this was a literature where critical engagement with memory and history remained central. “History is too much about wars; biography too much about great men,”4 she exclaimed, and in her diverse body of writing, Woolf practiced new methods for simultaneously challenging the ways in which women had been written out of human history, and for constructing alternative narratives to encourage, inspire and empower women. She wrote endlessly about both the genius of as well as the cruel (patriarchal) limits faced by women whose remembrance and recognition as historical subjects, she claimed, could potentially change all women’s lives. For instance, as much as she admired Shakespeare, she was curious about Shakespeare’s sister and why she

1 We would like to express our gratitude to Arlene Avakian, Ayşe Öncü, Cynthia Cockburn, Kathy Davis, Mary Evans, and Orna Sasson-Levy for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this introduction. 2 Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (San Diego: Harvest, 1938), 9. 3 Ibid., 143. 4 Ibid., 107.

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had died without ever writing a word. A Room of One’s Own provided possible answers, pointing towards a hopeful future: [Shakespeare’s sister] lives in you and me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.5

Where do we stand three quarters of a century after Virginia Woolf drew our attention to the intricate connections between gender, memory and war? How far have we come from histories being “too much about wars; and biography too much about great men?” Does Shakespeare’s sister now have “the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh?” How about Buddha’s sister, Aristotle’s sister, Mevlana’s sister? Where do we see the new words and new methods that can offer alternatives to the patriarchal politics of memory, of the present, and of war? Where does academia stand in recognizing Woolf’s theorizing of gender, memory, and war? Building upon Virginia Woolf’s “feminist curiosity,”6 and inspired by contemporary feminist theorists such as Cynthia Enloe who have added new questions to hers, this book offers a diversity of cases and perspectives from different parts of the world that explore the uncomfortable connections between gender, memory and war. As uncomfortable as these connections were when Woolf explored them in between the two great wars, in the footsteps of scores of other women before her (Zabel Yesayan, Jane Adams, Emma Goldman to name just a few), they continue to cause unease, and even fury. Or they are met with silent resistance. Many of the chapters in this book analyze precisely the ongoing discomfort in the gendered narratives of war and militarism, or the silent resistance to them, not only in contemporary political debates, but in academic inquiry as well. The chapters are written from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives and address a rare selection of contexts and geographies. From oral history to archival research to literary analysis, they draw from various research methodologies and introduce new sources. In what follows, we first share the story of this book, situating it in the intersecting fields of gender studies, memory studies and war/militarism studies starting with a personal story of how we came to edit this volume. We then discuss the possible contributions of the book through three cross-cutting themes: (un) silencing, intersectionality and “situated knowledges.”7 While analyzing silence and the efforts “to unsilence” has a lot to do with the search for “new words,” 5 Ibid., 112. 6 Cynthia Enloe, The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 7 Donna J. Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 183–201.

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intersectionality and “situated knowledges” are themselves new words that mark creative possibilities for new methods. Altogether, we aim to identify and make modest contributions to the feminist search for new words and new methods in understanding the intricacies of war and memory. Uncomfortable Histories, Unexpected Connections: The Book As a way of looking back on personal histories that led to this book and into the future simultaneously, we would like to share two striking instances that impressed on us, the editors of this volume, the politics of memory and the complicated politics of feminist unsilencing projects. When Andrea Pető started to put together a “citation list” for a university report, she was astonished to see that an article she had written on rapes committed by the Red Army in Hungary around 1944–1945 was her most cited article by far (both the original Hungarian, as well as its translated versions in German and English).8 It was especially stunning that most of the citations of this article on “sexual violence” were in journals of history, and not of gender studies. With this feminist memory work, unsilencing a particular case of sexual violence faced by Hungarian women during the Second World War, Andrea Pető had become one of the most quoted historians by conservative and right wing academics and journalists, especially during the month of February, which marks Budapest’s liberation in 1945, and the month of April, when the war in Hungary ended in 1945. Responses to the same article from the transnational gender studies community were mixed. For instance, when Andrea Pető discussed the troubling connections between different narrative frames regarding the sexual violence committed by Red Army soldiers during a gender studies summer school in Ukraine in 2004, her talk was followed by an uncomfortable silence. The silence was ultimately broken by a participant who enthusiastically shared her family story, focusing on the stories of her grandfathers who had fought and suffered during the Second World War fighting against Nazism. The silence and the story that followed, which despite being off-message received enthusiastic applause from the women’s rights activists and academics in the audience, constituted yet another reminder of the complicated nature of feminist unsilencing projects. In post-1989 East Europe, there has been a diverse “market” (academic and political) for stories of brutality by the Red Army. The increasing circulation of stories of women who saw or heard other women raped have contributed to the formation of national martyrology. However, some of the women who had experienced sexual violence, such as Jewish women who were greeting the Red Army as liberators but were also raped by them, continued their silence sometimes 8 Andrea Pető, “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna,” in Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, eds. Dirk Schumann and Richard Bessel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 129–149.

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in order not to participate in the invalidation of the Red Army’s role in the ending of the war. Silence for them was a form of resistance to the existing politics of memory. This story also underlines that often uneasy coalitions underlie new memory work. Feminist memory work is faced with the challenge of understanding the different layers of silencing (often self-silencing) and the politics of unsilencing, a challenge that can sometimes raise serious ethical questions (see Attarian, Chapter 13). Another striking moment of such awareness was our first encounter with each other at a gender studies workshop in Azerbaijan more than a decade ago. When Ayşe Gül Altınay gave a talk on the recent development of feminist historiography in Turkey, mentioning the “discovery” of the Ottoman women’s movement that included Kurdish and Armenian feminist activists, alongside those who identified as Turkish and Muslim, there was uproar in the audience.9 The conveners called for an immediate break to the workshop and asked her to stop her discussion of Ottoman Armenian feminists and move on to another topic. With Andrea Pető’s helpful interventions, the group of gender studies academics in the room calmed down and the workshop was able to resume. Stunned by the aggressive response to a brief mention of Armenian feminists from a century ago in another state (as Azerbaijan had never become a part of the Ottoman Empire), Altınay realized how little she had reflected on the unexpected connections and disjunctures between the politics of memory in different sites. She had notably missed the “attentiveness to the border-transcending dimensions of remembering and forgetting” that Astrid Erll calls for in her discussion of “transcultural memory.”10 In 2001, when this meeting was taking place, the naming of the “events of 1915” as “the Armenian genocide” among gender studies scholars in Turkey could have constituted serious debate, but the recognition of Ottoman Armenian feminists was becoming common place. At that point, Altınay herself was not using the term “genocide” and not yet working on its contested memories. Yet, for the Azeri gender studies scholars, who had recently experienced the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the contested Karabagh province, any mention of Armenians (even Armenian feminists from a century ago) was regarded as “offensive.” These two moments in our own personal histories as feminist scholars working on contested memories highlight the significance of context and positionality, as well as the dynamic nature of memory as “transcultural” and “multidirectional.” In the words of Astrid Erll, “memory fundamentally means movement: traffic between individual and collective levels of remembering, circulation among social, medial, and semantic dimensions.”11 Michael Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory” forces us to reflect also on the traffic between different memory cultures and politics.12 How  9 See Ayşe Gül Altınay, “Centennial Challenges: Denationalizing and Gendering Histories of War and Genocide,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 21 (2014): 307–312. 10 Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax, Special Issue: “Transcultural Memory” 17 (2011): 15. 11 Ibid., 15 12 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2009).

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do collective memories of war, genocide, colonialism, slavery, military interventions, and gendered violence interact with one another? How do concepts and politics of memory travel between seemingly disparate sites? And what are the implications of such travel for feminist memory politics at each site? These are some of the questions that remain open for future research in this field. Yet another open question is how to integrate the growing field of sexuality studies and queer theory into feminist memory work.13 We hope that we will soon be witnessing new research exploring these questions, expanding our understanding of sources, silences and the interconnectedness of the seemingly disparate struggles of memory worldwide. In the course of our joint research project Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence14 that has culminated into this book, we organized international conferences in Istanbul and Budapest. In each case, we were overwhelmed by the number, quality and diversity of the applications, and had the hard task of “rejecting” the majority of them due to limited space. This unprecedented interest signals two developments: First, it points to the growing scholarship and interest in the particular intersection of militarism/war, memory, and gender studies. Second, it signals the lack of opportunities for scholars researching this intersection to come together, present, share, and debate their work. We envision this book, which has resulted from such an interaction, to also be a facilitator for the future development of this emerging field. In the next section, we discuss gendered knowledge production and silencing in the emerging feminist scholarship. Gendered Politics of Knowledge Production on War and Memory In recent years, feminist scholarship has fundamentally changed the ways in which pasts, particularly violent pasts, have been conceptualized and narrated.15 Critical feminist historiographies have challenged “war stories” as we know them, and the growing field of feminist memory studies has alerted us to the ways in which the past shapes the present, and all of “us” in the present, in multiple and deeply gendered ways. 13 For instance, see Dilara Çalışkan’s discussion of “queer postmemory” in “Queer Mothers and Daughters: The Role of Queer Kinship in the Everyday Lives of Trans Sex Worker Women in Istanbul” (Unpublished MA Thesis, Sabancı University, Istanbul, 2014). 14 The joint research and teaching project was supported by the CEU-Sabancı University Joint Academic Initiative and included the development of a course syllabus to be taught at Central European University and Sabancı University, two international conferences, faculty exchange and graduate student exchange for conferences. See http:// myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/genderconf/ for the programs of the conferences, including a third young researchers conference in Istanbul, organized independently by a group of graduate students who had taken the course “Gendered Memories of War and Political Violence.” 15 See reflections on the feminist legacies and interventions in the centennial of the First World War in Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető, eds., “Feminist Questions at the Centennial of the First World War Open Forum,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 4 (2014): 293–312.

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This book comes out of and aims to contribute to three interdisciplinary research fields: gender studies, memory studies, and war/militarism studies. Although there has been growing interaction between these fields in recent years, the particular intersection between war/militarism, gender, and memory that we explore in this book is yet to be developed theoretically and methodologically. Let us first start by unpacking war/militarism studies and their interaction with memory and gender studies. War studies and militarism studies do not necessarily overlap. The English-speaking war studies field—even when coupled with “peace” and named “war and peace studies”—typically centers around concepts such as security, conflict, (dis)armament and terrorism, and allies closely with international relations, political science, and military history. In the well-established war/peace studies departments in major universities on both sides of the Atlantic, only rarely does one encounter the terms “militarism” or “militarization,” except in the context of Japanese or German militarism earlier in the century or militarization of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Hence, the term “militarism” already signals a critical departure from the hegemonic field of war studies, drawing attention to the continuum between war and peace, as well as between the military and civilian realms. Scholars that critically analyze militarist discourses and processes of militarization emphasize the shaping of what is referred to as “civilian life” by practices, institutions, and values that relate to the military. Perhaps not surprisingly, this critical departure often includes a critical feminist lens that also draws on the centrality of gender in the militarization of society in all its realms. Since the 1980s, the field of war/militarism studies has faced significant challenges posed by pioneering works by feminist scholars such as Betty Reardon and Cynthia Enloe, who have convincingly argued for the need to understand the role of femininities and masculinities in processes of militarization and warmaking.16 Drawing attention to the mutual shaping between gender ideologies, militarism and nationalism, feminist scholarship has had far-reaching impact on a number of disciplines, such as political science, international relations, political economy, law, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies, as well as on the nongovernmental organizations (NGO) and United Nations communities worldwide. The adoption of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women and peace has perhaps been the most visible and substantial example of this impact.17 Yet, when one reviews the major works in this growing field of critical war/ militarism studies from a feminist perspective, rarely does one see substantial 16 Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives (London: Pluto Press, 1983); Betty Reardon, Sexism and the War System (New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press, 1985); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 17 Feminist interventions in international law not only resulted in the acknowledgment of sexual violence as a war crime but also included other measures, such as the inclusion of women’s groups in peace and post-conflict processes (see Parts I and III in this volume.)

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engagement with memory studies. In other words, feminist analyses of war and militarism are yet to take seriously the ways in which gendered memories and memorializations of past wars shape contemporary lives and politics, as well as the ongoing processes of militarization. A striking example of this lack of engagement with memory studies is that a title search in the prestigious International Feminist Journal of Politics, which has come out of the need to gender war, militarism and international studies, reveals that only one article with “memory” in its title, and two others marked with the keyword “memory,” have been published in the journal between 1999 and 2014. Similarly, the major collections of feminist war and militarism scholarship in recent years, mention memory only casually.18 In turn, major texts in collective memory studies rarely engage gender, let alone the growing literature on gender and war/militarism. Despite the fact that almost 25 years have passed since the English publication of Frigga Haug and her colleagues’ pioneering feminist theorizing of memory in Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory (Sexualisierung: Frauenformen) and more than a decade since Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini and Paul Thompson’s influential volume Gender and Memory, major memory studies collections scarcely mention gender if they do at all.19 An exceptional effort to overcome the gender-blindness that continues to shape this field is the reader Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates edited by Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, that has two chapters that offer inspiring gender analyses, yet in the remaining 28 chapters of the reader, the term gender (and hence, gender analysis) is almost non-existent. Among the major journals in the field, History & Memory has published no article with the term “gender” or “women/men” in its title, between its first issue in 1996 till 2014 (only five with “women” or “feminism” among subject terms) and Memory Studies has published only one article with “gender” in the title between 2008, when the journal started coming out, and 2014 (with four others having “women” either in the title or among the keywords). The good news is that, beyond these readers and journals where gender is hardly visible, there is a growing body of separate 18 For instance, the term “memory” does not appear more than three times in the following prominent collections of contemporary feminist scholarship on war and militarism: Carol Cohn, ed., Women and Wars (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013); Kathleen Kuehnast, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, and Helga Hernes, eds., Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011); Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Dina Francesca Haynes, and Naomi Cahn, eds., On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and Post-Conflict Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, eds., Gender, War and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2010). 19 For example see, Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, eds., Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008); Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy, eds., The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Alexander Laban Hinton, Thomas La Pointe and Douglas Irvin-Erickson, eds., Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014).

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feminist literature on gender and memory, part of it focusing on war/militarism, that has also inspired this volume. Lynne Hanley’s pioneering Writing War: Fiction, Gender, and Memory; Joanna Bourke’s unsettling analysis of how men remember “killing” and other wartime experiences; Marianne Hirsch’s innovative feminist theorizing of memory and post-memory in connection with the Holocaust and beyond; the growing body of literature on gendered aspects of the Holocaust, its memory and memorialization; Selma Leydesdorff’s research on gender and memory in relation to the war in former-Yugoslavia; Veena Das’s insightful theorization of the gendered memories of the partition in South Asia; feminist analyses of the memories of war and state violence in the Middle East by Nadje Al-Ali and others; the impressive body of memory work on the sexual slavery of women, known as the “Comfort Women,” in Asia during the Second World War; Susan Jeffords and Marita Sturken’s analyses of the influential medium of popular culture and film in the making of the collective memory of war; Macarena Gomez-Barris’s feminist analysis of state violence and cultural memory in Chile; and Diana Taylor’s innovative discussion of performance, cultural memory, trauma and state violence in the Americas constitute some of the reference points that have inspired new research and thinking on gender, memory and war.20 20 Some of the pioneering work in this field include: Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press,1984); Susan Jeffords, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989); Lynne Hanley, Writing War: Fiction, Gender, Memory (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1991); Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (Binghamton, NY: Vail Ballou Press, 1998); Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in 20th Century Warfare (New York: Basic Books, 1999); Ronit Lentin, Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001); Anna Reading, The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture, and Memory (London: Palgrave, 2002); Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, trans. Suzanne O’Brien (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Marianne Hirsch and Valerie Smith, eds., “Gender and Cultural Memory,” Special Issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (2002); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003); Nadje Sadig Al-Ali, Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (London: Zed Books, 2007); Rosemary Sayigh, “Women’s Nakba Stories: Between Being and Knowing,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, eds. Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 135–158; Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Macarena Gomez-Barris, Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009); Janet Liebman Jacobs, Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011); Selma Leydesdorff, Surviving the Bosnian Genocide: The Women of Srebrenica Speak, trans. Kay

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Within gender studies, a dynamic and diverse research field, the main challenge has been to address differences among women, especially in their relationship with power and violence. Women perpetrators and soldiers, for instance, have only recently become subjects of critical inquiry and scholars engaged in this field demonstrate how much scholarly inquiry is embedded in contemporary political debates (see Part II and Part III of this volume). Moreover, one can see a tendency for the feminist literature on war and militarism to remain isolated from the growing body of literature on gender, bodies and sexualities. Unsilencing, Intersectionality, Situated Knowledges Virginia Woolf has not been alone in her cry against the great silencing of women in collective memories and histories. Feminist scholarship has historically been, among other things, a struggle for unsilencing—as well as a struggle for theorizing the intimate connections between silencing (from history and memory) and ongoing marginalization. Yet, as can be said of Woolf’s frequent conceptualization of “woman” in the singular, the efforts to “unsilence” women as historical subjects have themselves hardly been innocent of silencing and marginalization (of women and other subjugated groups). As Catherine Lutz succinctly puts it, “feminist margins have their own margins.”21 How can we understand the multiple layers of silencing in memories of wars? What do we choose to “unsilence” through our political and academic interventions? Who are the “subjects” who are remembered, rehistoricized, rethought in feminist memory work? Which women are remembered, which women continue to remain absent from our imagination, research and writing? What, in other words, are the politics of our own “unsilencing” projects? And who are “we,” in the first place? Asking these questions, among others, the chapters in this book struggle with the concept of “silencing,” searching for “new words and new methods” for remembering, reminding and retheorizing the gendering of wars, of memories, and of silences themselves. “Struggle” has multiple connotations here. One important connotation is “not taking for granted”—neither the concept of silence and the gendered politics of silencing, nor the feminist politics of unsilencing. Some of the authors in this volume are themselves engaged in such feminist politics, while not uncritically approaching “woman/women” as a unified category, nor remaining oblivious to the complicated politics of “unsilencing.” The analyses in the following chapters expand the feminist project of “unsilencing” women and the workings of gender from the histories and memories of war, often drawing on two significant Richardson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 21 Catherine Lutz, “The Gender of Theory,” in Women Writing Culture, eds. Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 251.

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contributions of feminist theory in recent decades: intersectionality and “situated knowledges.” It would not be possible—or even desirable—to bring together all of the authors of the volume under a single theoretical umbrella, but it is possible to argue that we share a search, in which the triple act of unsilencing, complicating the category “woman” through an intersectional lens, and reflecting on the question of positionality (and the larger question of how knowledge is produced) together constitute the key directions. Especially since Kimberlé Crenshaw’s use of the term in her 1989 article, “intersectionality” has received unprecedented attention and adoption in feminist critique in and outside of academia.22 How should feminists conceptualize the “intersecting” structures of inequality and categories of identification among women, especially those based on class, “race,” ethnicity and sexuality? And how can we imagine a feminist movement that does not assume a universal subjecthood (woman) and privilege gender as a category of analysis exclusive from other categories?23 These are some of the questions guiding the search for intersectional analyses, methodologies, and solidarities in the past decades. In their recent review of the productive concept of intersectionality, Cho, Crenshaw and McCall argue that “intersectionality was introduced in the late 1980s as a heuristic term to focus attention on the vexed dynamics of difference and the solidarities of sameness in the context of antidiscrimination and social movement politics.”24 The term may be recent, but the thinking behind is not, and can be found in contexts other than academic feminist practice. As Ann Phoenix and Pamela Pattynama remind us, “long before the term ‘intersectionality’ was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, the concept it denotes had been employed in feminist work particularly women of color on how women are simultaneously positioned as women and, for example, as black, working-class, lesbian or colonial subjects.”25 Critiques of knowledge production processes have accompanied the search for feminist theories and methodologies that take intersectionality seriously. Taking intersectionality seriously requires simultaneous critical attention to context, positionality and multiple structures of inequality. The main challenge 22 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989): 139–167. Also see Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43:6 (1991): 1241–1299. 23 See Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–1075. For a critical overview of the problematic uses of gender, including its ongoing association with women, see Joan Scott “Millenial Fantasies: The Future of ‘Gender’ in the 21st Century,” in Gender: die Tücken einer Kategorie, eds. Claudia Honegger and Caroline Arni (Zurich: Chronos, 2001), 19–38. 24 Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis,” Signs 38 (2013): 787. 25 Ann Phoenix and Pamela Pattynama, “Intersectionality,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13 (2006): 187.

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in this search has been to articulate an epistemological framework that neither essentializes, dehistoricizes, and universalizes gender differences (“woman’s point of view,” “women’s voices,” etc.), nor falls into a radical relativism where all viewpoints are considered to be equal. In the strong words of Donna Haraway, “relativism is the perfect mirror twin of totalization in the ideologies of objectivity; both deny the stakes in location, embodiment, and partial perspective, both make it impossible to see well. Relativism and totalization are both ‘god-tricks’ promising vision from everywhere and nowhere equally and fully.”26 To move away from the “god-trick” of relativism and totalizing objectivism, Haraway has argued for “embodied feminist objectivity” or “positioned rationality” that regards all knowledge as being situated, all perspective as partial, and “subjugated” standpoints as promising “more adequate, sustained, objective, transforming accounts of the world.”27 The quotations around the term “subjugated” signal a warning against taking its connotations for granted and against associating it with various categories of identification. “Subjugation is not grounds for an ontology,” Haraway reminds us, “it might be a visual clue.”28 Her project, as is ours, is to develop critical positionings that problematize “single vision,” whether it is the disembodied, everywhere-and-nowhere-at-the-same-time vision of objectivism or the single, universalizing vision of a “woman’s perspective.” The feminist situated knowledges to which we hope this volume will contribute are about developing “politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard.”29 In what follows, we discuss the ways in which the different chapters in this volume locate gendered silences in histories and memories of war, position the various struggles of women and feminists for remembering and memorializing, and situate their own critical feminist vision in the larger politics of memory and memory work. Silences, Sources, and the Struggles for Memory Many of the chapters in this volume are first and foremost concerned with understanding the production of historical and mnemonic silences. Silences—especially silences in the histories and memories of wars that shape contemporary lives—are deeply gendered and deeply political, and unsilencing can be a form of radical, transformative political intervention—as our personal examples discussed above illustrate. Yet, both silences and projects of unsilencing need to be contextualized, situated, and examined through critical “feminist curious” lenses. 26 Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” 191. 27 Ibid., 191. 28 Ibid., 193. 29 Ibid., 195.

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A crude “silencing/unsilencing” framework embodies a number of risks. The first risk, as we have already argued, is to assume that women’s experiences and memories of wars are undifferentiated from one another and categorically different from men’s. Another is to regard all silences as equal (and equally problematic) and celebrate all forms of unsilencing as equally progressive, without taking into account the context and politics of unsilencing. In a related vein, much of the scholarship on silences assumes a normative stance on the basis of which some women can be judged for not “speaking up,” without taking into consideration the possibility that silence can, at times, be a form of resistance and self-defense. Yet another risk is to position the narrator, in this case the feminist scholar, in a privileged position of the “knower,” who uncovers what no one else has been able to see and articulate. Cynthia Cockburn and Hourig Attarian’s contributions to this book provide inspiring reflections on “this vexed question of author-ity” (Cockburn, Chapter 14). For Attarian, this questioning requires developing research and narrative skills where we are able to “listen to silence” and regard “silence as a frame of narration” and not necessarily as a code that needs to be broken by the feminist scholar. Moreover, one needs to take into consideration to existence of “multiple publics” when one talks about silences and efforts to unsilence. For which public is the silence a silence? For which public is the “unsilencing” intended? In other words, an un-contextualized, un-critical project of unsilencing as feminist memory work may itself become the problem if we fail to engage with the complicated context and politics of memory struggles. As the editors of this volume, we can give examples of how we ourselves have fallen into these traps in our various feminist interventions. Learning from our own experiences and from the wisdom of others, we are joined in this volume by a diverse group of researchers who are searching for critical frameworks of unsilencing that take intersectionality and situated knowledges seriously, and that engage with the complicated context and politics of memory struggles. Such frameworks tend to make the uncomfortable connections between gender, memory and war/militarism even more uncomfortable, while silences appear as being more layered and more difficult to settle. A key issue all of the authors contributing to this volume deal with, as they struggle with various silences and contestations over memory, is “sources.” It is crucial to understand the axis of forgetting and the axis of expression based on the availability of sources contributing to or help to break silences. Silences can be traced, as some of the authors in this book do, in historical and mnemonic sources (or in their lack). Anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot identifies four moments when silences enter the process of historical production: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources), the moment of fact assembly (the making and collecting of archives), the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives) and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).30 30 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 26.

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For critical memory work, all of these moments and sites constitute sources for self-reflection and analysis. The different chapters in this volume, while engaging and reading into the silences in these different moments, also expand on the notion of “sources,” exploring the ways in which films, literature, autobiography, oral history, retrieved private photos, art and digital sites constitute sites of memory. How to use different sources and how to deal with the various silences in these sources remain important political and ethical questions. As Cynthia Cockburn reminds us: “methodology deserves political evaluation” (Chapter 14). The politics of sources, complicated by the digital turn, have been investigated by historiography and the emerging field of archive studies. Focusing on the case of sexual violence committed by German soldiers against Jewish women, Regina Mühlhauser’s chapter explores the influence of various institutional frameworks on what gets recorded and what gets remembered. Andrea Pető’s chapter also underlines the political consequences of the digital accessibility of photos of female perpetrators in the Second World War in Hungary, and how this changes not only modes of remembering, but the political communities of memory themselves. As Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney suggest “‘remembering’ is better seen as an active engagement with the past, as performative rather than as reproductive. It is as much a matter of acting out a relationship to the past from a particular point in the present as it is a matter of preserving and retrieving earlier stories.”31 How do such performances shape everyday life and politics in the present? What difference do the “medial frameworks”32 of memory make? And how are our own scholarly interventions implicated in the various struggles over memory? Each in its own way, the chapters in this volume seek to understand the connections between silences, sources and the struggles over memory, including our very own. Organization of the Book The chapters in the book are organized in four parts that begin with a commentary situating the chapters in the existing literature and raising critical questions. Part I deals with the difficult issue of sexual violence and the complex memory struggles over it. It is only since 2000 that sexual violence in war has been internationally recognized as a crime against humanity that requires punishment. Still, not all national laws regard sexual violence in war as a punishable crime, and even if they do, it is rarely punished in practice. In the past decades, with the development of a transnational feminist movement against sexual violence, there has been increasing public recognition and debate on sexual violence in wars, accompanied by a growing interest in the gendered articulation or silencing of such crime in 31 Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney, “Introduction: Cultural Memory and Its Dynamics,” in Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, eds. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009), 2. 32 Ibid., 2.

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memory works. As Andrea Pető, in her commentary, suggests, the chapters in Part I are engaged both in “uncovering traces of sexual violence: bodily and archival” and in understanding the ways in which, “silences are coded differently and de-coded differently depending on the context” (Pető, commentary). One overarching argument shared by the various authors is the significance of context in the articulation of experiences of sexual violence (who is interested in listening to the victims/survivors of sexual violence and in what terms). As Bürge Abiral underlines, “the presence of an audience that is curious about otherwise silenced experiences may change the content of the narration” (Chapter 4). And in many cases, that audience is sanctioned, first and foremost, by official narratives of the war, leaving survivors “with their experience of sexual violence as an individual, private matter” (Mühlhauser, Chapter 1). The terms of narrating sexual violence can differ significantly depending on context. In medical narratives, “healing of the body” gets priority, while trauma narratives focus attention on the non-visible wounds that may haunt survivors long after physical recovery. In legal contexts, the concern is usually over “evidence” and punishment of perpetrators, and not on the individual experiences and stories of women. Often, as in the case of Felicia Yap’s analysis of the European and Asian women’s narratives of rape by Japanese soldiers, court records, police records and medical reports might constitute the main “sources.” How should one analyze these sources in relation to other sources, e.g. personal and collective memory narratives? Yap, as she explores the different responses that European and Asian women gave to their experiences of rape by Japanese soldiers draws our attention to the ways in which sexual violence is articulated in national memory narratives. Whether experiencing sexual violence is coded as shameful, or on the contrary is recognized as involving ‘courage, heroism and bravery’ significantly affects whether, when and how it is remembered and articulated. In many genocide and war narratives around the world, we see greater value attached to women who kill themselves and their daughters to avoid rape than to those who endure or even use their sexual labor for survival. In recent years, it is the feminist movement, as well as feminist scholarship, that has challenged such conceptualizations of sexual violence. Katerina Stefatos and Bürge Abiral, in their analysis of memories of sexual violence among leftist prisoners in Greek and Turkish prisons respectively, show that it is not only national (official) memory cultures, but also counter-memory sub-cultures that can become obstacles for articulating sexual political violence. In both cases, women’s experiences of torture and imprisonment are marginalized in the memory narratives produced by human rights and leftist activists; and women’s ultimate articulation of such experience is constituted by major silences, including those regarding sexual political violence. Bürge Abiral draws attention to the potentialities of critical feminist interventions (shaped by intersectionality and critiques of militarism and nationalism) in such memory struggles to counter silences over women’s (and men’s) experience of sexual political violence: “A feminism which simultaneously rejects patriarchy, militarism, and nationalism would pinpoint and

Introduction

15

challenge masculinized and militarized constructions not only within the political left but in society at large. Only such feminism carries the potential to expose and unsilence past and present experiences of gendered political violence, both in the context of Turkey and worldwide” (Abiral, Chapter 4). Indeed, whether to narrate and problematize sexual violence has constituted a significant challenge for feminist activism and analysis worldwide. For instance, recent debates on sexual violence committed against Jewish women during the Shoah, point to the ways in which feminist scholarship can be divided in the conceptualization of sex, gender, and violence. Feminist scholars, skeptical of the view that sexual violence is merely a marginal story in the Big Narrative, have been revisiting the place of sexual violence in war. While the ethical issues (who has the authority to “unsilence” and for whom) remain key concerns, there is growing scholarship that focuses on the constitutive role of sexual violence in war and an emphasis on the need to understand the different aspects of such violence. In her insightful analysis of the denial of sexual violence against Jewish women in German sources, Regina Mühlhauser points to the significance of analyzing “the whole complexity of the phenomenon—the gendered as well as the sexual nature of the crime; the impact of such affects as arousal, inhibition, anxiety, satisfaction, repulsion, envy, longing, and ennui; and the intertwinedness of individual interests and collective (national, military) norms” (Mühlhauser, Chapter 1). Part II deals with the gendered memories of women’s active participation in armed forces, whether as part of organized armies or as members of the resistance. This investigation entails the questioning of easy dichotomizations such as (male) perpetrators vs. (female) victims of war. As Orna Sasson-Levy remarks in her commentary to this section, “from reading women’s memoirs of war and violence, or analyzing women soldiers’ life stories, as do the chapters in this section, it quickly becomes clear that the issue of women’s military service is more complex and deserves a more sophisticated analysis that can challenge dichotomous gendered conceptions” (Part II, Commentary). She also points out the need to expand the discussion of women in militaries and wars through an intersectional analysis, where we can recognize that “the obstacles that military women face have a specific gendered nature, but at the same time they are very much a result of class and race as well” and start to understand “how some women expand their resources, feel empowered and are socially mobile during military service, while for others, and sometimes for the same women, military service can be a humiliating, insulting and even traumatic experience” (Sasson-Levy, Part II Commentary). A striking case for the latter experience is that of former US women soldiers who face homelessness, militarized sexual trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder after their military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stephanie Yuhl looks into both the public silence over their memories of war and homecoming, as well women’s recent interventions into this silence. The falling short of promises of equal citizenship, even after women join national struggles and militaries, are of course not limited to the United States. Weronika Grzebalska concludes her analysis of women’s participation in the

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Warsaw uprising, and its public memory (Chapter 5) with the observation that “the case of the Warsaw Uprising … confirms the bitter argument raised decades earlier by Polish feminist Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmit, that by fighting for the nation’s freedom, women have not gained rights for themselves.” Although surviving women participants and a few feminist historians have challenged the silence over women’s contributions to the uprising, Grzebalska explores the limitations of these challenges in moving away from the gendered and militarized narratives of the uprising that continue to marginalize women in its memory. As a counter example, the participation of Italian women in the female military auxiliary corps established by Mussolini during the Second World War has hardly been problematized or even remembered until recently. Gianluca Schiavo analyzes the context in which some women participants of the corps have recently chosen to write memoirs based on their experience, and how these memoirs differ from those written by male participants of Mussolini’s auxiliary corps. Setenay Nil Doğan’s close analysis of the stories of the women from the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey participating in the Abkhazian War in the early 1990s, presents a more recent case of voluntary participation in an irregular armed force and highlights both the transnational flow of people and gender ideologies, and the gendered tensions raised by such flows. The narratives of the women, with whom Setenay Nil Doğan has conducted indepth interviews, point to gender as a key factor that has shaped their decisions for participation, actual experiences in Abkhazia, as well as memories of the war. Whereas the main sources in Part II are (auto)biographical texts, diaries, interviews, newspapers, public documents and official statements, Part III brings together a series of chapters that explore gendered memories of war and conflict through fictionalized and visualized memory narratives in the form of film, literature, photography and art. As Banu Karaca points out in her comments to Part III, the issue connecting the four papers together is “what makes women and their experiences invisible in each of the given contexts.” All four contributions are concerned with the positionality of the researcher as well as the ethics of the research as they investigate the very political processes of unsilencing of women’s experiences during wars. Sophie Milquet sheds light on the difficulties faced by women in the Spanish civil war, and on how women have struggled with official silencing, finally carving a space for their experiences in the official memory culture. Andrea Pető points out how resurfacing photos of female perpetrators not only complicates collective memory, but also offers legitimacy for the emerging far right movement in Hungary. Kornelia Slavova problematizes the position of the artist while comparing two influential accounts of war: Eve Ensler’s play Necessary Targets (2001) and Jasmila Žbanić’s film Grbavica, the Land of My Dreams (2006). She shows how these films reconceptualise witnessing and question power hierarchies. Marjaana Jauhola focuses on the emergence of an aesthetic political subjectivity in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquakes and the tsunami in Aceh in 2004. Bringing in the example of the ceramic installations by Endang Lestari, she shows how they strategically use silence to challenge and resist linear and developmentalist discourses of reconstruction.

Introduction

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Finally, Part IV, which we have named ‘Feminist Reimaginings’, looks simultaneously at the past and future of feminist scholarship on gendered memories of war and political violence, offering thought-provoking self-reflection and imagining new forms of research, writing and analysis. Cynthia Cockburn investigates the afterlife of her previous projects in the former-Yugoslavia, Ireland and Israel/Palestine, exploring new research methodologies, critically analyzing processes of knowledge production, and posing questions regarding the mediation of memories during the research process itself. Hourig Attarian, as she deals with archival material and familial stories of women survivors of the Armenian Genocide, combines critical historiographical and methodological analysis with creative self-reflective writing and storytelling, bringing together the personal, the political and the academic in an imaginative polyphonic text. Attarian’s imagination of an exhibit as a new form of engaging with women’s stories from the past, and Cockburn’s recent practice of mini-exhibits, with her photographs and the narratives of feminist activists working across militarized boundaries, point to new possibilities of feminist memory scholarship that combine research, activism, creative writing, and exhibiting. Both Cockburn and Attarian address the “vexed question of author-ity,” not only criticizing existing scholarship, including their own, but at the same time imagining alternatives. Reimagining is not only needed for scholarly purposes. The two personal stories of the editors regarding their own research also underline the shifting borders and contexts of feminist research. When every sphere of private life is militarized or re-militarized while new forms of surveillance are making the worst nightmare of biopolitics into everyday realities, nothing is more urgent than to revitalize our capacity to imagine new ways of connecting to the past to create a different future. Joan Scott warns us that we are in desperate need of feminist fantasies to make the world inhabitable.33 The contributions to this volume point to the transformative potentials of feminist memory work for feminist fantasizing for the future. References Al-Ali, Nadje Sadig. Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present. London: Zed Books, 2007. Altınay, Ayşe Gül. “Centennial Challenges: Denationalizing and Gendering Histories of War and Genocide.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 21 (2014): 307–312. Altınay, Ayşe Gül, Andrea Pető, eds. “Feminist Questions at the Centennial of the First World War Open Forum.” Europe Journal of Women’s Studies 4 (2014): 293–312. 33 Joan Wallach Scott, “Fantasy Echo. History and the Construction of Identity,” in The Fantasy of History, ed. Joan Wallach Scott (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 43–66.

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Bourke, Joanna. An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in 20th Century Warfare. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Bridenthal, Renate, Atina Grossmann and Marion Kaplan, eds. When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984. Cho, Sumi, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and Leslie McCall. “Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis.” Signs 38 (2013): 785–810. Cohn, Carol, ed. Women and Wars. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” The University of Chicago Legal Forum 140 (1989): 139–167. Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43/6 (1991): 1241–1299. Çalışkan, Dilara. “Queer Mothers and Daughters: The Role of Queer Kinship in the Everyday Lives of Trans Sex Worker Women in Istanbul.” Unpublished MA Thesis. Sabancı University, Istanbul, 2014. Das, Veena. Life and Words: Violence and Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Enloe, Cynthia. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Enloe, Cynthia. Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives. London: Pluto Press, 1983. Erll, Astrid. “Travelling Memory.” Parallax. Special Issue: “Transcultural Memory” 17 (2011): 4–18. Erll, Astrid and Ansgar Nünning, eds. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008. Erll, Astrid and Ann Rigney, eds. Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009. Gomez-Barris, Macarena. Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Hanley, Lynne. Writing War: Fiction, Gender, Memory. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1991. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Hirsch, Marianne and Valerie Smith, eds. “Gender and Cultural Memory,” Special Issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28 (2002). Jacobs, Janet Liebman. Memorializing the Holocaust: Gender, Genocide and Collective Memory. London: I.B. Tauris, 2011.

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Jeffords, Susan. The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Kuehnast, Kathleen, Chantal de Jonge Oudraat and Helga Hernes, eds. Women and War: Power and Protection in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011. Laban Hinton, Alexander, Thomas La Pointe and Douglas Irvin-Erickson, eds. Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Lentin, Ronit. Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. Leydesdorff, Selma. Surviving the Bosnian Genocide: The Women of Srebrenica Speak, trans. Kay Richardson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Lutz, Catherine. “The Gender of Theory.” In Women Writing Culture, edited by Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, 250–266. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala, Dina Francesca Haynes and Naomi Cahn, eds. On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and Post-Conflict Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Ofer, Dalia and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds. Women in the Holocaust. Binghamton, NY: Vail Ballou Press, 1998. Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Daniel Levy, eds. The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pető, Andrea. “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna.” In Life after Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, edited by Dirk Schumann and Richard Bessel, 129–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Phoenix, Ann, and Pamela Pattynama. “Intersectionality.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13 (2006): 187–192. Reading, Anna. The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture, and Memory (London: Palgrave, 2002 Reardon, Betty. Sexism and the War System. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College Press, 1985. Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2009. Sayigh, Rosemary. “Women’s Nakba Stories: Between Being and Knowing.” In Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, 135–158. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Fantasy Echo. History and the Construction of Identity.” In The Fantasy of History, edited by Joan Wallach Scott, 43–66. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis.” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–1075.

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Scott, Joan Wallach. “Millenial Fantasies: The Future of ‘Gender’ in the 21st Century.” In Gender: die Tücken einer Kategorie, edited by Claudia Honegger and Caroline Arni, 19–38. Zurich: Chronos, 2001. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, edited by Donna J. Haraway, 183–201. New York: Routledge, 1991. Sjoberg, Laura and Sandra Via, eds. Gender, War and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2010. Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995. Yoshiaki, Yoshimi. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, trans. Suzanne O’Brien. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. San Diego: Harvest, 1938.

PART I Sexual Violence: Silence, Narration, Resistance

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Part I: Commentary Andrea Pető

“Disassemble the unthinkable to the unthought”:1 Sexual Violence Narrated “The wreck is a fact./The worst has happened.” This is how Kay Ryan begins her poem, Salvage, describing the aftermath of violence and war. “The salvage trucks/back in and/the salvage men/begin to sort/and stack,” she continues. For a long time “the salvage men” who were mostly in charge of the narrative as “the self-taught salvagers disassemble/ the unthinkable/ to the unthought.” The differentiation between “unthinkable” and “unthought” is particularly useful when introducing the chapters in this section of the book as they are all related to process of speaking about the “unthinkable,” about sexual violence. Historical periods and political situations can be characterized on the basis of how sexual violence is talked about by contemporaries. The chapters in this section relate to the manner in which feminism initiated and reflected on the processes of unsilencing. The temptation to discuss sexual violence in dichotomies—silence and voice, victim and perpetrator—is difficult to resist. The chapters in this section go beyond the existing, sometimes dualistic explanatory frames, and they discuss the factors influencing how sexual violence has been talked about in particular historical contexts, focusing on women’s contribution to this painful process. First I would like to discuss the previous narrative frames, in order to point out how the chapters in this section critically reflect on them. This will be followed by a discussion of the temporality and materiality of narrating sexual violence. The first frame of speaking about sexual violence is that of its normalization as a part of warfare.2 For a long time rape was considered to be a “normal” part of warfare under the slogan: “war is war.” When war became an action controlled by international law, a second framework developed which conceptualized rape and sexual violence as consequences of the lack or partial failure of institutional mechanisms and legal sanctions. As part of the feminist framework, the third explanatory frame labels sexual violence as a conscious policy of actors involved in 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/22. Thanks to John Roth who first mentioned this poem at the workshop: “Teaching about Rape as a Weapon of War and Genocide” at Campion Hall, Oxford in March, 2014, which he co-organized with Carol Rittner. 2 Andrea Pető, “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna.” In Life after Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, eds. Dirk Schumann and Richard Bessel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 129–149.

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warfare, one that is used to manifest power, whereby sexual violence is considered to be an offence against the community to which the victim belongs. The fourth frame, elaborated within the human rights framework, categorizes sexual violence as a form of torture. These explanatory frames have developed in parallel with discourses on sexual violence and the punishment (or not) of perpetrators. The four frames have different vocabularies, different agendas and different audiences. The visibility of sexual violence depends, of course, on the historical period and on historical contexts. Sexual violence has been a part of a repertoire of violence which is used by different actors during military conflicts for the reaffirmation of their victory and to manifest their power. Silence and the silencing of victims (reinforced by shame) have been built-in elements of sexual violence during war time until, in the twentieth century, it started to be instrumentalized for its own purposes. Bringing sexual violence into the public discourse also has its own temporality. The occupation of Belgium was announced in French newspapers as the “Rape of Belgium,” heralding a new era in speaking about sexual violence: the era of the appropriation of the vocabulary of rape for national purposes and to differentiate between honorable and dishonorable victims of sexual violence. The differentiation leading to clear dichotomies has continued. The act of sexual violence itself creates clear distinctions: there are those who are raping and those who are being raped, and this is narrated in a dichotomy: the dichotomy of visibility and absence. Such dichotomies as victim/perpetrator and silence/narration continue to haunt the language of scholarship and theorizing about the issue of rape. The second major wave of events which changed the discourse on sexual violence took place during WWII where in different war theatres rape was used as a weapon. The rape of Nanking 1937–1938, the rapes committed by the German soldiers in occupied Europe, and the rapes committed by the Red Army while liberating Eastern Europe all created different forms of silences and international responses. (see the Introduction to this volume). The second wave of the women’s movement put this issue at the top of its agenda. The goal was to unveil the silences around rape during war time and define the framework of rape as a conscious policy. Women are the most probable victims of sexual violence following the logic of patriarchy, and this statement already determined that sexual violence against men was talked about even less, some even considering that talking about men as victims of sexual violence was a tool to diminish the importance of women as victims. In the dirty wars following WWII, the wars in Algeria, Guatemala, Indonesia and Uganda among others, sexual violence was present, but following the publication of the path-breaking book by Susan Brownmiller, Against our Will, feminist activists started to fight to make sexual violence visible and an issue of public debate. The activist agenda was informed by the wish that if sexual violence were discussed, then there would be fewer rapes and more humiliation for the perpetrators. Parallel with and linked to these interventions by feminist activists and scholars, the institutional and legal framework was transformed: after the war

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crimes committed in former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda and due to the intervention of international women’s movements, rape was acknowledged as a war crime. The first step, making the fact of sexual violence acknowledged as a war crime, is followed by analyzing and dismantling the mechanisms that create the dichotomy of silence and narration. The language of women’s activism has created the grammar of change, influencing how sexual violence is talked about. The Human rights discourse discussed sexual violence committed against women as “honor” crimes even in the 1970s. Changes in the international and transnational organizations, such as the holding of the world conferences on women (Beijing 1995, etc.), together with massive amount data collected, led to the adoption, by the United Nations’ General Assembly, of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) and the establishment of a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. This issue, sexual violence during wartime, helped to forge alliances beyond the national context, but it also created a perpetrator vs. victim paradigm, a dichotomy which frames not only the legal framework: men are considered as torture victims; there is no space for them as victims of sexual violence, but it created another dichotomy of understanding. This also does not give consideration to the fact that not all male soldiers are rapists. Men too can be victims of sexual violence, a phenomenon that is important to study, independently from the numbers. Masculinity studies construct hypermasculinity in opposition to those who are not following the imagined directives in their behavior. There are different frameworks in which rape has been talked about recently: Human Security, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Law. The human security discourse reinforced efforts for the successful lobbying of different women’s organizations towards the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1325. This framework defines the women/men, victim and perpetrator binary. The human rights discourse speaks about gender based violence, and the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) regulates the position of women. The identification and analysis of different layers in the mediatization of rape cases has been a recent development in scholarship. The chapters in Part I contribute to the extensive literature on sexual violence, by bringing in new points of view in this area. The authors aim to contribute to the process of moving beyond the dichotomy of silence and telling, by examining how silences are coded differently depending on who has the power to determine who is an honorable or dis-honorable victim. Authors in this section seek to identify who is breaking the silence around sexual violence and their motives for speaking out? The speaker’s position is always a position of power, and so it is crucial to understand who is speaking and why. They also investigate what kinds of sources are available for studying sexual violence and what are the limits of using these sources. The documentation of sexual violence raises complex methodological and ethical questions. Sexual violence has an unprecedented temporality as the experience of violence will remain closed in the body of the victim and also in the perpetrator. Their common

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interest would be to keep the story out of public view. However, when silence about sexual violence can be interpreted in both ways: as a form of denying agency from the victims via lack of public acknowledgement and also as a form of agency, as refusing to talk about the events takes away from the perpetrators the pleasure of repeating the violence in a verbal from. The photographs of the “Rape of Nanking” show the results, not the act with mutilated bodies of women, so the narratives around those bodies need to be constructed, and those narratives are also influenced by the different frames of narration. In the case of sexual violence committed against Jewish women the victims were killed as a part of the Nazi plan to destroy European Jewry and also as a part of keeping these acts secret. The fact that survivors speak about very few rape cases in their testimonies also demonstrates how difficult is to create a space for narration. The chapters are based on different types of sources relating to a phenomenon which allegedly has not left any sources behind for us to study. Ryan talks in her poem about objects “which are not/carriers of pain.” That leads us to the specificities of narrating sexual violence by those who are carrying pain in their bodies. This imposes a particular ethical and methodological challenge, as very often no written documentation remains about sexual violence. The chapters in this section uncover traces of sexual violence, both bodily and archival. In Chapter 1 Regina Mühlhäuser deals with the complex web of denials, as sexual violence against Jewish women during the war of annihilation, 1941–1945, has been denied by all parties involved in the process: German military officials and soldiers, Jewish women and men and also some historians of the Shoah. Therefore Mühlhäuser explores how German soldiers and military leadership made the frequent and structural rape of Jewish women invisible with their rhetorical frames. Katherine Stefatos (Chapter 3) looks at the female and political body in pain by examining sexual torture and trauma during the Greek Military Dictatorship (1967–1974) and using interviews with women who were victims of torture in the prison and who later either published memoirs or gave interviews themselves. Felicia Yap, in Chapter 2 on remembering war brutalities based on the memories of European and Asian women in Japanese-occupied territories, makes use of British government reports and the testimonies of English women to courts of law to demonstrate the two types of victim of Japanese aggression: those who were heard and those who were not listened to as they were only subjects of colonial rule and their well-being was not an issue. In Chapter 4, Burge Abiral analyzes narratives of female prisoners who were victims of sexual violence in Turkey during the dictatorship. In the four cases, sexual violence was instrumentalized for different purposes: in the case of the Greek and Turkish dictatorships it served as form of torture and as a disciplining force for controlling leftist prisoners who, according to the military junta, questioned traditional gender hierarchies by being active in the leftist and student movements. In the case of Jewish women in the Holocaust, Mühlhäuser points out—in a timely contribution to the debate about sexual violence and the Shoah—that sexual violence was one step before the total annihilation, as a part

Part I: Commentary

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of the war that Nazi Germany waged against Europe’s Jewish populations. In the case of South Asia, the rapes committed by the Japanese were a part of the militarism of committing rapes in order to manifest the victory of the army and to enforce ethnic superiority. The narration of sexual violence must be interrogated as far as materiality is concerned: it is the flesh and the body which are affected first. However, sexual violence does not have a visual representation or canon. That is clearly manifested when the private monument of the rapes committed by the Red Army soldiers in Poland was erected as a private initiative in Gdansk in 2013. The banality of the statue: a man in Red Army uniform penetrating the body of a pregnant woman on her back caused controversy and forced the authorities to remove the statue. Photographs of the Nanking massacre or police photos in Vienna about dead women’s bodies discovered in Prater Park, document “the unthought,” which raises the question of the aesthetic of catastrophes. (Jauhola, Chapter 12). The chapters in this section introduce the different layers of mediation about how “the carriers of pain” become speakers of the pain. Attempts to understand the power relations related to silencing often falling into two traps. The first is the trap of conspiracy: connecting sexual violence with the intentions of certain governments. The second is over emphasizing agency as a central category of analysis. The chapters in this section prove that silences are coded differently and de-coded differently depending on the context which reconceptualizes agency as a category of analysis. Asking the question: who is breaking the silence, who is the “proper” victim? In her chapter Stefatos explores how silencing is a constitutive part of disciplining, while Mülhauser points out, based on the sources, that sexual violence was a form of punishment. Yap underlines the frames of narrative, exploring the factors influencing narrative and the spaces of narration about sexual violence. It is unprecedented or “unthinkable” as Ryan describes sexual violence, and it has a very specific temporality. The chapters in the section also struggle with the specific temporality of sexual violence inflicted on women: how to conceptualize the time which has passed after the event happened and the event has been narrated. The authors look at the modality of domination derived from the ability and possibility to tell the story. The grammar of the discussion—how sexual violence is narrated—is closely related to the issue of how it is remembered and acknowledged by others. This selection of chapters is an important step towards that recognition. Reference Pető, Andrea. “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna.” In Life after Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, eds. Dirk Schumann and Richard Bessel, 129–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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Chapter 1

The Historicity of Denial: Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the War of Annihilation, 1941–19451 Regina Mühlhäuser2

Erich von Manstein, born in 1887, was one of the most prominent commanders of Germany’s armed forces, the Wehrmacht, during WWII. On 10 August 1946, he testified as a witness for the defense at the Nuremberg Trials. When questioned about the effectiveness of the chain of command and the military laws during the war in the Soviet Union he replied: We exercised military jurisdiction as we had to do according to our training, in other words, according to right and law and as decent soldiers. I should like to quote as an example that the first two death sentences with which I had to deal were imposed at the beginning of the Russian campaign on two German soldiers in my corps for the rape of Russian women, and it was the same everywhere.3

Von Manstein referred to a case of two soldiers who, he claimed, had been sentenced to death for rape charges in order to illustrate the respectability and honor of the Wehrmacht. By emphasizing the early timing of this event, he implied that acts of sexual violence were punished severely by the German armed forces, and that military discipline was maintained through rigorous sentencing. The picture von Manstein conjured up—that sexual violence against local women during the war in the Soviet Union was strictly prohibited and severely persecuted—was disseminated by former soldiers and remains a widespread belief. 1 This chapter has appeared in print before as Mülhäuser, Regina. “The Historicity of Denial. Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the War of Annihilation, 1941–1945,” in Lessons and Legacies XI, eds. Hilary Earl and Karl A. Schleunes (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 31–58. Copyright © 2014 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2014. All rights reserved. 2 I would like to thank the members of the International Research Group Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict (SVAC; www.warandgender.net) for the inspiring discussion of different aspects of this issue. 3 Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Proceedings, 1948 (IMT), vol. 20, 610.

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Until the 1990s and the Wehrmachtsausstellung, the image of the disciplined Wehrmacht soldier was frequently referred to in order to assert the “clean hands of the Wehrmacht” as opposed to the “dirty hands of the SS” who were depicted as the real bearers of cruelty during the war. Today, the narrative of the “clean Wehrmacht” has been shown to be a societal legend.4 Nonetheless, the myth of German soldiers’ sexual abstinence during the war, the occupation, and the “Final Solution” continues to be pervasive—particularly, but by no means only in Germany. In the SS as well as in the Wehrmacht, so the argument goes, “ordinary men” participated in horrendous atrocities, but sexual violence was not one of them. The aim to emphasize the uniqueness of Nazi racist and anti-Semitic violence seems, somewhat tragically, to have contributed to obfuscating knowledge about sexual crimes. According to Nazi racial ideology, sexual contact between a person who was considered to be “Aryan” and someone who was categorized as Slavic and/or “ethnically alien” ( fremdvölkisch) was defined as “undesirable intercourse” (unerwünschter Geschlechtsverkehr); sexual contact with someone who was designated Jewish and/or “of another race” (artfremd) was regarded as proof of the “degeneration of the German ethnic body” (Volkskörper) and was strictly prohibited (verbotener Geschlechtsverkehr).5 The notion that these prescriptions were consistently enforced and shaped the daily life of “Aryan” men during the Nazi regime remains widespread even today. It is still often assumed that Nazi soldiers generally did not rape women considered to be “inferior,” in particular Jewish women, to avoid violating Nazi ideology and laws.6 The fact that the NSDAP promoted “racially valuable” marriages and that Hitler officially condemned prostitution supports the perception that German soldiers and SS-men exercised “racial awareness” (Rassenbewußtsein) and “male self-restraint” (Manneszucht). Recent research on the concentration camps has established that racism and antisemitism as well as the threat of punishment did indeed restrict the sexual behavior of German guards in the confined spaces of camps. As Na’ama Shik has argued, the incarceration of Jewish women as “subhumans,” their shorn hair, dirty clothing and poor physical condition made them unthinkable as (sexual) Other for German men.7 Similarly, the Blood Laws had a repressing effect on German men within the borders of the Reich. Last but not least the determination of who belonged to/was excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft was intrinsic to German 4 Klaus Naumann, “Die ‘saubere’ Wehrmacht. Gesellschaftsgeschichte einer Legende,” Mittelweg 36 7/4 (1998): 8–18. 5 Alexandra Przyrembel, “Rassenschande,” Reinheitsmythos und Vernichtungslegitimation im Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 63. 6 For this position compare, for instance, Jeffrey Burds, “Sexual Violence in World War II, 1939–1945,” Politics & Society 37/1 (2009): 35–73, here 42. 7 Na’ama Shik, “Sexual Abuse of Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” in Brutality and Desire. War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 221–246.

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society and social monitoring as well as the fear of denunciation became part of everyday life for many after 1933.8 In the vast territory of the Soviet Union, however, where the populations seemed generally foreign and often not distinguishable to German soldiers and SS-men, the Nazi vilification of “racial mixing” was by no means congruent with the interests and the behavior of the majority of the men. Contemporary and post-war eyewitness accounts as well as official military documents indicate that sexual violence by German troops was a widespread reality.9 It could also merge with sexual bartering, professional prostitution and consensual encounters.10 The perpetrators were among the approximately 10,000,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and the additional SS and police-men as well as the civilian employees who operated at the Eastern front; they came from different social strata and included Germans as well as members of allied militaries and local collaborators. The victims came from all social, national, ethnic and religious backgrounds, they included nonJews as well as Jews. Most of them were women and girls, but men and boys could and did also become victims of sexual violence.11 The German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH), the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) as well as the Personal Staff of the Reichsführer-SS (RF-SS) knew about the sexual activities of their men. In a rather terse language, often in the form of a list, local military commanders or civil bureaucrats reported cases of rape and gang rape in  8 See, for example, Przyrembel, “Rassenschande;” Patricia Szober, “The Prosecution of Jewish-Gentile Sex in the Race Defilement Trials,” in Lessons and Legacies VII, ed. Dagmar Herzog (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 159–168.  9 Birgit Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt. Sexualverbrechen vor deutschen Militärgerichten 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004); Doris F. Bergen, “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust: Unique or Typical?” in Lessons and Legacies VII, ed. Herzog, 179–200; Monika Flaschka, “Race, Rape and Gender in Nazi Occupied Territories” (PhD diss., Kent State University, Ohio, 2009); Anatoly Podolsky, “The Tragic Fate of Ukrainian Jewish Women under Nazi Occupation, 1941–1944,” in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, eds. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2010), 94–107. Wendy Jo Gertjejanssen, “Victims, Heroes, Survivors. Sexual Violence on the Eastern Front during World War II” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2004); David Raub Snyder, Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007). 10 An attempt to show the whole variety of violent and consensual heterosexual encounters as well as everything in between can be found in Regina Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion 1941–1945 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010). 11 Bergen, “Unique or Typical,” 182; Regina Mühlhäuser, “Sex, Race, Volksgemeinschaft. Sexual Encounters of German Soldiers with Local Women and Men during the War and the Occupation in the Soviet Union, 1941–1945,” in Beyond the Racial State, eds. Mark Roseman, Devin Pendas, and Richard Wetzell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), forthcoming.

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the same context as looting, cattle theft, and excessive consumption of alcohol.12 On August 10, 1941, less than two months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the command of the 9th Army reported that the number of sexual crimes in the combat zone had risen significantly.13 In response, the Wehrmacht and SS issued military regulations to prevent violations of §5a of the Wartime Penal Code on rape (Notzucht) and §2 of the Blood Protection Law (Blutschutzgesetz) on “race defilement,” as well as to curb “undesirable intercourse.”14 In the day-to-day situation of war and occupation, however, rigorous action was rarely taken. Female victims did not have many reasons to report rape cases to the Nazi authorities, since they could not expect a fair trial, and risked being confronted with accusations of complicity, not only by the military courts, but also within their family and by neighbors. While at the Western front, cases of sexual violence were mostly reported by victims and/or their families, acts of sexual violence at the Eastern front usually did not come to the attention of the authorities unless military commanders or translators started to investigate a rumor. In general, it is safe to assume that unreported cases were much more numerous.15 If reported at all, disciplinary consequences seem to have been the exception. In contrast to desertion, unauthorized leave, self-mutilation or acts that undermined military morale, the Wehrmacht did not consider heterosexual violence a “primary crime.” Consequently, the number of cases tried in front of military courts was comparably low.16 The military leadership faced a dilemma: on the one hand, sexual activity was considered to be undesirable, because it jeopardized military discipline and the health and reputation of the troops and also violated the principles of Nazi racial ideology. On the other hand, male virility was considered to be an expression of strength and, ultimately, beneficial to the war effort. In addition, the conquest of “enemy women” symbolized the victory over foreign territory.17 As Annette Timm has argued, “the expression of male sexuality was not a matter of individual pleasure but of the nation’s 12 See, for example, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944. Exhibition Catalogue (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), 100. 13 AOK 9, Anweisung, Betr.: Überwachung der Disziplin, 10.08.1941, NARA [National Archives and Record Administration] RG 242/314/679, 649. 14 Merkblatt für das Verhalten der deutschen Soldaten in den besetzten Ostgebieten, Anlage zu 6. Div., Abt. Ic, Nr. 169/42 geh., 26.06.1942, Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau [BA-MA] RH 26–6/67; Hauptamt SS-Gericht, SS-Reichsamt, 4. Sammelerlaß, 01.04.1941, Befehl vom 19.04.1939, Bundearchiv Berlin [BArch] NS 7/3, 84–129, here 90. 15 Beck, Wehrmacht, 172; Christian Thomas Huber, Die Rechtsprechung der deutschen Feldkriegsgerichte bei Straftaten von Wehrmachtssoldaten gegen Angehörige der Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Gebieten (Marburg: Tectum, 2007), 95. 16 Beck, Wehrmacht, 327. 17 Ruth Seifert, “Der weibliche Körper als Symbol und Zeichen. Geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt und die kulturelle Konstruktion des Krieges,” in Gewalt im Krieg. Ausübung, Erfahrung und Verweigerung von Gewalt in Kriegen des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Andreas Gestrich (Münster: LIT, 1996), 13–33.

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military strength.”18 Nazi authorities thus widely accepted heterosexual activities of German men as a normal, virtually unavoidable, even “healthy” part of warfare. The following article traces one aspect of this history: acts of sexual violence perpetrated by men considered to be “Aryan” against woman designated as Jewish.19 In order to grasp a more precise picture, this paper will look at the issue from three different angles: Firstly, we can deepen our understanding of sexual violence against Jewish women by developing a more differentiated conception of the crime itself. Since the 1990s, international law has codified a wide range of sexual and sexualized acts as War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and Part of Genocide.20 These crimes include forced disrobement, sexual humiliation, sexual torture, rape with fingers and hands, rape with non-bodily objects, rape with genitals, gang rape, sexual enslavement, forced pregnancy, and genital mutilation. The documentation of the broad scope of sexual and sexualized acts of violence reveals the deep connection between the perpetration of violence and arousal, cruelty and pleasure.21 Kirsten Campbell has alerted us to the fact that we need to analyze the dynamics that evolve between the perpetrator and the victim in detail in order to understand the specificity of the harm he (for the majority of perpetrators are male) inflicts on her (for most victims are female).22 In the first part of this article, I will thus ask about the specificity of acts of sexual violence by German men against Jewish women. Which forms of sexual violence can we document? Were these acts directed against Jewish women as women and/or as Jews? Secondly, this paper will consider the particular territory as well as the stage of the war (invasion, occupation, genocidal campaign) when asking about the ways in which German soldiers and SS-men acted with regard to the Blood Laws. From the outset, the “Barbarossa campaign” was inextricably linked to the persecution, dehumanization, and extermination of the European Jews. For a soldier’s understanding of this war in general and his own role in particular, military orders and the ideological framework of Nazism as well as general ideas about soldiering and certain long-standing cultural conceptions of “the east” played a decisive role. The second part of this article will thus ask in which ways the specific conditions in “the east” shaped the perpetration of sexual violence against Jewish women. How did German soldiers and SS-men speak about it? How did they interpret the Blood Laws in this specific territory? 18 Anette Timm, “Sex with a Purpose. Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11/1–2 (2002): 223–255, here 253. 19 Since I focus on representing sexual violence against women in this article, I will not elaborate on sexual acts directed against men and boys. 20 Kelley Dawn Askin, “Prosecuting Wartime Rape and Other Gender-Related Crimes under International Law: Extraordinary Advances, Enduring Obstacles,” Berkeley Journal for International Law 21 (2003): 288–349. 21 On the sexualization of wartime violence see Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta Books, 1999). 22 Kirsten Campbell, “The Gender of Transitional Justice: Law, Sexual Violence and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1/3 (2007): 411–432.

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In the third part, this article will then turn to the military prosecution of “race defilement.” Recent research on sexual violence in conflict zones has suggested that the form of warfare as well as particular cultural conceptions of masculinity and ethnicity, that is, “the Other” in relation to “the Own,” have an important impact on the scale, the forms and patterns of sexual violence. Central for variations in the perpetration of sexual violence are the military regulation measures—implemented by the army leadership, the commanders of a small unit, the military courts, and so forth.23 If we apply these findings to the War of Annihilation in the Soviet Union, it becomes necessary to ask about the measures employed by the Wehrmacht and SS to regulate the sexuality of their men. Did the OKH, the OKW, and the RF-SS punish or tolerate sexual violence against Jewish women? Which impact did this have for the perpetration of sexual violence? To conclude, I will come back to Von Manstein’s denial of the pervasiveness of sexual violence and argue that it became so powerful because it followed specific communicative rules about wartime rape that were shared by the Allies in the middle of the twentieth century. To resist this history of denial and take a closer look at the historical situation thus not only means to recognize the voices and experiences of the victims. In addition, it also gives us a chance to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of wartime sexual violence and its representation. Different Forms of Sexual Violence My analysis is based on oral testimonies and written accounts of victims, spectators and perpetrators as well as on Nazi documents. Some describe acts which they have experienced themselves or witnessed directly, others report crimes they know from hearsay. Inevitably, all of these sources are shaped by contemporary ideas of heterosexual violence as well as by gendered conceptions of guilt and shame.24 In many cases, the sources do not offer reliable details. We have to take into account that eye witnesses deliberately conceal details (many consider the details to be too intimate) or exaggerate the degree of violence, whereby they stress that they were at the mercy of the German men and resistance was impossible. Some stories are most definitely based on rumors, passed on in order to scandalize Germans, avert suspicion, or simply to distract oneself with “sex-and-crime-stories.” Despite these short-comings, we must assume that the testimonies—as a collective body of evidence—refer to real occurrences: for every account there are others that describe

23 Elisabeth Jean Wood, “Variation in Sexual Violence during War,” Politics and Society 34/3 (2006): 307–342. 24 Accounts of sexual violence generally follow a gendered “rape script.” For a critical analysis see among others Sharon Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words. A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, eds. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York: Routledge, 2002), 385–403.

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similar forms of sexual violence. Thus, this essay is not so much concerned with individual accounts as it is with the entire body, the ensemble of sources. One eye-witness who elaborates on the perpetration of sexual violence is Jakob Littner. Born in Budapest to a Polish father and a Czech mother, he moved to Munich in 1911. In February 1939, the Nazis expelled him because he was a Polish Jew. Littner emigrated to Prague, from where he fled to Poland and then to the Soviet Union. On July 2, 1941, he experienced the invasion of the German armed forces in Zbaracz, Ukraine. According to his report, the first artillery soldiers, who originated from Southern Germany, were friendly, but this changed when additional Wehrmacht soldiers and SS-troops arrived two days later. In his description of the following days, he cites several incidents of sexual violence. In the city was a terrible chaos, it was swarmed with SS-men who were armed to their teeth, the initiation of our tragedy began before noon already. Both synagogues were put on fire, then came what turned out to be the Bartholomäus night for us. Theft, murder, rapes came upon us like a hailstorm. No Jewish flat was spared. That was only the beginning. [ … ] Gusti Segal, a very pretty girl, was fetched under the pretense that they had to show her something. They led her into an empty room, and there she was raped. Sobbing she came back and related that aside from her the daughter of the former policeman Goldappel as well as a couple of other girls known to us were treated in the same way. All of them were later murdered. Indeed a remarkable illustration of the principles of the so-called race defilement of the Third Reich.25

Littner describes rape as crime that accompanied other forms of violence and looting during the invasion. Similar stories exist from different territories.26 Ruth Seifert has pointed out that it is one of the unwritten rules of war to allow the victor to perpetrate violence against women in the short, unsettled periods directly after combat. They were regarded as a reward and booty after a successful conquest. It also sent a message to enemy men: that they were not able to protect “their” women anymore, a message that symbolized emasculation and destruction.27 For the men in the front divisions, it was often not distinguishable if the women they encountered were Jewish. Shortly afterwards, however, the Wehrmacht employed a military administration that registered the population, which included visibly marking Jews.28 Still, sexual violence against women designated as Jewish persisted. 25 Jakob Littner, Mein Weg durch die Nacht, published by Roland Ulrich and Reinhard Zachau (Berlin: Metropol, 2002), 51. 26 For instance, Joheved Inciuriene, “Rettung und Widerstand in Kaunas,” in Holocaust in Litauen. Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, eds. Vincas Bartusevicius, Joachim Tauber, and Wolfram Wette (Köln: Böhlau, 2003), 201–217, here 202. 27 Seifert, “Körper.” 28 Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht, Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (München: Oldenbourg, 2008), 134.

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For many women this form of violence was predictable as one effect of war, and their fear of rape could become a source of action, which is evidenced by the numerous stories about the hiding and disguising of young women. If a woman became a victim of a sexual attack, she probably feared being looked upon by her family and friends. It is all the more surprising that Littner’s documentation indicates that girls and women did not necessarily try to keep the experience of sexual violence a secret, but sometimes confided in persons around them immediately after the event. The fact that Littner actually mentions the full names of rape victims also appears to be rather unusual. He did not seem to think that this was a private matter that would dishonor the victims and their families. Maybe he felt authorized to mention the victims’ names, because by the time he compiled his report they had been murdered. Or he might have thought it necessary to provide a name in order to emphasize the authenticity of his report. In written testimonies or recorded interviews with women after the end of the war we hardly ever find female survivors who openly talk about an experience of sexual violence. On the contrary, it is remarkable how many women elaborate that sexual violence was the one form of violence they luckily did not fall victim to, because of the perpetrator’s anti-Semitic and racial beliefs. On the one hand, narratives like that might reflect a historical reality. On the other hand, they might conceal actual experiences of sexual violence. Either way, these narratives point to the fact that female survivors felt forced to affirm that they had not been raped.29 Indeed, the practice of treating rape, on the one hand, as a quasi-normal, inevitable, matter-of-fact byproduct of war and, on the other hand, as a personal catastrophe for the individual victims created an atmosphere in which sexual violence became an “open secret,” something which one talked about without saying who or what one was talking about. In this atmosphere, every woman was a potential rape victim—an experience which was associated with shame. In a bizarre twist, women became the guilty ones, responsible for the soiled honor of their families. All the more, women might have felt the need to convince their family, friends or community members that sexual violence had not taken place. At the same time, as Joan Ringelheim has emphasized, female survivors tended to play down certain experiences after the end of the war, because they considered them to be marginal in relation to murder and extermination.30 In the case of sexual violence we might also need to consider an argument Zoe Waxman brought forward when she asked how far women might have decided to deny

29 Regina Mühlhäuser, “Female Agency and Gendered Presuppositions. Narratives of Female Jewish Survivors about successful Self-Defense against German Soldiers during the War of Annihilation,” Position Paper SVAC-Workshop “Constellations and Dynamics of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict,” Sciences Po Paris, July 6–7, 2012. 30 Joan Ringelheim, “The Split between Gender and the Holocaust,” in Woman in the Holocaust, eds. Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

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their experiences in order to spare their fathers or husbands another moment of guilt that they had failed to protect them.31 One of the few memoirs that explicitly describes the experience of sexual violence is I will survive by Sala Pawlowicz Kaminskia who was 15 years old when the German Wehrmacht invaded Lask, Poland, on September 6, 1939. She and other teenagers worked for the Germans, clearing rubble and cleaning buildings. One day Pawlowicz realized that the police officer who guarded her group, an “ethnic German,” was watching her more closely than the others. When he asked her if she was Jewish, she affirmed. Later that day, he took her to his office and forced her to undress: I removed the blouse and dropped it at my feet. He looked at me for several seconds. “What’s the matter? You’re not ashamed, are you? You’re nothing special, but I like you! Come on, come on! Proceed!” I was incapable of moving. “Then-I-willdo-it-for-you!” he shouted and ripped my skirt and slip from me. [ … ] “You don’t know how to obey … I’ll show you. But I can’t have you, scum, because you’re Jewish, and filthy. What a shame!” He swung the whip across my breasts. “Here’s what you can have for being a dirty Jew—instead of me—this!” He lashed the whip again and again and I fainted.32

Pawlowicz’s memoir is based on several interviews the NPR journalist Kevin Klose conducted with her over a two-year period at the beginning of the 1960s. One has to assume that it is no coincidence that the most outspoken and detailed memoir on sexual violence was written by a man. Still, the book was published with Pawlowicz’s approval. At any rate, the cited passage draws attention to an argument that social psychologist Rolf Pohl brings forward when he states that the soldier’s feeling of sexual arousal and lust unmasks the male self-image, according to which the individual man (and especially the soldier) is in full control of his body and mind, as an illusion. When faced with this loss of control, soldiers experience a “hatred towards their own (sexual) desire [ … ], for which the woman is held responsible and thus punished.”33 In the case described here male hatred would be twofold, directed against the woman and the Jew. Pawlowicz’s memoir indicates that we have to ask if the criminal offense “race defilement” induced particular forms of sexual violence, that is, if sexual or 31 Zoe V. Waxman, “Towards an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Masculinity, Femininity and Genocide,” in Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination. Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies, eds. Christian Wiese and Paul Betts (London: Continuum, 2010), 311–321, here 319. 32 Sala Pawlowicz, I Will Survive, recorded by Kevin Close (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962), 35. 33 Rolf Pohl, “Massenvergewaltigung. Zum Verhältnis von Krieg und männlicher Sexualität,” Mittelweg 36 11/2 (2002): 53–75, here 71.

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sexualized acts that did not involve genital intercourse were purposefully directed against Jewish women, because the perpetrators were not allowed to “really have” them. Indeed, acts that did not involve genital intercourse and were thus outside of the sphere of reproduction—such as enforced disrobement, sexual humiliation, sexual torture, rape with fingers and hands, rape with non-bodily objects—were likely to be interpreted as acts that did not violate the Nazi laws. In the first months after the German invasion, so-called milder forms of sexual violence seem to have been a tool that soldiers and SS-men used when they searched houses or interrogated people. Military regulations indeed instructed the soldiers to body-search people for firearms or secret messages. However, these instructions did not include touching a victim’s breast, squeezing her nipples, fingering in her vagina for several minutes, or other sexual violations. Testimonies on incidents like this are numerous and reveal that the men occasionally interpreted the regulations according to their “self-will” (Eigen-Sinn).34 In situations where the (often very young) men felt bored or afraid, acts of verbal, voyeuristic and physical sexual assault could offer them an opportunity to affirm their own superiority and power and to ease their feelings of apathy and stress. For the victims, these acts could mean not only debasement, but also a severe attack on their bodily and sexual integrity as well as their sense of being. A number of testimonies indicate that these practices were furthermore often accompanied by torture with whips or sticks. Another form of violence that did not involve direct sexual intercourse was to force two or more prisoners to perform sexual acts on each other. In Koldichevo, a Byelorussian camp, local guards forced a male Jewish prisoner to perform sexual acts with fellow female prisoners at gunpoint. Similar situations enacted by German guards can be found in testimonies from Poland.35 These acts not only constituted sexual violence against the female prisoners. The violence perpetrated against the male prisoners also must be seen in connection with sexuality: the guards entertained themselves by attempting to instrumentalize the libidinal reaction of the male prisoners. As we have seen in other theaters of war, men sometimes display physical arousal in a situation like this against their will. Gaby Zipfel has used the term “libidinal coercion” in order to describe this exploitation of male sexual desire.36 Besides the thrill this spectacle might have aroused in the male guards, this kind of taboo-breaking atrocity also served the perpetrators by putting a distance between themselves and

34 On the concept of “self-will” see Alf Lüdtke, Eigen-Sinn, Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus (Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1993), 377. 35 KGB RB, record 19592–9, N.A.K., 55, 57, 62, cit. in Chiari, Alltag, 192. 36 Gaby Zipfel, “Ausnahmezustand Krieg? Anmerkungen zu soldatischer Männlichkeit, sexueller Gewalt und militärischer Einhegung,” in Krieg und Geschlecht. Sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg und Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern, eds. Insa Eschebach, and Regina Mühlhäuser (Berlin: Metropol, 2008), 55–74, here 70–74.

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the prisoners. As Doris Bergen has argued, the prisoners were removed “from their torturer’s sphere of ‘normal’ treatment of women and fellow human beings.”37 Another example from Koldichevo demonstrates that German SS-officers sometimes offered local policemen the opportunity to watch executions of female prisoners. The women had to disrobe and endure obscene comments before their murder, not only from German SS-men, but also from Byelorussian guards.38 The fact that the Germans asked the local guards to watch particularly in cases when the execution of women took place, indicates that this was about male community building (Vergemeinschaftung) accomplished through the torture and killing of women. A variety of narratives reveals that it was no exception that the perpetrators explicitly watched and commented on women’s physical appearance before mass killings. As Bergen has pointed out, deadly violence that did not involve physical rape was often accompanied by a language of rape.39 In addition, some testimonies indicate that rape and gang rape could take place in the immediate vicinity of shooting sites.40 In her study An Intimate History of Killing, Joanna Bourke has cited numerous examples from different theaters of war and demonstrated that the fact that cruelty, deadly violence and (sexual) lust merge is not unusual in war situations. Elizabeth Heineman, on the other hand, has asked about the impact of this intertwinedness of sexuality and violence for the victims of the Nazi genocide.41 Overall, it becomes clear that sexual violence was part of the genocidal project of the Final Solution in the Soviet Union. Kirsten Campbell has argued in connection with the war in the former Yugoslavia, that an integral part of the harm of sexual violence is that the perpetrators force their social categories upon the individual victims. Acts of sexual violence, thus her argument, “constitute bodies and their sexual difference along axes of identity, ethnicity and power, in contexts of conflict in which those persons were often not previously ascribed those identities, and in which those identities are at stake in the conflict itself.”42 In the context discussed here this would mean to examine more closely in the future what it means that Jewish women were targeted as women and/or as Jews.

37 Bergen, “Unique or Typical,” 188. 38 Chiari, Alltag, 193. 39 Bergen, “Unique or Typical,” 182. 40 Compare references in Podolsky, “Tragic Fate,” 99; Bergen, “Unique or Typical,” 187; Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen, 137–139. 41 Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Granta, 1999); Elizabeth D. Heineman, “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11/1–2 (2002): 22–67, here 66. 42 Campbell, “Gender,” 429.

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German Men and “Race Defilement” in the Soviet Union Between September 1939 and October 1945, more than 13,000 German prisoners were transferred to special facilities that the Allies had established in England and the United States in order to extract military secrets. Prison cells were wiretapped, and informants were planted among the prisoners to guide the conversations in a desired direction. As Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer have demonstrated, most prisoners were not aware that they were being spied on.43 Conversations about sexuality were generally not regarded as relevant to military strategy and thus seldom documented. In one case, for example, the transcriber decided to summarize a discussion he listened to as follows: 18:45 Women [h] 19:15 Women 19:45 Women 20:00 Women.44

One of the few cases that has been recorded is a conversation between the 23-yearold petty officer Helmut Hartelt and the 21-year-old sailor Horst Minnieur. At one point, Minnieur recounted a killing operation that he had witnessed as a worker for the Reich Labor Service in Lithuania. His narrative focused on “a beautiful broad,” who, when he and his comrades had asked where she was going, replied “to my execution.” Hartelt: Those broads, they were also shot there? Minnieur: Yeah. Hartelt: Did you see it [the execution; RM], when that pretty Jewess was there? Minnieur: No, we weren’t there anymore. We only know that she was shot. Hartelt: So did she say anything beforehand? Were you together with her again? Minnieur: Yeah, we were together the day before. The next day we wondered, she didn’t come anymore. Then we drove away with the machine [the motorcycle; RM]. Hartelt: Did she also work there?

43 Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldaten. Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011), 423–430. 44 Ibid., 424.

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Minnieur: She also worked there. Hartelt: Building roads? Minnieur: No, she cleaned our barracks. When we were there, those eight days we came into the barracks, slept there, so that we didn’t have to outside– Hartelt: So she certainly let herself get banged [sich hacken lassen], didn’t she? Minnieur: She let herself get banged, but you had to be careful that you didn’t get caught. That’s not new, of course, they got laid, the Jewish broads, in a way that it was not nice anymore. Hartelt: So what did she say, that she –? Minnieur: Nothing. Oh, we just chatted [ … ] she was at the university in Göttingen. Hartelt: And she let them turn her into a whore! Minnieur: Yeah. They didn’t realize she was a Jewess, she was quite decent and so on. Just tough luck that she had to bite the dust! 75,000 Jews were shot there.45

The young submarine soldiers addressed each other in formal German; they obviously were not well acquainted with one another. Nonetheless, they talked about mass shootings and sexual violence, topics that were apparently neither tabooed nor unusual. Young men especially could interpret blunt talk about violence as a demonstration of their relentlessness and an affirmation of their masculinity.46 The expression “sich hacken lassen” reveals that the merging of sexuality and violence seemed natural to them. It was also not unusual that women were blamed, at least in part, for their fate. In this case, it was Hartelt who insinuated that the woman had already become a “whore” in Germany. In a way, Hartelt even offered this interpretation as explanation and justification for her murder. Minnieur’s reaction reveals his ambivalence. He admitted to having liked the woman, but did not question the executions in and of themselves. With his characterization that the woman had been “quite decent”—despite her being Jewish—he rather asserted that his sympathy for her could not be held against him. The conflict caused by the fact 45 Ibid., 164. 46 FrankWerner, “Soldatische Männlichkeit imVernichtungskrieg. Geschlechtsspezifische Dimensionen der Gewalt in Feldpostbriefen 1941–1944,” in Schreiben im Krieg. Schreiben vom Krieg. Feldpost im Zeitalter der Weltkriege, eds. Veit Didczuneit, Jens Ebert, and Thomas Jander (Essen: Klartext, 2011), 283–294, here 286.

