Women and Nonviolence 1527566765, 9781527566767

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Women and Nonviolence

Women and Nonviolence Edited by

Anna Hamling

Women and Nonviolence Edited by Anna Hamling This book first published 2021 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2021 by Anna Hamling and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6676-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6676-7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. vii Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Part One: Women Exploring Nonviolence in Visual Arts and Literature Chapter One .............................................................................................. 10 All You Need is Cut Piece: Yoko Ono’s Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance Maria Rosa Lehmann Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 24 Loud Feminism: Pussy Riot’s Presumed Violations Alla Myzelev Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 42 Resisting Jim Crow Violence: Anne Moody’s Freedom Movement in the American South Nilgun Anadolu-Okur Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 60 Contesting the Victim-Escapist-Terrorist Syndrome in Contemporary Arab American Women’s Poetry Mayy ElHayawi Part Two: Courageous Women Remaking the World through Nonviolent Resistance Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 82 “Mother of the Revolution”: Tawakkol Karman and Nonviolent Mobilization in Yemen Anwar Ouassini and Nabil Ouassini

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Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 96 Past, Present, and Future Perspectives of Nonviolence and Gender: A Dialogue with Professor Mary Elizabeth King Dagmar Wernitznig Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 113 Mobilization of a Collective Consciousness: How Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Kollontai Shaped the First Socialist State Michael Iasilli Part Three: Women in Global Nonviolent Movements Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 130 Circles of Threat and Spheres of Power: Reflections on Women’s Nonviolent Mobilization Selina Gallo-Cruz Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 151 Nonviolence for Violence? Exploring Innovative and Emerging Measures to Curb Wife Beating in Africa (Focus on Nigeria) Olayinka Oluwakemi Adeniyi and Oluwaseyitan Ayotunde Solademi Chapter Ten ............................................................................................ 172 Women and Anti-Tax Protests in Colonial Nigeria: Examining the Nonviolent Approach of the Women of the Okigwe Division from 1929 to 1960 Livinus Ikwuako Okeke Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 193 Gendered Nonviolence in North Sumatra: Disrobing as a Symbolic Method of Nonviolent Resistance Maria Kardashevskaya Chapter Twelve ...................................................................................... 209 Bearing the Nonviolent Legacies in the Womb: An Indian Case Study Srija Sanyal Contributors ............................................................................................ 219

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Edited volumes are the result of a collective effort, and this one is no exception. I would like to acknowledge the excellent endeavours of all the international contributors for putting so much work into this project and the great help from the proofreader Graham Clarke and the Cambridge Scholars Publishing team, without whose commitment and support this would not have come to fruition. My sincere gratitude goes to my husband, Richard, who is the “invisible force” behind all my research and so much more. Thank you all, Anna Hamling

INTRODUCTION

I believe that peace is not merely an absence of war, but the nurture of human life, and that in time this nurture will do away with war as a natural process … I can see no reason why one should not see what one believes in times of war as in times of peace … Only in freedom is permanent peace possible … [in uniting] women in all countries who are opposed to any kind of war, exploitation and oppression and who work for universal disarmament … and by the establishment of social, political, and economic justice for all without distinction of sex, race, class, or creeds. —Jane Addams The most striking finding is that between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts … In our data set of 218 violent insurgencies since 1900, democratic governments succeeded in only about 5 percent of violent insurgencies. —Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan Violence and nonviolence are, after all, two different forms of theater. They both depend and thrive on the response of an audience. —Julia Bacha

This book is about courageous women who, in the face of oppression and suffering, focus on a vision of a better future in their respective countries and the world. It is a small tribute to all known and unknown agents of change – the heroic women to whom this book is dedicated. Women who keep proving to the world that success in achieving change for the better cannot occur through any form of violence, and only through nonviolent means and tactics. This current edited volume of twelve interdisciplinary chapters proposes a coherent discussion by renowned international contributors who analyse the multiple roles of the impressive achievements of women’s activism in the field of nonviolence that deserve the attention of a global audience. Women, with singular or multiple identities, have been historically silenced, neglected, or not given prominent space in the global histories of women engaged in either nonviolent resistance or, on a daily basis, using nonviolent acts.

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Introduction

The world of the twenty-first century has become increasingly complex and diverse. In this edited volume I propose to bring to light the entangled histories of women’s lives and activism and to explore them through the histories and interconnections between groups, societies, and cultures in both diachronic and synchronic ways. We explore the issues of nonviolence and women from different perspectives and within a broad cultural context. The range of perspectives includes the intersection of gender and sociopolitical movements and nonviolence in the context of society, visual arts, literature, and politics. All of the chapters offer an engaging, multiple analysis of women and nonviolence which should be of interest to those involved in the field of study and also enlightening to a wider readership interested in the often underreported role of women in global conflicts. For readers whose interest is not strictly academic, a short explanation of the terminology of “intersectionality” and “nonviolence” is essential. After two decades of debate among women scholars and activists studying the concept of intersectionality, Kimberlé Crenshaw formally introduced this term in 1989 referring to black and developing-world women in the context of the emerging global women’s movement. She argued that a focus on gender alone was not enough, and spoke of a middleclass, white, Western bias. Intersectionality experienced by civilian populations has been defined as the “idea that social identities such as race, class, and gender interact to form qualitatively different meanings and experiences.”1 For example, if we consider race or gender only (and not both simultaneously), we overlook the experiences of those with multiple identities providing only partial insights into identity. Intersectionality means describing the many interwoven systems of oppression. Class, race, gender identity, and sexuality all influence the kinds of the oppression women face. In this study comprised of three sections, every chapter tells a tale of individuals or groups who engage with their community and in some way improve the quality of their own and others’ lives. This is the purpose of all the women in this book – to achieve nonviolent, constructive social change that includes rather than excludes. It is not linear approach to improve the situation. Women within intersectionality theory support the holistic approach to achieve balance in nonviolent struggle. The concepts of intersectionality and nonviolence both evoke many images. There has been a plethora of scholarship relating to civil 1 Leah R. Warner, “A Best Practices Guide to Intersectional Approaches in Psychological

Research,” Sex Roles: a Journal of Research 59, no. 5–6 (2008): 454–63.

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disobedience, nonviolence, and nonviolent resistance, but for the purpose of brevity and clarity in this volume I will refer to the following rather lengthy but fascinating quote from Professor Michael Nagler, one of the most important scholars and activists in the field of nonviolence, and founder of the Metta Centre, California. In the recent volume Icons of Nonviolence, Professor Nagler defines nonviolence in the following way: For some, nonviolence is a roster of techniques. No one would disagree that there are techniques or tactics that implement nonviolence; but they are only the surface, and if you approach the topic with only that in mind you can make mistakes. A case in point (in my view) is the classic and influential list of 198 techniques assembled by the late Gene Sharp. Some of these, particularly those that humiliate the opponent, would not be considered nonviolent in the deeper sense but only non-violent, i.e. they do not inflict physical harm. Gandhi would make the British ashamed of what they were doing, but never ashamed of what they were – a subtle but critical distinction. When one’s commitment to nonviolence is only to a set of techniques he called it “the non-violence of the weak.” Any day more effective than violence (the technique of the very weak) but nowhere near the potential of a nonviolence arising from the awareness that the opponent, so called, is fully human and has arrived at her or his position, however much it may seem unjust or hurtful, for reasons that seemed legitimate to her or him. This is essentially a vision, an awareness, of the innate unity among people (indeed, in the end, with all that lives). The goal of a nonviolent action coming from this deeper place will of course involve a redress of grievances but include, perhaps primarily, repair and restoration of the relationships involved. This is how we get to one of the principles of nonviolence I like to call work vs. “work,” where “work” means achieving one’s immediate aim – reform of an unfair law, removal of a dictator; while work without quotes means to do good work on the social field – work that will often show up down the road as a far more important result than originally intended. Nonviolence, to the extent that it is engaged in any of the infinite ways possible, will always do good work on the social field, often, as we’ve seen, leading to unforeseen positive results that may far outweigh the immediate result whether or not the later was gained. Counter-intuitively, but perfectly in line with this principle, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that nonviolent insurrections led to more democracy some years down the road than violent ones did, even if they “failed.” What one brings to any situation of conflict, the techniques one selects to deal with one’s partners (aka opponents), determines its ultimate results, and has been determined in turn by what one “sees” – in particular whether or to what degree one is aware of the humanity of the other. Critically, it also depends on what nonviolent options one is aware of. Awareness of nonviolence

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Introduction is not available in our educational system, not to mention that powerful (dis)educational force, the mass media. That is changing, and informal avenues are becoming available now, though not nearly quickly enough to meet the urgent needs of the time. We can define principled nonviolence, Gandhi’s nonviolence of the brave, as follows: “Nonviolence is a method of persuasion that draws on the best within a person to elicit the best from others.” This definition goes far toward explaining the surprising effectiveness of nonviolence, how it elevates human dignity (which is in short supply these days) and why it is rewarding to doer and recipient alike – why it is such a fulfilling practice in sharp contrast to the devastating effects of practicing violence. The question then is, why has it taken so long – is still taking so long – for nonviolence to be recognized and used, and what shall we do about it?2

The women’s voices in the following chapters will hopefully provide some clarification on the topic. Maria Rosa Lehmann in “All You Need is Cut Piece: Yoko Ono’s Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance” discusses Cut Piece, Yoko Ono’s 1964 performance art piece, as a comment on human interaction, and the complicit relationship between individuals and the social body. The author explores the nonviolent resistance of the artist and the way Ono has been able to reach the mental freedom protecting her from outer aggression. Alla Myzelev in “Loud Feminism: Pussy Riot’s Presumed Violations” discusses the work of Pussy Riot, one of the most highly publicized and well-known feminist activist groups from Russia. Pussy Riot’s case constitutes a rare opportunity to examine how the conscious self-fashioning of young DIY musicians, Russian feminists, and anonymous activists contributes to the discussion of third-wave feminism. Using non-violent protest they evoke not only resistance but also national and international debates that made them world famous, and more importantly attracted national and international attention to the situation of women in Russia. Nilgun Anadolu-Okur in “Resisting Jim Crow Violence: Anne Moody’s Freedom Movement in the American South” explores Anne Moody’s contribution to twentieth-century activism and nonviolent struggle that reveals a hard-earned achievement which is consummate. In “Contesting the Victim-Escapist-Terrorist Syndrome in Contemporary Arab American Women’s Poetry,” Mayy El Hayawi explores the mechanisms that Arab women poets have adopted for defending their religion, race, and dignity, and focuses on the works of five contemporary Arab American 2

Michael Nagler, “What is Nonviolence?” in Contemporary Icons of Nonviolence, edited by Anna Hamling, xx–xxi (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2019).

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poets: Mohja Kahf, Laila Halaby, Suhair Hammad, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Emtithal Mahmoud. Anwar and Nabil Ouassini in “Mother of the Revolution: Tawakkol Karman, Islamic Feminism, and Non-violent Mobilization in Yemen” explore the activism in the nonviolent movement of Tawakkol Karman, a leader who has had a lasting impact on Arab politics and society. She was the first Arab woman Nobel Laureate in 2011. Known as the “Mother of the Revolution” in Yemen, Karman led the non-violent movement Women Journalists Without Chains that not only challenged President Saleh’s authoritarian regime through non-violent protests but also produced new boundaries surrounding the role of women as agents of change in Yemeni society. Dagmar Wernitznig in “Past, Present, and Future Perspectives of Nonviolence and Gender: a Dialogue with Professor Mary Elizabeth King” chronicles the life and work of Mary Elizabeth King, a scholar and practitioner of nonviolence for more than five decades. By highlighting various moments in Mary’s career, such as her activism in the 1960s US civil-rights movement, her publication – together with Casey Hayden – of Sex and Caste, or her appointment as Deputy Director of the Peace Corps during the Carter Administration, the author attempts to contextualize her leadership in widening the understanding of peacebuilding and women’s rights globally. Michael Iasilli in “Mobilization of a Collective Consciousness: How Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Kollontai Shaped the First Socialist State” considers “the woman question” at the height of the Russian revolution through the civil war in 1917, and explores the activism of prominent women such as Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Kollontai, who encouraged the Bolsheviks to appeal to working-class women in order to help national development. Both were key in constructing political organizations dealing with implementing education and social welfare. Selina Gallo-Cruz in her chapter “Gender and ‘Threat’ in Women’s Nonviolent Actions” outlines a comprehensive framework for understanding how different forms of women’s nonviolent activism relates to different forms of social “threat.” She explores the situation of women in Chile, El Salvador, and Palestine resistance movements. Through her case comparison, the author develops a social constructionist understanding of threat as a distinctive form of power, exploring how women’s intersectional statuses of class, education, prestige, race, and ethnicity take precedence over gender. In “Nonviolence for violence? Exploring innovative and emerging measures to curb wife battery in Africa (Focus on Nigeria)” Olayinka

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Introduction

Oluwakemi Adeniyi and Oluwaseyitan Ayotunde Solademi attempt an analysis of wife battery in Africa, particularly with the situation in Nigeria. They explore the best practices of nonviolence in some jurisdictions and share the success stories in Africa that lead them to consider innovative approaches to the realization of the possibility of non-violent measures to eradicate wife battery in Nigeria. The question remains as to the societal impact or resultant effect of the non-violent measures as effective solutions to eradicating violence against women and the possibilities of preventing violence against women through non-violent approaches. In “Women and Anti-Tax Protests: Examining the Nonviolent Approach of the Women of Okigwe Division, 1929–1960,” Livinus Ikwuako Okeke explores the policies which elicited reactions from the women of Igboland and led to the famous Aba Women’s War. This war, led by women in the provinces of Calabar and Owerri in southeastern Nigeria in November and December of 1929, became known as the “Aba Women’s Riots of 1929” in British colonial history, or the “Women’s War” in Igbo history. The war was a violent response to colonial tax policy in the area which culminated in the loss of lives and properties. After the 1929 war, women refused to shy away from responding to any perceived act inimical to their wellbeing, albeit nonviolently. Maria (Masha) Kardashevskaya in “Gendered nonviolence in North Sumatra: Shame as a Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance” analyses the outcomes of her field research in North Sumatra, exploring the gendered dimension of the struggle for customary land. The study is based on the experiences of women and considers the role of shame in the struggle for land. According to the author’s research, women use shame (making the opponents ashamed and shy) as a strategy to gain and create a space for themselves and their community within the context of an unequal power relationship with the security forces and the government officials. Finally, Srija Sanyal in “Bearing the Nonviolent Legacies in the Womb: an Indian Case Study” speaks of the women-led non-violent movements in India which compelled society to reconsider its decision-making process, boasting several women who have and are still leading movements in their own way both within and outside the domestic spheres. The chapter focuses specifically on two movements; the Chipko movement of the 1970s and #NoConditionsApply of 2018. In conclusion, in this volume we consider fundamental issues that range from the interpersonal to the global experiences of building a more nonviolent world by women. However, as citizens of a shared world we must work together for a truly nonviolent planet, look to each and every individual as a co-citizen, and learn to be much more open with each other

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and acknowledge that we are all in this work together. This is a constant and an ongoing effort.

PART ONE: WOMEN EXPLORING NONVIOLENCE IN VISUAL ARTS AND LITERATURE

CHAPTER ONE ALL YOU NEED IS CUT PIECE: YOKO ONO’S STRATEGY OF NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE MARIA ROSA LEHMANN

In 1964, Yoko Ono presented the iconic1 Cut Piece at the Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto. She subsequently staged the same event in Tokyo a couple of months later in 1965 at Carnegie Hall in New York, and again in 1966 at the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. There have been many re-enactments since, always with different “performers,” until Ono took on the mantle again in 2003 at the Théatre du Ranelagh in Paris. Although the historico-cultural context in which the event2 has been staged varies from presentation to presentation – and subsequently so too does its interpretation – only a few structural differences exist between each performance. In all

1

After years of obscurity, Ono’s intermedia artwork has fascinated scholars since the end of the twentieth century, who continue to declare Cut Piece her defining work. The limitations of this tendency are not a concern of this article, but have been convincingly explored by Gregory Laynor in “The Making of Intermedia: John Cage to Yoko Ono, 1952 to 1972.” PhD Diss (University of Washington, 2016), 95. 2 Instead of performance or happening, Ono prefers the term “event.” She says: “All my works in the other fields have an Event bent, so to speak. People asked me why I call some works Event and others not. They also ask me why I do not call my Events, Happenings. Event, to me, is not in a simulation of all other arts as happening seems to be, but an extraction from the various sensory perceptions. It is not a get togetherness as most happenings are, but a dealing with oneself. Also, it has no script as happenings do, though it has something that starts at moving – the closest word for it maybe wish or hope.” See “To the Wesleyan People (Who Attended the Meeting), a Footnote to My Lecture of January 13, 1966.” In Yoko Ono. En Trance, edited by Jon Hendricks and Birgit Hessellund (Randers: Randers Kunstmuseum, 1990), 40.

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versions, Ono, dressed in elegant clothes,3 has walked onto the stage with a pair of scissors in her hands. On reaching the middle of the platform, the artist has adopted one of two poses: the polite Japanese sitting position seiza (her legs folded underneath her, so that her body rests on her shins), or the onna-zuwari position – the “woman’s way of sitting.”4 Ono then put the shears next to her, and asked the audience to cut her clothes away.5 Staring straight ahead, she has fallen silent, seemingly expectant of the audience’s response and at the same time lost in her serene pose. Beneath the deceptive simplicity of the event, Cut Piece may be read on a number of levels. Ono herself has discussed the work in several ways: either as a challenge to her artistic ego, as a gift to the spectator, or as a spiritual act enabling the performer to transcend the critical situation they put themselves in. Yet, the element that generally attracts scholarly attention is the violence committed by the audience against the artist. In fact, according to Ono, the event is “a very frightening piece,”6 and “dangerous.”7 Even though members of the audience have initially hesitated to accept the artist’s spoken invitation,8 the violation of her body has consistently grown, therefore exposing the piece’s potential for violence. In Kyoto, for example, a man came up onstage and held the scissors over the artist’s head, brandishing them like a knife. Had he realized his threat, the scissors would have completed their transformation into a weapon.9 Hence, the audience’s appetite for cruelty and assault manifested itself through the behaviour of certain audience members.

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Ono remembers: “I went onto the stage bearing the best suit I had. To think that it would be OK to use the cheapest clothes because it was going to be cut up anyway would be wrong; it’s against my intentions.” See Kevin Concannon, “Yoko Ono's Cut Piece: from Text to Performance and Back Again,” PAJ: a Journal of Performance and Art 30, no. 3 (2008): 89. 4 Taro E. F. Nettleton, “Throw Out the Books, Get Out in the Streets: Subjectivity and Space in Japanese Underground Art of the 1960s,” PhD Diss. (University of Rochester, 2010), 127. 5 One of her event scores describing the thirty-minute piece is reproduced in Jon Hendricks, Yoko Ono: To See the Skies (Milan: Mazotta, 1990), 66–71. 6 Jamie Mandelkau and William Bloom, “Interview Piece: Yoko Ono and Grapefruit,” International Times (August 12–26, 1971), 11. 7 Gray Watson and Rob La Frenais, “The Poetry of the Personal: in Conversation with Yoko Ono,” Performance 63 (1991): 9–15. 8 Ono remembered that “[i]t was very, very difficult for people to come up.” See Barbara Haskell and John G. Hanhardt, Yoko Ono: Arias and Objects (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1991), 91. 9 Nettleton, “Throw Out the Books,” 125.

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Yet, there is a dimension of Cut Piece that has scarcely been commented on – the event’s inherent elements of nonviolent resistance. True, the event addresses “passivity and aggression on the presentation of the self as a victim connected to the reciprocity between abuse and self-denigration, or on the relinquishment of power.”10 However, there is a second dimension to the violent reading of the piece, namely the way Ono reacts to it. That which can be perceived as passivity or submissive behaviour by the artist vis-à-vis the audience’s aggression can also be read as a nonviolent strategy to turn the power structures unfolding during the event on their head. Her specific pose is more than a simple reference to her victimization. She is not passive, but actively resisting the audience’s transgression – albeit without using violence herself. She does not avoid conflict, but consciously provokes an action that exposes and prosecutes it.11 A closer look reveals her posture as one of strength. It transforms into something like a sit-in – occupying the centre of the stage and refusing to move or react, Ono peacefully resists the aggression from the overwhelming force, the audience. Rather than a “relinquishment of power,” Cut Piece, by acknowledging and exposing society’s violence, as well as defying it through nonviolent means, reverts the power to the oppressed – to Ono, the “other,” the woman, the foreigner.