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that his comrades had killed a student he rather liked seems to have preoccupied him to a certain extent, but in the end he shrugged it off as “tough luck.” The conversation illustrates that the ideological conception of “race defilement” did not necessarily restrict the behavior of German men in the Soviet Union—although Nazi ideology clearly marked sexual contacts between a person considered to be “Aryan” with someone who was categorized as Jewish as harmful for the race and the Volksgemeinschaft. Instead of paying attention to these ideological conceptions, Minnieur’s main concern seems to focus on not being caught, as his comment “you had to be careful” indicates. A violation of the rules could result in disciplinary action by a soldier’s commanding officer or a trial in front of a Wehrmacht or SS court. In certain situations the threat of potential punishment might also have thrilled soldiers and SS-men. To break the traditional moral norms as well as the Nazi laws could present a collective experience that strengthened the bonds between the men within a unit. Thomas Kühne has emphasized that boys and men in Nazi Germany were trained to view the male bond as “morally superior and morally sovereign. Hence they began to fantasize themselves as a revolutionary master race that would leave Western values and Eastern peoples behind.”47 The war in the Soviet Union seems to have fostered a situation in which Wehrmacht soldiers and SS-men not only committed crimes that they could consider “necessary actions” within the Nazi “ethical framework.”48 As “brothers in crime” (Kühne) the men who operated together in a small unit could furthermore establish their own set of rules that provided them with a sense of belonging and comradeship. Of course, not all soldiers shared this feeling of comradery outside the realm of the law: some were isolated as outsiders, while others criticized the criminal nature of military actions more or less openly. Ultimately, however, all men were bound into complicity. And indeed, in many situations, the male bond seems to have been stronger than Nazi laws or military orders. Sexual activity and in particular sexual violence against women, carried a highly symbolic value in this context, and appeared as a demonstration of male vitality and (individual and collective) strength and honor. Many men seem to have harbored a sense of complete power over the enemy women. For instance, one way to cover up the trespassing of racial boundaries was to kill the victims, who were witnesses to a transgression of Blood Law. When leading Kriminalassistent (leader of lowest rank in the lowest grade of the Criminal Police) Walter Thormeyer was denounced for sexual contact with a “Jewish spy,” he shot the woman in question, claiming she had been an “unreliable

47 Thomas Kühne, Belonging and Genocide. Hitler’s Community, 1918–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 6. 48 Following Raphael Gross, I am using the term “Nazi ethics” as “a designation [ … ] of the values created during a specific period.” Raphael Gross, Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2010), 16.

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agent.” Thormeyer’s case was closed without punishment.49 The sources indicate that this kind of behavior was widely tolerated within the male community of the Wehrmacht and SS. In his study on Einsatzgruppe D (one of the mobile killing squads of the SS), Andre Angrick has documented that SS-men sometimes promised Jewish women they would spare their lives if they succumbed to their sexual interests. As soon as the men had enough of the women or were in danger of being caught, however, the women were killed.50 In the beginning of the 1960s, the office of the Munich prosecutor conducted an investigation into a massacre close to Kerch (Crimea) in December 1941. One of the witnesses they interviewed was the former Wehrmacht soldier Josef F. When asked about the days before the organized mass shooting of Jews in Kerch, Josef F. related the following story: One day when I was again supposed to fetch tablecloths for Lieutenant S. from Hauptsturmführer Finger, I did not come across Finger in his quarters. I was in the SS quarters, a former school or a public building, in Kerch. Down a long corridor there were several doors leading to the rooms. So I went to the upper floor and entered one of the first rooms. When I opened the door I saw that an SS man was lying on the bed and that there was a pretty young girl with him. Since this SS man could not tell me where Finger was, I went into a second room. In this room I again found a young girl with an SS man. Since he was also unable to answer my question about where I might find Finger, I went into a third room. In the third room an SS man was lying on the bed without his uniform jacket but wearing pants. Beside him, that is, on the edge of the bed, sat, here too, a young and very pretty girl, and I saw her caressing the SS man’s chin. I could also hear the girl say: “Franz, you won’t shoot me, will you!” The girl was very young and spoke German without any trace of an accent. [ … ] I then waited for Hauptsturmführer Finger in this room. I asked the SS-man if this girl, who I assumed was a Jewess, because the Russians were not nearly as pretty, would really be shot. The SS man told me that all Jews would be shot; there would be no exceptions. So I asked him what would then happen to the girls that I had seen in the rooms. The gist of what the SS man said was that it would be bitter. Sometimes they had an opportunity to hand these girls over to another shooting squad, but in most cases there would be no time and they would have to do it themselves. I was so appalled by this that I 49 Klaus-Michael Mallmann, “‘Mensch, ich feiere heut’ den tausendsten Genickschuß.’ Die Sicherheitspolizei und die Shoah in Westgalizien,” in Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche?, ed. Gerhard Paul (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002), 109–136, here 123. 50 Andre Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003), 449.

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During his interrogation, Josef F. depicted himself as a respectable harmless Wehrmacht soldier while he incriminated the SS-men as outrageously cruel and inhumane. He emphasized the horrendousness of their crimes by depicting the pureness of the female victims which he symbolized through characterizing them as especially pretty and accent-free German speakers. SS-Hauptsturmführer Finger, on the contrary, seemed all the more like an inhumane hangman who did not possess any kind of mercy. Only the fact that they had to carry out the execution of the women themselves triggered a feeling of bitterness in him. Indeed, Josef F’s interpretation raises the question of whether German men who terrorized, abducted and murdered Jewish women harbored feelings of pity, guilt or shame—towards the victims, but first and foremost towards themselves. Other German men did not even try to hide the possibility of sexual contacts with Jewish women. At the beginning of 1943, three SS-men in Minsk publicly declared that the laws concerning “race defilement” were only applicable within the borders of the Reich and were suspended in “the East.” Again, this incident did not have any consequences.52 Military Prosecution of “Race Defilement” Overall, the sources indicate that there was a good chance for German soldiers and SS-men to get away with “race defilement,” even if they were caught. To date, we do not know of any military court cases on “race defilement” in the Soviet Union, and only of a relatively few from Poland—a fact that some historians have commented on with surprise, because at civil courts within the Reich “race defilement” was prosecuted with much vigor.53 When taking a closer look, however, it is clear that the societal intentions which led to the merciless prosecution of “race defilement” within the Reich were hardly of any importance during the war and the genocide in the Soviet Union: In September 1935, the Nazi regime first announced the Blood Protection Laws that forbade “mixed marriages” as well as “extramarital contact” between “full Jews” and persons “of German or related blood.” The law clearly situated the Jews outside of the Volksgemeinschaft. Even though they were still presented as tolerable neighbors at the time, they could no longer be (sexual) 51 Interrogation of Josef F., Office of the Public Prosecutor, 13.2.1965, 22 Js 203/61 der StA München I, Bd. 7, p. 1665, cit. in Deutscher Osten. Der Weltanschauungskrieg in Photos und Texten, eds. Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Wolfgang Rieß, and Volker Pyta (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2003), 154. 52 Hans Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/1942 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1996), 479. 53 For example Snyder, Sex-Crimes, 200.

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partners for non-Jews. The main intent of the Blood Law was to prevent the birth of “racially mixed offspring.” This, however, was impossible without drawing attention to the behavior, desires and motivations of Jewish/gentile couples. While the first decree concerning the implementation of the Blood Law stated that only sexual intercourse was punishable, local courts gradually began to expand their field of activity. For example, in one case the judges found that only masturbation had been practiced, but still sentenced the defendant harshly.54 This development was ultimately confirmed by the Reich Supreme Court which asserted that any kind of behavior that served to “gratify the desires of at least one of the partners” was sexual and could thus be tried under the Blood Law. As Patricia Szobar has emphasized, “local police officials began to pursue with remarkable thoroughness whether the ‘sexual desires’ of one or both partners had in fact been gratified” and questioned the defendants for details of their sexual practices.55 Within the borders of the Reich, the implementation of the Blood Law turned out to be very “effective,” because it was, according to Szobar, based on long standing patterns of the “sexual monitoring of women and ‘racial others,’” and many citizens were willing to participate in a system of surveillance and denunciation.56 Overall, the criminal offense of “race defilement” served as a crucial measure of exclusion. For the Wehrmacht judges in the territory of the Soviet Union, however, these developments were of little importance. When the German army invaded the Soviet Union, the Jews were already firmly excluded as a group and in the following months their persecution rapidly intensified. After the Germans decided on the “Final Solution,” military doubts about the idea that Jewish men and women had no right to live were disregarded as weak sentiments. Since the perpetrators envisioned the extermination of all Jews in the near future, the potential birth of “racially mixed offspring” hardly concerned them. Accordingly, the judicial persecution of “race defilement” was of no direct importance in the Soviet Union. One of the few Wehrmacht court cases we know from Poland demonstrates that the defendants had the chance to be acquitted even if the procedures confirmed the offense. Lance corporal Josef L. was indicted for “race defilement” at the Court of the Sixth Army, because he had contracted gonorrhea, and the investigators had identified Erika G., a Polish Jewish woman, as the “source of infection.” The defendant admitted to having had sex with her, but claimed he had not been aware of the fact that she was Jewish. The court allowed his plea. Erika G., the court observed, had worn no arm band, had spoken German, and posed as an “ethnic German” (Volksdeutsche). Ultimately, the indictment relied on his testimony alone, as hers was from a “lying Jew.” On June 23, 1942, the court exempted Josef L. from punishment.57 54 Przyrembel, “Rassenschande.” 55 Szober, “Prosecution,” 164. 56 Ibid., 166. 57 Gericht der Oberfeldkommandantur 379, Feldurteil vom 23. Juni 1942, BA ZNS S 391, also cit. in Beck, Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt, 278; Snyder, Sex Crimes

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In general, the main concern of the Wehrmacht courts was not focused on the enforcement of Nazi racist and anti-Semitic regulations, but rather on military discipline and the reputation of the Wehrmacht. In another case from Poland, the Court of the Military Government Headquarter 379-Lublin reconstructed the following events: on June 20, 1942, Corporal Ernst H. had gotten drunk, forced his way into the flat of a Jewish family, and demanded money. In the flat of the couple Z. he had raped the woman at gunpoint, threatening to kill her husband if she would not succumb to his will. Ernst H. did not dispute the charges, but claimed that he had been intoxicated and had no memory of the events. The court focused on the defendant’s excessive consumption of alcohol which was considered to be a violation of military discipline and sentenced him to four years imprisonment under §330a, “Drunkenness,” while ignoring his clear violation of the Blood Law. After serving approximately 16 months, Ernst H. was paroled to the 73rd Infantry Division.58 Similar patterns can be observed in regard to rape cases tried under §5a of the Wehrmacht Penal Law. The fact that German men chose women considered to be “ethnically alien” or “of alien races” as objects of their aggression/desire seldom provoked special attention during the War of Annihilation. The final verdicts usually ignored the question of race and instead referred to how the defendant had harmed military discipline and the reputation of the Wehrmacht.59 In earlier stages of the war and in different territories, however, the men seem to have been more likely to face punishment. Alexander Rossino cites a report of the 682nd Field Police Section concerning a case in which three Wehrmacht soldiers were accused of breaking into the home of the Kaufmann family in the town of Busko, Poland, and assaulting several family members in September 1939. According to the testimony of family members, the three men raped 21-year-old Hinda Kaufmann at gunpoint while her family had to watch. An investigation brought to light the identities of the three men: Frank Rothe, Siegfried Baudisch, and Andreas Kerner. When they were asked if they were aware of the Nuremberg laws, Rothe replied: The Nuremberg laws are known to me. I nevertheless attempted to have sex with her because at the moment, I did not think that this act was punishable. We also did not think it was punishable because we forced her to have sex with us at gun-point.60 under the Wehrmacht, 192. On the military’s proceedings with men who had contracted a sexually transmitted disease and the search for the “source of infection,” see Mühlhäuser, Eroberungen, 169–175, 195–203. 58 Gericht AOK 6, Akte Josef H, BA-ZNS RH 69/908, cit. in Beck, Wehrmacht, 278; Snyder, Sex-Crimes, 196. 59 Beck, Wehrmacht, 277–8, 247–252; Snyder, Sex-Crimes, xii, 138–143. 60 Cited in Alexander B. Rossino, “Destructive Impulses. German Soldiers and the Conquest in Poland,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 11/3 (1997): 351–365, here 357.

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Rothe’s claim that he did not consider the rape of Hinda Kaufmann a violation of the Nazi laws indicates he viewed the rape as ‘merely’ another form of the allegedly necessary violence against Jews. He furthermore argued that “race defilement” did not apply in cases of violent encounters. Indeed, the cases on “race defilement” that were tried at civil courts within the Reich and extensively covered in Nazi newspapers and magazines were usually not concerned with sexual violence, but rather with consensual relations, in which the partners were emotionally and/or socially attached. It is thus easy to see how Rothe could have believed that the law was only applicable when the “Aryan” male had some form of relation with a Jewish female prior to sex. As soon as Rothe realized, however, that he was accused of violating the Blood Law he tried to convince the investigator he had not ejaculated and so had not completed the act, making it clear that he was aware of the severity of the charge. Whether Rothe actually believed he had not violated the Nazi laws at the time of the crime or whether he only conjured up this story to be exempted from punishment, cannot be clarified. Furthermore, we do not know how the authorities proceeded. At any rate, the case demonstrates that at the beginning of the Eastern campaign in Poland in 1939, the German military police was, at least to a certain extent, still “dedicated to enforcing the Reich’s race laws.”61 Monika Flaschka suggests that the Wehrmacht also applied different standards in cases where “ethnic Germans” or local collaborators perpetrated rape. In general, they were punished more harshly, because the German authorities wanted to demonstrate their superiority and set examples for these groups to acquire other patterns of behavior. None of the victims in the cases Flaschka cites, however, were Jewish. Still, the sources indicate that sexual violence by ethnic Germans and local collaborators against Jewish women was no exception. For instance, men who worked as guards in Nazi camps or police stations seem to have used their position of relative power to exercise sexualized and sexual violence against Jewish women.62 Since these men usually operated in the territory where they had lived before and thus knew the local surroundings, the people, the culture, and the language, it is likely that they could make use of other opportunities to attack local women. Furthermore, the crimes probably had a different societal meaning in these cases—for the victims and the perpetrators, as well as the local society and the Nazi occupation authorities. For Poland, Maren Röger assumes that Nazi group distinctions—according to which “Reich Germans,” “ethnic Germans,” Poles, Russians, “Slavs from other regions,” Sinti, Roma, and Jews were understood in a hierarchical relation to each other—incited the perpetration of sexual violence, whereby their power was 61 Ibid., 358. 62 See, for instance, Bernhard Chiari, Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrußland 1941–1944 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998), 192; Andrej Angrick and Peter Klein, Die “Endlösung” in Riga: Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941–1944 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), 81.

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reinforced. For example, Röger assumes that Poles were more likely to exercise sexual violence against Jewish women, because in the “everyday” situation of war and genocide they were situated distinctly below themselves.63 Further research will have to determine how far this reflects the reality in different territories at various times. Overall, by seldom interfering, the German military authorities opened up “spaces of opportunity” (Gelegenheitsräume) for German men and their nonGerman comrades in the Wehrmacht and SS to engage in sexual violence against Jewish women. The men utilized these spaces, according to their individual norms and the habitual practices within their small military units. Whether Wehrmacht or SS commanders ultimately tolerated or disciplined sexual encounters they regarded as “race defilement” depended on the situation in a specific territory at a certain time as well as their personal norms. Conclusion: The Historicity of Denial German Wehrmacht soldiers and SS-men did not perpetrate sexual violence on an organized mass scale like Japanese soldiers in the military “comfort station” system.64 Furthermore, acts of sexual violence were not actively induced by the German military command. Nevertheless, sexual violence was an accepted part of the German warfare and occupation. During the War of Annihilation in the Soviet Union, ‘normal’ warfare and the genocidal campaign of the “Final Solution” were inseparably linked. It is often impossible to distinguish which national, ethnic and religious background a victim of sexual violence belonged to. Even though Nazi racial laws strictly banned sexual intercourse with Jewish women, the sources reveal that this did not mean they did not become victims of sexual violence, sometimes by chance, at other times specifically directed against them as Jews. The specific ideological and psychological environment at the Eastern front provided individual German soldiers and SS-men as well as the military units with “spaces of opportunity” to exercise different forms of sexual violence against women. In general, German men, allied soldiers and local collaborators had a good chance of getting away with their transgression of Nazi racial boundaries. While “race defilement” was strictly persecuted at civil courts within the Reich from 1935 onwards, the Wehrmacht courts saw no need to confirm the already well established societal exclusion of the Jews in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944.

63 Maren Röger, “Sexuelle Gewalt im besetzten Polen,” unpublished manuscript presented at the seminar “Sexual Violence during WWII” at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research on January 9, 2012. 64 Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women. Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (New York: Routledge, 2002).

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The Nuremberg trials failed to grasp the specificities of these atrocities as well as their impact for the German war and genocide. Von Manstein’s witness testimony cited at the beginning of this article presented an outrageous reinterpretation of the just recently elapsed past. He pictured sexual offenders as individual deviators who had dishonored the army and were punished with the death sentence. Notably, one of the defendants, the former chief of the German air force, Hermann Göring, related a quite similar story when he claimed that in cases of “defilement of women” (Schändung von Frauen) the death penalty was prolonged and personally confirmed by himself “in every single case.”65 Recent research demonstrates that accounts like these did not reflect the reality. The fact that both former military commanders related these stories without ever being questioned about sexual violence rather points us to their narrative strategy. With these stories they tried to evidence that the Wehrmacht’s leadership had acted in a civilized manner, according to the laws and customs of modern warfare. Ultimately, both testimonies reveal that in the immediate postwar period—during which the first interpretations of the war and the Holocaust were established—sexual violence was highly symbolic on the thin line between male honor/dishonor and military respectability/disrespectability. Indeed, von Manstein and Göring did not need to fear that their line of reasoning would be explicitly called into question by the Allies. Neither the prosecution nor the judges demanded further inquiry into the Wehrmacht’s handling of sexual violence. In the middle of the twentieth century, sexual violence was regarded as a maybe regrettable but ultimately inevitable byproduct of warfare. In a somewhat paradoxical communicative figure, rape appeared as an issue that was normal and not worth mentioning, but, at the same time, scandalous and an unbelievable disruption of civilization. During the collection of evidence, the prosecution did in fact adduce a variety of acts of sexual violence—rape, sexual enslavement, genital mutilation and sterilization. However, these were not formally prosecuted. Rather than to establish the perpetrator’s responsibility for having committed a crime against women, the cases of sexual violence brought up during the collection of evidence served to emphasize the barbarity and perversity of the Germans. Kelly Dawn Askin has argued that the Allies had no interest in establishing sexual violence as a crime, because they had to deal with sexual violence perpetrated by their own soldiers at the end of WWII in Europe as well as Asia.66 And even though in the Asian postwar theater, the Allies actually did charge the rape of Chinese women during the Nanking invasion as well as the sexual enslavement of Dutch women in Japanese “comfort stations” in Indonesia, the Tokyo Trial also failed to address the gravity and systematic nature of the crime.67

65 IMT, vol. 9, 404, 624. 66 Askin, “Prosecuting.” 67 Nicola Henry, War and Rape. Law, Memory and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2011), 36–45.

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Women’s human rights groups like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom did not try to establish a counter-narrative either. After WWII, they emphasized the plight of female victims of fascism in general, and of Nazi Germany in particular. Still, they made little comment on the major war crimes trials and, in addition, hardly ever explicitly dealt with sexual violence. This lack of involvement might, as Carol Harrington suggests, be due to the fact that after WWI the women activists “had plenty of suspicion of men of all nations when it came to politicizing sexual violence and forced prostitution.”68 The legal silence on wartime rape contributed to the silence in historiography. The reasons for the long persisting deficit of research on sexual violence by German men during the War of Annihilation are furthermore detectable on a variety of levels. For one thing, historians shied away from the systematic analysis of the entanglement of extreme violence and sexuality which tends to elicit different affects like disgust and titillation. It furthermore presented a challenge to develop a vocabulary and a form of representation that is neither simplifying nor evokes a voyeuristic view. Furthermore, the investigation of the interdependency that sexuality and violence get into during war inevitably brought to light that post-war societies are firmly built on wartime experiences of sexual violence and violent sexuality.69 “Denialism through ‘official memory’ serves to further marginalize victim experiences, adding a further layer of insult and injustice for the surviving victims of wartime rape,” writes Nicola Henry.70 Indeed, female Holocaust survivors were long left with their experience of sexual violence as an individual, private matter. What is more, over time, Nazi racial ideology appeared as an alleged proof that sexual violence was the one thing that could not have taken place against Jews. In a bizarre twist, Nazi antisemitism started to appear as a ‘fairly safe haven’ for Jewish women. Only since the 1990s have feminists and human rights activists started to challenge the pervasiveness of sexual violence in conflict zones in a broader public. A growing body of literature has established that sexual violence is a crime that can take different forms, follow distinct patterns, and serve different functions. The Nuremberg Trials have been the base for this new awareness concerning Human Rights violations. To deepen our understanding of sexual violence during the War of Annihilation does thus not only have a crucial impact on (public and private) historiographies of the Holocaust. In addition, it offers us the chance to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of sexual violence in conflict zones. The presently discussed conceptions of “rape as weapon of war” or “rape as military strategy” are often understood in an overly simplistic manner, implying 68 Carol Harrington, Politicization of Sexual Violence. From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 89. 69 Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism. Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 70 Henry, War and Rape, 60.

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that sexual violence would be an instrument that perpetrators and/or armed leaders have at their free disposal to implement or prohibit. The ultimate target of this weapon/strategy is then usually described as an (ethnic, religious, national) collective. The whole complexity of the phenomenon—the gendered as well as the sexual nature of the crime; the impact of such affects as arousal, inhibition, anxiety, satisfaction, repulsion, envy, longing, and ennui; and the intertwinedness of individual interests and collective (national, military) norms—is suppressed. Through discussing sexual violence by German men against Jewish women in different territories in more detail, and then contrasting it with sexual violence against non-Jewish women and against men, it will be possible to develop a much more complex picture of the crime in and of itself. References Angrick, Andrej. Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941–1943. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2003. Angrick, Andrej and Peter Klein. Die “Endlösung” in Riga: Ausbeutung und Vernichtung 1941–1944. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006. Askin, Kelley Dawn. “Prosecuting Wartime Rape and Other Gender-Related Crimes under International Law: Extraordinary Advances, Enduring Obstacles.” Berkeley Journal for International Law 21 (2003): 288–349. Beck, Birgit. Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt. Sexualverbrechen vor deutschen Militärgerichten 1939–1945. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2004. Bergen, Doris F. “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust: Unique or Typical?” In Lessons and Legacies VII, edited by Dagmar Herzog, 179–200. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Bourke, Joanna. An Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in TwentiethCentury Warfare. London: Granta Books, 1999. Burds, Jeffrey. “Sexual Violence in World War II, 1939–1945.” Politics & Society 37 (2009): 35–73. Campbell, Kirsten. “The Gender of Transitional Justice: Law, Sexual Violence and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1 (2007): 411–432. Chiari, Bernhard. Alltag hinter der Front. Besatzung, Kollaboration und Widerstand in Weißrußland 1941–1944. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998. Flaschka, Monika. “Race, Rape and Gender in Nazi Occupied Territories.” PhD diss., Kent State University, Ohio, 2009. Gertjejanssen, Wendy Jo. “Victims, Heroes, Survivors. Sexual Violence on the Eastern Front during World War II.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2004. Gross, Raphael. Anständig geblieben. Nationalsozialistische Moral. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2010.

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Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, ed., Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944. Exhibition Catalogue. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996. Harrington, Carol. Politicization of Sexual Violence. From Abolitionism to Peacekeeping. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Heineman, Elizabeth D. “Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (2002): 22–67. Henry, Nicola. War and Rape. Law, Memory and Justice. New York: Routledge, 2011. Herzog, Dagmar. Sex after Fascism. Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Huber, Christian Thomas. Die Rechtsprechung der deutschen Feldkriegsgerichte bei Straftaten von Wehrmachtssoldaten gegen Angehörige der Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Gebieten. Marburg: Tectum, 2007. Inciuriene, Joheved. “Rettung und Widerstand in Kaunas.” In Holocaust in Litauen. Krieg, Judenmorde und Kollaboration im Jahre 1941, edited by Vincas Bartusevicius, Joachim Tauber, and Wolfram Wette, 201–217. Köln: Böhlau, 2003. Kühne, Thomas. Belonging and Genocide. Hitler’s Community, 1918–1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Littner, Jakob. Mein Weg durch die Nacht. Published by Roland Ulrich and Reinhard Zachau. Berlin: Metropol, 2002. Lüdtke, Alf. Eigen-Sinn, Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus. Hamburg: Ergebnisse, 1993. Mallmann, Klaus-Michael. “‘Mensch, ich feiere heut’ den tausendsten Genickschuß.’ Die Sicherheitspolizei und die Shoah in Westgalizien.” In Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche?,edited by Gerhard Paul, 109–136. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2002. Marcus, Sharon. “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words. A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention.” In Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, 385–403. New York: Routledge, 2002. Mühlhäuser, Regina. Eroberungen. Sexuelle Gewalttaten und intime Beziehungen deutscher Soldaten in der Sowjetunion 1941–1945. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010. Mühlhäuser, Regina. “Female Agency and Gendered Presuppositions. Narratives of Female Jewish Survivors about successful Self-Defense against German Soldiers during the War of Annihilation.” Position Paper SVAC-Workshop “Constellations and Dynamics of Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict,” Sciences Po Paris, July 6–7, 2012. Mühlhäuser, Regina. “Sex, Race, Volksgemeinschaft. Sexual Encounters of German Soldiers with Local Women and Men during the War and the Occupation in the Soviet Union, 1941–1945.” In Beyond the Racial State, edited by Mark Roseman, Devin Pendas, and Richard Wetzell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, forthcoming.

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Naumann, Klaus. “Die ‘saubere’ Wehrmacht. Gesellschaftsgeschichte einer Legende.” Mittelweg 36 7 (1998): 8–18. Neitzel, Sönke and Harald Welzer. Soldaten. Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011. Pawlowicz, Sala. I Will Survive. Recorded by Kevin Close. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1962. Podolsky, Anatoly. “The Tragic Fate of Ukrainian Jewish Women under Nazi Occupation, 1941–1944.” In Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel, 94–107. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2010. Pohl, Dieter. Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht, Deutsche Militärbesatzung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1944. München: Oldenbourg, 2008. Pohl, Rolf. “Massenvergewaltigung. Zum Verhältnis von Krieg und männlicher Sexualität.” Mittelweg 36 11 (2002): 53–75. Przyrembel, Alexandra. “Rassenschande,” Reinheitsmythos und Vernichtungslegitimation im Nationalsozialismus. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. Ringelheim, Joan. “The Split between Gender and the Holocaust.” In Woman in the Holocaust, edited by Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, 340–350. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Röger, Maren. “Sexuelle Gewalt im besetzten Polen.” Unpublished manuscript presented at the seminar “Sexual Violence during WWII” at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research on January 9, 2012. Rossino, Alexander B. “Destructive Impulses. German Soldiers and the Conquest in Poland.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 11 (1997): 351–365. Seifert, Ruth. “Der weibliche Körper als Symbol und Zeichen. Geschlechtsspezifische Gewalt und die kulturelle Konstruktion des Krieges.” In Gewalt im Krieg. Ausübung, Erfahrung und Verweigerung von Gewalt in Kriegen des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by Andreas Gestrich, 13–33. Münster: LIT, 1996. Shik, Na’ama. “Sexual Abuse of Women in Auschwitz-Birkenau.” In Brutality and Desire. War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, edited by Dagmar Herzog, 221–246. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Snyder, David Raub. Sex Crimes under the Wehrmacht. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Szober, Patricia. “The Prosecution of Jewish-Gentile Sex in the Race Defilement Trials.” in Lessons and Legacies VII, edited by Dagmar Herzog, 159–168. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006. Tanaka, Yuki. Japan’s Comfort Women. Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the US Occupation. New York: Routledge, 2002. Timm, Anette. “Sex with a Purpose. Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 (2002): 223–255.

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Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Proceedings. 1948 (IMT), vol. 20. Waxman, Zoe V. “Towards an Integrated History of the Holocaust: Masculinity, Femininity and Genocide.” In Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination. Saul Friedländer and the Future of Holocaust Studies, edited by Christian Wiese and Paul Betts, 311–321. London: Continuum, 2010. Werner, Frank. “Soldatische Männlichkeit im Vernichtungskrieg. Geschlechtsspezifische Dimensionen der Gewalt in Feldpostbriefen 1941–1944.” In Schreiben im Krieg. Schreiben vom Krieg. Feldpost im Zeitalter der Weltkriege, edited by Veit Didczuneit, Jens Ebert, and Thomas Jander, 283–294. Essen: Klartext, 2011. Wilhelm, Hans Heinrich. Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/1942. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1996. Wood, Elisabeth Jean. “Variation in Sexual Violence during War.” Politics and Society 34 (2006): 307–342. Zipfel, Gaby. “Ausnahmezustand Krieg? Anmerkungen zu soldatischer Männlichkeit, sexueller Gewalt und militärischer Einhegung.” In Krieg und Geschlecht. Sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg und Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NSKonzentrationslagern, edited by Insa Eschebach, and Regina Mühlhäuser, 55–74. Berlin: Metropol, 2008.

Chapter 2

Between Silence and Narration: European and Asian Women on War Brutalities in Japanese-Occupied Territories Felicia Yap

On December 25, 1941, about 150 to 200 Japanese troops burst into an emergency military hospital at St Stephen’s College in Hong Kong. The troops began bayoneting the patients in their beds, a massacre which unfolded until more than 50 patients were slaughtered. They then turned their attention to the British and Chinese female nurses in the same building. A number of Chinese nurses were raped by the Japanese before they were taken away and murdered. Three British nurses were treated similarly; their mutilated bodies were discovered the following day. The remaining four nurses were also raped repeatedly but survived their ordeals.1 A few days earlier, six British auxiliary nurses and two Eurasian girls were raped and brutally abused by rampaging Japanese troops at a relief hospital near the Jockey Club racecourse in Happy Valley.2 These were merely two instances of the numerous sexual brutalities perpetrated by occupying Japanese troops in Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo and Singapore during the Second World War. Incidents of sexual assault abound: one account by the Chinese doctor Li Shu-Fan suggests that more than 10,000 girls and women were raped in Hong Kong during the occupation period.3 It is possible that the actual figure was much higher as many victims were reluctant to divulge their ordeals. Studies have suggested that a particularly high number of Japanese sexual brutalities occurred during the immediate aftermath of their territorial conquests as these were provoked by the flush of victory and the surge of emotions in the wake of combat and loss. At St Stephen’s, the severe casualties inflicted on the

1 Charles G. Roland, “Massacre and Rape in Hong Kong: Two Case Studies Involving Medical Personnel and Patients,” Journal of Contemporary History 32 (1997): 52–57; George Wright-Nooth, Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: Horror, Hunger and Humour in Hong Kong, 1941–1945 (London: Leo Cooper, 1994), 6–9. 2 Ramon Muniz Lavalle, “Rape of Women in Happy Valley Relief Hospital on December 22nd–23rd 1941,” The National Archives: Public Record Office (TNA: PRO), CO 980/48, 173. 3 Shu-Fan Li, Hong Kong Surgeon (London: Gollancz, 1964), 111.

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Japanese by Allied defenders near the relief hospital may have accounted for the violence which unfolded when Japanese troops surged into the wards.4 While memoirs, autobiographies and other first-hand accounts of the Japanese occupation of British Asia have alluded to the ubiquity of rapes and other sexual brutalities committed by the invading forces, only a limited number of scholarly studies have probed the factors influencing the voices behind these narratives.5 How did victims of Japanese cruelties narrate their experiences, both during and immediately after the war? In what ways did they bear testimony about these abuses, and what were their motivations for doing so? To what extent did eyewitness accounts (and rumors) of Japanese brutalities influence the reactions and actions of other European and Asian women during this period? Were there any differences in the responses of European and Asian women to the outrages perpetrated by the Japanese? As this study suggests, some intriguing answers to these questions may be found in the personal writings and court testimonies of these women. Indeed, the sexual violence perpetrated by the Japanese had a deep and lasting impact on both European and Asian women in these captured territories, both physically (in terms of bodily injuries and resulting pregnancies) and psychologically (in terms of trauma and other forms of mental anguish). While it should be emphasized that a vast array of European and Asian women (such as Dutch or Korean women) across East and Southeast Asia were subjected to Japanese wartime brutalities, this study focuses specifically on the narrative voices and silences of British and American women on the one hand as well as Chinese and Eurasian women on the other. This study contends, in particular, that there were similarities and differences in the ways European and Asian women responded or bore testimony to their wartime victimization. This may be attributed to the fact that these two categories of women were positioned differently within frameworks of narration or silence inherent to the colonial setting and faced different physical realities under Japanese rule. As this study demonstrates, these frameworks were partly influenced by the fact that European women were comparatively fewer in number and occupied a more privileged position within the colonial context where their voices seemed more likely to be heard. Indeed, both power relations and institutional dynamics had an impact on where European and Asian women ultimately positioned themselves along the continuum of silence and narration. Responses of British and American Women to Japanese Brutalities The evidence suggests, firstly, that much of the sexual aggression perpetrated by the Japanese within the occupied territories of British Asia was aimed at non-European 4 Roland, “Massacre and Rape in Hong Kong,” 59–60. 5 See, for instance, Michiko Nakahara, “‘Comfort Women’ in Malaysia,” Critical Asian Studies 33 (2001): 582.

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or Asian women.6 On a comparative scale, incidents involving European women appeared relatively fewer in number. It is possible that the dynamics of reciprocity may have partially accounted for the comparatively restrained Japanese treatment of European women in these localities. The Japanese, in particular, were well aware that large numbers of their own civilians were held captive in Allied hands during the same period (more than 110,000 Japanese civilians and Japanese-Americans in the United States, for instance, were interned by the Americans in “war relocation camps” after the Pearl Harbor attack). In Hong Kong, most of the rapes inflicted on British and other European women had in fact transpired at nursing stations during the immediate aftermath of the Japanese takeover.7 Most Allied civilians in these occupied territories were eventually incarcerated by Japanese in internment camps (such as Stanley in Hong Kong, Changi in Singapore and Lintang in Sarawak). Within these camps, the Japanese were comparatively restrained in their treatment of European women during the wartime period. Indeed, there is little ex post facto evidence (in the form of testimonies submitted to war crimes tribunals after the conflict, for instance) to suggest that rapes were widely committed by Japanese guards within the internment camps of British Asia. However, eyewitness accounts of the St Stephen’s and Jockey Club massacres rapidly buzzed across the European grapevine in wartime Hong Kong and had a great shock effect on the women in the territory. A sense of relief percolates across the memoirs of various British women in Hong Kong who had escaped such ordeals. Gwen Priestwood recalled how she avoided being at the Jockey Club relief hospital by virtue of being behind the wheel of her van. As she commented: Every woman in Hong Kong had heard of the rape of the English and Chinese nurses in this hospital and of other atrocities committed there by Japanese soldiers … Jean’s quietly told story [of the rapes perpetrated at the Jockey Club] sobered us all for many days. I thanked Providence for the day I had so nonchalantly wandered into Medical Headquarters and been transferred from night nursing at this hospital to driving my van.8

6 Gerald Horne, Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 152. While “European” was often used as a term by the British to describe themselves, it was also commonly used by accounts of the period as a reference term for all white nationals residing in these colonial territories (including citizens of Australia and the United States). This study employs the term “European” in a similar sense, though focusing largely on British and American nationals who were present in these territories during the war. The term “Asian” is used in this study as a counterpoint term to denote non-whites (chiefly Chinese and Eurasians) in these territories. 7 Bernice Archer and Kent Fedorowich, “The Women of Stanley: Internment in Hong Kong 1942–45,” Women’s History Review 5 (1996): 378. 8 Gwen Priestwood, Through Japanese Barbed Wire: A Thousand-Mile Trek from a Japanese Prison Camp (London: G.G. Harrap, 1944), 13, 52–53.

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Others reacted with disbelief or with a sense of numbed horror to the news. The policewoman Phyllis Harrop remarked that several English women have been killed at Stanley after having been terribly mutilated. Two doctors were also murdered, after being tied up and forced to witness the awful atrocities. How much more of this can one stand? I am surprised at the apparent calm with which I record it all. Afterwards a reaction will set in. Just now there is too much to do for time to brood or even to understand it properly.9

Rumors of these brutalities also filtered through the colonial grapevine to British Malaya and Singapore, where a sense of terror was engendered during the subsequent Japanese southwards advance by reports of the rapes and killings of European and Asian nurses and patients in Hong Kong.10 A small number of morally outraged British women became determined to submit formal accounts of these atrocities to the authorities in London as soon as possible. Phyllis Harrop escaped to Macao in late January 1942 and submitted a report detailing the atrocities to the British Vice-Consul in Macao (who in turn forwarded her report to the Colonial Office in London).11 As she insisted in her account: I am able to confirm at first hand that shocking atrocities were committed, of which Chinese as well as Europeans were the victims [ … ]. My own amah was raped by three or four men and was in a very serious condition when last I heard. Foreign women were also raped including an Englishwoman of my acquaintance. She was first slashed in the face with a soldier’s knife. Her husband afterwards found her dead body with two other wounds in the stomach. The Japanese shot none of their victims but invariably bayonetted them to death.12

Official reactions to Harrop’s report were varied, ranging from responses questioning the accuracy and dependability of her account to reactions intricately bound up with the politics of maintaining silence within the colonial context. At one level, her report was received with skepticism by some officials at the Colonial Office who felt that no publicity should be given to the information “at present” and that the Foreign Office should ascertain the “degree of reliability  9 Phyllis Harrop, Hong Kong Incident (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1943), 101. 10 Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2004), 121. 11 Sibylla Jane Flower, “Allied Prisoners of War: The Malayan Campaign, 1941–42,” in Sixty Years On: The Fall of Singapore Revisited, eds. Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002), 217. 12 Phyllis Harrop, “Eyewitness Account of Conditions in Hong Kong: Treatment of Internees,” 11 March 1942, TNA: PRO, WO141/101.

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to be given to the information.” Indeed, Harrop’s report was even dismissed by one official as unsubstantiated because it was written by a woman “known to an Assistant Secretary in this Department who considered her reliability as B+” and “has possibly a slight inclination to exaggerate.”13 Even when her report was backed by an independent source, the initial inclination of some individuals at the Colonial Office was to disregard the disturbing news emerging from Hong Kong.14 At another level, the issue of publicizing Japanese sexual atrocities was deeply intertwined with political concerns over the necessity of maintaining silence in this particular regard. Before the war, a key dimension of colonial thinking was its preoccupation with white prestige, and this was often intimately interlinked with the protection of the honor of white women. As Ann Laura Stoler has argued, “any attempted or perceived infringement of white female honor came to be seen as an assault on white supremacy and European rule.”15 As the ordeals of European women under the Japanese had threatened to discredit the fundamentals of British rule and prestige in the East, they essentially constituted a threat to the established colonial order. On March 10, 1942, Anthony Eden delivered a statement at the House of Commons strongly deploring the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in Hong Kong.16 However, it was soon countered that criticism of the Japanese could be damaging to British interests because if widely publicized, the information could create distress among the relatives of Japanese-held captives and possibly undermine morale in countries such as India, Burma and Ceylon.17 As a draft memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs remarked, “out of regard for the feelings of the thousands of relations of the victims, His Majesty’s Government have been unwilling to publish any accounts of Japanese atrocities at Hong Kong until these had been confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt. Unfortunately there is no longer room for doubt.”18 A report compiled by Calcutta censors in April 1942 suggested that a “state of mental panic has undoubtedly come into existence in the minds of a very large number of European women in India” after Eden’s speech in the House of Commons.19 The atrocities suffered by women in the East thus became a heavily politicized and charged issue as they 13 S.J. Cole memorandum, 4 February 1942, TNA: PRO, CO980/52, 1. 14 Flower, “Allied Prisoners of War,” 209. 15 Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 149. 16 Sybilla Jane Flower, “British Policymakers and the Prisoner-of-War Issue: Perceptions and Responses,” in The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, Vol. III: The Military Dimension, eds. Ian Gow et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 234. 17 Ashley Clarke memo to Secretary of State, “Publicity for Hong Kong Outrages,” 16 February 1942, TNA: PRO, FO371/31671, 21. 18 Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, “Treatment of Prisoners at Hong Kong,” 5 March 1942, TNA: PRO, WO141/101. 19 “Special Report on Hong Kong Compiled by Calcutta Censor Station, 2 April 1942,” National Archives of India, 403–X1942, 1.

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were decisively intertwined with concerns and tensions relating to the collapse of British prestige in the region. Some European rape victims were nevertheless willing to recount their harrowing experiences to war crimes tribunal units after the war when these formalized conduits for bearing testimony eventually became available to them within the post-war context. Many were motivated by different agendas by then, chiefly by a compelling desire to assist official or judicial investigations into Japanese wartime atrocities (and perhaps by the hope that punishment would eventually be meted out to the perpetrators of these crimes). Their court testimonies were commonly characterized by a deep and continuing sense of anguish, as well as considerable psychological and emotional turmoil. Such sentiments were demonstrated, for instance, in the starkly worded responses of the nurse Elizabeth A. Fidoe, who was a victim of the St Stephen’s College atrocities: Q: Yes, then what happened? A: There were just the four of us there and we shut the door. The mattresses had also been taken away. It was quite empty. We stayed in that room all night being visited by Japanese soldiers until we were so distraught we would not open the door any more. Q: When you say ‘they visited us’ were you molested and touched? A: We were raped from time to time. Q: That is, all the four of you? A: Yes.20

As the American journalist Gwen Dew described her encounter with another victim of the incident: The following story was told to me by one of the nurses who went through the worst of all experiences at St Stephen’s. She told it undramatically and methodically, but there were black circles under her eyes, and her thin, nervous hands which kept knitting the air, gave hints of the inner turmoil that retelling it occasioned. I hesitated a long time to ask her to live through the hours again with me, but I felt that I must have the story direct from one who knew every damnable second of it. And obviously she felt that it must be told, exactly and correctly, so that those who do not come close to the Japanese can know what sort of men they are. 20 Testimony of Mrs. Elizabeth A. Fidoe (P.W. No.12), in “Defendant: Ito Takeo, Place of Trial: Hong Kong,” TNA: PRO, WO235/1107, 58.

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No woman on earth is going to tell of being gang-raped by enemy soldiers unless it is imperative, and only the bravest would be willing to tell her story to the world. I marvelled at the inner strength which made her able to answer my most searching questions, and yet I sensed all through it the perspective which she had taken of the blackening experience: she was a soldier at her post; she had suffered grievous wounds which would leave scars on her soul forever, but she had gone through this line of duty, and she had done her part without fear or failure, just as would any brave soldier.21

This account is revealing for the emphasis it placed, in particular, on the courage, mettle and resolve displayed by the victim despite the considerable trauma she had suffered.22 Dew also recalled her encounter with a young British volunteer nurse named Marie Paterson who had experienced the Jockey Club atrocities, stating that the latter had “described minutely all the other details about which I asked—too horrible to write. There were still deep weary circles around her eyes for months afterwards, her mouth was sad and she had lost dozen of pounds of weight, but her spirit was unbroken.”23 Indeed, there is a tendency among survivors of the period to portray fellow British and Americans who were victimized by the Japanese as individuals who demonstrated significant heroism and bravery despite their terrible ordeals. Reactions of Asian Women to Japanese Brutalities As the war unfolded, thousands of Chinese and Eurasian women in British Asia were frequently reduced to positions of abject fear and terror by the predatory attentions of Japanese troops in their midst. In Hong Kong, some Japanese soldiers were said to have “broken into houses, asking for girls with permanent waves.”24 One Chinese chronicle of the Japanese occupation of Singapore noted that “the raping varied in intensity. Some localities suffered more and some less [ … ]. They rounded up women from the countryside, pinning on to each a tab in Chinese ‘For Military Use’.”25 Some women attempted to protect themselves by disguising themselves, while others sought refuge in the countryside. A few even hid in

21 Gwen Dew, Prisoner of the Japs (New York: Hutchinson, 1943), 76. 22 For related literature on trauma and memory, see Cathy Caruth, ed., Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) and Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Vogler, eds., Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma (New York: Routledge, 2003). 23 Dew, Prisoner of the Japs, 83. 24 “Report on General Situation in Hong Kong, (9B),” TNA: PRO, WO141/101. 25 N.I. Low, When Singapore was Syonan-to (Singapore: Times Books International, 1995), 4, 9.

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air-raid shelters or rubber plantations.26 One intelligence report suggested that some females even dressed up as “poor beggar-maids or dirty servant-girls to escape notice. Some cut their hair and wore men’s clothing.”27 Many Chinese and Eurasian women were aware that Japanese were setting up “comfort houses” for their troops and feared that they could be forced or abducted to work in these localities.28 In Hong Kong, it was said that “one entire Chinese district was declared a brothel regardless of the status of the inhabitants.”29 Janet Lim (a former victim of child molestation and rape) lived in constant fear of being taken by the Japanese as a “comfort girl,” and felt that the “underlying fear and mistrust in Singapore were terrible. One never knew who was an enemy and who a friend.”30 The Eurasian Victoria Krempl described how she was terrified of being coerced into acting as a “comfort woman” for the invaders. She also stated that she sought work as a dancer in an orchestral troupe in Singapore as she believed that a legitimate job would grant her protection and minimize unwanted Japanese attention.31 It is possible that fantasies of possible rape may have served as a legitimizing factor in her decision to take on a seemingly disreputable wartime profession. The evidence suggests that very few Chinese and Eurasian female victims of the Japanese have testified about their ordeals due to the comparatively restricted spaces of narration available to them. These limitations were in turn exacerbated by pronounced cultural stigmas associated with rape, or the simple social disgrace of coming forward with accounts of physical violation and victimization. Some may have simply feared the strain and shame of social rejection by families and friends. According to Ramon Lavalle (an Argentinian consular representative in Hong Kong), “many of the nurses [who were involved in the Jockey Club incident] seem to have promised not to say anything, it being the case apparently that many of them were raped or abused, and they considered it improper to talk about it.” He also remarked that he was “unable to obtain names on account of the panic-strike [sic.] feelings of those who were actual witnesses, and their desire to forget.”32 As one Chinese chronicle phrased it: “Their victims steeled themselves to accept the inevitable in as seemly a manner as their philosophy and good sense dictated. It would have been foolish to shout their disgrace from the house-tops.”33 The doctor Li Shu-Fan commented that “since Chinese women are modest, only a small percentage of those who were raped appeared at hospitals to be treated 26 Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 210. 27 “Report on General Situation in Hong Kong, (9B),” TNA: PRO, WO141/101. 28 Nakahara, “‘Comfort Women’ in Malaysia,” 582. 29 Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, “Treatment of Prisoners at Hong Kong,” 5 March 1942, TNA: PRO, WO141/101. 30 Janet Lim, Sold for Silver (London: Collins, 1958), 176, 236–237. 31 Victoria Krempl interview, Singapore National Archives, transcript 1783, 45, 66. 32 Lavalle, “Rape of Women in Happy Valley Relief Hospital,” 173. 33 N.I. Low and H.M. Cheng, This Singapore: Our City of Dreadful Night (Singapore: City Book Store, 1947), 5.

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for rape injuries. They felt so ashamed and disgraced that most of them would rather have died than to have had it known.”34 One narrative of the return of 15 young “comfort girls” from Java at the end of the war is similarly revealing. Upon arriving at the wharfside in Singapore, one girl was heard to have asked the official receiving them: “Will my father have me back?”35 Another account suggests that some families in Sarawak did in fact disown their daughters who acted as “comfort women” for the Japanese, “even though their daughters were not to blame.”36 This suggests that accounts of rape often presented a challenge to notions of family honor and respectability in narrative traditions of the period.37 There were also variations in the narrative tropes employed by the few Chinese and Eurasian women who have alluded to their ordeals under the Japanese. Some women have sought to describe episodes of sexual victimization along veiled, oblique, or heavily generalized lines.38 This is a trope common to stories of sexual violence committed by invading forces (victims of sexual brutalities committed by Soviet troops in Hungary during the war, for instance, were similarly reticent in narrating their rape-related experiences).39 The guarded nature of these accounts often indicates the underlying presence of deep emotional scars or psychological injuries. As Susan Brownmiller has argued, rape in warfare often has the effect of “intimidation and demoralization for the victims’ side.”40 Other individuals, however, have clung to yet another common trope employed in narratives of rape during times of conflict: that someone else was raped and victimized by the aggressors during the period—and not themselves. The American writer Emily Hahn recounted how a Eurasian girl named Mercedes had described her so-called narrow escape from the Japanese at one of the emergency hospitals in Hong Kong (Hahn nevertheless implied in her account that Mercedes’s body language suggested that the girl was in fact raped by the Japanese on that occasion): “But did you have a, uh, bad time?” I asked, not liking to use the word “rape.” “Did they bother the girls?” Mercedes looked out over the rooftops. “Some of them,” she said. “That old matron didn’t care what happened to anybody but the English girls. She was 34 Li, Hong Kong Surgeon, 111. 35 Low, When Singapore was Syonan-to, 10. 36 V.L. Porritt, “More Bitter than Sweet: Lena Rickett’s Experiences during the Japanese Occupation of Sarawak, 1941–45,” Sarawak Gazette 122 (1995): 48. 37 For related incentives governing the silence of rape victims, see Andrea Pető, “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna in 1945,” in Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s, eds. Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 140–141. 38 Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies, 210. 39 Pető, “Memory and the Narrative of Rape,” 132–133. 40 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 37.

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Several Chinese and Eurasian women who testified about their wartime experiences have even elected to describe how they were able to successfully avoid rape by the Japanese. The Chinese woman Lee Yeuk-Lan, for instance, had testified at the post-war trial of Ito Takeo in Hong Kong that while some ten Chinese women were raped in the building where she was hiding, she was not raped as she was pregnant and had two children with her.42 This lends credence to the contention that narratives of the Japanese occupation are often written by those who saw themselves as resistors (who accordingly choose to remember) and not as victims (who choose to forget, and are consequently forgotten). It is also possible that fantasies of rape were deployed by some individuals in narratives of the period for increased dramatic effect. Janet Lim described in her memoirs how she had valiantly resisted a rape attempt by a drunken Japanese soldier (whom she had referred to as an “admiral”) and eventually succeeded in foiling his advances: [ … ] he pulled me back and his hands tore at my clothing. Suddenly I was overcome with anger and I sprang on top of him and pinned him down. I jammed one knee into his stomach and my left hand clutched his throat. Because of his drunken state and his awkward position I was able to hold him down. He began to choke and I bore down harder. His face reddened, and his eyes bulged, as I screamed over and over again: “Jesus, help me!”43

Some Chinese and Eurasian women may have deliberately backed away from testifying about their experiences due to their comparative marginalization within the colonial context, especially in terms of the relatively limited narrative spaces available to them both during and immediately after the war. As the Eurasian girl Mercedes had phrased it to Emily Hahn, the old matron at the emergency hospital “didn’t care what happened to anybody but the English girls.”44 Indeed, those who feel that their voices are deemed inconsequential—especially within public or official contexts—rarely leave testimonials of their experiences.45 It may also be postulated that disclosures of rape were often influenced by the comparative context in which these incidents took place. By the fall of 1942, the Chinese doctor Li Shu-fan and other Asian medical practitioners in Hong Kong 41 Emily Hahn, Hong Kong Holiday (New York: Doubleday, 1946), 201–202. 42 Testimony of Lee Yeuk-Lan (P.W. No.21), in “Defendant: Ito Takeo, Place of Trial: Hong Kong,” TNA: PRO, WO235/1107, 102. 43 Lim, Sold for Silver, 186. 44 Hahn, Hong Kong Holiday, 201. 45 Felicia Yap, “Voices and Silences of Memory: Civilian Internees of the Japanese in British Asia during the Second World War,” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 929.

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were handling a “deluge of maternity cases” and a “crop of enemy babies” which resulted from the ubiquity of Japanese-perpetrated rapes immediately after their takeover of the territory.46 Numerous sexual outrages, too, were perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanking (one moderate estimate suggests that at least 20,000 women were raped over a six-week period), as well as in Beijing, Shanghai, and in other Japanese-occupied territories. Many of these incidents resulted in severe physical injuries or the eventual death of the victims.47 It is possible that the sheer weight of comparative horrors elsewhere may have contributed to the reluctance of some Chinese and Eurasian women in occupied British Asia to disclose lessbloody instances of rape which did not result in pregnancies or which they were eventually able to escape with their lives. Conclusion This study suggests that European and Asian women were bound by different spaces and frameworks of narration when recounting the sexual brutalities perpetrated by invading Japanese troops in occupied British Asia both during and immediately after the war. A considerably larger number of Europe women who were sexually brutalized by the Japanese appear to have testified about their ordeals, although their numbers were proportionally smaller than the number of Asian women who were raped by the occupiers. Moreover, the vast majority of Chinese and Eurasian women appear to have remained silent about their victimization as the conflict unfolded and during the years immediately after the war. This may be due to prevailing cultural stigmas associated with the shame and disgrace of physical violation, as well as the comparative marginalization of Chinese and Eurasian women within the colonial context in terms of the limited narrative spaces available to them. Indeed, testimony about sexual violence in times of conflict is often provided by those who are confident that their voices will be heard within public or official contexts, while those who feel that their voices are comparatively inconsequential (or that they will be ignored) rarely leave records of their experiences. It was not until the 1990s—more than 40 years after the end of the war—when the first “comfort women” of the Japanese (mainly Korean females) began to break this silence within an altered public milieu which afforded increased recognition to the testimonies of victims or survivors. As Michiko Nakahara has documented, it was this surge of “comfort women” testimonies during the 1990s which prompted eight women who were in “comfort stations” in occupied Malaya to speak out about their wartime victimization.48 46 Li, Hong Kong Surgeon, 121. 47 Roland, “Massacre and Rape in Hong Kong,” 57–59. 48 Nakahara, “‘Comfort Women’ in Malaysia,” 582. For related literature on the “comfort women” issue, see Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (London: Routledge, 2002) and

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The narrative tropes adopted by existing accounts are also revealing for what they suggest about the social and cultural contexts in which these disclosures took place. European rape victims of the Japanese were often portrayed by fellow British and Americans as individuals who reacted with courage, heroism and bravery to their wartime ordeals. The few who have testified about their own victimization under the Japanese have often done so within judicial settings where their voices were granted formal recognition by the authorities, possibly with the hope that appropriate action will eventually be meted out to the Japanese responsible for those crimes. The few Chinese and Eurasian women who have testified about their wartime experiences, for their part, have tended to describe themselves as individuals who bravely and successfully resisted the Japanese. There is also a tendency amongst narrators to portray other Chinese and Eurasian women (and not themselves) as sexual victims of the occupying forces. This suggests that it was often more socially acceptable for both European and Asian narratives to explore themes of active resistance and appropriate action against the Japanese—such as by emphasizing the successful avoidance of rape—instead of passive victimization. Indeed, for many female victims of the Japanese, the very act of bearing testimony was a challenge deeply fraught with social and cultural overtones. References Archer, Bernice and Kent Fedorowich. “The Women of Stanley: Internment in Hong Kong 1942–45.” Women’s History Review 5 (1996): 373–399. Bayly, Christopher and Tim Harper. Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945. London: Allen Lane, 2004. Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. Caruth, Cathy, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Dew, Gwen. Prisoner of the Japs. New York: Hutchinson, 1943. Douglass, Ana, and Thomas A. Vogler, eds. Witness and Memory: The Discourse of Trauma. New York: Routledge, 2003. Flower, Sibylla Jane. “Allied Prisoners of War: The Malayan Campaign, 1941–42.” In Sixty Years On: The Fall of Singapore Revisited, edited by Brian Farrell and Sandy Hunter, 208–217. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002. Flower, Sybilla Jane. “British Policymakers and the Prisoner-of-War Issue: Perceptions and Responses.” In The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, Vol. III: The Military Dimension, edited by Ian Gow et al., 232–241. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Hahn, Emily. Hong Kong Holiday. New York: Doubleday, 1946. Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 200).

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Harrop, Phyllis. Hong Kong Incident. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1943. Horne, Gerald. Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire. New York: New York University Press, 2004. Li, Shu-Fan. Hong Kong Surgeon. London: Gollancz, 1964. Lim, Janet. Sold for Silver. London: Collins, 1958. Low, N.I. When Singapore was Syonan-to. Singapore: Times Books International, 1995. Low, N.I. and H.M. Cheng. This Singapore: Our City of Dreadful Night. Singapore: City Book Store, 1947. Nakahara, Michiko. “‘Comfort Women’ in Malaysia.” Critical Asian Studies 33 (2001): 581–589. Pető, Andrea. “Memory and the Narrative of Rape in Budapest and Vienna in 1945.” In Life After Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s, edited by Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann, 129–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Porritt, V.L. “More Bitter than Sweet: Lena Rickett’s Experiences during the Japanese Occupation of Sarawak, 1941–45.” Sarawak Gazette 122 (1995): 46–54. Priestwood, Gwen. Through Japanese Barbed Wire: A Thousand-Mile Trek from a Japanese Prison Camp. London: G.G. Harrap, 1944. Roland, Charles G. “Massacre and Rape in Hong Kong: Two Case Studies Involving Medical Personnel and Patients.” Journal of Contemporary History 32 (1997): 43–61. Stoler, Ann Laura. “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 134–161. Tanaka, Yuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation. London: Routledge, 2002. Wright-Nooth, George. Prisoner of the Turnip Heads: Horror, Hunger and Humour in Hong Kong, 1941–1945. London: Leo Cooper, 1994. Yap, Felicia. “Voices and Silences of Memory: Civilian Internees of the Japanese in British Asia during the Second World War.” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 917–940. Yoshimi, Yoshiaki. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

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Chapter 3

The Female and Political Body in Pain:1 Sexual Torture and Gendered Trauma during the Greek Military Dictatorship (1967–1974) Katerina Stefatos

This chapter looks at the gendered characteristics of the terrorization, sexual torture and traumatization of female political dissidents during the Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974). The 1967 coup d’état resulted in a prolonged period of political persecution, imprisonment and terrorization. For women especially, the regime reinforced a calculated mechanism of persecution and terror with genderspecific markers. Political violence against and abuse of female dissidents was not a new phenomenon;2 it was closely related to anti-communist and nationalist rhetoric and actions taken against politically suspect citizens of the civil war period (1946–1949). But violence and sexual torture during the junta was organized and implemented as official state practice, systematized and scientifically performed by agents of the armed forces, specially-trained torturers and high-ranking officials. In what follows, I look at the narratives of women dissidents as told in their oral testimonies and written memoirs or found in archival and secondary sources in order to develop a gender analysis of a period of extreme political terror and theorize the gendered memories of the abuse experienced by the politically 1 I am paraphrasing Elaine Scarry’s well-known and influential study on torture; see Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 2 See Tasoula Vervenioti, “Left-Wing Women between Politics and Family,” in After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960, ed. Mark Mazower (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000a); “Makronisi: Martyria kai Martyries Gynaikon” [Makronisi: Agonies and Testimonies of Women], in Istoriko Topio kai Istorikh Mnini. To Paradeigma ths Makronisou [Historical Site and Historical Memory. The Makronisos Example] (Athens: Filistor, 2000b); Diplo Vivlio [Double Book] (Vivliorama, 2003). Also see Janet Hart, New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance (1941–1964) (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996); Margaret Poulos, “Gender, Civil War and National Identity: Women Partisans during the Greek Civil War 1946–1949,” The Australian Journal of Politics and History 46/3 (September 2000): 418–427; Eleni Fourtouni, ed. and trans., Greek Women in Resistance (New Haven, CT: Thelphini Press, 1986); Katherine Stefatos, “Engendering the Nation: Women, state oppression and political violence in postwar Greece (1946–1974)” (Doctoral thesis, University of London, 2012).

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active women. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section presents a “topography” of victims, practices, sites and perpetrators of torture. The second looks at specific cases of female torture and abuse as narrated by the women involved, analyzing these narratives through the lens of nationalism and gender. The last section examines the intersection and complex interplay of “gender,” nationalist ideals and sexuality, as well as trauma and memory, in the personal narratives. Emphasis is placed on the causing factors and resulting complications in relation to the silencing and marginalization of women’s traumatic experiences as reflected both on a personal and a collective memory level. Sources and Methods The chapter draws on gender studies and adopts a feminist theoretical perspective in the analysis of the gendered political violence, seeking to situate the Greek case within a feminist critique that emphasizes the politics of gender and the role of nationalism in the surge of gender-related abuse and coercion in recent conflicts.3 3 There is a particularly interesting and growing literature in the analysis of gender violence at times of war and conflict in nationalist and patriarchal settings through a feminist lens. See Cathy Blacklock and Alison Crosby, “The Sounds of Silence: Feminist Research across Time in Guatemala,” in Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zone, eds. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004); Cynthia Cockburn, “The Gendered Dynamics of Armed Conflict and Political Violence,” in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, eds. Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark (London and New York: Zed Books, 2001); Cynthia Cockburn, “The Continuum of Violence, A Gender Perspective on War and Peace,” in Sites of Violence, eds. Giles and Hyndman; Victoria DeFrancisco, “Gender, power and practice: or, putting your money (and your research) where your mouth is,” in Gender and Discourse, ed. Ruth Wodak (London: Sage Publications, 1998); Tina Skinner, Marianne Hester and MS Ellen Malos, eds., Researching Gender Violence: Feminist Methodology in Action (Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2005); Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson and Jennifer Marchbank, eds., States of Conflict, Gender, Violence and Resistance (London and New York: Zed Books, 2000); Cynthia Enloe, “All the Men Are in the Militias, All the Women Are Victims: The Politics of Masculinity and Femininity in Nationalist Wars,” in The Women and War Reader, eds. Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998); Caroline Moser, “The Gendered Continuum of Violence and Conflict: An Operational Framework,” in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?, eds. Moser and Clark; Vesna NikolicRistanovic, “Definitions of violence in war and the experience of women: the subject of research,” in Women, Violence and War, Wartime Victimization of Refugees in the Balkans, ed. Nikolic-Ristanovic (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000); Jan Jindy Pettman, “Women, Nationalism and the State: Towards an International Feminist Perspective,” Gender and Development Studies, Occasional Paper 4 (Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology, 1992); Victoria Sanford, “From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in 21st century Guatemala,” Journal of Human Rights 7 (2008): 104–122.

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For this chapter I “revisited” 14 interviews and informal conversations with former junta dissidents (among them one woman whose mother was a political exile); these comprised ten women and four men. The interviews and informal discussions were conducted during 2007–2010 as part of my doctoral research, primarily in Athens, but also during a pilgrimage trip to Yaros, one of the military regime’s main exile concentration camps. I emphasize the oral testimonies of three young women (in-depth semi-structured interviews), university students who were detained and abused due to their anti-junta activism, Zoe, Dora and Nadia. All my interviewees, including Zoe, Dora and Nadia, were asked if they wanted to use pseudonyms, but most wanted to use their actual names; some insisted on it. However, as my main informants remain politically active, for present purposes I use only first names. The archival resources include political documents, newspapers and correspondence. The main archives used herein were the Modern Greek Archives and the Amnesty International Archive of the League for Democracy in Greece (King’s College London Archives) and the Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI) in Athens, as well as the personal archives of former political detainees. The memoirs, life-histories and written testimonies, especially those written by women who have been persecuted, imprisoned and abused, are integral to this analysis of the gendered nature of political violence. When I began compiling these, I noted the lack of academic research on the period of the military dictatorship (1967–1974), especially in relation to the interrogation, torture and sexual terror of both men and women, but also female political activism. Women’s memoirs are not usually acknowledged as historical sources or viewed as forming part of Greek national history. Besides assisting women to overcome and cope with their traumatic experiences, they serve an additional function; they ensure that “war is no longer exclusively the domain of masculine memorial culture in which socalled ‘acts of war’ mute the female violence in the civil population.”4 In this respect, oral and life histories, memoirs and interviews should “serve as part of a body of testimonial literature.”5 Well-known Greek historians, political scientists and sociologists stated in a series of newspaper articles on the nature of historiographical research on the Greek military dictatorship that academia has focused only on “easy” or neutral subjects such as the anti-junta resistance, foreign intervention and the causes that led to the establishment of the military regime.6 There is also a dearth of 4 Selma Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction edition,” in Gender and Memory, eds. Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini and Paul Thompson (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2005), xiv. 5 Swanee Hunt, This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), cited in Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition,” xiv. 6 See the views expressed by Christina Koulouri and Ilias Nikolakopoulos in Pimplis’ article; Pimplis, M. “21h Apriliou: 38 hronia meta … Diktatoria, i ‘mavri tripa’ tis

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non-scholarly discussion. Recently, however, there has been some public and journalistic interest, with television broadcasts, documentaries, newspaper articles and literary texts dealing with the issue of torture and the male and female victims of abuse, and discussing the perpetrators.7 As for the published memoirs, most concentrate on the student revolts in the Polytechnic and Law School and the heroic, usually male, participants in anti-junta struggles, ignoring difficult aspects of everyday life and the victimization of women and men during imprisonment, torture and sexual violence.8 Very few memoirs are written by women who were politically persecuted, incarcerated and tortured, especially when the abuse and terror had gendered and sexual characteristics.9 An exception is the memoir of Kitty Arseni, an actress who was arrested in 1967 as a member of the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front for distributing bills. Kitty was severely abused and sexually assaulted during interrogation in the premises of the Athens Security Police. In her memoir she discusses her traumatic experiences as a political detainee and the sexual nature of her torture.10 Kitty’s memoir is based istoriografias” [21st of April: 38 Years Afterwards … Dictatorship, the “Black Hole” of the Historiography]. Orizontes, TA NEA, April 22, 2005.  7 See the television program I Mihani tou Hronou [The Time Machine] on the torture that took place during the junta years, November 19 and 26, 2010, NET; for the junta torturers see Thematiki Vradia [Thematic Evening] “The torturers of the EAT-ESA,” June 21, 2010, ERT1; see also the articles by Panos Mpailis, “Melpo Lekatsa: Imerologio Fylakis pano se harti sokolatas” [Prison Diary on a Chocolate Paper], November 17, 1997, TA NEA (electronic edition: http://www.tanea.gr/news/greece/article/3989784/?iid=2) and Nadia Valavani, “Vasanizan, alla ohi epitides” [They Were Torturing, but not on Purpose], November 29, 2005, TA NEA; for literary texts, see Roviros Manthoulis, Lilly’s Story (Athens: Exantas, 2002) and Ilias Maglinis, I anakrisi [The Interrogation] (Athens: Kedros, 2008); also Maro Douka’s novel I arhaia skouria [Fool’s Gold] (Athens: Patakis, 2008) and the short story I Pigada [The Cauldron] (Athens: Patakis, 2009), which were first published in 1979 and 1974, respectively. Special reference needs to be made to the first documentary that deals exclusively with women who were persecuted, detained and tortured during the military junta, Ta Koritsia tis Vrohis [The Girls of the Rain] by Alinda Dimitriou, released in 2012.  8 Also see Koulouri, Nikolakopoulos and Alivizatos in Pimplis, “21h Apriliou: 38 hronia meta … Diktatoria, i ‘mavri tripa’ tis istoriografias.”  9 This was also the case in several other contexts, for instance in Former Yugoslavia, South Africa, Chile and Argentina; see Temma Kaplan, “Acts of Testimony: Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory,” Signs 28/1 (Autumn 2002): 179–199; Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition” and Rhonda Copelon, “Surfacing Gender: Reconceptualizing Crimes Against Women in Time of War,” in The Women and War Reader, eds. Lorentzen and Turpin. 10 The sexual nature of torture is also discussed in the memoirs by two male former junta dissidents who were victimized during torture, Pericles Korovessis and Petros Vlassis. The torture of Pericles Korovessis, Petros Vlassis and Kitty Arseni, drew international attention as they were among the few political detainees who testified at the Council of Europe. See Pericles Korovessis, Antropofylakes [Humanwatchers] (Athens: Electra, 2007) and Petros Vlassis, Diadromes Zoes. Politiki kai politikoi [Life Paths. Politics and

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on her 1968 attestation to the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe against the regime. Kitty Arseni’s memoir is the only testimony written by a female dissident who overtly discusses the gendered dynamics of the abuse, including sexual torture and terrorization during interrogation and internment. As in similar cases of nationalist and ethnic conflicts or in militarized and war-affected societies, the accounts of women are limited, while a veil of silence covers rape, sexual abuse and torture during the military dictatorship. This silencing was prevalent even after the return to democracy in 1974. The silencing and lack of testimonials is closely connected to the officially nurtured socio-political amnesia, but also to the social and family structures, the traditional accounts of femininity and the prevailing gender norms and expectations in terms of reporting or discussing incidents of sexual abuse, regardless of the context in which they were committed. Contextualizing Torture: Victims and Practices, Sites and Perpetrators The victims11 of torture were usually students between the ages of 18–25, members of the various illegal anti-junta organizations (primarily leftist, but often from a wider political spectrum than similar dissidents in the civil war period), including Rigas Ferraios, the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front (PAM), and the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), as well as workers and professionals.12 As they were not well-known members of either the Communist or leftist parties or the Greek intelligentsia, they were more easily subjected to torture; even if their cases were made public, the levels of interest and outrage, both in the country and abroad, would not be that great. In addition, as the authorities used torture not only to mentally and physically punish and exemplify those who supposedly threatened the security and morals of the nation, but also to obtain information on anti-junta activities, the victims were selected on the basis of their vulnerability Politicians] (Athens: Epsilon, 2009). For more in relation to torture during the junta, see T. Mitafidis and C. Mouhayier, eds., Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona [Women in the Anti-Dictatorship Struggle], Conference Proceedings, Mika Haritos-Fatouros’s influential study The Psychological Origins of the Institutionalized Nature of Torture (London: Routledge, 2003) and the album I taratsa tis Bouboulinas: Katastoli kai vasanistiria stin Ellada ’67–69 [The Bouboulinas’ Terrace: Repression and Tortures in Greece 1967–1969], eds. K. Giourgos and T. Kabilis (Athens: Potamos, 2009). 11 According to James Becket, the American attorney representing Amnesty International in Greece, a conservative estimate is that at least 2,000 people were tortured. James Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada, 1967–69 [Barbarism in Greece, 1967–69] (Athens: Pontiki Publications, 1997), 31. 12 For more information on the victims, see Nadia Valavani, “To ‘miso t’ ouranou’ stin anakrisi” [Half of Heaven in Interrogation], Presentation to the Association of Imprisoned and Exiled Resistance-Fighters 1967–1974 (SFEA) Symposium, Athens, April 21, 2007; see also Kitty Arseni, Bouboulinas 18: Martyria [Bouboulinas 18: Memoir] (Athens: Themelio, 2005).

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under interrogation and torture. Zoe, a former junta dissident and student, held incommunicado for two and a half months by the Security Police, stated emphatically during our interview: “When you were called for interrogation your stance needed to be direct, non-negotiable [ … ] you had to make them realize that you were determined not to break.”13 A 1968 Amnesty International report on Greece states that even though the physical beating of prisoners was a common practice of intimidation, it could only be classified as torture if conducted in a systematic way.14 In the Greek junta, the physical and psychological violence against the detainees was most certainly systematic and deliberate. Moreover, the methods used targeted the gender identities of the dissidents. Although the civil war had been a particularly violent period, the interrogation and torture methods of the military junta were routinized and bureaucratized, especially in their sexual dimensions. Prisoners were tortured for hours on a daily basis, usually naked or half-naked, in some cases with their eyes covered. Five to six officers took the role of torturers and many more were present. Besides falanga (bastinado),15 methods of torture included beating naked bodies with wires, burning them with cigarettes, and applying electroshocks. Incidents of sexually-related assaults were also reported. In the case of women, these involved rape or attempted rape and genital penetration with objects and water. For men, sexual torture entailed excessive beatings and electroshocks in the genital area and anal penetration with objects.16 13 Zoe (July 24, 2009, Athens); Zoe was exiled to the Yaros concentration camp when the interrogators did not obtain a Declaration of Repentance. Also see Nadia (June 7, 2010, Athens) and Dora (July 29, 2010, Athens). 14 “Situation in Greece,” League for Democracy in Greece, Amnesty International, January 1968. Since 1973 Amnesty International has adopted a rather broad definition of torture: “Torture is the systematic and deliberate infliction of acute pain by one person on another, or on a third person, in order to accomplish the purpose of the former against the will of the latter.” In 2007 Amnesty International emphasized that the line between torture and illtreatment is blurred, arguing that “It is not possible to make a sharp distinction between those forms of treatment which amount to torture and those which amount to other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment (ill-treatment). But from a practical standpoint, any such distinction is not significant because all forms of torture and ill-treatment are absolutely prohibited under international law—and it is not simply a matter of law. The universal legal prohibition is based on a universal philosophical consensus that torture and ill-treatment are repugnant, abhorrent, and immoral.” See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture and http://web.archive.org/ web/20071205141017/http://web.amnesty.org/pages/stoptorture-arguments-eng#question1. 15 Falanga or bastinado, a common method of torture during the Greek civil war and the military junta, involved strapping the prisoner to a bench and beating the soles of the feet with bamboo or a pipe. 16 See “Situation in Greece;” also “Human Rights in Greece,” League for Democracy in Greece, Amnesty International, March 1973; Korovessis, Antropofylakes; Arseni, Bouboulinas 18. Other incidents of sexual torture can be found in “New Evidence on Greek Tortures,” Greek News Agency; also “Body of the Central Council of the Greek Communist Youth-KNE,” Odigitis (December 1973), 6.

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The main detention center where Greek dissidents were interrogated, tortured and imprisoned for short periods was the premises of the Security Police (Asphalia) on Bouboulinas Street, in central Athens.17 The solitary confinement cells were 1.5m by 1.80m; they were usually bare with cement floors and lacked ventilation or light. They were extremely dirty, as the public toilets in the floors would overflow, allowing sewage into the cells. The strict solitary confinement meant detainees would be incarcerated for up to four days without any food or water and forced to use their cell as a lavatory.18 The officers used isolation to politically suppress dissidents, and also to dehumanize them. For example, some women were deprived of water and food for up to 20 days or forced to eat excreta.19 The laundry room (plystario), which often appears in testimonies, was situated on the rooftop (known as the Bouboulinas terrace) of the Security Police building; most acts of torture were perpetrated here. It was a room measuring 2.50m by 3.50m, and it contained two to three showers. In the middle of the room was a workbench with ropes and a boiler which was hit during torture to avoid the screams of the victims being heard; a machine imitating the noise of a motorcycle was also frequently employed for the same purpose.20 When the dissidents were finally transferred to their cells after interrogation and torture, their chambers acted as a shelter, becoming their private space.21 Zoe began her narration with a very detailed description not only of her cell (No. 6) 17 In addition to the main prisons, detention and interrogation centers in Athens, there were also peripheral police centers and military camps such as the notorious camp of Dionysos (505 Naval Unit) outside Athens and specifically designated interrogation centers such as the Reform Prisons and the Third Army Corps, a special place of torture of the KYP (Central Information Agency) and the Karatassos camp, all of which were based in Thessaloniki. There were also the premises of the Piraeus Security Police and numerous other local police stations across the country, where men and women were assaulted and detained for short periods, before being transferred to the well-known interrogation centers, mainly at the Greek Military Police (ESA) or the General Security Police Station (Asphalia). For instance, Maria Kallergi, a student, was brutally assaulted and tortured for 25 days in the 505 Naval Unit at the Dionysos camp. She was then transferred to the General Security Police Station in Bouboulinas Street, where the interrogation and detention continued for nine months, before being sent to the Women’s Section of Averof Prison; see “Averof Prison,” a clandestine report, MGA/InfoXVI/Women Prisoners. 18 Kitty Arseni describes her cell in great detail; see Arseni, Bouboulinas 18; also Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada; and “Letter from Athens Security Police Station,” Amnesty International, League for Democracy in Greece, King’s College London Archives; also see Zoe (July 24, 2009). 19 For the conditions in solitary confinement, see Angeliki Sotiri, “New Evidence on Greek Tortures,” The Sunday Times, June 16, 1974; Dora Konstantinidou, Beikou Archive, Box 9: Youra, ASKI; Arseni, Bouboulinas 18; Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada, 45. 20 See Arseni, Bouboulinas 18; Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada. 21 According to Feldman, the cell is a “safe sector” in prison; see Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: the Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 209.

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but also the whole Security Police building, including the stairs leading to the notorious rooftop where they were taken for interrogation and torture. Their few resources in the cell, their dirty, bloodstained clothes, a few paper towels, a book, paper and a pen or a pencil (usually smuggled from the interrogation offices, as reading material was prohibited) gave some sort of privacy and intimacy. Even the bedbugs became “a sign of life.”22 During a recent blog interview, Melpo Lekatsa, a pharmaceutical student interrogated and tortured by the Greek Military Police (EAT/ESA) in January 1974, showed the wrapping paper from the chocolates she was given by the doctor after she passed out due to low blood sugar. In these small wrappers, she managed to keep a prison diary.23 Scarry notes that “the prisoner’s physical world is limited to the room and its contents; no other concrete embodiments of civilization pass through the doors.”24 This is evident in Anastasia Tsirka’s case; after her torture, she was thrown down the stairs causing her to have a miscarriage the next morning in her cell. She states in the Council of Europe 1974 Report that in spite of everything, she “loved” her cell: “The cell was pitch dark, dirty, full of bedbugs [ … ] then I started loving this cell, I laid down and I slept naturally, as though nothing had happened to me.”25 As noted above, the torture frequently had a sexual nature. Young women (and in some cases men), usually students, were the primary victims of sexual abuse and terrorization. This type of violence was executed by the Special Students’ Division (Spoudastiko) at the Security Police building under the Directorship of Karapanayiotis and Gravaritis, who was an expert in sexually oriented tortures.26 Cases of rape by the Military Police (ESA) have also been reported, but the victims (again usually students) were afraid to denounce the perpetrators. Women from the countryside were especially reluctant to report rape.27 Pericles Korovessis, a male victim of sexual assault during interrogation, mentioned in an interview that incidents of rape—in some cases involving the use of fish—were not publicized by women, even when the victims were well-known members of junta-resistance groups, because of the shame that extended to their local communities.28 In the same context, incidents of forced impregnation conducted by specially designated 22 See Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 70. 23 See Melpo’s interviews: “Imerologio Fylakis se harti sokolatas” [Prison Diary on a Chocolate Paper], TA NEA, November 17, 1997 and “To Polytehneio mesa apo ta matia mou” [The Polytechnic Through My Eyes], Alithina Psemata [True Lies], blog interview, November 9, 2011; accessed March 10, 2013, http://www.alithinapsemata.gr/personalities/ persons-news/person-of-the-month/2021-melpo-lekatsa.html. 24 Scarry, Body in Pain, 41. 25 Anastasia Tsirka, Vasanistiria, Vasanistes kai Vasanismenoi stin Ellada tis Hountas [Tortures, Torturers and Tortured in the Junta’s Greece] (Athens: Mnimon, 1974), 18. 26 Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada, 49–50. 27 For more information, see “Body of the Central Council,” 6. 28 Pericles Korovessis discusses those cases in the television program I Mihani tou Hronou [The Time Machine], NET, November 19 and 26, 2010.