All You Have is Aggression, or Cut Piece’s Dialogue of Violence According to Ono, if “you wear clothes long enough they become part of you and you will suffer from serious physical maladjustment when you take them off.”12 Clothes don’t just cover the naked body, but represent the body in society. They are the first thing that people perceive, and serve as the image one wants to – needs to – project in society. Therefore, clothes are intimately woven into our bodily fabric, especially in public. Having them forcefully removed not only renders the body vulnerable due to its nakedness, but strips a person of their social identity, of the image they want 10

Kristine Stiles, “Between Water and Stone,” in In The Spirit of Fluxus, edited by Elizabeth Armstrong and Joan Rothfuss (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1993), 81. 11 Nonviolence also suffers from this misconception of passiveness. However, nonviolent action is a direct means for prosecuting conflicts with opponents and an explicit rejection of inaction, submission, and passivity. See Kurt Schock, “Nonviolent Action and Its Misconceptions: Insights for Social Scientists,” PS: Political Science and Politics 36, no. 4 (2003): 705. 12 Jung Ah Woo, The Postwar Art of On Kawara and Yoko Ono: As If Nothing Happened, dissertation (University of California, Los Angeles, 2006), 268.

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to project to their environment. The act of cutting consequently becomes more than just an aggressive intrusion into the intimate zone surrounding the performer’s skin as it endangers their social identity. However, the audience’s transgression goes further than the violation of the artist’s social body. Ono remembers that, “Finally there was only the stone remained of me that was in me, but they were still not satisfied and wanted to know what it’s like in the stone.”13 Ono feels that the audience wished to cut more than just her clothes. They were not satisfied with stripping her of her social self and exposing her naked body. Rather, they seemed to cut down to her very soul, to her sense of self, her existence, her very Dasein.14 Members of the audience appeared to violate more than the exterior strata through which people relate to one another.15 Therefore, Cut Piece exposes the violence the inner self has to endure in social interactions. Through the violation of her clothes, skin, and outer body, the audience seems to invade and defile the artist’s inner state, that which makes Ono herself. Corporeal and intercorporeal processes of mental experience are intimately linked. In an interview with Gray Watson and Rob Le Frenais, the artist says: “we have all this conceptual world within us. But at the same time we have to be reminded that this is also a part of the body. We are a body and we often forget that.”16 Ono’s body is violated twice: first by those that participate in the process of cutting – the audience members that transgress her personal space and infringe upon her intimate individuality – then by those who decide to watch the action unfold before them.17 Those who only observe, the passive participants, not only witness the violation of the artist but also assist in the exposure and consumption of her body. In a way, her violation is made public, displayed on the theatre platform as a spectacle for an audience that prefers to watch. Through the observing of all those present – actively participating or not – the transgression against Ono takes on another degree 13 Ingrid Pfeiffer, Max Hollein, and Jon Hendricks, Yoko Ono. Half-a-wind Show – a Retrospective (Frankfurt, Munich, London, and New York: Schirn Kunsthalle/ Prestel, 2013), 179. 14 Martin Heidegger, “Sein und Zeit, 1927” (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1967). https://archive.org/stream/HeideggerMartinSeinUndZeit/Heidegger+ Martin+-+Sein+und+Zeit_djvu.txt. 15 Ibid, §5. 16 Watson and Le Frenais, “The Poetry of the Personal,” 15. 17 Tony Cox points out that “only one third of the audience” actively took part in the event, “while the rest apparently consider the prospect.” See “Instructive AutoDestruction. Yoko Ono Leads in a Direction that Might be Called Concept Art,” Art and Artists 5 (1966): 18.

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that augments her humiliation. Trying to expose those who observe,18 Ono proposes a social comment on the quiet violence that binds individuals and society – through action or inaction – as well as the alienation and pain resulting from it. Cut Piece comments on the complicit relationship between individuals and the social body as a whole and its collectivized behaviour.19 Although Ono did not conceive the event specifically for the female body,20 because of the artist’s gender, Cut Piece also invites a strictly feminist reading. Thomas Crow points out that, “[i]t is difficult to think of an earlier work of art that so acutely pinpoints (at the very point when modem feminist activism was just emerging) the political question of women’s physical vulnerability as mediated by regimes of vision.”21 Not only did Cut Piece invite the violation of any body, it specifically encouraged an assault of Ono’s female form. In fact, while the event unfolded, attention was increasingly focused on the artist’s sexualized body. Certain people started to cut specific parts of her clothes, exposing the naked female flesh underneath. In one instance, a man came on stage and deliberately cut away the tissues covering her breasts. The audience clearly desired to expose the woman that placed herself between their explorative and destructive hands. Although I do not think this feminist aspect of Cut Piece is onedimensional – and therefore marginalizing the very work scholars seek to reclaim for history22 – it is still necessary to point out that this is only one aspect of a very complex work. Of course, the physical violation of Ono’s female body, as well as the psychological infraction committed by the participants of the piece, invite feminist speculation. Through Cut Piece, Ono exposes the “aggression that marks sexual difference and the laborious efforts women make not to be undone by it.”23 Subjected to acts of brutality, Ono demonstrates the “potential for objectification of the ‘other.’”24 Othering describes a process through which one’s own image is elevated while defining people with different characteristics, features, or traits as 18 Sylvie Coeller, Histoire et esthétique du contact dans l’art contemporain (Aixen-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence, 2005), 22. 19 Alexandra Munroe and Jon Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 158. 20 In one of her event scores, Ono points out that the performer “does not have to be a woman.” See Grapefruit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971). 21 Thomas Crow, The Rise of the Sixties (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 133. 22 Concannon, “Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” 84. 23 Peggy Phelan, “The Returns of Touch: Feminist Performances, 1960–80,” in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, edited by Lisa Gabrielle Mark (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 352. 24 Stiles, “Between Water and Stone,” 81.

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different and strange.25 A distinction and distancing from the “other” takes place. In patriarchal society, this “other” can (and often does) designate “woman.” However, othering is also based on religious affiliation, ethnicity, and nationality, for example.26 As a Japanese immigrant, Ono also references her status as “other” in Western society. In that respect, Cut Piece exposes what Johan Galtung calls cultural and structural violence, both of which are responsible for “lowering the real level of needs satisfaction below what is potentially possible” for a person deemed as “other.”27 The event exposes a culture that “preaches, teaches, admonishes, eggs on, and dulls us into seeing exploitation and/or repression as normal and natural, or not seeing them (especially exploitation) at all.”28 Inciting the violent encounter between her and the audience, Ono reveals what Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow call a “field of contention”29: the socially constructed set of adversarial relationships embedded in a legal/institutional system that effectively constrains the strategic options available to all contenders. Thus defined, Cut Piece seems create “a confrontational language of interaction.”30 Yet, while the potential for aggression is certainly always there, the event is not simply a work about victimization and assault. While some critics understand the act of cutting as enacting and enabling the violence humans are capable of, it is not wholly a violation. Although Cut Piece clearly exposes the violence that lies beneath many a human interaction, as well as the resulting pain, there is also a dimension of healing.31 In that respect, the violent elements of the event function “as imaginary techniques for communicating and, thereby, confronting pain, frustration, anger, and sorrow.”32 25 Kerstin Gernig, Fremde Körper: Zur Konstruktion des Anderen in europäischen Diskursen (Berlin: Dahlem University Press, 2001). 26 In his critique on Orientalism, Edward Said points out that the difference between cultures is conceived, “first, as creating a battlefront that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other.” See Orientalism (London and Henley: Routledge/Kegan Paul, 1978), 55–6. 27 Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (London: Sage, 1996), 4. 28 Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1990): 295. 29 Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow. “Nonviolence as Contentious Interaction,” PS: Political Science and Politics 33, no. 2 (2000): 149. 30 Munroe and Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono, 148. 31 Stiles, “Between Water and Stone,” 85. 32 Kristine Stiles, “Unbosoming Lennon: the Politics of Yoko Ono’s Experience,” Art Criticism 7, no. 2 (1992): 39.

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All You Need is Love, or Cut Piece’s Dialogue of Nonviolence Ono has repeatedly credited her refugee experience in Second World War Japan with having oriented her entire artistic trajectory, including her peace activism from the 1960s onwards. Indeed, her wartime memories figure as a leitmotif in accounts she has given of her own life in popular and scholarly media in the last decade.33 She wanted to address the trauma she had lived through, and at the same time find relief from it. Her “poetic acts of self-narration”34 allow her to imagine the world other than it is, and to bring about a dialogue. Yet, some scholars question the sociopolitical validity of her acts. Because they have been firmly placed in the realm of art (or popular culture), they often forgo the qualification of being political acts of resistance – as demonstrated by Fabien Loszach’s crushing review of the Bed-in for Peace.35 However, it is my opinion that narrow interpretations such as this deny the many links that exist between the arts and political activism. In fact, although humorous and playful, Ono’s art is “thoroughly uncompromising in its radicalism.”36 In his highly interesting article on Ono’s and Lennon’s activism of the late 1960s, Jon Wiener explains how both of them sought to “overcome the apolitical and antipolitical aspects of avant-garde art in a way that would also liberate radical political activity from its traditional forms.”37 Although I would argue that avant-garde movements such as dadaism, surrealism, automatism, or situationism were far from “anti-political,” he has a point in trying to free Ono’s activities from an artificially constructed art-only realm. Her work is that of protest, however unconventional. Her creativity acts as resistance activism, and gives her intermedia work its subversive power. Nonviolent means of protest and resistance are intimately linked to Ono’s activities of protest. She said it best herself: Why am I still an artist? Why am I not joining the violent revolutionaries? … I realized that destruction is not my game. I like to fight the establishment 33 Midori Yoshimoto, Into Performance: Japanese Women Artists in New York (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 79–81. 34 Brigid Cohen, “Limits of National History: Yoko Ono, Stefan Wolpe, and Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism,” The Musical Quarterly 97, no. 2 (2014): 203. 35 Fabien Loszach, “Le bed-in: un idéal de la contestation molle?” Espace Sculpture 90 (Winter 2009–10): 31. 36 Jon Wiener, “Pop and Avant-Garde: the Case of John and Yoko,” Popular Music and Society 22 no. 1 (1998): 7. 37 Ibid., 8.

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by using methods that are so far removed from establishment-type thinking that the establishment doesn’t know how to fight back.38

Her political art activities carry a profoundly positive and transformative message,39 because they quietly unhinge reified structures and dynamics of power – a process of which Cut Piece serves as a perfect example. In fact, Ono herself, while acknowledging the event’s violence, has “described it as equally concerned with the idea of peaceful resistance as a form of protest.”40 Rather than inciting a totalistic and absolute sociopolitical overhaul, Ono’s message unfurls on a much more intimate scale. Margaret Atwood rightly points out that questions about power normally concern “who’s allowed to do what to whom, who gets away with it and how.”41 Intrinsically linked with the concept of domination, they address the divide between the “powerful” and the “powerless.”42 In this system, the powerful “get away” with the violation of the powerless. In Cut Piece, these two poles are represented by the audience and the artist. Because Ono has seemingly “let go” of the action, the power appears to be in the hands of the audience members – they decide what to cut, how much, and consequently the amount of flesh to be exposed. They seem to dominate Ono’s body, either through their actions or their gaze. The artist, on the other hand, “just” sits there, completely still, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind the public, enduring her ordeal. At first glance, hers appears to be a position of submission and vulnerability. Furthermore, the video feed of the New York staging shows that Ono’s composure during Cut Piece has not always been as non-responsive as described. As one (male) audience member comes up onstage to cut parts of her lingerie, theatrically declaring, “Very delicate … might take some time,” the artist is clearly uncomfortable. She repeatedly looks down, observing the actions of the cutter. She bites her lip, and then looks upwards to collect her strength. On the one hand, “the denuding of Ono magnifie[s] her status as a fetishized and exotic object of voyeuristic

38

Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” Oxford Art Journal 26, no. 1 (2003): 116. 39 Munroe and Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono, 11. 40 Rachel Wetzler, “Yoko Ono: Cut Piece,” Haus der Kunst. https://postwar.hausderkunst.de/artworks-artists/artworks/cut-piece. 41 Margaret Atwood, Second Words: Selected Critical Prose (Toronto: Anansi Press, 1982), 353. 42 Penny Strange, “It’ll Make a Man of You: a Feminist View of the Arms Race,” in Exposing Nuclear Phallacies, edited by Diana E. H. Russel (New York: Pergamon Press, 1989), 112.

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fascination.”43 However, it also underlines her vulnerability and the danger she is exposed to. In one photograph, she moves her arms to shield her naked breasts. This seemingly desperate, protective gesture seems to betray her suffering due to the violation against her body. The apparent loss of control over herself puts Ono in a very vulnerable position,44 already conveyed by her submissive sitting position and accentuated by her slips of composure. Therefore, Ono must be the powerless, and her violation by the audience – i.e. the powerful – allowed. Yet, Ono’s submissive passivity is an illusion. Certainly, the gesture of shielding her breasts may be read as vulnerable, but also as a moment of self-assertion.45 For one brief instant, Ono points out that the victimization of her body through others is her own doing. She invites the audience to cut as much fabric as they want. She dictates the parameters of the interaction. She planned the duration of the piece, chose the tools of her “domination,” and decided upon her reaction to the violation. The audience has power, yes, but in the end Ono is in control. The liberties accorded to her public are restricted by the artist – the initiator of the action – who constructs in a selective manner the frame of the event. By manipulating the general structure of Cut Piece she has control over its meaning and intention. Therefore, Ono is neither the victim of the exchange between her and her public, nor the weak alienated other on which the dominant audience members can play out their aggression. Through her stoic, still, pensive and meditative, turned-into-herself attitude, Ono reverses the prevailing power structures that normally take place in social interactions. Rollo May conceptualizes aggression and violence as expressions of impotence, because they are symptoms of a failed power through self-affirmation, or self-assertion (i.e. the power to be/of the self).46 Because the audience members make use of their power through violence, they in fact expose their own insecurity and impotence. Ono, on the other hand, turns out to be the powerful during the encounter, because she does not resort to violence while her power to be is violated. Those that are supposed to have power over her (i.e. the audience) may at first glance perceive her as passive and submissive, and therefore weak. However, through her quiet nonviolent resistance to her body’s violation, Ono transforms from powerless to 43 James M. Harding, Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-Garde (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 105. 44 Boris Groys, “A Genealogy of Participatory Art,” in The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now, edited by Rudolf Frieling, Boris Groys, Robert Atkins, and Lev Manovich (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 108. 45 Bryan-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” 107. 46 Rollo May, Power and Innocence (New York: Norton, 1972), 54.

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powerful. Gene Sharp points out that we need to rethink the notion of power (although he does speak of power in a strictly political context), because we have for too long assumed “that it originates in violence.”47 Ono does exactly that – she demonstrates that her power does not originate in her dominating the audience through a reaction more violent than those that transgress her body, but in her nonviolent attitude. Rather, Cut Piece reveals the violent actions of the audience as a sign of “weakness.” Richard Bartlett Gregg asserts that physically violent combat is conducted “on the basis of a strong fundamental agreement that violence is a sound mode of procedure.”48 However, if one of the parties eliminates that basic agreement, the other is startled and uncertain – their instincts no longer instantly tell them what to do. Trying to use violent means to end a conflict, they are caught off balance. Nonviolent resistance can therefore cause “the attacker to lose his moral balance.”49 True, Ono does not enter into physical combat with her audience, yet the same principle applies. In fact, violence is often “a feature of an interaction between two people.”50 Society being constructed on the powerful-powerless dichotomy, many interactions between two people are constructed on the basis of achieving power of and for oneself by dominating another (through violence and aggression, in whatever form they take). Most people cannot imagine any other reality than this dualism – if they “lose” power, the only available way of being is weak, passive, a victim.51 Therefore, people expect their Gegenüber to want to assert themselves by the same means. They expect violence and aggression. Yet, Ono did not comply. She did not react the way she was supposed to, being neither submissive/weak as the victimized other nor aggressive due to her power to be/of the self being aggressed. In a way, Ono withdraws her consent vis-à-vis the aggressive interaction between humans that defines society. In a larger sense, therefore, Ono makes use of what Gene Sharp has defined as one of the three broad categories of nonviolent action: non-cooperation.52 By withdrawing that 47 Gene Sharp, Social Power and Political Freedom (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1980), 19. 48 Richard Bartlett Gregg, Power of Nonviolence (London: James Clarke & Co, 1935), 44–5. 49 Ibid., 44. 50 Trudy Govier, “Violence, Nonviolence, and Definitions: a Dilemma for Peace Studies,” Peace Research 40, no. 2 (2008): 64. 51 Karen Malpede, “A Talk for the Conference on Feminism & Militarism,” in Reweavinq the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, edited by Pam McAllister (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1982), 205. 52 Gene Sharp, Exploring Nonviolent Alternatives (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1970).

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consent, she is able to “control and even destroy the power of [her] opponent.”53 Nonviolent resistance works “by identifying an opponent’s vulnerabilities and taking away [his] ability to maintain control.”54 That is exactly what Ono does here. She identifies the power of the audience, then takes it away. Not only by controlling the event parameters through her role as the artist, initiator, and creator, but also through her body language that defies her status as the weak, submissive other, she demonstrates her ability to take control. In fact, nonviolent protesters often position their bodies consciously in relation to changing structures of power,55 which is exactly what Ono does. The pose she adopts at the beginning of the event is a conscious decision as it conveys the presumed submissiveness, passiveness, and vulnerability of the other as weak. In that respect, the artist mirrors the dominant power structures. Her position should then underline the power of the audience who come on stage and violate her body. Yet, on the contrary, it undermines said power. Her stillness is not a sign of submission, but of strength, as stillness gives the nonviolent protester a powerful position from which to exert a sense of agency.56 Barbara Browning explains that nonviolent non-cooperation “requires a technique of the body which in many ways resembles what contemporary choreographers refer to as ‘release technique.’”57 Ono seemingly releases control of her body, yet, again, that release is an illusion. By continuing to sit still and maintain an air of meditation, she projects a different image – that of a controlled and confident person, who is in fact in charge of the violation of her body. However, Cut Piece does not simply reverse the power structures, which would mean creating another adversary system of the powerful-powerless dichotomy (even if the roles were reversed). Rather, Ono tempted a collective transformation by showing that not resorting to violence does not necessarily mean being weak, or that resorting to violence does not necessarily mean being powerful. Concerned with the “complex psychological interaction involving actors and spectators, with a process of heightened selfperception, and the development of an awareness of one’s thoughts and 53

Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Part One: Power and Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973), 4. 54 Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: a Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 494. 55 Danielle Goldman, “Bodies on the Line: Contact Improvisation and Techniques of Nonviolent Protest,” Dance Research Journal 39, no. 1 (2007): 61. 56 Susan Leigh Foster, “Choreographies of Protest,” Theatre Journal 55, no. 3 (2003): 395–412. 57 Barbara Browning, “Choreographing Postcoloniality: Reflections on the Passing of Edward Said,” Dance Research Journal 35/36, no. 2 (2004): 169.

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feelings,”58 Ono believes that art should affect social change. Yet, she does not tell viewers what to do or how to feel and react, and instead gives them the means to experience that change for themselves. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ono says that wanting to “make ‘change’ into a positive move: let the work grow by asking people to participate and add their efforts.”59 In much of her intermedia work, Ono wishes to reveal a person’s interior world, the Weltinnenraum – a space where the visible and invisible mix and change constantly.60 In her mind, this spirituality, the potential to look inside oneself, is capable of changing the world.61 Her instructions are therefore not simple directives but an invitation to explore said interior life. As Deborah K. Ultan notes, Ono uses the ritual in performance to “explore myths and realities of identity toward seeking a greater self.”62 Her event scores, for example, she defines as “seeds” that are to be activated in the minds of those who receive them.63 Drawing the spectator into acts of selfreflection,64 Ono transforms them into self-conscious actors responding critically to the dilemma presented on stage.65 The more committed she remains in her confident, transcendent posture, the more the violence used by the audience becomes pronounced and disturbing. The artist tries to invoke a feeling of unease on the public’s side when faced with aggression. In fact, the artist seems to function “as a mirror, reflecting the feeling of audience members; through watching the performance, the audience discover[s] voyeurism or violence within itself.”66 The active and passive participants are therefore forced to not only confront their own violent behaviour, but also reflect on violence and make a choice. Just as acts of 58

Pfeiffer, Hollein, and Hendricks, Yoko Ono, 30. Hans Ulrich Obrist and Yoko Ono, Yoko Ono (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2009), 8. 60 Charles Dreyfus, “Yoko Ono. Lumière de l’aube,” Inter 124 (Fall 2016): 63. 61 Benoit Jodoin, “Compte rendu de Liberté conquérante de Yoko Ono,” Spirale 270 (Fall 2019): 19. 62 Deborah K. Ultan, “From the Personal to the Transpersonal: Self Reclamation Through Ritual-in-Performance,” Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 20, no. 2 (2001): 30. 63 Concannon, “Yoko Ono's Cut Piece,” 83. 64 Munroe and Hendricks, Yes Yoko Ono, 147. 65 Felicia Leu emphasizes that Ono frequently uses participatory processes as kommunikationsmittel. Her art has a social dimension by which to engage the public and create a change within the recipients. See “Yoko Ono’s Instruction Paintings. RezipientInnen zwischen Partizipation und Performance” (Magistra der Philosophie, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 2019). 66 Yoshimoto, Into Performance, 99. 59

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nonviolence serve to “‘conscientize’ the larger population to the plight of others who are being oppressed,”67 Cut Piece not only disrupts the processes of violence but spreads awareness among those participating in the event. It “throws responsibility for judgment upon the viewer.” Not only does the artist force her public to confront their own attitudes towards aggression, but she incites audience members to take action upon that realization – or live with the fact that they don’t. Dick Higgins describes this act of transformation as central to performance art. According to him, during a performance two different horizons – that of the artist and the spectator – clash and fuse in a way (horizontverschmelzung). If and when that happens, those original horizons will alter. That way, even when they are no longer fused after the performance, they are forever changed: “The best piece is the one that permanently affects the recipient’s horizon.”68 In Cut Piece, Ono fuses her horizon with that of the audience. Cut Piece is less about confrontation than communication. Ono points out that “[a] dream you dream alone may be a dream, but a dream two people dream together is a reality.”69 The artist needs the audience and their shared collective experience – first, of course, to expose the violence in human interaction, but more importantly so she can share with them her dream of human interaction liberated from a system of violence that is based on the powerful-powerless dichotomy. By sharing that dream, by spreading it and making other people dream about it, it might eventually become a reality. Cut Piece is a communicative act in which both artist and spectator work together. In a way, violence “breaks the sense of community because it seeks to end or limit participation in the decisionmaking process.” Yet, nonviolence, as it involves “the transformation of a confrontation into a relationship of unity,”70 restores this dialogue. Nonviolent action “plays a double role in relation to dialogue: it is both a direct attempt at dialogue – most obviously in methods of symbolic action – and preparation for dialogue.”71 By inciting an aggressive action against 67

Marjorie Hope and James Young, The Struggle for Humanity: Agents of Nonviolent Change in a Violent World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1977), 35. 68 Dick Higgins, “Fluxus Theory and Reception,” in The Fluxus Reader (New York: Academy Editions, 1998), 230. 69 Yoko Ono, Imagine Yoko (Lund: Bakhall, 2005), 35. 70 Theodore Herman, “Six Views of Nonviolence for Peace Research,” in A Just Peace Through Transformation: Cultural Economic and Political Foundations for Change, edited by Chadwick Alger and Michael Stohl (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 104. 71 Brian Martin and Wendy Varney, “Nonviolence and Communication,” Journal of Peace Research 40, no. 2 (2003): 219.

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her body, yet also breaking through it thanks to her powerful, peaceful disposition, Ono, through Cut Piece, promotes the dialogue that has been lost. She informs the audience about her pain while sharing her vision for an alternative interaction with them, waiting for their answer. Her vulnerable yet stoic disposition serves as a transformative agent and a symbolic bridge between the self and the collective: “Through the ritual process, a complicit relationship [is] established among total strangers to evoke a transpersonal situation, where the personal submit[s] to a greater social body.”72

72

Ultan, “From the Personal to the Transpersonal,” 32.

CHAPTER TWO LOUD FEMINISM: PUSSY RIOT’S PRESUMED VIOLATIONS ALLA MYZELEV

On the morning of February 21, 2012, five young women walked into Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The cathedral, the tallest Orthodox Church in the world, is the religious centre of Russia’s capital. Wearing brightly coloured sleeveless dresses, neon tights, and their signature balaclava ski masks, the women jumped on the altar, took out electric guitars, and performed a song that mixed punk-rock chords and traditional Orthodox chanting. Their lyrics criticized the close ties between the Russian Patriarch Kirill and President Putin, and addressed the antiwoman and anti-LGBT rhetoric of the Russian Orthodox Church. The refrain – styled as a traditional Orthodox prayer chant – asked the Mother of God to “oust Putin” and “become a feminist.” The women were seized by security and forcefully taken outside before they could finish the song, a fact that became important since exactly what words those present at the cathedral heard at the time was crucial for the subsequent trial. Following the aborted appearance at the cathedral, the women created a video of their performance with an elaborately scored soundtrack and scenes recorded earlier, and released the work on YouTube. In less than two weeks, three members of the group were arrested, and a lengthy trial “that would make this ‘punk prayer’ world famous” commenced.1 A few months later, the members of the all-female Pussy Riot were found guilty on charges of

1

Anya Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice: Body Politics and Sovereign Power in the Pussy Riot Affair,” Critical Inquiry 40, no. 1 (2013): 221.

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“hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”2 and received two-year prison sentences in remote, all-female labour camps.3

Fig. 2.1. Four Pussy Riot members perform “A Punk Prayer” at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (2012) Source: Photo by Philip Cosores

Most Euro-American coverage of the trial concentrated on familiar dichotomies between “free speech” and “blasphemy,” “the secular,” and “the sacred,” or even “rationality” and “obscurantism.”4 Both the media and the audience seemed bewildered by the apparently disproportionate reaction of the Russian state to this affair. The conclusions in the Euro-American press were unanimous in saying that Pussy Riot had been covered under freedom of speech, and thus could not be prosecuted legally. In Russia and Eastern Europe, the response was vastly different. Support for the group was limited mainly to the like-minded artistic and liberally-inclined creative groups. In Russia, even those who supported Pussy Riot shared a common sentiment that they had crossed a mysteriously invisible line, breaking a 2

Miriam Elder, “Pussy Riot Sentenced to Two Years in Prison Colony for Hooliganism,” The Guardian (July 21, 2012). https://www.theguardian.com/music /2012/aug/17/pussy-riot-sentenced-two-years. 3 Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released from prison in December 2013 after serving twenty-three months of their two-year sentences. Samutsevich’s sentence was commuted. 4 Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 222–3.

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previously unspoken taboo, and thereby revealing its existence. Moreover, as Mark Lipovetsky argues, Pussy Riot managed to demonstrate that both the supporters of Putin and his most radical opposition shared a set of conservative values.5 Using the strategy of nonviolent protest, or what Stellan Vinthagen calls nonviolent “utopian enactment,” Pussy Riot attempted to imagine through their action a different version of religion and Russia in general, where women are protected and respected. As Vinthagen defines it, a nonviolent movement is one in which the people who disagree with those in power demand nonviolent actions in a nonviolent way. “In a nonviolent movement, activists contest ‘violence,’ ‘oppression’ or ‘injustice’ while they themselves avoid using such means.”6 Pussy Riot’s action and trial demonstrated that Russia is ruled by a particular brand of nostalgic masculinity that cannot tolerate challenges to its authority even from a peaceful, nonviolent artistic protest. To understand the notion of utopia, I am following Vinthagen’s discussion of the word as “futureoriented action” and an aspiration to “create a new society.”7 Vinthagen mentions that, in the case of nonviolent resistance, “utopian enactment” is not idealist, naive, or purely aspirational. While the action of Pussy Riot was understood in Russia as malicious, misguided, and idealist for the wrong reasons, I argue that their nonviolent protest was more akin to Gandhi’s proclamation that, “If you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding.”8 The affective appeal of this utopian enactment is what evoked such a reaction from the masculinist ideology of the Russian totalitarian regime. The strong reaction from both supporters and detractors of Pussy Riot’s right to express their views demonstrated that they “sharply divided society. However, what exactly the lines of this division were has proven, and continues to prove, a subject of hot debate.”9 Their performance in the cathedral and other appearances are examples of feminist nonviolent protests. Pussy Riot adhere to a type of feminism that believes in the empowering of not only secular women but also the institution of the Christian Orthodox religion. As will be explained below, the relationship 5

Mark LipovetskiƱ, Postmodern Crises: From Lolita to Pussy Riot (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies, 2017), 143. 6 Stellan Vinthagen, A Theory of Nonviolent Action: How Civil Resistance Works (London: Zed Books, 2015), 1–2. 7 Vinthagen, A Theory of Nonviolent Action, 210. 8 Quoted in ibid., 208. 9 Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” n. p.

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between nostalgia and religion has been especially tight in post-Soviet Russia. Religion that was severely persecuted during the Soviet times became one of the pillars of the post-Soviet conservative identity. In this sense, Pussy Riot’s peaceful protest indivertibly hit at the very core of the Soviet collective trauma, and was therefore understood in Russia as far from peaceful, and punished by a two-year jail sentence. My research proposes that the dividing line the group supposedly crossed was the complicated relationship of gender, nostalgia, religion, and feminine identity in Putin’s Russia. Pussy Riot brought to the forefront the idea of Western feminism, of which Russian society has often complex and negative conceptions. Thus, Pussy Riot’s case constitutes a rare opportunity to examine how their conscious self-fashioning as young DIY musicians, Russian feminists, and anonymous activists contributed to the discussion of third-wave feminism in Eastern Europe. Using nonviolent protest they nevertheless managed to evoke not only resistance but also national and international debates that made them world famous, and more importantly attracted national and international attention to the situation of women in Russia. Given their status as a small group, this type of nonviolent protest may have been overlooked by the media and authorities. Erica Cenoweth, for example, identifies the nonviolent protests of at least one thousand people as a minimum for the opportunity to create a difference.10 Thus, the international appeal and attention that such a small action of protest received testifies to its success, but also the degree of conservatism of Russian political and social powers.

Music and Performance Several authors addressed the atypical performing strategies of the group, noting that they often pre-record their music and lyrics before appearing in public, playing guitars during the performances while the words come from speakers. Thus, the element of live performance and interaction with audiences through their music has been limited. They have also only appeared once or twice and never undertaken concert tours. Their priority lies in releasing the recording of the performances on social-media sites. After each appearance, the group post on YouTube and their own platform Life Journal: Pussy Riot short (two to four-minute) video clips of the performances that include pre-recorded singing and noise of the crowds and bystanders along with traffic. One observer called it a mix of authentic 10 Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (Columbia University Press, 2011).

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with inauthentic, which characterizes some punk music,11 also noting that Pussy Riot’s style of punk political performance is unique for Russia, where most of the punk scene is ideologically aligned with the political regime.12 At the same time, Pussy Riot members commented that their inspiration came from female bands of the early 1990s such as those involved in the Riot Grrrl movement, which combined punk-music aesthetics with feminist messages and the use of exaggerated femininity to attract attention to the fact that punk was still a male-dominated field. While Riot Grrrl combined song writing, live performance, and publishing zines printing song lyrics and illustrations in a comic-book style, Pussy Riot decided to concentrate on more media-driven strategies. Instead of zines, they used blogs and regularly posted their performances and rehearsals on YouTube. Several scholars specializing in punk music note that Pussy Riot’s music, although rooted in the punk tradition, does not play a major factor in their performances.13 Instead, the main visual impact comes from the performers and what they wear, along with the choices of the locations, such as the top of a bus or a wall surrounding the Kremlin. The lyrics of the songs, although significant when analysed, also became secondary since it is hard to hear the words when the women are singing. Also, the lyrics are exclusively in Russian and therefore requiring translation for non-Russian audiences. Additionally, during the first four years of the group’s existence, they never performed in any venue such as a concert hall or auditorium, nor produced a disk or recorded a song without a video. All of the above brings me to argue that it is more productive to see Pussy Riot’s actions as performance art – or actionism, as it is called in Russia, in spite of the fact that Pussy Riot call themselves a punk-rock group. If one thinks of Pussy Riot’s actions as performances, it is more apt to compare them to Guerrilla Girls, a source of inspiration that members of Pussy Riot have noted on several occasions. Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985 as a response to the large blockbuster exhibition at the Museum of Modern 11 Polly McMichael, “Defining Pussy Riot Musically: Performance and Authenticity in New Media,” Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media 9 (2013): 99–113. http://www.digitalicons.org/wp-content/uploads/ issue09/files/2013/06/DI_9_6_McMichael.pdf. 12 For example, Grazhdanskaya Oborona or the projects of Egor Letov. For more on the specificities of Russian punk see Hilary Pilkington, “Punk – But Not as We Know It: Punk in Post-socialist Space,” Punk & Post Punk 1, no. 3 (November 16, 2012): 253–66, https://doi.org/10.1386/punk.1.3.253_1. 13 Elena Gapova, “Becoming Visible in The Digital Age: the Class and Media Dimensions of the Pussy Riot Affair,” Feminist Media Studies 15, no. 1 (2014): 18– 35. http://www.doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2015.988390.

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Art in New York called An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture (1984), which featured 169 artists, of whom only thirteen were female. The subsequent campaign, which started as protests at the museum entrance, continued with posters attracting attention to gender and race inequality in the arts. The ape masks that the group adopted as their official image differed from balaclavas in the sense that they completely excluded both race and gender from the visual appearance of the collective. By completely obliterating themselves, Guerrilla Girls attempted to “focus on the issue and not on personalities or on our work.”14 Positioning both groups as performance art helps to underscore the inadequacy of the two-year sentence given to the Pussy Riot members that not only goes against the presumed freedom of speech in Russia but also the freedom of artistic expression. It is helpful to think about Western groups of political performers such as the Yes Men, who bring up important social issues such as paying reparations to African American people for slavery, or Guerrilla Girls, who attracted the attention of Western society to the fact that men represent the majority of artists in American galleries. However, at the same time, the Yes Men and Guerrilla Girls remain free to practice their art because of their claim to be performance artists rather than political activists, and because they mainly work in the West.15 If we think of Pussy Riot’s actions as performance art it is vital to understand their fashioning. Their performance clothing comprises brightly coloured handmade balaclavas or store-bought ski masks. Using scissors, they crudely cut holes to allow openings for the eyes and mouth. The shape of the balaclava – or Templar masks, as they were previously called – dates back to the middle ages when they were made from chainmail and worn by knights to protect their faces. Lighter than helmets, they were used in jousting competitions and parades. The knitted masks first appeared in Russia around 1854 during the Crimean War when British women made them to keep British soldiers warm from the cold and windy winters. Since then, the balaclava – taking their name from the Balaklava Peninsula where the British troops were stationed – has been associated with military and criminal actions requiring anonymity.16 Pussy Riot’s use of the mask hints

14 PROJECTS, Guerrilla Girls (July 21, 2017). https://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects. 15 Rachel V. Kutz-Flamenbaum, “Code Pink, Raging Grannies, and the Missile Dick Chicks: Feminist Performance Activism in the Contemporary Anti-war Movement on JSTOR,” NWSA Journal, Feminist Activist Art, 19, no. 1 (2007): 89–105. 16 For more on balaclavas see Mark Thompson, “The 600 Years of History Behind Those Ukrainian Masks,” Time (April 17, 2014). http://time.com/67419/the-600-

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at the violent history associated with it. Yet, they also utilize the strategy of nonviolent protest by evoking historical violence without any actual violence. When Pussy Riot members use colourful neon balaclavas, they create a dialogue with the audience on the idea of beauty, trendiness, and infantilism usually embedded in these colours in Western cultures.17 There is also a desire to move away from the militarism and potential violence associated with the balaclavas. Pussy Riot’s use of these re-signify the object by changing its colour and appearance. The bright colours aim at breaking the association with violence while the sloppy craftsmanship points to the tradition of DIY culture that is also present in their music and lyrics. This DIY idea places them definitively in the third-wave feminist movement, members of which combine interests in traditional female crafts, DIY culture, an emphasis on femininity, and the feminist agenda. The simple, short and sleeveless dresses, along with bright tights that emphasize the shape of the legs, produce a look that is, while anonymous, also undoubtedly feminine. The bodies are thin, feminine, and conventionally attractive. At the same time, they are covered enough to be considered mainstream and decent. The fashion works with what Angela McRobbie calls post-feminist masquerade.18 It is the combination of female empowerment and an adherence to feminine norms that makes the message of the feminists palpable and digestible to the non-feminist audience. In this sense, there is a difference between Guerrilla Girls’ gorilla masks and Pussy Riot’s balaclavas that coincides with ideas of feminism and postfeminism. While McRobbie’s observations of the need to mitigate between the demands of normativity and female empowerment have been taken on by Pussy Riot, audiences have read their feminine clues in very different terms. I argue that the performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour has been misunderstood precisely because of the self-fashioning of women as post-feminists. Given the complicated role of female empowerment in Russian culture from the onslaught of the Bolshevik Revolution, Pussy years-of-history-behind-those-ukrainian-masks. On the history of balaclavas in craft see Richard Rutt, A History of Hand Knitting (Loveland, CO: Interveave, 2013). 17 For more on the balaclava as a media device see Caitlin Bruce, “The Balaclava as Affect Generator: Free Pussy Riot Protests and Transnational Iconicity,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 12, no. 1 (2015): 42–62. http://nca.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14791420.2014.989246. 18 Angela McRobbie, “Top Girls? Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 4–5 (2007): 718–37. See also Gillian Rose and Nancy Duncan, “Masculine Dwelling, Masculinist Theory and Feminist Masquerade,” in Bodyspace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1996), 57–75.

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Riot’s attempt to be both feminine and feminists provoked an unusual and, one can even say, pathological amount of anger.

Pussy Riot’s Feminist Influences When discussing feminism in relation to Pussy Riot’s work, it is important to separate the notion of feminism as understood and expressed by its members and the general understanding of the role of a woman in Putin’s Russia. Pussy Riot’s interest in women’s empowerment and feminism is shared by a very small percentage of women (and very few men) in Russia. While the extensive research on feminism and the role of women in the political struggle is lacking, it is safe to say that feminism as understood in the West is mainly relegated to academic and artistic circles in Russia. Pussy Riot’s knowledge of Western feminism has served them well. However, in terms of the feminist tradition in Russia and the Soviet Union, they have had relatively few role models. One of the most important influences on Pussy Riot’s practice as artists as well as feminists is Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952). In several interviews, Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova noted that they were inspired by Kollontai, whose early revolutionary feminism (1920) was geared towards educating women in the various parts of the recently created Soviet Union on their rights using performance and proclamations. Her early twentieth-century activist performances – put together during the turbulent times of the postrevolutionary period in Russia – in essence propagated the values of the ruling regime, and are very different from the context of Putin’s politics. Kollontai, an early twentieth-century socialist and feminist, was part of Lenin’s circle that later brought about the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Kollontai’s feminist works are important for Russian feminists mainly because she is one of the very few women who contributed to the understating of the role of a woman in a socialist society. Her works, although problematic both then and now, are rare examples of feministsocialist writings.19 19

The historical problematics of Kollontai’s work mainly lie in her interest in free love, which was foreign to the moral foundations of the peasant and bourgeois society in Russia. She was considered controversial, and this is in part why her work gained more traction in Bolshevik Russia. Also, her idea about making children the responsibility of the state and making parenting less personal meant she was seen as a radical in terms of her understanding of the traditional morality of the new society. In the present day, Kollontai continues to be a controversial figure in Russian feminism because of her lack of interest in the family.