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perpetrators remain covert and are rarely discussed.29 One 18-year-old woman was sexually abused with a stick, which was later used to hang her on the wall; her torture took place on the terrace of the Security Police building, where she was left naked for two days.30 In other cases, the breasts of women were whipped with wooden sticks and ropes, and they were sexually penetrated with objects.31 In these circumstances, the tortured body becomes an instrument of shame, especially the exposed naked body. Nakedness was systematically employed during torture and interrogation to enforce militaristic and patriarchal domination. As it flouted social norms and broke with cultural conventions, it amplified the victim’s sense of vulnerability, fear and humiliation, while dishonoring her gender and political identity. It was common practice to force women to strip off their clothes, bathe or use the toilet in front of guards or soldiers; women prisoners were also naked as they went through other forms of physical torture. Maria Kallergi, a 24-year-old student, was dragged into the snow naked at Dionysos camp and freezing water was poured onto her.32 In the narratives of female detainees who were severely tortured, the gendered dynamics of their abuse and traumatization concentrate almost exclusively on female functions such as menstruation and pregnancy (for example, Anastasia Tsirka and Aspasia Karra). Female political inmates emphasize their subjugation and degradation when they were forced to bathe in front of their guards, or when they were menstruating and were dragged into their cells after torture, without being allowed to use the toilet or wash themselves. Melpo Lekatsa describes the first bath she took after a month of torture as a traumatic experience. In a 1997 newspaper interview (and based on her aforementioned chocolate wrapper prison diary), she says: Three soldiers took me to an outdoor bathroom [ … ] and made me undress [ … ] For a whole month that I was imprisoned I didn’t have any contact with water. The dirt had stuck on my skin and I looked like a leper [ … ] suddenly the dirt is superseded by something worse. Three pairs of insatiable glances are setting eyes on my body [ … ] the drops of water are falling like barbs on me. The pains and spasms are intensified [ … ] I feel like screaming.33

29 Maria Piniou-Kalli, a doctor and former political detainee, mentions an incident of forced impregnation by a guard who was assigned this task. She argues that even though similar cases of sexual assault took place, they were not publicized; see I Mihani, NET, November 26, 2010. 30 Korovessis, Antropofylakes, 108. 31 See “New Evidence on Greek Tortures,” The Sunday Times, June 16, 1974; see also Arseni, Bouboulinas 18; Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada, 171. 32 Maria Kallergi, The Black Book. The Greek Junta Stands Accused (Central Committee of the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front, 1971), Vol. 1. 33 Mpailis, “Imerologio Fylakis.”

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In this way, women were transformed into a disposable, disoriented human mass.34 Aspasia Karra, a Professor of Philology, who was semi-paralyzed as a result of poliomyelitis when arrested and tortured, said during a 2006 workshop on women who participated in the anti-dictatorship struggle: “I assumed for a minute that they did it [torture and mortification], in order for me to hate my body and give them my soul. Maybe … but I loved it even more, because it endured.”35 Most of the female detainees say that even though the physical pain was almost unbearable, the prevalent feeling during interrogation was not pain, but a compound of fear, terror and psychological torment.36 During our interview, Dora described the uncertainty and fear before the torture of electroshock: “You don’t know what it is, where it is coming from, you are in their mercy, you are unable to realize if you are feeling pain or if they are ripping you apart.”37 Kitty Arseni also argues that the fear of torture outweighed the physical pain. Nadia has similar perceptions; a 19 year-old student who participated in the Polytechnic uprisings, she was tortured in the Security Police building before being sentenced by a court-martial and sent to Korydallos Prison in Athens.38 Nadia argued that the experience of interrogation was traumatic, but the trauma was mostly psychological. During our interview, Nadia told me that she spent four months in isolation at the Security Police before she was finally interrogated and tortured; she found that hearing and watching the abuse of other inmates during that time was worse than the physical pain of falanga and the cigarette burns that she later suffered.39 Scarry suggests that through wounding, the victim’s interrogation and pain, is transformed into “a vehicle of self-betrayal.”40 She argues that torture consists of a physical act, the infliction of pain, and a verbal act, in the form of interrogation, during which the body can often betray the person who is being tortured.41 Melpo Lekatsa was detained in a white cell of EAT/ESA in January 1974; she recalls: “I was constantly trying to subject myself to the idea that I should not surrender, that I should endure [ … ] but then I got anxious again. Maybe I don’t have the quality of a heroine.”42 In her memoir, Kitty Arseni emphasizes that the only reason for her existence, the only thing she cared about, was to not reveal anything when she 34 For the colonization of the female body, see Begona Aretxaga, Shattering Silence. Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 131–136; for men, see Feldman, Formations of Violence, 195–198, 199–205. 35 Aspasia Karra, Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona, 26. 36 This was backed up in my interviews with Dora (July 29, 2010), Zoe (July 24, 2009) and Nadia (June 7, 2010); also see Valavani, “To “miso.”” 37 Dora (Interview, July 29, 2010) 38 See Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 72 and Nadia (June 7, 2010). 39 Interview, June 7, 2010. 40 Scarry, Body in Pain, 46–47. 41 Scarry, Body in Pain, 35. 42 Mpailis, “Imerologio.”

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was brought back to the terrace to be tortured again.43 Nadia, who waited alone in her cell for months before interrogation, said to me: “In a way, I wanted to be tortured; I didn’t want to be treated differently than my comrades.”44 Such feelings take torture beyond the physical sensation of pain, into a realm where the victim assumes responsibility for her own victimization.45 At the same time, the construction of a sense of agency was possible. For instance, after Kitty was abused and tortured, she managed to write the following: I am not afraid of the perverted executioners, Spanos’ paranoiac face, the counter with the ropes, the darkness of the terrace and the waters of the wash house. I have the taste of the mop in my mouth, the noise of the motorcycle in my ears. I see Spanos’ face in front of me, but above all I hate my body for weakening. And I wait for them. As long as they come. I am ready. Now I don’t care that my mind isn’t working. I don’t need it … now I know how you encounter with them.46

In another instance, even though she knew it was pointless, Melpo Lekatsa asked her interrogators to use the plural when speaking to her as a sign of respect since she was a political detainee.47 And when Lambrou, her torturer, brought her mother into his office, Zoe emphatically told him: “You’re wrong to think that you will coerce me to sign a declaration of repentance.”48 By the same token, in her interview, Melpo said that the period of detention was particularly difficult, but at least the nightmare of waiting to be tortured had ended. At that point, she said: “It’s only you, the regime, the tortures and how someone will be able to survive.” Melpo’s interview ended with her saying: “We survived, so we consider that we won, while others didn’t.” In the view of Anastasia Tsirka, they survived because they were right and their cause was just.49 Deriving from to a large extent formulated political identity, the narratives of women junta dissidents, even in cases of extreme violence and both physical and political mortification of the female body, maintain “a resistant trace, a stain of the subject, a sign of resistance.”50

43 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 71. 44 Interview, June 7, 2010. 45 Also see Temma Kaplan, “Αcts of Testimony: Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory,” 181, and Susan McKay, “Gender Justice and Reconciliation,” Women’s Studies International Forum 23/5 (2000): 564. 46 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 70–71. 47 Lekatsa, “To Polytehneio mesa apo ta matia mou.” 48 Zoe (July 24, 2009). 49 For Melpo’s statements, see her interview: “To Polytehneio mesa apo ta matia mou” and for Anastasia’s, see Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 93. 50 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 49.

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Torturing Women: Gender, Nation and Sexuality The hegemonic militaristic narratives and paternalistic attitudes of the Greek military regime facilitated the establishment of a state apparatus of violence against women while consigning them to the “private” domain. Within this framework, women’s active participation in politics was considered unthinkable, unfeminine, and threatening. For example, Kitty Arseni was told during her interrogation: “Parasites like you should be killed. What is your business interfering with politics?”51 Additionally, in the Greek junta, as in the earlier civil war and postcivil war periods of political persecution, female political activism was equated with promiscuity, thus justifying their abuse. As noted by the political detainee Georgia Sarigianidou-Papadopoulou, men and women were treated equally during their interment in terms of deprivation and methods of torture. However, the verbal abuse, the sexual insinuations and sexual abuse of women was distinct. As the torturers labeled female dissidents as promiscuous to legitimize their actions, they were transformed into pariahs—atheists, Communists, and socially unfit, immoral women.52 The control of their bodies and sexuality was an attempt to shatter the political subjectivity of women anti-junta activists.53 For example, as Nadia recalls, during bastinado, torturers pulled women’s pubic hair; she says that victims “[do] not record the physical pain, but [suffer from] the uncomfortable intimacy of this gesture whose aim is not to cause physical pain, but to psychologically break them up.”54 Consider the case of Kitty Arseni, who during her interrogation by the Security Police, was sexually assaulted with a gun-barrel. In her memoir, she states: Twenty days55 have passed since my arrest … I was brought to the terrace … Despite having been beaten, I don’t feel pain. I want to shout but I don’t have a voice [ … ] I want a candescent iron to burn the parts of my body that were touched. [ … ] Now I remember when you said that, the fear of pain is bigger than the reality of pain. I didn’t see anything rational on them, something that I 51 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 80. The characterization “parasites” is not necessarily gendered as it primarily targeted the political identity of the detainees: Communists were considered unworthy, less than human and traitors to their nation. However, women were a double threat because of their political activism in the public sphere and because they acted against the prescribed gender roles. 52 Georgia Sarigianidou-Papadopoulou, “Martyries” [Testimonies], in Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona [Women in the Anti-Dictatorship Struggle], Conference Proceedings, Mitafidis and Mouhayier, 21. This is also argued by Nadia (June 7, 2010) and Dora (July 29, 2010); also see Valavani, “To ‘miso’” and Lekatsa “To Polytehneio mesa apo ta matia mou.” 53 Aretxaga, “Sexual Games,” 18. 54 Nadia (Interview, June 7, 2010). 55 Prisoners kept a diary by making deep cuts on the wall usually at the end of the day; see Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 70.

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could explain in my mind. I saw how they wanted to rip me in pieces, looking like cannibals. They were hedonic while I was writhing. That was their job. They didn’t know me at all … I wish they had left a part of my body free so that I could somehow resist.56

Arseni seeks an explanation, questioning the reasons for the abuse, but is also unable to identify any rationality for her torture. She feels that her torturers did not consider torture to be part of their usual working hours, but looked upon it as a time of pleasure and sexual gratification.57 She sums it up: “They were hedonic while I was writhing.”58 The relation of women’s sexuality and reproduction to motherhood was a crucial concept of the Greek dictatorial regime, as in similar nationalist frameworks elsewhere.59 Thus, female dissidents who denounced motherhood and the prescribed gender roles and adopted an active role in the political arena needed to be controlled. For the same reason, their abuse was seen as justified by their tormentors. Aspasia Karra was given electroshocks on the parts of her body that were healthy (she had poliomyelitis), while her torturers shouted: “Right arm, left foot, navel [ … ] On the navel so that you will not give birth to any communist children.”60 Similarly, during her interrogation, Maria Angelaki’s torturers told her that they would hurt her in such a way that she would never be able to become a mother.61 The body of the politically rebellious woman, as Begona Aretxaga argues, is not neutral, but “a body already invested with the meanings of sexual difference,”62 and in the Greek case, political differentiation. Consequently, the experience of interment, sexual terrorization and torture of women dissidents carried gender-specific differentiations that were integral to their victimization and thus need to be analyzed within a nationalist, militaristic and hyper-masculinized context that controlled and punished the bodies, actions and beliefs of women who were in a position to challenge the prevailing gender and power hierarchies. Male dissidents at the time of the military junta were also severely victimized, as they were psychologically humiliated, physically and sexually assaulted and 56 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 70, 72. 57 Becket, Varvarotita stin Ellada, 47. 58 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 72. 59 See Wendy Bracewell, “Women, Motherhood, and Contemporary Serbian Nationalism,” Women’s Studies International Forum 19/1–2 (1996): 25–33; Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov, eds., From Gender to Nation (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2004); Vesna Kesic, “Gender and Ethnic Identities in Transition: the Former Yugoslavia-Croatia,” in From Gender to Nation, eds. Ivekovic and Mostov and Roza Tsagarousianou; ““God, Patria and Home:” “Reproductive Politics” and Nationalist (Re)definitions of Women in East/Central Europe,” Social Identities 1/2 (1995): 283–313. 60 Karra, Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona, 25. 61 Maria Angelaki, Vol. 1 of The Black Book. The Greek Junta Stands Accused (Central Committee of the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front, 1971), 22. 62 Aretxaga, “Sexual Games,” 6–7.

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politically degraded.63 As with the abuse and terrorization of women, the aim was to weaken the morale of the dissidents and reconceptualize them as enemies in order to transform them into lesser subjects and rationalize the torture.64 The male body through sexual abuse and torture, was disciplined by being transformed into a feminine, vulnerable body. By feminizing the male body, the act of torture is normalized and naturalized, while the object of attack is not only the physical body of the victim, whether male or female but also the political locus that it represents. Therefore, male sexual abuse needs to be examined in relation to female victimization, since it is tightly connected to a hierarchical system of power and gender relations. Accordingly, it was through the abuse of women and female bodies or feminized male bodies that these gender markers were evoked as national fantasies and expectations within the idealized nationalist male body politic. Gendering of Memory: Concluding Remarks Through their narratives, their oral and written testimonies and memoirs, the women cited here have attempted to deal with their experiences. They note pain, fear and trauma, but they also speak of resistance and struggle, thereby articulating a counter-discourse.65 In a similar way, they enter the mnemonic public sphere through commemorative practices,66 pilgrimages to former exile sites or the publication of memoirs. However, in some cases, we also discern self-censorship or silencing, especially in relation to the sexualized nature of abuse. In addition, female active participation, political engagement (i.e., leftist) especially in the junta period, and the resulting persecution, incarceration and victimization of women, have been marginalized by the official rhetoric, public histories and academic debate. Clearly, there are two levels of silencing: the personal and the public inextricably intertwined. Stanley Cohen stresses the complex intersection and contestation of personal accounts and public histories; without the “comparisons and discrepancies between the public and the private” Cohen argues, “collective memory would become what it can never be: the arithmetical sum of the identical 63 The abuse of male youths in the Palestinian Intifada, as discussed by Julie Peteet, even though male torture during the Greek military dictatorship cannot be approached as a rite of passage into manhood and masculinity, gives the opportunity for interesting comparisons; see Julie Petteet, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian ‘Intifada’: A Cultural Politics of Violence,” American Ethnologist 21/1 (1994): 31–49. 64 See Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War” (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 44, 83, 86. 65 See Claire Hackett and Bill Rolston, “The burden of memory: Victims, storytelling and resistance in Northern Ireland,” Memory Studies 2/3 (2009): 355–376, especially 355. 66 See Fatma Kassem, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory (New York: Zed Books, 2011), 3–4.

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memories shared by all survivors, perpetrators and bystanders.”67 In the context of a narrowly defined national reconciliation, women’s experiences and stories of suffering and trauma were marginalized and often silenced. However, the silencing or socio-political amnesia was not always initiated from above, but was in some cases self-imposed as women had to deal with still unprocessed traumatic experiences, the shame imposed by still-dominant societal norms and the concern of transmitting their trauma to their own children or even bringing shame to local communities. Melpo has only talked about her detention and torture twice: in a 1997 newspaper interview and a 2011 blog interview. In the latter, her daughter—a young woman in her thirties—sits beside her as she talks about her victimization; her daughter is hearing about aspects of her mother’s traumatic experiences for the first time. In her interview, Nadia emphasized that for someone to talk about such experiences, they must first process them in order to turn them into discourse. She was forced to do this very early, as she had to testify at the trial of the Security Police Torturers in November 1974, a few months after the fall of the military dictatorship (July 24, 1974) and her release from Korydallos Prison.68 Although some of these women were involved in the feminist movement or are still politically active, they avoid discussing the sexual parameters of their abuse. For instance, even though Kitty Arseni’s case is well known, since she testified at the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe in 1968 and published a memoir, when she was asked during a TV interview about the infamous terrace, she mentioned falanga and the beatings but said: “Anyway I’m not prepared at this moment to describe some of the (other) tortures that took place.” And continued: “In any case, I think that enough has been said and do not need to say (anything more) and to reconvene.”69 Sexually-related violence is rarely publicly discussed or mentioned in written sources and oral accounts. In relation to the prevailing silence, we need to be aware of the social norms and gender biases that dominated Greek society at that period and to large extent are still in place. According to these norms, such matters were private. The atrocity of rape was considered private and women were to remain silent. Besides the apparent traumatization, making it extremely painful to turn women’s traumas into narrative, when they decide to share their traumatic stories, there is an obvious reluctance to talk about the sexual nature of their victimization; they more easily discuss the physical abuse and psychological violence, while their narrations are brief, succinct, and lacking in details. Besides self-censorship, the public politics of silence continued after the end of the seven-year military dictatorship (1967–1974) and the promise of transparency heralded by the new democratically elected state. Why was female participation, 67 Stanley Cohen, States of Denial, Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Oxford: Polity Press, 2001), 124. 68 Nadia (Interview, June 7, 2010). 69 Kitty Arseni, interview on the TV program Reportage horis Synora [Reportage without Frontiers], November 23, 2006; accessed March 1, 2013, http://rwf-archive.gr/ interviews_senaria-new.php?id=190&interview=1&interview_id=703.

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political engagement and the resulting persecution, incarceration and victimization marginalized or ignored by national historiography and public debate, but also in many cases silenced by women themselves? First, this exclusion is gender-based; the stories, experiences and traumas of women may be deemed less worthwhile to discuss or critique. Second, in certain areas, there was—and still is—limited access for women to knowledge and power. After the civil war and again after the fall of the military dictatorship, most women returned to the private sphere and tried to restore family and personal relations.70 Third, the marginalization of the experiences of women dissidents is also connected to a certain extent to the subsiding course of the Greek feminist movement in the 1990s, despite its reemergence in 1974 that actually set a basis for a series of important policies that were to substantially improve the lives and status of women in Greece.71 Finally, in the context of a narrowly defined “national reconciliation,” and under the pretext of forgiveness, a public debate on the persecution and sexual abuse of women (and men) would resurrect the passions and bring to light the mistakes of the past that the ruling political forces were trying to sweep under the carpet.72 For this reason, in the transitional, post-conflict period and within the context of official processes of justice and democratization, oblivion was considered as the “perfect remedy” while gender justice and gender matters, in general, were not established as a priority.73 70 Of course, Greece is not the only case where in the aftermath of war, conflict or guerrilla warfare, the return of women to their communities and to their previous invisible and silent status in civil society and the public realm was anticipated. See Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Pandora, 1989), Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed Books, 1986) and Simona Sharoni’s comparative analysis of women’s mobilization in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and in Northern Ireland; Simona Sharoni, “Rethinking Women’s Struggles in Israel-Palestine and in the North of Ireland,” in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?, eds. Moser and Clark, and Simona Sharoni, “Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Accord: Feminist Approaches to International Politics,” in Gendering the Middle East, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996). 71 See Harris Athanasiadis, “Oi dyo stigmes tou ellinikou feministikou kinimatos” [The Two Moments of the Greek Feminist Movement], Istoria tou Gynaikeiou Kinimatos [History of Women’s Movement], Essays for the Promotion of Gender Equality in Education, Part I, (2007): 13–23, 22, http://repository.edulll.gr/edulll/retrieve/5005/1428. pdf and Margaret Poulos, Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 182. 72 See Susan McKay, “Gender Justice and Reconciliation,” 565–566. McKay discusses a number of cases where women’s memories and experiences have been left out of the historical scope and omitted from the official processes of justice and reconciliation, such as the Japanese women who were held in American concentration camps during the Second World War, even with their families. 73 See McKay, “Gender Justice and Reconciliation,” 564, 566. Angelos Elefantis, a Greek leftist intellectual, argues that oblivion was perceived as the perfect remedy in reference to the incorporation of the Greek civil war in official history and the national

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Of course, the Greek case is not an exception. The persecution of politically active women in societies in conflict is typically excluded, manipulated or downplayed in the “official story of memory,” while the stories of men are institutionalized to achieve national reconciliation.74 The exclusion and resulting invisibility of women are linked to male dominance in historiography and decisionmaking.75 Furthermore, “canonical history typically does not consider women’s actions and experiences as fit or desirable to be integrated” into that history.76 This is evident in the Greek scholarly debate, where the issue of gender and political violence, especially during the military junta and the extreme suffering, sexual victimization and torture that took place, remains largely unexplored. Nevertheless, many women who were persecuted, imprisoned and tortured believe that their stories, voices and experiences must be documented, providing the possibility for “counter-histories” and “counter-memories” to emerge.77 For instance, during our interviews, Zoe and Dora both emphasized that even though they are aware of the particularly difficult and traumatic dimensions of women’s victimization during the military dictatorship, personal testimony is particularly important for future generations, to avoid a repetition of similar atrocities in the future and to achieve gender justice.78 Admittedly, there are certain experiences that will never be transformed into narrative. Nadia admits, “There are things that we never told, and that I never told.”79 And Kitty writes in the Prologue of her memoir: “[ … ] There is also another experience that defined me [ … ] There … where memory becomes more painful and judgment is not too clear.” She does not offer to explain this experience.80 In any case, even when the truths are fragmented or incomplete, these “half-truths,” despite the pauses or the partial silences, seem a far better alternative than absolute silence and invisibility.81 Perhaps these fragmented memories and testimonies of memory; see Angelos Elefantis, Mas piran tin Athina: Xanadiavazontas tin Istoria (1941–1950) [They’ve Taken Athens from Us: Rereading History (1941–1950)] (Athens: Vivliorama, 2003), 124, 151. 74 See Hackett and Rolston, “The burden of memory,” 362; also see Kassem, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory, especially 3–4; McKay, “Gender Justice and Reconciliation,” 565, and Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition,” xii–xiv. 75 See Kassem, Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory, 3–4, 9–10, and Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition.” 76 See Kassem, Palestinian Women, 4. 77 Leydesdorff, “Introduction to the Transaction Edition,” viii, x. 78 Zoe (July 24, 2009) and Dora (July 29, 2010). 79 Nadia (June 7, 2010). 80 Arseni, Bouboulinas 18, 9–10. 81 Also see David Close, “The Road to Reconciliation? The Greek Civil War and the Politics of Memory in the 1980s,” in The Greek Civil War, Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism, eds. Philip Carabott and Thanasis Sfikas (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), 275–277.

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trauma are a first step in coming to terms with this painful past, a “gendering of memory” both private and collective, a mode of “political resistance” and empowerment that transforms “private shame” into “political dignity” and reverses the shame that the dictatorship and the perpetrators (of violence) attempted to impose on the victims through sexual abuse, torture and humiliation.82 Even in cases of extreme abuse and sexual torture examined in this chapter, the gendered body, seemingly “stripped of political agency,”83 can still become a site of conflict and political resistance. For this reason, it is vital to reconceptualize these lived experiences of women and analyze them through a gendered perspective, in order to reveal the power structures that not only rationalize rape and sexualized violence, but also silence the women who are victimized. Women’s suffering, trauma, abuse and fear related to their political activism during the 1967–1974 period (and during the Greek civil war) has often been approached as a marginal subject or an isolated incident of war, conflict and socio-political unrest. For this reason, in this chapter I contextualize, historicize and engender the experiences, traumas and silences of women within the Greek nationalist ideology, traditionalist rhetoric and extreme militarism. State-organized and officially tolerated violence and terrorization of women often leads to a culture of violence, with distinct gender characteristics, embedded in patriarchal structures and militaristic and nationalist frameworks, creating a terrain for normalizing contemporary acts of violence, sexual assault and psychological oppression, misogyny and coercion. The incorporation and acknowledgement of women’s life-histories, narratives, memories, and traumas into collective memory and public discourse, lays the groundwork for a new platform for agency, justice, truth and fewer silences,84 shedding light at the same time on similar experiences among other oppressed groups, not only based on gender, but also on ethnicity, race and religion85 or in other contexts of nationalist uprisings and state terror.

82 See Temma Kaplan, “Αcts of Testimony: Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory,” 180–181, 184, 187–189, 192, 195, Kaplan through the testimony of the former Chilean political prisoner, Nieves Ayress, analyzes the gendering of memory as a form of political resistance. Agger discusses the ways in which private shame can be transformed into political dignity through testimonies of trauma; see Inger Agger, The Blue Room: Trauma and testimony among refugee women, a psychological exploration (London, New Jersey: Zed, 1992), cited in Susan McKay, “Gender Justice and Reconciliation,” 564. 83 Aretxaga, “Sexual Games,” 21. 84 See Victoria Sanford, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 209. 85 See Kassem, Palestinian Women, 10 and Hackett and Rolston, “The burden of memory,” 362; also see Olivera Simic, “Gender, Conflict, and Reconciliation: Where are the Men: What about Women?” Journal for Political Theory and Research on Globalization, Development and Gender Issues, accessed March 12, 2013, http://www.globalizacija.org/ doc_en/e0065sim.htm, (2007) 5, 8.

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References Archival Material Modern Greek Archive, LeAGue for deMocrAcy in Greece, kinG’s coLLeGe London Archives “Averof Prison.” A clandestine report, MGA/InfoXVI/Women Prisoners. Becket, James. “Torture in Democracy’s Homeland.” Christianity and Crisis: A Christian Journal of Opinion 28/9 (1968), MGA/InfoXIV/Torture. Greek News Agency, MGA/InfoXIV/Torture. League for Democracy. Sotiri, Angeliki. “New Evidence on Greek Tortures.” The Sunday Times, June 16, 1974, MGA/InfoXIV/ Torture. Modern Greek Archive, AMnesty internAtionAL, LeAGue for deMocrAcy in Greece, kinG’s coLLeGe London Archives “Human Rights in Greece.” Amnesty International, March 1973. “Letter from Athens Security Police Station.” Amnesty International. “Situation in Greece.” Amnesty International, January 1968. conteMporAry sociAL history Archives (Aski), Athens. “Body of the Central Council of the Greek Communist Youth-KNE.” Odigitis, December 1973, Contemporary Social History Archives (ASKI). Dora Konstantinidou, Beikou Archive, Box 9: Youra, ASKI. Interviews Dora, July 29, 2010, Athens Nadia, June 7, 2010, Athens Zoe, July 24, 2009, Athens Memoirs and Testimonies Angelaki, Maria. Vol. 1 of The Black Book. The Greek Junta Stands Accused. The Central Committee of the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front, 1971. Arseni, Kitty. Bouboulinas 18: Martyria [Bouboulinas 18: Memoir]. Athens: Themelio, 1975, 2005. Kallergi, Maria. Vol. 1 of The Black Book. The Greek Junta Stands Accused. The Central Committee of the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front, 1971. Karra, Aspasia. “Martyries” [Testimonies]. In Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona [Women in the Anti-Dictatorship Struggle], Conference Proceedings, edited by T. Mitafidis and C. Mouhayier, 23–29. Thessaloniki: Historical Archives Preservation Company (EDIA), 2006. Korovessis, Pericles. Antropofylakes [Humanwatchers]. Athens: Electra, 2007.

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Korovessis, Pericles. I Mihani tou Hronou [The Time Machine], NET November 19 and 26, 2010. Lekatsa, Melpo. “To Polytehneio mesa apo ta matia mou” [The Polytechnic Through My Eyes]. Alithina Psemata [True Lies], blog interview, November 9, 2011. Accessed March 10, 2013. http://www.alithinapsemata.gr/personalities/ persons-news/person-of-the-month/2021-melpo-lekatsa.html. Mpailis, Panos. “Melpo Lekatsa: Imerologio Fylakis se harti sokolatas” [Prison Diary on a Chocolate Paper]. TA NEA, November 17, 1997, electronic edition. http://www.tanea.gr/news/greece/article/3989784/?iid=2. Piniou-Kalli, Maria. I Mihani tou Hronou [The Time Machine]. NET November 26, 2010. Sarigiannidou-Papadopoulou, Georgia. “Martyries” [Testimonies]. In Gynaikes ston Anti-diktatoriko Agona [Women in the Anti-Dictatorship Struggle], Conference Proceedings, edited by T. Mitafidis and C. Mouhayier, 18–22. Thessaloniki: Historical Archives Preservation Company (EDIA), 2006. Tsirka, Anastasia. Vasanistiria, Vasanistes kai Vasanismenoi stin Ellada tis Hountas [Tortures, Torturers and Tortured in Junta’s Greece], Council of Europe Report. Athens: Mnimon: Company for the Study of Left Youth History (EMIAN), 1974. Valavani, Nadia. “To ‘miso t’ ouranou’ stin anakrisi” [‘Half of Heaven’ in Interrogation], Presentation at the Symposium of the Association of Imprisoned and Exiled Resistance-Fighters 1967–1974 (SFEA), April 21, 2007. Valavani, Nadia. “Vasanizan, alla ohi epitides” [They Were Torturing, but not on Purpose]. TA NEA, November 29, 2005. Vlassis, Petros. Diadromes Zoes. Politiki kai politikoi [Life Paths. Politics and Politicians]. Athens: Epsilon, 2009. Literature, Films, Documentaries, Television Programmes Dimitriou, Alinda. Ta Koritsia tis Vrohis [The Girls of the Rain], 2012. Douka, Maro. I Pigada [The Cauldron]. Athens: Patakis, 2009. Douka, Maro. I Arhaia Skouria [Fool’s Gold]. Athens: Patakis, 2008. Maglinis, Ilias. I anakrisi [The Interrogation]. Athens: Kedros, 2008. Manthoulis, Roviros. Lilly’s Story. Athens: Exantas, 2002. I Mihani tou Hronou [The Time Machine], “Vasanismoi kata ti diarkeia tis Xountas” [The Tortures During the Junta], November 19 and 26, 2010, NET. Reportage horis Synora [Reportage Without Frontiers]. Interview with Kitty Arseni, November 23, 2006. Accessed March 1, 2013. http://rwf-archive.gr/ interviews_senaria-new.php?id=190&interview=1&interview_id=703. Thematiki Vradia [Thematic Evening], “Oi vasanistes tis EAT/ESA” [The Torturers of the EATESA], June 21, 2010, ERT1.

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Internet Resources Torture—Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Accessed March 9, 2013. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture Amnesty International: torture and ill-treatment: the arguments. Accessed March 12, 2013. http://web.archive.org/web/20071205141017/http://web.amnesty. org/pages/stoptorture-arguments-eng#question1 Secondary Sources Agger, Inger. The Blue Room: Trauma and Testimony Among Refugee Women, a Psychological Exploration. London, New Jersey: Zed Books, 1992. Aretxaga, Begona. “The Sexual Games of the Body Politic: Fantasy and State Violence in Northern Ireland.” Culture Medicine and Psychiatry 25 (2001): 1–27. Aretxaga, Begona. Shattering Silence. Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Athanasiadis, Harris. “Oi dyo stigmes tou ellinikou feministikou kinimatos” [The Two Moments of the Greek Feminist Movement]. Istoria tou Gynaikeiou Kinimatos [History of Women’s Movement], Essays for the promotion of gender equality in education, Part I (2007): 13–23. Accessed March 1, 2013. http://repository.edulll.gr/edulll/retrieve/5005/1428.pdf. Becket, James. Varvarotita stin Ellada, 1967–69 [Barbarism in Greece, 1967–69]. Athens: Pontiki Publications, 1997. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Blacklock, Cathy and Alison Crosby. “The Sounds of Silence: Feminist Research across Time in Guatemala.” In Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zone, edited by Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman, 45–72. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. Bracewell, Wendy. “Women, Motherhood, and Contemporary Serbian Nationalism.” Women’s Studies International Forum 19/1–2 (1996): 25–33. Close, David. “The Road to Reconciliation? The Greek Civil War and the Politics of Memory in the 1980s.” In The Greek Civil War, Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences, edited by Philip Carabott and Thanasis Sfikas, 257–278. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2004. Cockburn, Cynthia. “The Continuum of Violence. A Gender Perspective on War and Peace.” In Sites of Violence, Gender and Conflict Zones, edited by Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman, 24–44. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004. Cockburn, Cynthia. “The Gendered Dynamics of Armed Conflict and Political Violence.” In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, edited by Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, 13–29. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001.

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Cohen, Stanley. States of Denial, Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Oxford: Polity Press, 2001. Copelon, Rhonda. “Surfacing Gender: Reconceptualizing Crimes against Women in Time of War.” In The Women and War Reader, edited by Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, 63–79. New York and London: New York University Press, 1998. DeFrancisco, Victoria. “Gender, Power and Practice: or, Putting Your Money (and Your Research) Where Your Mouth is.” In Gender and Discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, 37–56. London: Sage Publications, 1998. Elefantis, Angelos. Mas piran tin Athina: Xanadiavazontas tin Istoria (1941–1950) [They’ve Taken Athens from Us: Rereading History (1941–1950)]. Athens: Vivliorama, 2003. Enloe, Cynthia. “All the Men Are in the Militias, All the Women Are Victims: The Politics of Masculinity and Femininity in Nationalist Wars.” In The Women and War Reader, edited by Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, 50–62. New York and London: New York University Press, 1998. Enloe, Cynthia. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. London: Pandora, 1989. Feldman, Allen. Formations of Violence: the Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Fourtouni, Eleni, ed. and trans. Greek Women in Resistance. New Haven, CT: Thelphini Press, 1986. Giourgos, K., and T. Kabilis, eds. I taratsa tis Bouboulinas: Katastoli kai vasanistiria stin Ellada ’67–69 [The Bouboulinas’ Terrace: Repression and Tortures in Greece 1967–1969]. Athens: Potamos, 2009. Hackett, Claire, and Bill Rolston. “The Burden of Memory: Victims, Storytelling and Resistance in Northern Ireland.” Memory Studies 2/3 (2009): 355–376. Haritos-Fatouros, Mika. The Psychological origins of the institutionalized torture. London: Routledge, 2003. Hart, Janet. New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance (1941–1964). Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. Hunt, Swanee. This Was Not Our War: Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Ivekovic, Rada and Julie Mostov, eds. From Gender to Nation. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2004. Jacobs, Susie, Ruth Jacobson, and Jennifer Marchbank, eds. States of Conflict, Gender, Violence and Resistance. London and New York: Zed Books, 2000. Jayawardena, Kumari. Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. London: Zed Books, 1986. Kaplan, Temma. “Acts of Testimony: Reversing the Shame and Gendering the Memory.” Signs 28/1 (2002): 179–199. Kassem, Fatima. Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories and Gendered Memory. London and New York: Zed Books, 2011.

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Kesic, Vesna. “Gender and Ethnic Identities in Transition: the Former YugoslaviaCroatia.” In From Gender to Nation, edited by Rada Ivekovic and Julie Mostov, 63–97. New Delhi, Zubaan, 2004. Leydesdorff, Selma. “Introduction to the Transaction Edition.” In Gender and Memory, edited by Selma Leydesdorff, Luisa Passerini and Paul Thompson, vii–xvi. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 2005. McKay, Susan. “Gender Justice and Reconciliation.” Women’s Studies International Forum 23/5 (2000): 561–570. Moser, Caroline. “The Gendered Continuum of Violence and Conflict: An Operational Framework.” In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, edited by Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, 30–52. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001. Nikolic-Ristanovic, Vesna. “Definitions of Violence in War and the Experience of Women: the Subject of Research.” In Women, Violence and War, Wartime Victimization of Refugees in the Balkans, edited by Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, 21–34. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2000. Peteet, Julie. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian ‘Intifada’: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21/1 (1994): 31–49. Pettman, Jan Jindy. “Women, Nationalism and the State: Towards an International Feminist Perspective.” Gender and Development Studies, Occasional Paper 4. Bangkok: Asian Institute of Technology, 1992. Pimplis, M. “21h Apriliou: 38 hronia meta … Diktatoria, i ‘mavri tripa’ tis istoriografias” [21st of April: 38 Years Afterwards … Dictatorship, the “Black Hole” of the Historiography]. Orizontes, TA NEA, April 22, 2005. Poulos, Margaret. Arms and the Woman: Just Warriors and Greek Feminist Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Poulos, Margaret. “Gender, Civil War and National Identity: Women Partisans during the Greek Civil War 1946–1949.” The Australian Journal of Politics and History 46/3 (2000): 418–427. Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Sanford, Victoria. “From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in 21st Century Guatemala.” Journal of Human Rights 7 (2008): 104–122. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain, the Making and Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Simic, Olivera. “Gender, Conflict, and Reconciliation: Where are the Men: What about Women?” Journal for Political Theory and Research on Globalization, Development and Gender Issues. Accessed March 12, 2013. http://www. globalizacija.org/doc_en/e0065sim.htm, 2007. Sharoni, Simona. “Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Accord: Feminist Approaches to International Politics.” In Gendering the Middle East, edited by Deniz Kandiyoti, 107–126. London: I.B. Tauris, 1996. Sharoni, Simona. “Rethinking Women’s Struggles in Israel-Palestine and in the North of Ireland.” In Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict

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and Political Violence, edited by Caroline Moser and Fiona Clark, 85–98. London and New York: Zed Books, 2001. Skinner, Tina, Marianne Hester and Ellen Malos, eds. Researching Gender Violence: Feminist Methodology in Action. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2005. Stefatos, Katherine. “Engendering the Nation: Women, State Oppression and Political Violence in Postwar Greece (1946–1974).” Unpublished Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2012. Taylor, Diana. Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s “Dirty War.” Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1997. Tsagarousianou, Roza. “‘God, Patria and Home’: ‘Reproductive Politics’ and Nationalist (Re)definitions of Women in East/Central Europe.” Social Identities 1/2 (1995): 283–313. Vervenioti, Tasoula. Diplo Vivlio [Double Book]. Athens: Vivliorama, 2003. Vervenioti, Tasoula. “Left-Wing Women between Politics and Family.” In After the War was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943–1960, edited by Mark Mazower, 105–121. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000a. Vervenioti, Tasoula. “Makronisi: Martyria kai Martyries Gynaikon” [Makronisi: Agonies and Testimonies of Women]. In Istoriko Topio kai Istorikh Mnini. To Paradeigma ths Makronisou [Historical Site and Historical Memory. The Makronisos Example]. Athens: Filistor, 2000b.

Chapter 4

Silencing Sexual Violence and Vulnerability: Women’s Narratives of Incarceration during the 1980–1983 Military Junta in Turkey Bürge Abiral*

The September 1980 military coup in Turkey and the following three-year military dictatorship suppressed almost all political opposition through street violence, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary incarceration, and the physical and psychological torture of people in police custody or in prison. Women of various ages who actively participated in different oppositional groups before and after the coup, were taken into custody and imprisoned for different durations on charges ranging from putting up illegal posters to engaging in armed action.1 However, their political participation and their experiences during imprisonment were silenced in the memory and historiography of the period in general, and in the memory of leftist organizations in particular.2 In this chapter, I trace the gendered cultural memory of leftist women incarcerated during the military regime in Turkey between 1980 and 1983 and conduct a gender analysis at the intersection of patriarchy, nationalism, and leftist opposition. In order to understand the memory culture that developed, I analyze several printed memory documents3 which present the testimonies of female ex-prisoners * I would like to express my gratitude to Ayşe Gül Altınay and Andrea Pető for their insightful comments which immensely benefited my analysis and to my friends and colleagues who supported me throughout this research. 1 There are no exact figures on the number of women who were taken into custody, persecuted, and imprisoned during the military junta between 1980 and 1983. For general statistics, see Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı, İşkence Dosyası: Gözaltında ya da Cezaevinde Ölenler: 12 Eylül 1980–12 Eylül 1995 (Ankara: Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı, 1996), 19. 2 My analysis here concerns women who participated in leftist organizations, as I was unable to find information on the political involvement of women who identified with the right. 3 These are two collections of short memoirs written by women: Kadın Yazarlar Derneği, Tanıklıklarla 12 Eylül: Kadınlar Anılarını Paylaşıyor (Izmir: Kadın Yazarlar Derneği Yayınları, 2010), and Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu, Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar: Kadınlar Mamak Cezaevi’ni Anlatıyor (Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları, 2011); Mukaddes Erdoğdu Çelik, Üç Dönem Üç Kuşak Kadınlar: Demir Parmaklıklar Ortak Düşler (Istanbul: Ceylan Yayınları, 2005), in which the author incorporates summaries of in-depth interviews 1

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who spent time in the prisons of the military junta.4 After tracing the continuum of silence and erasure around women’s encounters with political violence, I question the possible reasons for the overall silencing of certain experiences, such as sexual violence and moments of vulnerability, in existing written narratives of the 1980 coup. By contextualizing this silence within a larger history of political violence that preceded and succeeded the coup, I argue that three interrelated hegemonic discourses largely define the memory culture of women ex-prisoners: a discourse of normative feminine respectability which deems rape the wrongdoing of the victim and which stigmatizes the woman and her significant male kin, a discourse of national security which legitimizes sexual torture for the sake of maintaining the social order, and a discourse of strength which, particularly in leftist circles, equates resilience with masculinity and which does not allow for vulnerability, even when faced with severe violence. I then argue for a feminism which simultaneously challenges all three discourses, as well as the authoritarian structures they impose, as a means of coming to terms with past and present atrocities. Continuum of Silence and Erasure The paucity of testimonial narratives by women is not peculiar to the 1980 coup, but pertains also to the earlier generation of 1968, whose female members refrained from making their experiences of political violence public in the form of memoirs.5 Following that tradition, women from the 1978 generation who survived the 1980 coup resorted to writing novels,6 rather than testimonies or autobiographies,7

with female political detainees from three consecutive decades and her own memories of prison; and one individual memoir: Pamuk Yıldız, O Hep Aklımda: Bir Mamak Cezaevi Tanıklığı (Istanbul: Ayizi Kitap, 2012). 4 Mamak, Selimiye, Metris, and Diyarbakır Prisons were the main institutions where female political prisoners were kept. 5 The sole exception is Sevgi Soysal, Yıldırım Bölge Kadınlar Koğuşu, (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008 [1976]). For a general analysis of the testimonial nature of novels dealing with the 1971 coup, see Çimen Günay-Erkol, “Taş Üstüne Taş Koymak: 12 Mart Romanlarında Görgü Tanığı Belleğinin Yazınsallaştırılması,” in Nasıl Hatırlıyoruz?: Türkiye’de Bellek Çalışmaları, ed. Leyla Neyzi (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2009). 6 One of the most prominent examples of this genre is Feride Çiçekoğlu, Uçurtmayı vurmasınlar! (Istanbul: Yön Yayıncılık, 1986). 7 According to the literary critic Patricia Meyer Spacks, women have traditionally had difficulty fulfilling the requirements of autobiography—making public claims of their own significance—and have therefore resorted to writing diaries and journals. The trend in the case of the military junta is thus no exception to the global tradition of women’s writing. See Patricia Meyer Spacks, “Selves in Hiding,” in Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, ed. Estelle C. Jelinek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 112.

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while their male counterparts published numerous memoirs.8 Some women who were imprisoned in the 1990s for political reasons proved more outspoken about the violence they faced in prison; Asiye Güzel, for example, wrote openly about rape, perhaps also preparing the way for women political prisoners from earlier generations to publicly share their memories, which are discussed in this chapter.9 In addition to this self-censorship on the part of women ex-prisoners, research initiatives on the 1980 coup did not necessarily include women until recently.10 Despite the growing number of new publications that render formerly incarcerated women dissidents visible,11 recent studies also participate in this continuum of erasure. Attempts to analyze the period of dictatorship often erase women from history, either by making them invisible altogether or by trivializing their participation in political struggles. Their portrayal often remains limited to their roles as mothers and wives awaiting their imprisoned husbands and sons.12 In some cases, attempts to talk about women’s experiences of political involvement and imprisonment may result in trivializing the gendered aspect of political violence.13 While feminist scholarship appears an appropriate outlet for unsilencing women’s past and present experiences of political violence, some feminist studies may run the risk of emphasizing an essentialized woman’s nature against men’s nature, and of praising women’s culture.14 In the case of the 1980 military coup,  8 Some examples are Mahmut Memduh Uyan, Ben Bir İnsanım (İstanbul: Belge Yayınları, 1985); F. Welat, Diyarbakır Sorgu ve 5 Nolu (Diyarbakır: Dilan Yayınları, 1992); Mahmut Memduh Uyan, Parça Parça, Biriktire Biriktire: Cezaevi Günlüğü (Istanbul: Okyanus Yayıncılık, 1995); Hüseyin Özlütaş, Felç: İşkencede 90 Gün: Anı (Istanbul: Evrensel Basım Yayın, 1992); Mehmet Tepebaşı, Unutulması İstenen Yıllar (Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları, 2010).  9 See Asiye Zeybek Güzel, İşkencede Bir Tecavüz Öyküsü: Asiye (Istanbul: Ceylan Yayınları, 1999), Asiye Güzel, Asiye’s Story (London: Saqi, 2003), Leyla Zana, Writings from Prison (Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1999). For an analysis of Güzel and Zana’s testimonies, see Roberta Micallef, “Incarcerated Women, Honorable Women,” in Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations of Coercion, eds. Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). 10 Two exceptions to this trend are Neyyire Özkan, Cezaevi—Cezaevi—: 1980–1986 Türkiye Cezaevlerinden Kesitler (Istanbul: Onur Yayınları, 1986), and Erbil Tuşalp, 12 Eylül Tutanakları—Bin Tanık (Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 1986). 11 Serra Ciliv, “Between Belonging and Opposition: Life Story Narratives of Women from the Generation of ‘78” (Master’s Thesis, Sabancı University, 2002); Hazal Halavut, “Tracing the ‘Document’: Gender of ‘Reality’ through the September 12 Coup” (Masters Thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2009); Meral Akbaş, Biz Bir Orduya Kafa Tuttuk Arkadaş: Mamak Kitabı (Ankara: Ayizi Kitap, 2011). 12 Indicatively, see Haşim Akman, Otuz Yıldır 12 Eylül: Yaşayanlar Anlatıyor (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2010), 20–21. 13 See Yılmaz, Kara Arşiv, 82–83. 14 Pascale Rachel Bos, “Women and the Holocaust: Analysing Gender Difference,” in Experience and Expression: Women, the Nazis and the Holocaust, eds. Elisabeth R. Baer and Myrna Goldenberg (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003).

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Mamak Kitabı, a study of women’s memories of the Mamak Prison by the feminist sociologist Meral Akbaş, exemplifies these fallacies, albeit constituting one of the most prominent and valuable feminist contributions to studies of the 1980 coup.15 In addition to associating ex-prisoner women’s overall silence with the modesty inherent in the female character,16 Akbaş paints a homogeneous picture of incarcerated womanhood supposedly shaped by “female publicness,” a womanly way of creating alternative living spaces in the wards, despite and against torture, through camaraderie, sharing, creativity, and laughter.17 Against the grain of such essentializing and standardizing framings, which may silence women whose experiences differed from those of others, my aim in this chapter is to critically engage with women’s testimonies and to problematize their specific ways of recalling the past. In the next two sections, I discuss how women’s narratives, when juxtaposed, manifest some silences,18 and question what kind of hegemonic discourses perpetuate the marginalization of certain experiences. First, I look at how sexual violence, not once mentioned by Akbaş and rarely narrated by women themselves in testimonies, is treated in the narratives. I then evaluate why stories of collective resistance prevail, while moments of vulnerability are seldom shared with the public. Narrating Sexual Violence at the Intersection of Patriarchy and Nationalism In the detention centers and penal institutions of the military junta, a heavily sexualized and gendered violence targeted the psyche and body of the prisoners. Most detainees were stripped during interrogation and hanged naked from their arms in slings, sometimes for several days. In addition to administering electric shocks and beatings, torturers often touched the sexual organs of the detainees and forced them to witness the torture of others. Rape and the threat of rape were often employed as weapons to break the prisoners. Other types of physical torture for women included virginity examinations, vaginal searches, the denial of sanitary towels to menstruating inmates, and arbitrarily recurring strip searches. The gendered nature of torture during incarceration defines the memory culture through which women narrate their experiences of sexual violence.19 While few of 15 Akbaş, Mamak Kitabı. 16 Ibid. 57. 17 Ibid. 100. Akbaş borrows this concept from the sociologist Pınar Selek, who was a political prisoner between 1998 and 2000. See Pınar Selek, “Hapishanede Bir Kadın Koğuşu ve Kamusallık,” in Kamusal Alan, ed. Meral Özbek (Istanbul: Hill Yayınları, 2004). 18 Without presenting myself as an authority on detecting silences, I try to sustain a critical eye while juxtaposing different narratives and acknowledge that for any unsilenced experience there may remain many more left to unearth. 19 Since sexual violation also targeted men with the aim of humiliation through demasculinization, I acknowledge that a comparison between the memory cultures of men

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the narratives openly talk about cases of sexualized torture, many narratives either mention sexual harassment and rape only implicitly or completely ignore them. When women mention specific cases of sexual violence which they witnessed or were told about, they avoid giving details. The narration of personally endured torture also lacks both elaboration of the event and details of the emotional response of the victim. In addition to reticence, generalizing the experience or dissociating oneself from the event appear to be common strategies when talking about sexual violence. A hegemonic patriarchal discourse which condemns the woman herself for rape and sexual harassment forces women into silence. This discourse works together with a discourse of national security to justify sexualized torture,20 thus making it doubly difficult for women to disclose sexual violence. The hegemonic patriarchal discourse on femininity dictates that women belong to their male relatives, and a woman’s honor, as well as the honor of her “owners,” is bound to her sexual purity.21 Any act that spoils a woman’s body stains her honor, and therefore the honor of her significant male kin, particularly of the father and the husband. According to a ten-year research project conducted in the 1990s on the experiences of women who survived sexual violence at the hands of state officers, many women refrained from revealing the sexual torture they experienced during detention because they were ashamed.22 Women who spoke out were often threatened with ostracism, forced marriage, physical violence, or in some cases death.23 Legal institutions have often worked in conjunction with these hegemonic codes of feminine shame and honor: for instance, until 2005 rape was not defined as a crime against the individual but a crime against “public morality and social order.”24 While the law was changed thanks to feminist activism and lobbying, the courts today continue to reduce the charges against perpetrators of sexual violence, as can be seen in the decreased sentences given recently to the defendants in a case of gang rape, on the pretext that the 12-year-old survivor consented to sexual intercourse.25 and women with regard to sexual violence, which currently remains outside the scope of this chapter, would have greatly enriched this analysis. 20 For a general analysis of how rape has been used as an instrument of national security, see Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 21 Amnesty International, “Türkiye: Kadınlara Yönelik Gözaltında Cinsel Şiddete Son!,” 2003, accessed August 20, 2013, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ EUR44/006/2003/ar/d02b49ca-d731–11dd-b0cc-1f0860013475/eur440062003tr.pdf. 22 Eren Keskin and Leman Yurtsever, Hepsi Gerçek: Devlet Kaynaklı Cinsel Şiddet (Istanbul: Punto Yayınları, 2006), 13. 23 Amnesty International, 8. 24 Yeşim Arat, “Contestation and Collaboration: Women’s Struggles for Empowerment in Turkey,” in Cambridge History of Turkey Vol. 4—Turkey in the Modern World, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 406. 25 “N.Ç. Davası Yeniden Görüldü,” Bianet, January 16, 2013, accessed September 8, 2013, http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/143609-n-c-davasi-yeniden-goruldu.

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Working in tandem with this hegemonic discourse on feminine respectability, a hegemonic discourse of national security that justifies all forms of torture has also rendered difficult the disclosure of sexual violence. Around a decade after the 1980 coup, Mehmet Ağar, Director General of Public Security, made a statement in 1994 in relation to the war between the Turkish Armed Forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, suggesting that those who mentioned the torture of people in custody intended to hinder the state’s fight against terrorism.26 In the case of the 1980 coup, too, torture was justified as a natural necessity which contributed to the alleged success of the military intervention; even political science literature on the coup either erased or trivialized torture as a form of methodological militarism.27 The suppression of all political dissidence perceived as a possible threat to national security was the raison d’être of the military regime. National security was not only defined as “the protection of the state and its citizens from external foes, but, perhaps even primarily, the maintenance of the social order.”28 Insurgent groups, non-governmental organizations, intellectuals critical of the state, and people sympathetic to leftist ideas all became internal enemies that threatened the social order and therefore national security. Women prisoners posed a threat to the social order not simply because they were dissidents, but also because they defied the conceptions of citizenship deemed appropriate for female citizens by the project of the modern “Turkish” nation-state; they were supposed to be “obedient wives, self-sacrificing mothers, warriors who sacrifice themselves for the nation when deemed necessary.”29 Their roles as dutiful wives and mothers—the only ways in which they could exist in the public sphere as sexual beings—proved particularly significant in maintaining the social order; in effect they were to raise future patriotic subjects who would uphold the nation.30 In this context, sexual torture, particularly rape, was supposed to turn women dissidents into obedient citizens by depriving them of their agency and by positing the state as the ultimate authority over the female body. Because of the hegemonic cultural meanings attached to the female body, sexualized violence subjugated women twice, both as political dissidents and as women. In other words, since the disclosure of rape was (as still is) rare and difficult and since the activation of sexuality would bring shame to the woman,31 sexual violence 26 Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı, 21. 27 Ayşe Gül Altınay, “Tabulaşan Ordu, Yoksayılan Militarizm: Türkiye’de Metodolojik Militarizm Üzerine Notlar,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, Cilt 9: Dönemler ve Zihniyetler, ed. Ömer Laçiner (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2009), 1251. 28 Enloe, Maneuvers, 46. 29 Altınay, “Sabiha Gökçen’den Sevgi Soysal’a, Kezbanlardan Kadın Vicdani Retçilere,” 27. 30 Ayşe Parla, “The ‘Honor’ of the State: Virginity Examinations in Turkey,” Feminist Studies 27 (2001): 73. 31 Inger Agger, “Sexual torture of political prisoners: An overview,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 2 (1989): 313.

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“aimed at subduing women into the norms of passive femininity by transforming an autonomous female political subject into a male dependent one, stripped, so to say, of political agency.”32 This discourse seems to have produced contradictory effects, all of which together pushed women into silence. As narrated by ex-prisoner women themselves, rape and sexual harassment in custody and in prison were unofficially justified in personal interactions,33 yet officially and systematically denied. A general’s statement in 1985 in response to allegations of sexual torture against women prisoners of the 1971 military coup exemplifies this contradiction: It was claimed that a girl was raped with a baton. (That was the verb I was avoiding.) The girl who claimed this, was a radical, serious communist. I apologize for putting it like this, but we have strong and brave young men of 20–21 years old … If they were to torture her in this way, would they feel the need to use their batons? Right? So there are some things that we can rebut with such simple logic.34

Turgut Sunalp’s emphasis on the girl’s radical political views insinuates that any sexual intervention would have been legitimate because her communist allegiance posed a threat to national security. Despite his ultimate denial of the allegations, he implicitly acknowledges the possibility of sexual violence and legitimizes the possible incident. The ex-prisoner Meral Bekar refers to Sunalp’s statement in her testimony, explaining the difficulty of appealing to authorities to disclose rape and sexual harassment.35 In addition to these justifications and denials, rape and sexual harassment have been supported by a legal framework which protects state officials and impedes claims to justice. The testimonies of ex-prisoner women reveal that women attempted at the time to appeal to the authorities with the purpose of filing complaints of sexual assault, all of which were disregarded.36 In the 1990s, despite a growing awareness of and campaign against politicized sexual violence, those who stood up against sexual torture experienced by female political dissidents, mostly of Kurdish origin, were accused of slandering the state and in some cases sentenced to prison.37 Faced with such difficulties, women have certainly not been encouraged to narrate the sexual violence that they have faced under incarceration. 32 Begoña Aretxaga, “The Sexual Games of the Body Politic: Fantasy and State Violence in Northern Ireland,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 25 (2001): 21. 33 See Yıldız, O Hep Aklımda, 305. 34 “Turgut Sunalp: Sorgu Sırasında Köşkteydim” Nokta, November 3, 1985. 35 See Meral Bekar’s testimony in Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu, Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar, 58. 36 For instance, see ibid. 56; Yıldız, O Hep Aklımda, 304–305. 37 When the lawyer and human rights activist Eren Keskin spoke openly about cases of rape and sexual harassment in 2002, she was sentenced for “defaming the moral character

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Narrating Vulnerability vis-à-vis a Discourse of Strength While the hegemony of discourses on respectable femininity and national security might explain why narratives of sexual violence are so rare in women’s testimonies, it would not by itself account for the overall emphasis on practices of collective resistance to torture in prison as opposed to personally endured violence, and the silencing of moments of individual vulnerability. How did the female prisoners negotiate their identity as revolutionaries and the hardship of ongoing constant pain and humiliation, both physical and psychological? How did they justify their decisions when they informed on their friends because they were unable to resist torture, especially when faced with rape and the threat of rape? Did any of the women feel alienated in the female wards which are often depicted as places of solidarity and camaraderie? The lack of answers to these questions suggests that the memory culture of women ex-prisoners is also shaped by a masculinized “discourse of strength,”38 which has been a dominant feature of the political left. The feminist author Ayşegül Devecioğlu describes the cherished values of the leftist camp as “determination, resistance to torture, courage, fighting well, using weapons well, being a brave man / brave woman.”39 While positioning themselves against the silencing of women’s experiences, many accounts discussed here perpetuate these hegemonic values. Wishing to insert themselves into an erased memory, some women emphasize that they resisted more than men.40 This comparison may come at the expense of adopting a discourse of persistence and courage which equates these values with masculinity,41 and which therefore perpetuates women’s invisibility.42 In the case of the testimonies shared by former female prisoners of the 1978 generation, this invisibility involves both the erasure of custody experiences which may involve moments of vulnerability and disloyalty to the leftist struggle, and the construction of a strict divide between women who resisted and women who “failed” to do so. In most testimonies, women prioritize their experiences of prison over those of police custody where they endured torture in separate interrogation rooms, suggesting the exclusion of painful moments undergone alone. Some women of the Turkish Armed Forces” first to 10 months in prison, then to paying a compensation fee, but the decision was reversed on procedural grounds. “Cinsel Tacizi Kınayan Eren Keskin’in Cezası Usulden Bozuldu,” Bianet, December 17, 2007, accessed August 20, 2013, http://www.bianet.org/bianet/ifade-ozgurlugu/103649-cinsel-tacizi-kinayan-eren-keskin-incezasi-usulden-bozuldu. 38 Ayşegül Devecioğlu, “Devrimci Kadının Yazılmayan Tarihi,” Virgül 85 (2005): 75. 39 Ibid. 75. In fact, these values, together with the discourse of strength, are in no way particular to the left, but project societal norms. 40 For examples, see Fatma Pala Akalp’s account in Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu, Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar, 202; Çelik, Üç Dönem Üç Kuşak Kadınlar, 161–165; Sema’s words in Akbaş, Mamak Kitabı, 102. 41 See Süheyla Kaya’s testimony in Çelik, Üç Dönem Üç Kuşak Kadınlar, 317. 42 Devecioğlu, “Devrimci Kadının Yazılmayan Tarihi,” 75.

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mention their custody experiences, yet spare the details.43 When women narrate stories of vulnerability, these moments are often followed by counter moments of resistance.44 Few accounts give the reader a sense of the different conundrums women faced with regard to torture. Even when women share stories of the different types of physical torture that they endured alone, they do not elaborate on their emotions. An exception to this trend, Pamuk Yıldız’s autobiographical account provides interesting comparisons with the narratives in Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar on the prison experience in Mamak. Yıldız shares vivid descriptions of her time in the police station, where she was subjected to constant persecution and sexual harassment. She broke when one of the torturers openly threatened to rape her. She felt strong disappointment in herself as well as dishonor as she entered Mamak. These emotions multiplied when she confessed to another inmate, who discouraged her from sharing with other women what she had done.45 Every time she visited the police station for further interrogation and torture, she would undergo internal turmoil, feeling intense guilt and shame.46 Only later, during her time in jail, did she find out that two others had also confessed to all the accusations.47 Yıldız’s honest and courageous account suggests a continuum between contemporary silencing of the custody experience and its past (self-)censorship among prisoners. Yıldız breaks this taboo not only by including in her narrative the threat of rape and other forms of sexual torture that she encountered, but also by sharing with the reader the details of her emotions. Her exposure of custody goes hand in hand with her disclosure of sexual violence, and suggests that in cases of sexual torture exerted on the female body, the threat of rape may lead to informing on comrades, breaking the resistance, and dishonoring the political struggle. Few narratives, however, include such accounts of vulnerability, thus perpetuating the silencing of sexual violence under custody. Another point of contention between Yıldız’s testimony and other narratives involves cici kızlar, “cute and obedient girls” who allegedly obeyed the rules of the prison administration and therefore received lenient treatment. Many existing narratives identify cici kızlar as traitors to the revolutionary struggle. According to Yıldız’s account, on the other hand, the label was introduced by the administration as a strategy to divide women’s resistance, but to no avail: the women still did not conform to the rules.48 Providing a contested memory, Yıldız’s testimony challenges many other accounts in which women separate the resisters from cici 43 For an example, see Serpil Z.’s account in Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu, Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar, 21. 44 For example, see Hilal Ünlü’s account in ibid. 277–282. 45 Yıldız, O Hep Aklımda, 112. 46 Ibid. 226. 47 Ibid. 263. 48 Ibid. 259.

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kızlar, those who did not resist.49 If there were obedient women, the reader is left to wonder who they were and why they did not testify. Narratives depicting the incarcerated women as heroines and focusing on their resistant practices contribute to the silencing of the women who, for one reason or another, were not able to resist to the same degree as the others. Conclusion: Feminism for Unsilencing Gendered Violence Through an analysis of the existing memory documents on female experiences of political violence in the prisons and detention centers of the 1980–1983 military junta, I have attempted to discuss how hegemonic discourses on feminine honor, national security, and masculinized strength largely shape women’s memory culture. Some ex-prisoners, however, challenge these discourses by talking openly about sexual violence and their moments of vulnerability. The medium of the testimony may determine whether a woman will share such details. For example, in her interviews, Mukaddes Erdoğdu Çelik specifically inquires about the gendered aspects of violence.50 In Kaktüsler and Tanıklıklarla, on the other hand, each woman narrates what she considers worth sharing. That stories acquire more detail in the company of an inquirer suggests that the presence of an audience curious about otherwise silenced experiences may change the content of the narration. According to the feminist scholar Aksu Bora, women from the generation of 1978 were able to voice their experiences “only after they started to speak as ‘us women.’”51 Collective endeavors of testifying and bearing witness to political violence, such as the joint works analyzed here, suggest the necessity of constructing a collective subjectivity to render a traumatic past visible. This, in turn, is closely linked to the presence of the aforementioned audience in Turkey, the emergence of which relates to the strengthening of the feminist movement in the 1980s and its expansion during more than three decades of campaigns and struggles.52 As I have tried to show in this chapter, however, these attempts may also render some women invisible by excluding them from this collective “us.” For that reason, only a feminist politics and scholarship which challenges the hegemonic discourses discussed in this chapter can effectively contribute to the unsilencing of experiences of political violence. Feminist struggles all over the world attempt to rewrite the hegemonic patriarchal codes of feminine respectability which perceive rape as a source of 49 See Gülbeyaz Hamurcu’s account in Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu, Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar, 89. 50 Çelik, Üç Dönem Üç Kuşak Kadınlar. 51 Bora, “Kadınlar, Rüyalar, Ejderhalar,” 196. 52 For a historical overview of women’s movements in Turkey, see Arat, “Contestation and Collaboration: Women’s Struggles for Empowerment in Turkey.”

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humiliation for the woman. A tool of empowerment, reporting sexual violence with a feminist consciousness reverses the shame brought to women through the act of sexual violation, by shifting the feeling of humiliation from victim to perpetrator. In Turkey, too, drawing on feminist contestations of hegemonic codes, women like Asiye Güzel “manage to transform rape from a silencing mechanism, a gendered punishment, into a topic of discussion and a re-evaluation of the concept of honor.”53 In addition to reversing the normative codes of shame and honor, the act of reporting sexual violence during incarceration signifies a refusal to accept the roles ascribed to women by the nation-state project that defines female citizens as the property of men and of the nation.54 As many scholars have shown, discourses of militarism and nationalism cannot endure without the cooperation of women.55 In the case of the military dictatorship between 1980 and 1983, further research into women’s participation in the military junta—for instance as prison guards, as wives of soldiers and of policemen—would lead to new insights into the intersection of gender, patriarchy, nationalism, and militarism. At the opposite end of the spectrum of female participation in political violence, several women conscientious objectors in Turkey today have observed close links between patriarchal, militaristic, and nationalist structures, and declared that they refuse to be collaborators in the perpetuation of militarism not only in war, but also in everyday settings.56 According to Ayşe Gül Altınay, however, the fact that the first female conscientious objectors “also objected to the militarized constructions of womanhood in oppositional movements”57 contributed to the invisibility of conscientious objection. While the movement has acquired more visibility in the last decade, the militarized discourse of strength today preserves its prevalence in some oppositional circles. The hegemonic code of honor that leftist groups ascribed to their struggle in the past—and some continue to do so—like the hegemonic discourses on feminine respectability and national security, are androcentric and contribute to the silencing of gendered forms of torture and vulnerability experienced by both women and men. A feminism which simultaneously rejects patriarchy, militarism, and nationalism would pinpoint and challenge masculinized and militarized constructions not only within the political left but in society at large. Only such feminism carries the potential to expose and unsilence past and present experiences of gendered political violence, both in the context of Turkey and worldwide. 53 Micallef, “Incarcerated Women, Honorable Women,” 208. 54 Altınay, “Sabiha Gökçen’den Sevgi Soysal’a, Kezbanlardan Kadın Vicdani Retçilere.” 55 Enloe, Maneuvers; Altınay, “Sabiha Gökçen’den Sevgi Soysal’a, Kezbanlardan Kadın Vicdani Retçilere.” 56 Altınay, “Sabiha Gökçen’den Sevgi Soysal’a, Kezbanlardan Kadın Vicdani Retçilere.” 57 Ibid. 34.

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Günay-Erkol, Çimen. “Taş Üstüne Taş Koymak: 12 Mart Romanlarında Görgü Tanığı Belleğinin Yazınsallaştırılması.” In Nasıl Hatırlıyoruz?: Türkiye’de Bellek Çalışmaları, edited by Leyla Neyzi, 41–63. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2009. Güzel, Asiye. Asiye’s Story. London: Saqi, 2003. Güzel, Asiye Zeybek. İşkencede Bir Tecavüz Öyküsü: Asiye. Istanbul: Ceylan Yayınları, 1999. Halavut, Hazal. “Tracing the ‘Document’: Gender of ‘Reality’ through the September 12 Coup.” Master’s Thesis, Boğaziçi University, 2009. Kadın Yazarlar Derneği. Tanıklıklarla 12 Eylül: Kadınlar Anılarını Paylaşıyor. Izmir: Kadın Yazarlar Derneği Yayınları, 2010. Keskin, Eren, and Leman Yurtsever. Hepsi Gerçek: Devlet Kaynaklı Cinsel Şiddet. Istanbul: Punto Yayınları, 2006. Mamaklı Kadınlar Kitap Grubu. Kaktüsler Susuz da Yaşar: Kadınlar Mamak Cezaevi’ni Anlatıyor. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları, 2011. Micallef, Roberta. “Incarcerated Women, Honorable Women.” In Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations of Coercion, edited by Laleh Khalili and Jillian Schwedler, 207–221. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. “N.Ç. Davası Yeniden Görüldü.” Bianet, January 16, 2013. Accessed September 8, 2013. http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/143609-n-c-davasi-yenidengoruldu. Özkan, Neyyire. Cezaevi—Cezaevi—: 1980–1986 Türkiye Cezaevlerinden Kesitler. Istanbul: Onur Yayınları, 1986. Özlütaş, Hüseyin. Felç: İşkencede 90 Gün: Anı. Istanbul: Evrensel Basım Yayın, 1992. Parla, Ayşe. “The ‘Honor’ of the State: Virginity Examinations in Turkey.” Feminist Studies 27 (2001): 65–88. Selek, Pınar. “Hapishanede Bir Kadın Koğuşu ve Kamusallık.” In Kamusal Alan, edited by Meral Özbek, 595–607. Istanbul: Hill Yayınları, 2004. Soysal, Sevgi. Yıldırım Bölge Kadınlar Koğuşu. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008. Spacks, Patricia Meyer. “Selves in Hiding.” In Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism, edited by Estelle C. Jelinek, 112–132. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Tepebaşı, Mehmet. Unutulması İstenen Yıllar. Ankara: Dipnot Yayınları, 2010. “Turgut Sunalp: Sorgu Sırasında Köşkteydim.” Nokta, November 3, 1985. Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı. İşkence Dosyası: Gözaltında ya da Cezaevinde Ölenler: 12 Eylül 1980–12 Eylül 1995. Ankara: Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı, 1996. Tuşalp, Erbil. 12 Eylül Tutanakları—Bin Tanık. Ankara: Dost Kitabevi Yayınları, 1986. Uyan, Mahmut Memduh. Ben Bir İnsanım. Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 1985. Uyan, Mahmut Memduh. Parça Parça, Biriktire Biriktire: Cezaevi Günlüğü. Istanbul: Okyanus Yayıncılık, 1995. Welat, F. Diyarbakır Sorgu ve 5 Nolu. Diyarbakır: Dilan Yayınları, 1992 (Özgürlük Yolu, 1987).

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Yıldız, Pamuk. O Hep Aklımda: Bir Mamak Cezaevi Tanıklığı. Istanbul: Ayizi Kitap, 2012 [Belge Yayınları, 2001]. Yılmaz, Ali. Kara Arşiv: 12 Eylül Cezaevleri. Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2013. Zana, Leyla. Writings from Prison. Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1999.

PART II Gendering Memories of War, Soldiering and Resistance

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Part II: Commentary

Women’s Memories of Soldiering: An Intersectionality Perspective Orna Sasson-Levy

Women’s military service has been a hot topic of feminist controversy for over two decades. This is because women’s participation in armed forces links the private sphere of women’s bodies, their sexuality and reproductive functions, and the public sphere of citizenship and state violence. Military service has been perceived as a venue for establishing citizenship for men ever since the French and American revolutions, in which “participation in armed conflicts [was] an integral aspect of the normative definition of citizenship.”1 Subsequent mandatory conscription laws enlarged the scope of citizenship to include broader social groups. Thus, in European countries and North America, military service and war became integral to the definition of citizenship and the development of the nationstate.2 Military combat service, which symbolizes the individual’s willingness to sacrifice “himself” for the good of the country, thus constitutes a criterion for citizenship and patriotism at the level of the individual3 and plays a significant part in citizen-making—the shaping of citizenship as a lived experience. This embodied devotion of the citizen’s to “his” state, the citizens’ very willingness to sacrifice “his” life in order to protect the nation, has always been perceived as the exclusive right and duty of men. Militaries have been identified as masculine institutions not only because they are populated by men, but also because they constitute a major arena for constructing masculine identities in society at large.4 Joan Nagel has shown that terms like honor, cowardice, bravery, heroism, duty, and adventure are hard to distinguish as either nationalistic or masculine.5 Hegemonic definitions of the military often conflate with hegemonic 1 Morris Janowitz, “Military Institutions and Citizenship in Western Societies,” Armed Forces and Society 2/2 (1976): 185–204. 2 Charles Tilly, “The Emergence of Citizenship in France and Elsewhere,” International Review of Social History 40/3 (1996): 223–236. 3 Yagil Levy, Israel’s Materialist Militarism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). 4 Orna Sasson-Levy, “Military, Masculinity and Citizenship: Tensions and Contradictions in the Experience of Blue-Collar Soldiers,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10/3 (2003): 319–345. 5 Joan Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21/2 (1998): 242–270.

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masculine culture, which is based upon the exclusion—and sometimes oppression—of women.6 Together with their chauvinist cultures, the gender division of labor in militaries creates and sustains dichotomous, hierarchical and essentialist perceptions of both femininity and masculinity. Despite far-reaching political, social and technological changes, the warrior is still a key symbol of both masculinity and “good citizenship,” meaning that military identity practices create a direct link between masculinity and the state. In response, many feminist critics have countered that the identification of citizenship with military service constructs the former in accordance with men’s life cycles, thereby creating a differential and hierarchical framework of citizenship for men and women.7 As women were barred from expressing their commitment to the state through “performance on the battlefield,” they were not perceived as men’s partners in the ultimate obligation to the state8 and are therefore not entitled to the same rights and privileges. This critique gives rise to two opposing feminist approaches to women’s military service. The liberal feminist approach, which emphasizes gender equality (often based on perceptions of gender sameness), believes that women’s full and equal participation in the public sphere is the way to achieve this goal. Women will attain equal rights, it is argued, only by shouldering equal responsibilities; thus, they must serve in the military and prove their loyalty to the state.9 This approach, sometimes labeled as “militarist feminism,” insists that it is women’s right to perform martial service given that the military is the sine qua non of full citizenship and hence equality.10 Judith Stiehm11 has added that by not participating in the military, women reinforce their role as recipients of protection, thereby legitimizing the military’s violence in carrying out its role as protector. In contrast, radical feminists have accentuated gender differences, claiming that women have a distinct approach to ethics based on caring, responsibility and relationality, as opposed to the male ethic, which is grounded in justice, rights

 6 Helena Carreiras, Gender and the Military: Women in the Armed Forces of Western Democracies (London and New York: Routledge, 2006) and Cynthia Enloe, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).  7 Claire R Snyder, Citizen-soldier and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republic Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999).  8 Carol Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), 11.  9 Ilene Rose Feinman, Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Antimilitarists (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 31–36, and Lucinda Joy Peach, “Gender Ideology in the Ethics of Women in Combat,” in It’s Our Military Too!, ed. Judith H. Stiehm (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). 10 Orna Sasson-Levy, “Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in ‘Masculine’ Roles,” The Sociological Inquiry 73/3 (2003b): 440–465. 11 Judith H. Stiehm, Arms and the Enlisted Woman (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).

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and autonomy.12 Stemming from an “ethics of care,” radical feminists oppose the military for its use of violence and its deeply masculinist culture, dependent as it is on the oppression of women.13 Women joining the military are seen as strengthening a fundamentally immoral institution which relies on violence for its functioning.14 In sum, while liberal feminists endorse equal service as a venue for equal citizenship, radical feminists see women’s service as the reification of martial citizenship and as cooperation with a hierarchical, sexist, and violent institution. These two arguments, however, tend to talk about women, and not with them; they examine the implications of women’s military service on the status of women in general, or on the gendered construction of citizenship, but not on the lives of real women. Therefore, they readily portray women soldiers as a unified category that is influenced by military service in a single, unified way. However, from reading women’s memoirs of war and violence, or analyzing women soldiers’ life stories, as do the articles in this section, it quickly becomes clear that the issue of women’s military service is more complex and deserves a more sophisticated analysis that can challenge dichotomous gendered conceptions. A small group of scholars has suggested that in order to understand the multiple ways in which women’s militarized subjectivities are constructed we should draw on the intersectionality approach to the analysis of women’s lives and gendered institutions.15 Following Cynthia Enloe and Spike Peterson, I propose two theoretical starting points, one relating to women in the military, and the second to the very structure of the military. First, women soldiers do not constitute a unified group. Women’s subjectivities are always shaped at the intersection of several axes of power and simultaneously experience several basic systems of inequality—primarily gender, class, race or ethnicity, and sexuality.16 Often, national ideologies or religious identities also play an important role in shaping women soldiers’ experience. Women of different ethno-class backgrounds sign up to the military for different reasons. They thus 12 Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). 13 Feinman, Citizenship Rites, 19–31, and Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers, The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 14 Betty Rerdon, Sexism and the War System (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1985) and Joyce Robbins and Uri Ben Eliezer, “New Roles or ‘New Times’? Gender Inequality and Militarism in Israel’s Nation-in-Arms,” Social Politics 7 (Fall 2000): 309–343. 15 Spike V. Peterson, “Gendered Identities, Ideologies, and Practices in the Context of War and Militarism,” in Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives, eds. Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010) and Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers, the International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 16 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 1990).

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develop different expectations of military service; are often channeled into different military roles; and experience their military service in different ways. All these in turn shape their subjective experiences of the military. Therefore, when reading women’s memoirs of war, we should not ask what military experience women have had, but rather what the subjective experience of each gendered and class group during military service is, and how different intersectional groups of gender and class experience war and participation in military service. Finally, we should inquire into how these experiences are reflected in their recollections and how they shape their militarized subjectivities.17 While intersectionality theory has been dominant in gender studies for over two decades,18 most research into women in the military downplays the differences among women, often treating women as a homogenous group, unified by its otherness from men soldiers, who are taken to represent the norm for soldierhood. Interestingly, research into men in the military has employed the intersectionality approach more than research into women soldiers. In Israel, for example, scholars have analyzed in detail the military experience of male soldiers of Ethiopian background;19 the masculinity of men soldiers in blue-collar roles;20 the different ethnic perceptions of combat soldiers;21 and the identity of gay soldiers.22 Women in the army, however, are still perceived as a single group and any internal differences disregarded. I therefore call for an intersectionality analysis of women’s memories of war and violence. Second, although militaries are “extremely gendered organizations”23 and are very resistant to gender reforms, some militaries (especially the Canadian and South African armies and certain NATO forces) have gone through major transformations to their gender regimes. Changes in the nature of warfare and

17 Catherine Lutz, Homefront: The Military City and the American Twentieth Century (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001). 18 Yeon Choo Hae and Myra Marx Ferree, “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions, and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities,” Sociological Theory 28/2 (2010): 129–149. 19 Malka Shabtay, “The Experience of Ethiopian Jewish Soldiers in the Israeli Army: The Process of Identity Formulation with the Military Context,” Israel Social Science Research 10/2 (1996): 69–80. 20 Orna Sasson-Levy, “Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in ‘Masculine’ Roles,” The Sociological Inquiry 73/3 (2003): 440–465. 21 Kachtan, Dana, “The Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Military—From the Bottom Up.” Israel Studies 17/3 (2012): 150–175. 22 Danny Kaplan, Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units (New York: Haworth Press, 2003). 23 Sasson-Levy, Orna, “The Military in a Globalized Environment: Perpetuating an “Extremely Gendered’ Organization,” in Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization, eds. E. Jeanes, D. Knights and P. Yancey Martin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2011).

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the missions carried out by the military,24 along with the shift from mandatory conscription to “all-volunteer forces” among almost all European and American militaries, have facilitated an increase in the rates of women’s participation in the military and have opened up a variety of military occupations to women.25 The integration of women into western armed forces was accelerated by a series of supra-national rulings, such as the European Court of Justice’s ruling from 2000 (case C-285/98), UN Resolution 1325, and NATO’s adoption of a gendermainstreaming approach.26 Today, women comprise about 14 percent of the US armed forces,27 21 percent of the South African armed forces (SANDF),28 and 34 percent of the Israeli military.29 Moreover, there are no formal restrictions on women’s service in the militaries of Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Norway, Luxembourg, and Spain,30 though a large number of informal barriers that exclude or marginalize women in the military still prevail. The process of gender integration reached a new peak in January 2013 when US Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta decided to lift the official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to women. This is a groundbreaking decision that overturns a 1994 Pentagon ruling that prevented women from serving in artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat positions, even though in reality women have frequently found themselves in combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The result of this process is that the gender regimes of many western militaries are no longer unified or coherent, but rather extremely dynamic, functioning in a context of conflicting pressures and opposing powers. In Israel, for example, 24 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, 2nd edition (London: Polity Press, 2006). 25 Carreiras, Gender and the Military; Karl W. Haltiner, “The Definite End of the Mass Army in Western Europe?” Armed Forces & Society 25/1 (1998): 7–36, and Donna Winslow and Jason Dunn, “Women in the Canadian Forces: Between Legal and Social Integration,” Current Sociology 50/5 (2002): 641–667. 26 Gerhard Kummel, “Complete Access: Women in the Bundeswehr and Male Ambivalence,” Armed Forces & Society 28/4 (2002): 555–573, and Orna Sasson-Levy, “The Military in a Globalized Environment: Perpetuating an ‘Extremely Gendered’ Organization,” in Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization, 391–411. 27 See US Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center. Data compiled by the Women Research & Education Institute, January 2008. 28 Major General N. Memela-Motumi (Chief Director Transformation Management South African National Defense Force), (2009). SANDF’s Approach to Integrate a Gender Dimension in Pursuit of the Defense Mandate. See: http://www.nato.int/issues/women_ nato/meeting-records/2009/presentation/Memela-MotumiNATO%20CONFERENCE%20 PAPER.pdf 29 Yohalan (Advisor to the chief of the general staff on women issues) (2009). Working year 2008: women’s service (Hebrew). See: http://www.aka.idf.il/SIP_STORAGE/ files/5/63635.pdf 30 Carreiras, Gender and the Military.

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masculinist and religious forces are striving to preserve a clear-cut and distinct gender order, while bureaucratic forces (manpower needs) and liberal forces, including women’s organizations, are acting to disrupt the existing gender order.31 The dynamic encounter of various forces acting in a differential way has produced a diverse and multifaceted military map of women’s integration and various forms of gender equality and inequality in different internal arenas. Understanding that women who take part in war come from various social groups and that they participate in the military in multiple ways raises a more complex picture of the link between gender and the military. Instead of reproducing essentialist conceptions of femininity that mainly see women as mothers, caretakers or peacemakers, or instead of relying on perceptions of gender sameness that promote equal service for women as a pathway to equal citizenship, we should look at different militarized gendered performances and ask how multiple militarized subjectivities are formed and how they are presented and represented in women’s memories of war. In the same vein, historical research should endeavor to deconstruct previous literature on nationalism, by employing an intersectionality perspective on gender (see Schiavo’s and Grzebalska’s chapters in this section). This “new” research should be able to offer a more complex picture than one that does not see women as a group either “gaining” or “losing” from military service. Rather, this approach shows how some women expand their resources, feel empowered and are socially mobile during military service, while for others, and sometimes for the same women, military service can be a humiliating, insulting and even traumatic experience. In Chapter 5, Weronika Grzebalska concentrates on the discrepancy between women’s actual participation in armed forces and the gendered construction of militaries and wars. As Grzebalska shows, women were active in almost all aspects of the underground movement in WWII Poland, and constituted around 22 percent of participants in the Warsaw Uprising (August 1944), but the gender politics of the Polish Home Army marginalized women during the war, and omitted them from the historical documentation and memories of the uprising. Grzebalska draws on interviews with women who participated in the uprising in order to analyze the gendered nature of Polish militarism. As in many other militarist societies, heroic “masculine” values of courage and sacrifice played an important role in motivating men to fight. Women’s bodies and sexualities, on the other hand, had to be controlled in order to signify national identity and men’s honor, and female fraternizers were stigmatized and punished. Within the ranks of the Home Army, women soldiers were relegated to support roles, providing medical services and serving in communications, sabotage and intelligence roles. 31 Tami Amanda Jacoby, “Fighting in the Feminine: The Dilemmas of Combat Women in Israel,” in Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives, eds. Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), and Orna Sasson-Levy, “From the Military as a Gendered Organization to Militarized Inequality Regimes: Research on Gender and the Military in Israel,” Israel Studies Review 26/2 (2011): 73–98.

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In order to ensure that the massive presence of women in the Home Army would not challenge the military’s gender order, women soldiers were not allowed to be on the frontline (though the boundaries between front and rear were almost nonexistent in urban warfare in Warsaw). Women underwent gender-specific military trainings and had a hierarchy of ranks different to that of men which prevented them from commanding men’s units, thereby maintaining an “appropriate” gender hierarchy. Moreover, women’s access to weapons was restricted. Grzebalska concludes that gendered military policies were “a clear sign that while female participants of the uprising might have become soldiers, they never ceased to be perceived as women.” It would seem, then, that in the case of the Warsaw Uprising, intersectionality analysis would be unnecessary—the women were treated by the military as a unified, inferior category. Grzebalska’s chapter can thus be read as pulling the rug from under the feet of liberal feminism as it shows that equal participation in the military is almost impossible. Even in underground militaries fighting against the horrors of Nazi occupation, gendered perceptions continued to be important for the organization of the military and for the men in that organization. Therefore, in Poland, as in Algeria, Israel or Vietnam, women’s military participation was not a path to gender equality. Grzebalska thus concurs with Polish feminist Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmit, that “by fighting for the nation’s freedom, women have not gained rights for themselves.” The next chapter examines more specifically the gendered implications of post-war situations. War, as Chris Cuomo32 has explained, does not have a discrete ending or clear boundaries in time, but is best seen as a process or continuum. Cynthia Enloe has argued that “wars don’t simply end,” but rather that they “have their endings inside families,”33 meaning that the gender consequences of war continue long after the fighting stops. Gianluca Schiavo’s chapter explores how memory is shaped from a distance of many years. The memories of Italian women who voluntarily served in Mussolini’s fascist forces are controversial and run against the anti-fascist consensus in Italy. Therefore, the women have had to adopt an alternative framing for their own militarized past. Being a woman soldier, which was a source of pride in the early 1940s, and posed a clear challenge to the essentialist fascist conception of women as wives and mothers, became a shameful identity after the war. In retrospect, the women need to bridge the gap between their past as strong and independent women who voluntarily went to war, and their present, which sees this past as disgraceful. They have bridged this gap by adopting a discourse of honor, so often identified as a masculine discourse.34 Framing their military service in terms of 32 Chris J. Cuomo, “War is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence,” Hypatia 11/4 (1996): 30–45. 33 Cynthia Enloe, “Women after Wars: Puzzles and Warnings,” in Vietnam’s Women in Transition, ed. Kathleen Barry (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1996), 99, 36. 34 Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism,” 242–270.

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honor allows them to present themselves as “patriots” instead of “fascists,” and thus to accommodate their war memories. Setenay Nil Doğan’s chapter about the seven Abkhazian women from Turkey who went to Abkhazia to participate in the Georgian civil war is illuminating if we wish to deconstruct previous notions of nationalism and gender, and employ an intersectionality perspective. Doğan examines the stories of five of the seven women who went to war. Although this is certainly a very small number of women, their stories highlight the complexity of militarized gender performances. Birgul, for instance, a 33-year-old mother of three daughters, traveled to Abkhazia, did what she could to join the fighting as a combatant, and returned home after 11 months. One interpretation of her story would see her as a “bad mother,” a woman who abandoned her children to fight for her nation. However, with a Klashnikov in her hand, she took on motherly roles, collecting berries and making jams for the warriors. Is she a female warrior or a mother? Do these images necessarily clash? Her performance does not give in to simple dichotomies. She offers a nontraditional performance that blends “feminine” and “masculine” practices and images in a unique way. Dogan’s analysis of her performance allows us to undo the homogeneous and stable category of “woman” and to analyze more closely her gendered military experience. The story of the four “girls” who ran away from their families in Turkey to join the war in Abkhazia offers a different reading of women and war. The “girls” left a letter saying: “We are going with our honor and pride. There we will do everything we can. [ … ] We will be able to say that we, too, exist. We will tell people, men there [in Turkey] who do not fight, to wear skirts. [ … ] Nobody should think that our actions are driven by our feelings.” The girls deployed national sentiment in order to make a gendered statement that redefined them as women who do not wear skirts, women who do not act based on their feelings, women who are no less members of the nation than are men. This is not just a story about women and military experience; it is a tale of four young women’s defiance against their own patriarchal culture. In this case, the nation and its pride constitute an excellent venue in which to legitimize their gendered rebelliousness. The girls failed in their mission. They did not fight, they did not become nurses, and they were unable to go to the front. They were chaperoned back to Turkey after two months by fathers and brothers. But their story, and especially their statement, became well known, and as such posed a symbolic challenge to gendered boundaries. None of the women just mentioned became equal members of the Abkhazian nation by participating in the battle field, but nor did they adhere to traditional feminine roles. Rather, as the author rightly argues, they used the war to redraw the links between women and the nation, thereby expanding gender boundaries, even if this had only a temporary and symbolic meaning. The last chapter in this section, by Stephanie E. Yuhl, discusses the women veterans who return to the US from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizing their specific problems as women. In particular, the women veterans suffer from militarized sexual trauma, PTSD, and/or unemployment and homelessness, which

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“challenge their sense of belonging, personal security and voice.” The strong association of “the American veteran of war” with men and masculinity leaves the women veterans invisible both in the public eye and in the eyes of state services and care systems. The aim of her chapter, therefore, is to deconstruct the category of “American war veteran,” and to highlight the specific obstacles facing women who return from war (such as privacy in mixed shelters, arrangements for children of veterans, coping with double trauma). Since Yuhl seeks to deconstruct the category of veterans, she does not deconstruct the category of “women veterans,” but this category itself is rife with class and race meanings. The American military is an all-volunteer force, and most of its recruits enlist for financial reasons—both men and women aspire to achieve social mobility through their military service. They do not enlist for the good of the nation, but because they hope to attain secure employment and benefits, financial security and, sometimes, a higher education.35 To be sure, the obstacles that military women face have a specific gendered nature, but at the same time they are very much a result of class and race as well. The women’s motivations and hopes before enlisting and the challenges they face upon returning home can only be understood in terms of the intersection of gender, class and race. Thus, an intersectional analysis would add to our understanding of women veterans’ struggles and disappointments, and would probably help to improve the services that they receive from state agencies. These four interesting chapters are very different from one another: they describe and analyze women’s stories at distinct historical times, in relation to different wars and geographical regions, and in the context of different cultures. Taken together, though, they highlight the need to avoid categories such as “women in the military” or “women soldiers” and to study, instead, the multiple militarized subjectivities that are constructed at the intersection of gender, race, class, and national ideology. By deconstructing the category of “women in the army,” we can let go of the judgmental attitude that the opposing feminist approaches often evince, and try to see the military experience as seen by the diversity of women themselves. References Burk, James, and Evelyn Espinoza. “Race Relations within the US Military.” Annual Review of Sociology 38 (2012): 401–422. Carreiras, Helena. Gender and the Military: Women in the Armed Forces of Western Democracies. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Choo Hae, Yeon, and Myra Marx Ferree. “Practicing Intersectionality in Sociological Research: A Critical Analysis of Inclusions, Interactions,

35 James Burk and Evelyn Espinoza. “Race Relations within the US Military,” Annual Review of Sociology 38 (2012): 401–422

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and Institutions in the Study of Inequalities.” Sociological Theory 28/2 (2010): 129–149. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 1990. Cuomo, Chris J. “War is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday Violence.” Hypatia 11/4 (1996): 30–45. Enloe Cynthia. Maneuvers, the International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. ———. “Women after Wars: Puzzles and Warnings.” In Vietnam’s Women in Transition, edited by Kathleen Barry, 299–315. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1996. ———. Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Feinman, Ilene Rose. Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Antimilitarists. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Haltiner, Karl W. “The Definite End of the Mass Army in Western Europe?” Armed Forces & Society 25/1 (1998): 7–36. Jacoby, Tami Amanda. “Fighting in the Feminine: The Dilemmas of Combat Women in Israel.” In Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, 80–91. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Janowitz, Morris. “Military Institutions and Citizenship in Western Societies.” Armed Forces and Society 2/2 (1976): 185–204. Kachtan, Dana. “The Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Military—From the Bottom Up.” Israel Studies 17/3 (2012): 150–175. Kaldor, Mary. New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. 2nd edition, London: Polity press, 2006. Kaplan, Danny. Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units. New York: Haworth Press, 2003. Kummel, Gerhard. “Complete Access: Women in the Bundeswehr and Male Ambivalence.” Armed Forces & Society 28/4 (2002): 555–573. Levy, Yagil. Israel’s Materialist Militarism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007. Lutz, Catherine. Homefront: The Military City and the American Twentieth Century. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. Nagel, Joan. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21/2 (1998): 242–270. Pateman, Carol. The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism, and Political Theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989. Peach, Lucinda Joy. “Gender Ideology in the Ethics of Women in Combat.” In It’s Our Military Too!, edited by Judith H. Stiehm, 156–194. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. Peterson, Spike V. “Gendered Identities, Ideologies, and Practices in the Context of War and Militarism.” In Gender, War, and Militarism: Feminist

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Perspectives, edited by Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, 17–30. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Rerdon, Betty. Sexism and the War System. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1985. Robbins, Joyce, and Uri Ben Eliezer. “New Roles or ‘New Times’? Gender Inequality and Militarism in Israel’s Nation-in-Arms.” Social Politics 7 (Fall 2000): 309–343. Sasson-Levy, Orna. “Military, Masculinity and Citizenship: Tensions and Contradictions in the Experience of Blue-Collar Soldiers.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10/3 (2003): 319–345. ———. “Feminism and Military Gender Practices: Israeli Women Soldiers in ‘Masculine’ Roles.” The Sociological Inquiry 73/3 (2003): 440–465. Sasson-Levy, Orna, and Sarit Amram-Katz. “Gender Integration in Israeli Officer Training: Degendering and Regendering the Military.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33/1 (2007): 105–135. Sasson-Levy, Orna. “The Military in a Globalized Environment: Perpetuating an ‘Extremely Gendered’ Organization.” In Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization, edited by E. Jeanes, D. Knights and P. Yancey Martin, 391–411. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2011. ———. “From the Military as a Gendered Organization to Militarized Inequality Regimes: Research on Gender and the Military in Israel.” Israel Studies Review 26/2 (2011): 73–98. Shabtay, Malka. “The Experience of Ethiopian Jewish Soldiers in the Israeli Army: The Process of Identity Formulation with the Military Context.” Israel Social Science Research 10/2 (1996): 69–80. Sjoberg, Laura, and Sandra Via. Introduction to Gender, War and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives, edited by Sjoberg Laura and Sandra Via, 1–17. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Snyder, Claire R. Citizen-soldier and Manly Warriors: Military Service and Gender in the Civic Republic Tradition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999. Stiehm, Judith H. Arms and the Enlisted Woman. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Tilly, Charles. “The Emergence of Citizenship in France and Elsewhere.” International Review of Social History 40/3 (1996): 223–236. Winslow, Donna, and Jason Dunn. “Women in the Canadian Forces: Between Legal and Social Integration.” Current Sociology 50/5 (2002): 641–667.

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Chapter 5

Militarizing the Nation: Gender Politics of the Warsaw Uprising Weronika Grzebalska

The Warsaw Uprising was a military operation organized by the Polish underground state in an attempt to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. Preceded by five years of underground activity and launched on August 1, 1944, the rebellion was expected to be supported by both the Western Allies and the Soviets, who had by then approached the eastern bank of the city’s river. Without the anticipated support, the battle nevertheless lasted 63 days until the capitulation of the Home Army. The results of the Uprising were disastrous. It led to a total destruction of the city with 85 percent of its buildings razed by 1945. It also resulted in the death of approximately 15,000 Polish soldiers and between 150,000 and 200,000 civilians.1 According to the data gathered by the Warsaw Uprising Museum, women constituted around 22 percent of the overall number of participants in the insurrection2 and were present in nearly all areas of underground activity during the German occupation. Yet despite the fact that women participated in the Warsaw Uprising in various fields and in great numbers, works on the insurrection written after the war failed to integrate them into the historical record and rarely went beyond simply mentioning selected female figures in an otherwise maledominated narrative. Women insurgents are not only entirely absent from history textbooks but also rarely present in renowned monographs of the uprising. In his book’s index, Kirchmayer listed only two women by their full name, and one of them was not even involved in the uprising.3 Ciechanowski mentioned ten women, but most of them as background characters: secretaries, wives or couriers of men.4 So far the best effort at integrating women into the historiography of resistance is

1 Andrew Borowiec, Destroy Warsaw! Hitler’s Punishment, Stalin’s Revenge (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 6. 2 The category of participants encompasses soldiers from all organizations that were subordinate to the Home Army, as well as persons carrying out work for the civil and military authorities of the uprising. 3 Jerzy Kirchmayer, Powstanie Warszawskie (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1957). 4 Jan M. Ciechanowski, Powstanie Warszawskie: zarys podłoża politycznego i dyplomatycznego (London: Odnowa, 1971).

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the book by Strzembosz which describes the various female units and lists many female participants.5 The relegation of women to the margins of the historical literature on the uprising drew a strong response from former female soldiers. In a letter to her subordinates written in 1951, Major Wanda Gertz complained that the Polish Historical Institute in London not only omitted women in its book on the Home Army but also refused to support efforts by the women’s editorial committee to publish a supplement dedicated to women’s participation: The historical bureau … was gathering accounts from Home Army members omitting women entirely. In an act of protest, we created an all-female committee to cover women’s participation in the Home Army. The historical bureau refused to help us due to lack of funds and the impossibility of publishing a supplement to the book that was already on sale.6

Having analyzed 3,000 publications on World War II, Lieutenant-Colonel Grażyna Lipińska voiced concern that women usually lacked necessary biographical information and often even surnames.7 This disappointment with the state of research, which many of them saw as male-centered, pushed female veterans to launch various initiatives aimed at documenting and promoting women’s participation in the war effort.8 Only recently has the need to commemorate female insurgents received wider recognition, resulting in museum exhibitions, press articles and events dedicated to female insurgents. This growing interest in female combatants can be seen as part of a larger right-wing revisionist trend to incorporate women into Polish national history, a tendency observed by Andrea Pető in Central Europe after 1989.9 While these joint efforts certainly succeeded in documenting women’s contribution and commemorating ‘women worthies,’10 none of them were informed by feminist thought and, thus, gender has never been the topic of their attention. Therefore, their impact on the official history of the insurrection was  5 Tomasz Strzembosz, Oddziały szturmowe konspiracyjnej Warszawy 1939–1944 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1983).  6 Quoted in Anna Nowakowska, Wanda Gertz. Opowieść o kobiecie żołnierzu (Krakow: Avalod, 2009), 125.  7 Grażyna Lipińska, “Stan wiedzy o kobietach w ruchu oporu w kraju na podstawie bibliografii,” unpublished paper presented on December 18, 1970.  8 Among the initiatives was The Commission for Women’s History in the Struggle for Independence established in Warsaw in 1970 and The Archives and Pomeranian Museum of the Home Army and Women’s Military Service founded in 1990.  9 Andrea Pető, “Methodological and theoretical problems of writing the women’s history in Central Europe,” lecture given at The Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw on September 6, 2012. 10 Gerda Lerner, “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges,” Feminist Studies 3 (Fall 1975): 5.

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rather limited. Instead of transforming the dominant narrative of the uprising, these works sought to add women into the pre-existing historiographical picture. The aim of this paper is to ask this missing question of gender in order to make a connection between women’s history and History and help rewrite the past in a way that “both makes women visible as historical actors, as subjects of the narrative, and offers new readings.”11 By looking at the way the Warsaw Uprising was prepared and carried out through the use of specific notions of femininity and masculinity, this article aims to shed much-needed light on the gendered nature of Polish militarism. In particular, it focuses on two tasks: to reconstruct the gender order that the Home Army relied on and provide a feminist reframing of the memory of the Warsaw Uprising. The paper draws from archival research and personal interviews conducted with female members of the Home Army.12 The interview narratives were analyzed in conjunction with two other sets of sources: diaries and journals written during or right after the war13 and the daily press issued during the uprising.14 All materials were then subjected to open coding and cross-case analysis. The Polish Nation as a Soldier-Nation The dominant narrative of the time of the Warsaw Uprising presented in press articles described it as the emanation of the Polish national spirit, centered on 11 Joan Wallach Scott, “Rewriting History,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, eds. Patrice and Margaret Higonnet (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1987), 25. 12 In 2009–2010 I conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with women from various units and performing different functions. Interviewees were acquired via chain referral, which limited my study to women holding a specific position in the ‘matrix of domination’ [see Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000)]: all of them were Polish, belonged to the intelligentsia, and were members of the Home Army. The names of interviewees have been changed to ensure their anonymity. 13 Altogether I analyzed eight diaries and journals: Halina Brzozowska-Surdyk, Tylekroć serce … Pamiętnik z Powstania Warszawskiego (Warsaw: Muzeum Niepodległości, 1995); Stanisław Komornicki, Na barykadach Warszawy (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2003); Jadwiga Kostuń Kwaśnik Badmajew, Pamiętnik Jagody (Warsaw: Bellona, 2003); Janusz Kozłowski, W baonie Odwet (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1970); Janina PierreSkrzyńska, Pamiętnik Inki 1939–1945 (London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 1986); Teresa Potulicka-Łatyńska, Dziennik powstańczy 1944 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Kwadryga, 1998); Jerzy Świderski, Dziennik harcerza powstańca (Warsaw: łósgraf, 2004); Henryka ZarzyckaDziakowska, Mój pamiętnik z powstania warszawskiego (Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Tchu, 2003). 14 I analyzed four newspapers with the highest circulation figures: Biuletyn Informacyjny, Rzeczpospolita Polska, Robotnik and Walka.

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the love of freedom, patriotism and imperative of sacrifice. It told a story of a brave nation that yet again fought for its highest value—freedom. In this sense, the insurrection was seen not as a matter of choice but as an inevitable consequence of who the Poles were. Press articles and appeals issued by state authorities endorsed this peculiar determinism contained in the image of a soldier-nation: The capital city threw itself spontaneously on the German occupier … This line of conduct is the result of our national psyche, our deep love for freedom and independence. We have always stood in their defense.15 One of the most deeply rooted traits of our nation is the spirit of chivalry. The Poles have always had a sophisticated sense of national dignity which was, invariably throughout the centuries, accompanied by soldierly bravery, dedication in combat and disregard for death … the Polish nation has always listened to the direct imperatives of honor and the spirit of chivalry. This is the Polish tradition.16

The discourse used to mobilize Poles for the war effort drew heavily from ideas about national identity and obligations that emerged in the course of Poland’s nineteenth-century struggle for independence. Centered on the idea of military sacrifice, it privileged army values such as heroism and courage over civilian values: the will to survive or fulfill individual interests. In consequence, military identity was established as national identity as postulated by the interwar slogan ‘every citizen—a soldier, every soldier—a citizen.’17 The role of the citizen-soldier was of course a highly gendered one in that the script in which it was embedded was “written primarily by men, for men, and about men.”18 “War is a great tragedy but it is also a great manly adventure.”19 This opinion voiced by a male veteran of the Warsaw Uprising gives valuable insight into the reciprocal relationship between militarism and masculinity by revealing that men were mobilized for the war effort not only as Poles but also as men. With popular books such as Stones for the Rampart,20 showcasing the alluring lives of underground members, and the fashion for wearing army clothing such as officer’s boots and jodhpurs, military masculinity was promoted as a dominant model of 15 Rzeczpospolita Polska, September 2, 1944, 1. 16 Rzeczpospolita Polska, December 6, 1944, 3. 17 A slogan of the Riflemen’s Association, a paramilitary organization providing military training to youth in the interwar period. 18 Joane Nagel, “Masculinity and nationalism: gender and sexuality in the making of nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (March 1998): 243. 19 Piotr Zychowicz, “Zakapior z Powstania Warszawskiego,” Rzeczpospolita 177 (2010): 16. 20 Published in Poland in 1943, this book by Aleksander Kamiński quickly became very popular among the young and strongly influenced their views and attitudes.

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male attraction in wartime Poland. All of a sudden, men who were not involved in the underground were deemed unattractive. During our interviews, female insurgents recalled they were only drawn to men who had a certain ‘underground charm’ to themselves, and considered others less manly. Through this ideological construction of combat manhood, women were therefore used as guardians of masculinity, encouraging men to join the underground and embarrassing those who did not live up to its standards. Mothers and Soldiers: Mobilizing Women for the War Effort Since building an underground resistance movement in wartime Poland required not only recruits but also extensive support on the part of the civilian population, military and state ideologues employed various strategies to involve women in the war effort in the various militarized roles of encouraging girlfriends, patriotic mothers, signifiers of national boundaries and soldiers filling the lower ranks.21 One particularly potent strategy was the politicization of traditional female roles in the form of the Matka Polka (Mother Pole) figure which came to describe a patriotic woman committed to preserving Polishness during times of national threat. This widely-promoted notion of patriotic motherhood emerged during the nineteenth-century partitions and combined in itself elements of Catholicism, gentry culture and folk culture.22 It defined women’s citizenship as sacrificing sons for the Fatherland rather than taking part in the struggle on equal terms. Adam Mickiewicz, a Polish poet of the Romantic period, best voiced this idea by saying that women will not gain their place in society by fighting for their rights but by sacrificing their children.23 The Matka Polka ideal was widely evoked during World War II. By elevating motherhood to a public role of serving the nation, army ideologues encouraged women to support the militarized gender order. Apart from biological reproduction and sacrificing children for the struggle, women were also expected to boost social morale, provide help to soldiers and embody the national spirit.24 21 On women’s militarized and nationalized roles see for example Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? (London: South End Press, 1983) and Nira Yuval Davis, Gender & Nation (London: Sage, 1997). 22 Barbara Jedynak, “Dom i kobieta w czasach niewoli,” in Kobieta w kulturze i społeczeństwie (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowiskiej, 1990), 86. For more on Matka Polka see, for example, Sławomira Walczewska, Damy, rycerze, feministki. Kobiecy dyskurs emancypacyjny w Polsce (Krakow: Wydawnictwo eFKa, 1999); Elżbieta Ostrowska, “Matki Polki i ich synowie. Kilka uwag o genezie obrazów kobiecości i męskości w kulturze polskiej,” in Gender. Konteksty, ed. Małgorzata Radkiewicz (Krakow: Rabid, 2004), 215–227. 23 A lecture given at Collège de France in 1842 quoted in Maria Janion, Kobiety i duch inności (Warsaw: Sic!, 2006), 97. 24 In August 1944, the Home Army’s Bureau of Information and Propaganda issued an appeal to women to support the national struggle: “The role of women is to mold national

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While compliance was rewarded with symbolic gratification in the form of respect and worship, misconduct was punished with stigmatization and various forms of harassment. One example is the treatment of female fraternizers, who were often sentenced to infamy and hair-shaving by underground courts.25 Personal testimonies also point to other forms of punishment such as rape or public flogging. Another is the stigmatization of women who broke the norms of patriotic womanhood in terms of their dress or behavior. Press articles called them ‘chaff and weeds of the uprising’ and blamed them for the loosening of soldierly discipline and morals. What the treatment of non-normative women reveals is a certain double-standard: since women were perceived as the bearers of national identity and male honor, their conduct and chastity was of greatest national concern. Men’s sexual behavior was not restricted in the same way.26 Military officials soon reached for women not only as mothers and bearers of national identity, but also soldiers filling the various non-combat positions in the army. In 1940, the commanding officer of the Union of Armed Struggle (later renamed the Home Army) decided to let women exceed auxiliary roles and undertake work in sabotage, intelligence and even combat, but only under special circumstances.27 This decision was then confirmed in 1943 by a presidential decree, which also legally acknowledged women’s service not as auxiliary but as military service equal to that of men. As indicated in army documents, this decision was mainly due to ‘manpower’ shortages in occupied Poland and the need to replace men on lower and auxiliary positions.28 Another rationale for engaging women was the perception of femininity as an asset in underground work. Knowing that women were less likely to cause suspicion among German soldiers, army commanders encouraged them to perform underground work while feigning their everyday female activities. For instance, they would carry guns in a basket full of home supplies or pretend to be on a date while exchanging dispatches. Personal testimonies also reveal that women were perfectly aware of their gender being an asset and strategically used patriarchal conceptions about femininity in order to carry out certain tasks.29 spirit in order to strengthen and motivate those fighting on the front, shape the character of children and youth by using the living example of the uprising, confirm others in the belief that the end of war is approaching fast, encourage others to preserve, fight the weakness of spirit and nervous breakdown.” 25 Postwar France provides an interesting analogy to Poland. In both cases, controlling women’s sexuality served as a means to reestablish national boundaries. See, for example, Joane Nagel, “Ethnicity and Sexuality,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 107–133. 26 I have found no instances of prosecution against male fraternizers. However, I came across a recollection in which a veteran of the Warsaw Uprising boasted about his sexual experience with a German woman. 27 Organizational Dispatch No. 118, May 16, 1942. 28 Order from January 18, 1944. 29 This strategy was aptly described by one of my interviewees: “When a pretty girl smiled at a common soldier, he was instantly eager to get to know her. And when you were

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The interwar activity of women’s paramilitary organizations also played an important role in preparing ground for this decision. In 1922, female soldiers who had been active in WWI and had been demobilized due to budget cuts, founded a special committee as a means to promote the idea of women’s military service and train women in civil defense. One of its prewar instructors, Elżbieta Zawacka, was later involved in the legal regulation of women’s service as emissary to the Polish government-in-exile in 1943. The recognition of women as soldiers was met with great support on the part of women, as many saw in it a long-awaited improvement of their roles from Matka Polka to fighter and a means to gain first-class citizenship. Anna Borkiewicz-Celińska, a member of an underground sabotage unit who took part in the uprising, gave insight into this rationale in her postwar recollection: Wanda Gertz, an authentic World War I soldier, embodied young girls’ dreams of being equal to boys, of being able to do everything that the opposite sex does. “Why wasn’t I born a boy?” This was the question (full of sorrow), that lay behind these sort of dreams.30

The overlapping of emancipatory and militarist discourses in Borkiewicz’s work also shows the Polish national struggle as a sphere in which new feminine identities could be enacted, for it “created desires that enabled rapid changes, and some of these changes have greatly benefited women.”31 These two dominant notions of wartime femininity—the Mother Pole and the female fighter—formed a discursive context for women’s experiences of the uprising. They also remained the dominant framework for remembering these experiences after the war. Even faced with my feminist questions and interpretations during our interviews, women still returned to these concepts to make sense of their wartime lives, thus making me acutely aware that more often than not, the task of a feminist historian is not to merely recount women’s narratives but rather critically analyze the discourses which shaped them.32

on a mission you had to smile and fake interest. Of course, no closer relationships occurred but you had to fake either a defenseless child or a charming young lady. Girls always had the advantage that they could be found attractive. And enemy soldiers were men after all. Men far from home, far from their women” (interview with Barbara, January 12, 2010). 30 Anna Borkiewicz-Celińska, “Kobiety w dywersji,” Więź 10 (1976): 110. 31 Ayşe Gül Altınay, The Myth of the Military-Nation. Militarism, Gender and Education in Turkey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 57. 32 See such feminist post-structuralist works as Katherine Canning, “Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19/2 (1994): 368–404; Joan W. Scott, “Experience,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, eds. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (London: Routledge, 1992), 22–40.

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Gendering the Battle Front and Rear Regardless of legal arrangements such as the presidential decree, the Home Army thrived on the sexual division of labor. Although women performed functions as diverse as medical service, communications, sabotage and intelligence, most of them were in fact trained to become nurses and couriers as well as carry out administrative and food supply work. In addition to their official war tasks, women were also expected to perform such ‘feminine’ duties as sewing and cooking for their comrades.33 One of the key assumptions militarism rests on is that the world is divided between those who protect and those who need protection. The ideological construction of ‘womenandchildren’34 thus serves as a rationale for engaging men to fight in wars. With women widely involved in the underground, the idea that men fight to protect the weak and feminine was seriously challenged. This explains why women’s presence in the underground army was not received unquestioningly by military circles. In their discussions, army commanders often voiced the opinion that women should be protected rather than directly exposed to enemy violence.35 Many of them also questioned women’s military value and remained skeptical about their inclusion in the army. In their diaries and recollections, women sometimes mention hearing offensive comments concerning their abilities as soldiers: Why don’t you trust our abilities? Ah, so the view that women are a burden for the military still lingers on. We will fight against this prejudice.36 On that day, we were directed to a new unit. And the commander told us that he had long opposed the inclusion of women because he believed they were not experienced and responsible. And that hurt us the most. (Interview with Hanna, January 21, 2010)

When women entered the army in unprecedented numbers, military men needed to make sure women’s presence would not threaten the gender order on which 33 As one of the articles put it: “Helping soldiers regain strength is primarily the task of women. Soldiers often do not know what bothers them and what they lack. Only women’s care and diligence of her hands can identify a soldier’s needs,” Demokrata, August 24, 1944, 4. 34 Cynthia Enloe, “Womenandchildren. Making Feminist Sense of the Persian Gulf Crisis,” The Village Voice, (September 25, 1990): 29–32. 35 Men’s rationale for keeping women in the back was described to me by one of my interviewees: “The boys were so anxious about me that they wouldn’t let me perform my tasks. Only later did they confess to me that they wanted to protect me. When they didn’t want to take me on a mission and discriminated me as a girl I argued with them and wouldn’t let them treat me like that … They believed that women were to be protected and not exposed to the enemy” (interview with Alicja, November 25, 2009). 36 Brzozowska-Surdyk, Tylekroć serce … Pamiętnik z Powstania Warszawskiego, 35.

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militarism rested. This goal was accomplished through the ideological demarcation between the ‘masculine’ battle front and the ‘feminine’ rear, presented as merely supportive to combat. In the collective imagination, male combat roles were presented as the very definition of wartime heroism and were therefore endowed with higher prestige than the tasks performed by women: It was commonly held that transportation was a task of secondary importance if not inferior service. Everyone valued close combat above all else … Nevertheless, our girls never complained and did not shirk from this unacknowledged responsibility.37 So it is that auxiliaries are underrated. I, however, am not sure what demands a bigger sacrifice (although it might sound funny): throwing bottles on tanks, fighting with a gun in one’s hand, or standing calmly at a stove and cooking a pot of soup, which is being constantly covered in rubble, and wondering whether this or the following bomb will destroy everything.38

Through the description of women’s participation in the uprising as a burden and by picturing it as less important than male combat, women were presented as somehow external to the army and therefore unable to subvert its masculine culture. In a case of urban warfare such as the Warsaw Uprising, the distinction between front and rear seems rather illusionary. Still, this differentiation was used in order to reassure men’s status. Women were therefore included into the ranks, not on equal terms, but as the symbolic “Other” in relation to which men could confirm their soldierly identity. The rhetoric of othering heavily influenced the way female participants understood their role in the uprising. Both wartime journals and later accounts of female insurgents reveal an ambiguity about their self-perception. On the one hand, women thought of themselves as soldiers, equal to men. On the other hand, they sensed that their role was of less importance and rather supportive to combat: while men’s role was invariably described as fighting, women’s wartime tasks were often referred to as helping the soldiers. As described by one of my interviewees: “Weapons and combat were a man’s thing. And us girls could only help in some way” (interview with Urszula, December, 8 2009). Most women I interviewed recalled they accepted this gender division of labor and “admired the

37 Zofia Cydzikowa and Irena Makowska, “Armia Krajowa. Wojskowa Służba Kobiet. Pluton Wartowniczy Teresy Strzały Alicji Szebero,” in Służba Polek na frontach II wojny światowej, eds. Mirosław Golon and Katarzyna Mińczykowska, Vol. 4 (Toruń: APAK, 2000), 119. 38 Teresa Wilska, “Oszczędzajcie filipinki,” in Pełnić służbę … Z pamiętników i wspomnień harcerek Warszawy 1939–1945, eds. Anna and Zofia Zawadzka (Warsaw: PIW, 1983), 293–294.

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boys but did not feel the need to do what they did” (interview with Olga, February 12, 2011). As one of my interviewees put it: I never had an ambition to become a real soldier, that is, to kill people. The paradox is that I would feel offended if someone told me I wasn’t a soldier. I think I accepted the division of labor. In this underground struggle the boys would set tasks for the girls, and I wholly submitted myself to this system. (Interview with Hanna, January 21, 2011)

The production of a ‘masculine’ battle front and ‘feminine’ rear was of course not a purely discursive process. It was supported and maintained though specific policies and decisions of military officials. For example, women underwent gender-specific military trainings and had a hierarchy of ranks different to that of men: women could not become officers and instead of lieutenants, captains and majors, they were ranked leaders, senior leaders and inspectors. While serving as a symbolical boundary between male and female service, different ranks also prevented women from commanding male units.39 Women were also the target of certain gender-specific orders such as the restriction of women’s access to weapons40 and permission to leave the city with civilians instead of going to a POW camp after capitulation.41 Making women the aim of these policies was a clear sign that while female participants of the uprising might have become soldiers, they never ceased to be perceived as women. Conclusion A question often posed in feminist studies of wars concerns their impact on women’s social position and the extent to which they challenged or reinforced the traditional gender order. Women’s participation in the Warsaw Uprising undoubtedly brought changes to their situation. The dominant notion of patriotic motherhood in wartime Poland gave women the chance to participate in the national struggle by politicizing their traditional roles. At the same time, manpower shortages made it possible for women to enter the ranks in great numbers and perform 39 Women were granted the same ranks as men only at the end of September 1944, soon before the capitulation. 40 Due to weapon shortages and a lack of combat training for women, female insurgents rarely possessed guns. In better armed units, women were sometimes given guns by their friends, but these were usually small caliber pistols. Still, on August 22, 1944, the Home Army Headquarters in Warsaw ordered women to return all the weapons that were in their possession to frontline units. Commanders were allowed to let women keep their weapons only under special circumstances. 41 This was stated in the capitulation agreement signed on October 2, 1944 between Polish and German military representatives.

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roles previously marked as masculine, redefining women’s roles from sacrificing mother to fighter. Eventually, women’s service was also legally acknowledged as military service with equal rights and obligations to that of men. On the other hand, women were the target of gender-specific policies within the military which highlighted their ambiguous position as both soldiers and women: they were not trained for direct combat and their access to guns was restricted. Also, while the military made extensive use of women’s work, their tasks were described as feminine and endowed with lower prestige than male roles, worshiped as the very definition of heroism. Since gender differences within the army were maintained, women’s step forward into the ranks failed to challenge the gender power relations. The case of the Warsaw Uprising thus confirms the bitter argument raised decades earlier by Polish feminist Paulina KuczalskaReinschmit, that by fighting for the nation’s freedom, women have not gained rights for themselves.42 The masculinization of the battle front and the construction of women as merely supporting the war effort had profound consequences for the way the Warsaw Uprising was narrated by both insurgents and historians after the war. Women’s position in these accounts, aptly criticized by female combatants, can be seen as the result of the way men’s and women’s roles have been shaped during the uprising. In the face of the relative absence of other narrative frames, such as the feminist one, the gendered rhetoric of patriotic obligations remains the dominant vocabulary for women to make sense of their experiences. Instead of critically analyzing the gendered constructions of front and rear, historians have reproduced them in their works, thus further contributing to the marginalization of women in the memory of the insurgency. References Altınay, Ayşe Gül. The Myth of the Military-Nation. Militarism, Gender and Education in Turkey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Borkiewicz-Celińska, Anna. “Kobiety w dywersji” [Women in Sabotage]. Więź 10 (1976): 110–115. Borowiec, Andrew. Destroy Warsaw! Hitler’s Punishment, Stalin’s Revenge. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. Brzozowska-Surdyk, Halina. Tylekroć serce … Pamiętnik z Powstania Warszawskiego [Whenever the Heart … Diary from the Warsaw Uprising]. Warsaw: Muzeum Niepodległości, 1995. Canning, Katherine. “Feminist History after the Linguistic Turn: Historicizing Discourse and Experience.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19/2 (1994): 368–404. 42 Paulina Kuczalska-Reinschmit, “Słówko wyjaśnienia,” Ster 4 (1907): 192.

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Ciechanowski, Jan M. The Warsaw Rising of 1944 [in Polish]. London: Odnowa, 1971. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. Cydzikowa, Zofia, and Irena Makowska. “Pluton Wartowniczy WSK „Teresy Strzały” Alicji Szebeko 1941–1944” [Alicja Szebeko’s Women’s Military Service Guard Platoon 1941–1944]. In Volume 4 of Służba Polek na frontach II wojny światowej [Polish Women’s Service During World War II], edited by Mirosław Golon and Katarzyna Mińczykowska, 111–136. Toruń: APAK, 2000. Enloe, Cynthia. Does Khaki Become You? London: South End Press, 1983. Enloe, Cynthia. “Womenandchildren. Making Feminist Sense of the Persian Gulf Crisis.” The Village Voice (September 25, 1990): 29–32. Janion, Maria. Kobiety i duch inności [Women and the Spirit of Otherness]. Warsaw: Sic!, 2006. Jedynak, Barbara. “Dom i kobieta w czasach niewoli” [Home and Women at Times of National Bondage]. In Kobieta w kulturze i społeczeństwie [Women in Culture and Society], 355–360. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowiskiej 1990. Kamiński, Aleksander. Stones for the Rampart: The Story of Two Lads in the Polish Underground Movement [in Polish]. London: Polish Boy Scouts’ and Girl Guides’ Association, 1945. Kirchmayer, Jerzy. Powstanie Warszawskie [The Warsaw Uprising]. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1957. Komornicki, Stanisław. Na barykadach Warszawy [On Warsaw’s Barricades]. Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2003. Kostuń, Kwaśnik Badmajew. Jadwiga, Pamiętnik Jagody [Jagoda’s Diary]. Warsaw: Bellona, 2003. Kozłowski, Janusz. W baonie Odwet: dziennik powstańca [In the Odwet Battalion: Diary of an Insurgent]. Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1970. Kuczalska-Reinschmit, Paulina. “Słówko wyjaśnienia” [Word of Explanation]. Ster 4 (1907): 191–195. Lerner, Gerda. “Placing Women in History: Definitions and Challenges.” Feminist Studies 3 (Fall 1975): 5–14. Lipińska, Grażyna. “Stan wiedzy o kobietach w ruchu oporu w kraju na podstawie bibliografii” [The State of Research on Women in the Resistance Movement Based on Bibliography]. A paper presented on December 18, 1970. Nagel, Joane. “Ethnicity and Sexuality.” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000): 107–133. Nagel, Joane. “Masculinity and Nationalism: Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21 (March 1998): 242–269. Nowakowska, Anna. Wanda Gertz. Opowieść o kobiecie żołnierzu [Wanda Gertz: The Story of a Woman Soldier]. Krakow: Avalod, 2009. Ostrowska, Elżbieta. “Matki Polki i ich synowie. Kilka uwag o genezie obrazów kobiecości i męskości w kulturze polskiej” [Mother Poles and Their Sons.

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Remarks on the Origins of the Notions of Femininity and Masculinity in Polish Culture]. In Gender. Konteksty [Gender. Contexts], edited by Małgorzata Radkiewicz, 215–252. Krakow: Rabid, 2004. Pető, Andrea. “Methodological and Theoretical Problems of Writing Women’s History in Central Europe.” Lecture given at The Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw on September 6, 2012. Pierre-Skrzyńska, Janina. Pamiętnik Inki 1939–1945 [Diary of Inka 1939–1945]. London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 1986. Potulicka-Łatyńska, Teresa. Dziennik powstańczy 1944 [Insurgent Diary 1944]. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Kwadryga, 1998. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Experience.” In Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott, 22–40. London: Routledge, 1992. Scott, Joan Wallach. “Rewriting History.” In Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, edited by Patrice and Margaret Higonnet, 21–30. New Heaven: Yale University Press, 1987. Strzembosz, Tomasz. Oddziały szturmowe konspiracyjnej Warszawy 1939–1944 [Assault Forces of Conspiracy in Warsaw 1939–1944]. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1983. Świderski, Jerzy. Dziennik harcerza powstańca [The Diary of a Scout-Insurgent]. Warsaw: łósgraf, 2004. Walczewska, Sławomira. Damy, rycerze, feministki. Kobiecy dyskurs emancypacyjny w Polsce [Ladies, Knights, Feminists. Women’s Emancipatory Discourse in Poland]. Krakow: Wydawnictwo eFKa, 1999. Wilska, Teresa. “Oszczędzajcie filipinki” [Save the Grenades]. In Pełnić służbę … Z pamiętników i wspomnień harcerek Warszawy 1939–1945, edited by Anna and Zofia Zawadzka, 277–318, 441–496. Warsaw: PIW, 1983. Yuval-Davis, Nira. Gender & Nation. London: Sage, 1997. Zarzycka-Dziakowska, Henryka. Mój pamiętnik z powstania warszawskiego [My Diary from the Warsaw Uprising]. Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Tchu, 2003. Zychowicz, Piotr. “Zakapior z Powstania Warszawskiego” [Hooligan from the Warsaw Uprising]. Rzeczpospolita 177 (2010): 16–17.

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Chapter 6

The Italian Civil War in the Memoirs of Female Fascist Soldiers Gianluca Schiavo

An interesting and lesser known aspect of the history of the Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), which was founded by Mussolini in September 1943 in the central and northern parts of Italy still occupied by German forces, is the voluntary enlistment of 6,000 women in the fascist armed forces. These women wished to make their own contribution to the war. After some months of intense debate, during which great pressure was mounted by women’s groups within the party, in April 1944 Mussolini signed a decree which established a female military auxiliary corps (Servizio Ausiliario Femminile, SAF) whose task was to recruit and train young volunteers to be assigned to the armed forces of the RSI. The regulations established that during their initial training, the auxiliary corps would learn the use of weapons for self-defense, but that then, once organized in units, they would only provide logistical support to the troops, mainly by working in infirmaries, mess halls and administrative offices, and as observers in anti-aircraft batteries. In the following year, almost 6,000 women served in the military corps of the RSI, and about 300 of them lost their lives. In recent decades, some SAF veterans, including General Piera Gatteschi Fondelli, the commander of the corps, have written memoirs, reconstructing the story of their participation in the Italian civil war. These female veterans of the fascist army, like their male comrades, waited until the last part of the twentieth century to put pen to paper, since the views of the vanquished were long considered “taboo” in the democratic Italy that was born out of the anti-fascist resistance. In the first years following the end of the war, because of the cultural climate of the country, it was very difficult for former supporters of the defeated regime to explain in public the reasons for their actions. Indeed, only a few of them published their memoirs and these were mainly men who had held very important positions and were unable to keep their pasts secret. This group included Rodolfo Graziani, Minister of Defense of the RSI, Giovanni Dolfin, Mussolini’s Chief of Staff, and Prince Julio Valerio Borghese, Commander of the Special Naval Forces of the RSI. Their works were particularly aimed at highlighting and proudly justifying their conduct in wartime, which, in their view, had stemmed from a desire to serve Italy, not fascist ideology.

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Over the course of time, as in many other European countries, in Italy the climate gradually changed. Both the passage of time and the long-term involvement of a party with neo-fascist origins in the government of the country1 contributed to a decline in postwar tensions and to the development of a well-balanced historical debate. Some veterans who had been supporters of Mussolini’s government and had kept silent for decades, decided to narrate their stories. Many essays have explored the history of Mussolini’s female soldiers,2 but there has been no comparative examination of the memoirs written by members of the SAF. This chapter aims to fill this gap, throwing light on the viewpoints of women who took part in one of the most surprising experiments conducted by the fascist regime in its last throes, in a desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable defeat. In fact, the image of a woman leaving her house and family to don a uniform and join the war is obviously very far removed from the image that the regime had tried to spread among Italian women throughout the previous 20 years; namely, that of the affectionate mother and devoted wife.3 I shall examine the most important memoirs of the female veterans, focusing particularly on the influence that the anti-fascist context in which they lived and wrote their books might have exerted on their representations of events. The Reasons for the Women’s Choice One of the most interesting characteristics of the texts is the tendency of the authors to frame their memories as apolitical; that is, to play down as much as possible the ideological roots of their involvement, presenting themselves as patriots who simply fulfilled their duty to their country. In postwar Italy, where anti-fascism became an essential pillar of the national identity, this approach meant marginalizing those factors that could divide the fascist veterans from the large majority of Italians, or that might cause aversion. It also meant emphasizing those elements which were common to the entire nation. 1 Founded in 1946 by a group of fascist veterans, the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) was transformed, in 1995, into the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN), a conservative center-right party. Alleanza Nazionale has taken part in the government of Italy in the following periods: 1995–1996, 2001–2006, and 2008–2009. 2 In addition to the books quoted in subsequent footnotes (Garibaldi, Munzi and Perissinotto), it is also important to mention: Marino Viganò, Donne in grigioverde (Rome: Settimo sigillo, 1995) and Maria Fraddosio, All’armi siam fasciste. Le donne che combatterono per Salò (Milan: Mondadori, 1995). 3 For a very careful analysis of the gender codes of the fascist regime, see Victoria de Grazia, Le donne nel regime fascista (Venice: Marsilio, 1993); Marina Addis Saba, La corporazione delle donne (Florence: Vallecchi, 1988); and Piero Meldini, Sposa e madre esemplare (Rimini and Florence: Guaraldi, 1975).

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This attempt to play down the ideological basis of their involvement emerges very clearly if we focus on three important subjects that the veterans discuss in their works: their reasons for choosing to serve in the fascist army, their feelings towards the anti-fascist resistance, and their relationship with the Germans. As to what motivated them to enlist, there is a very marked tendency to deideologize their choice, which is not presented as the result of their fascist “faith.” On the contrary, it is portrayed above all as a reaction against a loss of honor: the humiliation that they felt Italy had suffered in September 1943, when the Badoglio government decided to sign an armistice with the Allies. From the point of view of these women, the sense of national honor obliged Italy to respect its alliance with Germany and Japan until the end of the war. This point is made very clear in the words of Luciana Cera, an officer of the auxiliary corps of the 10th Assault Vehicle Flotilla (Decima MAS), a special naval force: My rebellion began on September 8, 1943. It was acceptable to lose the war, even to cry, but it was unacceptable to lose one’s honor. The shameful armistice, the desertion and the flight of the King with Badoglio and the entire government, the fact that Italian soldiers, deployed in the whole of Europe, were totally abandoned, without any order or assistance … that was absolutely intolerable for my soul. I felt the need to do something, since I did not want to feel like a worm among other worms … I was not following Mussolini and fascism, I was following men who felt the same way as I did, and who had not turned traitor. We had lost everything, the only valuable thing that we still had was our life, but it was definitely acceptable to exchange it for Honor.4

Owing to the difficult military situation, the risk of death was great for fascist soldiers, but, as Luciana’s words clearly indicate, death was merely considered a means by which to redeem the dignity of the motherland. Luciana clearly reaffirms this framing in another passage in which she describes an encounter with a dying marine: I took his motionless, warm hand and put it to the collar badge of my uniform: the gladius, the symbol of redeemed honor. I told him that it was the same symbol which adorned his uniform, and which united us, making us feel comrades and brother and sister. I thought that this was the reason why he was dying, and we would probably both soon be dead. … The important thing was the cause for which he was dying. I thought his death was sufficient to redeem the honor of Italy.5 4 Luciana Cera’s memoirs have been included by Marino Perissinotto in his essay Il servizio ausiliario femminile della Decima flottiglia MAS (Parma: Albertelli, 2003). The passage quoted is on page 66. All the passages quoted in the present chapter have been translated by the author. 5 Ibid., 88.

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With the redemption of national dignity as the main reason for her choice, the consequence is that Luciana assesses the concepts of “victory” and “defeat” from a very particular perspective: true victory does not consist in defeating the enemy on the battlefield, but in valorous behavior which cleanses the stain that the armistice of 1943 has left on the image of the country. For this reason, after the end of the war, she does not believe that there has been a real defeat: Had we been defeated? No! The mission was accomplished! I had won my personal war, and my brothers and sisters with me. We had found what we had been looking for, with death by our side. That death held a flower in its mouth, as in the symbol of the Decima, a flower named “HONOUR.”6

The tendency not to present themselves as fascist activists is so marked that, even among the few authors who mention the political basis of their choice, their observations do not refer to the soundness of fascist principles or to the importance of the survival of Mussolini’s government. On the contrary, their statements are of a very different order, ranging from psychology to religious forms of expression. Some authors highlight the fact that, for a girl who had grown up in a totalitarian system whose propaganda had invaded every aspect of reality, from school to leisure, from work to arts and mass media,7 fascist sentiment was not regarded as the best possible option, but simply as the “norm.” In the summer of 1943, therefore, the collapse of the regime seemed to them an incomprehensible alteration of a normal condition that they and their comrades sought to restore by wearing the uniform of the RSI militias. This emerges very clearly in the words of Raffaella Duelli, born in 1926 into a middle-class family of fiery fascist activists and who, still being underage in 1944, had joined the Decima MAS: “I did not understand: for me fascism and Mussolini represented the ordinary condition. I had known no other organizations but the ones which had made my youth happy: athletic contests, drama school, choral singing. And then everything collapsed from July 25 to September 8.”8 In the pages preceding this passage, she recalls what had been for her a “joyful” day, June 10, 1940. Aged 14, she had gone with her father and younger sister to the gathering at which the Duce proclaimed war on the United Kingdom and France. In her words, as in those of some of her fellow soldiers, we find a very precise sensation which seems to be more psychological than political. Until the summer of 1943 their lives had been complete and satisfying, but the sudden collapse of the regime and the end of the war had produced a situation that they perceived as abnormal, and which had left a great void in them. Reading their pages, we have 6 Ibid., 102. 7 The EIAR, the only radio service broadcaster in the country, was founded in 1927 and was administered by the government. 8 Raffaella Duelli, Ma nonna, tu che hai fatto la guerra … (Rome: TER, 1996), 36–37.

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the impression that the decision to enlist came from their need to fill that void and to make a contribution to the restoration of the norm (which, from their point of view, was a stable fascist regime). Some of the authors mention the extraordinary charisma of the Duce as the decisive factor in their choice, but the words they use are not incompatible with the tendency to marginalize the ideological motives of their life choices. In fact, the terms in which they refer to the leader of fascism belong more to the vocabulary of religion than of politics. Anna Fabrini described Mussolini’s body, which she saw exposed to public ridicule in Milan a few hours after his execution, as “the body that I had worshiped as that of God descended to Earth. May the Lord forgive me. An honest God who did not steal a single penny, who provided for our well-being, and made us feel proud of being Italians.”9 Donatella Gila was a member of the Black Brigades (the fascist party militia) who was arrested and jailed by partisans a few days after the end of the war. Six months later, when she was summoned by a police officer for questioning, she asked him: “‘Do you believe in God?’ He looked at me in surprise. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Well, I believe in Mussolini as you believe in God. If someone told you that God is a scoundrel, would you believe him?’”10 Therefore the female veterans give numerous and different reasons to justify their decision to join the auxiliary corps: they appeal to a notion of “national honor” situated beyond politics and ideology; they refer to the hegemonic status of fascist rule and ideology, representing the norm; they also identify the God-like status of Mussolini in their lives, which placed him beyond politics and critique. None presents herself as an activist of the fascist party11 or cites her desire to support Mussolini’s government and its policies. Partisans, Germans and “Invaders”: Identifying the Enemy The tendency of female members of the SAF to represent themselves as having decided to enlist more for love of their motherland, invaded by foreign (AngloAmerican) armies and humiliated by the surrender, than out of a desire to support an ideology and a regime, also affects how they deal with their feelings towards partisans and the Allied Forces and their relationship with the German army. In these books it is rare to find any expression of hatred or resentment against those Italians who joined the anti-fascist resistance after the foundation of the RSI. The prevailing feelings expressed are incredulity and bitterness about the fact that some compatriots had decided to fight not only against the Germans but also  9 Ulderico Munzi, Donne di Salò (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 1999), 65. 10 Ibid., 82. 11 In reality all of the ausiliarie were members of the fascist party, since, from a legal point of view, the SAF was a branch of the PFR (Partito Fascista Repubblicano).

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against other Italians, and subsequently sorrow that the war could not be continued in the same manner as in previous years, with an entire country united against foreign invaders. This sentiment is expressed by General Piera Gatteschi: “Unfortunately, besides the world war, there was also a civil war, which prevents us from using the calm and serene tone that our fathers and grandfathers had when they talked about Carso and Montegrappa (battles of the First World War12).”13 Gatteschi also recalls the huge suffering that she felt every time she was informed of the death of one of her volunteers, killed in a partisan operation: “Those tragedies were a torment for my heart. I saw the irremediable deterioration of the situation, the impossibility of a war fought only against foreigners. I saw that the nightmare of the civil war was becoming more and more real and bloody.”14 In the texts issued by officers charged with great responsibility, we never find any raging resentment against the men (and women) of the anti-fascist resistance; nor are such feelings frequent among their subalterns, although there are some exceptions. Anna Fabrini recalls what happened a few years after the end of the war in the little town where she had returned to live: she met a likeable, sweet young man, and they fell in love. But one day, while they were together in a cafe, they began talking about the war, and she found out that Fernando was a former partisan: I stood up and began to run towards the exit of the bar. He shouted: “Wait, Anna, stop!” If I had stopped, I’m sure I would have put my nails into his throat. What a pity, Fernando was really a sweet man, but I could not forgive him. I could probably have forgiven a leftist man, but a partisan … never! I had made such a promise before the corpses of my young comrades, which had been thrown on the ground in Milan as rubbish. I had promised before the corpse of Mussolini. I have always told my former comrades in arms: we were cowards, we ought to have avenged their deaths, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.15

The same process is at work with regard to the relationship with the German army, which was very complex and insidious, since collaboration with the occupying power was one of the most serious accusations made against the fascist militias during and after the war. The charge was evidently a very grave one for veterans of the RSI, as demonstrated by the important role played by the principle of national honor in their arguments. The theme of “fighting at the side of German comrades,” 12 Author’s note. 13 Luciano Garibaldi, Le soldatesse di Mussolini (Milan: Mursia, 1995), 31. 14 Ibid., 65. 15 Munzi, Donne di Salò 70–71.

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which was very frequent during the war, is nowhere to be found in the memoirs of the postwar years, which sometimes present the alliance with the Third Reich as merely a contingent and tactical necessity. Carla Costa, who ran away from home when she was still underage to join a special unit of the republican secret service and who was given the task of operating behind enemy lines, emphasizes “the enlistment in the Italian army also of people who, for mere practical reasons (italics in the original)16 have been operating in contact with the German Command.”17 Costa wrote those words in reply to a former American intelligence officer who, in some of his own writings, had represented the RSI as a “puppet state” in the hands of Hitler. Commander Gatteschi, recalling the first weeks after the foundation of the SAF and the great desire felt by her girls to fight against the foreign invaders, includes Germans among the enemies to be expelled from Italian soil.18 This is very surprising since, in the vocabulary used by fascist supporters during the war, the concept of “foreign invaders” referred only to the Allied Forces.19 Nevertheless, it should be clarified that this reference is limited to the north-eastern part of the country, where the German authorities had taken the decision, humiliating for Italians, to subject some areas to direct administration by the Reich. No Regrets Therefore, with regard to all the themes treated so far, it is clear that the authors, decades after the end of the conflict, tend to play down in their writings those themes and sentiments which could place their stories in a bad light in the eyes of the average reader (for example, their support for the fascist dictatorship and their fight against partisans). Indeed, they take pains to highlight different aspects of their conduct, such as their alleged protection of the nation’s dignity. They stress as much as possible those elements which serve to unite the conquerors and the vanquished, and marginalize those which could revive conflict and hatred. This tendency, prevalent more among high-ranking officers than among their subordinates, is also very marked in the memoirs of many male leaders of the RSI, sometimes even in the few words chosen for the titles of their books. For instance, when in 1947 General Rodolfo Graziani, Minister of Defense of the RSI, decided to publish a book in which he recounted his long career, including its last tragic 16 Author’s note. 17 Carla Costa, Servizio segreto (Rome: Ardita, 1951), 82. The intelligence unit that Carla joined was known by the nickname Volpi argentate (Silver Foxes), which came from the nameplate on the door of the head office of the service in Milan, which stated: “Silver Fox Farm.” 18 Garibaldi, Le soldatesse di Mussolini, 47. 19 This was a reversal of reality, since the only legitimate government of Italy, led by King Victor Emmanuel III and General Badoglio, supported the Anglo-American forces.

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chapter, the title he chose was, simply, Ho difeso la patria; that is, I defended my motherland.20 In recalling his service as a member of the last Mussolini government, he expresses some of the same concepts we have found among his female colleagues. Commenting on his decision to accept the responsibility proffered by Il Duce, Graziani writes that he accepted “consciously the supreme mission that destiny had assigned to me, deciding in that moment to make a personal sacrifice for the sake of my motherland.”21 In the light of the accurate analysis of the fascist press made by Luigi Ganapini in La repubblica delle camicie nere, we have the impression that, during the wartime period, this marginalization of ideological motives was not as marked. In texts issued between 1943 and 1945 by the RSI’s press and propaganda unit, the fascist government is repeatedly extolled, a strong (and sometimes furious) aversion to insurgents is expressed, and there are recurrent appeals for comradeship with the German allies. The texts written during wartime were certainly conditioned by the necessity of spurring people on to fight, but the fact that these traits become secondary in the postwar memoirs seems to result from the fact that they were written in an anti-fascist. This tendency is certainly not peculiar of to Italy; on the contrary, it tends to appear very often in the words of people who, after taking part as protagonists in a war which ended with a heavy defeat, seek to explain the reasons for their actions. In The Body in Pain Elaine Scarry shows that, in many different contexts, defense of the motherland and national dignity, together with freedom and the right to a disputed territory, are among the main motives cited by leaders, both before and after a war, to justify the conflict. In the postwar period, the tendency to make use of these concepts is frequent, particularly among people who have fought on the losing side.22 The tendency to de-politicize the narration of their stories is also one of the main differences between the memoirs of the members of the SAF and those written by the women who took part in the anti-fascist resistance. In the books of female partisans23 the aversion to Nazi-fascist ideas and the desire to fight against their supporters is mentioned very frequently as one of the main reasons for taking the decision to participate in the war. In the 1940s, the idea of women under arms was considered rather unusual and surprising, even in the most progressive sections of Italian society. Despite this, none of the veterans, rethinking her past, has described a change of mind. In some passages we find a contextualization of their actions, but there are no second thoughts. This constitutes a major difference from the writings 20 Graziani Rodolfo, Ho difeso la patria (Milan: Garzanti, 1947). 21 Ibid., 369. 22 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 63. 23 It is important to mention, in particular, Carla Capponi, Con cuore di donna (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2000) and Onorina Brambilla, Il pane bianco (Varese: Arterigere 2010).

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(memoirs and novels) of male veterans, some of which represent enlistment as a youthful error resulting also from the tragic context, and particularly from the long and pressured indoctrination that they underwent during adolescence. To understand the reasons for this narrative strategy, we should probably take into consideration the two most peculiar aspects of female military service in the RSI. First, members of the SAF, unlike their male colleagues, had voluntarily decided to be involved in the civil war, since compulsory conscription was in force only for men. Second, the strong, anti-traditional character of their choice, which so profoundly revolutionized the role of women in Italian society, was very difficult to understand and accept for both opponents of the regime and its supporters. In the light of these two factors, we should observe first of all that a woman had to be highly motivated to decide to wear the fascist uniform, since it meant her voluntarily renouncing civilian life and facing incomprehension on the part of society and frequently her family. In other terms, in comparison with the large number of men who were recruited into the armed forces of the RSI (at least 250,000 in the army alone), the 6,000 women members of the SAF were a small group, but they were extremely determined and, for most of them, in the postwar period, the proud defense of their past continued to be a reason to survive in a very hostile context. Moreover, it may be that, given the strong anti-fascist sentiment that characterized postwar Italy, those ausiliarie who have changed their views over the years have tended to keep secret that chapter of their lives and have been reluctant to write their memoirs. Indeed, had they done so, they would have reopened and disclosed a past that had become extremely embarrassing for them. This, of course, also applies to the men, but it is understandable that for women, such an unearthing of the past would be particularly hard: in a country like Italy, where the idea of admitting women to the army was accepted only in 1999 and fascist ideas were rejected by almost the whole nation, the story of the 6,000 women who voluntarily decided to wear the fascist uniform was such a major taboo that explaining that choice would have been very difficult, even for those who had changed their views. References Addis, Saba Marina. La corporazione delle donne. Florence: Vallecchi, 1988. Brambilla, Onorina. Il pane bianco. Varese: Arterigere, 2010. Capponi, Carla. Con cuore di donna. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2000. Costa, Carla. Servizio segreto. Rome: Ardita, 1951. De Grazia, Victoria. Le donne nel regime fascista. Venice: Marsilio, 1993. Duelli, Raffaella. Ma nonna, tu che hai fatto la guerra … Rome: TER, 1996. Fraddosio, Maria. All’armi siam fasciste. Le donne che combatterono per Salò. Milan: Mondadori, 1995. Ganapini, Luigi. La repubblica delle camicie nere. Milan: Garzanti, 1999.

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Garibaldi, Luciano. Le soldatesse di Mussolini. Milan: Mursia, 1995. Graziani, Rodolfo. Ho difeso la patria. Milan: Garzanti, 1947. Meldini, Piero. Sposa e madre esemplare. Rimini and Florence: Guaraldi, 1975. Munzi, Ulderico. Donne di Salò. Milan: Sperling & Kupfer, 1999. Perissinotto, Marino. Il servizio ausiliario femminile della Decima flottiglia MAS. Parma: Albertelli, 2003. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Viganò, Marino. Donne in grigioverde. Rome: Settimo sigillo, 1995.

Chapter 7

“We Left Our Skirts to Men as We Went to the Front”: The Participation of Abkhazian Women from Turkey in the Abkhazian War Setenay Nil Doğan*

Though the origins of the Abkhazian–Georgian war can be traced back to Soviet times, especially Stalin’s rule, competing national projects emerged in the Caucasus with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As part of one of these conflicting nationalist projects, the Georgian army invaded Abkhazia in 1992. With the outbreak of the war in Abkhazia, one of several wars in the post-Soviet space, Abkhazian and Caucasian men from the diaspora in Turkey1 volunteered to fight in the conflict. Seven Abkhazian women from Turkey also voluntarily went to Abkhazia to participate in the war. According to some accounts published in diasporic newspapers and magazines and available throughout Turkey, the arrival of women from the diaspora symbolized the courage of Abkhazians, the sacred and rightful nature of Abkhazian resistance, and the unity of the diaspora in Turkey. However, a statement by four of the women that they had “left their skirts to men as they went to the front” was not celebrated by the diaspora in Turkey. The statement had gone beyond the contemporary patriarchal limits of Abkhazian society, which viewed war, events at the front, and the military in general as masculine affairs. Based on five in-depth interviews conducted in 2012 with women from Turkey who had participated in the war, this chapter aims to explore the gendered dynamics of the Abkhazian war and the memories of these militant women of * I would like to thank the editors of this volume for their suggestions and comments. I would also like to thank those women who shared their war stories with me. This chapter came into being with their contributions, support and joy, and it was my pleasure and honour to meet them and cooperate with each of them to enlarge our knowledge. 1 The Abkhaz and the Circassians were exiled to the Ottoman lands in the nineteenth century as a result of the Russian expansion into the Caucasus and with the support of the Ottoman Empire. Today, Turkey is home to the world’s largest Abkhaz and Circassian diaspora community. Estimates of its size vary: diaspora leaders say 1,000,000 people, while Abkhaz estimates range from 150,000 to 500,000. (Elizabeth Owen, “Abkhazia’s Diaspora: Dreaming of Home,” 2009; accessed May 2010, http://www.eurasianet.org/ departments/insightb/articles/eav030909b.shtml).

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the war. In addition, it will also seek to reveal how they, as female participants in the war, are remembered. The Abkhazian–Georgian Knot The postwar state of relations between Abkhazia and Georgia can be defined today as a knot of “competitive clientalism, with the United States strongly backing Georgia, and Moscow guaranteeing the security of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”2 Originally the knot was tied to the collapse of the Soviet Union, albeit the fabric itself can be traced back to Soviet times. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and as the Georgian national movement began to articulate its independence from Moscow, fears arose among the Ossetians and the Abkhazians that the political, economic and cultural rights they had enjoyed under Soviet rule would be undermined by the Georgian national movement.3 Elites in each of the three power centers of the former Georgian Soviet Republic—Tbilisi (the Georgian capital), Tskhinval (the South Ossetian capital), and Sokhum (the Abkhazian capital)—seized political power.4 The various nationalist projects were transformed into conflicting nationbuilding projects, and this resulted in the Abkhazian–Georgian war of 1992–1993. After the war, Abkhazia emerged as a “de facto republic,” described variously as a “secessionist,”5 “separatist,”6 or “breakaway” territory.7 After the war in 2008, which was initiated by the Georgian attack against South Ossetia and took place between Georgia and Russia, Russia recognized Abkhazia’s independence. Abkhazian-Circassian Diaspora in the War The Abkhaz and the Circassians were exiled to the Ottoman lands from the Caucasus in the nineteenth century as a result of the Russian expansion into the

2 Alexander A. Cooley and Lincoln A. Mitchell, “Engagement without Recognition: A New Strategy toward Abkhazia and Euroasia’s Unrecognized States,” The Washington Quarterly 33/4 (2010): 70. 3 Vicken Chetarian, “The August 2008 War in Georgia: From Ethnic Conflict to Border Wars,” Central Asian Survey 28/2 (2009): 157. 4 Florian Mühlfried, “Citizenship at War: Passports and Nationality in the 2008 Russian-Georgian Conflict,” Anthropology Today 26/2 (2010): 12. 5 Anne-Sophie Lois, “Bearing Witness to Displacement in Georgia,” Forced Migration Review FMR 30 (2007): 77. 6 Spencer B. Meredith, “Toward a Just Peace after the Georgian Civil War,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 26/3 (2010): 413. 7 Cooley and Mitchell, “Engagement without Recognition,” 59.

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Caucasus and with the support of the Ottoman Empire. Contemporary Turkey hosts the world’s largest Abkhaz and Circassian diaspora.8 In the post-Soviet era, the diasporic homeland has become accessible to the Abkhaz and Circassian diaspora. The haphazard and rare encounters with the diasporic homeland of the Cold War era have been replaced by direct access and regular visits to the homeland.9 Rather than the mythical land of nationalist discourses, people in the diaspora have encountered a territory with multiple problems. Indeed, in the 1990s, the Caucasus proved to be the least stable region of the former Soviet Union. For the diaspora in Turkey, the Abkhazian War was one of these problems. In the initial days of the war, the Caucasian associations were turned into non-official headquarters from where communication with Abkhazia was coordinated. Hunger strikes, protests in front of the embassies, and campaigns to inform the public and collect money, medicine, clothes and food, were actively organized by diaspora organizations and groups. A group of male Abkhazians and Circassians from Turkey—the number was variously estimated at between 120 and 200—went to the front, as did seven women volunteers.10 Gendering the Abkhazian–Georgian War Although the 1992–1993 war constituted a turning point in terms of the construction of Abkhazian and Georgian national and diasporic identities, the literature on the war11 ignores the existence and the experiences of women from both the diaspora  8 Owen, “Abkhazia’s Diaspora”  9 For these encounters of the Circassians in the 1990s, see Seteney Shami, “Circassian Encounters: The Self as Other and the Production of the Homeland in North Caucasus,” Development and Change 29 (1998): 617–646. 10 A group of 37 people, young male Abkhazians from Turkey, volunteered to go to the war in Abkhazia. Most of these young men left Turkey without informing their families. During the war, the number of people from the diaspora continuously changed; there were individual participants; there were people who came to Abkhazia and undertook political tasks rather than take part in the actual fighting; there were people who came from Turkey to settle in Abkhazia but joined the war with the levee en masse; some of them were students from Turkey who had already started their undergraduate education in Abkhazia when war broke out. Estimates for the numbers of participants in the Abkhazian War from Turkey vary between 120 and 200. (For a brief chronology of the actions of the AbkhazianCircassian diaspora in Turkey during the Abkhazian War, see “Kafkas-Abhazya Direnişinin Kronolojisi,” Kafkasya Gerçeği 10 (October 1992): 13–54.) They were initially placed at the rear by the Abkhaz military authorities. The trips of the male and female volunteers took place either on an individual basis or in groups, and they were not organized by the Caucasian institutions in Turkey. 11 See, for instance, Lois, “Bearing Witness to Displacement in Georgia,” Cooley and Mitchell, “Engagement without Recognition: A New Strategy toward Abkhazia and

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and Abkhazia. This article aims to explore the gendered dimensions of this war and the memories of the militant women, based on how they remember it and how they, as female participants in the war, are remembered. In the textual and visual accounts of the war in Abkhazia, published in diaspora newspapers and magazines and available throughout Turkey, different groups of women were portrayed in different ways. Women in Abkhazia were portrayed in these accounts as direct participants in the war (as soldiers and war nurses) and as women in pain. The image of raped women was also part of the AbkhazianCircassian diaspora’s war imagery: for instance, in videos produced for the diaspora in Turkey during the war, one of the male volunteers from Turkey called on the diaspora to protect the women’s honor and hence the nation’s honor.12 As volunteers from Turkey went to Abkhazia, their mothers, sisters, relatives, friends and daughters became part of the memories of the war. In some accounts of people in the Abkhaz diaspora in Turkey, the mothers of volunteers from Turkey are portrayed as women in pain, who are too emotional to understand the sacredness of the war. For instance, the mother of Efkan, the first volunteer from Turkey to die, struggled with her husband and the volunteers to ensure that the son’s funeral take place in Turkey. Efkan’s father called each of Efkan’s friends and said: “Son, we are all men, we can somehow accept it, but I cannot persuade his mother.”13 Some accounts, such as Yeşim’s, narrate about the “militarized mothers”14 in the diaspora. In an interview conducted for this article, Yeşim narrated her memory of the mother of a male volunteer saying “he went there for education in the good times and accepted Abkhazia as his country, now he had to be there when they needed him.”15 In Turkey there were also some Abkhazian women, mostly young and single, who wished to participate in the war:16 Their brothers, relatives, and friends were at the front, and they felt uneasy about “being left behind.” This group included Ülkü, the sister of Bekir,17 who told how she had wanted to go to the war and was Euroasia’s Unrecognized States,” Giulia Prelz Oltramonti, “Borders, Boundaries, Ceasefire Lines and de facto Borders: The Impact of Mobility Policies,” Eurolimes 11 (2011): 157–169, Chetarian, “The August 2008 War in Georgia: From Ethnic Conflict to Border Wars,” and Mühlfried, “Citizenship at War: Passports and Nationality in the 2008 RussianGeorgian Conflict.” 12 Bekir Aşba, Üşüyorum (İstanbul: ChiviYazıları, 2010), 74–75. 13 Ibid., 108. 14 Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2000), 253. 15 Yeşim, online interview by the author, April 19, 2012. 16 Among these women, seven of them managed to participate in the war: Birgül, the group known as “the girls” (Ayşegül, Elif, Figen and Zeliha), Yeşim and Özlem. 17 Another resource used for this research is a book by Bekir Aşba, an Abkhazian volunteer from Turkey who participated in the war. The book “Üşüyorum” (“I Feel Cold”), written in 2007 and published in 2010, includes some details on Birgül’s and the girls’ journeys and experiences, including some letters written by the women during the war.

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among the women wishing to be in Abkhazia. One of Ülkü’s letters to Abkhazia was published in Bekir’s memoir: Everybody was there; all the world, ‘my world’ all those that I loved. Brothers, sisters, friends, my future friends. After I sent the girls off, the days turned into eternity. I had to go. I had only one thing in mind: going to Abkhazia. We were like flies around a fire. It was as if we were being pulled by a center. It was not something we could control.18

Ülkü went to Abkhazia and stayed there for 7–10 days with her father. She was able to see her relatives, the volunteers. There were other women like Ülkü who wished to be in Abkhazia during the war. Based on in-depth interviews, the rest of the article will focus on those women who made the journey to Abkhazia and participated in the war. Among the women who went to the war, Birgül was the first woman from Turkey to do so and the only one who saw actual combat. As she died in 1999, I conducted my interview with her daughters. Therefore, my understanding of Birgül is mostly based on the narratives of her daughters, Ekim, Onur and Ceren. Though Ekim, Onur and Ceren read me some parts of Birgül’s diaries, my understanding of Birgül is based on how her daughters remember her before and after the war and what Birgül’s friends at the Abkhazian front—mostly volunteers from Turkey—told them about the time she spent there. Hence Birgül’s story in this article is the story of how other people (friends and family members) construct and reconstruct their memories of Birgül. After Birgül, a group of four young women, who continue to be remembered by members of the diaspora as “the girls,” went to Abkhazia. I interviewed three of them. The interview with Figen could not take place in view of her tight schedule. Possibly, she was unwilling to give an interview about her participation in the war. Özlem, the only woman participant in the war to be currently settled in Abkhazia, politely refused to give an online interview: she underlined that there were “more significant things done in the war” and that I needed to “come to Abkhazia” to better understand that. The last female volunteer from Turkey was Yeşim. I conducted the fifth interview, an online interview, with her; she currently resides in Britain. In addition to the interviews with these women, the research was supported by other resources such as newspapers, magazines, videos, photographs, books, diaries, poems, and documentaries. These different sources enabled me to explore different memories of the war. I addressed not only women’s memories through diaries, letters and poems—all of which are spaces for constructing subjectivity at a certain point—but also memories of these women, which can be reconstructed by means of magazines, newspapers, and books. 18 Aşba, Üşüyorum, 159.

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Birgül: “The Goddess of War”?19 Birgül, born in 1959, was a member of a socialist party throughout the 1970s. As a divorced mother of three daughters, she went to Abkhazia as a journalist in 1992. As her daughters underlined, “she went to Abkhazia and returned back after eleven months.”20 At first, she tried to join Shamil Basayev’s battalion with other volunteers from Turkey. Though Basayev personally and persistently rejected her participation in the actual fighting, she hid in helicopters and buses. After several unsuccessful attempts, she switched to another battalion. Bekir Aşba, one of the volunteers, writes in his memoirs: The only female member of “the Freedom Fighters” … saying that the group needed a nurse, went to the mountains with her kalashnikov. She took her place in history as the only nurse who did not know how to give an injection. Birgül would not put down her kalashnikov till the end of the war. … She would fight with the enemy, she would be close to everyone in the camp, like both a mother and a sister. While she was participating in the operations, she was at the same time collecting berries from the mountains and making jams.21

In the narratives of the volunteers and the memories transmitted to her daughters through personal encounters, Birgül was defined through a maternal space in war which kept her desexualized and hence eased the gendered tensions surrounding her presence at the front. Yet her being there tempered some of the wartime activities of the men: the male soldiers tried not to swear when she was close by.22 The presence of a woman meant for the soldiers, especially the volunteers from Turkey, that they should moderate their behavior. In 1993, one of the nationwide newspapers in Turkey published a photograph of Birgül. It showed her washing the dishes with a weapon in front of her. The caption stated that Birgül was “both making war and washing the dishes in Abkhazia.”23 She was constructed as a superwoman and portrayed as one of “the goddesses of war” and “the guerilla with children.”24 When the journalist asked someone about her whereabouts, one of the male volunteers from Turkey replied “calmly”: “If she did not die in the mountains, you can see her in Gudauta. The crazy girl fights at the closest distances.”25

19 “Ateş Altındaki Cennet Abhazya: Savaş Tanrıçaları,” Milliyet, September 25, 1993, 21. 20 Interview by the author, April 8, 2012, İstanbul. 21 Aşba, Üşüyorum, 149. 22 Ibid. 23 “Milliyet, Kaynayan Kazan Abhazya’da,” Milliyet, September 23, 1993, 1. 24 “Ateş Altındaki Cennet Abhazya: Savaş Tanrıçaları,” Milliyet, September 25, 1993, 21. 25 Ibid.

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Figure 7.1

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Birgül relaxing with a militant woman from Abkhazia during a break in hostilities

Source: Personal archive of Yeşim.

She left her children in the care of their father, her best friend, her mother and her sister. During the war she kept writing letters to Turkey. Yeşim, who met Birgül in Abkhazia, remembers her reading a letter sent from Turkey: Birgül read the letter [from her best friend.] … At some point, she [the friend] wrote “Oh Birgül, I cannot tell you how angry I am with you.” … How could she explain to those three small children their mother’s presence in a country at war, a country that they had never seen? Then Birgül started crying. She desperately asked, “they are too young, do you think they will forgive me?”26

Bekir, too, in his book writes about how Birgül read one of those letters that informed her about the first menstruation of her daughter. Reading the letter, 26 Yeşim Trış-pha, “Köklü Bir Abhaz Soyunun Parçası,” Abaza 1 (April 2011): 29.

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Birgül told one of the male volunteers: “Today I am here when I should be with my daughter, but I am not unhappy. But still I would like to be with her on such an important day for her. I wonder which one is more sacred?”27 Memories of Birgül portray her as a woman who continuously suffered because she was away from her daughters. The war is constructed as a sacred task which caused and to some extent legitimized a mother to leave the maternal space in the family. For her absence, Birgül apologized several times in letters to her daughters. She wrote that her shame was greatest with regard to her youngest daughter; she did not know what to tell her.28 During the interview, her daughters underlined that they had not been “miserable” during Birgül’s absence, but that many people in the diaspora and at the front had expected this to be their reaction. Yet the maternal space which she left in Turkey was reconstructed at the front in Abkhazia: making the motherly jams, washing the dishes and nursing her children, Birgül was constructed as the mother in war. In her diaries, she wrote about the death of a soldier in her arms and linked it with her labor during the birth of her first daughter. After the war, Birgül was given a house in Pitsunda and a war medal by the newly formed Abkhaz government. She declined the medal since she “did not do anything heroic, she did what she had to do.” She decided to settle in Abkhazia and went to Turkey to collect her daughters. On her return to Turkey, her ten-year-old daughter observed a “mutation”: “She was a tiny woman when she went to the war. She came back huge. I remember her coming down the hill. She had the shirt with stripes, the one in the photograph. I said ‘who is this?’”29 The daughters also observed that she had learned Russian and Abkhazian. She had even learned how to swear in Abkhazian. They realized that their mother had some new fears: she was afraid of thunder and terrified by the sound of a soda water bottle being open, as the sounds reminded her of the bombs and the snipers, and hence of the war. She died in 1999 at the age of 40. At the time, she was in Moscow, where she had settled for work. The Abkhazians in Abkhazia wanted her to be buried in Abkhazia and the diaspora activists wanted her funeral to take place at the association’s offices in İstanbul. In accordance with her daughters’ decision, her funeral in İstanbul did not include any official or semi-official ceremonies. The medal that she had rejected was sent to her daughters by Ardzınba, the president of Abkhazia after her death. A letter by Ardzınba was supposed to accompany the medal, but Birgül’s daughters never saw it.