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At the core of Kollontai’s writing is the question of the role of the New Woman in the new socialist country. In general, Kollontai sees the woman’s living conditions before the revolution as restrained by the fact that she bears the burden of child and house care. A woman is not an equal member of the society since she rarely works outside the home.20 Kollontai argues that with the advent of socialism women should be made equal to men through the availability of work and opportunities to share housework and provisions for the care of children.21 This somewhat utopian approach maintains that it is primarily the responsibility of the state to provide families with sustainable childcare that takes on the lion’s share of women’s responsibilities for the upbringing of children. Kollontai insists on creating childcare centres that would provide total care so that mothers can visit, or if desired take children home for short periods. It is important to note that, while this approach was instituted soon after the revolution, it was abolished due to the rate of mortality among infants (almost ninety percent, according to some accounts).22 Thus, Kollontai takes the idea of women as mothers away from the social values and gives this symbolic motherhood to the state. In so doing she liberates women to pursue their own lives without being chained to the responsibilities of the family. Needless to say these views did not continue during the Soviet period, which both symbolically and practically left the responsibility of being a mother to the woman. In 1919, Kollontai wrote in an article “New Moral and Working Class” that: It is time to teach a woman to understand love not as a foundation of life but only as a step towards discovering of the real You … A woman should, similar to a man, learn to come out of conflicts of life not with wrinkled and damaged wings of anger but with the stronger soul.23

Pussy Riot were seen by the society as women in a symbolic sense of the word, as responsible for propagating the pure values of love and perseverance while they took on Kollontai’s call to be independent and 20

Alexandra Kollontai and Alix Holt, Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980). 21 Alexandra Kollontai, Communism and the Family (New York: Literature Dept., Workers Party of America, 1921). 22 Aino Saarinen, Kirsti Ekonen, and Valentina Uspenskaia, Women and Transformation in Russia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 23 Alexandra Kollontai, Novaya Moral’ i Rabochii Klass (Moscow, 1918). Alexandra Kollontai, “New Woman, from The New Morality and the Working Class,” The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman, 1971, 21. https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1918/new-morality.htm.

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vigorous. What they took from Kollontai’s writing, and what is for the most part forgotten in Putin’s Russia, is that women can and should be many things at once, similar to men, and that the relationship between the sexes is not the main part of a woman’s life.24 To an extent, Soviet life and ideology adopted Kollontai’s approach. Soviets proclaimed that women and men were equal and therefore had similar privileges and responsibilities. Thus, everything feminine was considered to be excessive and outside of the normative understanding of the society. Yet, in reality, the situation was very different, as while men and women were supposed to work equally and share all the responsibility in the settled Soviet existence after the Second World War, women in fact worked full hours outside of the house and did most of the housework. Thus, the separate spheres remained at home but not at work. In the late 1970s and early 1980s a samizdat journal Maria became the voice of women who wanted change. While I am not familiar with Pussy Riot’s references to this journal and its agenda, the performance at the church echoes its interest in softening the religious and social roles of women. The few issues of Maria that were created by women in Soviet Russia had a very different outlook on feminism and the role of women in society from their Western counterparts. While Western feminists both American and European argued that women were barred from playing an active role in society and sought to remediate it,25 Russian Feminists of the late 1970s and early 1980s were interested in giving the woman the right to be feminine and adhere to what they considered her “biological” nature. While both Western and Soviet feminists advocated a more nuanced cultural understanding of the “feminine” in the society, Soviet dissident feminists associated femininity with mythology and female deities. They also were interested in merging

24

Alexandra Kollontai, “Alexandra Kollontai and Red Love.” https://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1724. Interestingly, thanks to Kollontai, as early as 1918, socialists created a law ensuring equality for women. According to the Code of Citizenship, Marriage, Family, and Adoption Laws, only the civil registration of marriage was lawful. A new code of laws established the equality of rights between spouses – the wife was allowed to keep her last name, have a separate address, be in charge of her income, and have equal rights on family property. The code also significantly simplified procedures of marriage and divorce. The notion of illegal children, born outside of marriage, was abolished, and all children had equal rights. This code was the most advanced and radical in terms of gender equality in the world in 1918. 25 Alice Echols, “Daring to Be Bad”: Radical Feminism in America, 1967–1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

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the religious Christian beliefs with the empowering of femininity.26 Such an approach resonated with the California Feminist scene of the 1970s and socalled female art practiced by Judy Chicago and Mariam Shapiro,27 but was mainly taken up in art and therefore did not come into direct contact with Soviet dissidents who advocated for social reform. The truncated “feminist prayer” presented by Pussy Riot at the cathedral in Moscow blended the nonviolent approach to public performance of Kollontai and Guerrilla Girls with the religiosity of the Soviet feminists of the 1980s. The members of Pussy Riot choose to pray to god, and ask a female god (bogoroditsa), the Virgin Mary, to protect women and become more feminist. Repeating the ideas of the feminists of earlier generations, they hope for the love and protection of Mary against the evil that for them is represented in the figure of Putin. With their performance, Pussy Riot asked to be seriously considered as young independent women who want to fight for the rights of other women outside of the influence of the church and state. Yet, in their lyrics, and as we will see in their self-fashioning, they present themselves as feminine. Instead of being seen as independent feminist performance artists after their arrests, they were repositioned from masked villains as criminals. As Anya Bernstein argues, one of the most popular images circulated in the Russian media was the photograph of the three women sitting behind bars, literally in a cage for everyone to see.28 The exhibitionism ingrained in these photos, together with constant surprise at the fact that the women seem to be conventionally attractive and two are mothers of young children, complicated the discussion. The audience seemed to have expected the stereotypical “angry, ugly feminist monsters” often ridiculed in the media. Instead, once the masks were removed, the women presented to the Russian audience were brave, outspoken, educated, and independent. Instead of bright dresses and tights, they wore casual or business clothes. Nadia Tolokonnikova often wore shirts depicting Che Guevara or proclamations of political freedom. The reference to Che is an important strategy of nonviolent protest, since here a Pussy Riot member created a link between violent and nonviolent protest. Although wearing the Che T-shirt cannot be read as a veiled threat, it nevertheless creates a clear genealogical connection between Pussy Riot and radical left movements, and therefore by default placed their opponents on the right wing of the 26

ȿɥɟɧɚ Ƚɟɨɪɝɢɟɜɫɤɚɹ, “ɀɭɪɧɚɥ 'Ɇɚɪɢɹ,' ɂɥɢ Ɏɟɧɨɦɟɧ ɋɨɜɟɬɫɤɨɝɨ Ʉɜɚɡɢɮɟɦɢɧɢɡɦɚ,” ȺɊɌɂɄɍɅəɐɂə Ʌɢɬɟɪɚɬɭɪɧɨ-ɏɭɞɨɠɟɫɬɜɟɧɧɵɣ Ⱥɥɶɦɚɧɚɯ 1, no. 1 (August 2018). 27 Simon Taylor and Natalie Ng, Personal and Political: the Women’s Art Movement, 1969–1975 (East Hampton, NY: Guild Hall Museum, 2002). 28 Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice.”

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authoritarian ideology. While there were no overt comparisons between Putin and Hitler during the trail, Putin’s place on the political right of neoliberal politics was brought to the forefront of the predominantly politically “woke” audiences. Moreover, the shirt, by mentioning of dissent and demonstrations of the West (against the Vietnam War, for instance), again brought Pussy Riot into the domain of the left radical nonviolent protesters and emphasized the intersectionality of their practice.29

Fig. 2.2. Three Pussy Riot members on trial in 2012 Source: dw.com (https://p.dw.com/p/15c1Z)

The colourful balaclavas were adopted by their people who gathered around the courthouse and expressed their support for Pussy Riot by wearing them. Using the similar tactics of nonviolent protest and performance, these people wearing balaclavas were not interested in preserving their anonymity. They used them as a prop and symbol of Pussy Riot’s actions. The playfulness of balaclavas and their combination of violent and nonviolent connotations made the subsequent demonstrations and protests during Pussy Riot’s trial more poignant since they continued the ideologies of the feminist nonviolent struggle. However, for the Pussy Riot group, the removal of the masquerade damaged the very core of their modus operandi because the root of their performances was anonymity. Their performances aimed to represent every young woman in Russia, not Tolokonnikova and Aliokhina in particular. Once the women lost their generic young femininity and presented themselves as intelligent and educated personalities with a sense of humour 29

Alek D ƠpshteƱn, ɂɫɤɭɫɫɬɜɨ ɧɚ ɛɚɪɪɢɤɚɞɚɯ: “Pussy Riot,” “Ⱥɜɬɨɛɭɫɧɚɹ ɜɵɫɬɚɜɤɚ” ɢ ɩɪɨɬɟɫɬɧɵɣ ɚɪɬ-ɚɤɬɢɜɢɡɦ [Art on the Barricade: Pussy Riot, Bus Exhibition and Protest Art-activism] (Moscow: ȼɢɤɬɨɪ Ȼɨɧɞɚɪɟɧɤɨ, 2012).

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and aloof attitudes towards the authorities, the media changed its tune and attempted to vilify them by pointing out their deviance. They were accused of being bad mothers whose behaviour brought about jail sentences, which would damage their children’s lives.

Unilateral Misunderstanding On the same day the action took place, the well-known journalist and TV presenter Maksim Shevchenko, wrote: “I think Orthodox women should catch and flog these little bitches with birch rods. Let them also have a ‘performance.’”30 An influential conservative intellectual, Egor Holmogorov, opined that: “If I were working for this church, I would first call the TV crews and then undress them, cover them with feathers and honey, shave their heads, and kick them out into the cold in front of the cameras.”31 Following the news about the upcoming trial of Pussy Riot, the Internet was filled with cruel and often sexually sadistic comments, such as calls to “strip them naked,” “have them tarred and feathered,” “strip them and tie them to a whipping post,” “spank” (otshlepat’), “flog” (vyporot’), “whip” (vysech’), and “birch” (otkhlestat’ rozgami) them, or give them “a fatherly spanking” (otecheski otshlepat’). Speaking outside the courthouse on the first day of the trial, Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician and leader of a liberaldemocratic coalition that regularly criticizes Putin, said: “If I could get my way, I would spank these girls and let them go. What is going on here is sadism and cruelty.” On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Gennadii Ziuganov, the head of the Russian Communist Party, commented: “I would take a good leather belt, give them a good spanking, and then send them back to their children and parents. This would be a good administrative punishment for them. Moreover, I would tell them not to engage in such blasphemy anymore.” When discussing the performance at the cathedral, Putin called it a “witches’ gathering” (shabash). Putin was also aware of the women’s involvement in group sex during one of their previous performances. In a forced attempt at a joke, he noted that the “group sex can be better than ‘individual’ sex because one can always ‘slack off’ (sachkanut’).”32 Indeed, 30

“An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 225. Anya Bernstein, “Post-Soviet Body Politics: Crime and Punishment in the Pussy Riot Affair,” Smartosphere (September 16, 2013). http://somatosphere.net/2013/09/post-soviet-body-politics-crime-and-punishmentin-the-pussy-riot-affair.html. 32 Sophie Mayer, “The Size of a Song: Pussy Riot and the (People) Power of Poetry,” Soundings 54, no. 54 (July 22, 2013): 147–60. 31

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the Russian left, right, and centrists became unwittingly unified in their rejection of women’s feminist subjectivity and insistence on treating these women like children or girls. Even their staunchest supporters used the word “girls” in the Russian language (devotchka) rather than “young women” (devushki) or “women” (zhenschiny). The documentary Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer, which is decidedly on the side of Pussy Riot, also fell into the trap by dedicating at least quarter of its runtime to interviews with the parents of Samutsevich, Alyokhina, and Tolokonnikova.33 The parents talked about them as young girls, and their upbringing and how they were formed. One of the unifying lines was their dismissal of Pussy Riot performances, including the one destined to become infamous. They unanimously talked about it as growing pains and the craziness of the young. While the somewhat infantile and feminine clothing of Pussy Riot could work in the West, Russian audiences understood their self-fashioning as unserious, awkward, and ultimately immature; they then projected these same feelings onto their actions. Thus, it is not surprising that the responses that infantilize these women and denigrate them to the status of children, such as “stupid little girls,” occur. This reaction worked both to the advantage and disadvantage of Pussy Riot’s mission. Their nonviolent “utopian re-enactment” appealed to the emotions of the Russian authorities and the general audience. Their infantile yet feminine look underscored the notion of the victimhood of the three women who were arrested and put on trial. As Erica Cenoweth mentions, actions by women that evoke such disproportionate reactions are especially effective in changing policies.34 Analysing the participation of women in nonviolent campaigns in the last fifteen years, Cenoweth notes that: “Frontline women’s participation is highly correlated with successful resistance campaigns, even when accounting for other factors such as campaign size. A similar effect holds for campaigns that feature genderinclusive ideologies, which are more likely to succeed than campaigns without such ideologies.”35 Pussy Riot’s short and small action managed to provoke a reaction from those in power to then create a significant resistance movement that continued during the trial. Even more importantly, they managed to engage audiences across the world through global digital activism to attract attention to the feminist agenda in Russia. At the same 33

Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer, 2013. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2481238. 34 Erica Chenoweth, Women’s Participation and the Fate of Nonviolent Campaigns: a Report on the Women in Resistance (WiRe) Data Set (Broomfield, CO: One Earth Future Foundation, 2019). 35 Ibid., 1.

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time, the victimhood and “utopian enactment” also contributed to the dismissal of their real demands to cut ties between the state and church, and for a more active role for women in Russia. The debates concentrated mainly on the disproportionate punishment of the politically insignificant musicians and protesters. The Western intellectual community was outraged and vocal during the trial, but quicky lost interest and moved on after the verdict was announced. To the credit of Aliokhina and Tolokonnikova, they never gave up the fight, and continued their own version of nonviolent feminist protest throughout their prison sentence and after being freed.

The Religious and Political Reaction When the masquerade of the performance ended, the masquerade of the courtroom began. The conviction of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” shows profound misunderstanding of, or, more probably, a refusal to understand the actual goals of the group and their performances. Firstly, this verdict obliterated the fact that Pussy Riot had political motivations, asking in their song for the Virgin Mary to oust Putin. Secondly, it completely disregarded the feminist concerns of the group who were asking the Virgin Mary to become a feminist to protect women from the unlawfulness of the church and Russian state. What was recognized in the verdict is unruly behaviour or hooliganism, a sentence that has no political or social agenda, and instead invokes to the idea of infantile, immature, and uncontrollable thugs, the likes of whom graffiti the walls or fight with each other after soccer games. The verdict and subsequent punishment then became completely incongruent since most of the debates were about Pussy Riot offending the believers. The women, again and again, explained that they did not want to offend people and respect religion, but against the bond between religion and government. As Alek Epstein explained, the performance in the cathedral was not illegal in terms of the functionality of the space, as that same space is offered for rent for musical and theatrical performances on its website.36 Thus, some sarcastically commented that Pussy Riot had been punished, not because they performed inappropriate songs in the cathedral, but because they did not pay rent for the performance.37 It seems that religion and masculinity in Russia had become part of the one consolidated 36

“Ɋɭɫɫɤɚɹ ɉɪɚɜɨɫɥɚɜɧɚɹ ɐɟɪɤɨɜɶ Ʉɚɮɟɞɪɚɥɶɧɵɣ ɋɨɛɨɪɧɵɣ ɏɪɚɦ ɏɪɢɫɬɚ ɋɩɚɫɢɬɟɥɹௗ: Ɋɭɫɫɤɚɹ ȼɟɪɫɢɹ,” ɏɪɚɦ ɏɪɢɫɬɚ ɋɩɚɫɢɬɟɥɹ, 2015. http://www.xxc.ru. 37 Alek ƠpshteƱn, “Izkustvo Na Barrikadakh: ‘Pussy Riot,’ ‘Avtobusnaia Vystavka’ I ProtestnyƱ Art-Aktivizm,” Kolonna Publications (Moskva, 2012), 21.

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process of restorative nostalgia that is mitigated by traditional and new media. Pussy Riot then tried to undo a very tight knot between the nostalgic feelings of the Russian people who attempt to restore their tradition and religion that was taken away by the Bolshevik Revolution. It is interesting that these religious beliefs and traditional ceremonies along with the architecture of the churches did not go through European or North American modernization. In Russia, religion seems to be going back to where it was one hundred years ago.38 It is not surprising that at this point the religion in Russia is affiliated with governmental bodies and supports the traditional version of stable and conservative masculinity.39 Thus, the performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour perhaps inadvertently challenged a whole range of connections and assumptions and created such a robust and unpredictable reaction.

Conclusion Regarding the feminist agenda of Pussy Riot, the performance in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was not understood by a great number of Russian people and, one could say, did not achieve its goals. I argue that the reason for this is precisely because of Pussy Riot’s reliance on the strategies of third-wave feminism. In addition to the self-fashioning that I discussed above, two other shortcomings are important. One is the fact that they relied on the Western strategies of feminist engagement without really knowing them well. In essence, they attempted to bring together Western and Russian feminist ideas without clearly articulating the differences between them. However, the more problematic issue here is the fact that Pussy Riot used the third-wave feminist strategy of intersectionality. They created a mixed agenda that included feminist, political, religious, and ecological concerns, all of which were brought together in their performances that relied on punk music and the aesthetics of DIY culture. Given such a broad spectrum of issues, unusual especially for Russian audiences, with their performance strategies and music, it is unsurprising that the message became diluted in the rhetoric of Pussy Riot themselves and their critics. Several years after the performance, one can adopt a different standpoint and acquire some perspective on the events and, more importantly, the overall significance of the performance. No doubt it and subsequent events became one of the most 38

Zoe Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia After Communism (London: Routledge, 2004). 39 David-Emil Wickström and Yngvar B. Steinholt, “Visions of the (Holy) Motherland in Contemporary Russian Popular Music: Nostalgia, Patriotism, Religion and Russkii Rok,” Popular Music and Society 32, no. 3 (2009): 313–30.

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radical, visible, and widely supported (albeit only in the West) events of the last decade. Perhaps more than anything, Pussy Riot managed to attract the attention of the West to the fact that Russia remains a totalitarian state, even after Perestroika.

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Appendix 1 “Punk Prayer” (English version by Carol Rumens) (Chorus) Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish him, we pray thee! Congregations genuflect, Black robes brag gilt epaulettes, Freedom’s phantom’s gone to heaven, Gay Pride’s chained and in detention. KGB’s chief saint descends To guide the punks to prison vans. Don’t upset His Saintship, ladies, Stick to making love and babies. Crap, crap, this godliness crap! Crap, crap, this holiness crap! (Chorus) Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Be a feminist, we pray thee, Be a feminist, we pray thee. Bless our festering bastard-boss. Let black cars parade the Cross. The Missionary’s in class for cash. Meet him there, and pay his stash. Patriarch Gundy believes in Putin. Better believe in God, you vermin! Fight for rights, forget the rite – Join our protest, Holy Virgin. (Chorus) Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin, Virgin Mary, Mother of God, we pray thee, banish him!

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CHAPTER THREE RESISTING JIM CROW VIOLENCE: ANNE MOODY’S FREEDOM MOVEMENT IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH NILGUN ANADOLU-OKUR

Until individuals and their government understand why they do have responsibility, they cannot ensure racial justice and equality. So, please do not assume that the book is closed. There is yet much work to be done. As the governor of Mississippi, you have a unique opportunity to acknowledge the past and to participate in ensuring a meaningful future for your state. Please don’t squander this moment by proclaiming that the past does not inform the present and the future. —Rita Schwerner Bender

Anne Moody’s youth was beset with violence, and deeply troubled by the challenges of growing up the eldest daughter of a sharecropping family in Centreville, Mississippi. Her first encounter with violence took place when she was just four years old. When her parents left for the fields, her mother’s eight-year-old brother George Lee, who was watching Anne and her six-month-old sister Adline, set the house on fire. As well as enduring blows, slapping, and beatings at George Lee’s hands, her father’s increasingly abusive behaviour towards her and her mother intensified Anne’s troubles at a young age. In her autobiography, Anne Moody also mentions several instances of violence aimed at her by outsiders. Almost all of these incidents were initiated by racially motivated vigilante white people who lived in and around Centreville, Mississippi. This paper primarily depicts an African American woman’s experiences with the violence and violent behaviour that pervaded her childhood and adolescence against the backdrop of judicial ineffectuality contrived by white vigilantes, and its disparaging effects on the nation’s future. Despite setbacks, Anne Moody learned to overcome white defiance through resilience and inner strength. In evaluating Moody’s display of nonviolent

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passive resistance, one has to be cognizant of the fact that she was never in pursuit of personal salvation. Instead, she believed that civil disobedience exhibited through nonviolent strategies would constitute a political assault, and a major impediment to the framework of racial injustice. She perceived her role, as clearly defined in the US Constitution and its blueprint the Declaration of Independence, as the primary attribute of being an American citizen, and demanded equal access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Consequently, Moody’s autobiographical account should also be read as the consummate effort of brave young women who defied and exposed the elitist white vigilante movement supported by a group of Southern white people, and to a degree by Northern Democrats, who collectively inaugurated Jim Crow laws after overthrowing Reconstruction goals in the late 1880s. In her 2005 essay “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Jacquelyn Dowd Hall asserts that her “longer” version of the civil-rights narrative explores new ways to improve and alter perceptions about the vital elements of the movement. One of the six ways Hall mentions in her analytical narrative is about black women and their significant roles in helping to develop the Southern economy. She remarks that “women’s activism and gender dynamics were central both to the freedom movement and to the backlash against it.”1 Ultimately, Moody’s autobiography, set against the tumultuous context of racial divide, white-on-black violence, civil unrest, assassinations, marches, protests, freedom rides, and voting drives is considered a classic account of the 1960s civil-rights struggle. Moody begins her story with a dramatic account of her childhood days spent on an old plantation farm, where generations of black women, including her mother and grandmother, were relegated to field work or domestic jobs, combining diminutive amounts of wage earning with homemaking and taking care of children and elderly relatives, with the help of social networking. The reader witnesses her full transformation into a civil-rights activist and educator, notwithstanding numerous encounters with violence and hostility, including discrimination, prejudice, racism, and lawlessness throughout her life. Not surprisingly, Mississippi, Moody’s birthplace, had been at the centre of racial conflict and violence for decades. Emmett Till, one of the youngest victims of racial hatred, was senselessly killed in Jackson, Mississippi in the summer of 1955. In the following decade, several assassinations including activist Medgar W. Evers (July 12, 1963, Jackson Mississippi), President J. 1 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233–63.