27 Aşba, Üşüyorum, 150. 28 Interview by the author, April 8, 2012, İstanbul. 29 Interview by the author, April 8, 2012, İstanbul.

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Yeşim: “I Hate the Sound of the Helicopter” Born in İstanbul, Yeşim was 22 years old when the war in Abkhazia began. When she began preparing to go to the war, she learned that her brother was already going, and so she stayed behind. Her mother, shocked by her son’s departure, told her that this was her fault: he was not interested in Abkhazia, but Yeşim was. Her family sent her away to a different city so that she would be unable to join the war. After a couple of months, she left Turkey for Abkhazia. The daughter of a middle-class family, she was making her first trip abroad, and she, too, did not inform her parents. When she arrived in Abkhazia, she was put under strict controls, as she had one brother and two cousins at the front. For instance, her cousin caught her when she was getting into a helicopter and prevented her from going to the front. Her male relatives and friends brought her to a hospital where she worked as a nurse till the end of the war: unlike Birgül and “the girls,” she was informally assigned to the most secure and feminine site by other volunteers from the diaspora. Within such limitations she was able to witness the end of the war. At the time of the final operation in Sokhum, when the city was taken by the Abkhazian army, she tried to photograph the corpses on the streets so that their relatives might recognize them: I tried to photograph all of them. … One day we were walking near a park in Gudauta with my cousin and a friend. They told me that there was a smell and there might be an animal corpse there. … I just smelled it and said “no, it is not a human corpse.” … I did it unconsciously. My cousin looked at me, took the camera from me and said, “Ok, you are not taking photographs anymore.”30

Regarding those days at the hospital, she wrote a poem and recorded it in 2005 after crying for an hour in the studio: When I was a small child, I used to run very fast and find a spot to see the helicopter whenever I heard its sound. … [Sentences omitted by the author] But I am not running any more when I hear the sound of a helicopter. Now I close my ears not to hear it. … I have seen what that huge machine carries. For months, it carried death to me without ever getting tired and without ever giving up. Whenever it landed on the garden of the hospital, … I received the dead bodies of many friends. … It is a bizarre thing, a pain mixed with pride, suffering, anger and shame. You get proud that he became a martyr, you get sad since he died very young, you get angry at the war, you feel shame since you are still alive, and you cannot forget.

30 Yeşim, online interview by the author, April 19, 2012.

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Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories I hate the sound of the helicopter. … They came from the morgue, I asked who was dead. … They said it was either my cousin or my brother. … With each face opened in front of me, I died. With each dead face that they opened, I became the mother, the sister, the wife. With each nonliving body that they opened, I died again.31

After the war, Yeşim stayed and started her undergraduate education in Abkhazia. In 1995, when she went to Turkey with a dancing troupe, the embargo started and she was left outside of Abkhazia with her Turkish passport. She waited to resettle in Abkhazia for ten years, during which time she got married and had a son. Ultimately, she did not settle in Abkhazia but in Britain for her son to have better education opportunities, spending the summers in Abkhazia. “The Girls”: “The Prisoners of War?”32 Ayşegül, Elif, Figen and Zeliha; four young and single Abkhazian women (aged respectively 22, 21, 19 and 20) from middle-class families in Adapazarı, “the girls” as they were and still are called in the diaspora, went to Abkhazia in November 1992 and stayed there till January 1993. They had friends and relatives in the first group of male volunteers from Turkey. They decided to go to Abkhazia on the day of the funeral of Efkan, the first volunteer from the diaspora to die. They secretly made arrangements for their journey in just ten days. In the letters that they left to their families and the association, they defined themselves as “the honorable [namus timsali] girls of a fearless nation.”33 As they stated: “We are going with our honor and pride. … We will be able to say that we, too, exist. We will tell people, those men [in Turkey] who do not fight, to wear skirts. … Nobody should think that our actions are driven by our feelings.”34 Traveling with 16 suitcases full of clothes and food for their friends, they were told by the commander at the border of Abkhazia: “Here there is war. Do you know that?” They told him that they came for the war; he was shocked and they were angry.35 They wanted to be nurses and “just like Birgül” to go to the front. However after a week at the hospital, their training was interrupted abruptly. The military authorities in Abkhazia, who did not even want male volunteers36 from the diaspora at the front, rejected these women from the diaspora. 31 Yeşim Trısha, “Helikopter,” available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= TobatRPGLpM, accessed May 2012. 32 Zeliha, interview by the author, April 11, 2012, Eskişehir. 33 “Abhazya’da Türk Gönüllüler,” Milliyet, November 23, 1992, 15. 34 “Yorumsuz,” Marje, November 1992, 46. 35 Elif, interview by the author, March 24, 2012, İstanbul. 36 The volunteers from Turkey were not immediately sent to the front in Abkhazia. Rather they were initially treated as guests from the diaspora. Hence even for male

The Participation of Abkhazian Women from Turkey in the Abkhazian War

Figure 7.2

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“The girls” posing for news

Source: “Cepheden Selam Var,” Yeni Günaydın, December 2, 1992, 1.

Unable to receive a medical training at the hospital, “the girls” decided to pick oranges in the gardens of Abkhazia, a gendered work. In those days, orange gardens were bombed. Just as they were starting to think about returning home in order “not to be a burden,” two of their volunteer friends from Turkey got wounded; until their return they performed gendered work by attending and nursing them. During the stay of “the girls” in Abkhazia, their presence there became “almost a more popular topic than even the war itself”37 for the diaspora community and media in Turkey. Their relatives came to Abkhazia to persuade them to return home, and Zeliha’s father stayed with them until they did so. Their protection became a major issue and the main excuse to keep them idle. Their existence in Abkhazia drew the attention of the media in Turkey and Abkhazia, which published several news pieces about them. In the newspapers, they were given various names and definitions such as “the Turkish girls,” “the jihadist girls,” “the girls who sold their dowries to go to war,” and “the girls volunteers from the diaspora, participating in the war became a struggle. (“Gerilla Haykırıyor: Bağımsız Abhazya,” Marje (November 1992): 31–32.) 37 Ayşegül, interview by the author, March 19, 2012, İstanbul.

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who ran away from home to go to war.” In the photographs, they posed with their weapons, and some of the news articles claimed that they had fought at the front. Such reports were far from true, but were mostly based on the journalists’ search for “tabloid aspects of the girls’ participation in the war.”38 They and the Abkhazians saw this as an opportunity to present the war to the world not as a separatist war, but as a just war of self-defense. Their return to Turkey after two months spent in Abkhazia proved to be hard for “the girls.” During these two months, their parents had experienced various health problems. A relative of one of “the girls” stated that she had “stolen ten years from her mother’s life.”39 Some people condemned their parents for their inability to “control and limit their daughters,” while others regarded the girls’ actions as heroic. There were also rumors among members of the diaspora that they had followed their boyfriends to the front. Because they were planning to return to Abkhazia sooner or later, they were kept under scrutiny by their families: their mobility in their home city was limited to some degree. Walking in Adapazarı, some non-Abkhazian people who had read the news told them to “go back to Abkhazia,” in a demeaning manner. Finally, their statement that they were “leaving their skirts to men as they went to the front” had offended young Abkhazian men in Turkey who did not go to the war. With their actions and statements they challenged the contemporary patriarchal limits of Abkhazian society in particular and Caucasian and Turkish society in general, in which protecting women and the motherland from threats was regarded as a masculine task. In subsequent years, none of them settled in Abkhazia. They did not visit Abkhazia till one of them decided to go in 2010. After their return to Turkey, one of their mothers stated that it would have been better if they escaped from home for a husband.40 “The girls” did not escape for marriage, which might have been considered traditional and thus relatively acceptable, but as one of their friends put it “they escaped to the war, and they [the community, the families] were just freaked out”41 as wars are regarded as more deadly and manly affairs than marriages. Conclusion This chapter aims to explore the Georgian-Abkhazian War from a gender perspective based on the memories of the war of female participants in the war and based on how they are remembered. In all three cases, the women struggled very hard to reach the front. In Abkhazia, war became one of the gendered settings within which patriarchal roles and expectations such as getting married, being a 38 Elif, interview by the author, March 24, 2012, İstanbul. 39 Zeliha, interview by the author, April 11, 2012, Eskişehir. 40 Ibid. 41 Ayşegül, interview by the author, March 19, 2012, İstanbul.

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mother and permanently taking care of the children, and not leaving the country or the city without the permission of the families and elders, were contested. Participation in the war became a channel through which women could go beyond the traditional expectations of the diaspora. Nation, motherland and the duty to protect it to some extent legitimized their unexpected mobility and participation in the war in the eyes of their families, friends and other members of the diaspora. Yet the control of women is of great significance to the success of militarizing enterprises. Hence, ideas about feminine respectability, duty, and sexuality have been crucial as far as the ideology of militarism and the processes of militarization are concerned.42 The existence of women as the national honor to be protected or conquered, and the control over the images and meanings of femininity, normalize the domination of the militaristic values and enterprises that sanctify death over life.43 The stories of Birgül, Yeşim and “the girls” underline that the control over women and the visibility of women may also become hard for the male elites during wars. However, since military institutions and discourses imagine multiple roles for women, the war in Abkhazia presented women with various opportunities. Birgül, a socialist divorced woman who never portrayed herself as an Abkhazian nationalist, was transformed into an Abkhazian goddess of war, who made war and jams at the same time. Yeşim, owing to the presence of many male relatives among the volunteers from Turkey, was integrated into the war as the nurse-sister: no photographs of her and no news about her were published during the war. Meanwhile, “the girls” were harder to categorize: they made bold statements challenging the manhood of those in the diaspora who chose not to participate in the war, and their images and utterances in Turkey and Abkhazia could not be controlled. Hence they could stay in Abkhazia for only two months, while Birgül and Yeşim stayed till the end of the war. War, in which these women struggled to participate, became a setting that required them to belittle their presence and their work: all of them underline that they are not war heroines. Furthermore, their memories are loaded with feelings of guilt. “The girls” underline their feelings as “a burden” during the war. Apologies for being present in a war zone, a male domain, can also be seen in Birgül’s diaries, some parts of which her daughters read to me: during the war, as she saw people dying, there were instances when she spoke sharply to her male friends; she apologized several times in the diaries for demotivating them. Appropriation of silence by women after the war is another commonality in the war memories of women. Yeşim kept her silence till 2005 when she was invited by an Abkhaz from Turkey to record her poem on the war. Birgül had only diaries and she published nothing about her experiences in the war. A few weeks after their return to Turkey following their two-month stay in Abkhazia, “the girls” decided to be silent; they hesitated to be interviewed even for this research. 42 Enloe, Maneuvers, 294. 43 Ibid.

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Although all the women remember the 1992–1993 war in Abkhazia as a rightful and just war fought for self-defense, nevertheless their memories of the war are loaded with guilt, silences and apologies for penetrating into the war zone, “a male zone.” Those penetrations of women were transformed into different militarized images of women in war: an apologetic mother, a silent nurse-sister and rebellious but patriotic girls. These stereotypes helped the diaspora and the general public in Turkey and Abkhazia to ease these female penetrations into the war, which had been constructed as a male zone. References “Abhazya’da Türk Gönüllüler.” Milliyet, November 23, 1992. Aşba, Bekir. Üşüyorum. İstanbul: Chivi Yazıları, 2010. “Ateş Altındaki Cennet Abhazya: Savaş Tanrıçaları.” Milliyet, September 25, 1993. “Cepheden Selam Var.” Yeni Günaydın, December 2, 1992. Chetarian, Vicken. “The August 2008 War in Georgia: From Ethnic Conflict to Border Wars.” Central Asian Survey 28/2 (2009): 155–170. Cooley, Alexander A., and Lincoln A. Mitchell. “Engagement without Recognition: A New Strategy toward Abkhazia and Euroasia’s Unrecognized States.” The Washington Quarterly 33/ 4 (2010): 59–73. Enloe, Cynthia. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2000. “Gerilla Haykırıyor: Bağımsız Abhazya.” Marje, November 1992. “Kafkas-Abhazya Direnişinin Kronolojisi.” Kafkasya Gerçeği 10 (October 1992):13–54. Lois, Anne-Sophie. “Bearing Witness to Displacement in Georgia.” Forced Migration Review 30 (2007): 77. Meredith, Spencer B. “Toward a Just Peace after the Georgian Civil War.” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 26/3 (2010): 413–434. “Milliyet, Kaynayan Kazan Abhazya’da.” Milliyet, September 23, 1993. Mühlfried, Florian. “Citizenship at War: Passports and Nationality in the 2008 Russian-Georgian Conflict.” Anthropology Today 26/2 (2010): 8–13. Oltramonti, Giulia Prelz. “Borders, Boundaries, Ceasefire Lines and de facto Borders: The Impact of Mobility Policies.” Eurolimes 11 (2011): 157–169. Owen, Elizabeth. “Abkhazia’s Diaspora: Dreaming of Home.” Accessed May 2013. http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insightb/articles/eav030909b. shtml. Shami, Seteney. “Circassian Encounters: The Self as Other and the Production of the Homeland in North Caucasus.” Development and Change 29 (1998): 617–646. Trısha, Yeşim. “Helikopter.” Accessed May 2013. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TobatRPGLpM. Trısha, Yeşim. “Köklü Bir Abhaz Soyunun Parçası.” Abaza 1 (April 2011): 28–32. “Yorumsuz.” Marje, November 1992.

Chapter 8

Militarized US Women from the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Citizenship, Homelessness, and the Construction of Public Memory in a Time of War1 Stephanie E. Yuhl

“I called Child Protective Services on myself … No one asked if I was a veteran”—Homeless female Army veteran, mother of four2 “We’re the forgotten veterans”—Homeless female veteran3

Women comprise approximately 15 percent of active duty US military personnel, nearly 12 percent of the deployed forces in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,4 and more than 8 percent of the total US veteran population.5 Indeed, women are the fastest growing segment of the American veteran population and their numbers are expected to increase significantly over the next two decades.6 This constitutes

1 I wish to thank my colleagues Karen Turner, Mary Conley, and Sahar Bazzaz, as well as the editors of this volume, for their invaluable insights and comments on this chapter. 2 United States Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Requesters, Homeless Women Veterans: Actions Needed to Ensure Safe and Appropriate Housing (2011), 47. 3 Women’s Bureau, United States Department of Labor, The Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: A Guide for Service Providers (2011), 15. 4 Statistics are based on US Department of Defense data and found in “Statistics on Women in the Military” (Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, September 30, 2011), accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.womensmemorial.org/ Press/stats.html; and US Department of Veterans Affairs, “Facts and Statistics about Women Veterans, Women Veterans Health Care,” accessed March 7, 2014, http://www. womenshealth.va.gov/WOMENSHEALTH/latestinformation/facts.asp. 5 US Department of Veterans Affairs, “Facts and Statistics about Women Veterans, Women Veterans Health Care.” 6 “Veteran Population Projections: FY2000-FY2036,” (National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, October 2010), accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.va.gov/ vetdata/docs/QuickFacts/population_quickfacts.pdf

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a dramatically gendered shift in the demographics of American soldiering, a category traditionally associated with men. When American women return home from war, many encounter highly gendered and entrenched obstacles that frustrate women veterans’ sense of citizenship, belonging, personal security, and agency. This chapter analyzes how gender politics shape both the homecoming narratives of this expanding group within the American military, as well as the policies of the institutions charged with aiding soldiers’ transitions home. By shifting the focus from the frontlines to the post-service home front, gender-destabilizing legacies of war, such as homelessness, militarized sexual trauma, and post-traumatic stress disorder, become priority experiences for many former servicewomen. The presence in civilian society of these struggling women veterans radically disrupts hegemonic conceptions of American soldiering as well as the ideal of the State as the steward of returning soldiers. It is no surprise that, until very recently, these intimate yet critical personal experiences have been largely invisible in the “official” public discourse of American war. As the individual narratives of women soldiers and veterans become increasingly public, they provide scholars with an opportunity to witness a dynamic process: the creation of a public, collective memory of, for and by American women veterans in a time of war. As a vital expression of female agency and perspective, these women’s stories are slowly pressuring governmental institutions, such as the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and the US Congress, as well as the larger national public, to acknowledge the ways gender powerfully influences military and post-military experiences. These women’s voices constitute the beginnings of a vital counter-narrative that extends the boundaries of where we locate and how we define the costs of militarized citizenship. This chapter explores two interrelated issues. First, it highlights the complex process by which gender shapes the way the state and women veterans see, or fail to see, female soldiering as a new reality, in particular in relation to the rising population of women veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Homeless male veterans from the war in Vietnam have been a familiar sight in most American cities for decades. But women veterans who return home wounded and excluded from “normal” domestic life pose particular challenges to the military that is charged with protecting vulnerable citizens. Women who are at once militarized and victimized demonstrate all too clearly the perilous costs of war. The second issue taken up here concerns social memory. My sources include public documents, official statements of governmental policies, reportage, and published interviews with women veterans. On the one hand, these sources are problematic because they were produced for public consumption and, therefore, were shaped by extant gender norms and a lack of attention to women veterans’ multiple subjectivities. Nevertheless, their value is in their contribution to tracing the ongoing ways in which a public discourse of military service and gender is constructed. It is this framework that will, in part, inevitably shape the subjectivities of individual veterans and the ways they tell their own war stories.

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As early theorists of social memory have demonstrated, memory is not simply a product of the subjective mind, but rather a process by which the individual mind intersects with society.7 Personal memories of war are particularly apt to be framed by public discourse, as we have learned in the US from the war in Vietnam.8 As histories of other wars in other places demonstrate, memories mutate over time, in response to forces outside individual experiences and lived realities, such as government policies, fictional representations, and popular culture.9 Placing US women soldiers and veterans at the center of war stories broadens our understanding of both the universal costs of war and the way war is remembered.10 Since 2001 and 2003, the United States has been engaged in two major wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. On September 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda-trained terrorists successfully launched attacks on several iconic sites in the United States, killing nearly 3,000 human beings who hailed from 115 different countries.11 In October of that same year, the United States and Great Britain responded with air strikes in Afghanistan, an action that was followed by the arrival of combat-ready ground troops in a campaign styled “Operation Enduring Freedom.” On March 19, 2003, in what has become a very controversial and highly critiqued initiative on the part of the Bush Administration and US Congress, American military forces, along with a coalition of international forces, invaded Iraq. This action, dubbed by the US “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” was not sanctioned by the United Nations and was protested by many throughout the world, and yet it persisted.  7 See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) for a clear analysis of the workings of personal memories and social contexts. An interesting critique can be found in Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, “Collective Memory: What Is It?” History and Memory 8 (1996): 30–50. I have explored these issues in my own work: A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historical Charleston (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).  8 For a fascinating study of Vietnam War veterans’ homecoming, see Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New York University Press, 2000).  9 See, for example, Susan Rodgers, Telling Lives, Telling History: Autobiography and Historical Imagination in Modern Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); also a classic, Lila Abu-Lughod, Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The American preoccupation with the war in Vietnam has produced a large amount of material but to my knowledge very few systematic studies about gender and memory. Two notable exceptions include, Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Brenda M. Boyle, Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives: A Critical Study of Fiction, Films and Nonfiction Writings (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009); and Tracy Karner, “Fathers, Sons and Vietnam: Masculinity and Betrayal in the Life Narratives of Vietnam Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” American Studies 37 (1996): 63–94. 10 See Enloe, Maneuvers, 160–63. 11 “9/11 By The Numbers,” New York Magazine, accessed March 5, 2014, http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm

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After August 2010, the United States’ military involvement in Iraq was rebranded “Operation New Dawn.” The official “end” of this war was declared on December 31, 2011, although US troops and military material remain in Iraq. The war in Afghanistan continues. The death, destruction, and despair wrought upon Iraqis and Afghanis by the US-led invasion and occupation forces—homes destroyed, families displaced, lives shattered—are an undeniable result of the bloody business of war, but so too are the wars’ effects on American soldiers themselves as they return home. How does the violence of war manifest itself in the lives of former invaders and occupiers in the transition to civilian life? As Cynthia Enloe’s work repeatedly demonstrates, it is ordinary people, civilian and military alike on all sides of a conflict, who most often get caught in the crossfire and for whom wars have longfelt and often hidden repercussions.12 This is certainly the case for the American female soldier, for whom the line between power and powerlessness, between her status as perpetrator of violence and victim of violence, can be hard to untangle. Despite the fact that American women’s service has clearly proved invaluable in wars past and present, until recently women have been excluded from formal combat service. Serious resource pressures on troops coupled with the reality of how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fought on the ground—the unclear battle lines, guerilla insurgency, and incendiary explosive devices—have blurred the age-old gender barriers of military participation. During these wars, women have served as medics, armored vehicle drivers, checkpoint guards, military police, intelligence officers, and helicopter pilots. Often servicewomen were attached, if not formally assigned, to fighting battalions. Military women and their civilian advocates in Washington, DC, have also pushed back against sexist hierarchies and have fought for more egalitarian recognition and opportunity within the military structure. In response to this shifting political and martial landscape, in January 2013, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that women would no longer be excluded from direct combat positions, and that each branch of the US military had until 2016 to comply with this command.13 And yet, historically, deep and persistent objections to integrating women into the military apparatus as “real” soldiers have played out in the US public, through congressional hearings, popular media, and debates within the military. About women in war, perhaps no better (sexist and heterosexist) example is the declaration of General Robert Barrow, Commandant of the US Marines in 1980: 12 To move beyond statistics to sense how individual women from diverse cultures are affected by war, see Cynthia Enloe, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). For a general study of militarism and culture more generally, see also Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers. 13 Elizabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, “Pentagon Set to Lift Ban on Women in Combat,” New York Times, January 23, 2013, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www. nytimes.com/2013/01/24/us/pentagon-says-it-is-lifting-ban-on-women-in-combat.html? pagewanted=all&_r=0.

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War is man’s work. Biological convergence on the battlefield would not only be dissatisfying in terms of what women could do, but it would be an enormous psychological distraction to the male who wants to think that he is fighting for that woman left somewhere behind, not up there in that foxhole with him. It tramples the male ego. When you come right down to it, you’ve got to protect the manliness of war.14

Barrows repeated this sentiment in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the question of women in combat in 1991, shortly after the end of First Gulf War.15 Perhaps military personnel will become less blatantly misogynistic as women move into combat positions, but the sentiments of old soldiers and conservative congressmen have stymied efforts to recognize women as equal in the field.16 Thus, women soldiers who return from wars and perhaps suffer from militarized sexual trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder, and/or homelessness remain incompatible with traditional essentialized and masculinized norms of “the American veteran of war.” Certainly, there is much that American men and women share in common as members of the US armed forces. As part of an all-volunteer force, men and women generally join the military for the same reasons—opportunity, job training, a paycheck, duty, educational access, patriotism, travel, even to be “in the fight.” Returning home from a war zone presents common challenges for all veterans, regardless of gender: finding a job in a depressed economy, and dealing with anxiety, health concerns, memories of violence, and reintegration to domestic life. Increased parity in war experience also means that more women soldiers are reporting post-traumatic stress than ever before, at rates equal to those of their male counterparts. Clinical psychologist Shira Maguen, the lead author of a recent study of gender and combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), found that “men and women really don’t differ in how they react to the stresses of combat.”17 As one American female veteran from the Iraq War contended, “When you get shot at, it doesn’t matter if you are male or female, it still makes your heart race.”18 14 Karen Turner, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam (New York: Wiley, 1999), 117. 15 Women in Combat: Hearing Before the Armed Services Subcommittee, United States Senate, June 18, 1991 (statement of General Robert H. Barrows) C-Span, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy--whDNNKk 16 For more on the challenge of integrating women in the US military, see Erin Solaro, Women in the Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military (Berkeley: Seal Press, 2006), 145–194. 17 Steve Tokar, “Women Soldiers See More Combat Than in Prior Eras, Have Same PTSD Rate as Men, Study Says,” University of California at San Francisco News Center (January 13, 2012), accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/01/11321/ women-soldiers-see-more-combat-prior-eras-have--ptsd-rate-men-study-says. 18 Veteran interview from Service: When Women Come Marching Home, Dirs Marcia Rock and Patricia Lee Stotter, http://servicethefilm.com/.

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Above all, returning soldiers of both sexes struggle to search through the echoes of war for the person they left behind upon deployment. Isolation and alienation from civilian life are natural for both sexes as they transition home. Alicia Watkins, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who returned from war with both physical and emotional wounds, and who eventually became homeless, explained, “Your family, they want the person that they sent off to the war, and they will never get that person back.”19 Former military police officer Sue Downes, who lost both her legs in a bomb attack in Afghanistan, concurred: “You want people around you who understand you, and I don’t have that at home. I’m so different from who I was before … I’m not that person anymore.”20 Despite such common experiences, American women veterans describe a gender-specific set of social stressors that mark their homecoming and, for thousands, their descent into homelessness. For example, servicewomen repeatedly find their status as “women veterans” challenged and devalued by the dominant culture that persists in reducing the soldier to an exclusively male status.21 As one homeless woman veteran noted, “When you think of veterans—you don’t think of women. As much as society is changing, it’s still a man’s world.”22 Army Specialist Mickiela Montoya, who served in Iraq for 11 months from 2005–2006 and was later homeless, described this exclusion in its simplest terms: “Nobody believes me when I say I’m a veteran. I was in Iraq getting bombed and shot at, but people won’t even listen when I say I was at war. You know why? Because I’m a female.”23 That many women veterans internalize this gendered perspective of their military experience is evinced in comments such as, “I thought veteran meant you had been in combat. If in church, on Veteran’s Day, I don’t want to stand up. I don’t want to raise my hand. It just doesn’t seem right to me,” and “I never thought of myself as a veteran even though I served. I didn’t think those words applied to me.”24 Health care and service providers report that because women are less likely to self-identify as “real veterans” upon their homecoming, they are less 19 Alicia Watkins interview quoted in Lisa Fletcher and Felicia Biberica, “For Female Vets, a New Fight at Home,” ABC News Online, March 14, 2010, accessed March 10, 2014, http://abcnews.go.com/WN/homeless-female-veterans-americas-streets/ story?id=10099653. 20 Sue Downes interview quoted in Service: When Women Come Marching Home, Dirs Marcia Rock and Patricia Lee Stotter. 21 Amy E. Street, Dawn Vogt, and Lissa Dutra, “A New Generation of Women Veterans: Stressors Faced by Women Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Clinical Psychology Review 29 (2009): 692. See also Kayla Williams, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army (New York: Norton, 2005). 22 Women’s Bureau, US Department of Labor, “The Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans Experiencing Homelessness” (2011), 15. 23 Helen Benedict, “The Plight of the Female Soldier,” The Nation/NPR, May 6, 2009, accessed March 5, 2014, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103844570. 24 Women’s Bureau, “The Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans Experiencing Homelessness,” 15.

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assertive in accessing veterans’ benefits and networks, and so their struggles are under-reported and under-supported.25 And the cycle of marginalization, at best, and invisibility, at worst, continues. Given the totalizing nature of the masculinist discourse of military service in the United States, it is not surprising that state investigating agencies have tended to replicate this hegemonic formula of “soldier = male” in their data collection methodologies, an approach that reinscribes the essentialist tendencies of the larger culture and keeps military women unseen and un-individuated as veterans. As Orna Sasson-Levy notes in her Commentary (p. 110 above), “the warrior is still a key symbol of both masculinity and ‘good citizenship,’ meaning that military identity practices create a direct link between masculinity and the state.” Until recently, for example, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development collected data on veterans in general and on civilian/nonveteran women who might be homeless, but not specifically on homeless female veterans.26 This category simply did not exist in the bureaucratic imagination as one deserving separate analysis. As a result, the particular existence of these women veterans has been largely marginalized in policy discussions and in the public memory of war. Despite the best efforts of scholars, part of this myopia grows out of past practice that lacks a feminist analysis of war, that benefits the patriarchal status quo, and that also reflects a large population of male veterans from the Vietnam War era who live on the country’s streets and crowd US homeless shelters.27 Fortunately, a 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticizes this shortcoming and recommends a “both/and” research method that brings together the identities of “homeless” and “female veteran” in its analysis. While the GAO’s call to see women as homeless and veterans is admirable, the agency itself falls into a familiar bureaucratic method that takes away the power of women veterans to narrate their qualitative experiences. In its report, for example, the GAO reduces interviews with individual homeless women and providers into aggregate statistics, thus muting distinctive female voices of war and its aftermath and rendering them quantifiable, essentialized, contained, and even “domesticated” categories.28 Nevertheless, as agencies begin to see homeless women veterans, their 25 Street, Vogt, and Dutra, “A New Generation of Women Veterans,” 692. Interviews by the author with housing providers for women veterans, including Dawnita Boulton, US Veterans Initiative (USVETS), Long Beach, California (October 3, 2012) and Crystal Scott, Veterans Village of San Diego, San Diego, California (October 5, 2012) echo this sentiment. 26 United States Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Requesters, “Homeless Women Veterans: Actions Needed to Ensure Safe and Appropriate Housing” (2011), 3; See also “Homeless Among Female Veterans,” New York Times, April 16, 2012, accessed July 12, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/opinion/ homelessness-among-female-veterans.html. 27 See National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, accessed March 3, 2014, http:// nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/. 28 See United States Government Accountability Office, “Homeless Women Veterans,” 16, 31.

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research reveals several stark and growing problems that would otherwise be left invisible: first, female veterans make up approximately 8 percent of the nation’s homeless veterans;29 second, women veterans are four times more likely to become homeless than their civilian counterparts;30 third, women veterans “in poverty are more than three times as likely to be homeless as non-female veterans in poverty;”31 and, finally, that while the overall number of homeless veterans has declined by 12 percent in recent years, the percentage of homeless female veterans “has more than doubled between fiscal years 2006 and 2010.”32 The number of homeless women veterans is projected to increase as more and more servicewomen return from Iraq and Afghanistan and face the challenges of integrating into society. The significant gender differences in soldiers’ experiences of homecoming are slowly coming to the attention of the US government and public. Recent government- and independent agency-sponsored research, for example, has found that in addition to severe deficiencies in attending to women’s health care needs at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics across the country,33 war seems to take an especially brutal toll on returning women’s domestic relationships and living arrangements. For example, while divorce rates among active-duty members of the military “are not dramatically higher than either the national divorce rate or the peacetime military divorce rate,” divorce among female troops is three times more common than among male service members.34 Forty percent of US women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have children,35 and as of March 2009, more than 30,000 were single mothers.36 American servicewomen, like their civilian counterparts, are also more likely than men to be single parents and the primary caretakers for their children. The United States Census Bureau reports that the rate of single motherhood is on the rise in the general US population, with 10,000,000 29 See National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, “Background and Statistics,” accessed March 3, 2014, http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_ statistics/; and Nick Diamantides, “Homeless Female Veterans Find Help in LB, but their Numbers are Rising,” Signal Tribune Newspaper, February 17, 2012, accessed July 12, 2014, http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/?p=13693. 30 Women’s Bureau, “Trauma-Informed Care,” 12. 31 The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of veterans Affairs, “Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress” (2010), ii. 32 “Homelessness Increasing for Female Veterans,” Boston Globe, April 9, 2012, accessed July 12, 2014, http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/04/08/morefemale-veterans-are-homeless/X592CfwrlFR9R2AoXA4bVO/story.html. 33 See, for example, Katie Drummond, “America’s Female Soldiers: Fighting, But Without Fair Medical Care,” Forbes Online, June 8, 2012, accessed March 11, 2014, http:// www.forbes.com/sites/katiedrummond/2012/06/18/female-soldiers-health/2/. 34 Erin Mulhall, “Women Warriors: Supporting She ‘Who Has Borne the Battle’,” Issue Report, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, (2009) 5. 35 Women’s Bureau, “Trauma-Informed Care,”12. 36 Mulhall, 4.

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“single mothers living with children younger than 18 in 2011, up from 3,250,000 in 1970.”37 A 2013 examination of single motherhood in the US undertaken by the Census Bureau concluded that single parents live under additional life strains, as they are “younger on average, have less education and have lower income than married parents. Children who are born to unmarried parents are more likely to live in poverty and to have poor developmental outcomes.”38 Add to this the findings of a recent study that the deployment of a military mother “can have a negative impact on the health and behavior of both the women and their adolescent children,”39 and the resulting homecoming transition becomes even more strained and risk-prone for all involved. When these statistical conclusions are applied to the lives of homeless American women veterans, a bleak picture emerges. Because of the persistent “soldier = male” trope, power imbalances are imbedded in a system that was, in the words of Kim Olson, retired Air Force Colonel and women veterans advocate, “built around a guy soldier.”40 Temporary and transitional housing programs for veterans have not been designed with women in mind and do not meet their particular post-service needs. Homeless women who are willing to seek shelter regularly encounter facilities lacking the necessary security measures to make veteran women feel safe. A recent audit by the Veterans Affairs Inspector General found that homeless veteran women were repeatedly placed in inadequate facilities that were approved for men only. Women were regularly faced with bedrooms and bathrooms without locks, mixed-gender living facilities without access restrictions to living areas, and improper/unsafe lighting conditions.41 The situation is especially dire for homeless single women accompanied by their children. Veterans Affairs provides financial assistance to shelters that house women veterans, but until recently, it did not pay the expenses for housing their children, and thus, actually provided a disincentive for these programs to welcome women vets. Likewise, shelters generally do not provide childcare or offer separate residential housing that accommodates children of varying ages.42 Gidelina Pineda, 37 United States Census Bureau, “America’s Families and Living Arrangements” (2012–2013), accessed March 4, 2014, www.census.gov/hhes/families. 38 Rachel M. Shattuck and Rose M. Kreider, “Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women with a Recent Birth, 2011,” United States Census Bureau (2013): 1, accessed March 6, 2014, http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/censusreport-on-unmarried-mothers/128/. 39 Mulhall, 4. 40 Eric Tucker and Kristin M. Hall, “Homeless Female Vets: Numbers but Housing Scarce (What You Can Do),” Huffington Post, April 9, 2012, 2, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/homeless-female-vets-housing_n_1411498.html. 41 Veterans Administration Office of the Inspector General, Office of Audits and Evaluations, “Veterans Health Administration Audit of Homeless Providers Grant and Grant Per Diem Program” (2012), 3–5. 42 See Government Accountability Office, “Homeless Women Veterans: Actions Needed to Ensure Safe and Appropriate Housing”; and “Homeless Women Veterans

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a veteran of Iraq and young single mother, struggled to find a shelter placement for herself and her young daughter, Layla, within this gender-biased system: “Without a support structure, where do you keep a kid when you need to work and can’t afford childcare?”43 As one Army veteran and mother of three put it, “[Shelters that take children] don’t have any beds available. You call one, they say they’re full and tell you to call the one down the street, and they don’t have beds either … .I’ve done things I wasn’t happy with just to keep my kids off the streets.”44 Even when facilities do accommodate women with children, safety and privacy issues persist. A March 2012 report by the Veterans Affairs Inspector General found inadequate building and room security and screening processes for potential residents in state-supported facilities. In April 2011, for example, one homeless female veteran and her 18-month-old son were placed in a facility that housed a homeless male veteran who was a registered sex offender, a status not discovered due to inadequate background checks on the part of housing staff.45 A second and profoundly gendered difference for male and female veterans seeking assistance is the double trauma of combat and sexual violence that many women experience.46 In addition to coping with post-traumatic stress disorder from combat-related situations, a significantly larger proportion of female veterans than male veterans report being victims of Militarized Sexual Trauma (MST), defined on a spectrum from sexual harassment to assault and rape.47 As with much sexual violence, episodes of MST are notoriously under-reported, although the issue is Listening Sessions,” (2009) US Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.dol.gov/wb/programs/listeningsessions.htm. 43 Gidelina Pineda interview, quoted in “Women and Children’s Program: Case Management” Veterans Inc., Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, accessed March 11, 2014, www. veteransinc.org/wp … /News-from-Veterans-Inc.-May-2011.pdf. 44 Government Accountability Office, “Homeless Women Veterans,” 47. 45 Inspector General, “Veterans Health Administration Audit of Homeless Providers Grant and Grant Per Diem Program,” 4. 46 For more, see Donna L. Washington, et al., “Risk Factors for Homelessness among Women Veterans,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 21 (2010): 82–91; Alison B. Hamilton, et al., “‘Homelessness and Trauma Go Hand-in-Hand’: Pathways to Homelessness among Women Veterans,” Women’s Health Issues 21 (2011): S203-S209; and Dir Kirby Dick, The Invisible War, 2012, at http://invisiblewarmovie.com/. 47 United States Code Title 38, Paragraph 172OD, defines militarized sexual trauma as “psychological trauma, which in the judgment of a mental health professional employed by the Department, resulted from a physical assault of a sexual nature, battery of a sexual nature, or sexual harassment which occurred while the Veteran was serving on active duty or active duty for training.” The US Code defines sexual harassment as “repeated, unsolicited verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature which is threatening in character.” United States Code, 2006 Edition, Supplement 5, Title 38, “Veterans’ Benefits,” Sec. 1720D—Counseling and treatment for sexual trauma, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCODE-2011-title38/USCODE-2011-title38-partIIchap17-subchapII-sec1720D/content-detail.html.

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gaining increased attention within the US military and media. This is due in part to recent high-profile scandals, such as the sexual assault of over 60 women trainees by drill instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas between 2009 and 2012, which resulted in the removal of commanding officers and the prosecution of perpetrators.48 Likewise, at the time of the writing of this chapter, reports on the long-awaited sexual assault trial of Brigadier General Jeffrey A. Sinclair, former deputy commander of American forces in southern Afghanistan, filled national US newspapers.49 A powerful contribution to the emerging public conversation about the harrowing reality of American women’s military sexual assault experiences is the 2012 documentary “The Invisible War,” which was nominated for an Academy Award.50 Without a doubt, the fact that the politics and repercussions of MST have gained traction in America is a result of the willingness of courageous women veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to speak out and demand to be heard. Forced by the brave testimony of female MST victims over the years, military and governmental leadership are also beginning to shift the public discourse on how the American military operates. Perhaps the most effective event to shatter the normative silence around MST was the publication in May 2013 of a Pentagon report revealing a 6 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the military, as many as 22,000 in 2012 alone. This prompted then Secretary of Defense (and Vietnam War Army veteran) Chuck Hagel to declare, “We need cultural change, where every service member is treated with dignity and respect, where all allegations of inappropriate behavior are treated with seriousness, where victims’ privacy is protected, where bystanders are motivated to intervene and where offenders know that they will be held accountable by strong and effective systems of justice.”51 Before a graduating class of over one thousand West Point Academy Army cadets later that month, Hagel characterized this endemic military sexual criminality as “a scourge” and “a profound betrayal.”52 The following year, the US Congress “passed legislation preventing commanders from overturning sexual assault verdicts. The measure also expanded a special counsel program for 48 James Risen, “Attacked at 19 by an Air Force Trainer and Speaking Out,” New York Times, February 26, 2013, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes. com/2013/02/27/us/former-air-force-recruit-speaks-out-about-rape-by-her-sergeant-atlackland.html?pagewanted=all. 49 Alan Blinder, “Judge Won’t Dismiss Sex Assault Charges Against General,” New York Times, March 5, 2014, A15. 50 Dir Kirby Dick, The Invisible War, 2012, http://invisiblewarmovie.com/. 51 Luis Martinez and Sunlen Miller, “Hagel: Sexual Assault Report Shows Armed Forces ‘Need Cultural Change,’” ABC News, May 7, 2013, accessed March 11, 2014, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hagel-sexual-assault-report-shows-armed-forces-cultural/ story?id=19128532#.UZE963AaK0t. 52 Michael Hill and Lolita Baldor, “Hagel: Cadets Must Stamp Out Sexual Assault Scourge,” Washington Post, May 25, 2013, accessed March 10, 2014, http://www. washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hagel-cadets-must-stamp-out-sex-assaultscourge/2013/05/25/a56eb43e-c563–11e2–9fe2–6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html.

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victims through the military, and made retaliation for reporting assault a crime.” While these developments are to be applauded, on March 6, 2014, in what can only be described as a major setback for gender-aware military justice, the US Senate rejected a bill that would have removed the power held by the commanders of sexual assault victims to determine whether a case should be prosecuted, and instead, would have placed that power in the hands of independent, seasoned military lawyers. The status quo, expressed through US lawmakers’ misguided trust and respect in the military chain of command and their belief that such a fundamentally patriarchal system can be merely reformed, sadly endures.53 The changes that have been authorized for the military’s handling of sexual assault cases are too little, too late for many American women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Department of Defense data shows that sexual assault is much more prevalent among women while serving in the US military than among civilian women: “One in three [military women] report that they were raped or sexually assaulted compared to one in six civilian women.”54 According to Veterans Affairs data, “20 percent of female veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified as having experienced MST.”55 This “epidemic of sexual violence”56 has increased with women’s integration in the armed forces, with the result that female veterans suffer from “double the rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder” related to MST than their male counterparts.57 When homeless women veterans speak of the sexual climate in the military a desolate and intricate picture develops. These women’s recollections are simultaneously stories of vulnerability and victimization, the too common privatization of suffering, as well as glimpses of female solidarity and agency against sexual predators. Homeless 22-year-old Iraq War veteran Christiana Carrera, a resident of a women-only housing facility in Leeds, Massachusetts, for example, recalled how during her deployment, women soldiers were required to travel to the toilet facilities in pairs out of safety concerns, after several rapes were reported within her unit. The women’s bathroom door was locked, “[b]ut all the men in the housing authority know it [the lock combination]. That makes me feel safe …,” Carrera noted sarcastically. “You better believe that I showered with my rifle on the

53 Helene Cooper, “Senate Rejects Blocking Military Commanders from Sexual Assault Cases,” New York Times, March 6, 2014, accessed March 6, 2014, http://www. nytimes.com/2014/03/07/us/politics/military-sexual-assault-legislation.html?_r=0. 54 Women’s Bureau, “Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans,” 11. 55 Ibid., 11. 56 Brianne Ogilvie and Emily Tamlyn, “Coming Full Circle: How VBA Can Complement Recent Changes in DoD and VHA Policy Regarding Military Sexual Trauma,” Veterans Law Review 4 (2012): 1. 57 Benedict, “The Plight of the Women Soldiers,” 1. On the historic “invisibility” of militarized rape of civilian and military women, see Enloe, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War, 108–152.

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towel rack.”58 One need only listen to the words of Army Reserve Specialist Jennifer Wells, who was raped by a fellow soldier in Iraq, to understand part of the ongoing trauma experienced by MST victims. Describing her return to the United States, Wells stated, “I did everything. I bought a gun. I had an attic in my apartment, which connected to the other apartment, and I nailed it shut. I added bolts to my door. I slept in the living room and watched the door.”59 Perhaps reflective of militarization’s ability to obliterate other modes of agency, in each of these stories, empowerment for militarized women came in the form of ready access to a very masculinized totem of strength, a weapon (as well as the knowledge to use it). For homeless female veterans struggling with multiple forms of trauma, the vulnerabilities are exponential. Ideally, a homeless woman who is the victim of militarized sexual trauma should be supported by the system that sent her to war in the first place. She should be able to turn for help to the military, but that is the same apparatus that trained and accommodated her assailant. In March 2014, for example, the Army’s top prosecutor for sexual assault cases was suspended due to allegations of sexual misconduct. For many women, the military’s promise of “zero tolerance” for sexual assault is hard to trust.60 Evidence is strong that a servicewoman will be ignored or accused of playing up her charge of sexual trauma. “You think she’s going to go to a facility with forty-six other guys sleeping next door to her?” Kim Olson, women veterans advocate points out. “No she’s not. She’s simply not going to re-enter the environment if that [MST] is her issue.”61 Homeless women veterans have reported being harassed and even assaulted in government-supported housing that also houses men.62 It is no wonder that many struggling women veterans are not willing to come forward and seek help through Veterans Affairs. Likewise, despite recent changes to the law, given women’s fear of reprisal or fear of receiving less than honorable discharges as a result of their reporting psychological stress, it is not surprising that militarized sexual trauma episodes are often characterized as privatized silences.63 58 Christiana Carrera quoted in Susan Kaplan, “Women Veterans Face Unique Hurdles,” Public Radio International’s The World, March 16, 2012, 2, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.theworld.org/2012/03/women-veterans-face-unique-hurdles/. 59 Mark Curnutte, “For Female Soldiers, Last Battle is Within,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 21, 2009, accessed March 11, 2014, http://www.cincinnati.com/article/20090522/ EDIT03/305220004/For-female-soldiers-last-battle-within. 60 Chris Carroll and John Vandiver, “Army’s Top Sexual Assault Prosecutor Suspended after Assault Allegation,” Stars and Stripes, March 6, 2014, accessed March 12, 2014, http://www.stripes.com/army-s-top-sex-assault-prosecutor-suspended-after-assaultallegation-1.271461. 61 Kim Olson, quoted in Tucker and Hall, “Homeless Female Vets,” 2. 62 VA Inspector General, “Veterans Health Administration Audit of Homeless Providers Grant and Grant Per Diem Program,” 4–5. 63 Yochi Dreazen, “Rate of Sexual Assault in Army Prompts an Effort at Prevention,” Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2008, accessed, March 11, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/ article/SB122298757937200069.html.html.

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Not all militarized women have remained silent, of course. Lest we focus too narrowly on martial women as only victims of their military service, a gender construction that ironically can be used to support misogynistic arguments against women in the military, it is important to note that some women veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been among the earliest and most vocal activists advocating for their struggling sisters. These women have drawn from personal initiative as well as their experiences in the military to address some of the more acute concerns facing women veterans. They have establish homeless shelters, MST support programs, employment aid, art outreach, and political lobbying efforts that not only have had a positive impact on real women’s lives, but have also served to place women veterans’ struggles more prominently on the radar screen of governmental agencies and politicians. Some of these efforts have been decidedly grass roots in nature, such as Final Salute, Inc, founded in 2010 by Jaspen Boothe, an Iraq War veteran, who “realized a need for an organization that was designed to meet and understand the unique needs of homeless women Veterans and their children.” Boothe’s organization helps women find transitional housing and pay for rent when financial crises arise.64 Others, such as Tammy Duckworth, a former Army Blackhawk pilot in Iraq who suffered double leg amputation after her helicopter was shot down by a rocket propelled grenade in 2004, have raised their voices for women veterans through more formal political channels. As a former Assistant Secretary with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and now Congresswoman from Illinois, Duckworth has made women veterans’ homecoming and homelessness issues a priority on Capitol Hill.65 Women such as these insist that the gender-specific concerns of women veterans be acknowledged and addressed, despite women’s presence in a system that has traditionally rendered real gender problems invisible. In the end, physical concerns, such as unsafe, substandard housing conditions, PTSD and MST, and the psycho-cultural concerns, such as the military culture’s impulse to valorize masculinities that have rendered women veterans’ real challenges largely underappreciated, are part of a subtle but ongoing aspect of gendered political and social violence against women that ripples out from militarized societies at war. “Political violence and armed conflict are not distinct,” Cynthia Cockburn reminds us, “one spills into the other. Nor is it necessarily helpful to identify moments like ‘before,’ ‘during,’ and ‘after’ conflict. Violence flows through all of them.”66 Violence cannot be understood simply as a physical force that causes damage, visible only in the public domain. Instead, in order to 64 Final Salute, Inc., accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.finalsaluteinc.org/7.html. 65 For more on Representative Tammy Duckworth’s biography and political record supporting veterans, see http://www.tammyduckworth.com/about/ and http://duckworth. house.gov/, accessed March 10, 2014. 66 Cynthia Cockburn, “Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence” (The World Bank, Washington, DC, June 10 and 11, 1999), accessed March 10, 2014, http://genderandsecurity. researchhub.ssrc.org/gender-armed-conflict-and-political-violence/attachment.

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capture more fully the impact of war and its aftermath, we must define anew what constitutes militarized violence and where and when that violence occurs. We must push back against a sexist environment in which victims of sexual violence and domestic trauma feel obliged to keep their stories private and thus become re-victimized by patriarchy. We must make more explicit and public instances in which gendered power imbalances shape how women experience war and its costs, and how governments acknowledge their stories and take responsibility for their healing and their integration into civilian society as full citizens. The social memory of women veterans’ military and homecoming experiences is a dynamic and multi-faceted phenomenon that is in the process of being articulated. And yet, as the architects of public information, the government and media, continue to shape the popular memory of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the place of women veterans in general within that narrative, if changing, remains largely liminal. When women appear in the social memory, it is most often as problematic victims, perhaps unable to handle the demands of a military life. Women returning from war must work within and around these forces in order to survive with dignity and to reframe the public narratives of war in their own voices. Being heard is no easy task given the patriarchal structure in which they find themselves. We have seen that some women are paralyzed by established masculinist norms, and that they seem to accept the construction of the soldier as a male and dismiss their own rights. Others resist and assert, even if in a limited fashion, their veteran status and insist on noting their particular needs and stories as women, and act as agents of change. As more American women soldiers return home from war, they will add their individual narratives to the public conversation, pushing its boundaries and challenging established conceptions of the gendered meaning of armed conflict and militarization. The task of collecting oral histories from these women, many of them traumatized by their experiences, is a vital next step toward enlarging our understanding of gender and war, as well as detailing a broader range of diversity within the rather general but flawed category “American woman soldier and veteran.” American military women’s service and homecoming experiences are undoubtedly shaped by numerous factors beyond their gender, such as race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, educational level, and sexuality, nuances that are not highlighted in the kinds of sources deployed in this chapter. More attention must be paid to social positioning and multiple subjectivities within the category “American women veteran.” This is especially pertinent given that African-American women are a key source of new recruits for the all-volunteer armed services and enlist at much higher rates than white or Hispanic women. Indeed, black women comprise 31 percent of women in the military, more than double their percentage in the civilian population.67 How might women of color, working-class women, and sexual minority women navigate 67 James Dao, “Black Women Enlisting at Higher Rates in U.S. Military,” New York Times, December 22, 2011, accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/ us/black-women-enlist-at-higher-rates-in-us-military.html?_r=0.

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through military life and homecoming? In what ways might assumptions about additional burdens of racism, heterosexism, and classism, for example, be upheld or challenged by listening to these women? How do servicewomen’s experiences of life stressors compare with civilian women in American society? Nascent scholarship in the area of diversity within the military can at times be contradictory. Contributors to a new volume, Managing Diversity in the Military, for example, note that ethnic and racial minorities face many additional obstacles in equality and accessing military benefits.68 A study by the sociologist Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, however, recently concluded that African American women expressed the highest job satisfaction in the military, where equal pay for equal work is more pronounced than in the civilian sector.69 The situation is far more complex than it might at first appear and it requires further study by feminist scholars. Veterans of war are not usually eager to remember and re-experience violence, particularly when it is so fresh, so recent. Anyone, whether friend, family or scholar, who prods traumatized individuals bears a responsibility to use words carefully and respectfully. And yet, as Cynthia Enloe has demonstrated in her life’s work on militarized women, recording and analyzing their experiences contributes to our understanding of the human costs of war. It is the duty of the feminist scholar to record and contextualize these narratives so that they can inform both the public memory of gender politics and of war. References Abu-Lughod, Lila. Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Benedict, Helen. “The Plight of the Female Soldier.” The Nation/NPR, May 6, 2009. Accessed March 5, 2014. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId=103844570. Biberica, Felicia and Lisa Fletcher. “For Female Vets, a New Fight at Home.” ABC News Online, March 14, 2010. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://abcnews. go.com/WN/homeless-female-veterans-americas-streets/story?id=10099653. 68 Daniel P. McDonald and Kizzy M. Parks, Managing Diversity in the Military: The value of Inclusion in a Culture of Uniformity (New York: Routledge, 2013); and National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, “Minority Veterans: 2011,” Department of Veterans Affairs (2013), accessed March 10, 2014, http://www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/ SpecialReports/Minority_Veterans_2011.pdf. 69 Susan Kliff, “The Most Satisfied Military Employees? Black Women. The Least? White Men,” Washington Post, January 23, 2013, accessed July 15, 2014, http:// www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/23/the-most-satisfied-militaryemployees-black-women-least-satisfied-white-men/. See also Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, “Ethnic and Gender Satisfaction in the Military: The Effect of a Meritocratic Institution,” American Sociological Review 73/3 (2008): 477–496.

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Blinder, Alan. “Judge Won’t Dismiss Sex Assault Charges Against General.” New York Times, March 5, 2014. A15. Boulton, Dawnita, US Veterans Initiative (USVETS). Interview with Stephanie Yuhl. Long Beach, California, October 3, 2012. Boyle, Brenda M. Masculinity in Vietnam War Narratives: A Critical Study of Fiction, Films and Nonfiction Writings. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009. Bumiller, Elizabeth and Thom Shanker. “Pentagon Set to Lift Ban on Women in Combat.” New York Times, January 23, 2013. Accessed March 11, 2014. http:// www.nytimes.com/2013/01/24/us/pentagon-says-it-is-lifting-ban-on-womenin-combat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Carroll, Chris and John Vandiver. “Army’s Top Sexual Assault Prosecutor Suspended after Assault Allegation.” Stars and Stripes, March 6, 2014. Accessed March 12, 2014. http://www.stripes.com/army-s-top-sex-assaultprosecutor-suspended-after-assault-allegation-1.271461. Cockburn, Cynthia. “Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence.” The World Bank. Washington, DC: June 10 and 11, 1999. Accessed March 10, 2014. http:// genderandsecurity.researchhub.ssrc.org/gender-armed-conflict-and-politicalviolence/attachment. Cooper, Helene. “Senate Rejects Military Commanders from Sexual Assault Cases.” New York Times, March 6, 2014. Accessed March 6, 2014.http:// www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/us/politics/military-sexual-assault-legislation. html?_r=0. Curnutte, Mark. “For Female Soldiers, Last Battle is Within.” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 21, 2009. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.cincinnati.com/ article/20090522/EDIT03/305220004/For-female-soldiers-last-battle-within. Dao, James. “Black Women Enlisting at Higher Rates in U.S. Military.” New York Times, December 22, 2011. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://www.nytimes. com/2011/12/23/us/black-women-enlist-at-higher-rates-in-us-military.html?_r=0. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Veteran Homelessness: A Supplemental Report to the 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.” Washington, DC: 2010. Diamantides, Nick. “Homeless Female Veterans Find Help in LB, but their Numbers are Rising.” Signal Tribune Newspaper (Long Beach, CA.), February 17, 2012. Accessed July 12, 2014. http://www.signaltribunenewspaper. com/?p=13693. Dreazen, Yochi. “Rate of Sexual Assault in Army Prompts an Effort at Prevention.” Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2008. Accessed, March 11, 2014. http://online. wsj.com/article/SB122298757937200069.html.html. Drummond, Katie. “America’s Female Soldiers: Fighting, But Without Fair Medical Care.” Forbes Online, June 8, 2012. Accessed March 11, 2014. http:// www.forbes.com/sites/katiedrummond/2012/06/18/female-soldiers-health/2/. Enloe, Cynthia. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

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Enloe, Cynthia. Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Final Salute, Inc. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://www.finalsaluteinc.org/7.html. Gedi, Noa and Yigal Elam. “Collective Memory: What Is It?” History and Memory 8 (1996): 30–50. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Hamilton, Alison B. et al. “Homelessness and Trauma Go Hand-in-Hand: Pathways to Homelessness among Women Veterans.” Women’s Health Issues 21 (2011): S203-S209. Hill. Michael and Lolita Baldor. “Hagel: Cadets Must Stamp Out Sexual Assault Scourge.” Washington Post, May 25, 2013. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hagel-cadetsmust-stamp-out-sex-assault-scourge/2013/05/25/a56eb43e-c563-11e2-9fe26ee52d0eb7c1_story.html. “Homelessness Among Female Veterans.” New York Times, April 16, 2012. Accessed July 12, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/opinion/ homelessness-among-female-veterans.html. “Homelessness Increasing for Female Veterans.” Boston Globe, April 9, 2012. Accessed July 12, 2014. http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/04/08/ more-female-veterans-are-homeless/X592CfwrlFR9R2AoXA4bVO/story.html. Kaplan, Susan. “Women Veterans Face Unique Hurdles.” Public Radio International The World, March 16, 2012: 2. Accessed March 11, 2014. http:// www.theworld.org/2012/03/women-veterans-face-unique-hurdles/. Karner, Tracy. “Fathers, Sons and Vietnam: Masculinity and Betrayal in the Life Narratives of Vietnam Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” American Studies 37 (1996): 63–94. Kliff, Susan. “The Most Satisfied Military Employees? Black Women. The Least? White Men.” Washington Post, January 23, 2013. Accessed July 15, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/23/themost-satisfied-military-employees-black-women-least-satisfied-white-men/. Lembcke, Jerry. The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Lundquist, Jennifer Hickes. “Ethnic and Gender Satisfaction in the Military: The Effect of a Meritocratic Institution.” American Sociological Review 73/3 (2008): 477–496. Martinez, Luis and Sunlen Miller. “Hagel: Sexual Assault Report Shows Armed Forces ‘Need Cultural Change’” ABC News, May 7, 2013. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hagel-sexual-assault-report-showsarmed-forces-cultural/story?id=19128532#.UZE963AaK0t. McDonald, Daniel P. and Kizzy M. Parks. Managing Diversity in the Military: The Value of Inclusion in a Culture of Uniformity. New York: Routledge, 2013. Mulhall, Erin. “Women Warriors: Supporting She Who Has Borne the Battle.” Issue Report. Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America: 2009.

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National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, Department of Veterans Affairs. “Minority Veterans: 2011.” 2013. Accessed March 10, 2014. http:// www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/SpecialReports/Minority_Veterans_2011.pdf. National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics. “Veteran Population Projections: FY2000-FY2036.” Washington, DC: October, 2010. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/QuickFacts/population_ quickfacts.pdf. National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. “Background and Statistics.” Accessed March 3, 2014. http://nchv.org/index.php/news/media/background_and_statistics/. “9/11 By The Numbers,” New York Magazine. Accessed July 14, 2014. http:// nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm. Ogilvie, Brianne and Emily Tamlyn. “Coming Full Circle: How VBA Can Complement Recent Changes in DoD and VHA Policy Regarding Military Sexual Trauma.” Veterans Law Review 4 (2012): 1–40. Risen, James. “Attacked at 19 by an Air Force Trainer and Speaking Out.” New York Times, February 26, 2013. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.nytimes. com/2013/02/27/us/former-air-force-recruit-speaks-out-about-rape-by-hersergeant-at-lackland.html?pagewanted=all. Rodgers, Susan. Telling Lives, Telling History: Autobiography and Historical Imagination in Modern Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Scott, Crystal. Interview with Stephanie Yuhl. Veterans Village of San Diego, San Diego, California. October 5, 2012. Service: When Women Come Marching Home. Dirs. Marcia Rock and Patricia Lee Stotter. 2011. http://servicethefilm.com/. Shattuck, Rachel M. and Rose M. Kreider. “Social and Economic Characteristics of Currently Unmarried Women with a Recent Birth, 2011.” United States Census Bureau, Washington, DC: 2013. Accessed March 6, 2014. http://apps. washingtonpost.com/g/page/local/census-report-on-unmarried-mothers/128/. Solaro, Erin. Women in the Line of Fire: What You Should Know About Women in the Military. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2006. Street, Amy E., Dawn Vogt, and Lissa Dutra. “A New Generation of Women Veterans: Stressors Faced by Women Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.” Clinical Psychology Review 29 (2009): 685–94. The Invisible War. Dick, Kirby, Dir. 2012. http://invisiblewarmovie.com/. Tokar, Steve. “Women Soldiers See More Combat Than in Prior Eras, Have Same PTSD Rate as Men, Study Says,” University of California at San Francisco News Center, January 13, 2012. Accessed March 10, 2014. http://www.ucsf. edu/news/2012/01/11321/women-soldiers-see-more-combat-prior-eras-have-ptsd-rate-men-study-says. Tucker, Eric and Kristin M. Hall. “Homeless Female Vets: Numbers Spike but Housing Scarce (What You Can Do).” Huffington Post, April 9, 2012. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/homelessfemale-vets-housing_n_1411498.html.

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Turner, Karen. Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam. New York: Wiley, 1999. United States Census Bureau. “America’s Families and Living Arrangements.” 2012–2013. Accessed March 4, 2014. www.census.gov/hhes/families. United States Department of Veterans Affairs. “Facts and Statistics about Women Veterans, Women Veterans Health Care.” Accessed March 7, 2014. http:// www.womenshealth.va.gov/WOMENSHEALTH/latestinformation/facts.asp. United States Government Accountability Office. Report to Congressional Requesters. Homeless Women Veterans: Actions Needed to Ensure Safe and Appropriate Housing. Washington, DC: 2011. United States Code. 2006 Edition, Supplement 5, Title 38. “Veterans’ Benefits.” Sec. 1720D—Counseling and treatment for sexual trauma. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCODE-2011-title38/USCODE2011-title38-partII-chap17-subchapII-sec1720D/content-detail.html. Veterans Administration Office of the Inspector General, Office of Audits and Evaluations. “Veterans Health Administration Audit of Homeless Providers Grant and Grant Per Diem Program.” Washington, DC: 2012. Veterans Inc. “Women and Children’s Program: Case Management.” Accessed March 11, 2014. www.veteransinc.org/wp … /News-from-Veterans-Inc.May-2011.pdf. Washington, Donna L. et al. “Risk Factors for Homelessness among Women Veterans.” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 21 (2010): 82–91. Williams, Kayla. Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the US Army. New York: Norton, 2005. Women in Combat: Hearing Before the Armed Services Subcommittee. United States Senate. June 18, 1991. Statement of General Robert H. Barrows. C-Span. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy--whDNNKk. Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation. “Statistics on Women in the Military.” September 30, 2011. Accessed March 10, 2014. http:// www.womensmemorial.org/Press/stats.html. Women’s Bureau, United States Department of Labor. “Homeless Women Veterans Listening Sessions.” 2009. Accessed March 11, 2014. http://www.dol.gov/wb/ programs/listeningsessions.htm. Women’s Bureau, United States Department of Labor. The Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: A Guide for Service Providers. Washington, DC: 2011. Yuhl, Stephanie E. A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

PART III Fictionalizing and Visualizing Gendered Memories

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Part III: Commentary

Unsettling Accounts: Fictionalizing and Visualizing Memories of War Banu Karaca

The intriguing chapters assembled in this section examine different modes of fictionalizing and visualizing gendered memories of war, and their reverberations. The gendered dimension of war and political violence is taken up through the experience of women, and the contributions share a decidedly feminist perspective by interrogating questions of justice, power and governance in a way that complicates and unsettles the category of the victim, and specifically that of the woman as a victim. Feminist interventions have posed important challenges regarding the ethics of image production, especially when it comes to the representation of violence and the formation of public memory (or post-memory) of gendered violence. While not explicitly taken up in all of the chapters, feminist critiques are nonetheless addressed as they highlight alternatives to hegemonic regimes of fictionalization, visualization and perception, and as they focus on the production of images and texts that deal with violence, yet aim to be non-exploitative. The fictional and the visual accounts of gendered violence and its aftermath, of episodes of violence and its institutionalization pay attention to what is said, written and shown, but also to what is silenced, left out and obscured. The translation of silence into invisibility and vice versa is used as a prism by all of the authors—yet as the following discussion shows the relationship between silence and speech, visibility and invisibility is constructed differently within their explorations. As Coronil and Skurski write in the introduction to their highly influential “States of Violence,” landscapes of violence function as much through their “representation as they do through the invisibility of [their] operations or the occlusion of their agents and instruments.”1 Brought into dialogue with the contributions assembled in this section, this statement also raises the question of what makes women and their experiences invisible in each of the given contexts. Sophie Milquet’s chapter on literary accounts that to varying degrees fictionalize women’s experiences of the Spanish Civil War makes us listen to whispers. Milquet discusses gendered violence in two registers: the repression 1 Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, “States of Violence and the Violence of States,” in States of Violence, eds. Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006), 12.

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and silencing of women during the war, and that of their experiences under the Franco dictatorship. These women not only lost the war, but have long been disenfranchised from a place in public memory. The many roles they took on during the armed struggle and the repression they faced within their own movement still remain largely obscured. Their experiences and voices were delegitimized twice, first within the patriarchal structure of the resistance, and then within the Franco regime. Milquet points to a notable facet of the global “memory boom,” namely the way in which official memory regimes are codified by law. She hints at this issue through the amnesty of 1977 that established a “pact of silence,” as well as the Law of Historical Memory (2006–07). The latter has allowed for the “recovery of historical memory,” but opened another struggle with regard to the place of women’s memory in the official process of facing the past. This process, entailing a struggle for gender equality and justice, unsettles not only official memory work and the ways in which the past is understood, but also how politics are reconfigured in the present. While women’s memories are being recovered, they still remain mediated through the articulation of whispers. The lowered voices try to break through the imposed silence—a silence that embodies, as so often noted, the continuation of violence. Milquet proposes that the polyphony and what she calls the practice of “collective voicing” in which authors acknowledge those whose stories have served as inspirations for their novels, also destabilize authorship as a “means of making the past intelligible.” Here, as in the following examples, the question of the intentions of authors or artists and the hegemonic framing of perception may give us further food for thought. Different kinds of whispers become audible in Andrea Pető’s fascinating chapter that explores the two-tiered representational deficit of female war criminals: On the one hand, Pető points to the general invisibility of women in rightwing extremist movements apart from designated roles as clerical help, or supporting wives for that matter. On the other, she diagnoses and investigates the iconoclasm that ranges from the practice of destroying pictures of female Arrow Cross members (when it became clear that the taking—and safe-keeping—of these photographs themselves would constitute an incriminating act) to their non-usage in war tribunals and their non- or mis-categorization in the archives. Moving beyond the question of what makes women active participants in these movements, Pető opens up a space to discuss how women’s participation in war crimes is rendered unspeakable or even unimaginable. The photographs she discovers are in boxes labeled “miscellaneous”; they designate the depiction of women perpetrators as too rare of an occurrence to warrant a separate category. There are no files under their names; in fact, their names are not even disclosed. Female perpetrators, then, are seen as aberrations that do not fit into any of the available narratives of the past and belong in none of the existing archival categories. Nor are they grouped with men who committed similar crimes. Instead they are deemed utterly unrepresentable. The silence that surrounds women’s participation in war crimes not only translates into their invisibility but also

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facilitates, as Pető points out, their (re-)appearance as “whispers” on a far right website by the same name. It is notable that the representational deficit of these women mirrors that of Holocaust victims,2 leaving us with the discomforting thought that women perpetrators and women victims are subject to parallel processes of marginalization and invisibility. The missing representation that Pető unearths is mirrored in the visual memory regime of Germany as the quintessential context out of which the template for remembering the Holocaust and, by extension, other kinds of political violence was developed.3 It brings to mind “The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders”4—a collection of letters written and photographs taken along the route of the Nazi war machine, the strife for Lebensraum (living space) that according to National Socialist ideology marked masculine virility and the needs of the German Volk. Its foreword states that “[t]he particular significance of this book is that in it the facts are not recorded by Jewish survivors but German witnesses: men who by chance or in the course of duty, or out of curiosity, observed events as they occurred and made a record, sometimes a photographic record, of them.”5 Although the text notably shies away from identifying the German witness as perpetrator, ‘he’ is nonetheless constructed as exclusively male. And yet, we know that women occupied official positions in Nazi institutions, including different divisions of concentration camps. Others accompanied their spouses into the occupied territories, and some lived with their husbands and families in separate parts of the camps. Although great care was taken to separate the Nazi living quarters both spatially and visually from the rest of the camps,6 women raised their children and entertained guests there—as some photographs in “The Good Old Days” document. While their male counterparts in the pictures are ‘furnished’ with biographical information, women only appear as victims throughout the book, and often as anonymous, naked bodies captured before or after mass executions. They remain both visually and textually positioned—captured as it were—under the gaze of their male tormentors.7 In this double-vision that the photographs present, the viewer becomes complicit in the marginalization of women as victims by reenacting the position of perpetrators and witnesses of violence—regardless of their individual intentions. 2 Anna Reading, The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture and Memory (Houndsmill: Palgrave, 2002). 3 Andreas Huyssen, “Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia,” in Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). 4 Ernst Klee, The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Old Saybrook: Koneckey and Konecky, 1991). 5 Klee, The Good Old Days, xi. 6 Paul B. Jasko, The Nazi Perpetrator. Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 7 Carolyn Korsmeyer, Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2004), 53.

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This is potentially the case of Pető’s example of Manci too. However, Pető begins to sketch possible counter-memories and counter-narratives based on the availability of visuals of Arrow Cross women today, even if it is through rightwing websites. These sites, and the right-wing mobilization behind them, are the legacy of a different kind of memory boom that celebrates collaboration with the Nazis. This possibility was foreclosed prior to 1989 in Hungary and in the other Eastern bloc countries, where the myth of nations born out of antifascism was a vital part of self-fashioning after the war. Pető’s endeavor then is not just one of making women, who were obscured, visible but one of recoding8 the images that resurface both in her archival research and on said websites by way of focusing on what is unmarked, and by divorcing these images from their triumphalist headings and re-contextualizing them. Taking on the complex and difficult issue of gendered violence during the Balkan Wars, Slavova turns to two fictionalized accounts of sexual violence and its aftermath. Slavova contemplates the multiple traps that the representation of sexual violence holds, in that survivors of sexual violence are victimized again, this time by the exploitative, sometimes even pornographic accounts of their experiences. This sensationalist exploitation has been most forcefully criticized by feminist scholarship, and yet it is frequently legitimized as a tool to raise public awareness. Slavova proposes that Eve Ensler’s Necessary Targets (2001) and Jasmila Žbanić Grbavica, the Land of My Dreams (2006) present examples in which art, in this case theater and film, can “translate social and political trauma into forms of understanding” and that both the play and the film do so because of, rather than despite, the narrative of the failed therapy sessions around which both stories are weaved. Slavova sees these works as offering “witnessing imagination,” the idea of “seeing, knowing, and connecting with an Other’s experience of trauma.” Yet this assumption remains fraught with difficulties concerning the two central categories of witnessing and testimony and their normative, even commoditized formation (both in their political usage and in their medialization as human-interest stories). As they seek to capture what is essentially unknowable,9 they leave us with these questions that perhaps need to remain unsettling and unsettled. Marjaana Jauhola’s chapter brings us to quite a different time and place, taking us to the post-tsunami reconstruction of Aceh, Indonesia. This is a landscape of doubly layered violence, first of armed conflict and then of natural disaster that has disproportionately affected women. Evidently, both of these layers have entailed mutually enforced processes of disenfranchisement in which gender as well as class have played a pivotal role. The question of intersectionality, here as in the other chapters, certainly opens a possibility for further research.

8 Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’” in Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: Sage, 1997). 9 Marc Nichanian, The Historiographic Perversion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

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Juahola’s emphasis too is on silence. Yet, in contrast to the invisibility discussed above, she focuses on silence not as occlusion but on its constitutive function,10 a communicative tool that makes visible certain wounds11 and positionalities. Providing a counterpoint to Sophie Milquet, who constructs silence mainly as the absence of speech, and hence of what is suppressed, Jauhola argues that silence and stillness are not passive states induced by trauma, but rather active strategies in dealing with and addressing the experience of gendered violence. Jauhola’s research shows that the ‘cultural logic’ of “building Aceh back better” follows the dynamic laid out in Ferguson’s notion of ‘development’ as an “anti-politics machine.”12 Understood as such, development reduces political and social inequities to technological problems. Rather than producing improved conditions it presents an integration into the hegemonic governance of the state. This is illustrated not least by the separation and ranking of victim categories, which are translated into different kinds of programming and budgeting. Jauhola claims that this process nevertheless entails the possibility to “open up space for feminist political subjectivity” by challenging the “politics of the invisible and unspeakable of the armed conflict and its lived experiences.” The example Jauhola focuses on is the artist Tari’s intricate ceramic installations, which she interprets as re-politicizing the silence imposed on women throughout Aceh’s violent past and the structural violence of its post-tsunami reconstruction. The modalities of this re-politicization provoke further examination, especially when it comes to the perception of Tari’s artworks. While we hear Jauhola’s interpretation along with that of some critics and the artist’s own statement, she does not really specify what kind of challenge these works (can) pose in the context of a reconstruction effort that, as she explains herself, is not just a rehabilitation of a ravaged landscape and its built environment but an enforcement of normative cultural values. Aceh’s reconstruction is not about reinstating what once was, but rather in Herbert Marcuse’s13 terms a process of political consolidation that obscures the conditions of the majority, including the conditions of structural gendered violence, which according to Jauhola are made invisible in “the context of armed conflict, and religious revivalism and the politicisation of Islamic law.” The question I want to raise here then is not just about a deeper reading of the ‘nature’ of the challenge that Tari’s work offers but also about its limits within the 10 Judith Butler, “Ruled Out. Vocabularies of the Censor,” in Censorship and Silencing: Practices of Cultural Regulation, ed. R.C. Post (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998). 11 Crapanzano, Vincent. The Harkis. The Wound that Never Heals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 12 Ferguson, James. “The Anti-Politics Machine.” In The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, eds. Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta, 270–286. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). 13 Herbert Marcuse, “The Affirmative Character of Culture” (trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro), in Art and Liberation, ed. Douglas Kellner, 82–112. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

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given political context. After all, artistic approaches to or expressions of “feminist subjectivities,” as to other issues and positionalities, are bound to processes of aestheticization that carry the risk (as well as the opportunity) of distancing and decontextualization.14 More than just interrogating the limits of art in visualizing subaltern experiences, my questions concern the publics that might be able to see and interpret, be troubled and inspired by these works along the lines that Juahola proposes. References Adorno, Theodor W. “Valéry Proust Museum.” In Prisms, translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Samuel Weber, 175–185. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Butler, Judith. “Ruled Out. Vocabularies of the Censor.” In Censorship and Silencing: Practices of Cultural Regulation, edited by R.C. Post, 247–259. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998. Coronil, Fernando, and Julie Skurski. “States of Violence and the Violence of States.” In States of Violence, edited by Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, 1–31. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Crapanzano, Vincent. “Remembrance.” In Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-philosophical Anthropology, 148–177. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Crapanzano, Vincent. The Harkis. The Wound that Never Heals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Ferguson, James. “The Anti-Politics Machine.” In The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, edited by Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta, 270–286. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Hall, Stuart. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other.’” In Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 223–290. London: Sage, 1997. Huyssen, Andreas. “Presents Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia.” In Presents Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 11–29. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Jasko, Paul B. The Nazi Perpetrator. Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Klee, Ernst. The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Old Saybrook: Koneckey and Konecky, 1991. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2004. 14 Theodor W. Adorno. “Valéry Proust Museum.” In Prisms, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen and Samuel Weber, 175–185 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996) and Vincent Crapanzano, “Remembrance.” In Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-philosophical Anthropology, 148–177. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

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Marcuse, Herbert. “The Affirmative Character of Culture” (translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro). In Art and Liberation, edited by Douglas Kellner, 82–112. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007. Nichanian, Marc. The Historiographic Perversion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Reading, Anna. The Social Inheritance of the Holocaust: Gender, Culture and Memory. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002.

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Chapter 9

Women’s Memory of the Spanish Civil War: The Power of Words Sophie Milquet

“Women have lost twice,” said the Spanish writer Dulce Chacón, commenting on the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).1 Indeed, women not only lost the war (in political terms), but also their voice—their existence in the public sphere and their right to express themselves as historical subjects. From a literary perspective, this chapter studies women’s memory of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) in three novels published in the early 2000s: Ángeles Caso’s Un largo silencio (2000), Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002), and Jesús Ferrero’s Las trece rosas (2003). After an historical introduction to the Spanish case and to the specificities of women’s memory, the chapter will analyze representations of women’s experiences of war and repression, focusing on the discussions about gender identity and the gendered forms of repression. It will claim that these representations fit into a literary dialectic between the silencing of women’s experiences and the breaking of this silence. Finally, it will have a quick look at the formal features that express the awakening of female voices. Historical Introduction As Maud Joly explained, women’s memory was built as a differentiated one at the heart of the defeated community.2 Indeed, after the Spanish Civil War, women were forced to remain silent because, within the Francoist patriarchal society, women were given a particular role: “The only mission assigned to women is homemaking.”3 Furthermore, inside the Republican community, women’s memory was not privileged because of the lack of legitimacy of its figures, in comparison 1 Virginia Olmedo, “Entrevista. Dulce Chacón. Las mujeres perdieron la guerra dos veces,” accessed March 26, 2011, http://perso.wanadoo.es/guerracivilcc/dulce.pdf. 2 Maud Joly, “Guerre Civile, violences et mémoires: retour des victimes et des émotions collectives dans la société espagnole contemporaine,” in Entre mémoire collective et histoire officielle. L’histoire du temps présent en Amérique latine et en Espagne, eds. Luc Capdevila and Frédérique Langue (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009), 113–125. 3 Pilar Primo de Rivera’s speech (May 30, 1939), quoted in Historia de la misoginia, eds. Fiol Bosch Esperança et al., (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1999), 164. “La única misión que

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with the traditional male ones of the Brigadist, the Maquis or the Soldier. The Spanish Republic, which gave decisive rights to women before and even after the outbreak of the war (eligibility, maternity insurance, divorce, education, etc.)4 and which promoted the myth of the Miliciana and heroicized several women (Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, Lina Odena, etc.), was not devoid of contradictions, since women were banned from the front from 1937 and relegated to more traditional tasks.5 The Dictatorship lasted for more than 35 years. At Franco’s death in 1975, it was not yet time for the female experience of the Civil War to be totally reassessed. Once again, the question of legitimacy recurs. Indeed, the conditions of reassessment were quite difficult during the Transition to Democracy (1975–1982). A “pact of silence” in Spanish society was often evoked and was materialized by the Amnesty in 1977. The most important thing was to build national unity, and the past (and its memory) was seen as a source of conflicts. The Republican memory had thus to present itself as homogeneous, though it was not, because it comprised several sub-memorial groups, which Y. Hamel called “groupuscular memories.”6 Each of these sub-groups has its own rhythm for the recovery of memories, corresponding with different contexts and interests. Concerning the construction of the “general” Republican memory, we can notice an intensive and relatively new process of recovery, with the first official exhumations (2000), the creation of some important associations, the condemnation in 2002 of the takeover of July 1936, and, latterly, the adoption of the Law of Historical Memory (2006–2007).7 At the political level, it was brought about by the Socialist Party, initially while the party was in opposition (late 1990s and early 2000s). Although this interest for the past is not new, at the cultural level too, we can talk of a “memory boom.”8 All these facts take their place in what is generally called the movement for the “recovery of historical memory.” tienen asignada las mujeres en la tarea de la Patria, es el hogar.” The translations were made by the author of this chapter. 4 Danièle Bussy Genevois, “Femmes d’Espagne—De la République au franquisme,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident V. Le XXe siècle, eds. Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 267–286, [1st ed.: Paris: Plon, 1992]. 5 Lisa Lines, “Female Combatants in the Spanish Civil War: Milicianas on the Front Lines and in the Rearguard,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 10 (2009): 174. 6 Yan Hamel, La bataille des mémoires. La Seconde Guerre mondiale et le roman français (Montreal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2006), 20. 7 In 2006, which was declared the Year of Historical Memory, the government presented a bill on historical memory, commonly called the Law on Historical Memory [Ley de Memoria Histórica], which was approved in 2007. Its official name is the Law “recognizing and extending the rights of, and establishing measures in favor of, those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.” 8 Paloma Aguilar, “La evocación de la guerra y del franquismo en la política, la cultura y la sociedad españolas,” in Memoria de la guerra y delfranquismo, ed. Juliá Santos (Madrid: Taurus, 2006), 279–317.

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In the case of women, some vectors of memorial expression have been ever since 1975, but in quite a confidential way. Women’s memory is being progressively reassessed, whereby the reference point is the Second Republic and especially women’s suffrage, received in 1931. The struggle for memory joins the struggle for gender equality, through commemorations, anniversaries, conferences and exhibitions. All these initiatives became more evident in the 2000s, during the general “memory boom.” From a social point of view, we may take the example of some newly created associations more or less focused on gender equality (Asociación Trece Rosas Asturias) and women’s memory (Fundación Trece Rosas).9 The reassessment also occurred in the literary field: testimonies published by very small publishers in the 1980–1990s were republished for a wider audience in the 2000s. This is what happened to Tomasa Cuevas’s collected testimonies, first published in the 1980s,10 but more or less forgotten until the appearance of new editions in 2004,11 200512 and 2006.13 Fernanda Romeu Alfaro’s book, self-published in 1993, was published again in 2002.14 Juana Doña wrote her testimony in 1967, but no one agreed to publish it, even in an underground version, before 1978.15 It was translated into French in 2009, and reedited in Spanish in 2012.16 This reassessment also happened in literary fiction, with the growing number of female characters and female writers.17 The “general” memory boom of the 2000s thus permitted the reassessment of groupuscular memories.

 9 URL: http://asociaciontrecerosas.blogspot.com/; http://trecerosas.es/?page_id=42. 10 Tomasa Cuevas, Cárcel de mujeres (Barcelona: Sirocco, 1985) and Mujeres de la resistencia (Barcelona: Sirocco, 1986). 11 Tomasa Cuevas, Testimonios de mujeres en las cárceles franquistas (Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 2004). 12 Tomasa Cuevas, Presas: mujeres en las cárceles franquistas, (Barcelona: Icaria, 2005). This well-known publisher gathered together the three volumes and shortened the very long text. 13 Tomasa Cuevas, Mujeres de la resistencia, Mujeres en las cárceles and Presas en Las Ventas, Segovia y Les Corts (Barcelona: RBA, 2006). 14 Fernanda Romeu Alfaro, El silencio roto. Mujeres contra el franquismo (Mataró: El viejo topo, 2002). 15 Juana Doña, Desde la noche y la niebla (mujeres en las cárcelesfranquistas) (Madrid: La Torre, 1978). 16 Juana Doña, Depuis la nuit et le brouillard. Femmes dans les prisons franquistes, trans. Ángelez Muñoz (Aden: Bruxelles, 2009); Juana Doña, Desde la noche y la niebla (mujeres en las cárceles franquistas) (Madrid: Horas y Horas, 2012). 17 Maryse Bertrand de Muñoz, “La mujer, la novela y la guerra civil española,” in Actas del Congreso internacional La Guerra Civil Española 1936–1939 (Sociedad estatal de las conmemoraciones culturales, 2006), accessed December 20, 2009, http://dialnet. unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2574435.

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War and Dictatorship Experiences Un largo silencio [A long Silence] by Ángeles Caso tells the story of Vega’s family women, who return to the village they had fled because of the Civil War.18 They realize they have become strangers in their home village: their houses have been confiscated and they cannot find jobs because of their politic opinions. Based on interviews that are used to construct a fictionalized collective story, La voz dormida [The Sleeping Voice] by Dulce Chacón19 focuses on female prisoners and their relatives in the postwar Spain. One of the protagonists, Hortensia, is executed once she has given birth to her daughter. Las trece rosas [The Thirteen Roses] by Jesús Ferrero is based on real-life events.20 It tells the stories of 13 young women, jailed in Las Ventas, most of them underage and known as “thirteen roses.” They are sentenced to death for a crime they had not committed. The three selected novels have thus different levels of veracity (with the fictional story of Ángeles Caso, the fiction based on and inspired by interviews for Dulce Chacón’s work, and the recreation, thanks to various historical works, of a well-known women’s group for Jesús Ferrero’s novel). These books were selected among approximately a dozen novels published in the 2000s that focus on women and the Spanish Civil War because of their explicit focus on and problematization of the gendered experience of war and repression. In this section, we will see that the fictions address the Spanish Civil War by focusing on two important dimensions: the “war of genders” (discussions about women’s identity and the tensions around gender equality) and the gendering of war itself (specific acts of gendered violence). The fact that the war was followed by 35 years of dictatorship extends these two issues in time. The War of Genders: Women at the Front The three novels promote an active vision of women during the war. There exist many instances of active female roles in the three novels (a communist leader, members of the socialist party, a nurse, etc.). The more obvious is the central character of La voz dormida, Hortensia, who was a guerrillera. She was dressed in the same uniform as men, as it appears on the cover of the book. However, this description is weakened by the presence of a child, presumably to express the idea that a woman remains a (potential) mother. But the books also represent the internal tensions around questions of gender equality. For instance, in La voz dormida, when Hortensia joins the maquis, her husband tells her that it is no place for a woman.21 After Hortensia’s death, Felipe 18 Ángeles Caso, Un largo silencio (Barcelone: Planeta, 2006) [1st ed. 2000]. 19 Dulce Chacón, La voz dormida (Madrid: Alfaguara—Santillana, 2002). English translation: The Sleeping Voice, trans. Nick Caistor (Harvill Secker, 2006). 20 Jesús Ferrero, Las trece rosas (Madrid: Siruela, 2003). 21 Chacón, La voz dormida, 74.

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tolerates Elvira’s presence because she has some “masculine characteristics” (physical strength, bravery, short hair, political consciousness, etc.). Being a woman appears as a sufficient reason for not being able to fight. The only time Felipe seems to agree with Elvira’s role in the guerrilla war is when she is washing some clothes. He tells her she is doing it very well, and she protests: If you think I’m going to get married to do my husband’s laundry, you’re very naive. Those who want to have clean clothes must do the washing themselves. You haven’t learnt anything from the Republic, Mateo, the gentlemen’s era has ended.—[ … ] I don’t know what the hell they had to teach me.—That men and women are equal, do you understand it?—Equal in what? Washing the clothes?—And voting, for instance, they gave us suffrage for a reason. -But you mix up one thing with the other … you women cannot debate.22

Moreover one of the arguments of the Spanish Republic for taking women away from the front was fear of venereal disease. This irrational fear served the more and more diffused image of the female soldier who gradually becomes a prostitute.23 In Un largo silencio, Margarita considers herself apt to go to the front. But her mother refuses to take care of the children and says: “She says that she’s going to the war! Maybe as a whore, because she can’t do anything else … .”24 In La voz dormida, one of the companions deserts the camp to go to a brothel, claiming this to be a necessity for a good fighter. The Gender of War: Gendered Violence All three novels narrate numerous acts of violence inflicted on female bodies during the war. These acts of violence are often sexual in nature (rape attempts, sexual insults, etc.). A widespread humiliation represented in all three novels is hair shaving, which represents a way to deconstruct the gendered identity and depersonalize the victim. These episodes illustrate the desire to exhibit the body of the “sinner woman,” in order to reestablish the gendered social order.25 Then, 22 Ibid., 263. “Si te crees que yo voy a casarme para llevar limpio a mi marido estás tú bueno. El que quiera ir de limpio que se lave su ropa. No has aprendido nada de la República, Mateo, los tiempos de los señoritos se acabaron. [ … ]No sé qué carajo me habían de enseñar a mí. -Que los hombres y las mujeres somos iguales, a ver si te enteras. -¿Iguales para qué, para lavar la ropa? Y para votar, por ejemplo, que para algo nos dieron el sufragio. Pero qué tendrá que ver una cosa con la otra, las mujeres no sabéis discutir.” 23 Dolores Martín Moruno, “Un regard féminin sur la médecine: L’hygiène sexuelle dans la Guerre civile espagnole,” in Femmes en guerres, eds. Sophie Milquet and Madeleine Frédéric (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2011), 53–67. 24 Caso, Un largo silencio, 152. “Dice que a la guerra! Será de puta, porque de otra cosa … ” 25 Frédéric Baillette, “Organisations pileuses et positions politiques. Àpropos desdémêlésidéologico-capillaires,” quoted in Maud Joly, “De la corporéité de la guerre:

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the obligation to consume castor oil, represented in La voz dormida, must be understood in the same way. The diarrhea that it causes was supposed to give the community the spectacle of a red dirty woman. In a more indirect way, the Francoist system managed to break another possible component of female identity: motherhood.26 The attack on motherhood is represented in La voz dormida by Hortensia, who receives the exceptional grace to be killed only after having given birth to her daughter, but who will never know her daughter, and in Un largo silencio by Margarita who has to abandon her children to flee. The system was so pernicious that it managed to negate motherhood ex ante. There is also the case of a woman in La voz dormida who realizes that she is menopausal, a few days before leaving the prison, without having had the time to have children. This example shows us that even violence inflicted on both men as women (imprisonment) has a gendered component: being a prisoner does not mean the same for both man and woman. For example, La voz dormida also examines the lack of intimacy in the prison, which is particularly disturbing when women have to wash their sanitary towels. The Dialectic between Silence and Speech Having noted that the experiences in the three novels are largely gendered, I will now focus on the way these experiences are put into words. To be brief, the novels work within the dialectic between an imposed silence and the attempt to break it. This dialectic may of course also exist in the memorial expressions of men,27 but it has a peculiar relevance in the case of women, who face layers of gendered silencing. Silence is already mentioned in the peritext of our novels. The titles of Dulce Chacón and Ángeles Caso are quite explicit. The dedications also refer to silence: “To those who had to remain silent” and “To those who survived in silence to the defeat.”28 La voz dormida ends with a long acknowledgement where silence is again mentioned. In Chacón’s novel we can find an epigraph taken from a poem by Paul Celan (“Ein Lied in der Wüste,” 1952), referring to silence. An epigraph can be very important for the understanding of a novel. Indeed, it symbolically suggests corps de femmes et violence-spectacle dans la guerre civile espagnole,” in Femmes en guerres, 33. 26 Ricard Vinyes Ribas, Irredentas. Las presas politicas y sus hijos en las cárceles franquistas (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2002); Ricard Vinyes Ribas, Montserrat Armengou Martín and Ricard Belis i Garcia, Los niños perdidos del franquismo (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 2002). 27 The word “silence” appears in many novels, essays, documentaries and articles about the “general” experience of the Spanish Civil War and Dictatorship. 28 “A los que se vieron obligados a guardar silencio”; “a los que sobrevivieron en silencio a la derrota.”

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that the quoted author endorses the text.29 Paul Celan is known for defending the possibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz, and is often mentioned in the debates on the so-called “prohibition” by Theodor Adorno. For Dulce Chacón, quoting Paul Celan would therefore be a way to say literature is possible—or even necessary?—after the Spanish Civil War. Several types of silences thematized in the novels can be identified. The first one is the silence in the prison. In La voz dormida, the prisoners always whisper, and the author chooses to begin the novel in these terms: “The woman who was going to die was called Hortensia. She had blue eyes and she never spoke aloud.”30 The solitary confinement and the interdiction of visits are other common punishments. In the same way, when Hortensia knows that she is condemned to death, she says that she would like to tell it to Felipe because “the worst pain is not to be allowed to share pain.”31 In Las trece rosas, the references to silence focus on two types of sequences: the interrogations and the night before the execution: “She wanted to say something but the words didn’t go out,” “they kept silence,” “breaking her silence,” “she went on, silent,” “a dying silence prevailed once again in the room.” “The silence came back and the door opened.”32 It is interesting to note that in Un largo silencio, which is not centered on the prison experience, silence has contaminated the entire society. That is a second type of silence. For instance, Margarita takes the train with an old woman wearing black clothes, who tells Margarita: “What a long silence!” The narrator states: “Margarita will nod in agreement. Then they will smile at each other and they will follow their roads. Alone and silent.”33 Even the landscape appears as if it has been silenced. A further specific type of silence arises on account of the prohibition on mourning. More than being a simple consequence of the conflict, the prohibition on mourning symbolizes the extreme violence imposed on the vanquished in order to break the resistance of their families:34 The running rumors pointed out the trap set for those who recognized their dead. Only a few trusted they would have been given back the bodies, and they would have not been arrested and interrogated. The others looked at the portraits trying

29 Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Le Seuil, 1987), 147. 30 Chacón, La voz dormida, 13. “La mujer que iba a morir se llamaba Hortensia. Tenía los ojos azules y no hablaba nunca en voz alta.” 31 Ibid., 191. “El peor dolor es no poder compartir el dolor.” 32 Caso, Un largo silencio, 157–182. “Quería decir algo pero no le salían las palabras,” “guardaron silencio,” “rompiendo su silencio,” “siguió en silencio,” “Un silencio agónico volvió a reinar en la sala,” “Volvió el silencio y se abrió la puerta.” 33 Ibid., 182. “Qué silencio tan largo!” “Margarita asentirá. Luego se sonreirán y cada una seguirá su camino. Solas y calladas.” 34 Michael Richards, Un tiempo de silencio. La Guerra Civil y la cultura de la represión en la España de Franco, 1936–1945 (Barcelona: Crítica, 1999).

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The war appears to be experienced as a trauma. Thus, it is not surprising that some of the well-known stages of the trauma process described by Freud, like psychological repression, repetition compulsion or latency period, appear in the novels, within episodes that describe the prohibition on mourning.36 Dulce Chacón evokes the story of Tomasa, who never felt able to tell others what had happened to her: her relatives had been shot dead and the Falangists had let their bodies drift away in the river. She then develops a repetition compulsion (another element of the Freudian trauma) and keeps asking her inmates if they have ever seen the sea, where she imagines her relatives’ corpses rest. In the character of Teresa in Un largo silencio, the latency period is noticeable. When she is told in prison that her boyfriend is dead, she is unable to cry, until she goes back home and realizes that the Nationalists took her piano away. This event reactivates the previous trauma of death. The silence thus comes from a double logic: political (as a tool of repression) and psychological. The same duality can be founded in speech, which is both an attempt to leave the trauma behind and a way to oppose power imbalances.37 It is strongly thematized in the novels, which insist on the moment of this “birth of/to speech.” That is the case of Tomasa who will “be born to speech” by trying to survive: Tomasa could not say goodbye to Hortensia. Our only duty is to survive, Hortensia said at the last assembly she attended. To survive. Tomasa will not allow the pain to crush her to the ground. To survive. Madness. Silence is patrolling. Silence is on patrol and so is madness. To survive. It patrols and patrols. To survive. And to tell the story, so that madness does not go with silence. She stands up and cries out. To survive is to resist. She cries out to fill the silence with the story, with her story, her own story.38 35 Chacón, La voz dormida, 303. “Los rumores que corrían señalaban la trampa en la que caerían los que reconocieran a sus muertos. Sólo unos pocos confiaban en que les entregarían los cadáveres, y no serían detenidos ni interrogados. Los demás miraban los retratos procurando controlar la emoción para que su rostro no les delatara al conocer la muerte de los suyos. Miraban. Guardaban silencio y se alejaban sin un gesto de dolor, sin una lágrima.” 36 Sigmund Freud, Cinq leçons sur la psychanalyse (Paris: Payot, 1923) [1st ed.: 1909]. 37 Renée Gendron, “The Meanings of Silence during Conflict,” Journal of Conflictology 2 (2011), accessed March 10, 2012, http://www.uoc.edu/ojs/index.php/ journal-of-conflictology/article/view/vol2iss1-gendron. 38 Chacón, La voz dormida, 213. “Tomasa no pudo despedirse de Hortensia. [ … ] Nuestra única obligación es sobrevivir, había dicho Hortensia en la última asamblea a la que ella asistió. Sobrevivir. Tomasa no permitirá que el dolor la aplaste contra el suelo.

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Once women are sentenced to death, their only hope is to survive in the collective memory. Julia Conesa, one of the 13 roses also represented in La voz dormida, writes to her mother: “May my name not be erased from history.”39 In a similar vein the brother of one of the 13 roses writes on a piece of wood: “Here lies ANA, deceased on 5th August 1939, alive in our memory”40 and puts it on the mass grave. In the book, this sentence is typographically set apart, as it really was written on a tomb. In this way, literature assumes a ritualizing function. The three authors also insist on their own acts of speech, by writing and publishing about a silenced topic. Significantly, they express this idea in numerous interviews, positioning themselves as memorial mediators. For example, Ángeles Caso stated in an interview: “They were mistreated, humiliated, chased, subjected to fear … and I wanted to give them back the voice and pay a kind of literary tribute to them with this book, because I think it has not been done yet.”41 Collective Voicing The expression of this dialectic between silence and speech can take different forms among which, for reasons of length constraints, I will only talk about polyphony, which appears at four different levels. The last three of them are especially noticeable in La voz dormida. By means of this polyphony, the novels resist—in the French feminist logic –the monolithic male language (H. Cixous, J. Kristeva, L. Irigaray) and, therefore, the canonical war story. Their objective is not to reveal the bravery of one single person, but to show the interconnections, which are, at the same time, respectful of individual subjectivities. The first level concerns the global structure of the novel. It is quite explicit in the works by Caso and Ferrero. Indeed, most chapters in those works are dedicated to a single woman and her point of view on war and repression. For example, in Las trece rosas, the chapters are entitled according to the roses’ names. Symbolically, the external narrator lends his voice to each woman. The second level is especially noticeable in La voz dormida. Like in the other two novels, the narrative voice focuses on several women with various experiences Sobrevivir. [ … ] Locura. Ronda el silencio. El silencio hace su ronda y ronda la locura. Sobrevivir. Y ronda y ronda. [ … ] Sobrevivir. Y contar la historia, para que la locura no acompañe al silencio. [ … ] Se levanta y grita. [ … ] Resistir es vencer. Grita para llenar el silencio con la historia, con su historia, la suya.” 39 Ibid., 199. “Que mi nombre no se borre de la historia.” 40 Ferrero, Las trece rosas, 214. “Aquí yace ANA, muerta el 5 agosto de 1939, viva en nuestro recuerdo.” 41 Marta Iglesias, “Entrevista con Ángeles Caso,” Revista Fusion, 2001, accessed January 13, 2011, http://www.revistafusion.com/2001/mayo/entrev92.htm. “Fueron maltratadas, humilladas, perseguidas, sometidas al miedo … y yo quería devolverles la voz y hacerles una especie de homenaje literario con este libro, porque creo que no se les ha hecho todavía.”

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of war. The event itself does not only convey a single meaning; rather, it echoes differently with each character.42 But the mode of expression is more sophisticated here: to the prisoners’ stories are added their friends’ narratives. For example, it is Tomasa who first narrated Reme’s story.43 The most striking example is perhaps the famous episode of the “thirteen roses,” each time narrated differently, depending on the character’s recollections. For instance, Reme remembers the announcement of their execution, and Elvira remembers their departure. An entire network of memories is thus deployed, forming a kind of collective memory with an apparent coherence. This obviously coincides with the reflections of Maurice Halbwachs: although we always remember in the singular, gathering into a group confers a shape to individual memories.44 Others memories are represented (e.g., the male combatant or the second generation with Hortensia’s daughter). This does not mean there is a conflict between women’s and men’s memories; rather it points to a “particular perspective” over the vanquished memory.45 In the same novel, there is interplay between the different levels of narration. The narrator’s voice echoes the characters’ voices, as if he would give them support. This is the third level of polyphony. Therefore, the narration alternates between direct and indirect discourses: – I had four children, and a grand-daughter. She tells she had four children, and a grand-daughter, and the child died of starvation in Los Santos de Maimona. – She died. Her name was Carmen. Carmen, Carmencita, my baby. And she cries out that the child’s mother was a wet nurse. – She used to breastfeed two twins in Zafra, and her breast was not enough for the three of them.46 42 This issue is discussed in Kathryn Everly, “Women, War and Words in La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón,” in Women in the Spanish Novel Today: Essays on the Reflection of Self in the Works of Three Generations, eds. Kyra A. Kietrys and Montserrat Linares (Jefferson: McFarland, 2009). 43 Chacón, La voz dormida, 48–52. 44 Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994) [1sted. 1925]. 45 Joël Candau, “Conflits de mémoire: pertinence d’une métaphore?” in Conflits de mémoire, ed. V. Bonnet (Paris: Éditions Khartala, 2004), 28. 46 Chacón, La voz dormida, 213–214. “– Yo tenía cuatro hijos, y una nieta. | Cuenta que tenía cuatro hijos, y una nieta, y que la niña se les murió de hambre en Los Santos de Maimona. | – Se nos murió. Se llamaba Carmen, Carmencita, mi niña. | Y grita que la madre de la niña era ama de cría. | – Le daba de mamar a dos mellizos en Zafra, y para los tres no le llegaba la teta.”

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The authors’ commitment to the reconstruction of women’s memory can be considered the third key point. All the novels give voice to numerous women, each of whom narrates the stories of other women, besides her own story. Writing and publishing on this topic is a social act, but by interviewing women who had not spoken for years, Dulce Chacón offered them the opportunity to overcome their trauma and to include their story in the collective memory—or at least present it like that. The author insists on the importance of her interviewing work for the women in the long acknowledgments that close the book and in numerous press articles. She even arranged for an old woman who had inspired the character of Pepita to accompany her to the award ceremony for a literary prize in 2002. Conclusion Novels are social objects in that they are conditioned by memorial representations circulating at a specific moment in society. They can also actively contribute to the constitution of collective memory and identity. Along the same line, an author can be regarded as homo agens,47 an agent that has the capacity to affect the social commemoration processes. Literature becomes a “site of memory” (like a monument, a minute of silence or a flag) of a unique experience that it had previously lacked, like women’s memories of war.48 To that memorial ambition is added another one: opening a space of expression to those who had to be silent for such a long time. It is obvious in Chacón and Ferrero’s cases: the former leads discussions for four years with ex-prisoners of the Francoist prisons and their family circles, whereas the latter investigated real people (the 13 roses), even if reality is fictionalized in his novel. However, even a novel that does not claim to be based on real facts (as in Caso’s case) can reveal an historical process (showing the “war of genders,” the gendering of war and the tension between silence and speech). Fiction and history do not necessarily oppose each other when it comes to the reality of represented events, and literature concerning women’s war experiences can be understood as a “means of making the past intelligible.”49

47 The expression is taken from Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, eds., War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1999), re-used by Ana Luengo in La encrucijada de la memoria—La memoria colectiva de la Guerra Civil Española en la novela contemporánea (Berlin: Tranvia, 2004), 22. 48 Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1997) [1st ed.: 1984–1992]. 49 Patrick Boucheron, “Ce que la littérature comprend de l’histoire,” accessed June 20, 2011, http://www.scienceshumaines.com/ce-que-la-litterature-comprend-de-l-histoire_ fr_25809.html.

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References Aguilar, Paloma. “La evocación de la guerra y del franquismo en la política, la cultura y la sociedad españolas.” In Memoria de la guerra y delfranquismo, edited by Juliá Santos, 279–317. Madrid: Taurus, 2006. Boucheron, Patrick. “Ce que la littérature comprend de l’histoire.” Accessed June 20, 2011. http://www.scienceshumaines.com/ce-que-la-litterature-comprendde-l-histoire_fr_25809.html. Bussy Genevois, Danièle. “Femmes d’Espagne—De la République au franquisme.” In Histoire des femmes en Occident V. Le XXe siècle, edited by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, 267–286. Paris: Perrin, 2002. Candau, Joël. “Conflits de mémoire: pertinence d’une métaphore?” In Conflits de mémoire, edited by V. Bonnet, 21–32. Paris: Éditions Khartala, 2004. Caso, Ángeles. Un largo silencio. Barcelone: Planeta, 2006. Chacón, Dulce. La voz dormida. Madrid: Alfaguara-Santillana, 2002. Chacón, Dulce. The Sleeping Voice. Translated by Nick Caistor. Harvill Secker, 2006. Cuevas, Tomasa. Cárcel de mujeres. Barcelona: Sirocco, 1985. Cuevas, Tomasa. Mujeres de la Resistencia. Barcelona: Sirocco, 1986. Cuevas, Tomasa. Mujeres de la resistencia, Mujeres en las cárceles and Presas en Las Ventas, Segovia y Les Corts. Barcelona: RBA, 2006. Cuevas, Tomasa. Presas: mujeres en las cárceles franquistas. Barcelona: Icaria, 2005. Cuevas, Tomasa. Testimonios de mujeres en las cárceles franquistas. Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses, 2004. Doña, Juana. Depuis la nuit et le brouillard. Femmes dans les prisons franquistes. Translated by Ángelez Muñoz. Aden: Brussels, 2009. Doña, Juana. Desde la noche y la niebla (mujeres en las cárcelesfranquistas). Madrid: La Torre, 1978. Doña, Juana. Desde la noche y la niebla (mujeres en las cárceles franquistas. Madrid: Horas y Horas, 2012. Everly, Kathryn. “Women, War and Words in La voz dormida by Dulce Chacón.” In Women in the Spanish Novel Today: Essays on the Reflection of Self in the Works of Three Generations, edited by Kyra A. Kietrys and Montserrat Linares, 92–111. Jefferson: McFarland, 2009. Ferrero, Jesús. Las trece rosas. Madrid: Siruela, 2003. Fiol Bosch, Esperança et al. Historia de la misoginia. Barcelona: Anthropos, 1999. Freud, Sigmund. Cinq leçons sur la psychanalyse. Paris: Payot, 1923. Gendron, Renée. “The Meanings of Silence during Conflict.” Journal of Conflictology 2 (2011). Accessed March 10, 2012. http://www.uoc.edu/ojs/ index.php/journal-of-conflictology/article/view/vol2iss1-gendron. Genette, Gérard. Seuils. Paris: Le Seuil, 1987. Halbwachs, Maurice. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel, 1994.

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Hamel, Yan. La bataille des mémoires. La Seconde Guerre mondiale et le roman français. Montreal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2006. Iglesias, Marta. “Entrevista con Ángeles Caso.” Revista Fusion, 2001. Accessed January 13, 2011. http://www.revistafusion.com/2001/mayo/entrev92.htm. Joly, Maud. “De la corporéité de la guerre: corps de femmes et violence-spectacle dans la guerre civile espagnole.” In Femmes en guerres, edited by Sophie Milquet and Madeleine Frédéric, 27–38. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2011. Joly, Maud. “Guerre Civile, violences et mémoires: retour des victimes et des émotions collectives dans la société espagnole contemporaine.” In Entre mémoire collective et histoire officielle. L’histoire du temps présent en Amérique latine et en Espagne, edited by Luc Capdevila and Frédérique Langue, 113–125. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009. Lines, Lisa. “Female Combatants in the Spanish Civil War: Milicianas on the Front Lines and in the Rearguard.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 10 (2009): 168–187. Luengo, Ana. La encrucijada de la memoria—La memoria colectiva de la Guerra Civil Española en la novela contemporánea. Berlin: Tranvia, 2004. Moruno Martín, Dolores. “Un regard féminin sur la médecine: L’hygiène sexuelle dans la Guerre civile espagnole.” In Femmes en guerres, edited by Sophie Milquet and Madeleine Frédéric, 53–67. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2011. Muñoz Maryse, Bertrand de. “La mujer, la novela y la guerra civil Española.” In Actas del Congreso internacional La Guerra Civil Española 1936–1939 (Sociedad estatal de las conmemoraciones culturales, 2006). Accessed December 20, 2009. http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2574435. Nora, Pierre, editor. Les lieux de mémoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Olmedo, Virginia. “Entrevista. Dulce Chacón. Las mujeres perdieron la guerra dos veces.” Accessed March 26, 2011. http://perso.wanadoo.es/guerracivilcc/ dulce.pdf. Richards, Michael. Un tiempo de silencio. La Guerra Civil y la cultura de la represión en la España de Franco, 1936–1945. Barcelona: Crítica, 1999. Romeu Alfaro, Fernanda. El silencio roto. Mujeres contra el franquismo. Mataró: El viejo topo, 2002. Vinyes Ribas, Ricard. Irredentas. Las presas politicas y sus hijos en las cárceles franquistas. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2002. Vinyes Ribas, Ricard, Montserrat Armengou Martín and Ricard Belis i Garcia. Los niños perdidos del franquismo. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 2002. Winter, Jay and Sivan Emmanuel, editors. War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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Chapter 10

Forgotten Perpetrators: Photographs of Female Perpetrators after WWII Andrea Pető

In January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a donation of a photograph album with the inscription “Auschwitz 21.6.1944” consisting of Karl Höcker’s photographs of his service years in Auschwitz. In Höcker’s Auschwitz album there are no photographs of prisoners, unlike in the parallel Auschwitz Album donated by Lili Jacob in 1983 to Yad Vashem, which aimed to demonstrate how inmates were handled there. The photographs of the Höcker Album show female guards at Auschwitz enjoying themselves while off duty. This series of photographs stimulated a new debate around how undertheorized the research on female perpetrators is. The surprise and uneasiness surrounding the Höcker album reflected the fact that the presence of women among the camp guards is a rarely discussed element in historiography, and where it has been discussed, the women are usually framed as beasts, not as normal, diligent, reliable workers who love to have fun while off duty. This discussion spots a void in the literature on political violence, namely the portrayal of female perpetrators.1 Recent research has tried to map the participation of women at every level of the Nazi state, not only focusing on concentration camp guards and wives.2 The representational deficit, namely that no woman is a part of the visual canon of Nazi Germany other than the “beasts” and the wives (“Women of the Nazis”), has several political consequences. This chapter analyzes this representational deficit in an even more complex setting—post-WWII Hungary, which has yet to face the complicity and active participation of the Hungarian state in the killing of its citizens. This deficit is even timelier to investigate as Hungarian public life 1 Anette Kretzer, NS-Täterschaft und Geschlecht. Der erste britische RavensbrückProzess 1946/47 in Hamburg (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2009); Claudia Taake, Angeklagt. SS-Frauen vor Gericht (Oldenburg: Universität Oldenburg, 1998); Gudrun Schwarz, “Verdrängte Täterinnen. Frauen im Apparat der SS (1939–1945),” in Nach Osten. Verdeckte Spuren nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, ed. Theresa Wobbe (Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1992), 197–227. 2 Elizabeth Harvey,”Management and Manipulation: Nazi Settlement Planners and Ethnic German Settlers in Occupied Poland,” in Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, eds. Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (New York: Routledge, 2005), 95–112.

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was shaken at the time of the 2010 parliamentary election when 17 percent of the popular vote was won by a far-right party that shows continuity—in terms of symbology and rhetoric—with the right-wing extremist party of the pre-1945 period. The latter, the Arrow Cross Party, was in part responsible for Hungary’s defeat in World War II and for the death of half a million of the country’s Jewish citizens. The period that began with the political changes of 1989 and culminated in the victory of the right wing in the 2010 election has seen a gradual questioning of earlier anti-fascist historical interpretations and the incipient rehabilitation of the pre-World War II era. The collapse of communism in 1989 reopened the public debate on anti-fascism, and history in Eastern Europe, has become an unfinished history. This chapter, as part of a larger work examining transitional justice in the post-World War II period from a feminist gendered perspective, analyzes how this past—divided and unfinished in terms of (the role of) the perpetrators—is shaped by, and in return shapes, the visual representation. I examine the paradox that although photography and film were already well established in Hungary by the outbreak of World War II, very few photographs of extremist right-wing women engaged in political activity during the war are to be found in the accessible public collections.3 Why are such pictures missing from the public collections and from newspaper reports on the political justice process after World War II? Why was there a failure to document female war criminals in a country in which, only a few years earlier (in a two-month period in 1944), 460,000 Jews had been transported to concentrations camps (mostly to Auschwitz) and where 10 to 30 percent of Hungarian women had given their support to the Arrow Cross Party?4 Why are women, who constituted 10 percent of war criminals sentenced in the aftermath of World War II, absent from the photographs? Why were the female executees erased from historical memory, even though Hungary—among all the countries formerly allied with Germany—carried out the highest number of female executions following people’s court trials?5 Even where photos of the women do exist, they tend to be hidden away in uncataloged archive boxes or inaccessible private collections. How did these photographs become forgotten pictures?6 What is the relationship between the failure to remember and Hungary’s

3 Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, Police History Museum (Budapest), Hungarian Museum of Photography (Kecskemét), Getty Collection, Photo Archives of the Hungarian News Agency. 4 The wide range is due to two factors: regional differences (in some areas membership was 30 percent, in others it was closer to 10 percent) and uncertainity in numbers as membership files have not been made available to me. Andrea Pető, “Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants,” Baltic Worlds 3–4 (2009): 48–52. 5 The number of executed women in Hungary is seven. 6 Andrea Pető, “Who is Afraid of the ‘Ugly Women’? Problems of Writing Biographies of Nazi and Fascist Women in Countries of the Former Soviet Block,” Journal of Women’s History 4 (2009): 147–151.

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divided memory of World War II, and how is this relationship shaped by gender?7 How has this situation been altered by the Internet and the publication of these formerly “forgotten” pictures (showing right-wing extremist women and female perpetrators) by today’s far-right websites? Absent Female War Criminals: The Reasons for the Representational Deficit There are several reasons for the representational deficit in collective memory as far as female perpetrators are concerned. One reason—as has been shown in various works on the political role of far-right women—is the general invisibility of women in the right-wing extremist movements: a manifestation of this was that women’s activities in political life were rarely photographed. Women were typically marginalized in politics, and in this respect the extremist right-wing political parties were no exception. Examining the photos that have been found, we see only secretaries or shorthand recorders.8 Yet there were, in the Arrow Cross Party, several charismatic female leaders, of whom there are no surviving photographs. Many women worked in the extremist right-wing parties both in peacetime and during the war; as in other party apparatuses they tended to be employed in administrative positions.9 The formality of party life is manifest in the group photo taken at the time of a visit to Kassa (today Kosice, Slovakia) by Ferenc Szálasi, the Arrow Cross leader10 The photograph of members of the Arrow Cross women’s organization celebrating St Francis’ Day follows the usual iconography.11 The Arrow Cross Party seized power in Hungary on October 15, 1944, following Horthy’s unsuccessful attempt to exit the war. At the time the Red Army had already reached the country’s eastern borders. Arrow Cross rule was brutal and short-lived (lasting barely six months). If we look at a photo taken during an Arrow Cross congress at the House of Loyalty (the party’s headquarters), we find—among the many men—Mrs. Thoma and Mrs. Dücső, two rival Arrow Cross females leaders, who are seated far apart (Figure 10.1).12  7 Andrea Pető and Klaartje Schrijvers, “Introduction,” in Faces of Death. Visualising History (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Pisa University Press, 2009), xi–xix.  8 Klára Kovács, secretary of Szálasi keeps the minutes, Getty Collection, 508770000, and Meeting of the Great Arrow Cross Council at the House of Loyalty, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 1489–1954. Interestingly this latter photo was published on www.suttogo.hu without the secretaries.  9 József Varga and Mrs. Károly Kis, www.suttogo.hu, Meeting, www.suttogo.hu, 10 Szálasi visits the women’s section in Kassa, Vojtech Kárpáty private collection. 11 The party celebrates the name day of Ferenc in the 9th district of Budapest in 1940, www.suttogo.hu. 12 Meeting at the House of Loyalty, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 1511–1954.

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Figure 10.1 Meeting at the House of Loyalty

Source: Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 1511–1954.

This is the only surviving photograph of the two women. The uniformed women serve as illustrations in the life of the extremist right-wing party, and the attractiveness and photogenic appearance also plays a role in selecting female activists for public meetings.13 Of course, wives are also present in the photographs; they embody the middle-class ideal and are portrayed as loyal supporters of their husbands, who hold important positions in the party. An example is the wife of Kálmán Hubay, who was leader of the Arrow Cross Party during Szálasi’s prison years and who became Minister of Culture under Arrow Cross rule.14 The second reason for why few photos have survived is that the 1940s was the era of iconoclasm. Although I examined many hundreds of files created by the people’s tribunals, I found not a single photograph: photographs were not used as evidence. A crucial scene in Costa-Gavras’s film Music Box is when the music box starts to produce self-documentary images of the atrocities perpetrated by the Arrow Cross in Budapest. I found no such pictures in the people’s tribunal files or in museum collections. This raises questions about the relationship between the tribunal and photographs as evidence. The surviving photographs do not document the criminal 13 János Salló at the opening of the exhibition of the National Front in 1939, Getty Collection, 50440527. 14 Kálmán Hubay and his wife, www.suttogo.hu, originally from Getty Collection.

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acts as such, but instead they document the justice process. This supports the hypothesis that the people’s tribunals played a key role in establishing memory of the war.15 Even where a person did take a picture of an atrocity, he or she would normally destroy it—out of fear of being held responsible. Thus the most important attribute of a photograph—its evidential power stemming from synchronicity—was lost. The Hungarian Museum of Photography in Kecskemét has collected private photographs from this period. It was at the Museum that I discovered a private photo of a woman in military clothing posing in her garden, which shows that women too were affected by the power (and security) of a uniform. The picture was not taken for a wider public, and it is only now that it has entered the public domain.16 But as in the case of the other pictures, we do not know who took it. The third reason for the scarcity of photos is the dominant anti-fascist discourse of the post-1945 period, which left no space for them, thus making it impossible to share memories or to illustrate them. It is no accident that the photos analyzed here have come from private collections and are now being used to document “history” as interpreted by the far-right website Suttogó [Whisperer]. The website’s name reflects its founders’ perception that “true” knowledge can only be whispered—as the dominant anti-fascist discourse silences “true patriots.” The photos that we have analyzed establish a special social time, for these pictures were not part of the public discourse and were “overseen” during the post-World War II period. The significance of the content of the photographs changes continuously, for it was only after 1989 and the advent of the Internet that Suttogó, the far-right website, made what had been family photos accessible to the public. Women in Photographs Showing the Political Justice System in Operation The other half of the excavated photographic sources relate to the participation of women in the people’s tribunals. The portrait of Gizella Lutz, the wife of Szálasi, was made at no. 60 Andrássy Street, the headquarters of the powerful Department of State Protection (Figure 10.2). It would seem that the powerful head of this department, Gábor Péter, made great efforts to ensure that the interrogation of war criminals was documented. Thus, sources pertaining to this process are abundant.17 It was here, at the Department of State Protection or secret police headquarters, that during his interrogation Szálasi showed to the camera an Arrow Cross handkerchief that had been embroidered by members of the Arrow Cross women’s movement; this illustrates the contradictory relationship of the Arrow Cross

15 Andrea Pető, “Problems of Transitional Justice in Hungary. An Analysis of the People’s Tribunals in Post-War Hungary and the Treatment of Female Perpetrators,” Zeitgeschichte 3 (2007): 335–349. 16 Woman in Uniform, Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskemét, 0144063. 17 Portrait of the wife of Szálasi, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum.

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Figure 10.2 Portrait of the wife of Szálasi

Source: Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum.

women’s movement to female work; as I demonstrated previously, embroidery was of no interest to most of the Arrow Cross’s female members.18 Many photos of the people’s tribunal trials have survived—a significant number of which were taken by private individuals. Based on the documentation, many women attended the trials (Figure 10.3).19 Many men were still being held as prisoners-of-war, while others were working. The documentation of crimes by means of official photographs helped the people’s courts to reach their goal of “searing” into citizens’ consciousness what is good (Figure 10.4).20 For this reason, the Hungarian daily newspapers and newsreels carried an abundance of pictures of war criminals under prosecution, all of whom were male. A photograph of the exhumation of a site in Maros Street is the only one to show a woman: apparently, she had taken an active part in the murder of patients at the Jewish hospital. 18 Szálasi at no. 60 Andrássy Street; during his interrogation he shows a handkerchief made for him by women in the party, Photo Archives of the Hungarian News Agency, FMAFI 1945–34036. 19 Women participating as audience at the people’s tribunal, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 64–730. 20 Massacre in Maros utca, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 00002916.

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Figure 10.3 Women participating as audience at the people’s tribunal Source: Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum 64–730.

Figure 10.4 Massacre in Maros utca

Source: Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 00002916.

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Figure 10.5 Manci

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Source: Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 83–766.

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As far as our research is concerned, the most interesting collection is held by the Police History Museum in Budapest. Not only do we receive a glimpse of the hot and stuffy atmosphere of the people’s tribunal trials, but also we get closer to the women perpetrators, for they receive “faces.”21 The collection consists of photographs commissioned by the police to document the process of the trials. Here we return to the traditional documentary function of the photograph to document what actually has happened. The women brought before the people’s tribunal, whose trials were held in the university auditorium or who awaited their fate while sat on the narrow benches of the accused, were “unrecognized social actors” until the discovery of the photos. We do not know who took the photos: the crime reporter, a family member of one of the victims, or someone else. Evidently, however, the photographs found their way into the collection of the Police History Museum, and in this way these private photos became community photos, serving as illustrations of the discourse on female war criminals. The most important picture as far as this chapter is concerned is found in the photographic archives of the Hungarian National Museum among photographs relating to the people’s court; it is entitled “Manci” (Figure 10.5).22 If we manage to overcome our surprise that in recent decades not one researcher bothered to change this sexist title—for to my knowledge none of the executed female war criminals was called Margit (and Manci is a nickname for Margit)—we can then analyze the picture as a metonymy. This does not mean what it was in the past, but what it remains even today—a part of our everyday lives. In this way we close the gap between then and now. If we interpret the picture in this manner, the photograph receives a presence rather than a meaning. Its presence in the collection in a non-catalogued and marginalized way is the historical fact, not the meaning which is difficult to attribute as basic information is missing. My purpose, here, is to present the current presence/existence of the past and to reveal those points that are, in an unfinished and unprocessed manner, a part of our present reality. Although seven women were executed as war criminals in Hungary, we have only a single photograph of a female execution. The photo seems to show one of the seven women. We may think we know which one, but it is not the name but the absence of a name that must be the subject of this research. It is disturbing to look at this picture.23 Thus, it is important to bear in mind Liebman’s methodological consideration, which he referred to as “double vision.”24 Liebman also argues that when viewing photos of an execution, the researcher is 21 The trial of Balogh, Police History Museum (Budapest), 385. 22 Manci, Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, 83–766. 23 For an analysis of photos documenting the execution of war criminals, see Andrea Pető, “Death and the Picture. Representation of War Criminals and Construction of Divided Memory about WWII in Hungary,” in Faces of Death. Visualising History, eds. Andrea Pető and Klaaertje Schrijvers, 39–57. 24 Janet Liebman, “Women, Genocide and Memory. The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research,” Gender and Society 18 (2004): 223–238.

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both a witness of the event and a historian collecting qualitative material. The other methodological challenge is that if we know that history is written by the victors, then we may also suppose that the victors are the ones photographing as a tool of dominating narratives about the events. At the same time, this picture had been hidden in the “miscellaneous” box of the National Museum until I found it and decided to publish it. We must ask ourselves what will be the impact of publishing this picture: Will it help to make truth part of consciousness by showing how those women that reported on Jews or stole Jewish property were subsequently punished as this was the major crime which brought women to justice? Concerning the analysis of visual sources, Perlmutter established the criteria on which basis such sources are established, accepted and interpreted.25 The function of a photograph is to present an event, and in doing so it shapes popular memory. A great many official and private photographs were taken of war criminals, but only one of them—an undated photo—shows the execution of a woman. Looking at old photographs is a part of the “processing” (Verarbeitung) of the past, and so the fact that the photo of “Manci” has remained invisible until now is important. According to Barthes, a photograph has no meaning of itself, and it is only in dialogue with other sources that a meaning emerges.26 For this reason, we need to determine why the female perpetrators were forgotten. Were they forgotten because of the lack of a dialogue or because of the lack of a framework for such a dialogue? We may also analyze the picture from an iconographic standpoint. The photographer was facing the woman; as she awaited her execution on the gallows, an executed corpse covered in a sheet lay alongside her. We see no other onlooker, which is unusual, as executions were generally attended by large numbers of people. The aim or task of the photograph’s maker was apparently to document the carrying-out of the sentence. Foucault linked the notions of gaze and power, for disciplinary power also operates using visual means. A public execution is a means of this. At the same time, “visual truth” does not always accord with the truth of the justice system, for in the picture we see a fragile woman in clean but modest clothing: she seems almost to be preparing for martyrdom. The various cultures of memory clash when it comes to interpreting the picture. Visual memory of the execution of war criminals in Hungary has portrayed them as martyrs, and the execution of “Manci” is no exception.27 This was not so in the case of the photographs depicting the men executed at Nuremberg. The iconography used in Hungary, however, undermines the anti-fascist discourse in which the executions took place. As early as 1764, Cesare Beccaria argued that execution is the state’s weapon against uncooperative individuals.28 But if pictures of an executed person 25 David Perlmutter, “Visual Historical Method Problems, Prospects, Applications,” Historical Method 4 (1994): 167–184. 26 Roland Barthes, “Rhetoric of Image,” in The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (New York: Routledge, 2002), 70–73. 27 Pető, “Death and the Picture. Representation of War Criminals,” 39–57. 28 Cesare Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, (1764).

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evoke feelings of sympathy and sorrow in viewers, then the execution has not fulfilled the disciplinary function anticipated by the state. On seeing the photo, many people will wonder why the woman’s cardigan was the main concern of the man supervising the execution, given that the woman would be dead within minutes. It is this humane gesture that renders “Manci” first and foremost a victim, whereby the crimes she committed were left to fade into oblivion. Not only is the female war criminal forgotten, but also the crime she has committed; in this way the true victims become invisible in history. For researchers of this period, sites and modes of silencing are becoming a historical fact itself which should be analyzed while explaining how gendered memory of WWII has been constructed. It was the “new cultural history” school that in its methodology turned away from the idea of visual sources of history as the documentation of reality and which focused instead on representation.29 Photographs may be analyzed not only as descriptive means for the documentation of historical truth but also as a visual discourse that tells the story of the visual representation of right-wing extremist women. The photographs are determined by absence: there are no pictures, or if there are some, we do not know who took them and what they depict. Based on Carol Zemel’s theoretical approach, the photos are emblems of the past.30 Unknown, forgotten and absent photos belong just as much to the documentary function of photographs as to the emblematic function. Why did the producers of the photographs choose this kind of representational form, if their goal was to preserve the subject of the photograph for collective memory? The question of what and who are chosen to be photographed receives a political relevance as this is a process of building up an archive of the past for future generations to read and interpret. The photograph is mediating the past to us, and therefore the framing of the photo and the accessibility of the photo are crucial issues. The photographs published here were intended to be forgotten; no one thought that—by means of this chapter too—they would become iconic pictures. The “Memory Boom” and Photographs of the Perpetrators Historians have at their disposal not only written sources, but also—from the midtwentieth century onwards—visual sources, the use of which requires a special methodology. According to Manovich, the distinct borders between production and consumption have been blurred by the new media.31 This means that those who 29 Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001); Natalie Zemon Davis, Slaves on Screen. Film and Historical Vision (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 30 Carol Zemel, “Emblems of Atrocity. Holocaust Liberation Photographs,” in Image and Remembrance. Representation and the Holocaust, eds. Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 201–219. 31 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

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took the photograph of Szálasi’s visit to Kassa (Kosice) and preserved it for decades under difficult circumstances in a private collection in communist Czechoslovakia or those who published—15 years after the collapse of communism—a group photograph of smiling Arrow Cross party workers, not only produced a picture but also contributed to the creation of a new knowledge and a new memory. This is why the increasing number of far-right websites is so crucial to the memory boom after 1989, for they opened, to a wider audience, locations of memory that had previously been closed or private. Their aim was to emancipate their own history, to make it possible to tell and represent their history—which had not been an option before. A photograph also signifies a memory space in which counter-memories can be formed, for photographs represent a repeat socialization: we are likely to look at a photograph more than once. As time passes, the memories associated with a photograph will change, but the location and occasion of remembrance will be the viewing of the picture. This is possible in various visual narrative modes, whereby opportunities arise for injustices to be exposed from the perspective of the subjective historical actor. Photographs have no meaning in themselves, but they acquire meaning within the narrative of the interpretative framework.32 In 1945 and after 1989, similar changes occurred in the narrative frame; a space was created for the reinterpretation of the lives and deeds of those accused by the people’s tribunals. The spaces communicate with each other, for when previously “unknown”—that is, unpublished—photographs of Arrow Cross members or supporters were published, they immediately found their way to the far-right “Hungarista” website. This is why I stress the need for a reverse process, whereby photos of the far-right movement that have been lurking in private collections and whose owners have uploaded them to the Suttogó [Whisperer] website should find their place in the mainstream of historical criticism, thereby establishing a muchneeded dialogue on our evaluation of the past. When analyzing photographs, we should take four criteria into consideration: the material of the photo, its selection, provisionality and authenticity.33 Concerning the material of the photographs: the pictures showing the “Arrow Cross women” are preserved as prints in the museums. In the collection of the Hungarian News Agency (MTI), the negatives—the originals—are also present, as the photographs are stills captured from newsreels or the roll of film came directly from the photographer. Aware of historical trends, Life magazine hired a photographer to produce pictures of emerging right-wing extremist politicians in the interwar period and then, for a substantial sum, had the negatives enlarged. The first group of photographs published here were stored in an unsystematic miscellaneous box for decades, and they had never been cataloged. Photographs documenting the people’s tribunals are somewhat more ordered and were correctly labeled “miscellaneous photographs of the people’s tribunals.” 32 Pető, “Death and the Picture. Representation of War Criminals,” 39–57. 33 Pető and Schrijvers, “Introduction,” xi–xix.

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I have already referred to the selection aspects (what factors determine whether a picture will be forgotten or become iconic). But a further aspect must also be noted, namely the issue of their mass availability. The photographs became widely available when they were published by such press outlets as Life magazine, whose archive is now managed by Getty Images. When the photographs belonging to Getty Images became researchable online, the material relating to the Hungarista movement immediately appeared on the Suttogó [Whisperer] website, thereby creating a cycle in which the representations “return” to the representational milieu. A special feature of this cycle is that the period between its two extremes is the era of both World War II and the Cold War, as well as the transition following the collapse of communism. Yet the pictures are uploaded to the site without any critical reflection; it is as if 70 years had never even passed. The provisionality of a photograph has two dimensions: the survival of the photo and its internal provisionality. Photographs transform reality into something memorable. As soon as the exposure button on a camera is pressed, the present becomes the past, a “frozen memory” and a privileged representation. Thereafter the object of the photographs is lost; it is only present in the form of a memory. This past is an unfinished past, which creates parallel pasts in viewers. A regular visitor to the Suttogó [Whisperer] website and a historian will look differently at a picture. For both of them the process of canonizational interpretation is underway, even if the interpretation occurs along opposing value axes. The question concerns the monopoly of interpretation: who has the right to say what we (should) see in the photo. Thus, returning to the main question, that of the divided memory of the war, we can state that the interpretation of photographs has also contributed to the development of a divided memory. An important part of World War II history—female perpetrators—became invisible in collective memory, owing to the absence of visual representation. However, the special features of the photographic genre mean that it also offers an opportunity to go beyond this division. In this way, groups of alternative collective memories are established—which, over time, strive for political representation. Susan Sontag claimed that “Photographs of atrocity illustrate as well as corroborate.”34 In the case of photos about female perpetrators it depends on who is looking at these types of photos while corroborating different claims. The process of viewing might silence some other photos, which is the same selection process as the one used in the case of selecting texts as traditional historical sources. The difference is that as Sontag pointed out: “The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photograph.”35 When certain photos are remembered, the people portrayed in those photos gain frozen, iconic visual status. In the case of the two Auschwitz Albums, the female guards enjoying their break have also become a part of the Holocaust imagery, urging a rethink of the relationship between gender and the Holocaust. In the case of Hungary, 34 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of the Other (New York: Picador, 1993), 84. 35 Ibid., 89.

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my research searching for the visual representation of female perpetrators might contribute to a further questioning of the anti-fascist framework, and this seems to be too high a price for a feminist work to pay. References Printed Primary Sources Photo Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, Police History Museum (Budapest), Hungarian Museum of Photography (Kecskemét), Getty Collection, Photo Archives of the Hungarian News Agency. Secondary Sources Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of Image.” In The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, 135–139. New York: Routledge, 2002. Beccaria, Cesare, Dei delitti e delle pene, (1764). Burke, Peter. Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence. London: Reaktion Books, 2001. Harvey, Elizabeth. “Management and Manipulation: Nazi Settlement Planners and Ethnic German Settlers in Occupied Poland.” In Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, edited by Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, 95–112. New York: Routledge, 2005. Kretzer, Anette. NS-Täterschaft und Geschlecht. Der erste britische RavensbrückProzess 1946/47 in Hamburg. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2009. Liebman, Janet. “Women, Genocide and Memory. The Ethics of Feminist Ethnography in Holocaust Research.” Gender and Society 18 (2004): 223–238. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MT: MIT Press, 2001. Perlmutter, David. “Visual Historical Method Problems, Prospects, Applications.” Historical methods 4 (1994): 167–184. Pető, Andrea. “Arrow Cross Women and Female Informants.” Baltic Worlds 3–4 (2009): 48–52. Pető, Andrea. “Death and the Picture. Representation of War Criminals and Construction of Divided Memory about WWII in Hungary.” In Faces of Death. Visualising History, edited by Andrea Pető and Klaaertje Schrijvers, 39–57. Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Pisa University Press, 2009. Pető, Andrea. “Problems of Transitional Justice in Hungary. An Analysis of the People’s Tribunals in Post-War Hungary and the Treatment of Female Perpetrators.” Zeitgeschichte 34 (2007): 335–349. Pető, Andrea. “Who is Afraid of the “Ugly Women”? Problems of Writing Biographies of Nazi and Fascist Women in Countries of the Former Soviet Block.” Journal of Women’s History 4 (2009): 147–151.

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Schwarz, Gudrun. “Verdrängte Täterinnen. Frauen im Apparat der SS (1939–1945).” In Nach Osten. Verdeckte Spuren nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, edited by Theresa Wobbe, 175–196. Frankfurt: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1992. Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of the Other. New York: Picador, 1993. Taake, Claudia. Angeklagt. SS-Frauen vor Gericht. Oldenburg: Universität Oldenburg, 1998. Zemel, Carol. “Emblems of Atrocity. Holocaust Liberation Photographs.” In Image and Remembrance. Representation and the Holocaust, edited by Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz, 201–2019 Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Zemon Davis, Natalie. Slaves on Screen. Film and Historical Vision. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

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Chapter 11

Testimonies of War and Love: The Work of the Witnessing Imagination in Eve Ensler’s Play Necessary Targets and Jasmila Žbanić’s Film Grbavica Kornelia Slavova

Twenty-three years ago, in April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo marked the beginning of the interethnic wars in former Yugoslavia—the most destructive European war after World War II, which took the lives of 200,000 people and turned 2,000,000 people into refugees. Many feminists such as Cynthia Cockburn, Renata Salecl, Zarana Papić, Cynthia Enloe, Rada Ivecović and others have discussed women’s experiences and responses to these violent conflicts, their ethical dilemmas regarding the use of arms and pacifism as well as theoretical questions related to how women negotiate identity across shifting national, ethnic and political boundaries in a context of militarized and interpersonal violence.1 This paper, however, looks at the haunting legacies of the Yugoslav wars through two fictional works: the play Necessary Targets (2001) by the American playwright and feminist activist Eve Ensler and the feature film Grbavica, the Land of My Dreams of the young Bosnian director Jasmila Žbanić, which won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2006. Although the two fictional works are docudramas based on actual conflicts, they both rely on the imaginative apparatus of theatre/film to represent the extremely sensitive subject of war violence—especially gendered forms of violence such as war rape and stigmatization. This is a very tricky issue because the representation of sexual violence in cultural forms always involves the risk of reproducing the victimization of women, of commodifying their traumatic stories or even triggering sensationalism and re-traumatization.

1 See Cynthia Cockburn, From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007); “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War. A Feminist Standpoint,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 12/2 (2010): 139–157; see also Wenona Giles, Malathi de Alwis, Edith Klein, Neluja Silva and Zarana Papic, eds., Feminists Under Fire: Exchanges Across War Zones (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003) and Renata Salecl, The Spoils of Freedom (London: Routledge, 1994).

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In what follows I want to discuss how Ensler and Žbanić, who come from different locations (one from the United States, the other from Bosnia) and employ different media, manage to enact on stage or screen the horrible stories of sexual abuse of real-life Bosnian women survivors without falling into the trap of perpetuating essentialist and ahistorical accounts of womanhood and victimization. This brings immediate association with the “victimists”/ “anti-victimists” controversy among Western feminists in the early 1990s when “third wave,” “power” or “postideological” feminists started criticizing the so-called “victim feminism” for defining women as the helpless victims of patriarchal violence and focusing on female victimization at the expense of social agency.2 The use of sexual violence in the Yugoslav wars and especially mass rapes—defined by Cynthia Enloe as “systematic,” “militarized” and “administered rapes as an instrument of an open warfare”3—received unprecedented international media coverage in 1992, and intensified the debates and divisions not only among Western feminists but also among feminists from Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. As Jelena Batinic explains, the transnational entanglement of feminist discourses surrounding the connections between women, nationalism and ethnic conflicts pulled in different directions: “The conundrums in feminist theories around the issues of rape and pornography highly conditioned the reading of the wars by some Western feminists,” while at the same time “the Yugoslav feminist divisions along national lines informed and shaped Western feminist discourses on Yugoslavia.”4 One of the most heated controversies was sparked by Catherine MacKinnon’s argument that “in this war pornography emerged as a tool of genocide,” which fueled accusations that the American feminist was using the Yugoslav case as a weapon in her own radical feminist campaign against pornography in the States.5 Local feminists criticized some Western feminists for “pursuing their own agendas” by reproducing “Orientalized versions of the East and the Balkans as traditional and tyrannical” as well as casting women only as victims of nationalism and war time rape, while ignoring women’s activism, peace-making campaigns and involvement in

2 Concerning the debates see Alyson M. Cole, “‘There Are No Victims in This Class’: On Female Suffering and Anti-Victim Feminism,” NWSA Journal 11/1 (1999): 72–96; Katie Roiphe, The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism on Campus (Boston: Little, Brown Book, 1993); Naomi Wolf, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the 21st Century (New York: Vintage, 1993). 3 Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 11. 4 Jelena Batinic, “Feminism, Nationalism, and War: The ‘Yugoslav Case’ in Feminist Texts,” The Journal of International Women’s Studies 3/1 (2001): 1–23. 5 The MacKinnon quote is from her article (published in several versions) “Turning Rape into Pornography,” Ms. 4/1 (1993): 24–30. It is impossible to introduce the complexity of her ideas in this short text; for more on sexual violence and pornography see Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

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self-help groups.6 Along similar lines, they attacked the Western media for their sensationalist approach to sexual violence in the war, while acknowledging their role in raising public awareness. For example, Dubravka Zarkov criticized media coverage of the war rapes in Bosnia for constructing “the Rape Victim Identity as an exclusive preserve of Muslim women”—thus “de-legitimizing women from Bosnia as political subjects” and constructing “the need for a protector” as well as “re-producing ethnicity as the ultimate divide and the only legitimate base of victimization.”7 The debates surrounding the use and abuse of women’s bodies not only by nationalist regimes and militarized forces but also by media discourses and representations have not subsided today, as seen in the polarized reactions to the recently released American film In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), written and directed by Angelina Jolie. Although the film begins as a wartime romantic story between a Bosnian Serb soldier and his former love (a Muslim woman from Bosnia, who becomes his captive), it ends as a devastating war story, precluding any possibility for love and human contact in the “land of blood” and “no honey.” Jolie, a UN good-will ambassador, wanted to “rekindle attention for the survivors of a war in recent history,”8 but her good intentions received little praise, while triggering hostility, petitions to boycott the movie, and accusations for unbalanced (pro-Bosnian) attitudes and reinforcement of the myth that “the war was the result of ethnic hatred only.”9 The film’s focus on gruesome cruelty and violated women’s bodies—described by some critics as “a perverse love story” or “a messy war porno”10—has rekindled the so-called “MacKinnon debate.” Its graphic representation of sexual violence and ethnicized sexual victimization of Muslim women has brought back questions from the 1990s: Who has the right to speak on behalf of the victims? What is the role of transnational feminism and activism in combat zones? Can sexualized and violated female bodies be shown without reproducing the spectacle of sexual violence? Is it possible to represent  6 Dubravka Zarkov, “War Rapes in Bosnia. On Masculinity, Femininity and Power of the Rape Victim Identity,” Tijdschrift voor Criminologie 39/2 (1997): 148; see also Biljana Kašic, ed., Women and the Politics of Peace: Contributions to a Culture of Women’s Resistance (Zagreb: Center for Women’s Studies, 1997).  7 Zarkov, “War Rapes in Bosnia,” 140; The Body of War. Media, Ethnicity and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia (London: Duke University Press, 2007). See also Silva Meznarić, “Gender As an Ethno-marker: Rape, War and Identity Politics in the Former Yugoslavia,” in Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective, ed. Valentine M. Moghadam (Boulder: Westview 1994), 76—97.  8 Christiane Amanpour, “Jolie Mixes Glamour with Foreign Policy,” Telegram.com, accessed December 11, 2011.  9 Srecko Horvat, “The Land of Blood and Money,” Eurozine, January 3, 2012. For a full list of critical reception see the official site of the film as well as its wikipedia page. 10 Manohla Dargis, “In a Fractured Society Ethnic War Kindles Both Hatred and Desire,” New York Times, December 23, 2011; Bor Beekman, “Angelina Jolie’s Regiedebuut is rommelige, onnatuurlijke oorlogsporno,” De Volkskrant, February 16, 2012.

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the systematic mass rapes of women in the interethnic wars of former Yugoslavia without casting these women as symbols of their ethnic group victimization? In an attempt to suggest a more productive way of dealing with these sensitive issues I will now turn to Ensler’s and Žbanić’s art to explore how theatre and film can be employed as an effective tool and technological apparatus to translate social and political trauma into forms of understanding. Ensler’s work (particularly her play The Vagina Monologues) has already become a platform for women’s activism in many parts of the world (including Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia), inspiring a global movement to end violence against women (V-day). Like Angelina Jolie, she has been involved in humanitarian activism and her play Necessary Targets has been inspired by her aid work in Bosnia. As Ensler explains, “The play is based on the stories of the women I met and heard in Bosnia. It was their community, their holding on to love, their insane humanity in the face of catastrophe, their staggering refusal to have or seek revenge that fueled me and ultimately moved me to write this play.”11 Žbanić is not a self-proclaimed feminist but she also wants to mobilize public opinion through her film and bring the issue of mass rape into the open: In 1992 everything changed and I realized that I was living in a war, in which sex was used as part of a war strategy to humiliate women and thereby cause the destruction of an ethnic group! 20,000 women were systematically raped in Bosnia during the war. I lived 100 meters from the front line and was most afraid of this kind of fight. Since then, rape and its consequences have become an obsession for me.12

The two works under discussion are dedicated to women victims of the war in Bosnia. In addition, they both frame women’s testimonies of the war as group therapy sessions where the Bosnian women survivors (of diverse ethnic, religious and national backgrounds) are supposed to come to terms with their suffering by sharing their unspeakable experience. Both Ensler and Žbanić rely on the power of art to transmit traumatic knowledge through what Stevan Weine calls “the witnessing imagination”—the reader’s or spectator’s imaginative capability of “seeing, knowing, and connecting with an Other’s experience of trauma.”13 This is why trauma theory is instrumental in shedding light on the role of testimony and witnessing in the re-enactments of the women victims’ stories in the two fictional works. Recently, feminist scholars have criticized trauma studies for approaching the traumatized person merely as a damaged victim, who cannot understand, narrate and testify to the experienced trauma—thus eliminating moral meaning 11 Eve Ensler, Necessary Targets (New York: Villard, 2001), xiv. 12 Jasmila Žbanić, Interview. Official site of Grbavica, accessed April 10, 2012, http://www.coop99.at/grbavica_website/down/interview_jasmila_eng.pdf. 13 Stevan Weine, “The Witnessing Imagination: Social Trauma, Creative Artists, and Witnessing Professionals,” Literature and Medicine 15/2 (1996): 173.

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and seeing trauma as mute and unavailable for representation. As a result, a greater emphasis has been placed on the significance of social location as well as the role of witnessing and testimony in feminist approaches to trauma.14 As Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub contend, testimony is not simply a performative statement (“the vow to tell and produce one’s speech as material evidence for truth”) but a “process of bearing witness to a crisis,” and “a mode of witnessing and accessing reality.”15 Clinical studies have proved that the very act of telling the truth is painful because it means re-living the event, which the testifier wants to forget. However, as Felman explains, for the testimonial process to take place there needs to be a bonding, “the intimate and total presence of an Other—in the position of one who hears—a co-participant and co-owner” of the traumatic event.16 The ensuing analysis reveals how Ensler and Žbanić employ the testimonial potential of theatre and film by involving spectators as secondary witnesses and “co-participants” to produce critical reflection on the brutality of the Bosnian war both on and off stage/ screen. Ensler’s “story of women and war” (as the subtitle of Necessary Targets specifies), is set in the actually existing Centre for Women War Victims in Zagreb, where the playwright spent time with women refugees from various regions of former Yugoslavia. As a journalist, she is aware of the risks in “cannibalizing” actual testimonies of other people. “Recording refugee tears is a sexy business,”17 says one of the characters in her play as if provocatively voicing the playwright’s fears about her own vulnerable position as a feminist, coming from the safe and privileged West. This is why she chooses not to speak on behalf of the Bosnian women but to present their stories through the eyes of two American women therapists (J. S. and Melissa) who come to the Bosnian refugee camp after the war as part of the US presidential mission, ready to act as “necessary targets” (i.e. to provide an outlet for the victims’ rage and despair). From the beginning the refugees refuse to participate in what they ironically call “American therapy.” They refuse to be reduced to “a book chapter” and retaliate by accusing American media for exploiting them as sellable war stories: “That’s why you turn us into stories, into beasts, Communists, people who live in a strange country and speak a strange language [ … ]. Then you can feel safe, superior. Then, afterward, we become freaks, the stories of freaks—fax, please—get us one raped Bosnian 14 See Gina Marie Weaver, Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010); Ruth Leys, Trauma: A Geneaology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000); Bonnie Burstow, “Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work,” Violence Against Women 9/11 (2003): 1293–1317; Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic to Political Terror (New York: Harper Collins, 1994). 15 Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 3–5. 16 Felman and Laub, Testimony, 70. 17 Ensler, Necessary Targets, 50.

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woman, preferably gang-raped, preferably English-speaking.”18 Although Ensler does not comment directly on the American involvement in the Yugoslav war, her critique of the government’s and the media’s failure to understand the complexity of the situation can be easily read between the lines. As the play progresses, fragments of the women refugees’ stories start emerging, pointing to horrible scenes of familial separation and massacres, of lost homes and villages, of sexual abuse and gang-rapes. The women’s testimonies are elliptical and broken; the truth often emerges through visual and olfactory details—in the smell of the soldiers’ sweat as they rape Nuna or in the bright color of the bloodstains. Ensler avoids the gory details of the sexual assault on women, relying instead on smell, sound and color as sites of memory—thus producing a kind of physical remembering through the senses, suggesting the limits of verbal and literary representation of bodily and psychic wounds. Instead of reproducing the spectacle of sexual violence, she focuses on the consequences and invites the spectators in the theatre to fill in the gaps themselves, to expand their witnessing imagination and become double witnesses—what Felman and Laub describe as “a witness to the trauma witness and a witness to himself/ herself.”19 By provoking strong visceral reactions in the spectators, Ensler positions the audience as “coparticipants” in the women’s trauma: as they watch the women on stage choke, weep, laugh through tears, scream, express violent resentment and anger, they are trapped in diverse positions of identification, feeling empathy and grief, but also complicity, discomfort and displeasure. This is what feminist theorist Elin Diamond describes as a non-hierarchical positioning of the spectator “who is refused a unified position of seeing/ knowing”—a new form of “spectating” in the theatre, where the spectator is not the one who controls signification but is rather, a witness.20 Another strategy of disrupting the viewers’ position of “seeing and knowing” is Ensler’s decision to reverse the typical therapy scenario: the American trauma specialists fail as professionals and leave, whereas the traumatized Bosnian women continue to struggle to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. In the end, Melissa packs her suitcase to move to her next “Chechnya chapter” on women and war, whereas J. S. gives up on her profession. Back in her posh New York apartment, J. S. is reevaluating her life, thinking of the women from the refugee camp and imagining how in between the tears they “take little sips of mad, thick coffee.”21 The play ends somewhat positively on this imagined scene of female closeness, cemented by the ritual of coffee-drinking and singing—evoking the power of female connectedness as an antidote to suffering and isolation.

18 Ibid. 64. 19 Felman and Laub, Testimony, 58. 20 Elin Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre (New York: Routledge 1997), 105. 21 Ensler, Necessary Targets, 117.

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Because of this reconciliatory ending Ensler has been accused of “producing rosy visions of survival” and creating an “Opraphied version of transnational feminist activism” along with other feminist “sins” such as repeating “the paradigm of the American feminist-as-rescuer,” “fetishizing the victimization of ‘Other’ women,” and seeking to establish “ahistorical universal sisterhood.”22 In my opinion these accusations are far-fetched, as Ensler does not reiterate the stereotypical image of the silent, shamed, and tear-stained victimized woman from the Balkans that was visible in most Western media in the 1990s. Also, by positioning herself through the two American therapists she reverses the gaze from the suffering women to the observers (the trauma specialists but also herself) where the observer becomes aware of her own crisis. Žbanić’s film Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams also begins and ends as a group therapy—this time at the Women’s Center in Sarajevo, where many Bosnian women have come to heal their wounds after the war. In technical terms, the therapy is a failure again as the protagonist refuses to share her story with the other women; she visits the sessions only to collect the modest financial aid given by the government. At the center of the film is a single mother (Esma), who raises her 12-year daughter on a meager salary, telling her that her father was a shaheed (Bosnian war martyr, who died in the war against the Serbian chetniks). Eventually, the mother is forced to tell her daughter that she was born in a war camp, where she had been gang-raped by the Serbian chetniks. The uncovered secret threatens to destroy the mother-daughter connection, as the two stop talking to each other. Yet, like Necessary Targets, this tragic story ends in a surprisingly moving and optimistic way: Esma revisits the Women’s Center, where the soft voice of a woman singing of love and red roses prompts her to utter her first and only testimony: I wanted to kill her. I hit as hard as I could but nothing happened [ … ]. My belly grew bigger and bigger with her inside. They were coming even then. Two or three of them. Every day. In the hospital, when I gave birth, I told them not to bring her to me. [ … ] When they brought her to me, she was so tiny. She was so beautiful. I had forgotten that there was anything beautiful in this world.23

Although brief and full of pauses, Esma’s testimony speaks volumes about her pain, shame and humiliation as a victim of systematic gang-rapes but also of her strength and resilience. By embracing the beauty of the child, Esma chooses life over death, as well as love over hate. She decides to keep the baby and raises Sara with all her devotion despite the fact that she is not a love-child, but a child of war violence and metissage with the enemy. Esma’s broken testimony—“speaking for and to others”—bears witness to the war rapes without sensationalism and 22 Ruth Williams, “Moving Beyond Necessary Targets: The Role of the American Feminist in Transnational Feminism,” Michigan Feminist Studies 23/1 (2010): 12–29. 23 Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, film-script by Jasmila Žbanić (2006), 69.

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shock, without graphic details and ethnic hatred. Yet, it produces both verbal and body signification, a form of witnessing through the flesh—thus the movie serves simultaneously as testimony (providing evidence) and representation (interpreting evidence). Like Necessary Targets, the film narrative ends on an optimistic note as the protagonist re-connects with the other women victims through song, tears, and empathy as well as her daughter.24 Mother and daughter embrace silently—the extended child’s hand through the bus window reasserts in one simple visual gesture motherhood as a reconciliatory experience. Like Necessary Targets, Žbanić’s film ends with a song—this time the cheerful voices of the children, singing “Sarajevo, my love”—suggesting a possibility that the grim neighborhood Grbavica (associated with the war camp during the siege) might become one day a “land of dreams.” In an ironic contrast to the Hollywood film, which is expected to have a happy ending but precludes it, Žbanić’s “land of blood” holds promise for the future. The film attacks the ugliest and most crippling consequences of the war through asserting the value of life; it dissipates the war violence through diverse acts of love such as the tenderness between mother and daughter, female friendship, even teenage love, and romance. Although Žbanić does not describe her own art as feminist, in her film she comes to question and revise patriarchal structures and scripts in multiple ways: by positing a new model of alternative family, which is not based on blood or kinship (Esma’s family of female friends and co-workers from the shoe factory); by revising the traditional understanding of motherhood as biology; by attacking nationalist structures of imagined “ethnic purity” and validating the beauty of Otherness and ethnic mixture. Out of this very personal and intimate motherdaughter story Žbanić weaves a moving feminist critique of war and its symbolic use of women by overwriting clichéd representations of female victimhood and creating strong female characters who try to control their lives despite the tragic circumstances. Her film enacts the power of what Rada Ivecović calls “the feminine principle” which is “the principle of interrelation and incorporation of Otherness—a space of mixture and meeting, metissage, and brassage;” while her strong, sensitive and supportive female figures illustrate Ivecović’s claim that “boundaries for women are relational rather than obstacles to relations.”25

24 The positive ending is instrumental in emphasizing female agency as argued by Jasmina Lukić in “Engendering Closure: Reading Grbavica in a Feminist Perspective,” in Gender/Genre, eds. Kornelia Slavova and Isabelle Boof-Vermesse (Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2010), 179. 25 Rada Ivecović, “Women, Nationalism and War: Make Love Not War,” Women’s Studies Journal for Feminist Theory 3/1 (2002): 104.

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Conclusion Through their politically engaged and engaging testimonies of war and love Ensler and Žbanić provoke a serious social and ethical critique of the interethnic wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Although both works are organized as failed therapies—disrupted all the time, moving back and forth, always beginning from the start—they can be considered successful feminist interventions in raising public awareness by rejecting the silencing and erasure of militarized violence and banishing the stigmatization of the victims. The Ensler and Žbanić case of diverse similitude reveals how women’s art at the beginning of the twenty-first century approaches the extremely painful subject of war violence to women in a complex manner by representing women’s victimization without perpetuating essentialist and sensationalist accounts of female victimhood, by attacking violence while simultaneously dissipating it through love, and by asserting new forms of female agency which serve as a counter-force to nationalism, ethnic hatred and war. References Amanpour, Christiane. “Jolie Mixes Glamour wit Foreign Policy.” Accessed December 11, 2011. Telegram.com. Beekman, Bor. “Angelina Jolie’s Regiedebuut is rommelige, onnatuurlijke oorlogsporno.” De Volkskrant, February 16, 2012. Burstow, Bonnie. “Toward a Radical Understanding of Trauma and Trauma Work.” Violence Against Women 9 (2003): 1293–1317. Cockburn, Cynthia. From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007. Cockburn, Cynthia. “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War. A Feminist Standpoint.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 12 (2010): 139–157. Cockburn, Cynthia. The Space between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London and New York: Zed Books, 1998. Dargis, Manohla. “In a Fractured Society Ethnic War Kindles both Hatred and Desire.” New York Times, December 23, 2011: C, p.3. Diamond, Elin. Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre. New York: Routledge, 1997. Enloe, Cynthia. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Ensler, Eve. Necessary Targets. New York: Villard, 2001. Felman, Shoshana, and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic to Political Terror. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.

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Ivecović, Rada. “Women, Nationalism and War: Make Love Not War.” Women’s Studies—Journal for Feminist Theory, Anniversary issue. Belgrade: Belgrade Women’s Centre, 2002. Kašic, Biljana, ed. Women and the Politics of Peace: Contributions to a Culture of Women’s Resistance. Zagreb: Center for Women’s Studies, 1997. Leys, Ruth. Trauma: A Geneaology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Lukić, Jasmina, “Engendering Closure: Reading Grbavica in a Feminist Perspective.” In Gender/Genre, edited by. Kornelia Slavova and Isabelle BoofVermesse, pp.179–191, Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2010. MacKinnon, Catherine. Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. MacKinnon, Catherine. “Turning Rape into Pornography.” Ms. 4 (1993): 24–30. Meznarić, Silva. “Gender as an Ethno-marker: Rape, War and Identity Politics in the Former Yugoslavia.” In Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective, edited by Valentine M. Moghadam, pp. 23–45, Boulder: Westview, 1994. Stiglmayer, Alexandra, ed. Mass Rape: The War against Women in BosniaHerzegovina. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Zarkov, Dubravka. From Media War to Ethnic War: The Female Body and Nationalist Processes in the Former Yugoslavia. London: Duke University Press, 2007. Zarkov, Dubravka. “War rapes in Yugoslavia: on Masculinity, Femininity and the Power of Rape Victim Identity.” Tijdschrift voor Criminologie 39 (1997): 140–151. Žbanić, Jasmila. Interview. Official site of Grbavica. Accessed April 10, 2012. http://www.coop99.at/grbavica_website/down/interview_jasmila_eng. pdf. Weaver, Gina Marie. Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War. Albany: SUNY Press, 2010. Weine, Steva. “The Witnessing Imagination: Social Trauma, Creative Artists, and Witnessing Professionals.” Literature and Medicine 15 (1996): 163–179. Williams, Ruth. “Moving Beyond Necessary Targets: The Role of the American Feminist in Transnational Feminism.” Michigan Feminist Studies 23 (2010): 12–29. Filmography Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams. Directed by Jasmila Žbanić, 2006. In the Land of Blood and Honey. Directed by Angelina Jolie, 2011.

Chapter 12

“Conversations in Silence”: Ceramic Installations Shaping the Visual and Political Imagination of Gendered Tsunami and Conflict Reconstruction Landscapes in Aceh1 Marjaana Jauhola

Wander into the mind Stroll into the calm Reach out into the light Touch the silent void Seek out the ocean of quiet gently lapping in the subconscious Seek out the silence And know what it is to be Still. Debra H. Yatim

Written in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquakes and tsunami of 2004 and published in the collection Of Aceh and Turning Tides: Songs for My Sisters in 2005, the poem “Turning Tides” by Acehnese poet Debra H. Yatim explores opportunities for trauma-handling through silence and stillness. Reconciliation, the healing of trauma stemming from political violence, and the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms, both restorative and punitive, have become normalized and institutionalized into the peace processes and post-conflict reconstruction strategies

1 Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the conference “Otherness, Subjectivity and Representation,” held in Åbo Akademi, Finland, on October 21–2, 2011, and at the conference “Political Theaters of Suffering: Humanitarian Politics and Representation of Distant Suffering,” held at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs on March 15, 2012. I also want to thank Andrea Pető and Ayşe Gül Altınay for valuable editorial comments.

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over the past two decades.2 As I have discussed elsewhere, both past and present have become contested sites of reconstruction in Aceh: the past is being actively provoked to define what Aceh, Acehneseness, or Acehnese norms are in the present by developmentalist aid humanitarianism, the Acehnese ethnonationalist movement, and religious revivalists, with gendered effects.3 Furthermore, linear and progressive images of improvement and normalized and closed narratives of “new and better lives” of reconstructed subjects form an important part of the reconstruction governmentality that is constructing the normative temporal and spatial logic of reconstruction governmentality in Aceh in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean earthquakes and tsunami and after three decades of armed conflict.4 Yet, in this chapter, the analytical focus is on the simultaneously emerging sites of counter-conducts and on the politics of disruption and silence as a strategy of resistance to reconstruction governmentality. This chapter focuses on the politics of silence by introducing selected ceramic installations by Endang Lestari, an Acehnese artist who explores in her work Acehnese landscapes of political violence and her “in-betweenness” in them. Thus, the chapter offers visual landscapes of Aceh that challenge and resist linear and developmentalist discourses of reconstruction and it suggests that the reconstruction landscapes, or “Aceh,” are a multitude—an open, performatively produced social space5 through which disaster landscapes are continuously re-politicized and alternative narratives of the tsunami and armed conflict are kept open.6 “Build Aceh Back Better”: Developmentalism and Silenced Political Violence The post-tsunami aid program (2005–2009) is said to be the single largest reconstruction effort in the developing world and one of the biggest efforts globally

2 Fiona C. Ross, Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, (London: Plutopress, 2003), 1; Birgit Bräuchler, “Introduction: Reconciling Indonesia,” in Reconciling Indonesia: Grassroots Agency for Peace, ed. Birgit Bräuchler (London: Routledge, 2009), 26; Karen Brounéus, “Truth-Telling as Talking Cure? Insecurity and Retraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts,” Security Dialogue 39/1 (2008): 57. 3 Marjaana Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives in Aceh (London: Routledge, 2013). 4 The epicentre of the Indian Ocean earthquakes and the tsunami of December 26, 2004 was one hundred kilometers off the coast of the Province of Aceh in Indonesia. The worst hit area was Aceh, a special autonomous region of Indonesia. 5 David Campbell, “Geopolitics and Visuality: Sighting the Darfur Conflict,” Political Geography 26/4 (2006); Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999). 6 Tarja Väyrynen, “Keeping the Trauma of War Open in the Male Body: Resisting the Hegemonic Forms of Masculinity and National Identity in Visual Arts,” Journal of Gender Studies (2013): 1–15.