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F. Kennedy (November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas), Malcom X (February 21, 1965, Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, New York), and Dr. Martin L. King Jr. (April 4, 1968 Memphis, Tennessee) shook the nation, while the Southern states witnessed violent confrontations between the two races. The town named Philadelphia, where James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were headed for, is in Neshoba County at the heart of Choctaw land. Nearby Hattiesburg, Canton, McComb, Jackson, Meridian, Centreville, and Palmer’s Crossing became the centres of African American voter campaigns during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Hundreds of college students travelled from the Northern states in order to join thousands of African American volunteers, local participants, and Freedom School students.2 In 1960, African Americans made up 42.3 percent of Mississippi’s population,3 yet ninety-three percent of black people aged twenty-one and older were denied the right to vote.4 Having lived through poverty, a sense of abandonment, denial, and disenfranchisement, African Americans had no recourse but to “agitate” constantly, as Frederick Douglass had adamantly suggested in the pre-Civil War days.5 Hundreds of college-age men and women worked tirelessly to register voters during Freedom Summer. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) members were unsuccessful in sending their own delegates to the Senate. As student arrests were taking place, television networks broadcast the police violence in Mississippi. The sit-ins were raided with clubs and water hoses, and hundreds of young people, both black and white, were taken to jail. The state left its mark on the map as the epicentre of violence stemming from a historic divide between the two races on the fundamental issue of voting rights. The American public watched while the nation’s founding principles, “equality,

2 Once referred to as “the Mecca” of the Freedom School world, “Hattiesburg, in Mississippi became the epicenter of action during the summer of 1964. In addition to 90 to 100 college students who arrived from other states, nearly 3,000 local participants, as well as 650–675 Freedom School students, gathered in Hattiesburg to join the Freedom Summer voter registration campaigns”. See “Civil Rights Movement in Hattiesburg.” https://lib.usm.edu/spcol/collections/manuscripts /finding_aids/crsitdoc.html. 3 Mark Lowry, “Population and Race in Mississippi, 1940–1960,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61, no. 3 (1971): 576–88. 4 Charles M. Sherrod, “Mississippi at Atlantic City.” https://civilrightsteaching.org/voting-rights/mississippi-at-atlantic-city. 5 Nilgun Anadolu-Okur, Dismantling Slavery: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Formation of the Abolitionist Discourse, 1841–1851 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1917), 203.

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liberty and justice for all,” were dismantled on the streets of the magnolia state and further crushed in courtrooms. African Americans decided to establish the headquarters of civil-rights organizations close to their own neighbourhoods. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) chose Hattiesburg as its headquarters, and operated as an umbrella organization for other groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Mississippi chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Fannie Lou Hamer’s Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was in neighbouring Jackson. These organizations and their volunteer corps launched the state-wide voter-registration drive known as “Mississippi Freedom Summer” in June 1964. The three young men, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, whose lifeless bodies were discovered days later buried under a pile of dirt were closely connected to the MFDP. As a matter of fact, they were on their way to a voter-registration drive organized by MFDP in Philadelphia when they were kidnapped and violently killed. Until the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in August 1964, Mississippi black people were told that they could not participate in voting without poll-tax receipts, despite a constitutional amendment outlawing such provisions.6 The 1964 Civil Rights Act had neglected to mention voting rights for African Americans, and people had to wait until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6 with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civilrights leaders present at the ceremony. This aimed to remove legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their rights to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution. To this day, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered one of the most far-reaching developments of civil-rights legislation in US history. It was also a major victory for African Americans who once faced rejection at the polls, despite previous legislative attempts. The letter Rita Schwerner Bender addressed to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour on July 7, 2005 followed the verdict in the Edgar Ray Killen trial in Neshoba County, Mississippi for the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner four decades earlier.7 Killen was one of the convicted 6

Charles M. Sherrod, “Mississippi at Atlantic City.” https://civilrightsteaching.org /voting-rights/mississippi-at-atlantic-city. 7 In her essay “New Heroes of the South: Susan Glisson,” Cynthia Tucker mentions that Glisson joined the crusade for justice in one of the state’s most notorious cases. She asserted that the 1964 murders of civil-rights workers Goodman, Chaney, and

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murderers of the three college students, who went missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964, during the early days of Freedom Summer. The three young civil-rights activists had begun their perilous journey in the South in order to register more African Americans to vote. Rita, then only twenty-two, was the young bride of Michael “Mickey” Schwerner, who was one of the three students killed in the fatal ambush organized by the Ku Klux Klan. She warned the governor against putting to rest the “dead past” before the state of Mississippi, and asserted that its residents should be educated about the terrible crimes and injustices committed years before in the “people’s” name. Reactions to the killing of the activists and the trial it generated decades later grew nationwide, and gathered public attention beyond the borders of Mississippi. Initial support came from the multiracial Philadelphia Coalition in Philadelphia, Mississippi, which issued a public statement condemning the killings.8 As a civil-rights organization established in 2004, the group comprised thirty individuals from all walks of life, with different racial backgrounds, including Choctaw Indians, African Americans, and white people. They were all residents of Neshoba County; some were long-time neighbours, a few had never met before, and the rest lived in diverse neighbourhoods. Yet they all shared a common objective – demanding justice and stopping violence. The group invited the mothers of Goodman and Chaney. Schwerner Bender also decided to join the group and seek justice for the dead. She vowed to become a civil-rights lawyer after her husband was murdered. The residents of Philadelphia invited Attorney General Jim Hood in addition to the local district attorney. The townspeople brought together nearly 1,500 people seeking justice for the murdered men. The group issued a statement warning the state that the killings demonstrated a violent past and it should face the truth, and never attempt to conceal or forget it. “These Schwerner constituted a turning point in Mississippi’s long record of civil-rights violations. She wrote: “When Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of three counts of manslaughter in 2005, 41 years after the crime, a gear shifted in Mississippi’s universe.” The trial had inspired Susan Glisson to coordinate the “Mississippi Truth Project,” a grassroots movement pressing for a commission to investigate racially motivated crimes of the civil-rights era. For further information on the Killen trial see Susan M. Glisson, “Organizing Theological Practice,” in Lived Theology: New Perspectives on Method, Style, and Pedagogy, edited by Charles Marsh, Peter Slade, and Sarah Azaransky (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 231. 8 Dick Molpus, “Philadelphia, Mississippi: a Story of Racial Reconciliation.” http://mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/389/philadelphia-mississippi-a-story-ofracial-reconciliation.

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three brave young men were not murdered by a lone individual. While a vigilante group may have fired the gun, the state of Mississippi loaded and aimed the weapon.”9 A brief look into the history of Neshoba County reveals, quite unsparingly and with certainty, that it had been the centre of violent action since the early days of white settlements, ultimately targeting Native Americans, namely the Choctaw and Cherokee nations. Neshoba County was established in 1833, when the Choctaw Native Americans were reported to be the longterm dwellers of the land. Between 1830 and 1850, sixty thousand Native Americans were forcibly removed by the government from their ancestral homelands in the southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as “Indian Territory” in eastern Oklahoma. Members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, as well as their black slaves, involuntarily left the area on a devastating journey known to the public as the Trail of Tears – Native Americans refer to this fatal journey as “The Trail Where We Wept.”10 The Cherokee who resided in Neshoba County in the 1800s were among those who suffered most from the signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. On December 6, during his annual address to Congress, Jackson proudly declared that the removal would “incalculably strengthen the southwestern frontier.” “Clearing Alabama and Mississippi of their Indian populations,” he said, would “enable those states to advance rapidly in population, wealth, and power.”11 In a society which has historically been quite successful in defining the meaning and function of “othering” for its minority populations, primarily Native Americans and African Americans, newly emerging sociopolitical situations still demand when the nation is suffering from a deadly virus. The first two decades of the twenty-first century, and the spring-tosummer months of 2020 in particular, were marred with nationwide protests as the public response to police violence targeting African Americans reached its height. At a most pivotal time in US history, while millions were trying to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is no coincidence that some

9

“The Philadelphia Coalition: Recognition, Resolution, Redemption: Uniting For Justice.” https:// www.neshobajustice.com. 10 John Ehle, Trail of Tears: the Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation (New York: Anchor Books, 1988), 385. 11 President Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress “On Indian Removal,” December 6, 1830; Records of the United States Senate, 1789–1990; Record Group 46; National Archives. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash

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of the worst cases of police brutality erupted across the nation. The Maafa12 and the Middle Passage during the height of the African slave trade caused millions of African men, women, and children to perish in violent seas, while those who survived endured harsh conditions on remote lands and islands, under distant skies. Africans were enslaved by European men and women who denied them their humanity. Their struggle to end enslavement took more than three hundred years. Yet, for African Americans being exposed to unprecedented cruelty and injustice in a supposedly post-Jim Crow, post-civil-rights era, under the canopy of the great American civilization, is overwhelmingly abhorrent. This fact necessitates deeper insight into the cultural alienation, discrimination, hatred, and racism escalating throughout world. These and similar instances of violence naturally constitute the essence of a legitimate argument about the current onslaught of “peripheral essentialism”13 observed in acts of white prejudice and hatred towards minorities. Moody’s own experiences of growing up poor and underprivileged on a Mississippi plantation as the daughter of a sharecropping family barely demonstrate the historical consequences of American enslavement. Sadly, history exposes numerous onslaughts and denigrations in an undeniably ruthless and centuries-long mechanism of exploitation imposed on generations of Native Americans, African Americans, and poor white people and minority populations. It is not wise to interpret atrocities committed against black people as either isolated incidents, devoid of historical, cultural, or social context, or responses to specific cases of state violence against an individual. Civilrights protests, as in the past, constitute a reaction to generations of everyday exclusion and downgrading. Killings carried out against black men and women represent, in concrete form, a response by the system towards those 12

Maafa is a Kiswahili term meaning “disaster,” “great occurrence,” and “human tragedy.” In Afrocentric thought it refers to the African Enslavement, or the “African Holocaust.” The term was first introduced by Marimba Ani in Let the Circle be Unbroken: the Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1994). The Arabic term al-Nakba, which is phonetically similar to maafa, also means “great disaster” or “human tragedy.” 13 Peripheral essentialism is a term I coined to explain ultra-elitist positions, and giving precedence in sociohistorical and cultural assessments solely to Eurocentric assumptions. Rather than proposing an all-embracing and more egalitarian outlook in matters of culture, ethnicity, and race, it favours biased or one-sided arguments, leading to schisms, disenfranchisement, othering, isolation, and alienation among cultures. Hegemonic and European-centred in nature, this view advances its goals through legitimizing peripherality. For further information see N. Anadolu-Okur, “Out of ‘Borrowed Space’: Multi-culturalist Discourse and Historiography in the Twenty-first Century,” ønsan & Toplum 3, no. 6 (2013): 25–48.

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who are deemed to be the most dispensable. The “lynching” of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 exemplifies, besides the cold-blooded murder of an unarmed black man under the knee of a white police officer, a manifestation of the desire to eradicate African Americans historically, socially, politically, economically, and culturally. Floyd’s “I Can’t Breathe” should be interpreted not simply as the last words of a black man pleading for his life, but as the spirit of African Americans being choked by xenophobia in the United States. Racial killings are factual and spiritual manifestations of peripheral essentialism. To understand the complexity of Moody’s encounters with violence and the methods she adopted to raise consciousness about nonviolent civil disobedience, one needs to reconsider the historical, political, and social factors at work because there were several dimensions to her life in Mississippi. In its long history, the state had been involved in numerous acts of violence directed against African Americans and minorities. Additionally, the fact that Mississippi once housed a notorious prison for African American males known as the Parchman Prison further dilutes its civilrights record.14 The Parchman estate, once a plantation, was home to a vast and extremely profitable cotton operation. The state later purchased the land and built a prison which was expressly designed to deal with, in the words of an early twentieth-century governor named James K. Vardaman, the “criminal Negroes” who attempted to threaten “the white man’s home.”15 The housing units for inmates were called “cages,” until they were later replaced by barracks buildings surrounded by barbed wire. In 1961 the first wave of freedom riders who aimed to desegregate the transportation system were arrested in Jackson. On June 15, 1961, forty-five young men – twenty-nine African Americans, and sixteen white people – were transported from Hinds County Prison to Parchman and put to work on chain gangs. At one time,

14

“Mississippi State Penitentiary” (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about twenty-eight square miles (seventy-three square kilometres), Parchman is the only maximum security prison first established for black inmates in the state of Mississippi. It is the state’s oldest and most notorious prison. In January 2020 gang violence erupted, and was followed by riots, disorder, and murders. 15 Rick Rojas and Richard Fausset, “‘A Blood Bath’: 5 Dead as Gang Violence Rocks Mississippi Prisons,” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/us/mississippiprisons.html.

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three hundred freedom fighters were imprisoned at Parchman.16 This explains the anxiety within the sociopolitical and cultural environment where a young African American girl was expected to spend her life. While dealing with violence directed against herself, her family, and her community, she decided to join the fight against racism not only for her own sake but also to assist others. Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi chronicles, besides the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the precarious life of a young activist. Her book is a volume of first-person accounts narrating, over the course of twenty-three years, the extent of discrimination and violence suffered by African Americans. The significance of Moody’s autobiography lies in the fact that, while narrating her upbringing in grinding poverty, she stands witness to black people’s experiences with an unjust system that compelled her to join the Civil Rights Movement. In her personal life, she suffered much discord in her family, detesting her mother’s frequent pregnancies and struggling to avoid sexual advances by men, including a rape attempt by her mother’s long-time partner Raymond. Moody was born on September 15, 1940 in Centreville, Mississippi. Her childhood name Essie May, which her mother fondly called her, was changed to Anne during her adolescence. As the eldest child of a sharecropping family who endured immense poverty, she was tied to the land, like the rest of her ancestors, through crop farming, which brought little or no income. Their earnings were irregular and inconsistent in nature, as the harvest stood vulnerable to changes in the climate and seasons, often aggravated by flooding or a lack of rain. She witnessed prejudice, poverty, hunger, dispossession, alienation, and deprivation. Her entire life was spent fighting Jim Crow barriers, and she organized protests at the chicken factory, participated in public protests and a sit-in, and was arrested, imprisoned, and even shunned by her own mother due to her involvement in the movement. Anne grew up with a staggeringly complex family life, and her relationship with her parents began to present serious challenges at a young age. The experience of racial discrimination at every turn of her adolescence life facilitated her involvement in the movement, mainly after she entered Tougaloo College, a historically black institution in Mississippi, followed by her full immersion in the movement. The majority of incidents mentioned in Moody’s autobiography took place in Neshoba County, and the author poses a critical question to the reader about the inexplicably 16

Mark Lowry, “Population and Race in Mississippi, 1940-1960,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 61, no. 3 (1971): 576 – 88, accessed January 21, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2569234.

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shameful relationship between her birthplace and its local residents, whose beliefs and racial attitudes towards minorities were destined to smear the nation’s civil-rights record for many years to come. In her autobiography, Moody explains the sequence of shock, fear and hatred she went through upon hearing of Emmett Till’s murder: I was fifteen years old when I began to hate people. I hated the white men who murdered Emmett Till and I hated all the other whites who were responsible for the countless murders … But I also hated Negroes … for not standing up and doing something about the murders.17

Till, a fourteen year old from Chicago, was brutally killed by a group of white men in Money, Mississippi on August 28, 1955. His mutilated body became the face of innocence and criminal acts committed against African Americans almost overnight. But for white people, as Moody explains, Till’s murder “provoked a lot of anger and excitement in Centreville.” White women were gathering in houses, organizing “guild meetings” and soliciting new members through telephone campaigns. As men and women gathered to watch young protesters, remorse or humiliation was nonexistent. Anne feared that mob violence would gradually increase, torment her, and haunt her dreams. “Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil,” she wrote. “But now there was a new fear known to me – the fear of being killed just because I was black.”18 Who could tell whether Till had actually committed a crime? Moody remarks that Till’s murder proved that his existence was indeed a crime, in the South, “punishable by death, for a Negro man to even whistle at a white woman in Mississippi.”19 Following his murder, she thought, there could never be reconciliation, peace, or common ground between whites and black people in the United States. On September 19, 1955 the kidnapping and murder trial of the two white men, the assailants who kidnapped Till from his uncle’s home, began in Sumner, Mississippi. On September 23 the allwhite, all-male jury acquitted the two men of murder after deliberating for just over an hour. In 2004 the US Justice Department reopened the case. A book published in 2017 reveals that the woman who blamed Emmett confessed that the boy had never harassed or whistled at her.20 The Till case 17 Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York: Dell Publishing, 1968), 129. 18 Ibid., 125. 19 Ibid., 131. 20 Carolyn Bryant Donham, who raised the allegations against Till, spoke to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor in 2017, whose book The Blood of Emmett

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was a watershed moment for Moody and all black people in Mississippi. Fear was everywhere, and justice had gone missing. During her childhood, Moody spent a lot of time helping her family in the cotton fields. The immense heat of Mississippi summers quickly drained her energy. On one of these nights she had a terrible dream about “dying” in the fields. The sense of experiencing a violent death during childhood is hard to imagine unless one’s mind is constantly preoccupied with the threat of living in danger. We were hoeing slowly down the hill when the sun came up so big that it seemed to fill up the whole sky. It came so close to us, it looked like a big mouth about to swallow us. The whole sky and everything around us was red … I looked around in the far distance and the trees were on fire, the whole forest was burning. I looked around for everybody else in the cotton field, for Raymond and all of them, and they were all dead, lying between the rows. I was leaning on my hoe and I was rocking and the sun came down even closer. I was the last one standing and I knew it was coming for me. I quickly glanced at all the dead bodies evaporating around me. And I felt myself crumbling under the heat of the sun. And then I woke up.21

Following her terrifying dream, the sun had become her enemy, and the nightmares continued for days, terrorizing her so much so that one day she fainted while working in the field. I was scared to look up at the sky because I knew the sun had come up. My heart began to beat like a loud drum. I shook all over. I could almost feel the sun rising in the sky. I looked up at the sun and for a moment I was completely blinded. Then I knew the others were dead. I felt myself reeling and rocking on my hoe.22

The Taplin house burning down was another defining moment when Moody’s visions of the scorching sun came to haunt her. The sun set a fire that consumed an entire field, as well as the nearby forest, killing her family. This dream validated her qualms about suffering a violent death. Though symbolic in nature, her fears about being burned to death in a cotton field Till publicized the case and the woman’s long-ago confessions. For further information see the New York Times article by Richard Pérez-Peña, “Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False” (January 27, 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryantdonham.html. 21 Ibid., 84. 22 Ibid., 87.

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foreshadowed, in a subtle way, what was about to happen in her neighbourhood. One night, the Taplin family’s house burned down with the family sleeping inside. The incident traumatized Moody so much that all she could remember were the screams, flames, and smoke that enveloped the neighbourhood. One night, while trying to fall asleep, she heard loud voices outside. As she travelled with her family towards the scene of the fire, the real shock was exposed. Terror was visible in the eyes of their neighbours who swarmed the streets. A voice in the darkness explained, “I heard it was the Taplin family. They say the whole family is still in the house. Look like they are done for, so they say.”23 Anne was speechless. She saw black women passing their car crying, whispering to each other. No one believed it was an accident because there was an intense smell of gasoline in the air. Anne knew that in the house were eight or nine people from the same family. The walls were falling down, the roof had collapsed, and the house was burning on every side. “The smoke was the thickest and blackest smoke I had ever seen.”24 White vigilante racism had appeared once again in Centreville, Mississippi. Among the ashes there lay nine charcoal-burned bodies of their neighbours. Anne, determined to leave the town after this incident, witnessed profound hopelessness in the men and women she had known since childhood. She explains how she suffered internally after being traumatized by such violence inflicted on innocent black people: “Didn’t any one of us say anything after that. We just sat in the car silently. I couldn’t believe what the man had just said, ‘A whole family burned to death – impossible!’ I thought.”25 During her high-school years she continued to work in her hometown for white women, including Mrs. Burke, a KKK supporter who held “Guild” meetings at her home. When the woman accused Moody’s brother Junior of stealing her purse, Moody quit immediately. At the end of the day, Moody had reached a decision – she was willing to put Mrs. Burke and “all her kind” out of her life. In the summer months she went to New Orleans and Baton Rouge and, despite having little income, she found life quite pleasing there. Home had become too stifling for her outwards personality. Moreover, her mother’s growing fears about her safety were causing a rift between them that she did not want to endure anymore. Her interactions with white people, both as teachers and matrons of the houses she worked for, had generated mixed feelings about white people’s attitudes. She had good experiences while working at some houses, but terrible ones at others, 23

Ibid., 134. Ibid., 135. 25 Ibid., 134. 24

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in particular when they treated her “as a second hand dirty dish towel.” “I got so damn mad just sitting there thinking about those white teachers, chills started coming down my back. I knew that if they were at all like the whites I had previously known, I would leave the school immediately.”26 When Anne started Natchez College she led a mass boycott with her fellow students against the administration. Due to a leak in the shower room upstairs, the kitchen shelves had gotten wet and maggots had entered the soggy containers where grits were kept, which were then served to the students for breakfast. This was the first major victory she won against the administration as a student activist. In the following days she joined mass rallies and demonstrations which summoned her full-time immersion into the movement. Her involvement in the NAACP took place during her junior year. She left Natchez for Tougaloo College where she received a fulltuition scholarship. The murder of Samuel O’Quinn, a NAACP member, was on her mind when she joined the chapter at Tougaloo. She knew many people who were driven from their homes because of being a sympathizer, or simply by mentioning the NAACP. Anxiety over experiencing violent retaliation from white people had never deserted her, yet she was willing to take the risk: “The more I remembered the killings, beatings, and intimidations, the more I worried what might possibly happen to me or my family if I joined the NAACP. But I knew I was going to join anyway. I had wanted to for a long time.”27 The crucial moment of her autobiography is her rising as a fearless college student who volunteered to get involved in Jackson’s memorable Woolworth’s sit-in on the morning of May 28, 1963. John Salter, Moody’s favourite social-science professor, sat with three of his students, including Moody, Pearlena Lewis, and Memphis Norman, at the “Whites Only” lunch counter in a Woolworth’s store. Seconds before 11:15 we were occupying three seats at the previously segregated Woolworth’s. Our waitress walked past us a couple of times before she noticed we had started to write our own orders down and realized we wanted service. She asked us what we wanted. We began to read to her from our order slips. She told us that we would be served at the back counter, which was for Negroes. “We would like to be served here,” I said.28

No waitress served the group as they sat quietly before a growing crowd of fuming spectators, abusive white students, a group of police officers, and 26

Ibid., 245–6. Ibid., 248. 28 Ibid., 264. 27

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news people. The group’s goal was to desegregate the segregated lunch counter. When Moody and her friends refused to leave, they were covered with mustard, ketchup, salt, and sugar. Subsequently, they were dragged out of the store, arrested, and sent to jail. Nevertheless, the group were able to assert themselves and sent a message to not only local authorities but also the entire nation as the press and TV cameras televised their nonviolent resistance. The audience’s reaction was mixed – parents were concerned, while some viewers were inspired by what they saw. Tougaloo College and its students were already under attack throughout Mississippi because the school had housed Freedom Riders on campus. After the sit-in all I could think of was how sick Mississippi whites were. They believed so much in the segregated Southern way of life, they would kill to preserve it, I sat there in the NAACP office and thought of how many times they had killed when this way of life was threatened. I knew the killing had just begun … The whites had a disease, an incurable disease in its final stage. What were our chances against such a disease?29

Through her membership of CORE and SNCC, Moody learned to practice nonviolent tactics of civil disobedience. Her travel experience in Canton where she first went to work on a voter-registration drive for SNNC in the Delta region taught her many lessons about the future course of the movement and what to expect from the townspeople. Greenwood and Greenville were tough communities where the neighbourhood posed serious problems for getting organized due to resentment and violence directed at black people by white vigilantes. Meanwhile, Anne was delighted to have had the opportunity to meet engaging civil-rights speakers like Jackie Robinson, Floyd Patterson, Curt Flood, and Margaretta Belafonte. On June 12,1963 Medgar Evers, the thirty-seven-year-old leader of the student-protest network, was violently killed on the doorsteps of his house in Jackson, Mississippi. This was probably a decisive moment that left an undeniably painful memory for Moody. “I had to get out of all this confusion. The only way I could do it was to go to jail. Jail was the only place I could think in.”30 Despite the anger she felt, Evers’s murder pushed her to further indulge in the movement. She was determined to absorb and block the violence targeting her people. Fully aware of her responsibility, she also recognized the fact that her only defence rested in joining the protests where she could demonstrate, with her friends, the power of nonviolent resistance. She volunteered to lead the first march starting from 29 30

Ibid., 267. Ibid., 278.

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Pearl Street Church, singing freedom songs as they went: “After singing we headed for the streets in a double line, carrying small American flags in our hands. The cops had heard that there were going to be Negroes in the streets all day protesting Medgar’s death. They were ready for us.”31 Throughout these marches, Moody’s activist spirit was reinforced, her self-confidence invigorated. While she continued to keep faith in the future success of the movement, her trust in its leaders was gradually weakening. Finally, the Great March in Washington DC took place on Wednesday, August 28, 1963, and marked Moody’s last public act supporting nonviolent demonstration before she became totally disillusioned with the African American leaders of her era. The demonstration in front of the Washington Monument in the National Mall aimed to secure “jobs and freedom” as part of a plan to put pressure on the administration of President John F. Kennedy to initiate and implement a powerful federal civil-rights bill in Congress. Its purpose was actually to promote the civil and economic rights of African Americans. By 1963, on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, the civil-rights agenda had been partially realized, although racial discrimination and injustice still permeated America’s sociopolitical fabric. African Americans faced high levels of unemployment, discrimination at the workplace which ranged from receiving low wages to a lack of promotion, disparities in obtaining educational opportunities, and the threat of disenfranchisement. Additionally, dominant racial antagonism and Jim Crow segregation in the South led to occasional protests demanding political and economic justice. Change was in the making, though it was slow, and the gains did not deliver much. During the march, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his memorable “I Have a Dream” speech. Attended by thousands of protesters, the march seemed to be a historic success for all except Moody. She ends her autobiography in extreme disillusionment. As her fellow marchers sang songs of freedom on the bus that took them to the capital city, where thousands of protesters had gathered, she sat silently, in reflection on the days she had lived through. Her experiences were too intense, and did not allow her to forget the violence she had witnessed. She ended her narrative with the words of the movement’s anthem: I sat there listening to “We Shall Overcome,” looking out of the window at the passing Mississippi landscape. Images of all that had happened kept crossing my mind. The Taplin burning, the Birmingham church bombing, Medgar Evers’ murder, the blood gushing out of McKinley’s head, and all

31

Ibid.

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the other murders … We ain’t big enough to do it by ourselves. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. “Moody …” it was little Gene again interrupting his singing. “Moody, we’re gonna git things straight in Washington, huh?” I didn’t answer him. I knew I didn’t have to. He looked as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “I wonder. I wonder.” We shall overcome, we shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. I WONDER. I really WONDER.32

Conclusion In summer 2020 the US experienced shocking events that made almost everyone question the nation’s legacy and future trajectory. At the beginning of the colonial days, the native peoples experienced violent encounters with white settlers due to major differences that can be attributed to European prejudice and aggression. Yet, America’s longest battle with racism was staged in the South both before and after the civil-rights legislation took effect. During the Freedom Summer of 1964, hundreds of young students descended on Mississippi and the Southern states in order to dismantle centuries of African American political disenfranchisement. Mississippi had the lowest percentage of any state in the country of African Americans registered to vote. Although they constituted more than onethird of the population, in 1962 only 6.7 percent of eligible black voters were registered.33 Through voter-registration drives and packed sit-ins organized by brave college students who became civil-rights activists, including Anne Moody and her friends, a new era was being ushered into American social history. As the 1960s activist spirit gradually evolved into Black Power and the Black Arts Movement, it was clear that President Johnson’s civil-rights legislation had accomplished some of its primary goals, in order to “hasten the end of legal Jim Crow.”34 Even if it did not eradicate prejudice and racial attitudes entirely, it secured African Americans equal access to restaurants, transportation, and other public facilities. It enabled African American women and other minorities to break down racial, ethnic, and gender-related barriers in the workplace. It also brought about radical reforms such as equal 32

Ibid., 384. “Freedom Summer,” CORE, http://www.core-nline.org/History/freedom _summer.htm. 34 “Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, Epilogue.” https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/epilogue.html. 33

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access to education, and students began attending integrated schools in the wake of the act’s enforcement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 expanded protections to voting and housing, and seemed to galvanize new securities to stop racially-motivated violence. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs complemented some of the civil-rights milestones by attacking the economic inequalities that had for so long accompanied racial discrimination and exclusion. In the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the “Fair Housing Act”), the previous legislation was further expanded. These measures prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, or financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and gender. Consequently, federal and state programs were openly engaged to resolve existing disparities in education, healthcare, housing, employment, and the distribution of wealth. The racial equality of opportunity upheld by the law was brought to the forefront of national principles and implemented throughout American sociopolitical life. For a brief moment in US history, racial inequalities seemed to have been amended through government interference. As Americans witnessed a “softening effect” and a tendency to eradicate peripheral essentialism intrinsic to centuries-old Jim Crow codes, the nation eventually moved towards a reconciliation. Segregation and separation in society were gradually being crushed by relatively peaceful campaigns, including nonviolent resistance. However, sporadic confrontations organized by extremist groups such as the KKK and white supremacists were never fully eliminated. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s conciliatory efforts, as exemplified in his “I Have a Dream” speech, could have accomplished his intended mission if he had not been assassinated in 1968. Sadly, by that time, Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy, whose paths eventually merged by sharing the same fate, were also gone. Their lives were violently and abruptly cut short by assassins’ bullets. Without visionary leadership, the civil-rights struggle began to lose its initial momentum. The promise of equality, jobs, housing, and justice, which once seemed so easy to attain, gradually collapsed in the tumultuous environment of the 1980s and 1990s. The American social fabric began to disintegrate as racial discord and polarization grew. At the turn of the millennium, economic disparities and racial injustices had already grown out of proportion. The minorities were being targeted by the police and no fight seemed to halt the threats of violence towards African Americans and minorities. Old disputes were awakened and carried over to future decades as demonstrated by the events of May and June 2020.

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The majority of Americans chose to remain oblivious to racist attacks against African Americans. Whereas Emmett Till’s death had contributed immensely to the evolution of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, resemblances between the Till (1955), Eric Garner (2014), and George Floyd (2020) killings demonstrate America’s tenacious problems with the colour line and the violence that emanates from it, sadly rooted in the experience of African enslavement. Garner and Floyd were suffocated by police officers using chokeholds. After Michael Brown’s shooting in 2014, several black men and women died at the hands of young white police officers. Yet, Floyd united Americans against police brutality, while his last words, “I can’t breathe,” became the slogan of the outcry for millions of protesters against police brutality around the world during the summer and fall of 2020. Violence against black people could be recollected with no other names than those of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Walter Wallace Jr. Anne Moody passed away on February 5, 2015 at age seventy-four in her Gloster, Mississippi home, where she had lived since retirement. In the final chapter of Coming of Age in Mississippi, Moody expresses her disappointment with Southern black people who were too hesitant to take action. She asserts that they liked to sing about their “dreams” but never demonstrated the will to act in order to terminate injustice. Henceforth, she concludes her narrative in a pessimistic tone. Moody’s exemplary contribution to political action, women’s leadership, and nonviolent direct confrontation strategies for racial justice reveals a hard-earned accomplishment which is consummate for contemporary activists. Her autobiography remains one of the most widely read documents about the 1960s Civil Rights era, a collection of true stories based on the merits of women’s courage and leadership, volunteerism, self-sacrifice, humility, and nonviolent protest in defence of democracy and its institutions. Condemning violence, women seek to generate respect for human life; women empower other women to fight for equality, justice, and freedom throughout the world. Women, as mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, and caregivers, continue to prevail and endure at the forefront of the struggles they believe in. Women abhor violence and unite against it. Women know their influence and power is immeasurable because it grows and infuses life. It heals injured souls, provides hope, restores order, and shapes the minds and hearts of the young from their earliest years.

CHAPTER FOUR CONTESTING THE VICTIM-ESCAPISTTERRORIST SYNDROME IN CONTEMPORARY ARAB AMERICAN WOMEN’S POETRY MAYY EIHAYAWI

Stereotyping is integral to human beings’ perception and projection of themselves and the world. The process of classifying animate and inanimate entities, assigning the self and the other to specific groups, and attributing to them certain positive or negative characteristics – presumably shared by all members of that group – is unconsciously or consciously performed to expedite comprehension, simplify analysis, facilitate judgement, and avoid stepping into unfamiliar cognitive territories. Nevertheless, locking the perceiver and target in a loop of conceptual categorization, associative remembering, and prophecy fulfilment has plagued human history with multiple constructed narratives of assumed supremacy, presumed subjugation, protective emancipation, and pre-emptive annihilation. The “grain of truth” – the aspect of social reality from which the stereotype may have emerged1 – is infused with fallacies, mixed with prejudices, stuffed into education, media, and social practice, and readily served to the collective consciousness of the oppressors and the oppressed alike. To explicate how such a recipe has been consistently utilized to masculinize the Occident and feminize the Orient, how transnational sexism has evolved as a major ingredient in victimizers’ stereotyping propaganda, and how hyper-feminized victims are struggling to defy prejudiced preconceptions and clarify propagated misconceptions, this paper will focus on the strategies adopted by five contemporary Arab women poets to break free from the Western conceptual cages of the scantily-clad harem maidens submissive to lascivious sultans, or the veiled victimized black bundles subservient to vicious Arab terrorists.

1

Rupert Brown, Prejudice: Its Social Psychology (Oxford: John Wiley, 2010), 70.

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Etymologically, the word “stereotype” is a conjunction of two Greek words: stereos and typos, meaning a solid impression, mark, or original form.2 The term appeared in English in 1817 to refer to the metal plate used in printing.3 Evoking the connotations of inflexibility, severity, duplication, and sameness, the term was first used by Walter Lippmann to refer to “the ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves.”4 Not only do stereotypes, as Lippmann argues, save the time and effort of detailed analysis and secure the comfort of familiarity and dependence, but they also provide a shortcut for the confusion of reality and “preserve us from all the bewildering effect of trying to see the world steadily and see it whole.”5 Following Lippmann’s study, the content of stereotypes, the cognitive process of stereotyping, and the sociocultural reasons and consequences of stereotyping have been examined in hundreds of studies noting that stereotypes – “the characteristics we apply to others on the basis of their national, ethnic, or gender groups” – are rogue generalizations, usually based on insufficient information and driven by prejudice, wishes, and desires rather than objective experience.6 In 1954, Gordon Allport defined a stereotype as “an exaggerated belief associated with a category. Its function is to justify (rationalize) our conduct in relation to that category.”7 In Social Psychology (1964), Secord and Backman argue that, “stereotyping has three characteristics: the categorization of persons, a consensus on attributed traits, and a discrepancy between attributed traits and actual traits.”8 Instead of, “arising out of careful and systematic analysis, stereotypes arise out of hearsay and culture, and instead of aiding our understanding of the human being, they always stand in the way of accurate understanding.”9 The underlying inaccuracy, exaggeration, and prejudice – along with the threatening potentials of inheritance, reproduction, and 2

“Stereotype,” Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com /search?q=sterotype. 3 “Type,” Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q =type. 4 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, 1922), 95. 5 Ibid., 114. 6 David J. Schneider, The Psychology of Stereotyping (New York: Guilford, 2004), 8–20. 7 Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Perseus, 1979), 191. 8 Paul Secord and Carl Backman, Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 66. 9 Joel M. Charon, Ten Questions: a Sociological Perspective (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2004), 251.

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manipulation, outlined in the above definitions – constitute stereotyping as the main premises for the justification and perpetuation of colonization, racial discrimination, and gender inequality. In Orientalism, Edward Said assures that “the web of racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, dehumanizing ideology holding in the Arab or the Muslim is very strong indeed …”10 To understand how this web was intricately knitted, Mohja Kahf traces how Arab women have been stereotyped in the Western narratives written prior to Orientalists’ prejudiced conceptions. According to Kahf, it was during the period from 1100 to 1400 that Arab women started to step into Western literary texts.11 In contrast to the nineteenth-century literature, which tended “to feminize the entire Orient in relationship to a dominant Europe,” Medieval literature masculinized Muslim women and portrayed them as “equals of the Europeans.”12 Nevertheless, the decline of the Islamic empires, the expansion of the European powers, and the “birth of new concepts of individualism and domesticity” during the Renaissance led to the deterioration of Muslim women’s status in European literature. The motifs of enclosure, separation, and obedience that were propagated through the image of veiled women locked in a harem and subservient to patriarchal domination were strongly favoured.13 Projecting a foreign counterpart to the ideal family life was not meant to degrade the status of Arab women, however, but serve the sociopolitical mandates of domesticating Western women and persuading them of their natural household roles.14 “If European culture in the seventeenth century discovered the seraglio or harem and located the Muslim woman in it,” Kahf maintains, “the Enlightenment declared her unhappy there.” With the expansion of Western colonial empires and the proliferation of the transatlantic slave trade, Muslim women began to be further feminized in Western literature through a limited textual presence and a consistent portrayal as helpless, subdued creatures locked in isolation.15 In Said’s words, the Arab female was portrayed less as “a woman than a display of impressive but verbally inexpressive femininity.”16 The “massive production of Orientalia” strengthened “a general feminization of the Islamic Orient,” and placed the 10

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 27. Mohja Kahf, Western Representation of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999), 21. 12 Ibid., 53. 13 Ibid., 55. 14 Ibid., 98–105. 15 Ibid., 112. 16 Said, Orientalism, 187. 11

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Muslim women – “the most feminine part of that effeminate world” – as “its exemplary manifestation.”17 While such a politicized imposition of gender paradigms on the Orient/Occident cultural images is regarded by Said as a result of colonialism and the subsequent Arab-Israeli struggle,18 and by Amani Hamdan as an alleged reference to “the inferiority of Islam” which is “the dominant faith of the colonized countries,”19 Kahf argues that the “narrative of the Muslim woman” was more than “a function of European relations with the Islamic world. It was also a function of specific kinds of desire in the discourse of sexuality within European societies.” Portrayed as “the object of the male gaze” – skilled in flaunting her sexuality and instigating men’s desires – the Muslim woman provided the Western discourse with “safely foreign and therefore even fairer game” for condemning the behaviour of Western aristocratic women. The image of Muslim women enclosed in the harem “could at once arouse the wrong, passé desire and serve as an object lesson in the right kind of desire.”20 Under Western colonization and neo-colonization, Arab women continued to be triply stereotyped on account of their gender, race, and religion. The colonial scheme of stressing the masculinity of the Western culture and the effeminacy of the indigenous culture, as Patrick Hogan argues, goes hand in hand with hyper-feminizing indigenous women to serve as a further pretext for the white man’s burden of saving the less-fortunate oppressed races.21 “The West’s interest in Arab women,” as Amal Amireh puts it, is grounded in “the colonialist project, which casts women as victims to be rescued from Muslim male violence.”22 Whether represented as the romanticized half-naked harem maidens submissive to hypersexual masters, the helpless shapeless bundles in black oppressed by barbarous extremists, or the suicidal bombers controlled by fanatic terrorists, Arab women have been integrated into the anti-Islamic discourse to prove Western cultural and religious superiority and justify the colonial domination/annihilation of the other.