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since the European Recovery Plan of 1948–1952.7 In Aceh the reconstruction initiatives amounted to a total aid sum of approximately 4.8 billion euros.8 Although the government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka, GAM) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at ending 29 years of armed conflict just eight months after the tsunami, the reconstruction efforts divided Aceh artificially into separate post-tsunami and post-conflict reconstruction contexts by constructing separate victim categories, programs, and budgeting.9 What is significant in this separation and the dominant focus on the tsunami destruction is that it made the context of armed conflict, religious revivalism and the politicization of Islamic law invisible.10 Thus, the slogan “Build Aceh back better,” used widely by the Indonesian government and international humanitarian organizations during the tsunami reconstruction effort was based on specific understandings of the past and the present, and it actively constructed “the limits and forms of the sayable.”11 The slogan became part of a governmental discourse used both by humanitarian aid organizations, ethnonationalists, and

 7 Olle Törnquist, “Introduction and General Conclusions: Social Democratic Peace: to be Continued,” in Aceh: The Role of Democracy for Peace and Reconstruction, eds. Olle Törnquist, Stanley Adi Prasetyo, and Teresa Birks (Jakarta: ISAI, 2009), 23.  8 The amount is 74.8 trillion Indonesian rupiah as of the currency rates in January 2009. The biggest flows of funding came from the US, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Ireland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Norway. The funds disbursed were divided between the Government’s development agencies and the international organisations (the UN, World Bank Group and Development Banks), and international and national NGOs. Source: Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for Aceh and Nias, www.e-aceh-nias.org (website closed in April 2009), (2009).  9 The generous tsunami reconstruction funding is in stark contrast to the few efforts that aimed at repairing houses, restoring livelihoods and infrastructure in areas affected by the armed conflict. See Arno Waizenegger and Jennifer Hyndman, “Two Solitudes: Posttsunami and Post-conflict Aceh,” Disasters 34/3 (2010): 67; Jacqueline Aquino Siapno, “The Politics of Reconstruction, Gender, and Re-Integration in Post-Tsunami Aceh,” in Tsunami in a Time of War: Aid, Activism and Reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, eds. Malathi de Alwis and Eva-Lotta E. Hedman (Colombo: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2009); Paul Zeccola, “Dividing Disasters in Aceh, Indonesia: Separatist Conflict and Tsunami, Human Rights and Humanitarianism,” Disasters 35/2 (2011): 308–28. 10 For details see Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia; Arno Waizenegger and Jennifer Hyndman, “Salient Versus Silent Disasters in Post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia,” in Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies, eds. Kirsch Scott and Colin Flint (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011); Moch Nur Ichwan, “Official Ulema and the Politics of Re-Islamization: The Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama, Sharīʿatization and Contested Authority in Post-New Order Aceh,” Journal of Islamic Studies 22/2 (2011): 183–214. 11 Michel Foucault, “Politics and the Study of Discourse,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 59.

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religious revivalists in their efforts to reconstruct “Acehnese” values and norms,12 each building on the global discourse of developmentalism,13 euphoric ideas of a new Aceh, and the goal of transforming the lives of the suffering Acehnese people,14 at times in contradictory and divergent ways. The rest of the chapter introduces three ceramic installations by Endang Lestari, focusing analytically on the politics of silence. The analysis of the ceramic installations in this chapter is limited in the sense that it primarily draws upon photographs of the original ceramic works and thus lacks the experiential dimensions of the originally exhibited works. The chapter draws additionally on media coverage and on interviews conducted with Endang Lestari and the art critic and women’s activist Carla Bianpoen in 2008, as well as on social media interaction with Endang Lestari between 2010 and 2013. Molding the Narratives of Political Violence in Aceh with Clay Endang Lestari, or Tari, as she likes to be called, was born in Aceh in 1976. She studied at the Indonesia Arts Institute in Yogyakarta where she currently lives and works. She was born in the year of GAM’s formation, which marked the start of three decades of ethnonationalist armed conflict between the GAM and the Republic of Indonesia. Armed conflict in Aceh has featured in various ways in Tari’s works, and her life story and family background are intimately related to it: Tari’s mother is Acehnese and father is a Javanese retired musician, who served in the Indonesian army (TNI) based in Aceh. Tari’s ceramic installations are a fascinating starting point to discuss political subjectivity. First, the fragility of the ceramic installations renders them a fragile form of art, but also one that art investors are reluctant to invest in.15 Thus, people who buy Tari’s work usually buy it for themselves, rather than as an economic investment.16 Second, ceramics is a highly embodied and aesthetic form of 12 R. Michael Feener, “Social Engineering through Shari’a: Islamic Law and StateDirected Da’Wa in Contemporary Aceh,” Islamic Law and Society 19/3 (2012): 280; Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia, 6. 13 Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Thirld World, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Mark Duffield, “Complex Emergencies and the Crisis of Developmentalism,” IDS Bulletin 25/4 (1994). 14 Feener, “Social Engineering through Shari’a: Islamic Law and State-Directed Da’Wa in Contemporary Aceh,” 280–81; Patrick Daly and Yenny Rahmayati, “Cultural Heritage and Community Recovery in Post-Tsunami Aceh,” in From the Ground Up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh, eds. Patrick Daly, R. Michael Feener, and Anthony Reid (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), 59. 15 On the commodification and commercialization of Indonesian art, see Aminudin TH Siregar, “Everything is Allowed,” Inside Indonesia 112/Apr–Jun (2013); Adrian Vickers, “What is Contemporary Indonsian Art?” Inside Indonesia 112/Apr–Jun (2013). 16 Interview with Endang Lestari in 2008.

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expression: molding the clay with the palms of hands and finger tips, yet having to face the unpredictability of the end result and the fragility of the work after firing and glazing. In fact, clay seems to offer ways to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct; there are endless possibilities of molding and altering combined with a fragility and thus intensified awareness of the temporal nature of its existence. Third, the combination of pottery work and ceramic installations also marks the boundaries of private and public, with gendered spatial divisions into a women’s sphere and a men’s sphere, as well as distinctions between art and craft. Fourth, although still regarded as an emerging artist who is yet to make her major breakthrough in the Indonesian art scene,17 Tari’s work has been exhibited in various art galleries in Yogyakarta and Jakarta and at the Yokohama Triennale 2011 in Japan. Reprints of her works have featured in several English-speaking publications and web-based art portals. Her installations are viewed by metropolitan audiences at art galleries. However, she finances her ceramic installations through the tea pottery production exported mainly to Germany and Australia, thus making the precariousness of living as an artist visible. This illustrates the precariousness of artists’ livelihoods and their intimate relationship with the global political economy. Finally, Tari’s ceramic installations are feminist in a sense that they touch upon the issue of gendered bodies and voice, exploring the body as a source of “social, political and personal critique.”18 Those who have conducted feminist analyses of Indonesian art have argued that most artists of the Dutch colonial period and those involved in the decolonialization process constructed women as objects of fetishist beauty.19 However, the reforms that followed the end of the authoritarian regime of President Suharto in 1998 created new public spaces for critical engagement with gendered norms in Indonesian society and in the art scene. This reflected the efforts of civil society organizations, but also artistic expression—both products of the emergence of an educated middle class in Indonesia. Tari was born in Aceh, yet currently she occupies various metropolitan artist landscapes outside Aceh. This gives her a simultaneous positionality as an insider/outsider. Thus, the life trajectory of Endang Lestari, her in-betweenness, with a “half-Acehnese” family tree and “archipelagic Acehneseness,” locates her artwork in the inter-provincial and inter-island migration that lies on the borderlines of the politics of Indonesian nationalist archipelagic identity20 and Acehnese ethnonationalism and the debate 17 Interview with Carla Bianpoen in 2008. 18 Wulan Dirgantoro, “Herstory in Art,” Inside Indonesia 112/Apr–Jun (2013), paragraph 7. 19 Carla Bianpoen, Farah Wardani, and Wulan Dirgantoro, “Women in Indonesian Modern Art: Chronologies and Testimonies,” in Indonesian Women Artists: The Curtain Opens, eds. Carla Bianpoen, Farah Wardani, and Wulan Dirgantoro (Jakarta: Yayasan Senirupa Indonesia, 2007), 23. 20 For a detailed discussion of various uses of ‘archipelago’ and ‘archipelagic self,’ see Tom Boellstorff, The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), 189–215.

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on the true meanings of “Acehneseness.” Her position is one of an insider/outsider with potential insecurities and new forms of belonging and memorialization. Conversations in Silence: Emerging Aesthetic Political Subjectivity

Figure 12.1 Conversation in Silence ( percakapan dalam senyap) Conversation in Silence (Figure 12.1), first exhibited in 2001, consists of 17 40cm high figures in long dresses and veils, standing as a group on a black velvet screen. Figures are “empty inside.” That is to say, the bodies are missing beneath the dresses. In fact, Conversation in Silence is just one example of Tari’s installation series depicting female figures or figures resembling females with recognizable gendered clothing21 which are “empty inside.” One Indonesian art critique analyzed this as visual art deconstructing the female body.22 In fact, many of the currently active female artists have focused on the issue of the body: exploring the female body in relation to sexuality and religious norms, marking a crossing over from the private sphere to the public, and reclaiming the 21 Marjaana Jauhola, “Building Back Better?—Negotiating Normative Boundaries of Gender Mainstreaming and Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Indonesia,” Review of International Studies 36/1 (2010). 22 Anonym, “Dekonstruksi Perempuan dalam Seni Keramik,” accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.institutungu.com/pages.php?p=news&bag=detail&id=44.

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body through various representations.23 However, Bianpoen et al. argue that feminism in art remains elusive, while fear of the f-word displays a tension between cultures and genders. The stereotype of a feminist as a radical, anti-family, and man-hating lesbian, circulates in Indonesian debates.24 Thus, one reading of the installation is to focus on the feminist critique concerning the historically established normalization of gender norms, religious norms that construct, name and classify identities and subjects as men and women and regulate their clothing. This naming is done through exclusions that require objects and populations to be erased from view. Indeed, the exhibition of the installation Conversation in Silence coincided with the granting to the province of the formal right to implement Shari’a law in full. This was part of the central government’s attempt to solve the armed conflict in Aceh.25 The formalization of Shari’a law in Aceh in 1999 led to a debate on which theological and legal school of Islam should inform the implementation of Shari’a in Aceh.26 This question was a central concern for many local women activists and feminist Islamic scholars who feared that symbolic, literal and de-contextualized interpretations of Islam would portray women as the moral symbols and values of society and of the nation.27 In fact, many Acehnese interpreted the earthquake and the tsunami as originating from God and as a punishment for their sins, a test of their faith or a pre-ordained destiny.28 For some religious leaders and Islamic activist groups, the tsunami “happened because women ignored religion.”29 As a consequence, it was feared that women would become potential targets of moral policing and control,30 and Acehnese forms of feminist activism would be labeled as anti-Islamic or non-Acehnese behavior.31 Since the formalization, women have 23 Bianpoen, Wardani, and Dirgantoro, “Women in Indonesian Modern Art: Chronologies and Testimonies,” 31. 24 Ibid. 25 Moch Nur Ichwan, “The Politics of Shari’atization: Central Governmental and Regional Disocurse of Shari’a Implementation in Aceh,” in Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions, eds. Michael Feener and Mark Cammack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Ichwan, “Official Ulema and the Politics of Re-Islamization: The Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama, Sharīʿatization and Contested Authority in Post-New Order Aceh.” 26 Ichwan, “The Politics of Shari’atization: Central Governmental and Regional Disocurse of Shari’a Implementation in Aceh,” 205. 27 Gender Working Group (Kelombok Kerja Gender), “Evaluasi situasi perempuan tahun 2006 di Aceh,” Gender Working Group (Kelombok Kerja Gender), March 8, 2007. 28 Feener, “Social Engineering through Shari’a: Islamic Law and State-Directed Da’Wa in Contemporary Aceh,” 283. 29 Tim Lindsey et al., “Sharia Revival in Aceh,” in Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions, eds. Michael Feener and Mark Cammack, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 243–244. 30 Edriana Noerdin, “Women in the Decentralized Aceh,” in Decentralization as a Narrative of Opportunity for Women in Indonesia, eds. Edriana Noerdin and Sita Aripurnami (Jakarta: Women Research Institute, 2007). 31 Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia, 44–48.

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experienced increased harassment in relation to the Muslim dress code and moral behavior. The Shari’a police have specifically targeted women, stopping and harassing those who walk alone in the evenings or those not wearing the jilbab or not adhering to the separation of the sexes at public events.32 In fact, the question of proper Muslim dress is argued to be one of the most politicized, criticized and debated aspects of the implementation of Shari’a law in Aceh. Theresa R. Milalloshas argued that there is a lack of public debate on the topic; even where there is a debate, it is dominated by men, especially by the chiefs of the Shari’a Islam Department.33 Previous research and women’s activism in and on Aceh has focused on the gendered impacts of the formalization of Shari’a law and how enforcing a particular interpretation of Islamic values and morality has increased the vulnerability of women.34 For example, Suraiya Kamaruzzaman35 has drawn attention to the politicized narrative of the veil in Aceh, pointing out that the practice of wearing a veil became part of campus life in Banda Aceh at the University of Syiah Kuala in the 1980s, but initially only for the lectures.36 Although veiling has a long history within Islamic boarding schools, up to the 1980s only women who had performed the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) used the jilbab.37 Kamaruzzaman argues that a significant change took place around 1999, which coincided with attempts to solve the conflict surrounding the implementation of Shari’a law: women who were not dressed “properly” had tomatoes and eggs thrown at them.38 Raids by unidentified and masked men started in major towns from mid-1999 onwards and “jilbab raids” intensified again after the tsunami and after the establishment of the Shari’a police, the Wilayatuh Hisbah (WH).39

32 Ibid., 40–41. 33 Ma. Theresa R. Milallos, “Muslim Veil as Politics: Political Autonomy, Women and Syariah Islam in Aceh,” Contemporary Islam 1/3 (2007): 297. 34 Noerdin, “Women in the Decentralized Aceh”; Kathryn Robinson, Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia (London: Routledge, 2009); Sally White and Maria Ulfah Anshor, “Islam and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia: Public Discourses on Duties, Rights and Morality,” in Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, eds. Greg Fealy and Sally White (Singapore: ISEAS, 2008). 35 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman, “Bagaimana Pakaian Perempuan Aceh?,” accessed February 2009, http://www.indonesianmuslim.com. 36 For similar analysis on the Islamic revival of the middle class in Java and the religious activity of university students, see Suzanne Brenner, “Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the Veil,” American Ethnologist 23/4 (1996): 677. 37 Eva F. Amrullah, “Indonesian Muslim Fashion Styles & Designs,” ISIM Review (2008): 22. 38 Kamaruzzaman, “Bagaimana Pakaian Perempuan Aceh?” See also Susan Blackburn, “Indonesian Women and Political Islam,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 39/1 (2008): 102. 39 Ichwan, “Official Ulema and the Politics of Re-Islamization: The Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama, Sharīʿatization and Contested Authority in Post-New Order Aceh,” 201; also in Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia, 40–41.

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However, Susan Sontag has suggested that art has the capacity to make us nervous: “By reducing the work of art to its content and interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comfortable.”40 In the words of Tutta Palin, even the smallest details can be read as signs that subvert the iconographic41 coherence of the meaning42 one reads into the installation. Once the focus is on the details, they become so talkative and noisy that they can no longer be sidelined as unimportant.43 This “detailed reading” allows exploring the idea of “politics of an open end” or an idea that interpretations of cultural meanings are always open for new articulations. This analytical repositioning means that subjects or art works are not understood as static entities with coherent stories to tell, but rather as beings “with multiple possibilities for becoming.”44 Aesthetic subjects to Michael Shapiro are “people who, through artistic genres, articulate and mobilize thinking.”45 “Their movement and action map and often alter experiential, politically relevant terrains,”46 and so they disturb any fixed ideas of feminist agency or female oppression. A refusal to see the artwork as a representation of Muslim women’s oppression permits alternative readings of aesthetic female subjectivity, thereby provincializing stereotypical understandings of oppressed female Muslim subjectivity.47 Accordingly, reducing the interpretation of the installation to a debate about the veil is racially and geopolitically situated in a problematic Islamophobic discourse that reads veiling automatically as an oppression of women and connects Islam and the rise of political Islam as a threat to liberal Western (feminist) freedoms.48 It also omits the socio-political history of the New Order regime (1965–1998) in Indonesia when Islamic clothing was banned and wearing such clothing was considered a form of resistance to the power of the state.49 In fact, Conversation in Silence invites us, rather provocatively through the invisible and deconstructed bodies, to ponder the limits of feminist analysis and the tendency to reduce non-Western women, 40 Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation (London: Andrè Deutsch, 1977/1987), 8. 41 Iconographic refers to dominant perceptions of certain symbols and signs representing certain subjects that are constantly produced culturally. 42 Tutta Palin, Oireileva miljöömuotokuva. Yksityiskohdat sukupuoli- ja säätyhierarkian haastajina [The Symptomatics of the Milieu Portrait. Detail in the Service of the Challenging of Gender and Class Hierarchies] (Helsinki: Kustannus Oy Taide, 2004), 42. 43 Ibid., 46. 44 Michael J. Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2009), 8. 45 Michael J. Shapiro, Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method: After the Aesthetic Turn (London: Routledge, 2013), 11. 46 Ibid., xviii. 47 Asma Barlas, “Engaging Islamic Feminism: Provincialization Feminism as a Master Narrative,” in Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, ed. Anitta Kynsilehto (Tampere: Juvenes Print. Tampere Peace Research Institute Occasional Paper No. 96, 2008). 48 Jane Freedman, “Women, Islam and Rights in Europe: Beyond a Universalist/ Culturalist Dichotomy,” Review of International Studies 33/1 (2007): 29. 49 Amrullah, “Indonesian Muslim Fashion Styles & Designs,” 22.

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their bodies, experiences, and agency, to their clothing or to the on-going debate on the veil. When interviewed in 2008, Tari’s own interpretation of the installation focused on the importance of recognizing the publicly invisible, yet firmly existing feminist activism, or conversations, as she calls them, which take place despite the appearance of silence, invisibility and indifference. On a closer look, we see that one of the linings of the dresses has a carved poem on it. The poem, Tari explains, is made in the memory of women in Aceh, and women around the world, who struggle for their lives and resist constantly in conditions of prolonged conflicts. It is a poem of quiet love and longing for peace, and how to survive and co-exist with men.50 Thus, instead of assuming that the installation draws attention to the silenced or marginalized women and other oppressed groups in the Third World,51 the work could alternatively be read as drawing attention to the politics of the invisible, the subversive spaces that women create outside the public eye. A withdrawal from the reconstruction discourse of liberal empowered and vocal female subjectivity, could also be seen as a form of executing subversive female political agency.52 When the Clay Speaks: The Silenced Horrors of Conflict Tari’s installation Forbidden to Tread on the Grass (Dilarang menginjak rumput /Beek Gilho Na Leung) was exhibited at the all-women art exhibition at the National Gallery in Jakarta in 2001 (Figure 12.2).53 Like Conversation in Silence, this installation was exhibited at the time of the armed conflict and only a couple of years after the lifting, in 1998, of the status of Military Operational Area (Daerah Operasi Militer, or DOM). This decade-long counter-insurgency campaign established village-based surveillance systems and military checkpoints, curfews, house raids and arrests. Other tactics included burning houses, raping the wives and daughters of suspected supporters of the independence movement, arbitrary arrests, detention, torture and disappearances of people. It is estimated that 10,000 people died during the DOM decade in Aceh.54 50 Discussion with Endang Lestari in 2013. 51 Maria Stern, “Racism, Sexism, Classism, and Much More: Reading SecurityIdentity in Marginalized Sites,” in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, eds. Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern, and Jacqui True (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Bina D’Costa, “Marginalized Identity: New Frontiers of Research of IR?” in Feminist Methodologies for International Relations. 52 Eka Srimulayani, “Gender in Contemporary Acehnese dayah: Moving Beyond Docile Agency”, in Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam: Leaders, Feminists, Sufis and pesantren Selves, eds. Bianca J. Smith and Mark Woodward (New York: Routledge, 2014). 53 Carla Bianpoen, “Aceh’s Women Show the Road to Peace: Reflection on International Women’s Day,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1/2 (2000): 123–124. 54 Suraiya Kamaruzzaman, “Violence, Internal Displacement and its Impact on Women in Aceh,” in Violent Conflicts in indonesia, ed. Charles A. Coppel (London: Routledge, 2006).

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Figure 12.2 Forbidden to Tread on the Grass (Dilarang menginjak rumput /Beek Gilho Na Leung)

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The installation portrays killing fields in Aceh, and the title directly refers to the impossibility of knowing where the victims of the conflict are buried and thus to the forced breaking of a cultural taboo of stepping over a buried body or a grave site: Ceramic mounds reminiscent of worm casts spring out of the earth, symbolising the dead that lie buried beneath the grass, while ceramic oblong forms set on sand and continuing against a black cloth intensify the sense of both compassion and gruesomeness.55

Australian scholar Barbara Leigh referred to this installation in her opinion piece “Voices from the Below Ground” published in the Jakarta Post in June 2001. She associated the “beautiful yet terrifying installation”56 and its “voice boxes” with specific incidents of violence in Aceh: the killing of the volunteers of Rehabilitation for Torture Victims in Aceh in December 2000, the re-intensification of military operations, and the increased insecurity of civilians after the 1999 troop withdrawal. Tari works in clay on topics that relate earth to the embodied experiences of conflict. In fact, her newer installations were exhibited in Yogyakarta in an allfemale ceramic artist exhibition in 2011 entitled “When the earth speaks/spoke.” Her installations constantly challenge the politics of the invisible and unspeakable of the armed conflict and the lived experiences. For example, the installation Forbidden to Tread on the Grass was exhibited at a time when those who opposed state violence in Aceh or reported on killings and gross human rights violations, were categorized by the Indonesian military as threats to national unity and charged as potential terrorists. Thus, at the time of the exhibition, the installation represented an active field of political resistance against the authoritarian and militarist regime; it resisted the political violence of the Indonesian state and the forcible silencing of the DOM violence and killings. The formal peace process and the negotiated MoU in 2005 included the minimal participation of women: only one woman participated in the process as a GAM team member. Further, it has been suggested that the peace process in Aceh reflected a highly problematic elite-masculinist agenda: “The failure to ensure that women, and issues specific to women, were represented throughout the peace process indicates a densely gendered, and problematic, conceptualization of peace.”57 Further, this was a failure of both the sponsors and main protagonists of 55 Carla Bianpoen, “Indonesian Women Artists: Transcending Compliance,” in Women in Indonesia: Gender, Equity and Development, eds. Kathryn Robinson and Sharon Bessel (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002), 124. 56 Barbara Leigh, “Voices From the Below Ground,” accessed April 4, 2013, http:// www.thejakartapost.com/news/2001/06/28/voices-below-ground.html, (2001). 57 Katrina Lee-Koo, “Gender at the Crossroad of Conflict: Tsunami and Peace in Post-2005 Aceh,” Feminist Review 101 (2012): 74; see also Kristina Grossmann, “Women as Change Agents in the Transformation Process in Aceh, Indonesia,” in Women and

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the peace process and included the dismissal of female combatants as part of the GAM combatant structures and the continuously stalled debate on the fate of the human rights court and the truth and reconciliation commission.58 However, to argue that invisibility at the formal peace negotiations is evidence of the lack of women’s participation in the peace process in Aceh neglects the active grassroots organizing work during the conflict years, as well as more recent women’s policy and legal advocacy shaping the Law on the Governing of Aceh and local by-laws.59 Further, vibrant women’s organizing around Qur’an reading groups and the pesantren (traditional Islamic boarding schools)60 and artistic expression through music, dance and theatre in Aceh61 suggest that reconciling with the past can take many, even surprising, forms. The question then arises, is all reconciliation stifled if formal state-led actions are stalled? What are the guarantees that formal justice processes would be just for women or for any other gender witnessing atrocities? Is institutionalized state-led truth and reconciliation the only way of understanding reconciliation?62 Scholarly attention to what “gender justice,” implemented through transitional justice mechanisms means, and how it is experienced by individual women, varies considerably from context to context.63 Also Acehnese women’s responses to justice mechanisms vary. Some say there are many women who would be willing to testify in a process that would guarantee their protection,64 but other views also exist: There are several cases … reported by women colleagues … where it is very difficult for the women to advocate and seek access to justice for what they have Politics in Asia: A Springboard for Democracy?, eds. Andrea Fleschenberg and Claudia Derichs (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), 98. 58 Lee-Koo, “Gender at the Crossroad of Conflict: Tsunami and Peace in Post-2005 Aceh,” 72. 59 Grossmann, “Women as Change Agents in the Transformation Process in Aceh, Indonesia,” 102. 60 Bianca J. Smith and Mark Woodward, Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam: Leaders, Feminists, Sufis and Pesantren Selves (London: Routledge, 2013). 61 Kimberly S. Twarog, “Performance and Trauma Recovery in Aceh,” 5th Annual International Workshop & Expo on Sumatra Tsunami Disaster & Recovery (2010); Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia. 62 For a critique of the TRC-focused understanding of the reconciliation process in Aceh, see Leena Avonius, “Reconciliation and Human Rights in Post-Conflict Aceh,” in Reconciling Indonesia: Grassroots Agency for Peace, ed. Birgit Bräuchler (London: Routledge, 2009). 63 Ross, Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa; Karen Bronéus, “Truth-Telling as Talking Cure? Insecurity and Retraumatization in the Rwandan Gacaca Courts,” Security Dialogue 39/1 (2008). 64 John Braithwaite et al., Anomie and Violence: Non-truth and Reconciliation in Indonesian Peacecbuilding (Australian National University E-press, 2010), 380; see also Lee-Koo, “Gender at the Crossroad of Conflict: Tsunami and Peace in Post-2005 Aceh,” 72.

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Thus, instead of praising public testimonials and bearing witness to conflict atrocities, Tari’s installations, such as the Conversations in Silence, draw strategic attention to silence and could be read as a “grounded” call for sensitivity to the Acehnese lived experiences that suggest that not all experiences are accessible publicly, as words make bodies vulnerable and the vocabularies used for some of these experiences are limiting. Jacqueline Siapno’s work, derived from the Acehnese context of armed conflict, has specifically focused on silence and its pleasures: “It is also a longterm strategy, and skill, of care of the self as a practice of freedom. It can also be a meditation, a contemplative technique, a path, an everyday practice of embodied presence, embodied peace.”66 Siapno argues that silence is a cultivated skill and a choice that can assure anonymity and continued movement, mobility, and the ability to go in and out, create horizontal and vertical networks, and live in Aceh without having to be evacuated, exiled, or displaced. Silence also has a specific place in the post-colonial studies research methodology, whereby specific attention is paid to the potential for resistance and the agency it may entail in the midst of methodological dominance on visibility, action, loudness and assertiveness.67 Finally, returning to the question of the politics of reconstruction, I discuss Tari’s more recent installation City Lost in Words (Figure 12.3) which, according to Tari, is a story of the town where she was born, but which was lost in the tsunami that nearly drowned Aceh. In the aftermath of the destruction, there was new hope and a wave of relief. This, however, was combined with a myriad of interests of ever-greater effect: the loss of identity, which was replaced with the logos and flags of humanitarian organizations and the unnecessary words that were said.68 Thus, although on the one hand the installation directly points towards the physical tsunami destruction of Tari’s hometown Banda Aceh, on the other hand it points towards the mental and affective processes of destruction, also touched 65 Siapno, “The Politics of Reconstruction, Gender, and Re-Integration in PostTsunami Aceh,” 51–52. 66 Jacqueline Aquino Siapno, “Living Through Terror: Everyday Resilience in East Timor and Aceh,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 15/1 (2009): 51. 67 Ilan Kapoor, “Hyper-self-reflective Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other’?” Third World Quarterly 25/4 (2004): 644. 68 Discussion with Endang Lestari in May 2013.

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Figure 12.3 City Lost in Words (Kota yang hilang dalam kata) upon by other Acehnese artists, such as the filmmaker Ronny Chandra, who has used the symbolism of wrecked things in a documentary entitled “History of a Wrecked Nation” to discuss the politics of reconstruction and the lost voice of the subaltern.69 Furthermore, the installation has an intertextual relationship with the legendary island of Atlantis that was described in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias as a strong naval power that had conquered many parts of Europe and Africa and which sank into the Ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune” after an attempt to invade Athens. The Indonesian archipelago is one of the speculated sites of the island, and the Brazilian scholar Arysio Santos, for instance, makes several references to the Indian Ocean earthquakes and the tsunami in his book Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found. In fact, the history of Banda Aceh as the capital of the sultanate of Aceh, established in the twelfth century, is often depicted in the nationalist discourses that emphasize the golden era of the sultanate as a regional political, military, and commercial power that resisted the imperial interests of both regional and European powers. However, the installation can also be seen as pointing towards mourning the effects of the ethnonationalist conflict that has politicized the uses of the “Acehnese homeland” and pointing towards the marginalization that is the result of such identity politics for those that are regarded as outsiders. Further, the installation could be considered to 69 Marjaana Jauhola, Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia, 165.

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refer to the impossibility of putting the tsunami and the conflict narrative, or meanings of home and belonging, into a coherent and linear transformative story of “building back better.” Conclusion This chapter focused on the ceramic installations of Endang Lestari, with an emphasis on the politics of silence. Reconstruction in Aceh is framed predominantly in the aftermath of the tsunami and the conflict with progressive, linear and developmentalist notions, such as “build Aceh back better,” with varying gendered effects and the silencing of experiences of political violence. How do Tari’s installations talk to the reconstruction governmentality in and through silence? They seem to talk back to the politics of silencing, while also making space for an understanding of silence as a form of agency. The installations could also be seen as a way to mold and construct artistic subjectivities reflecting upon experiences of in-betweenness, “archipelagic Acehneseness” and migration: an Acehnese insider/outsider, living through the tsunami and conflict experience as an artist, a position that allows the emergence of aesthetic political subjectivity. Just as the artist molds the clay, so the artistic expression molds the intelligible mental and experiential landscapes of Aceh. The ceramic installations were read through a methodology which, instead of offering fixed interpretations and meanings for the art works, would view art as politics with an open end. Thus, it is suggested that instead of understanding reconstructed Aceh as a closed form of governmentality, dominated by gendered linear and developmentalist forms of silencing, the reconstruction landscapes, or “Aceh” could be called a multitude of traumas relating to the tsunami and the armed conflict which are opened for debate. This would be an open and performatively produced social space through which the post-tsunami landscape is continuously politicized. A focus on the silence allows us to see the invisible stories of the formal reconstruction process and the emergence of feminist political subjectivity, which does not fit into the expected ideal of reconstructed subjectivity. Not being able to see or hear the invisible does not mean there is no subjectivity left. References Agency for the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction for Aceh and Nias. Website closed in April 2009. http://www.e-aceh-nias.org. Amrullah, Eva F. “Indonesian Muslim Fashion Styles & Designs.” ISIM Review Autumn (2008): 22–23. Anonymous. “Dekonstruksi Perempuan Dalam Seni Keramik.” Accessed March 15, 2013. http://institutungu.com/pages.php?p=news&bag=detail&id=44.

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Dirgantoro, Wulan. “Herstory in Art.” Inside Indonesia 112/Apr–Jun (2013). Accessed October 21, 2013. http://www.insideindonesia.org/feature-editions/ herstory-in-art-2. Duffield, Mark. “Complex Emergencies and the Crisis of Developmentalism.” IDS Bulletin 25/4 (1994): 37–45. Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Thirld World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Feener, R. Michael. “Social Engineering through Shari’a: Islamic Law and StateDirected Da’wa in Contemporary Aceh.” Islamic Law and Society 19/3 (2012): 275–311. Foucault, Michel. “Politics and the Study of Discourse.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with Two Lectures by and an Interview with Michel Foucault, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, 53–72. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Freedman, Jane. “Women, Islam and Rights in Europe: Beyond a Universalist/ Culturalist Dichotomy.” Review of International Studies 33/1 (2007): 29–44. Gender Working Group (Kelombok Kerja Gender). “Evaluasi Situasi Perempuan Tahun 2006 Di Aceh.” Gender Working Group (Kelombok Kerja Gender) 8 Maret 2007. Grossmann, Kristina. “Women as Change Agents in the Transformation Process in Aceh, Indonesia.” In Women and Politics in Asia: A Springboard for Democracy?, edited by Andrea Fleschenberg and Claudia Derichs, 97–122. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012. Ichwan, Moch Nur. “Official Ulema and the Politics of Re-Islamization: The Majelis Permusyawaratan Ulama, Sharīʿatization and Contested Authority in Post-New Order Aceh.” Journal of Islamic Studies 22/2 (2011): 183–214. Ichwan, Moch Nur. “The Politics of Shari’atization: Central Governmental and Regional Disocurse of Shari’a Implementation in Aceh.” In Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions, edited by Michael Feener and Mark Cammack, 193–215. Harvard Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Jauhola, Marjaana. “Building Back Better?—Negotiating Normative Boundaries of Gender Mainstreaming and Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Indonesia.” Review of International Studies 36/1 (2010): 29–50. Jauhola, Marjaana. Post-Tsunami Reconstruction in Indonesia: Negotiating Normativity through Gender Mainstreaming Initiatives in Aceh. Oxon: Routledge, 2013. Kamaruzzaman, Suraiya. “Bagaimana Pakaian Perempuan Aceh?” Accessed in February 2009. http://www.indonesianmuslim.com. Kamaruzzaman, Suraiya. “Violence, Internal Displacement and Its Impact on Women in Aceh.” In Violent Conflicts in Indonesia, edited by Charles A. Coppel, 258–268. London: Routledge, 2006. Kapoor, Ilan. “Hyper-Self-Reflective Development? Spivak on Representing the Third World ‘Other’?” Third World Quarterly 25/4 (2004): 627–647.

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Lee-Koo, Katrina. “Gender at the Crossroad of Conflict: Tsunami and Peace in Post-2005 Aceh.” Feminist Review 101 (2012): 59–77. Leigh, Barbara. “Voices from the Below Ground.” Accessed April 4, 2013. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2001/06/28/Voices-Below-Ground.html (2001). Lindsey, Tim, M.B. Hooker, Ross Clarke, and Jeremy Kingsley. “Sharia Revival in Aceh.” In Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions, edited by Michael Feener and Mark Cammack, 216–254. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Milallos, Ma. Theresa R. “Muslim Veil as Politics: Political Autonomy, Women and Syariah Islam in Aceh.” Contemporary Islam 1/3 (2007): 289–301. Noerdin, Edriana. “Women in the Decentralized Aceh.” In Decentralization as a Narrative of Opportunity for Women in Indonesia, edited by Edriana Noerdin and Sita Aripurnami, 173–217. Jakarta: Women Research Institute, 2007. Palin, Tutta. Oireileva Miljöömuotokuva. Yksityiskohdat Sukupuoli- Ja Säätyhierarkian Haastajina [The Symptomatics of the Milieu Portrait. Detail in the Service of the Challenging of Gender and Class Hierarchies]. Helsinki: Kustannus Oy Taide, 2004. Robinson, Kathryn. Gender, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2009. Ross, Fiona C. Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. London: Plutopress, 2003. Shapiro, Michael J. Cinematic Geopolitics. London: Routledge, 2009. Shapiro, Michael J. Studies in Trans-Disciplinary Method: After the Aesthetic Turn. Oxon: Routledge, 2013. Siapno, Jacqueline Aquino. “Living through Terror: Everyday Resilience in East Timor and Aceh.” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 15/1 (2009): 43–64. Siapno, Jacqueline Aquino. “The Politics of Reconstruction, Gender, and Re-Integration in Post-Tsunami Aceh.” In Tsunami in a Time of War: Aid, Activism and Reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia, edited by Malathi de Alwis and Eva-Lotta E. Hedman, 163–190. Colombo: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2009. Siregar, Aminudin TH. “Everything is Allowed.” Inside Indonesia 112/Apr-Jun (2013). Accessed October 16, 2013. http://www.insideindonesia.org/featureeditions/everything-is-allowed-2. Smith, Bianca J., and Mark Woodward. Gender and Power in Indonesian Islam: Leaders, Feminists, Sufis and Pesantren Selves. Routledge, forthcoming. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. London: André Deutsch, 1977/1987. Stern, Maria. “Racism, Sexism, Classism, and Much More: Reading SecurityIdentity in Margnialized Sites.” In Feminist Methodologies for International Relations, edited by Brooke A. Ackerly, Maria Stern and Jacqui True, 174–197. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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Törnquist, Olle. “Introduction and General Conclusions: Social Democratic Peace: To Be Continued.” In Aceh: The Role of Democracy for Peace and Reconstruction, edited by Olle Törnquist, Stanley Adi Prasetyo and Teresa Birks, 1–54. Jakarta: ISAI, 2009. Twarog, Kimberly S. “Performance and Trauma Recovery in Aceh.” 5th Annual International Workshop & Expo on Sumatra Tsunami Disaster & Recovery 2010 (2010). Väyrynen, Tarja. “Keeping the Trauma of War Open in the Male Body: Resisting the Hegemonic Forms of Masculinity and National Identity in Visual Arts.” Journal of Gender Studies (2013): 1–15. Vickers, Adrian. “What Is Contemporary Indonsian Art?” Inside Indonesia 112/ Apr-Jun (2013). Accessed October 21, 2013. http://www.insideindonesia.org/ feature-editions/what-is-contemporary-indonesian-art-3. Waizenegger, Arno, and Jennifer Hyndman. “Salient Versus Silent Disasters in Post-Conflict Aceh, Indonesia.” In Reconstructing Conflict: Integrating War and Post-War Geographies, edited by Kirsch Scott and Colin Flint, 67–90. Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. Waizenegger, Arno, and Jennifer Hyndman. “Two Solitudes: Post-Tsunami and Post-Conflict Aceh.” Disasters 34/3 (2010): 787–808. White, Sally, and Maria Ulfah Anshor. “Islam and Gender in Contemporary Indonesia: Public Discourses on Duties, Rights and Morality.” In Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, edited by Greg Fealy and Sally White, 137–158. Singapore: ISEAS, 2008. Zeccola, Paul. “Dividing Disasters in Aceh, Indonesia: Separatist Conflict and Tsunami, Human Rights and Humanitarianism.” Disasters 35/2 (2011): 308–328.

PART IV Feminist Reimaginings

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Part IV: Commentary

Interrogating Memory and Evidence: An Intersectional Feminist Perspective Arlene Avakian

The authors of the chapters in this section are venturing into uncharted territory. Working in archives and her own family history, Hourig Attarian deploys an imaginative and artistic approach to the fragments of data she has unearthed about the thousands of Armenian women and children who were taken into Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab Bedouin homes during the 1915 Armenian genocide. Cynthia Cockburn interrogates her earlier research with three women’s groups who worked to bridge deep divides across race/nation/ethnicity, in the context of armed conflict. Revisiting these groups after 15 years, she questions the reliability of memory across time, explores the difficulties presented by language barriers, and critiques the use of visual artifacts as well. She calls for more collaborative, democratic research to address these problems. These chapters raise questions about memory and evidence. Is memory reliable evidence? What is reliable evidence? What are the relationships among narratives/ testimonies, archival records, and researchers’ personal histories? And what does gender have to do with any of these issues? The women’s liberation and feminist movements as well as other social movements of the 1960s had a profound impact on these questions. Among the most exciting and important assertions of the women’s liberation movement and the feminisms of the 1970s, was the idea that the personal is political. Women’s lives had been naturalized as limited to the domestic even if they worked outside of the home. Making the personal political broke the sharp dichotomy between the public and the private. What had previously been dismissed as trivial, the stuff of ordinary women’s daily lives, was now not only recognized as worthy of research and analysis, but deemed necessary to understand women’s lives which had previously been either ignored or distorted. In the humanities and social sciences, women’s oral histories and narratives were validated, even sometimes privileged, over other forms of evidence. These ideas were revolutionary and shaped the development of the academic discipline then known as women’s studies1 which 1 Over the last decade many women’s studies programs and departments changed their names to reflect the changes in the field which developed from an exclusive focus on women and women’s issues to one that sees gender as socially constructed within a complex matrix of power along race/nation/ethnicity, class, sexuality, as well gender that are interconnected

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began with a few scattered courses on women in the late 1960s and early 1970s and then grew to programs of study and departments offering majors and minors, and in the last decade, doctoral degrees.2 The mostly young scholars teaching courses on women and developing programs, many of whom were also activists in the feminist movement, posited and demonstrated that the assumed objectivity of knowledge makers was a myth. They argued that all disciplines, including the hard sciences, were biased because they came from a patriarchal perspective. They offered detailed critiques and developed methodologies more appropriate to women’s lives. These were enormous tasks but, with the fervor of recent converts, ones they were more than willing to undertake. When these emergent women’s studies scholars were accused of being biased their rejoinder was that everyone was coming from a particular perspective which framed the way they went about research, the questions they asked, the methodology used to address them, and of course of the conclusions they reached. The difference between women’s studies scholars and others, they asserted, was that those in women’s studies knew their bias and were open about them. The aim was to not merely to insert women into the existing discourse, but to reframe the disciplines with gender at the center in order to understand more fully how humans affected and were affected by their world. Though much work remains in this area, women’s studies has had enormous success. Every field has been affected by these concerns and some have been transformed. While great strides have been made with respect to gender in the academy, women’s studies has not always brought the lives of marginalized women and the issues that frame their lives into the center of inquiry. Just as researchers coming from an unexamined, assumed patriarchal perspective did not see their biases, many women’s studies researchers continue to privilege gender over other equally significant social formations of race/nation/ethnicity, class, and sexuality. In the United States and in Europe as well, women of color have been critiquing the women’s movement and women’s studies scholars from the inception of the field for their unexamined assumption that all women are similarly oppressed by gender. In addition to this critique they have developed their own prodigious body of research on women of color and theory about gender, race, and class. Central among the theoretical perspectives developed to bring previously marginalized women into the center is the concept of intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw,3 but a concept that was articulated by both activists and mutually constitutive. My own department, as well as some others, is now called women, gender, sexuality studies. Others new names include gender studies, feminist studies, and the study of women and gender. 2 There are now 900 programs and departments that focus on the study of women and gender around the world, including 34 programs offering a doctorate. 3 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43/6 (1991): 1241–1299.

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and scholars as early as the mid 1970s.4 They argued that all women needed to be contextualized within matrices of oppression, as well as recognizing the power as well as privilege they occupy as a result of their social positionalities. My own political and scholarly trajectory, following that of many other activists in the United States, began by being profoundly affected by the Civil Rights movement. Watching young African American men, women, and sometimes even children being beaten, hosed, and jailed because they wanted to exercise the privileges of citizenship in a democracy exposed the racism and hypocrisy of the country I loved with the fervor of a first generation child of immigrants in the 1950s. For reasons that I would not understand for many years, I was also deeply moved by stories of families being broken apart during slavery when slave owners sold children, wives, and husbands. I had the sense then, and it would be only be deepened over the next decades, that racism was a powerful and deeply embedded force in our democracy, though it remained invisible to those of us who benefitted from it. When I became a feminist and particularly when I was part of the effort to develop women’s studies first at Cornell University and then at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I tried to bring to it my consciousness of race, but that was very difficult at a time when we were just establishing gender as a legitimate category of inquiry. Although I was part of the committee that formulated the program and eventually became a member of the department, I was not able to make significant changes. My colleagues identified race and women of color as my issues. However, when we hired more than one women of color whose work focused on women of color and/or issues of race, we were able to prioritize hiring scholars who centrally addressed race in their research. When a majority of our faculty were women of color researching women of color, our curriculum was transformed and intersectionality rather than gender became central and the department is now recognized as a leader in the field for bringing race and class into the center. That recognition says as much for the lack of attention to race in the field as it does for our leadership. My passion about these issues lay in my family history, though I would not know that for a number of years. My maternal family were Armenians in Turkey 4 Frances Beale, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee activist, published Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female as a pamphlet which was later included in Toni Cade’s groundbreaking edited book, The Black Woman: An Anthology: Frances Beale, “Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female” in The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade, 90–100. New York: New American Library, 1970. The Cohambee River Collective, a group of Black women who did not identify themselves beyond the name of their collective, wrote a statement outlining the intersections of race, class, and gender: Combahee River Collective. “Combahee River Collective Statement” in Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein, 247–255. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978. The poet, essayist, and activist June Jordan presented her landmark essay, “Report from the Bahamas” as the keynote address at the New England Women’s Studies Association Conference in Salem, MA in 1982. June Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas” On Call: Political Essays, by June Jordan, 39–49. Boston: South End Press, 1985.

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during the 1915 genocide. My grandfather was conscripted into the army and never heard from again. Later my grandmother, mother, aunt, uncle, along with a number of other women and children in the family were driven under guard to the Eastern part of Turkey. They were very fortunate to escape the worst of these so called deportations since their basic needs of food, water, and shelter were provided, but the gendarmes took my grandmother’s eight year old son from her, presumably to Turkify him as was the case with many Armenian boys. Through enormous courage, cunning, and very good luck, my grandmother managed to travel to where he was and, with the help of a Turkish friend of her husband, got him back as well as the rest of the family out of exile and eventually to the United States. My grandmother told me this story only once and while maternal family members occasionally made derogatory references to Turks, no one talked about the genocide. It was the 1950s and being ethnic, even in my largely multiethnic neighborhood in New York City was difficult. I never asked anyone about what my grandmother had told me and her story went underground. Nor was there any mention of the genocide anywhere outside of my home. I did a paper on it when I was in college and learned about the horrors my grandmother’s story had omitted. It was my focus on race and gender that led me to go back to this story, to have her tell it to me again, and to finally to begin to incorporate it into my psyche, my politics, and my scholarship. I could see then why the story of Blacks in America had had such a profound and lasting impact on me. Africans and African Americans were driven from their lands, families were separated, they suffered enormous injustice, but they also—like my grandmother—resisted. With this new knowledge and my interest in bringing an intersectional analysis to the study of women, I wrote a selfethnographic dissertation in which I demonstrated that my gender was constructed within a web that included ethnicity, class, sexuality, and race.5 My family was racialized in Turkey and I was definitely outside of the mainstream when I was growing up, yet I benefitted from race, class, and sexual privilege. I continue to delve into my history for insights into the mechanisms of oppression, privilege, and resistance.6 I would not have been able to even conceptualize such a project let alone complete it if women’s studies scholarship had not legitimated memoir and autobiography as a source for both data and theory. Hourig Attarian’s chapter in this section goes a step further. Combining family history with archival research Attarian “enter[s] a liminal stage, ‘suspending all disbelief,’ where boundaries are blurred deliberately between memory and imagination” (Attarian, p. 262 below), she proposes that there may be an imaginative, artistic way to tell stories that are lost, to fathom the loss, to re-imagine 5 The dissertation was published as Arlene Voski Avakian. Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir (New York: Feminist Press, 1992). 6 I have written about how my grandmother constructed her story as a survivor rather than a victim and the changing impact of that story on me as my psyche and politics developed: Arlene Voski Avakian. “Powerful Silences: Becoming a Survivor Through the Construction of Story” Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies 2 (Fall 2006): 45–56.

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the silence, to go beyond what we can’t possibly know from the scant evidence about the Armenian women who were either abducted or given to Turkish, Kurdish, and Arab Bedouins. Digging into the archives like an archeologist, finding shards of information about the women who were rescued, she calls their names and gives us what little there is about them. But she wants more about their lives than the names of their husbands or the places where they were rescued. She wants to imagine what their lives were like and to that end she proposes two evocative installations hoping to “propel the viewer/reader to listen deeply and engage with the narratives” as a way to voice the stories (Attarian, p. 265 below). She also raises ethical questions about naming the names that have been hidden in ledgers for almost a century. Focusing entirely on methodological issues, particularly memory work, Cynthia Cockburn critiques both her earlier research with three women’s groups as well as her most recent work in revisiting them. Steeped in decades of feminist research and activism, Cockburn strives for democratic research and argues that each actor in the research process—researcher, interpreter, and subjects— must be put within their own contexts with respect to power relations, in other words race, class, gender, and other relevant positionalities. Additionally, the researcher must be cognizant of the colonial power relations that have an impact on these relationships. These two chapters offer critical tools to approach memory work and research into marginalized groups of women, those seeking to make connections across war zones and Armenian women who disappeared into “enemy territory” and who only now are being found, almost one hundred years after the genocide. As Cockburn argues, memory rather than being fixed in time and space is profoundly affected by the present. Attarian’s careful attention to the silences in the archives and her artistic imagination has given us a glimpse into what is lost while Cockburn’s critique alerts us to the dangers of assumptions based on power relations. Both benefit from and advance the work begun more than four decades ago by those intrepid young feminist scholars who developed the new field of women’s studies. References Avakian, Arlene Voski. Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir. New York: Feminist Press, 1992. Avakian, Arlene Voski. “Powerful Silences: Becoming a Survivor Through the Construction of Story.” Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies 2 (Fall 2006): 45–56. Beale, Frances. “Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female.” In The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade, 90–100. New York: New American Library, 1970.

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Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43/6 (1991): 1241–1299. Combahee River Collective. “Combahee River Collective Statement.” In Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for Socialist Feminism, edited by Zillah Eisenstein, 247–255. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978. Jordan, June. “Report from the Bahamas.” On Call: Political Essays, by June Jordan, 39–49. Boston: South End Press, 1985.

Chapter 13

Narrating Women’s Bodies: Storying Silences and Secrets in the Aftermath of Genocide1 Hourig Attarian

My work aims to explore intergenerational life stories of Armenian women who, as a direct consequence of the 1915 genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish Empire against its Armenian subjects, were absorbed into Turkish, Kurdish and Arab Bedouin households and led “hidden” double lives in many cases throughout their lifetimes. Their stories have been buried deep into folds of personal memories through decades of silences burdened by secrets, stigma, and shame. Written on the boundaries of women’s bodies, these stories offer an opportunity to critically explore hybridized spaces of identity along a very sensitive divide between perpetrator and victim, executioner and survivor, “pure” and “impure” national identities. My interest in this topic stems from several years ago, when I was in the thick of my doctoral research—a self-study exploring family stories and memories of inherited exile, dispossession, trauma, and healing. At the time, I positioned my autobiographical inquiry around the two poles of the compelling narratives of my two great aunts, Anush and Azniv in my writing. It was only long after I had written my dissertation and gained a certain detachment from it that I was able to look more closely at how I attempted to retell their stories. Both these narratives embody tales of loss and survival, silences and secrets sometimes written out literally on the bodies of the women. Anush and Azniv were both lost and refound in the aftermath of genocide. Their life stories took very different paths, however. The word for fate in Armenian is ճակատագիր [jagadakir] which translates as “the writing on the forehead.” Like many others who shared a similar fate and spent years among Bedouin tribes, my great aunts carried tattoos on their foreheads. Their fate had branded them for life, with that lone word of “jagadakir” encapsulating the actual territorialization and appropriation of their bodies in equal measure. 1 This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Western Armenian transliteration is used throughout the essay for Armenian proper and place names.

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I tell my maternal great aunt Anush’s story in the beginning of my dissertation. To spare her life from the certain death that awaited the family, in a desperate act she was given away by her father to a Turkish gendarme who pretended to adopt her. Years later she surfaced in Northern Iraq, as a Bedouin Arab woman, with traditional tattoo marks on her face and garbed in traditional black robes. The joy of finding her was short lived. In the midst of trying to secure her return to her original family, she disappeared never to be found again. My paternal great aunt Azniv’s story told towards the end of my writing is similar in some instances, very different in others. Around the same age as Anush and about roughly the same timeframe, she was rescued by desert Bedouins from under a pile of corpses. She lived with them in the Der Zor2 region for around 15 years until she was miraculously found by my grandparents. She too carried the traditional tattoos on her face. I met Azniv when I was roughly the same age Azniv and Anush had been when they went through the horrors. I saw and touched Azniv’s scar on her forearm, her faint tattoo marks on her forehead. I can only imagine Anush. Juxtaposed with her Bedouin tattoos, inside her left arm, right above the wrist, near the veins leading straight to her heart, Azniv had a clearly marked tattoo of a cross with a date underneath. That was the traditional blue cross all Armenian pilgrims to Jerusalem had. I had seen it on the wrists of all four of my survivor grandparents. Did the new vivid tattoo purge the hellish memories that came with the fading ones? What of Anush, who never had this chance of expurgation no matter how perfunctory? The reader in me questions my writer self whether it was totally an unconscious decision to situate the Anush and Azniv narratives towards the beginning and ending of the bigger story of my dissertation. Certainly they feel like inverted mirror images of one another. In pondering my connection to these women and the hidden folds of their stories I find I am driven by an urge to understand the lost and found in their lives, their memories, their secrets. It is this new introspection that made me realize the only details I think I know about Anush and Azniv are the scant and fragmented episodes hinging around their actual survival, but nothing about their lives in between. How did they live? How did they survive beyond that survival? How did they put their lives together in their everyday life? What did it mean being and knowing that you were Armenian but not being able to live it openly? How did they negotiate their womanhood in their daily life, while making sense of the decimation that they lived, the schism they felt? When the moment of reunification with family came, how did they experience that? How did my maternal grandfather in his attempt to save and reunite with his sister, think of her life “before” and “after”? Or did he? In Anush’s case that must have weighed very heavily on her and was also most probably the reason why she disappeared again 2 Desert area in north-eastern Syria, which was part of the Ottoman Empire during the time of the Armenian genocide. The region became a notorious open-air death camp where most of the death marches led to. Before the civil war in Syria it had become the site of annual pilgrimages for Armenians.

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and this time forever. Interestingly, I have never questioned my mother or anyone else in her family about their attitudes on this. Azniv came back to my father’s family as a young woman probably in her early twenties. She never married. And nothing was transmitted, or at least I have no recollection of it, that has to do with her life among the Bedouins. Finally, what about me? These stories and fragmented memories have stared me in the face for so long, yet I am only rediscovering them in this light now. What does this say about so many other untold stories and lives still languishing in the desert sands? It is with all these questions in mind that I now embark on my research into the stories of women who share a similar fate with my great aunts. In questioning how “storied lives and lived lives”3 intertwine, what we can make of silences and gaps in texts, and whether the function of memory is present or past-oriented, Liz Stanley argues for a nuanced understanding of the relationship between text and context, while foregrounding the role of researcher reflexivity. She reminds us of the centrality of the researcher as “an active interpretational presence.”4 Engaging in narrative inquiry through merging auto/biography and life story, anchoring family stories as a starting point to understand the stories of others, is my attempt to look critically at these narratives and problematize them. In doing so, I am interested in claiming an alternative methodological space through my own language, in exploring what my language can be, whether in textual or visual form, and in understanding the place of my self in all these stories. Life/Defying Fiction: Contexts and Texts across the Blurred Boundaries of Memory and Imagination The 1918 Armistice and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire signaled the beginning of the massive humanitarian relief efforts in many different cities of the Near East where Armenian genocide survivors had ended up. Various Armenian organizations both large and small, together with European and US ones, joined or initiated these relief efforts. Alongside the countless orphanages and refugee camps, shelters for “abandoned” young girls and women dotted the Armenian post-genocide landscape of survival. As early as 1919, these shelters came into existence in Beirut, Baghdad, Port Said, Damascus, Aleppo and Constantinople. Multiple shelters operated in various cities, administered by different organizations. Aleppo, which had some of the major deportee concentrations, housed several such shelters. For the purposes of this essay, I will concentrate only on the archival records of the shelter administered by the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). A key 3 Liz Stanley, “In Dialogue: Life Writing and Narrative Inquiry,” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 1. 4 Ibid., 3; Also see Liz Stanley, “In Dialogue: Life Writing and Narrative Inquiry Part 2,” Life Writing 7/2 (2010): 122.

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player in the relief efforts, the AGBU is a philanthropic organization established in Cairo, Egypt in 1906, that in a relatively short time became a vast Armenian transnational organization, including Armenians from communities in Europe, Asia/Middle East, and the Americas. The opening of shelters for the young girls and women went in tandem with rescue missions to liberate or recover adolescent girls and women who were abducted, sold into slavery, forced into marriages, kept against their will, coerced or driven into prostitution. The task undertaken by the shelters was an enormous one. The well-known feminist author Zabel Yesayan5 in her report to the Armenian National Delegation in Paris in early 1919 wrote with genuine insight and compassion on the issue of kidnapped women and children and the reasons why some women may not want to come forward or may return to their captors. Insisting that the liberation of the women and children was “a work of justice and humanity,” she also provided recommendations on how shelters should operate. While acknowledging that time was of the essence in the rescue efforts, she advocated: To create an International Commission of Women directly supported by the Allied powers … .To create asylums for the women returned from the Muslims until they are repatriated to their provinces of origin. To organize a health service, especially for the examination of women, in order to group in consequence, because many are, unfortunately, infected with dangerous and contagious diseases. To create a special service for pregnant women. To organize workrooms to secure jobs for women and adults. To realize all these works, the Armenian Ladies of Russian Armenia, Constantinople, and the colonies of Europe, Egypt, and America will be mobilized and organized to be put at the disposal of the International Commission of Women that will be created with this aim.6

Her list reads like a veritable blueprint. Most significant of all, she understood the importance of mobilizing women’s groups, associations, auxiliaries, in taking charge and supervising the shelters, as well as the essential task of reintegration of the shelter residents through the creation of workshops and the teaching of trades. Typically, there was a constant flow of residents at the shelters, with new arrivals and departures each month. Usually the women and girls stayed a month or two on average. Departures depended on a number of factors—the women reunited with relatives or family members who accepted them; they repatriated; they married and in some cases left for the Americas as picture brides; they went on to look for lost relatives or children; or they escaped in many tragic instances, 5 Yesayan, a prominent female writer and activist at the time, was appointed an inspector for the Armenian National Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. 6 Zabel Yesayan, La liberation des femmes et enfants non-musulmans en Turquie, Nubarian Library, Armenian National Delegation Archives, Vols.1–15, correspondence February–March 1919. I am thankful to Lerna Ekmekçioglu for providing the English translation of the original French document.

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sometimes returning to the families who had held or kept them. The younger children admitted were eventually sent on to local orphanages after a couple of months. All received medical attention immediately upon arrival. Many were pregnant. In addition, many also suffered from sexually transmitted diseases, apart from other diseases they might have contracted during the deportations. In general, shelters also had workshops to teach various trades to the women. Many also taught basic reading and writing skills. The AGBU Cairo head office, encouraged by the success of their Damascus shelter-workshop, which had been in operation since early 1919, and wanting to replicate it as a model, decided to open up their own shelter in Aleppo “with an adjacent workshop to it, so the residents can learn a trade and earn a living, until they find their relatives or return to their hometowns.”7 On February 1, 1920 the AGBU officially took over the administration of a shelter operated until then by the Aleppo Young Armenian Women’s Association, letting the Association oversee its educational and vocational programs which included wool spinning, embroidery, needlework, sock knitting, and sewing.8 The first detailed report on the shelter-workshop sent from the local chapter to the Cairo head office on March 14, 1920 mentions that the supervisor of the shelter is a member of the Aleppo Young Armenian Women’s Association, Miss Gadarine Seferian, and notes her monthly salary. The report also describes the nutrition scheme at the shelter with tea and bread for breakfast (occasionally even halva9 and bread), soup provided by the French administration in addition to bread for lunch, and a hot meal for dinner, with a meat portion every two-three days. Milk is bought daily for a five-month-old infant. At the time of this transition in administration, the shelter counted 35 residents.10 The correspondence between the local Aleppo AGBU chapter and the Cairo head office in the time span of a little less than a decade is rich with regular reports on the activities of the shelter-workshop, minute details of expenditure, medical reports, as well regular information files of all arrivals and departures. These files contain skeletal data, more resembling vital stats, on the residents of the shelter. The information is very succinct, usually comprising the name, family name, father’s or mother’s name, birthplace, age or date of birth, Turkish name given  7 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, January 12, 1920.  8 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, October 10, 1920. Also see Raymond H. Kévorkian and Vahé Tachjian, eds., The AGBU: One Hundred Years of History, Volume 1: 1906–1940. (Cairo, Paris & NY, 2006), 83–85.  9 Halva is a type of sweet confection popular in Middle Eastern countries; it can be either flour-based (wheat or semolina) or nut-butter-based (sesame paste). 10 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, March 14, 1920. A subsequent report sent on October 10, 1920 gives additional information on the hygiene and laundry scheme of the shelter, as well as a detailed enumeration of furnishings, down to the number of spoons and plates.

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during the time she was held captive, marital status, where she was brought from, admission date, departure date, notes. The last category is the most ambiguous, its descriptive depth depending on the diligence of the chapter secretary at the time of the writing of the letter. It is these lists that I explore in an attempt to understand the lives, choices, “non-choices” of the women and young girls who passed through these shelters. Believing firmly in voice and with a genuine concern to listen deeply to the untold stories of these women, I seek to be attentive to issues of agency that may appear in these fractured narratives. I use “fractured” here in the sense of rupture that has to do not only with the fact of silencing, stigma and shame, but also the disjointed lives many of these women were forced to lead.11 At this most exploratory stage of my work, where I have barely scratched the surface, I realize that I have more questions than the beginnings of answers, not least on the seemingly impossible task I have set myself. In my attempt to fill in the gaping holes of the fragmented life stories of these young girls and women I feel sometimes that the only possibility I have is to imagine. But even then my imagination is at best a cripple’s crutch, contoured around the emotions of the creeping silences and secrets the scant descriptions unleash. And so I enter a liminal stage, “suspending all disbelief,” where boundaries are blurred deliberately between memory and imagination, in these narratives of life/defying fiction.12 11 Going through the “‘black box’ of the archive,” (Liz Stanley, “In Dialogue: Life Writing and Narrative Inquiry,” 2.) in this case of the official correspondence and reports on the shelter, I am aware of Kali Israel’s warning not just to utilize narrative as a form of writing, but more importantly to regard ‘the archive’ as a narrative construction itself that is to be analyzed (Kali Israel, “Changing the Place of Narrative in Biography: From Form to Method,” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 5). As I attempt to “imagine,” I am also driven by the existing narratives in the loose and scattered fragments of the ledger descriptive notes. In fact, I view the fractures and ruptures in my writing about them as their mirror images, with the metaphor of inversion and deliberate blurriness, an intended consequence. Israel further reminds us that stories should be read as objects, with close attention paid to structure, tropes, and language. The euphemisms, repetitions, generic descriptions appearing in these official correspondence and reports yield rich material in that sense. However, they fall outside the scope of this current essay and are among the issues I discuss in a book manuscript on the life stories of these shelter residents. I am also interested here in critically exploring the linkages between Israel’s perspective on texts as being history and doing history (Ibid., 8), with Lorri Neilsen’s notion of the researcher self becoming the text in her assertion “We are learning that we are no longer mere creators of text, we are texts ourselves” (Lorri Neilsen, Knowing Her Place: Research Literacies and Feminist Occasions (San Francisco and Nova Scotia, 1998), 10), thus going back to and reframing Stanley’s “interpretational presence.” 12 Engaging with the official reports as “sites of story-making” (Israel, “Changing the Place of Narrative in Biography,” 10) I am intrigued by Israel’s notion of narratives offering “plots into which to imagine oneself, repertoires of persons to be as well as things to think, multiple but finite ‘plausible’ means of understanding and acting.” In the same sense, I view my attempt to narrate the life stories of the shelter residents, whether in textual or visual format, as an inevitable act of blurring imagination with memory. At the same time, by offering possibilities of becoming, these narratives by their very nature nest ambiguities, defy closure and embrace an “unendingness,” thus also embodying the faultlines of fractured memories.

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Idea for installation—Photo of shelter residents on huge touch screen. Shelter lists are layered on top of photo in transparent mode and appear to float down in continuous motion. Touching any of the women’s photos activates a short sound file in English and/or Armenian, which is a random descriptive note from the lists, changed into active voice. “I came here from the brothels.” “I don’t remember my family name.” “I had syphilis.” “I escaped from the public baths, screaming I’m a Muslim.” “I was married both to an Armenian and a Turk.” “I am a virgin.” “I am pregnant.” In the earliest information files available from February 1, 1920, we read: Paris, 26, from Sepasdia, found in Ras-ul-Ayn, Armenian husband’s name Krikor Vartanian, Turkish husband’s name illegible from Edirne, had a child who was lost. Mariam, 18, of Chmshgadzak, Turkish name Zeynab, found in Urfa, Turkish husband’s name Mejid from Erzrum, had a child, but left it behind. Azniv, 22, of Sepasdia, Turkish name Meriem, found in Berejik, Armenian husband’s name Norarevian, Turkish husband’s name Mustafa Chaoush of Berejik, had a child, who died, is now pregnant. The list goes on and on—Married a Turk in Rakka, didn’t have children; married a Turk in Rakka, had a child, died; married in Urfa to a Turk named Ahmed, is pregnant; was with an Arab named Abo; was with a Kurd, pregnant now; married Seyid Ahmed from Severeg, had a son who died, had three children from Armenian husband, one lost, two with her; had two children from Armenian husband, both dead, Turkish husband’s name Hasan from Aleppo, didn’t have children from him.13 In the very economical details describing the circumstances of these women I am struck at the attention paid to meticulously write down the names of each of the non-Armenian husbands and where they were from. The trajectories from the birthplace to where a woman was found and sometimes where the non-Armenian husband is from tell of arcs of routes, visually crisscrossing the whole region, while the lives of the women are circumscribed between the names of the two husbands. The list ends with an enigmatic entry—Sara, no family name, five months old, from Der Zor, mother’s name Yeghisapet, Turkish father’s name Avad, born in Der Zor. I realize she’s the child mentioned in the first report from March 1920 for whom the milk was bought. I cannot find her mother anywhere on the list. I find Sara again in a list attached to a letter dating July 14, 1920. She still has no family name, but the notes give more details—Her mother got sick and died on January 2, 1920, leaving her child from the Turkish husband to the shelter, who was subsequently named Sara.14 A month later, another list registers Sara passed away on July 20.15

13 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, February 1, 1920. 14 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, July 14, 1920. 15 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, August 10, 1920.

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Idea for installation—Title: Spinning life stories. Retrace the trajectories of the shelter residents including birthplace, where they were found, where Turkish/ Kurdish/Arab husband came from, and the city of Aleppo on huge screen map. Use wool (red color?) to trace sum of all trajectories together and make it into a ball, which is then put on a spinning wheel. Visitors are invited to sit and spin. As they do, the foot pedal triggers soundfiles of recitations of random descriptive notes in English and Armenian.16 The last letter issued from the local chapter in this archival collection is dated March 16, 1928. Attached to it are the list of arrivals for 1927 totaling 46, the list of departures for the same period of 42 women, and those who are still residing at the shelter by year end of 39 people, approximately one third of whom are children. The descriptive notes have become shorter and more generic in these lists. Three have left because they have married, 30-year-old Ovsanna, 20-year-old Aghavni and 18-year-old Mary. 18-year-old Nvart escapes from the roof, within four days of being admitted, while 20-year-old Vahide escapes from the workshop. 35-year-old Kayane is referred to the shelter by Karen Jeppe,17 together with her two Turkish-born sons (թրքածնունդ) who bear Armenian names, Hagop and Hampartsum. They leave after a week, to live with her relatives. Kayane’s is an intriguing case, the sketchy details reverberating through the fragmented stories of so many residents who have passed through those shelters. Apart from attesting 16 There certainly is a parallel in my approach to utilize the archival material as literal “sites of story-making” through my installation pieces with what Hirsch refers to perceiving and conceptualizing “the archive as a site of creative artistic production rather than mere reproduction.” (Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (New York, 2012), 229). Since the original writing of this paper, this installation idea is now in its early development stage and has shifted from the original inception to include double channel video projections. True to Stanley’s “active interpretational presence” in researcher reflexivity, I now envision a meshing of my autobiographical inquiry into this visual life writing piece, through my intervention in the video projections of threading the map and spinning the wool myself, as sound files of the descriptive notes recorded in my voice are triggered when the viewer approaches the projections. In “personalizing the archive” (Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 233) in this manner, I am particularly interested in exploring the notion of sequencing in narratives and on how a visual language can be connective, bridging with the textual, especially when the latter encounters the impossibility of verbalizing. My reflections on sequencing owe a debt to Israel’s concept of a spatial, rather than a chronological mapping which allows for a closer scrutiny of sources as “sites of story-making,” and Tamboukou’s questioning of sequences which leads to a view of narratives as a constant becoming, remaining essentially unfinished (Maria Tamboukou, “Working with Stories as Multiplicities, Opening up the Black Box of the Archive,” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 20–21). Thus the narratable moment manifests through its resistance of sequence and closure. 17 The Danish missionary Karen Jeppe, who also operated a shelter for girls and young women in Aleppo, was the Aleppo director of the Commission for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East, under the auspices of the League of Nations.

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to the fact that as late as 1927, women were still trying to get away together with their children, this little fragment also hints at central issues at the intersection of shame, honor, reintegration and belonging not only of the “abandoned” young girls and women, but also of their children born of rape, abductions, and forced marriages. The specific denotation here of “Turkish-born” sons juxtaposed with their Armenian names is a significant clue that added to the fact of her departure from the shelter to live with her relatives may indicate acceptance not only of her situation but also of her sons, designating them an identity of belonging to the survivor community. The last person admitted to the shelter is 23-year-old Hranush, “married with a Turk, doesn’t have children, sent by Miss Jeppe.” The notes on the final list of the residents at the shelter offer a different take on her situation however, revealing that she “is pregnant and is sent to the hospital.”18 Unfinished Endings: Reflections on Storying the Silences As I try to see the young girls and women behind these unending lists of arrivals and departures, it seems that all I am left with are disembodied faceless sketches. I question myself whether it is ever possible to portray the stories of these women. The process of writing also pushed me to reflect on non-textual forms of storying and more particularly to explore a parallel visual language that could better help voice the stories. This is how the idea to use some form of installations germinated, since they can add a new dimension that propels a viewer/reader to listen deeply and engage with the narratives. The installations also create the possibility of writing the stories from the perspectives of the girls and women. In these installation pieces I imagine the women speaking out their “(non)-choices,” subverting the abrupt phrases about them appearing in the descriptive notes of the lists. A fundamental question I have on the exploration of a visual language revolves around what Marianne Hirsch signifies as the “gesture [of the archives] toward what has been lost and forgotten, toward the many lives that remain obscure, unknown, and unthought.”19 The aim of the installation pieces is to convey and have the viewer reflect on these losses as s/he engages with them. The inevitable impossibility to coherently piece together the loss, to map the unknown leads to an act of conscious (re)imagining, to “fill the emptiness through our performative practices of desire.”20 It is also this desire, this intention, that propels me to seek new forms and languages to tell the stories of the absences, gaps, ruptures and fractures in the archival documents.

18 AGBU central archives (Cairo), Aleppo file, letter from Aleppo chapter to Cairo centre, March 16, 1928. 19 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, 247. 20 Ibid.

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I am interested in two interlinked axes in the storying process here. The first is what Tamboukou refers to as “the desire of the narratable subject for her story to be told”21 as a node in lifewriting. The question this leads me to is the challenge when the “narratable subject,” the actor herself, is absent in the archival documents or rather, as is the case here, is herself the object of fragmented narrations in correspondence reports and information ledgers, almost always invariably written by men. What role does my writing and imagining play in this context in imbuing the “narratable subject” with agency? To what extent then is this agency a “product” of the storying and not necessarily the story itself? And where does the desire of the writer/researcher take over that of the “narratable subject”? The second axis, which I see born out of this desire to narrate, revolves around “silence as a frame of narration” and not an absence of it. This could then lead to “factionalizing” (as opposed to fictionalizing) where the (re)imagined narrative becomes an alternative way of critically exploring a life story not told.22 The (re)imagining necessitates a listening to silence. As Hirsch reminds us, “postmemory is subject to dreams and desires that can shape an alternate archive.”23 Silences and gaps play the critical role in becoming the “connective tissue”24 for the (re)imagined, factionalized narrative. Methodologically, I find this concept of (re)imagining an apt positioning for my narrative textual interjections and the visual language of my installations, since it pushes me to reflect on how silence becomes part of the story, how I can read and narrate it. I also struggle with the ethical challenges I face of revealing the full names25 of the women and girls I have come across in the archival records. Would I be trespassing into a territory that is best left undisturbed? Do I have the right as a researcher to reveal those secrets? I remember how when I initially got interested in this topic several years ago and started reviewing the scant literature, I was struck by an episode recounted by Isabelle Kaprielian-Churchill in her article on Armenian picture brides in the post-genocide era.26 One of her participants, who had been abducted and forced to marry a young Kurd, told her that her husband never asked about her past in 50 years of marriage except on his deathbed.27 I always wonder how that husband lived for those 50 years dreading knowledge of a “secret” and chose to never ask his wife about it. Was it out of respect? 21 Tamboukou, “Working with Stories as Multiplicities, Opening up the Black Box of the Archive,” 23. 22 Erla Hulda Halldórsdóttir, “The Narrative of Silence,” Life Writing 7/1 (2010), 38. 23 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, 249. 24 Ibid., 248. 25 Even though the family names of all the shelter residents are clearly identified in the reports, except in very rare cases, I have made a choice to only utilize their first names here. 26 Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, “Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920–1930,” Journal of American Ethnic History 12/3 (1993): 3–29. 27 Ibid., 22.

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Love? Shame? Not to open a wound that maybe had not scarred? Among all the difficult stories I have read, that particular episode still haunts and obsesses me. As I reflect on my responsibility as a researcher dealing with sensitive material, it is no wonder that I return to that question deliberately not asked of the picture-bride wife. On the other hand, doesn’t leaving out the names on my part amount to burying these stories yet again in piles of archives, leaving these girls and women as faceless, bodiless entities? Don’t they deserve to be named? Naming is defining, existing, challenging the inherent power structure that renders these girls and women to the powerless status of victims who can only exist on the margins of fragmented half-line descriptions. After all, as a feminist scholar I firmly believe in transformative and empowering praxis as a research outcome. None of these questions I have fit into any neat rubric I can place in an “informed consent” form. How do I deal with the dilemma? I have no answers as yet, except for leaning on a concept of situated ethics28 that will honor the voices of the women, and admitting that any marker in the final decision will have to take into account how best it encapsulates a representation of agency.29 Very recently, my mother gave me a cache of letters my paternal grandmother had entrusted her. In it I discovered the letters my great aunt Azniv had written to my grandmother in the last decade of her life. As a child of barely ten, Azniv was “lost” for 15 years in the desert and found from amid the Bedouins. Here she was in her seventies, yet that time in the past was still with her, part of her every day, of her being, of who she was in her present. The choices made 50 years earlier still reverberated in her words. Among mundane exchanges of bits and pieces of news and information about family members, the same lines appear repeatedly addressed to my grandmother. “I will never forget what you have done for me.” “Whatever I do for you is too little.” “If it were not for you, I would have rotted in the desert a long time ago.” “This is testimony,” I think. And I let her words touch me in the now.

28 Gesa E. Kirsch, Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation, and Publication. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999). 29 Israel calls for an awareness of how agency can be “produced by and through stories” in lifewriting and cautions against imposing it driven by a desire not to see the actors we write about as victims (Israel, “Changing the Place of Narrative in Biography,” 13). This is a question I find myself constantly driven to in my reflective practice. Is there a refusal (albeit unconscious) to see the frailty of the humanness of victims in choosing to see them as active agents at all times and at all costs? I believe it is important to remember that all choices and non-choices, should be seen as what they are, as contextual complex situations and agency should be regarded as equally nuanced.

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References Primary sources AGBU central archives, Cairo Armenian National Delegation archives, Paris Secondary sources Kaprielian-Churchill, Isabel. “Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920–1930.” Journal of American Ethnic History 12/3 (1993): 3–29. Kévorkian, Raymond H., and Vahe Tachjian, eds. The AGBU: One Hundred Years of History, Volume 1: 1906–1940. Cairo, Paris & NY: AGBU Central Board, 2006. Kirsch, Gesa E. Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The Politics of Location, Interpretation, and Publication. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Israel, Kali. “Changing the Place of Narrative in Biography: From Form to Method.” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 5–15. Halldórsdóttir, Erla H. “The Narrative of Silence.” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 37–50. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Neilsen, Lorri. Knowing Her Place: Research Literacies and Feminist Occasions. San Francisco and Nova Scotia: Caddo Gap Press and Backalong Books, 1998. Stanley, Liz. “In Dialogue: Life Writing and Narrative Inquiry.” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 1–3. Stanley, Liz. “In Dialogue: Life Writing and Narrative Inquiry Part 2.” Life Writing 7/2 (2010): 121–122. Tamboukou, Maria. “Working with Stories as Multiplicities, Opening up the Black Box of the Archive.” Life Writing 7/1 (2010): 19–33.

Chapter 14

Women Living and Re-living Armed Conflict: Exploring a Methodology for Spanning Time and Place Cynthia Cockburn

In the year 1996 and for a couple of years thereafter I engaged in a project of qualitative research in and among three women’s organizations that were sustaining difficult alliances across enemy lines in the armed conflicts of Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Israel Palestine.1 The organizations differed in their purpose. The Women’s Support Network in Belfast was a unique feminist alliance of women’s neighbourhood associations, asserting women’s interests in a period of peace negotiations. The Medica Women’s Therapy Centre in the Bosnian town of Zenica was a refuge and clinic for women raped and traumatized in the Yugoslav nationalist aggression. Bat Shalom was a Jewish/Palestinian women’s group organizing bicommunal events and activities in the northern reaches of Israel. My interest in these particular groups of women, however, was specific to one characteristic they shared – each encompassed members of conflictual communities. The Women’s Support Network furnished a unique model of cooperation by women from embattled Catholic/Republican and Protestant/Loyalist neighbourhoods. Medica, in an area held by Bosnian nationalist forces, was a working team of Muslim women with a minority of Serb and Croat women, antinationalists who had refused to observe the logic of ethnic war and the pressure to flee to the areas secured by “their” armed forces. Bat Shalom involved a partnership of Jewish women and women of the marginalized Palestinian minority in the Galilee and Wadi Ara. While they were striving for an end to Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights, they were primarily concerned to transform the Israeli state itself. Israel’s Muslim, Christian and other religious and cultural minorities lack many rights and benefits that accrue to Jews in what is constitutionally a Jewish state. Bat Shalom’s aim was a genuinely inclusive multicultural democracy. Women of the three organizations were alike in taking the risk of defying the territorialism and hatred being engendered by their respective nationalist ideologues, and the 1 Cynthia Cockburn, The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (London and New York: Zed Books, 1998).

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pursuit of armed violence by many, notably men, in their communities. In The Space Between Us I analysed the skills, especially an ability in the negotiation of complex identities, they were developing in order to meet and work together on a terrain strewn with the unexploded ordinance of extreme nationalisms.2 It was a practice we were beginning to call “transversal politics”.3 A decade and a half later I decided to “revisit” this project. I would return to the three countries to find out what had become of the women, their organizations and their wars. In the early months of 2012 I sought out and interviewed as many of the original activists as I could find (38 in total). In each country I arranged a meeting of the “old-timers” for group discussion. I asked them “What has become of violence?”, and “What are relations like today between people identified by those conflictual nationalist names?” “Have gender relations changed in this period – what’s become of women?” Hardest of all, I asked them “What progress has been made here towards justice, democracy and peace?”4 My purpose here is not to report on the findings of my “revisiting”. In brief, I may say that I found the three women’s organizations had lost much of their political momentum with the passage of time. Indeed, Bat Shalom had folded up entirely. Peace agreements that had been in the air in the late 1990s had failed to deliver the democratic states they had seemed to promise. Violence, though it had changed in form, had not ended – and in Israel it had escalated. I have reported these findings extensively elsewhere.5 In this chapter I wish to maintain a clear focus on problems of research strategy. First, how was I going to span time – this gap of 16 years or more between the two research moments? What is involved in the intellectual and emotional enterprise of looking back through time, and redirecting the light of the past onto the present moment? Here I found accounts of other researchers’ experiments with “memory work” helpful. In particular, I wanted to think through the role photography and other visual media might play 2 Cockburn, The Space Between Us. 3 Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London: Sage Publications, 1997); Cockburn, The Space Between Us; Cynthia Cockburn and Lynette Hunter, (1999) “Transversal Politics and Translating Practices”, Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, special issue on ‘Transversal Politics’, 12 (1999): 88–93. 4 I wish to express appreciation to the following organizations that generously funded this project: Network for Social Change, the Feminist Review Trust, the Irene Bruegel Trust, the Lansbury House Trust Fund, the Scurrah-Wainwright Charity and the Maypole Fund. 5 See my articles “Against the Odds: Sustaining Feminist Momentum in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Women’s Studies International Forum 37 (2013): 26–35; “A Movement Stalled: Outcomes of Women’s Campaign for Equalities and Inclusion in the Northern Ireland Peace Process”, Interface: Global Journal For and About Social Movements 5 (2013): 151–182; “What Became of “Frontline Feminism”? A Retro-perspective on Postconflict Belfast”, Feminist Review 105 (2013): 103–121; and “The Dialogue that Died: Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian Women in Hard Times”, International Feminist Journal of Politics 16/3 (2014): 430–447.