17

Kahf, Western Representation, 113. Said, Orientalism, 26. 19 Amani Hamdan, Muslim Women Speak: a Tapestry of Lives and Dreams (Toronto: Women’s Press, 2009), 2. 20 Kahf, Western Representation, 116–17. 21 Patrick Colm Hogan, Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crisis of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean. Explorations in Postcolonial Study 9 (Albany: SUNY, 2000), 19. 22 Amal Amireh, “Publishing in the West: Problems and Prospects for Arab Women Writers,” Al Jadid: a Record of Arab Culture and the Arts 2, no. 10 (1996): 10. 18

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In Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing, Brinda Mehta writes: Arab women were further marginalized within the reductive model of identity as the passive victims of patriarchal control, caught between reductive binaries of hypersexuality and the helplessness of veiled abjection. Western civilizing imperatives to cleanse the moral infamy of Arabs thereby became a justification of war, occupation, trade sanctions, and First World feminist rescue missions to save beleaguered Arab women from the savagery of their men and the backwardness of their religion.23

Much of the Western feminists’ work about Muslim women, as Amani Hamdan puts it, “either oversimplifies, mistakenly confuses cultural practices with religious doctrine, or refers to a sole interpretation of Islam and its demonization of women.”24 Instead of using Muslim women as a counter-image for preaching morals and proper social practices, as was the case in the Enlightenment age, the emerging narratives of burkas, polygamy, domestic violence, silence, incompetence, and oppression in a horrid patriarchal world provided Western women with not only an alleged feminist mission for liberating Muslim females from the oppression of their culture, but also salient proofs asserting the superiority of Westerners compared to their marginalized and helpless Arab inferiors. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 and the subsequent American invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) gave rise to what Robin Riley calls “transnational sexism” – “the deployment, use, and propagation of ideas about Muslim women to Western audiences … through popular culture,” which is “spread by a multibillion-dollar industry” of media, literature, and art. The rationale of transnational sexism, Riley argues, is “simultaneously contradictory” – it portrays Muslim women as “objects or victims in need of rescue and saving from local patriarchs while it also imagines these very same Muslim women to be subjects of terror and fear.”25 In the war-on-terror discourse, Muslim women ironically appeared as “victims, coupled with children, as collateral damage from Western bombs,” as “duped and oppressed by men with brown skin,” or as “the mothers of baby jihadists … creators of weapons of mass

23 Brinda J. Mehta, Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writings (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 1. 24 Amani Hamdan, Muslim Women Speak: a Tapestry of Lives and Dreams (Toronto: Women’s Press, 2009), 2. 25 Robin L. Riley, Depicting the Veil: Transnational Sexism and the War on Terror (London: Zed Books, 2013), 3.

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destruction, and … walking – veiled – threats to Western well-being.”26 Though the voices of transnational sexism were slightly abated during the Arab Spring – the popular revolutions that swept the Middle East and managed to topple longstanding authoritarian regimes – the volume was raised to the max again thanks to President Trump’s anti-Muslim campaigns, his “inflammatory rhetoric on immigration and his active push for a travel ban aimed primarily at Muslim-majority countries.”27 Not only have Arab women been dehumanized, subjectified, and demonized to justify the American crusades against terrorism or win presidential elections through fomenting islamophobia, they have also been used to defend/redeem Western masculinity, which was vigorously assaulted by terrorist attacks at home and military losses in foreign lands. While the sacred mission of combating evil, protecting the innocent, killing the villains, and rescuing the victimized helped the Western World in general – and the United States in particular – to show off its militarized muscles and propagate the glorifying narratives of noble heroism and unbeatable masculinity, it framed Muslim women in a victim-escapee narrative. She is chained, “beaten, raped, murdered for honor … by the Muslim father, husband, imam … while Islam, the tribe, her society, and so on look on approvingly; ‘the West’ rides up on a white horse and rescues her; fade to The End.”28 She may also be imprisoned and brainwashed by “primitive, brutal, fundamentalist men” only to be rescued by Western saviours, who in this scenario “are posited as liberal and free-thinking, and appreciative of every aspect of female liberation.”29 The escapee narrative, on the other hand, “follows the same plot but is narrated by the Victim herself, who casts off the shackles of Muslim patriarchy all by her Nancy Drew self. Then she runs into the arms of the waiting West, or at least embraces a Victoria’s Secret shopping spree.”30 Once liberated from the beastliness of their patriarchal world and assimilated into the Western

26

Ibid., 2. Heidi Przbyla, “Trump Era is Igniting a New Wave of Muslim-American Candidates,” NBC News (August 26. 2018). https://www.nbcnews.com /politics/elections/trump-era-igniting-new-wave-muslim-american-candidatesn903641. 28 Kahf, Mohja. “The Pity Committee and the Careful Reader: How Not to Buy Stereotypes about Muslim Women,” in Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging, edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Christine Naber (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 111. 29 Riley, Depicting the Veil, 3. 30 Kahf, “Pity Committee”, 112. 27

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paradise, Arab women are ironically re-stereotyped as incompetent inferiors, “cheats, liars, dangerous terrorists, and irrational fanatics.”31 The key stereotypical elements or patterns in the victim-escapee-terrorist narratives which are promoted by what Kahf calls the “neo-Orientalist Committee” or “the Pity Committee” are the mute marionette whose plight can only be expressed through “a Western proxy,” the exceptional escapee “who against all odds escaped from this brutal culture and found her voice,” the meek mother who remains minimized and invisible to maintain the victimization loop, and the vile veil “starring as the most oppressive device since the rack,” and the discernible icon of “Islamic sexism.” Lurking about the victim or escapee is a forbidding father or any “cruel male authority,” whose “motivations are inscrutable, or thoroughly evil.” Then comes the “rotten religion” with every possible code for oppressing women, followed by the cruel country which is “unmitigatedly woman hating.”32 Caught in the vicious circle of racial stereotyping and transnational sexism, Arab women poets found themselves forced into a ferocious battle against not only the patriarchal hegemony at home but also the disgracing, marginalizing, and demonizing stereotypes propagated abroad. Though their involvement in debunking stereotypes has always differed based on the intensity of contact with the Western culture as well as the severity, nature, and length of their colonial experience, Arab women poets have adopted similar self-defence, attack, and counter-attack strategies. To explore the mechanisms that Arab women poets have adopted for defending their religion, race, and grace, the remainder of this paper will focus on the works of five contemporary Arab American poets, namely: Mohja Kahf, Laila Halaby, Suhair Hammad, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Emtithal Mahmoud. Not only do the selected poets come from different countries (Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Sudan), but they have also experienced transnational sexism as immigrants and refugees. Hence, integrating, comparing, and contrasting their stereotyping defence mechanisms will provide a well-rounded overview of Arab women’s struggle to defy Orientalists’ myths, break free from the chains of the victim-escapee-terrorist narrative, challenge the Western fallacies of masculinity and liberal feminism, and celebrate their transcultural agency as accomplished contributors rather than marginalized dehumanized outcasts. To break into the Orientalist harem and release the barely-clad maiden from the Western locked-in-the-past imagination, Arab women poets 31

Carol Fadda-Conery, “Arab American Stereotypes,” in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson, vol. 1 (Westport: Greenwood, 2005), 186. 32 Kahf, “Pity Committee,” 116–19.

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resorted to restructuring the cultural myth of Scheherazade – the most famous storyteller in world literature and the legendary saviour and survivor who could wittily tame the despotic king, Shahryar. Impressed with her “narrative mastery, her resourcefulness, and her genuine interest in transforming the disturbed psyche of the unhappy king, and through him curing an ailing nation,”33 Mohja Kahf – the Syrian-American professor, poet, and novelist – resurrects a modern version of Scheherazade. She starts the title poem of her volume E-mails From Scheherazade (2003) with the following proclamation: Hi, babe. It’s Scheherazade. I’m back For the millennium and living in Hackensack, New Jersey. I tell stories for a living. You ask if there is a living in that.34

No longer locked in the harem or threatened by patriarchal authority, the new Scheherazade is in full control of her destiny. Her decision to divorce Shahryar, pursue her career, and tour the world deconstructs the cultural myth of the harem, reconstructs the Muslim male-female relationship, and reintegrates the emerging narrative in the Western consciousness as a paradigm of emancipation and self-accomplishment: “Later, we got divorced. He’d settled down/ & wanted a wife & not so much an artist./ I wanted publication …”35 Scheherazade’s therapeutic orality, which “saved the virgins/ From beheading by the king” and tamed “the beast of doubt in him,”36 is now united with her mastery of creative writing and ability to disseminate narratives far beyond the confinements of the harem: “I teach creative writing at Montclair State,/ And I’m on my seventh novel and book tour.”37 Her ability to heal psychological maladies and survive literal death is now applied to the Western collective consciousness with a view to treating prejudices and surviving “the figurative death of the ‘real’ Arab Muslims.”38 The mutual sharing, fruitful collaboration, and everlasting bond, represented by 33

Hanadi Al-Samman, Anxiety of Erasure: Trauma, Authorship, and the Diaspora in Arab Women’s Writings (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 10. 34 Mohja Kahf, E-mails From Scheherazade (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 43, lines 1–4. 35 Ibid., 43, lines 12–14. 36 Ibid., 43, lines 6–8. 37 Ibid., 43, lines 19–20. 38 Suaad Muhammad Alqahtani, “Arab-American Poetic Resistance in E-Mails From Scheherazade,” Studies in Literature and Language 14, no. 5 (2017): 20.

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the little daughter in the final stanza of the poem, build a new contact zone wherein Muslim males and females can have a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship void of hypersexuality, lascivious seduction, or patriarchal sadism: Shahryar and I share custody of our little girl. We split up amicably. I taught him to heal His violent streak through stories, after all, And he helped me uncover my true call.39

Scheherazade’s enlightening revelation, which comes through the help of Shahryar, is about transcending the boundaries of gender, place, time, and reality to conjure up characters that will continue the mission of her older self – teaching humanity how to control violence and eliminate fear through embracing other cultures, tolerating their differences, and empathizing with their life stories. In her series of numbered poems “Hijab Scenes” in E-mails From Scheherazade, Kahf debunks the popular “vile veil” stereotype which – combined with accusations of terrorism, submissiveness, incompetence, and distrust – permeates the Western transnational sexism discourse. Depicting examples of the communal attitudes, practices, and challenges Arab American women have to confront in everyday life, and articulating the modes of resistance and defiance they had to learn to defend themselves, Kahf sarcastically questions Western values of human liberty and violently shakes the foundational pillars of stereotyping. In Hijab Scene # 1, Kahf depicts the dilemma of Arab Muslim teenage girls who are marginalized, shunned, and even bullied for daring to use their right to a unique identity just like their American peers: “You dress strange,” said a tenth-grade boy with bright blue hair to the new Muslim girl with the headscarf in homeroom, his tongue-rings clicking on the “tr” in “strange.”40

“The negative stereotypes that have become common in the experience of Arab Americans,” Fadda-Conery maintains, “not only relegate this group to the margins of American society but also render it invisible, denying it access to unbiased representation.”41 In addition to the pressures of adapting 39

Kahf, E-mails, 43, lines 21–24. Ibid., 41, lines 1–3. 41 Carol Fadda-Conery, “Weaving Poetic Autobiographies: Individual and Communal Identities in the Poetry of Mohja Kahf and Suheir Hammad,” in Arab Women’s Lives 40

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to a new environment, the Muslim girl finds herself embarrassingly cornered in an unwelcoming “homeroom” and humiliatingly reduced to the fabric on her head. Ironically, the headscarf is deemed stranger than the boy’s bright blue hair. The visual and auditory image of the clicking tongue-rings exemplifies the hollowness of stereotypical claims while exposing the grave threats of plaguing younger generations with racial prejudices and selfdoubt. In Hijab Scene # 7, the silent Muslim girl is replaced with an eloquent adult who, through repeated exposure to the same situation, has become well prepared in responding to Western racist questions. With a series of negations, Kahf both defies the mistaken assumptions triggered by Muslim women’s attire and claims her right to be treated as a normal American citizen: No, I’m not bald under the scarf No, I’m not from the country where women can’t drive cars No, I would not like to defect I’m already American42

The ironical thanking note in response to a reminder of the Arab diaspora otherness, foreignness, and marginalization – “But thank you for offering”43 – is followed by a bitterly and defiantly-posed question that seeks to position Muslim women homogeneously within the texture of the American society: What else do you need to know relevant to my buying insurance, opening a bank account, reserving a seat on a flight?44

In a confessional, threatening tone that paradoxically defies stereotypes through a rebellious celebration of the power of articulation, Kahf challenges the heritage of suspicion, accusation, and hatred that has always regarded Arab-American women as inferior others: Yes, I speak English Yes, I carry explosives Retold: Exploring Identity through Writing, edited by Nawar Al-Hassan Golley (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 155. 42 Kahf, E-mails, 39, lines 1–5. 43 Ibid., 39, line 6. 44 Ibid., 39, lines 7–10.

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They’re called words And if you don’t get up Off your assumptions, They’re going to blow you away.45

In this poem, as Nathalie Handal puts it, “Kahf tells us of the hardship of being other in United States, the misrepresentations and anti-Muslim sentiments, the verbal threats, the discrimination she endured,” and explicates that she, “found her power in words and her words have become a way to fight back.”46 Obliged to confront the Western rejection/annihilation of the other, Kahf – like many Arab American poets – decided to dwell in-between cultures, celebrate difference, and exercise her transcultural agency. In diaspora, Arab women poets have experienced the tortures of national schizophrenia – a distortion or erosion of national identity through “the conscious and unconscious oppression of the indigenous personality and culture by supposedly superior racial or cultural model.”47 In her poem “Browner Shades of White” from the Food for Our Grandmothers anthology, the Jordanian-American poet Laila Halaby expounds the pressures of being exotic in a country that preaches, but fails to practice, acceptance of the other: Under race/ethnic origin I check white I am not a minority on their checklists and they erase me with the red end of a number two pencil.48

The white man’s supremacy and racial prejudices are summed up in the word “checklists,” which regulates the “us” and “them” dichotomy and determines the ethnic, colour-based conditions for assimilation into US 45

Ibid., 39, lines 11–16. Nathalie Handal, “Hi, Babe: Mohja Kahf’s E-mails From Scheherazade,” H-Net Reviews (June 2005). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10594. 47 Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (New York: Routledge, 1989), 9. 48 Laila Halaby, “Browner Shades of White,” in Food For Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists, edited by Joanna Kadi (Boston: South End Press, 1994), 204, lines 1–9. 46

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society. Struggling to find which box, or racial frame, on the checklist matches her not-white-enough-for-America white, Halaby finds herself obliged to defy a legacy of stereotypical misconceptions associated with her race, gender, and religion: There is no square to check that I have no camels in my backyard, that my father does not have eight wives inside the tents of his harem or his palace or the island he bought with his oil money.49

While discrediting the stereotypes which have persisted over centuries of anti-Islamic discourse, Halaby explains how Western narratives have locked Arabs in the frame of the Orientalist harem, no matter how much they have changed or developed. Whether living in a tent, a palace, or an island, herding camels or squandering oil money, Arab men remain the epitome of despotism, which smears the whiteness of their race with exotic defaming shades. Uncovering the reality of the harem master and maiden – “My father is a farmer./ My mother is a teacher”50 – Halaby claims her right to be woven into the Western social texture for the exotic person she is, not for her skin colour: “I am white because/ there is no/ square for exotic.”51 In Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said maintains: As we look back at the cultural archive, we begin to reread it not univocally but contrapuntally, with a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts.52

Through a contrapuntal reading of the Western narrative of Islamic terrorism, Halaby excavates Arab history and digs out the subaltern version 49

Ibid., 204, lines 13–25. Ibid., 204, lines 26–27. 51 Ibid., 204, lines 28–30. 52 Edward Said. Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 51. 50

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of Western terrorism. Summoning the demons of Western colonization that still haunt Arab countries, the poet defies historical oblivion and points to the real terrorists: My husband does not have a machine gun though sometimes his eyes fire anger because while he too is white, his borders have long since been smudged by the red end of a number two pencil.53

Employing the erasure motif, Halaby articulates the collective grievances of Arabs whose borders, national identities, racial status, religious graciousness, and international reputation have been smudged/erased to fit the narratives of Western imperialism, neo-colonization, and war-on-terror crusades. Insisting on being equal and visible no matter how different their beliefs, clothing, race, or legacy may be, Arab American poets – including Halaby – have chosen to live in a fluid cultural space “which enables them to mix with both cultures, breaking down all dichotomies between an essentialized self and other while retaining and celebrating their differences.”54 At the end of her poem “Browner Shades of White,” Halaby proves Arab women’s ability to coexist and integrate with all ethnicities: My friend who is black calls me a woman of color. My mother who is white says I am Caucasian. My friend who is Hispanic/Mexican-American understands my dilemma. My country that is a democratic melting pot does not.55

Relating her dilemma to that of African and Hispanic Americans, Halaby counters the Western allegations of Islamic intolerance, and sarcastically 53

Ibid., 205, lines 31–39. Amal Talaat Abdelrazek, Contemporary Arab American Women Writers: Hyphenated Identities and Border Crossing (New York: Cambria Press, 2007), 12. 55 Halaby, “Browner Shades,” 205, lines 40–47. 54

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refutes the essence of US values that shun rather than accept racial differences, and divide rather than unite the American people in one “melting pot.” In Depicting the Veil: Transnational Sexism and the War on Terror, Robin Riley argues: The story of women in the war on terror is told by a media preoccupied with drawing lines between “us” and “them” in order to shape an enemy. This enemy is gendered and raced yet is abstruse. In order to create and maintain it, then, a complicated endeavor must be engaged so that the enemy can become immediately recognizable. As part of this effort, people of various religions and nationalities are lumped under one rubric (Arab), one religion (Islam), and one practice (terror).56

To defy the 9/11 terrorism and war-on-terror discourses which employ a Manichean logic and divide the world into two fighting camps, the Palestinian-American poet and political activist Suheir Hammad refutes the blood-shedding arguments of all war/terror drummers and dancers. Employing the strategy of dual critique in her poem “What I Will” from ZaatarDiva (2006), Hammad declines to side with the murderer or the suicide bomber, and chooses to resist and persist in defence of her values, race, and grace: I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless …57

Using counterpoint and associative remembering to “bring together American and Arab tragedies across disparate geographical locations,”58 Hammad alludes to the Western crimes of colonization and the slave trade: I know intimately that skin

56

Riley, Depicting the Veil, 3. Suheir Hammad, ZaatarDiva (New York: Cypher Books, 2006), 60, lines 1–9. 58 Sirène Harb, “Arab American Women's Writing and September 11: Contrapuntality and Associative Remembering,” MELUS 37, no. 3 (2012): 14. 57

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74 you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched … 59

The prey, whose skin was hunted and is now being hit to proclaim the war on terror, is an ironic reminder of a long list of Western atrocities that includes, to name only a few, hunting African slaves, eliminating Amerindians, and colonizing countries. With a challenging and determined tone, Hammad finally proclaims that her voice will never be silenced, her resistance will never be abated, and her resilience will never be taken aback by the ferocious blood thirst triggered and maintained by political and economic interests, yet justified by allegations of defending and/or avenging the self: [I] will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath.60

The dancing motif which has always been associated with the hypersexuality of harem maidens is now turned into a tribal-like ritual for defying the vilification/annihilation of Arabs to avenge Western masculinity. Hammad’s dancing aims at protecting humanity at large from the evils of racism, terrorism and war. Like the three previously-mentioned poets, Hammad highlights difference to claim similarity, articulates resistance to defy dominance, and seeks communion to heal detachment. Both Hammad and Kahf, as Carol Fadda-Conery explains: foreground the paradoxical and contradictory place that Arab American women, and by extension Arab American in general, are allotted within the United States ... By drawing on their experience of living in the United Stated as women of color, both poets discursively contest and undercut the majority’s preconceived notions of what constitutes Arab American subjectivity,

59 60

Hammad, ZaatarDiva, 60, lines 9–14. Ibid., 60, lines 36–43.