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in such a time-spanning project. I had an archive of images from the late nineties available for use, but I sensed there was peril as well as promise in photos. Second, both the original and new research involved spanning between places – and consequently between cultures and languages. In the former I now knew that I had taken language interpretations too much “at face value”. This time I wanted to think more rigorously about the challenge of communicating in and between English, Serbo-Croat, Hebrew and Arabic. Here I consider my own choices in the light of several analyses by other researchers of the difficulties involved in the use of interpreters and translators. Spanning Time: Memory Work as Social Research First, the vexed question of memory. The women I hoped to find, in the cities of Belfast and Zenica and in the wide reaches of northern Israel, would be 15 years older than when I last met them. So would I. Their contemporary lives would be shaped by new realities – children and grandchildren born, health and wellbeing gained or (more likely) lost, changed economic circumstances and new political structures. Mine too. For one thing, in these intervening years I had learned much from many other women’s groups in a variety of conflict zones in which I had done research. How could I re-establish simultaneity with each of these women, in a moment we had shared in the past? How could we together travel through time, connecting the past with the present, and the interval between? “Memory work” is a distinctive category of qualitative inquiry. Some narratives6 locate its origins in the work of the Frauenformen collective in the late 1970s, inspired by the Marxist feminist Frigga Haug and associated with the journal Das Argument. They were intent on disrupting the academic canon, rejecting the “scientific” mode in social research that divorced theory from everyday lived experience. Their method involved three phases: individual reflections in writing; group discussion of these accounts; and a recursive process of theorizing from the writings and discussion.7 Thus, they set store by women’s own account of themselves. At the same time, conscious of the selectiveness and partiality of memory, they made collective sense of individual stories about the past as knowledge usable in the present. A notable product of the process was the book Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory.8 This originary memory methodology, though far more interactive and collectivized than my 6 For instance Adrienne E. Hyle, Margaret S. Ewing, Diane Montgomery and Judith S. Kaufman, eds., Dissecting the Mundane: International Perspectives on Memory-Work (Lanham: University Press of America, 2008). 7 Jenny Onyx and Jennie Small “Memory-work: The Method”, Qualitative Inquiry 7 (2001): 773–786. 8 Frigga Haug, ed., Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory (London: Verso, 1987).

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own, has resonance for me as arising in our shared liberatory moment of 1970s feminism, when we newly set store by theorizing from our lived experience. More recently, three decades after Frauenformen, a new generation of researchers has begun to address the question of how to handle this tricky thing called “memory” as a source of knowledge. Emily Keightley notes a growing conceptualization and use of memory in the social sciences, both as a tool and as an object of research.9 What I have found particularly fresh (and reassuring) in her work is the notion that memory studies are not just about the past. They are explicitly concerned with the relationship between past, present and future. Remembering, she says, is the activity that “enables us to navigate and mediate these temporal arenas and forge links between them”.10 This made special sense to me as I set out to recall past conflicts as ground from which to survey the unpeaceful present and turbulent times in between. Common ground among memory researchers is an understanding that, although there are overlaps between memory and history, the two should not be confused. “Analytical work in memory studies is different from historical analysis in several ways. In the first instance, rather than being considered as a transparent documentary account, each narrative or testimony is treated as a text in the cultural sense of the word … ” In other words, a memory should be seen as something to be critically interpreted in terms of both form and content. Besides, both individual and collective memory is changeable. “The meanings of memory are never fixed once and for all and the relationship between memory and experience is contingent and fleeting … ”11 My own search for a shared memory of 1996, therefore, was going to have to be cautious, open-minded, provisional. I might be able to generate a remembering of that period (my own recall, as of this moment). But I could not assume that is how things actually were. Even less could I suppose that other women would remember those times in the manner I myself remembered them. Annette Kuhn is someone who has thought deeply about the treatment of memory in research (2005). “Memory work”, she says, “undercuts assumptions about the transparency or the authenticity of what is remembered, treating it not as ‘truth’ but as evidence of a particular sort: material for interpretation, to be interrogated, mined for its meanings and its possibilities. Memory work is a conscious and purposeful staging of memory”.12 This German model was subsequently taken up and developed, in a somewhat different direction (Frigga Haug, “Memory work”, Australian Feminist Studies 23 (2008): 537–542.) by women at Macquarie University, in Australia (June Crawford, Susan Kippax, Jenny Onyx, Una Gault and Pam Benton, Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory (London: Sage Publications, 1992)).  9 Emily Keightley, “Remembering Research: Memory and Methodology in the Social Sciences”, International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13 (2010): 55–70. 10 Keightley, “Remembering Research”, 62. 11 Keightley, “Remembering Research”, 60. 12 Annette Kuhn, “Memory and Textuality”, in Inventing the Past: Memory Work in Culture and History, eds. Otto Heim and Caroline Wiedmer (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2005), 15.

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Using Photography in Memory Work How then, was I going to “stage” my assay at a memory of 1996? With materials, clearly. Memory, says Andreas Kitzmann, is materialized in media. “[M]edia is the matter of memory. Media literally brings memory into the realm of lived and material existence”.13 The materials I had to hand were of two kinds, visual images and the printed word. I had a couple of hundred photos, painstakingly printed in my dark room back in the days of silver print, and now stored in boxes. As to words, in and among my own observations of that time, the most lively and appropriate prompts to memory were, it seemed to me, women’s own words, reported speech from the period. I devised a plan to “re-present” that moment in the past by a collage of these two elements, photographs and words. But what kind of a collage could I conveniently carry with me on my travels, and present to both individuals and groups? This couldn’t be a scrap album you could hold in your hands, or a simple pinboard of snaps and snippets. It had to be a presentation that could hold its form across many viewings in many locations, for I wanted in my re-interviews and group discussions to present each woman from any given organization with identical stimuli to memory. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney write of “medial frameworks of remembering”. This made me dwell more consciously on the framing that might work for us. I needed a “medial process through which memories come into the public arena and become collective”, as they put it.14 I decided to produce a medial framework of three parts: a set of printed posters; PowerPoint presentations; and a short documentary film. They would draw on the same matter, the same photographs and words. All would be portable. All but the film would be translated into the relevant languages. They could be viewed individually or by a group of women. Together, they would be a kick-start to memory. But hold on! What authority, or even validity, would these verbal-visual statements have? Photographs are all too often taken to be representations of historical events and moments that may be understood at a glance. These of mine could not even be said to be “about” 1996, only to have reference to 1996 in my own selective remembering. The words, though legitimately offered as direct quotations of women’s own utterances at the time, had been selected by me in the first reporting, and now selected once more for this medial memory framework of posters, PowerPoints and film. Their significance was the significance with which I myself endowed them, then and now. And as to the photographs … Photography had been an important component of the original Space Between Us project. I described my purpose in using a camera in the introduction to 13 Andreas Kitzmann, “The Page, the Camera and the Network: Media and the Materiality of Memory”, in Memory Work: The Theory and Practice of Memory, eds. Andreas Kitzmann, Conny Mithander and John Sundholm (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), 64. 14 Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney, “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics”, in Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, eds. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 2.

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the book. First, I would make these images directly available to the projects, furthering a kind of reflexivity, a seeing of themselves through my eyes, and a seeing of me through the way I was seeing them. Again, the women themselves saw potential uses for the photos in publicity and fund-raising material. That would be a contribution I could make to their “action”. Finally they would be used in my research publications as a visual take, alongside the verbal take, on the social space between these women, and between them and me, and the physical and political spaces in which we were together living and working. All the time I kept in mind Susan Sontag’s phrase about the “shady commerce between art and truth” to remind readers that both the photos and my written research “findings”, alike, were subjective and interpretive.15 That choice to use photography in the first round generated the many images from which I could now choose in “staging” the memory of 1996. For the medial framework, I selected around a dozen from each country for use in the posters, thirty or forty for the PowerPoints. Perhaps a hundred however are gathered and (literally) mobilized in a movie: a 25-minute retrospective documentary film of the Space Between Us project. Made by Dvora Liberman, it was initiated by her and completed, fortuitously, in time for me to employ it as an intrinsic part of my medial framework. Photographic images however, whether still or moving, need to be handled with great care in memory work. As some with experience in this field have written, photographs are emphatically not transparent. They are “thick images with social and historical lives that are not apparent on first look – they are ambiguous; their lives may have been distorted by the passing of time and an overlay of outmoded political agendas and national, corporate or aesthetic economies of need; and these changes cause shifts in meaning as cultures, too, shift”. Thus a photograph is curiously contradictory. Sure enough, it has indexicality, it is “fixed in a time and a place”. But perversely “it is mobile, traveling inexhaustibly, accruing meanings as it goes”.16 Our uniquely personal and shifting memories do not permit of a simple mental reflection of this (always already mobile) image. Rather, as Patrik Sjöberg puts it, memory “collaborates” with a photograph in complex ways.17 I understood therefore that what I would be doing in staging memory to my research subjects in my three-fold medial framework would be (in the words of Annette Kuhn, still pursuing a dramaturgical metaphor) “a re-enactment of the past” through a “performance” of memory in my chosen visual medium (my 15 Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Allen Lane 1978), 6. 16 Marlene Kadar, Jeanne Perreault and Linda Warley, “Introduction: Ambiguities, Distortions, Shifts”, in Photographs, Histories and Meanings, eds. Marlene Kadar, Jeanne Perreault and Linda Warley (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1. 17 Patrik Sjöberg, “A Mirror with a Memory: On the Relation Between Cameraproduced Images and Memory”, in Memory Work: The Theory and Practice of Memory, eds. Andreas Kitzmann, Conny Mithander and John Sundholm (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), 68.

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italics).18 My use of the memory-prompts furthermore should avoid theatricality in any declamatory sense, but instead seek to be collaborative and interactive – more like Forum Theatre. I needed to prompt the women with whom I would be engaging to think of (a) what I didn’t see, (b) what I didn’t photograph and (c) which photos, of the many I took, I had not chosen to reproduce and re-present. They should also be encouraged to question the choices I had made as I linked given photographs to given words, whether these were my own descriptions of their place, their organization and themselves, or my citation of the words they themselves had used to describe their reality in 1996. In launching discussions of the posters and videos, therefore, I took care to stress: “This is how, listening to you, I saw you in 1996”. And then I would ask: “Is this how you remember it, or differently, otherwise?” That invitation to offer their own interpretations of the past became for me a mandatory preface to any discussion of the present. Spanning Places and Cultures: Demands of Language Interpretation You will see from the foregoing that my desire to span time in this “revisiting” project had led me into the methodological long grass. But this was nothing to the tangled thickets in which I found myself when I woke to the full implications of traversing space as well – that is to say carrying out the research in three countries, involving four languages, in such a way that each case study would be understandable to all participants within any one country, and eventually capable of meaningful transmission across the entire transnational landscape spanned by the project. If photographs were my material device for traversing time, it was two young women called Ana and Hanan that I enlisted to help me traverse between cultures and languages. I addressed the problem of language interpretation far more consciously in the “revisiting” than I had in the original project, into which I had plunged with more enthusiasm than foresight. My own first language is English and this I share with the women of the Women’s Support Network in Northern Ireland. I do not however understand or speak the languages current among the women of Bat Shalom. In Israel Palestine, Hebrew is the currency of Jews and the Jewish state, while Arabic is the first preference of many Palestinian Arabs dwelling in Israel. Many of the latter are also, to varying degrees, competent in Hebrew, but a full grasp of the language cannot be assumed. Conversely, very few Israeli Jews have learned Arabic. While a number of my women informants in both communities are familiar with English, even they in some cases asked for the support of an interpreter. In Bosnia-Herzegovina language diversity is of a different kind. In Federal Yugoslavia the language was unitary, though with slight regional variations. After 18 Annette Kuhn, “Memory Texts and Memory Work: Performances of Memory in and with Visual Media”, Memory Studies 3 (2010): 298.

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the ethno-national wars of the 1990s, the political authorities representing Serb, Croat and Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) communities at local, entity and national levels, began to emphasize cultural specificities and to structure the school system around language “difference” in order to realize what the ethnic cleansers had proclaimed and crafted: the existence of three separate and distinct peoples. Notwithstanding, in practice all Bosnians continue to understand each other without difficulty. There are however two scripts in use and it is courteous to observe them. Roman is the script of those identifying as Croat or Muslim, while Serbs use Cyrillic. Furthermore, while some of my Bosnian research participants speak good English, I needed an interpreter to communicate with others. A methodological concern with the nature and reliability of knowledge produced in qualitative social research when dependent on language interpretation is relatively recent, prompted by a growing stress on “reflexivity”. Particularly vocal in appealing to researchers to think more profoundly about the implications of language interpretation has been Bogusia Temple who, with co-authors Rosalind Edwards and Alys Young, produced a number of articles on the topic between 1997 and 2010.19 These authors were critical of the simplistic view they encountered in most reports of interpreter-based social research. The interpreter, if not entirely invisible, was being represented as a mere “conduit”, “a neutral mouthpiece, faithfully and passively translating back and forth between languages”.20 These critics argued that “language is more than the medium people use to express what they want to say. Language is used to construct, as well as describe, people’s identities and the differences between us and those we define as ‘other’”.21 Consequently, it was incumbent on the researcher to identify the interpreter, describe her or his background and experience in relation to those of the researcher and her informants and “acknowledge that they carry out interviews with, rather than through, interpreters”.22 After all, the traditional positivistic model of research has given way in the social sciences to an understanding that “who the researcher is” shapes the research process and outcomes. “There appears to be no reason why such critical reflexivity should not usefully be extended to the role of interpreters in the research process and to textual representations of such research”.23 After 19 Bogusia Temple, “Watch Your Tongue: Issues in Translation and Cross-cultural Research”, Sociology 31 (1997): 607–618; Bogusia Temple and Rosalind Edwards, “Interpreters/Translators in Cross-language Research: Reflexivity and Border Crossings”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 1 (2002): 1–12; Bogusia Temple and Alys Young, “Qualitative Research and Translation Dilemmas”, Qualitative Research 4 (2004): 161–178; Bogusia Temple, “Narrative Analysis of Written Texts: Reflexivity in Cross Language Research”, Qualitative Research 8 (2008): 355–364; Rosalind Edwards, “A Critical Examination of the Use of Interpreters in the Qualitative Research Process”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24 (2010): 197–208. 20 Temple and Edwards, “Interpreters/Translators in Cross-language Research”, 5. 21 Temple, “Narrative Analysis of Written Texts”, 357. 22 Edwards, “A Critical Examination of the Use of Interpreters”, 197. 23 Ibid. 203.

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all, if we now understand qualitative researchers themselves as “translating” the stories they receive from research informants, as “reconstructing the experiences of others in their own terms and from their own reference points”, how can we neglect the constructing of worlds in the language translation process too?24 This shift of perspective implied getting closer to the interpreter, who would become a partner in the research process. “Without talking to interpreters about their views on the issues being discussed the researcher will not be able to begin to allow for differences in understandings of words, concepts and worldviews across languages”.25 Bogusia Temple and Rosalind Edwards suggest that not only should researchers bring their interpreters “out from the shadows”, they might even designate them “key informants” and interview them too before starting the work of interpretation.26 Author-ity, Power and Democracy in the Research Relationship The issues of power and democracy present in all projects of research are particularly acute in translingual research. “The interaction between languages is part of the establishment and maintenance of hierarchical relations”.27 In any country the official language, usually that of the majority of the population, prevails authoritatively over minority languages. English, due to its imperial past and current global reach, tends to carry special weight. “Such differences in power between languages … influence the translation of meaning”.28 Any attempt at equality in the relationship between researcher and researched needs to take account of this. There is also a political dynamic in the three-way relationship of the researcher, interpreter and interviewee. Where the researcher attempts to render the interpreter invisible or reduce the act of interpretation to a technicality, this not only ignores and denies her or his role in contributing and shaping meanings in the research, it also an abuse of the interpreter as a person.29 The vexed question of author-ity arises too in the use of photographs and textual/ verbal memory materials. Who is it who chooses the (persuasive) photographs, and chooses the (also influential) medial framework in which they are presented in the process of memory research? It is the researcher. And voices warn us of the danger of the authorial sense of entitlement, the imperial gaze, the “role of photography in producing colonial knowledge structured by the desire and the gaze

24 Temple, “Watch Your Tongue”, 609. 25 Temple and Young, “Qualitative Research and Translation Dilemmas”, 171. 26 Temple and Edwards, “Interpreters/Translators in Cross-language Research”, 6. 27 Ibid. 3. 28 Temple and Young, “Qualitative Research and Translation Dilemmas”, 167. 29 Edwards, “A Critical Examination of the Use of Interpreters”, 197–208.

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of the coloniser”.30 There are yet other kinds of photography projects, consciously “democratic”, in which the subjects of concern to the initiator of the project are invited and enabled themselves to become photographers, to take photographs, to author visual narratives. Well-reasoned examples are the Open Shutters project by Iraqi women, and the PhotoPAR project in Guatemala.31 I conclude from these, and my own, contemplations on author-ity, that an irreducible necessity in research that strives for democracy is an alertness to every dimension of power operating in the field. In the community and the research relationship there will be differentials of class, “race” and gender. But other attributes too confer relative power: mobility, education, organization, weapons. A careful detailing is required of each actor’s (complex) “positionality” in relation to these power dynamics. Beyond positionality (given, individual), we also need to be explicit about political “standpoint” (achieved, collective).32 Frigga Haug and the Frauenformen 30 Annette Kuhn and Kirsten Emiko McAllister, “Locating Memory: Photographic aActs – aAn Introduction”, in Locating Memory: Photographic Acts, eds. Annette Kuhn and Kirsten Emiko McAllister (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006), 4–5. 31 The Open Shutters project involved a number of Iraqi women being trained in the use of a camera and enabled to document their own lives in Iraq during the still-violent aftermath to the 2003 invasion (Eugenie Dohlberg, Open Shutter Iraq (Yateley, Hampshire: Trolley Books, 2010)). In the PhotoPAR project Brinton Lykes engaged with rural Maya women over a ten year period in participatory and action research processes in which they learned to use a camera to respond to some of the effects of the war’s atrocities. They collectively analysed their products to produce and publish ‘photonarratives’ (M. Brinton Lykes, “Silence(ing), Voice(s) and Gross Violations of Human Rights: Constituting and Performing Subjectivities through PhotoPAR”, Visual Studies 25 (2010): 238–254.). 32 Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1983) and Nancy Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays (Boulder, CO: The Westview Press, 1998). The Marxist concept of standpoint, as elaborated in the 1920s by Georg Lukacs in History and Class Consciousness, posited the development of a distinctive ‘proletarian standpoint’ forged in the process of working class struggle against the capitalist bourgeoisie. The theory was subsequently applied by feminist thinkers in the years of ‘second wave feminism’ to the perspective deriving from women’s struggle against the phallocracy (see for instance Nancy Hartsock, Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1985), Dorothy E. Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987)). Their engagement with Marxist thought, after being eclipsed by post-structuralist critiques for two decades, has re-emerged, with claims for additional sources of feminist standpoint – including my own for one derived from women’s resistance to militarization, war and other kinds of violence (Hartsock, The Feminist Standpoint Revisited, Sandra Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), Cynthia Cockburn, From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis (London and New York: Zed Books, 2007), Cynthia Cockburn, “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Standpoint”, International Feminist Journal of Politics 12 (2010): 139–157.). I have reviewed these

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collective for example were explicit about the feminist and Marxist standpoint that guided their memory work. I have proposed elsewhere that the analysis of war generated by women who experience and oppose it may be termed a standpoint in this sense.33 The significance of standpoint in research, the reason for making it explicit, is that, being politically derived, it necessarily governs the questions we ask, how we make sense of what we discover, and whom we address with our research findings. A standpoint also suggests a research process that is adequate to its values. Methodology, then, deserves political evaluation even when (particularly when), as in the case illustrated here, it retains ambiguities, inconsistencies and shortcomings. The Methodology in Practice: A Self-Evaluation It is easier to prescribe a plausible and legitimate research methodology than to implement it. Research, especially during the moment of fieldwork, often feels under-funded and rushed, incapable of fulfilling hopes and ambitions that inspired an earlier moment of design and preparation. It was so in this project. While my approach to use of photography was firmly founded on prior reading into the methodology of memory work, my approach to the demands of multiple languages was less theorized, even in the revisiting. Much that I have written above springs from reading I was prompted to do on return from fieldwork, uncomfortably aware of shortcomings in the interpretation and translation process, as described below. That I chose to prepare and take with me into the fieldwork visual materials drawing on the original research in the shape of posters, PowerPoints and film, was, I conclude in retrospect, a good decision. The medial framework worked. The seven minute PowerPoints were watched patiently by my informants at the start of their interview. We were able to sit shoulder to shoulder as we watched and talked about them quietly together. The posters had a different purpose. They could and did remain on the walls during the group discussions to which I drew the informants in each country context. The women were able to walk around, look at the posters, absorbing the images, considering the words, and chatting to each other in their several languages as they did so. The discussion would then begin with interpretations and arguments, both about the past and about these particular representations of it. The film I felt to be most effective when projected towards the end of the group meeting, for a further and final iteration from present to past and back to present. The particular photographs I assembled, and the words I selected from the many long interviews I had recorded in that earlier time, likewise proved to developments in a chapter, “Standpoint Theory” for the collection Shahrzad Mojab ed., Feminism and Marxism: A Conceptual Quest (London: Zed Books, 2015). 33 See Cockburn, From Where We Stand and Cockburn, “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War”.

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have sufficient shared meaning to elicit a lively response from those to whom I presented them now. People are a little shaken, perhaps, but also pleased, to see a younger version of themselves and their friends, in the grainy black-and-white of an old photo. They dwelt carefully on the dour images of their war-torn cities and spaces. For the most part they said “Yes, that’s how it was”. When they responded with memories different from my own, it was to suggest that, as someone put it, “No photo, nor even words, can really express the full horror of that time”. One or two felt I had tended to understate it. When I paused to reflect on this, it seemed to me that the love I felt for these women, in the past and now, my admiration of their capacity for survival and care of each other, had caused a little romanticization to creep into my recall, and this had influenced my choice of pictures and words. But we were able to talk about this, and reconsider our feelings in the light of passing time. As to language, I admit to less satisfaction in my achievement, but not for lack of competent interpreters. In my fieldwork in Bosnia I was fortunate to obtain the help of Ana Stevanović, newly graduated in English. Living locally, unemployed and with time on her hands, her family was already known to some of my women informants. In Israel Palestine I was lucky to obtain the services of Hanan Massalha, a final architecture student, sufficiently competent in English, Hebrew and Arabic to be able to work in all three languages. Both Ana and Hanan agreed to work long and flexible hours. Lack of time and resources in this research prevented me from adopting in full the integrative procedure advocated by Bogusia Temple and colleagues, as described above. I was at pains however to learn as much as I could about Ana and Hanan, their circumstances and their lives, to perceive proximity and distance in relation to me, my research intentions and my informants. When we were alone after an interview, I would readily ask them for amplification and for their reflections on what we had learned. It was difficult to dispel the anxiety translingual work provokes. I remembered how Steven Kellman had written, in The Translingual Imagination, that “the legacy of the multiplicity of languages is the realisation that each of us is incomplete. The limits of my language remind me of the limits of my mind”.34 I tried, though it was not easy, to look upon my linguistic incapacity as a reason to celebrate the gift of language partnerships. The Bosnian case study went relatively well from a linguistic point of view – better perhaps than my funders, and I, in my relative unpreparedness, deserved. Ana and I had time for long and deep conversations about women’s lives, about the city, about Bosnia and about the work. She spent many hours after my return to London helping our informants check carefully through my transcripts. Ana was indeed the research “partner” valorized in the literature cited above. The case study of Israel was harder, and not only in the matter of language. I was able to locate fewer of my original informants. Some had died, some were now unwell, 34 Steven G. Kellman, The Translingual Imagination (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 114.

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others had scattered beyond reach. My interpreter Hanan was a busy woman and, though her family were from a village within the locality of my research, she now lived some distance away, in Tel Aviv, necessitating a drive of some hours each day to and from our working sessions. Though her language skills were excellent, she had been less exposed than Ana to the issues dealt with in my research, and we had less time for long review sessions after interviews. My greatest failure was in the case of one Arabic Palestinian informant – let’s call her Rana. It is my practice to proceed with writing up and reporting on the research only after I have obtained the agreement of all my informants to the painstakingly revised and amended contents of their interview transcripts. Rana made it clear that her confidence in me depended on being able to read a written translation into Arabic of the full transcript of her interview. Since Hanan was obliged to return to her usual occupation when I went home, I sought the services of an Arabic translator in London. As it happened, he was not Palestinian, and Rana found his variant of Arabic deformed her meanings. Further communication between us failed, and I was devastated to have to abandon the material in what had been, for my research purposes, a vitally informative interview. For my fieldwork in Northern Ireland, where English is the universal language, no interpreter was needed. I might add, however, that given the Belfast accent and my own diminished hearing it was sometimes laughingly suggested that employing an interpreter might not be a bad idea. This is less of a joke than it seems. It is a reminder that there is more to interpretation than transposing the signs of one language into those of another. Culture cannot be reduced to language. As I ended my revisiting I thought again about my choice of title for the original book. I had called it The Space Between Us. I had meant, by that, to problematize the space between women of conflictual national identities in wartime. Now, I felt, it could just as well refer to the problematic space between researcher and researched. References Cockburn, Cynthia. “Against the Odds: Sustaining Feminist Momentum in Post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina”. Women’s Studies International Forum 37 (2013): 26–35. Cockburn, Cynthia. “The Dialogue that Died: Israeli Jewish and Israeli Palestinian Women in Hard Times”. Online in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (2014), http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616742.2013. 849964#.U6KzPfldWKQ Cockburn, Cynthia. From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis. London and New York: Zed Books, 2007. Cockburn, Cynthia. “Gender Relations as Causal in Militarization and War: A Feminist Standpoint”. International Feminist Journal of Politics 12 (2010): 139–157.

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Cockburn, Cynthia. “A Movement Stalled: Outcomes of Women’s Campaign for Equalities and Inclusion in the Northern Ireland Peace Process”. Online in Interface: Global Journal For and About Social Movements 5 (2013): 151–182. http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/ uploads/2013/05/Interface-5–1-Cockburn.pdf Cockburn, Cynthia. The Space Between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict. London and New York: Zed Books, 1998. Cockburn, Cynthia. “Standpoint Theory”. In Feminism and Marxism: A Conceptual Quest, edited by Shahrzad Mojab. London: Zed Books, forthcoming. Cockburn, Cynthia. “What Became of “Frontline Feminism”? A Retro-perspective on Post-conflict Belfast”. Feminist Review 105 (2013): 103–121. Cockburn, Cynthia and Lynette Hunter. “Transversal Politics and Translating Practices”. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, special issue on “Transversal Politics”. 12 (1999): 88–93. Crawford, June, Susan Kippax, Jenny Onyx, Una Gault and Pam Benton. Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory. London: Sage Publications, 1992. Dohlberg, Eugenie. Open Shutter Iraq. Yateley, Hampshire: Trolley Books, 2010. Edwards, Rosalind. “A Critical Examination of the Use of Interpreters in the Qualitative Research Process”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24 (2010): 197–208. Erll, Astrid and Ann Rigney. “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics”. In Mediation, Remediation and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, edited by Erll, Astrid and Ann Rigney, 1–30. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Harding, Sandra, editor. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Hartsock, Nancy. The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Boulder, CO: The Westview Press, 1998. Hartsock, Nancy. Money, Sex and Power: Toward a Feminist Historical Materialism. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1985. Haug, Frigga, editor. Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso, 1987. Haug, Frigga. (2008) “Memory Work”. Australian Feminist Studies 23 (2008): 537–542. Hyle, Adrienne E., Margaret S. Ewing, Diane Montgomery and Judith S. Kaufman, editors. Dissecting the Mundane: International Perspectives on Memory-Work. University Press of America, 2008. Kadar, Marlene, Jeanne Perreault and Linda Warley. “Introduction: Ambiguities, Distortions, Shifts”. In Photographs, Histories and Meanings, edited by Kadar, Marlene, Jeanne Perreault and Linda Warley, 1–8. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Keightley, Emily. “Remembering Research: Memory and Methodology in the Social Sciences”. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13 (2010): 55–70.

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Index

abandon (a child), 116, 194, 265, 259 abduct, abduction, 44, 62, 255, 260, 265, 266 Abiral, Bürge, 14, 15, 26, 93 Abkhazia, 16, 116, 145–158 Sokhum, 146, 153 Abkhazian(–Georgian war), 16, 116, 145–147, 156 Abkhazian women, 116, 145, 148, 154 absence 24, 131, 185, 211, 213, 215, 265, 266, see also silence abuse, 55, 56, 62, 69–73, 77–84, 86, 220–221, 224, 277 Aceh, see Indonesia Acehneseness, 230, 233–234, 244 Adams, Jane, 2 Afghanistan, 15, 113, 116, 159, 161–173 aftermath: of earthquake / tsunami, 16, 229–230, 242, 244 of conquer, 55, 57, 278 of violence / war, 1, 23, 84, 165, 173, 181, 184, 204 African American, 173, 174, 253, 254 agency, 26, 27, 79, 86, 98, 160, 165, 166, 170, 171, 220, 226, 227, 237, 238, 242, 244, 262, 266, 267 female, 160, 226, 227, 238 political, 86, 99, 238 Al-Ali, Nadje, 8 Aleppo, see Syria Algeria, 24, 115 alien, alienate, 100, 164 “ethnically alien”, 30, 46 all-volunteer force, 113, 117, 163, 173 Allied Forces / Allies, 34, 40, 49, 56–57, 121, 137, 139, 141, 260 Altınay, Ayşe Gül, 1, 4, 93, 103, 229 American women, see women amnesty of 1977 (Spain), 182, 190, see also “pact of silence”

Amnesty International, 71, 73–75 anti-fascism, anti-fascist, 115, 136, 139, 143, 184, 204, 207, 212, 216 anti-fascist resistance, see resistance anti-junta (junta-resistance), 71–73, 76, 80 antisemitism, anti-Semitic, 30, 36, 46, 50 anxiety, 15, 51, 163, 280 archipelago, archipelagic, 233, 243, 244 archive, archival, 2, 12, 13, 14, 17, 26, 69, 71, 123, 182, 184, 203–204, 211, 213, 215, 251, 254, 255, 259, 262, 264–267, 271 armed conflict, see conflict armed forces, 15, 16, 29, 31, 35, 69, 98, 100, 109, 113–114, 135, 143, 183, 170, 269 Armenia, 4, 17, 251–266 Armenian(s), 4, 253, 254–267 women, 17, 251, 255, 257, 261 Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), 259–261 Armenian genocide, see genocide armistice, 137, 138, 259 army, 27, 75, 112, 117, 124–126, 145, 153, 164, 171–172, 254 German, 31, 32, 34, 45, 49, 139–140 Indonesian, 232 Italian (fascist), 135, 137, 141, 143 Polish Home Army, 114–115, 121–131 arrest, 72, 78, 80, 139, 195, 238 Arrow Cross Party, 182, 204–207, 214 Arrow Cross women, 184, 205, 208, 214 Arseni, Kitty, 72–75, 78–81, 83 art, 13, 16, 172, 184, 186, 222, 226, 227, 232, 233–238, 244, 274 artistic expression, 186, 233, 241, 244 arousal, 15, 33, 37, 38, 51 Aryan, 30, 33, 42, 47 Asia, 8, 14, 26, 27, 49, 55–58, 61, 64–67, 161, 260 South Asia, 8, 27

286 assault, 46, 59 sexual, 38, 55, 72, 74–77, 80–81, 86, 99, 168–171, 224 Athens (Greece), 71, 72, 75, 78, 243 Auschwitz Album, 203 atrocity, 30, 38, 49, 57–61, 83, 85, 94, 206–207, 215, 241–242, 278 Attarian, Hourig, 4, 12, 17, 251, 257 Auschwitz, see Poland Australia, 57, 231, 233 authoritarian, 94, 233, 240 autobiography, 13, 56, 94, 101, 254, 257, 264 Avakian, Arlene, 1, 251, 254, 255 Bat Shalom, 269–270, 275 battle front and rear, see front beat, beating, 74, 80, 83, 96, 253 Bedouin, 251, 255, 257–259, 267 Beijing, see China Belfast see Ireland Belgium, 24, 113 Bianpoen, Carla, 232, 235 Birgül, 116, 148–154, 157 blame, 41, 63, 126 Blood Protection Law, 30, 32, 33, 42, 44–47 body, 9, 14, 25–27, 37–39, 55, 58, 63, 69, 74, 77–82, 86, 96–97, 139, 142, 153–154, 183, 195–196, 226, 233–235, 237–238, 240, 242 female / women’s, 27, 79, 82, 98, 101, 109, 114, 193, 221, 234, 257 Bosnia, 219–225, 269, 275–276, 280 Zenica, 269, 271 Bourke, Joanna, 8, 39 brave, bravery, 14, 61, 66, 99, 100, 109, 124, 169, 193, 197 breaking of silence, see unsilence British Asia, 56–57, 61, 65 brothel, 62, 193, 263 brother, 116, 148–149 Brownmiller, Susan, 24, 63 brutal, brutality, 3, 26, 55, 56, 58, 61, 63, 65, 75, 166, 205, 223 Budapest, see Hungary Bush Administration, see US government bystander, 83, 169, 183

Index Campbell, Kirsten, 33, 39 canon, canonical, 27, 85, 197, 203, 215, 271 captive, 57, 59, 221, 262 Caso, Ángeles, 189, 192, 194, 197, 199 Caucasus, 145–147 ceramic installations, 16, 185, 230, 232–233, 244 Chacón, Dulce, 189, 192, 194–196, 199 child, 2, 62, 64, 81, 83, 116, 117, 125–128, 150–152, 157, 166–168, 172, 183, 192–194, 198, 225, 226, 251, 253, 254, 260, 261, 263–265, 267, 271 Chile, 8, 72, 86 China: Beijing, 25, 65 Nanking, 24, 26, 27, 49, 65 Chinese and Eurasian women, 55–57, 61–66 Circassians, 145–147 citizen, citizenship, 15, 45, 57, 69, 98, 103, 109–111, 114, 124, 125, 127, 159, 160, 165, 173, 203, 204, 208, 253 civil courts, 44, 47, 48 civil war: Greek, 69, 73–74, 80, 84, 86 Italian, 135, 140, 143 Spanish, 16, 181, 189–192, 195 civilian, civilians, 6, 31, 57, 121, 124–125, 130, 143, 160, 162, 164–166, 170, 173–174, 240 class, classism, 10, 15, 111, 112, 117, 173–174, 184, 251–255, 278 Cockburn, Cynthia, 1, 12, 13, 17, 172, 219, 251, 255, 269 collective memory, see memory collective resistance, see resistance “collective voicing”, 182, 197 colonial, 10, 26, 56–59, 233, 255, 277 colonial context, 56, 58 64–65 colonialism, 5 combat, 32, 35, 55, 109, 112, 113, 124–126, 129–131, 149, 161–164, 168, 221 combatant, 116, 122, 131, 198, 241 “comfort station”, 48–49, 65 “comfort women / girl”, 8, 62–63, 65

Index commemorate, commemoration, commemorative, 82, 122, 191, 199 communism, collapse of, 145–146, 204, 214–215 communist, 73–74, 80–81, 99, 192, 214, 223 comrade, comradeship, 40, 42, 48, 79, 101, 128, 135, 137–142 concentration camp, 30, 71, 74, 84, 183, 203–204 conflict, conflictual, 1, 6, 16, 24, 34, 39, 41, 50, 57, 63, 65, 70, 85–86, 113, 141–142, 145–146, 162, 172, 190, 195, 198, 219, 229, 236, 238, 240–244, 269–272, 281 armed, 109, 172–173, 184–185, 230–232, 235, 238, 240, 242, 244, 251, 269 nationalist and ethnic, 73, 220 post-conflict, 6, 84, 229, 231 Congress (US), see US government conscientious objection, 103 conscious, consiousness, 103, 142, 193, 208, 212, 253, 265, 271–273, 275, 278 conscious policy, 23–24 contextualize, contextualization, 11, 73, 86, 94, 142, 174, 184, 253, see also de-conzextualize counter conduct, 230 counter memory, see memory counter narrative, see narrative courage, courageous, 14, 61, 66, 100–101, 114, 124, 145, 169, 254 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 10, 252 crime, 13, 15, 25, 32–35, 42, 44, 47, 49–51, 66, 97, 170, 192, 208, 211, 212, 213 against humanity, 13, 33 sexual, 30, 32, 51 war, 6, 25, 33, 50, 57, 60, 182 Croatia, 220, 222 cruel, cruelty, 1, 30, 33, 39, 44, 56, 74, 221 cultural memory, see memory custody, 93, 98–101 Damascus, see Syria Das, Veena, 8

287

death, 58, 65, 97, 121, 124, 137, 138, 152, 153, 157, 162, 196, 204, 225, 258 death sentence, 29, 49, 192, 195, 197, 212 de-contextualize / un-contextualize, 12, 186, 235, see also contextualize defendant, 45, 46, 49, 97 Defense Secretary (US), see US government dehumanize, dehumanization, 33, 75 denial, deny, 11, 15, 26, 29, 34, 36, 48, 50, 99, 277 denunciation, 31, 45 Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs (US), see US government Department of Housing and Urban Development (US), see US government deploy, deployment, 64, 116, 137, 159, 164, 167, 170, 173, 198, 251 deportation, 254, 259, 261 Der Zor, see Syria desert, desertion, 32, 137, 193 destruction, 1, 35, 121, 162, 222, 231, 242 detailed reading, 237 detain, detainee, 71–80, 94, 96 detention, 79, 83, 97, 238 detention center, 75, 96, 102 developmentalist, 16, 230, 244 diary, 16, 76–77, 80, 94, 123, 128–129, 149, 152, 157 diaspora, 16, 145–149, 152–158 disappearance, 238, 242, 255, 258 disclosure of rape / violence, 64, 66, 98, 101 discourse, 16, 24–25, 82–83, 94, 96–103, 115, 124, 127, 147, 157, 165, 198, 207, 211–213, 220–221, 230–232, 237–238, 243, 252 public, 24, 86, 160–161, 169, 207 disgrace, 62–63, 65, 115 dishonor, dishonorable, 24, 36, 49, 77, 101 dissident, 71–75, 79–82, 84, 95, 98 political, 69, 98–99 divided memory, see memory Doğan, Setenay Nil, 16, 116, 145 dominance, dominant, domination, 27, 77, 83, 85, 100, 112, 121, 123, 124,

288

Index

127, 130, 131, 157, 164, 207, 212, 231, 236, 237, 242, 244 “double vision”, 183, 211 duty, 61, 109, 136, 157, 159, 163, 166, 183, 196, 203 earthquake, see Indian Ocean earthquake Eastern Europe, 24, 204 education, 117, 147, 148, 154, 163, 167, 173, 190, 261, 278 Edwards, Rosalind, 276, 277 electroshock, 74, 78, 81 elite men, elites, 146, 157, 240 embodied experience, 240 empower, 15, 86, 103, 114, 171, 238, 267, see also power encourage, 1, 99, 125, 126, 261, 275 endure torture / violence, 14, 39, 78, 97, 100, 101 enemy, 35, 61–62, 65, 127, 128, 138, 139, 141, 150, 225, 255 enemy women, 32, 42 England (Great Britain), 40, 138, 161 enlist, 117, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 173 Enloe, Cynthia, 2, 6, 111, 115, 162, 174, 219–220 Ensler, Eve, 16, 184, 219, 220, 222–225, 227 equal, equality, 15, 80, 110–111, 114–116, 125–127, 129, 131, 163, 174, 182, 191–193, 252 erase, erasure, 94–95, 98, 100, 204, 227, 235 Erll, Astrid, 4, 13, 273 escape, 57, 58, 62, 63, 65, 156, 254, 260, 263–264 ethic, ethical, 4, 13, 15, 16, 25, 26, 42, 110, 111, 181, 219, 227, 255, 266–267 ethnic, ethnicity, 10, 27, 30–31, 34, 39, 46, 48, 51, 73, 86, 111–112, 173–174, 219–222, 226–227, 251–252, 254, 269, 276 “ethnic German”, 37, 45, 47 ethnic hatred, see hatred ethnonationalist, see nationalist evidence, 14, 34, 36, 49, 56, 57, 62, 171, 206, 223, 226, 241, 251, 255, 272

execute, execution, 39–41, 44, 76, 79, 139, 183, 192, 195, 198, 204, 211–213, 257 exile, 71, 74, 82, 127, 145–146, 242, 254, 257 experience: military, 112, 116–117, 160, 164 violence, see violence exploitation, exploitative, 38, 181, 184, 223 ex-prisoner, see prisoner extermination, 33, 36, 45 eye-witness, see witness falanga (bastinado), 74, 78, 83 far-right (Hungary), see right-wing extremist far-right (Hungarista) website, see Whisperer [Suttogó] fascism, fascist, 50, 115, 116, 135–143 father, 37, 97, 116, 140 fear, 31, 36, 49, 61–62, 77–78, 80, 82, 86, 146, 152, 154, 171, 193, 197, 207, 223, 235 Felman, Shoshana, 223, 224 female military auxiliary corps (Servizio Ausiliario Femminile, SAF), 16, 135–143 female perpetrator, see perpetrator female role / women’s role, 81, 95, 98, 103, 110, 112, 114, 116, 125–131, 143, 157, 182, 189, 192, 193, 205 feminine, femininity, 6, 73, 82, 97–103, 110, 114, 116, 123, 126–131, 153, 226 feminine respectability, see respectability feminism, feminist, 1–4, 6, 8–11, 16, 18, 23, 50, 70, 96, 100, 102, 103, 109–111, 115, 122–123, 127, 131, 185–186, 197, 216, 219–228, 235, 237, 244, 253, 260, 269, 271, 278–279 feminist: activism / activist, 4, 15, 17, 24, 97, 219, 225, 235, 238 analysis, 7, 8, 165, 233, 237 approach, 110, 117, 223 art, 226, 233 critics / critique, 10, 70, 110, 181, 220, 226, 235

Index historian / historiography, 4–5, 16, 127 intervention, 6, 12, 14, 181, 227 literature, 8, 9 memory work, 3, 5, 9, 12, 17 movement, 10, 13, 14, 83–84, 102, 251–252 perspective, 6, 20, 70, 91, 181, 204, 251 politics, 9, 102 reimagining, 17, 249 research, 17, 255 scholar / scholarship, 4–7, 9, 12, 14–15, 17, 95, 102, 174, 184, 222, 235, 255, 267 studies, 95, 130, 252 theorist (thinker), 2, 224, 278 theory / theorizing / theoretical, 7–8, 10, 34, 52, 70, 127, 133, 220 transnational, 13, 221, 225 unsilencing, 3–4, 9 Ferrero, Jesús, 189, 192, 197, 199 fictional, fictionalize, fictionalizing, 16, 161, 179, 181, 184, 192, 199, 219, 222, 266 film, 8, 13, 16, 184, 204, 206, 119–128, 273–274 “Final Solution”, 30, 39, 45, 48 forced marriage, 97, 265 forced disrobement (strip / undressing), 33, 37–39, 77, 96 forget, forgetting, 4, 12, 62, 64, 153, 159, 191, 223, 265, 267 forgotten criminal / perpetrator, 203, 212, 213 forgotten pictures, 204–205, 213, 215 fragmented memory (narration / story), 85, 224, 259, 262, 264, 266 France, 126, 138 Franco, Francisco, 190 Franco dictatorship, Francoist, 182, 189–190, 199 Frauenformen, 7, 271–272, 278 freedom, 124, 150, 161, 237, 242 nation’s, 16, 115, 131, 142 front, frontline, 31, 32, 35, 48, 113, 115–116, 126, 130, 131, 145, 147–156, 160, 190, 192, 193, 222 battle front and rear, 128–131

289

GAM, see Free Aceh Movement gang rape, see rape Gatteschi, Piera, General, 135, 140–141 gay, 112 gender norm, 73, 160, 233, 235 gender order, 114–115, 123, 125, 128, 130 gender studies, 2–6, 9, 70, 112, 252 gendered: aspect, 8, 95, 102 characteristics, 69, 72, 86 conception, 15, 34, 111 dynamics of, 73, 77, 145 memory, see memory nature of, 15, 51, 71, 96, 114, 117, 123 perspective, 86, 164, 204 politics, 5, 9 genital mutilation, see mutilation genocide, genocidal, 1, 4–6, 14, 19, 33, 39, 44, 48, 220 Armenian, 4, 17, 251, 254–255, 257–259, 266 German (Nazi), 39, 48–49 post-genocide, 257, 259, 266 Georgia, 116, 145–147, 156 Tbilisi, 146 Geraka Aceh Merdeka (GAM), 231, 232, 240, 241 Germany, 27, 29, 30, 35, 41, 42, 50, 137, 183, 203, 204, 231, 233 Munich, 35, 43 Goldman, Emma, 2 Gomez-Barris, Macarena, 8 Government Accountability Office (US), see US government Graziani, Rodolfo, Minister of Defense, 135, 141–142 Grzebalska, Weronika, 15, 16, 114–115, 121 guard, 30, 37–39, 47, 57, 77, 162, 203, 215 Guatemala, 24, 278 guilt (and shame), 34, 44, 101, 157–158 gun, 38, 46, 80, 126, 129–131, 171 Hanley, Lynn, 8 harassment, 126, 171, 236 sexual, 97, 99, 101, 168 Haraway, Donna, 11

290

Index

Harrop, Phyllis, 58–59 hate, hatred, 37, 78–79, 139, 141, 153–154, 225, 269 ethnic, 221, 226–227 Haug, Frigga, 7, 271, 278 hegemonic, 6, 80, 97–98, 100, 102, 103, 109, 139, 160, 165, 181–182, 185 hegemonic discourse, 94, 96–98, 100, 102, 103 heroism, heroic, 14, 61, 66, 72, 109, 114, 124, 129, 131, 152, 156, 157, 190 heterosexual(ity), 32, 33, 34, heterosexism / heterosexist, 162, 174 hierarchy, hierarchical, 16, 26, 47, 81, 82, 110, 111, 115, 130, 162, 277 Hirsch, Marianne, 8, 264–266 historical memory, see memory Hitler, Adolf, 30, 141 Holocaust, 8, 26, 49–50, 183, 203, 215 homecoming, 15, 160, 164, 166, 167, see also return homelessness, 15, 116, 159–160, 163–168, 170–172 Hong Kong, 55, 57–59, 61–64 honor, honorable, 24–25, 29, 36, 42, 49, 59, 63, 97, 102–103, 109, 114–116, 124, 126, 137, 148, 154, 171, 265, 267 nation’s / national, 137, 139–140, 148, 157 horror, 58, 65, 115, 238, 254, 258, 280 housing, 165–172 Höcker Album 203 human rights, 14, 24, 25, 50, 99, 240, 241, see also rights Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe, 73, 83 humanitarian, humanitarianism, 25, 230, 259 aid, 131 activism, 222 organization, 231, 242 humiliation, humiliate, 15, 77, 81, 114, 137, 139, 141, 193, 197, 222 sexual, 24, 33, 38, 86, 96, 100, 102–103, 225 Hungary, 3, 13, 16, 63, 184, 203–205, 211–212, 215 Budapest, 3, 5, 23, 35, 206, 211 husband, 37, 95, 97, 183, 206, 253, 255, 263

iconoclasm, 182, 206 iconography, 205, 212, 237 identity, 39, 100, 112, 115, 189, 192–194, 199, 219, 221, 233, 242–243, 257, 265 military, 110, 124, 129, 165 national, 114, 124, 126, 136 political, 77, 79–80 imposed silence, see silence imprisonment, 14, 46, 69, 71–72, 75, 77, 93, 95, 194 in-betweenness, 230, 233, 244 incarceration, 30, 57, 72, 75, 82, 84, 93, 95–96, 99, 102–103 incident, 57, 60, 62, 64, 65, 240 independence, 115, 122, 125, 146 independence movement, 238 Indian Ocean, 16, 229–230, 243 Indian Ocean earthquake, 16, 229, 230, 235, 243, see also tsunami Indonesia, 24, 49, 184, 231–235, 237, 240, 243 Aceh, 6, 184–185, 229–236, 238, 240–244 Banda Aceh, 236, 242–243 Jakarta, 233, 238 Yogyakarta, 232, 233, 240 injustice, 50, 214, 254, inmate, 77–78, 96, 101, 196, 203 inequality, 10, 111, 114 inhibition, 15, 51 injury, 56, 63 insecurity, 234, 240 insult, insulting, 15, 50, 114 insurgency, insurgent, insurrection, 98, 121–125, 129–131, 142, 162, 238 integration, reintegration, 113–114, 157, 162, 163, 166, 170, 173, 185, 260, 265 interethnic war, see war international law, 6, 23, 33, 74 internment camp, 57, 73 interpretation, 41, 44, 49, 116, 127, 185, 204, 214–215, 235–238, 244, 259, 262, 264, 271–272, 275–277, 279, 281 interpreter / translator, 255, 271, 275–277, 280, 281

Index interrogate, interrogation, 27, 38, 44, 71–81, 96, 100, 101, 181, 186, 195, 207, 251, 272 intersectional, intersectionality, 2–3, 9–10, 12, 14–15, 109, 111–117, 184, 251–254 interviewee, 71, 123, 126, 128–130, 277 invade, invasion, 32–38, 45, 49, 65, 139, 145, 161–162, 243, 278 invader, invading forces, 56, 62–63, 139–141, 162 investigate, investigation, 32, 43, 45–47, 60, 165 invisible, invisibility, 16, 26, 84–85, 95, 100–103, 117, 160, 165–166, 169, 170, 172, 181–183, 185, 205, 212–213, 215, 231, 237–241, 244, 253, 276–277 Iraq, 15, 113, 116, 159, 161–172, 258, 278 Iraqi war, see war in Iraq and Afghanistan Ireland, Northern Ireland, 17, 99, 269, 275, 281 Belfast, 269, 271, 281 Islam, 235–237, 241 political, 237 Islamic Law (Shari’a law), 185, 231, 235–236 isolation, 75, 78, 164, 224 Israel / Israel Palestine, 17, 84, 112–113, 115, 269–271, 275, 280 Israel, Kali, 262, 264, 267 Istanbul, see Turkey Italian Social Republic (Repubblica Sociale Italiana, RSI), 135–143 Ivecović, Rada, 219, 226 jail, see prison Jakarta, see Indonesia Jauhola, Marjaana, 16, 27, 184–185, 229 Jeffords, Susan, 8 Jew, Jewish, 3, 13, 15, 26, 27, 29–51, 183, 204, 208, 212, 269, 275 Jolie, Angelina, 221–222 journal, see diary junta (Greece and Turkey), 26, 69, 71–74, 79–82, 85, 93–94, 96, 102–103 junta-resistance, see anti-junta

291

justice, 84–86, 99, 110, 169, 170, 181, 182, 204, 207, 212, 229, 241–242, 260, 270 political, 204, 207 justice process, 204, 207, 241 justice system, 207, 212 Karaca, Banu, 16, 181 Karra, Aspasia, 77–78, 81 Kassa (today Kosice, Slovakia), 205, 214 killing (murder), 8, 14, 26, 35–36, 39–44, 46, 55, 58, 80, 93, 130, 140, 161, 194, 203, 208, 225, 240, 242 killing field, 240 Korovessis, Pericles, 72, 76 Kuczalska-Reinschmit, Paulina, 16, 115, 131 Kuhn, Anette, 272, 274 Kurdish, 4, 98, 99, 251, 255, 257, 264 language, 24, 25, 31, 39, 47, 63, 197, 223, 251, 259, 262, 265, 273, 275–277, 279–281, see also visual language language interpretation, 271, 275–277 Laub, Dori, 223–224 Law of Historical Memory (2006–2007, Spain), see memory, historical memory, 182, 190 leader, leadership: female, 130, 205 military, 26, 32, 34, 42, 49, 51, 139, 141, 142 political, 139, 141, 142, 145, 169, 192, 205–206 Lekatsa, Melpo, 76–80 lesbian, 10, 235 Lestari, Endang (Tari), 16, 185, 230, 232–234, 238, 240, 242, 244 Leydesdorff, Selma, 7, 8 Littner, Jakob, 35–36 longing, 15, 51 Lutz, Catherine, 9 MacKinnon, Catherine, 220–221 Malaya, 55, 58, 65 mandatory / compulsory conscription, 109, 113, 143

292

Index

Manstein, Erich von, 29, 34, 49 marginalize, marginalization, 9, 14, 16, 50, 64, 65, 70, 82–84, 96, 113–114, 131, 136, 139, 141–142, 165, 183, 205, 211, 238, 243, 252, 255, 269 martyr, martyrdom, 153, 212, 225 masculine, masculinist, masculinity, masculinize, 6, 15, 25, 34, 41, 71, 81, 82, 94, 100, 102–103, 109–117, 123–125, 129–131, 145, 156, 163, 165, 171–173, 183, 193, 240 mass rape, see rape mass shooting, see shooting massacre, 27, 43, 224 at St Stephen’s College, Hong Kong, 55, 57, 60 at Jockey Club, 55, 57, 61–62 Massalha, Hanan, 275, 280–281 “Matka Polka” (Mother Pole), 125, 127 media, mediatization, 25, 138, 155, 162, 169, 173, 213, 220–225, 232, 270, 273 media coverage, 220, 221, 232 medial framework, 13, 273–274, 277, 279 mediate, mediation, 17, 27, 168, 182, 197, 213, 272–273 Medica Women’s Therapy Centre, 269 medical, medics, 14, 57, 64, 155, 261 medical service, 114, 128, 162 memoir, 15, 16, 37, 56–57, 64, 69, 71–73, 78, 80, 82, 85, 93–95, 111–112, 135–137, 141–143, 149, 150, 254 published, 26, 72, 82–83 memorialization, 7–8, 11, 234 memory, 1–17, 26, 46, 50, 70, 82, 85, 93, 100–102, 115, 123, 131, 148–149, 152, 161, 163, 182–183, 190–191, 198–199, 207, 212, 214–215, 251, 254–255, 257–259, 262, 271–275, 277, 280, see also recollection collective (public), 7–8, 14, 16, 70, 82, 86, 159, 160, 174, 181–182, 197–199, 205, 213, 215, 272 counter, 14, 85, 184, 214 cultural (transcultural), 4, 8, 93 divided, 205, 215

gendered (gendering of), 5, 7, 8, 15–17, 69, 93, 179, 181, 213 “groupuscular memory”, 190–191 historical, 14, 204 Law of Historical Memory (2006–2007, Spain), 182, 190 official, 14, 16, 50, 182 politics of, 2–5, 11–12 popular, 173, 212 recovery of, 182, 190 site of, 13, 199, 224 staging of, 272, 274 social, 160–161, 173 of war, 5, 8, 9, 11–12, 15–17, 107, 112, 114, 148, 156–158, 161, 165, 181, 198–199 women’s, 84, 86, 95–96, 102, 109, 112, 114–116, 136, 145, 148–150, 157, 173, 182, 189, 191, 199, 238 “memory boom”, 182, 184, 190–191, 213–214 memory culture, 4, 14, 16, 93–94, 96, 100, 102 memory struggles, 11–14, 191 memory studies, 2, 5–7, 272 memory work, 3–5, 8–9, 11–14, 17, 182, 255, 270–274, 279 middle-class, 138, 153, 154, 206, 233, 236 Middle East, 8, 161, 260 Milan (Italy), 139–141 militant women, 145, 148, 151 militarism, 2, 5–9, 12, 14, 27, 86, 98, 103, 114, 123–124, 128–129, 157, 162 methodological, 98 militarized, militarization, 1, 6, 7, 15–17, 73, 103, 111–117, 121, 125, 148, 157–158, 159–160, 163, 168, 170–174, 219–221, 227, 278 Militarized Sexual Trauma (MST), 15, 116, 160, 163, 168–172 militarized subjectivity, see subjectivity military: American (US), 113, 117, 139, 141, 159–163, 169–170, 173, 224 commander (commanding officer), 29, 31–32, 34, 42, 48–49, 115, 126, 128, 130, 135, 141, 154, 162, 169–170

Index court, 32, 34, 44 coup, Turkey, 93, 95, 99 dictatorship: Greek, 26, 69, 71, 73, 82–85 Turkish, 93, 103 discipline, 29, 32, 46 experience, see experience German, 6, 26, 47, 48, 130 identity, see identity junta, see junta leader, see leader official, 26, 69, 130 operation, 40, 121, 140, 150, 153, 240 police: German, 47 Greek, 75–76 US, 162, 164 regime, 71, 80, 93, 98 regulations, 32, 34, 38 service, 15, 109–117, 122, 126–127, 131, 143, 160, 165, 172 training, 29, 115, 124, 130, 135, 168 militia, 138–140 Milquet, Sophie, 16, 181–182, 185, 189 minority, 173, 174, 269, 277 mission, 113, 116, 127, 128, 138, 142, 189, 223, 260, 264 mobility, 117, 156, 157, 242, 278 mobilize, mobilization, 84, 124–125, 127, 184, 260 Moscow, see Russia mother, motherhood, 5, 81, 95, 98, 114–116, 125–126, 148, 156, 158, 166–167, 194, 226 patriotic mother, 125, 130 single mother, 166–168, 225 motherland, 137, 139, 142, 156, 157 Munich, see Germany murder, see killing Muslim dress, 236 Muslim women, see women Muslim subjectivity, see subjectivity Mussolini, Benito, 16, 115, 135–142 mutilation, mutilate, 26, 32, 55, 58 genital, 33, 49 Mühlhäuser, Regina, 13–15, 26, 29

293

naked, 74, 77, 96, 183 Nanking, see China narration, 14, 21, 24, 25, 27, 55, 62, 75, 83, 97, 102, 142, 198, 266 frame of, see narrative frame narrative, 1, 2, 3, 12, 14–17, 23, 26–27, 30, 36, 39, 40, 49, 56, 63–66, 69–70, 77, 79, 80, 82–83, 85, 86, 93–97, 100–102, 121, 123, 127, 131, 143, 149–150, 160, 173–174, 182, 184, 197–198, 212, 214, 226, 230, 232, 236, 244, 251, 255, 257–259, 262, 264–266, 271, 272, 278 counter-narrative, 50, 160, 184 narrative frame, 3, 12, 26, 23, 56, 65, 131, 214, 266 narrator, 12, 66, 195, 197–198 national: dignity, 86, 124, 137, 138, 141–142 freedom, see freedom honor, see honor identity, see identity reconciliation, see reconciliation security, see security unity, 190, 240 nationalism, nationalist, 6, 14, 69–70, 73, 81–82, 86, 93, 96, 103, 109, 114, 116, 145–147, 157, 196, 220, 221, 226–227, 243, 269–270 ethnonationalist, 230–233, 243 Nazi, Nazis, Nazism, 3, 26–27, 30–50, 142, 183–184, 203 Nazi Germany, 27, 42, 50, 203 Nuremberg laws, 46 Nuremberg trials, 29, 49–50 nurse, 55, 57–58, 60–62, 116, 128, 148, 150, 153, 154, 157, 158, 192, 198 obligation, 110, 124, 131, 194 occupation, occupy 24, 30, 32, 33, 47, 48, 113, 126, 162, 183, 269 German / Nazi, 115, 121, 124, 135, 140 Japanese, 26, 55–57, 61, 64–66 Open Shutters project (Iraq), 278 oppress, oppression, 86, 110–111, 237–238, 252–254 oral history, 2, 13, 173, 251

294

Index

“Other”, otherness, 30, 34, 129, 184, 222, 223, 225, 226 Ottoman, Ottoman Empire, 4, 145–147, 257–259 outrage, 56, 58, 65, 73 outsider, 42, 233, 234, 243 “pact of silence” (Spain), 182, 190, see also amnesty of 1977 pain, 27, 69, 74, 77–80, 82, 100, 148, 195–196, 225 “carriers of pain”, 26–27 Palestine, see Israel / Israel Palestine) partisan, 139–142 Passerini, Luisa, 7 patriarchal, patriarchy, 1, 2, 14, 24, 70, 77, 86, 93, 96–97, 102, 103, 116, 126, 145, 156, 165, 170, 173, 182, 189, 220, 226, 252 patriot, patriotic, patriotism, 1, 72, 73, 98, 109, 116, 124–126, 130, 131, 136, 158, 163, 207 patriotic mother, see mother Patriotic Anti-Dictatorship Front (Greece), 72–73 peace process, 229, 240–241 perpetrator, 14–15, 23–26, 31, 33, 34, 36, 38–39, 45, 47, 49, 51, 60, 70, 72, 73, 76–77, 83, 86, 97, 103, 162, 169, 183, 203–204, 213, 257 female (women) perpetrator, 9, 13, 16, 182–183, 203, 205, 211–212, 215–216 persecution, 29, 33, 45, 48, 69, 71–72, 82, 84–85, 93, 101 political, 69, 72, 80 personal security, see security Pesantren (Islamic boarding school), 241 Pető, Andrea, 1, 3, 4, 13–14, 16, 23, 93, 122, 182–184, 203, 229 photo (photograph, photography), 16, 204, 207, 208, 212, 270, 273–274, 277–279 photographer, 212, 214, 278 PhotoPAR project (Guatemala), 278 Poland, 27, 35, 37, 38, 44–47, 114–115, 124–126, 130 Auschwitz, 195, 203–204

Polish Home Army, see army political: activism (female), 71, 80, 83, 85, 86, 204 dignity, see national dignity dissident, see dissident engagement, 82, 84, 204, 227 identity, see identity justice, see justice leader, see leader opposition, 93, 103 persecution, see persecution prisoner, see prisoner subjectivity, see subjectivity politicize, 59, 99, 230, 236, 243–244 politics of memory, see memory positionality, 4, 10, 16, 185, 186, 233, 253, 255, 278 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), 15, 160, 163, 168, 170 post-conflict, see conflict post-genocide, see genocide post-tsunami, see tsunami post-war, 31, 49, 50, 60, 64, 115, 126–127, 136, 141–143, 146, 192 power, powerful, 1, 2, 9, 16, 24–25, 34, 38–39, 42, 47, 84, 111, 113, 140, 146, 160, 162, 165, 169, 170, 181, 205, 207, 212, 220, 237, 243, 251, 253, 260, 277, 278, see also empower power imbalance, 167, 173, 196 power relation (structure), 27, 56, 81–82, 86, 131, 255, 267 pregnant, pregnancy, 27, 33, 56, 64, 65, 77, 260, 261, 263, 265 pride, 115–116, 153–154 prison / jail, 26, 40, 75–78, 83, 93–96, 99–101, 139, 192, 194–196, 206, 253 prisoner, 14, 26, 38–40, 74, 76–77, 93, 96, 98–101, 154, 192, 194–195, 198, 203, 208 ex-, 93–96, 99–100, 102, 199 political 86, 94–96 privacy, 76, 117, 168–169 private matter, 14, 36, 50 privilege, privileged, 10, 12, 56, 110, 124, 189, 215, 223, 251–254

Index prosecute, prosecution, prosecutor, 34, 43–44, 49, 126, 169–171, 208 prostitute, prostitution, 30–31, 50, 193, 260 protest, 122, 147, 161 psychological, 48, 56, 60, 63, 81, 100, 138, 163, 168, 171, 196 psychological torture / oppression / violence, see torture public awareness, 184, 221, 227 public discourse, see discourse published memoir, see memoir punish, punishment, 13, 14, 24, 27, 29, 30, 34, 37, 42–43, 45–47, 49, 60, 73, 81, 103, 114, 126, 195, 212, 235 pure, purity, 44, 97, 226, 257 queer, 5 Qur’an reading groups, 241 race, 10, 15, 30, 86, 111, 117, 173, 251–255, 278 race defilement, 32, 34–35, 37, 40, 42–48 racial, 30–31, 36, 45, 48, 174, 237, 254 boundary, 42, 48 ideology (Nazi), 30, 32, 50 racism, racist, 30, 46, 174, 253 raid, 236, 238 rape, raped, 3, 14, 23–27, 29–36, 38, 39, 46, 47, 49, 55–58, 60–66, 73, 74, 76, 83, 86, 94–103, 126, 148, 168, 170, 171, 193, 219–225, 265, 269 gang rape, 31, 33, 39, 61, 97, 224–225 mass rape, 220, 222 Reardon, Betty, 6 rebellion, rebellious, 81, 116, 121, 137, 158 recollection, 112, 126–128, 170, 198, 259, see also memory recognize, recognition, 1, 4, 13–15, 27, 34, 65–66, 122, 127, 146, 153, 162, 163, 195, 251, 253 reconciliation, 225, 226, 229, 241 national, 83–85 reconstruction, 16, 185, 229–231, 238, 242–244 reconstruction governmentality, 230, 241, 244 reconstruction landscape, 229, 230, 244 recovery of memory, see memory

295

recruit, 117, 125, 135, 143, 173 Red Army, 3–4, 24, 27, 205 reflexivity, 259, 264, 274, 276 refuge, refugee, 61, 219, 223–224 refugee camp, 223–224, 259 rehabilitation, 185, 204, 240 reintegration, see integration religion, religious, 86, 139, 235 religious norm, 234–235 religious revivalism, 185, 230–232 remember, remembering, remembrance, 1, 4, 8–9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 26, 27, 44, 64, 80, 127, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 156, 158, 161, 174, 183, 198, 204, 214, 215, 224, 263, 266, 267, 272, 273, 275, 280 represent, representation, 189, 199, 203–205, 213, 215–216, 219, 221, 223, 226, 235, 237, 273, 276, 279 representational deficit, 182–183, 203, 205 repression, 181–182, 189, 192, 196–197 reproduction, 38, 81, 125, 264 repulsion, 15, 51 resistance, 2, 4, 12, 15, 16, 21, 23, 34, 64, 66, 71, 76, 79, 81, 82, 96, 100–102, 107, 112, 121, 125, 145, 173, 182, 195–196, 197, 230, 237, 238, 242–243, 254, 264, 278 anti-fascist, 135, 137, 139–142 collective, 96, 100 political, 86, 240 resource, see source respect, respectable, respectability, 29, 44, 49, 63, 79, 126, 137, 169, 170 feminine respectability, 94, 98, 100, 102, 103, 157 responsible, responsibility, 36–37, 49, 66, 79, 110, 128–129, 140, 142, 173–174, 204, 207, 267 return (from war / service), 63, 84, 116–117, 140, 150, 152, 155–157, 160, 162–164, 166, 171, 173, 192, 258, 260–261, see also homecoming right-wing extremist / far-right (Hungary), 204–206, 214 right-wing extremist movement, 182, 205 right-wing extremist women, 204–205, 213

296

Index

rights, 3, 16, 110, 115, 125, 131, 146, 173, 190, 253, 269. see also human rights Rigney, Ann, 13, 273 Rothberg, Michael, 4 Russia, 146, 260 Moscow, 146, 152 Ryan, Kay, 23, 26–27 Rwanda, 25, 241 sabotage, 114, 126–128 sacrifice, 98, 109, 114, 124–125, 129, 131, 142 Sarawak, 57, 63 Sasson-Levy, Orna, 1, 15, 109, 165 satisfaction, 15, 51 Scarry, Elaine, 69, 76, 78, 142 Scott, Joan, 17 Schiavo, Gianluca, 16, 114–115, 135 secret, 26, 36, 38, 40, 135, 141, 143, 207, 225, 257–258, 262, 266 security, 6, 25, 168, 207 national, 73, 94, 97–103, 146 personal, 117, 160, 167 Security Police, 72–80, 83 self-censorship, 82–83, 95, 101 self-defense, 12, 135, 156, 158 Senate Armed Services committee (US), see US government separatist, 146, 156 Serbia, 220, 222, 225 servicewomen / women’s service, 111, 113, 126, 127, 131, 160–166, 173, 171, 174 sexist, 111, 162, 173, 211 sexual: abuse, see sexual violence act, 33, 38 activity, 31–33, 42 assault, see assault contact / encounter, 30, 42, 44, 48 crime, see crime enslavement, see slavery harassment, see harassment humiliation, see humiliation intercourse, 38, 45, 48, 97 “undesirable intercourse”, 30, 32 violence, 35, 38, 44, 55, 73–74, 76, 77, 99

sexuality, 1, 5, 9–10, 32, 34, 38–41, 50, 70, 80–81, 98, 109, 111, 126, 157, 173, 234, 251, 252, 254 shame, shameful, 14, 24, 34, 36, 37, 44, 62–63, 65, 76, 77, 83, 86, 97–98, 101, 103, 115, 137, 152–153, 225, 257, 262, 265, 267 Shari’a law, see Islamic Law shelter, 62, 75, 117, 165, 167, 168, 172, 254, 259–266 Shoah, 15, 26 shoot, shooting, 39–43, 58, 163–164, 172, 196 mass shooting, 41, 43 Shu-Fan, Li, 55, 62, 64 silence, silencing, 2–5, 9, 11–16, 21, 23–27, 50, 55–56, 58–59, 63, 70, 73, 82–86, 93–94, 96–97, 99–103, 157–158, 169, 171, 181–182, 185, 189–199, 207, 213, 215, 227, 229–244, 255, 257, 259, 262, 265–266 imposed, 182, 185, 194 politics of, 9, 83, 230, 232, 244 Singapore, 55, 57–58, 61–63 single mother, see mother situated knowledges, 2–3, 9–12 slavery, 5, 8, 253, 260 sexual enslavement, 33, 49 Slavova, Kornelia, 16, 184, 219 social memory, see memory social order, 94, 97, 98, 193 social research, 271, 276 socialist party, 150, 190, 192 Sokhum, see Abkhazia soldier, 25, 29, 48–49, 77, 103, 112, 121, 124–126, 128–131, 150, 152, 162–167, 171, 173, 190, 221, 224 fascist, 135–143 German, 13, 24, 26, 29–31, 33, 35, 37–38, 41–44, 46, 48, 126 Japanese, 14, 48, 57–58, 60–61, 64 Red Army soldiers, 3, 27 women (female), 9, 15, 109, 111–112, 114–115, 117, 122, 127, 135–138, 148, 160–163, 170, 173, 193 soldier nation, 123–124

Index soldiering, 33, 107, 109, 160 Sontag, Susan, 215, 237, 274 source (resource), 2, 5, 11–14, 16, 25–27, 34–35, 43, 44, 47, 48, 59, 69, 70, 71, 123, 148–149, 160, 173, 207, 212, 215, 254, 264, 280 visual, 212–213 written, 83, 213 South Ossetia, 146 Soviet era, 145–147 Soviet Union, 29, 31–35, 39–40, 42, 44–45, 48, 145–147 SS (Schutzstaffel), 30–35, 38–39, 42–44, 48 Stefatos, Katerina, 14, 26–27, 69 Stevanovič, Ana, 275, 280 stigma, stigmatize, stigmatization, 62, 65, 94, 114, 126, 219, 227, 257, 262 strength, strengthen, 32, 33, 42, 61, 94, 102, 111, 126, 128, 171, 193, 225 “discourse of strength” 94, 100, 103 Sturken, Marita, 8 subjectivity, 102, 111, 149, 160, 173, 186, 197, 237, 238, 244 aesthetic political, 16, 234, 244 militarized, 111–112, 114, 117 Muslim, 237 political, 16, 80, 185, 232, 234, 244 Sultanate of Aceh, 243 superior, superiority, 27, 38, 42, 47, 223 survival, survive, survivor, 14, 16–17, 26, 36, 37, 50, 55, 60, 65, 79, 83, 94, 97, 124, 143, 173, 183–184, 194, 196–197, 208, 220–222, 225, 238, 254, 257–258–259, 280 Syria: Aleppo, 259, 261, 263, 264 Damascus, 259, 261 Der Zor, 258, 263 Szálasi, Ferenc, 205–208, 214 taboo, 41, 135, 143, 240 taboo-breaking, 38, 101 tattoo, 257–258 Taylor, Diana, 8 Tbilisi, see Georgia Temple, Bogusia, 276, 277, 280

297

terror, terrorization, terrorize, 44, 58, 61, 69–73, 76, 78, 81–82, 86 terrorism, terrorist, 6, 98, 161, 240 testimony, 26, 34, 36, 38, 39, 45, 46, 49, 56, 57, 60, 64–66, 69, 71, 73, 75, 82, 85–86, 93–94, 95, 96, 99–102, 126, 169, 184, 191, 219, 222–227, 242, 251, 267, 272 Third Reich, 30, 35, 44–45, 47–48, 141 torment, tormentor, 78, 81, 140, 183 torture, torturer, 14, 24–26, 38–39, 69–83, 85, 96, 98, 100–101, 238, 240 psychological (oppression / violence), 56, 74, 78, 80–81, 83, 86, 93, 100 sexual, 26, 33, 38, 69, 72–74, 81, 86, 94, 97–99, 101, 103 transition home, 160, 164, 167, 172 transitional justice, 204, 229, 241 translator, see interpreter translingual, 277, 280 transversal politics, 270 trauma, traumatization, 8, 14, 15, 26, 56, 61, 69–72, 77–78, 82–86, 102, 114, 116, 117, 160, 163, 168, 170–174, 184–185, 196, 199, 219, 222–225, 229, 244, 269 healing of, 173, 229, 257 social and political, 184, 222 tribunal: people’s, 206–209, 211, 214 war crime, 57, 60, 182 troops: German, 31–32, 35 Japanese, 55–56, 61–62, 65 US, 161–162, 166 truth, 85, 86, 212, 213, 223, 224, 241, 272, 274 Tsirka, Anastasia, 76–79 tsunami, 16, 229, 230, 231, 235, 236, 242–244, see also Indian Ocean earthquakes post-tsunami, 230, 231, 244, see also aftermath post-tsunami reconstruction, 184, 185, 229, 231

298

Index

Turkey, 4, 15, 16, 26, 93, 102–103, 116, 145–158, 253–254 Istanbul (Constantinople), 5, 152–153, 259, 260 Ukraine, 3, 35 UN Security Council Resolution 1325, 6, 25 underground activity / movement / work (Poland), 114–115, 121, 124–128, 130 uniform, 27, 43, 136–138, 143, 192, 206–207 United Nations (UN), 6, 161, 221 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, 6, 25, 113 United States (US / America), 15, 40, 57, 109, 116, 146, 160–162, 165, 166, 169, 171, 174, 203, 220, 231, 252–254 unsilence, unsilencing (breaking of silence), 2–4, 9–12, 15–16, 23, 25, 27, 65, 95–96, 102–103, 182, 189, 194, 195 unspeakable, 182, 185, 222, 240 unthinkable, unthought, 23, 27, 30, 80, 265 US government: Bush Administration, 161 Congress, 160, 161, 163, 169, 172 Defense Secretary, 113, 162, 169 Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs, 159–160, 165–168, 170–172 Department of Housing and Urban Development, 165 Government Accountability Office, 165 Senate Armed Services committee, 163 vanquish, vanquished, 135, 141, 195, 198 veil, 234, 236–238 veteran, 159, 167–169 American, 117, 159, 160, 164, 167, 173 homeless female, 159, 165–166, 168, 171 Vietnam war, 161, 165, 169 victim, 14, 15, 23–27, 31–34, 36, 38–39, 42, 44, 47, 48, 50, 55, 56, 58–66, 70, 72, 73, 75–80, 82, 86, 94, 97,

103, 162, 168–173, 181, 183, 185, 193, 211, 213, 220–223, 225–227, 231, 240, 242, 254, 257, 267 of rape, 36, 60, 63, 66, 221 victimize, victimization, 56, 61–63, 65–66, 72, 79, 81–85, 160, 170, 173, 184, 219, 220–222, 225, 227 wartime victimization, 56, 65 victor, victory, 24, 27, 32, 35, 55, 138, 204, 212 Vietnam, 115, 160–161, 165, 169 Vietnam war, see war in Vietnam violate, violation, 30, 32, 38, 42, 46–47, 50, 240 physical violation, 62, 65, 221 violence, violent, 1, 8, 9, 17, 24, 39, 74, 76, 79, 80, 83, 86, 93–95, 97, 110–112, 128, 162–163, 172–174, 181–185, 190, 192–195, 219, 225–227, 240, 270, 278 gendered, 5, 15, 70–71, 96, 102–103, 172, 181, 184–185, 192–193, 219 political, 5, 17, 69–71, 85, 94–95, 102–103, 172, 181, 183, 203, 229–230, 232, 240, 244 sexual (sexualized), 3, 6, 13–15, 21, 23–27, 29–42, 47–51, 56, 63, 65, 72, 86, 93–103, 168, 170, 173, 184, 219–221, 224 state, 8, 109, 240 verbal, 26, 38, 78, 80, 168 wartime, 24–25, 33–34, 50, 56, 60, 64, 66 women’s, 3, 12, 14, 15, 16, 36–37, 50, 63–66, 70–72, 81–86, 93–97, 99–103, 114, 127, 131, 147–148, 160, 163, 165, 168–169, 172–174, 181–182, 184, 189–190, 197, 199, 219, 222, 226, 236, 238, 241 visible, visibility, 7, 24, 95, 102–103, 123, 157, 172, 181, 184–185, 242 visual landscape, 230 visual language, 264–266 visual representation, 27, 204, 213, 215, 216 visualize, 16, 179, 181, 186

Index Volksgemeinschaft, 30, 42, 44 vulnerability, 73, 77, 82, 93–94, 96, 100–103, 160, 170–171, 223, 236, 242 war

of Annihilation, 26, 29, 34, 46, 48, 50 crime, see crime criminal, 29, 182, 204–205, 207–208, 211–212 effort, 32, 122, 124, 125, 131 interethnic, 219, 222, 227 in Iraq and Afghanistan , 15, 113, 116, 159–173 memory of, see memory in Vietnam, 160–161, 165, 169 zone, 157–158, 163, 255 warrior, 98, 110, 116, 165 Warsaw uprising, 16, 114–115, 121, 123–124, 129–131 wartime (time of war), 8, 57, 62, 125, 127, 129–130, 135, 142, 150, 159–160, 221, 281 Waxman, Zoe, 36 weapon, 24, 50, 51, 96, 100, 115, 129, 130, 135, 150, 156, 171, 212, 220, 278 Wehrmacht, 29–32, 34–35, 37, 42–49 Wehrmacht soldier, 30, 31, 35, 42–44, 46, 48 whisper, 181–183, 195 Whisperer [Suttogó] (far-right website), 205, 207, 214–215 wife, 95, 98, 103, 115, 121, 136, 154, 182, 203, 206–208, 238, 253, 266, 267 witness (eye-witness), 29, 34–35, 40, 42, 43, 49, 58, 62, 96–97, 102, 153, 160, 183–184, 212, 222–223, 225–226, 241–242 witness account, 31, 56, 57 witnessing imagination, 219, 222, 224

299

womanhood, 96, 103, 126, 220, 258 women American, 56, 160, 162, 164, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174, 223 of color, 10, 173, 252, 253 Muslim, 221, 237, 269 women’s liberation, 251, 260 women’s memory, see memory women’s military service, 15, 109–111, 114, 122, 126–127, 131, 143, 159, 172 women’s movement, 4, 24–25, 102, 207–208, 252 women’s organization, 25, 114, 205, 241, 269, 270 women’s participation (in military / political events / war), 15, 103, 109, 113, 122, 129, 130, 182, 241 women’s service, see servicewomen Women’s Support Network, 269, 275 Woolf, Virginia, 1–2, 9 World War I (WWI), 5, 123, 127, 133, 140 World War II (WWII), 3, 8, 13, 16, 24, 29, 55, 84, 114, 122, 125, 203–205, 207, 215, 219 wound, 14, 58, 61, 78, 155, 160, 164, 185, 224–225, 267 Yap, Felicia, 14, 26–27, 55 Yatim, Debra H., 229 Yesayan, Zabel, 2, 260 Yogyakarta, see Indonesia Young, Alys, 276 Yugoslavia (former), 8, 17, 25, 39, 72, 219–223, 227, 275 Yuhl, Stephanie, 15, 116–117, 159 Žbanić, Jasmila, 16, 184, 219–227 Zenica, see Bosnia