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thus creating their own poetic versions of individual and collective Arab American identity.61

Contrasting the viciousness of the barbaric rituals of war on the one hand, and the cultural richness of peaceful chanting and humming on the other, reverse the stereotypical view of Arabs propagated extensively after the 9/11 attacks: I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you or dance to bombs because everyone is dancing. Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right not collateral or casual …62

Equating the crimes and ethical responsibility of terrorist attacks on the United States and the US war on terrorism, Hammad stands against the overgeneralization of crime, oversimplification of retribution, and overexaggeration of punishment. While Hammad uses an anonymous “You” to challenge the US president’s militaristic anti-Islamic rhetoric, the Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye assumes the persona of the president himself and uses the confessional first-person pronoun “I” to send letters to the victims of the US crusades. In her poem “Letters My Prez Is Not Sending” from Honeybee (2008), Nye addresses imaginary Arab characters using an ironically apologetic tone and open-ended scenarios with a view to exposing the fallacies of the US civilizing mission to save the less-fortunate races: Dear Rafik, Sorry about that soccer game you won’t be attending since you now have no … Dear Fawziya, You Know, I have a mom too so I can imagine what you … Dear Shadiya, Think about your father versus democracy, I’ll bet you’d pick …63

61

Fadda-Conery, “Weaving Poetic Autobiographies,” 156. Hammad, ZaatarDiva, 61, lines 22–29. 63 Naomi Shihab Nye, Honeybee (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 89, lines 1–7. 62

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The indefinite possibilities for ending each letter exemplify the tortures that innocent Arab civilians are enduring to fulfil the American humanitarian dream of an evil-free world. Juxtaposing the loss of family members in a meaningless war and the benefits of importing the US version of democracy to be implemented on the ruins of a nation sheds light on how the white man’s enlightening mission has always ignored the preferences, priorities, and circumstances of their target clientele and arrogantly imposed a onesize-fits-all model that serves nothing but Western interests. The path to freedom, used by President Bush to deny all accusations of US anti-Islamic prejudices, ironically leads to utter destruction, loss, and pain: No, no, Sami, that’s not true what you said at the rally, that our country hates you, we really support your move toward freedom, that’s why you no longer have a house or a family or a village …64

While the Western fallacy of freeing the oppressed from the shackles of autocracy is painfully exposed when the freed are traumatically imprisoned within the borderless ruins of their homelands, the myth of Western liberal feminism is defied when the emancipated are further oppressed, marginalized, and silenced: Dear Ribhia, Sorry about that heart attack, I know it must have been rough to live your entire life under occupation, we’re sending a few more bombs over now to fortify your oppressors … Dear Suheir, Surely a voice is made to be raised, don’t you see we are speaking for your own interests …65

The double standards that have permeated the Western outlook and treatment of other cultures are poignantly brought forward in the letter where the president says: “Dear Sharif, Violence is wrong/ unless we are using it,/ why doesn’t that make sense …”66 Like Hammad, Nye refutes the 64

Ibid., 89, lines 8–13. Ibid., 90, lines 19–28. 66 Ibid., 90, lines 29–31. 65

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Manichean logic governing the war-on-terror rhetoric through delineating multiple scenes of violence, loss, and bereavement that are trapping the victims and the victimizers in a vicious circle of retaliation and retribution. A decade later, the Darfuri American poet Emtithal Mahmoud used her face-to-face meeting with President Obama to criticize the Western doublestandard politics and challenge the validity of the heroic humanity-saviour image propagated through transnational sexism narratives. In her poem “For Muhannad, Taha, and Adam” from her first volume Sisters’ Entrance (2008), Mahmoud highlights the paradoxes plaguing US policies (whenever Muslim/Arabs are involved): I met the president sat with him at a table too small to hold everything that brought us there. His hands resting. Where are your chains? They told me your hands were tied. When they sent those kids back, when they wouldn’t take the refugees, when they closed off the borders but not Guantanamo67

Through associative remembering, the image of the chains puts the atrocities of hunting millions of Africans and transporting them to the Americas to serve in the plantations side by side with the crimes of rejecting thousands of refugees escaping the hell of wars and genocides, and indifferently witnessing them perish. Satirizing how the white man’s burden of saving the distressed is manipulated to serve Western interests, and how human rights are viciously denied for alleged national-security causes, Mahmoud revisits the OccidentOrient history to dig up the roots of prejudices and misconceptions: Mr. President, why do they call it the land of the free when even the dead can’t leave? Mr. President, what does one caged bird say to another? But I could barely hear him over the corpse lying between us.68

The imprisoned spirits, the caged birds, and the corpse blocking the communication between the President and the Arab Muslim poet stand for 67

Emi Mahmoud, Sisters’ Entrance (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2018), 104– 5, lines 62–70. 68 Ibid., 105, lines 71–75.

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not only the victims of Western atrocities in the Arab countries, but also the persistent stereotypical images that have confined Arabs to the cages of hatred and distrust. Mahmoud ends the poem with another blow to the Western stereotypical view of Arab Muslim women: “He looked at me as if he thought I was afraid/ Doesn’t he know, that back home, the women take care/ of the bodies?”69 Recollecting memories of the Darfur genocide, Mahmoud powerfully emphasizes the strength of Arab women who, in times of peace or war, undertake the responsibility of supporting their own nations. In a counter-attack of Western narratives of supremacy, Mahmoud masculinizes the hyper-feminized victims and challenges the masculinity of the victimizer. In their struggle to resist the colonial strategy of feminizing men and hyper-feminizing women, to defy the fabricated binaries which guarantee the constant submission of the Orient or everlasting domination of the Occident, and to debunk the stereotypes that have always locked Arab women behind the bars of defaming hypersexuality, dehumanizing marginalization, or demonizing terrorism, Arab women poets have adopted various strategies reflecting a unified collective consciousness that no longer tolerates Western racial prejudices. While Kahf deconstructs cultural myths and resurrects new modernized versions of legendary characters to exorcize the Orientalist harem ghosts from Western consciousness; Halaby, Hammad, Nye, and Mahmoud revisit historical narratives to dig up evidences defying the fallacies of Occidental supremacy, discrediting Western crusades to save the oppressed and demeaning liberal feminist missions to protect the Arab Muslim women from patriarchal despotism and religious backwardness. To rectify stereotypical misconceptions, Kahf, Halaby, and Mahmoud resort to presenting the heroic battles that Arab women – just like Western women – have to wage to support themselves, their families, and their nations. Articulating their transcultural agency and embracing other cultures while emphasizing their right to hold onto their identities, Kahf and Halaby shake the foundations of racial prejudice in a globalized world that celebrates fluidity, rootlessness, sharing, and collaboration. Summoning the US president – as Hammad’s silent addressee, Nye’s assumed letter writer, and Mahmoud’s helpless listener – exemplifies how Arab women have been empowered at national and international levels – a fact that is both rhetorically and practically testified to thanks to the great role Arab women have played in the popular revolutions that have so far ousted seven autocratic regimes in the Middle East. Investigating the five poets’ 69

Ibid., 105, lines 72–74.

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articulations of Arab women’s grievances, aspirations, and strategies for resisting Western binaries, and beholding how Arab women continue to impress the world with their accomplishments and perseverance in spite of all obstacles, testify that Arab women have not only managed to renegotiate their agency in patriarchal regimes but also reserved new leading roles in national histories and imposed their powerful presence on Western consciousness.

PART TWO: COURAGEOUS WOMEN REMAKING THE WORLD THROUGH NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE

CHAPTER FIVE “MOTHER OF THE REVOLUTION”: TAWAKKOL KARMAN AND NONVIOLENT MOBILIZATION IN YEMEN ANWAR OUASSINI AND NABIL OUASSINI

Introduction A recent political development during the Arab Spring was the active role of women in nonviolent political mobilization challenging authoritarian regimes and bringing about change in the sociopolitical and economic spheres of their respective societies.1 The postcolonial Arab world has been immersed in decades-old violent political mobilizations that have produced and reproduced cycles of violence that are still impacting the region today.2 Although the call for the utilization of nonviolent ideological frameworks in social and political movement action has always been present in Arab and Islamic political and philosophical thought, it was never thoroughly pursued by political movements and actors.3 The incessant role of violence in shaping political outcomes in the region has unfortunately produced suffering, injury, and death to millions across the Arab world. What was profoundly different about the Arab Spring than previous mobilizations was the initial impulse of nonviolent action that spread across the Arab world as revolutionaries in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen voiced their 1

E. Johansson-Nogués, “Gendering the Arab Spring? Rights and (In)Security of Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan Women,” Security Dialogue 44, no. 5–6 (2013), 393–409. 2 W. T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 3 T. R. Davies, “The Failure of Strategic Nonviolent Action in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya and Syria: ‘Political Ju-jitsu’ in Reverse,” Global Change, Peace, and Security 26, no. 3 (2014): 299–313.

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concerns online and in the streets, protesting against years of authoritarian rule that defined their lives, opportunities, and political expressions.4 The majority of Arab Spring activists and protesters were not directly influenced by philosophies of nonviolent political mobilization. Nevertheless, they pursued strategies of nonviolence to upend and restructure their engagement with the existing authoritarian structures in the hopes of putting pressure on the regimes to comply and obtain international support for their cause.5 This paradigm would be short-lived as the revolutionaries faced brutal state violence, mass imprisonment, torture, and death. The violent state response to peaceful protest allowed for a shift in protest action towards violent revolutionary mobilizations as was experienced in Syria, Libya, and Egypt.6 In Yemen, the fledgling movements that protested the authoritarian regime of President Saleh included many factions along with “Women Journalists Without Chains,” a nonviolent political movement that was organized and led by Tawakkol Karman. Karman and her philosophy of nonviolent protest led to the eventual fall of President Saleh’s regime and introduced nonviolent political action as an alternative path for political and economic change in the region. Karman’s short-lived success worked to institutionalize the transitional government, while seeking to establish democratic reforms in the fledgling Yemeni state. This abruptly ended as the instability and lack of support for the transitional government generated intrusive responses from regional nations that seized control of Yemen.7 It enabled the rise of the counter-revolutionary forces and militant mobilizations that have engulfed the country in continuous war, strategic-regional conflicts, terrorism, and famine.8 While Karman was ultimately unsuccessful in producing lasting change in Yemen, she introduced to it and the Arab world an alternative path towards greater reform, women’s empowerment, and nonviolence as a method of resistance to authoritarianism.9 The following 4

Ibid. S. E. Nepstad, “Nonviolent Resistance in the Arab Spring: the Critical Role of MilitaryဨOpposition Alliances,” Swiss Political Science Review 17, no. 4 (2011): 485–91; Davies, “The Failure of Strategic Nonviolent Action.” 6 A. Bulent and R. Falk, “Authoritarian ‘Geopolitics’ of Survival in the Arab Spring,” Third World Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2015): 322–36. 7 M. Darwich, “The Saudi Intervention in Yemen: Struggling for Status,” Insight Turkey 20, no. 2 (2018): 125–42. 8 Ibid. 9 V. Asal, R. Legault, O. Szekely, and J. Wilkenfeld, “Gender Ideologies and Forms of Contentious Mobilization in the Middle East,” Journal of Peace Research 50, no. 3 (2013): 305–18. 5

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paper will explore Tawakkol Karman’s nonviolent struggle against the dictatorship of President Saleh in Yemen at the height of the Arab Spring. We will first briefly introduce the Yemeni context and examine Karman’s early political organizing, and then discuss the significance of Karman’s nonviolent philosophy in reaction to authoritarianism, the patriarchy, and democracy in Yemen. Finally, the paper will address the enduring legacy of Tawakkol Karman’s work on the future of nonviolence and political action in Yemen and the broader Middle East.

Saleh’s Yemen Located in the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen is by all economic indicators the poorest country in the Arab world. Yemen has an unfortunate reputation for terrorism, religious extremism, tribalism, and a Sunni-Shia conflict involving multiple nations from the international community. For over thirty years, Ali Abdullah Saleh ruled Yemen through a system of patronage that provided economic benefits for the ethnic, political, tribal, and religious groups that pledged their loyalty and helped maintain his rule. Saleh came to power in 1978 when he was elected President of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) by parliament.10 When North Yemen was unified with the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) in 1990, Saleh was accepted as president of the Republic of Yemen. In the new republic, Saleh retained his power through an agreement with tribal leaders who swore allegiance to his rule. Yemen’s brutal security forces were controlled by family members, with his son commanding the Republican Guards, his half-brother the Air Force, and his nephews the Central Security Forces, National Security Organization, and Presidential Guard.11 Throughout his reign, Saleh undermined the political integrity of state institutions by introducing constitutional amendments and laws that helped him and his family preserve power and control over Yemeni society. By January 16, 2011 the Arab Spring had reached Yemen, as thousands flooded the streets to protest and shatter the image of Saleh as the arbitrator of a unified Yemen.

10

W. A. Terrill, “The Conflicts in Yemen and U. S. National Security,” Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College. 2011. www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1040.pdf. 11 Ibid.

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Karman and Political Organizing Tawakkol Karman was born on February 7, 1979 into a prominent family in Shara’b As-Salam, Taiz Governorate, Yemen. Her father is Abdul Salam Khaled Karman, a lawyer who served as a former minister for legal and parliamentary affairs and a member of the Yemeni Congregation for Reform (al-Islah) political party. Tawakkol’s sister Safa is known as the first Yemeni citizen to graduate from Harvard Law School. In her own education, Tawakkol studied commerce at the University of Science and Technology as an undergraduate and obtained a degree in Political Science from the Sana’a University.12 Tawakkol started her career as a journalist and became an outspoken critic of the social and political injustices she witnessed and experienced in Yemeni society. As a member of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate, she cofounded Women Journalists without Chains (WJWC) in 2005 with the help of aid organizations and foreign governments to uphold freedom of the press, speech, and expression, as well as advocate for Yemeni democratic aspirations and human rights. Since its founding, the Yemeni government has aggressively sought to shut down the organization as WJWC has documented the government’s abuses against the press, journalists, and the co-optation of the media by President Saleh to shape Yemeni politics and society. Karman is concerned with Yemen’s authoritarianism, corruption, and the limited space available to organize in civil society. In her early years, she organized protests and actively led demonstrations against the government’s repressive propensities. She constructed novel ways to circumvent the government’s media censorship before the widespread usage of social media by starting a text messaging system to spread news, information, and resources to mobilize resistance against the regime and its repressive and often violent policies of shutting down dissent. By 2007, Karman published an article in al-Thawry that openly called for the toppling of President Saleh, as well as the democratization of Yemen.13 She also bridged her political ideologies with social and economic issues that she believed were central in the process of democratization, particularly women’s and children’s rights. She called for an increase in women’s political participation and resources to confront Yemen’s high levels of poverty, illiteracy, health, and other social problems. Karman’s particular focus on children sought to address child illiteracy, youth marriages, labour organizing, and other forms of child exploitation. 12 Nobel’s Women Initiative, Tawakkol Karman Yemen. 2011. https://nobelwomensinitiative.org/laureate/tawakkol-karman. 13 Dina Hosni, “Middle Eastern Women’s ‘Glocal’: Journeying Between the Online and Public Spheres,” Cyber Orient, 11, no. 1 (2017): 4–27.

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It was, however, her courageous and brave nonviolent protests against the corrupt and authoritarian regime of Saleh’s government that introduced Karman to the larger Yemeni society and international community.

Karman’s Philosophy of Nonviolence The emphasis on nonviolent mobilizations throughout her short political career in pre and post-revolutionary Yemen reflected approaches steeped in both Islamic and feminist ideological frameworks. Moreover, as a selfprofessed practicing Muslima and political activist, she embodied both the religio-spiritual principles of the Islamic tradition and the critical frameworks of feminist inquiry. This intersectional ideational framework centralizes both Islamic liberation theology14 and women’s rights in resisting political authoritarianism and gendered repression. Karman’s Islamic feminist framework interprets the Islamic tradition as not only the guarantor of women’s rights but also an approach that is embedded in Yemeni history and culture, and thus not an imposition from the West.15 Karman suggested that the vulgar violence, pervasive gender inequality, and lack of political freedom in contemporary Yemen stem from the absence of Islamic principles in the country. Her discourse and call for nonviolence are a reflection of her Islamic religio-spiritual prescriptions that she believes can pave the way towards the establishment of a democratic civil state that respects individual rights and liberties, religious freedom, and gender equality.16 Moreover, she describes authoritarianism as a by-product of the patriarchy wherein the same men who make bad decisions concerning political life do the same in the religious sphere.17 Karman’s integration of Islam in her legitimacy claims are critical frames for ensuring support in a very traditional and highly religious society like Yemen. Thus, it provided Karman the space to challenge the patriarchy and authoritarianism and all its expressions, and notably the role of violence in political life. Karman stated that she would constantly call “on the Yemeni people to abandon their arms, and to protest while carrying roses instead, to show them how

14

H. Dabashi, Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008). 15 M. Al-Sharmani, “Islamic Feminism: Transnational and National Reflections,” Approaching Religion 4 (2014): 83–94. 16 E. Chenoweth, and M. J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 17 D. Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2, no. 3 (1988): 274–90.

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nonviolence is less expensive both in cost and human life.”18 To produce change, Karman contended that Yemeni society needed a paradigm shift towards nonviolence and dialogue, stating, “non-violence is the common denominator of all my actions. I have adopted it in what I say, in what I do and in my strategies. I never shy away from it and I don’t see any alternative.”19 To accomplish this, Karman flipped the patriarchal norms on their head and invoked Islam, femininity, and her follower’s maternal identities to mobilize nonviolently for political change.20 She utilized patriarchal ideologies to not only legitimate her public presence and mobilizations21 but also challenge the grasp of authoritarian-patriarchal structures on their lived realities.22 Karman stated that the Yemeni people: believed that I sacrificed for them. They believed me when I said, “I’m here for you,” when I gave them my voice, and sacrificed to express and defend their rights. They trusted me. When I was abducted and detained, Yemenis from different backgrounds went into the streets to protest, carrying my picture. It was the first time they carried a woman’s picture in this way.23

This created a dilemma for the Yemeni state as it ultimately produced a nonviolent mass movement that unseated President Saleh from power.

Mother of the Revolution As protests in Tunisia exploded after the death of Mohammed Bouazizi in 2011, thousands of young people across the Arab world were inspired to stand up for their democratic aspirations. In Yemen, Tawakkol Karman was one of the thousands who came out onto the streets on January 16, 2011 to protest and call for the downfall of the Saleh regime. The protests were framed in gendered-Islamic terms by emphasizing the role of women as 18

A. Codinha, “Tawakkol Karman Has Not Given Up on Yemen – and Neither Should You,” Vogue (March 27, 2018). https://www.vogue.com/article/tawakkolkarman-yemen-humanitarian-crisis. 19 UNESCO, “Tawakkol Karman: ‘Non-violence is the Common Denominator of all My Actions’ (March 2018). https://en.unesco.org/courier/january-march-2018/ tawakkol-karman-non-violence-common-denominator-all-my-actions. 20 Anwar Mhajne and Crystal Whetstone, “The Use of Political Motherhood in Egypt’s Arab Spring Uprising and Aftermath,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20, no. 1 (2018): 56. 21 Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy.” 22 C. Stavrianos, The Political Uses of Motherhood in America (New York: Routledge, 2014). 23 Codinha, “Tawakkol Karman Has Not Given Up on Yemen.”

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caretakers and mothers in defining their responsibilities to push back against the state and society. Moreover, in generating Islamically-gendered frames, Karman was able to gain support in a deeply conservative culture that has relegated women to the domestic sphere. This initially worked in Karman’s favour as her daily nonviolent protests were not conceived of as a threat by Yemeni security forces as the movement called for nonviolence and was led by women. The state also had a secondary motivation in that it was rare for women to protest in the streets, and so the security forces initially did not use violence as they did not want to be perceived by the Yemeni public as killing or beating “Yemeni mothers.”24 Karman built on this momentum to grow the protest movement, while strictly maintaining its core belief in nonviolence. This stance was one that reflected her philosophical outlook but was also used to allow them to be perceived as peaceful protesters by Saleh’s regime and, most importantly, the masses. Her nonviolent stance was a critical resource that enabled her to negotiate and counter-frame the regime’s mediated campaigns and labelling of Karman and the protesters as violent vermin, women with no honour, and terrorists. Saleh would even attempt to label the female protesters’ actions as a violation of Islamic law by calling all men to bring their women home to prevent the “mingling of men and women in public.”25 Karman’s Islamically-gendered counter-framing of her nonviolent protests utilized the religio-cultural sources in Yemeni society to reframe the protesters’ roles as “mothers of the revolution.”26 This position of caretaker of the revolution allowed the protesting women to “use their identities as mothers to negotiate with and contest the barriers to their participation presented by patriarchal elements of society and the state.”27 Sensing the momentum shifting, Saleh responded by lowering taxes, raising the wages of government workers, instituting legal reforms in an attempt to co-opt the protests, and starting a propaganda blitz against Karman.28 Karman stated 24

Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”; M. E. Carreon and V. E. Moghadam, “‘Resistance is Fertile’: Revisiting Maternalist Frames Across Cases of Women’s Mobilization,” Women’s Studies International Forum 51 (2015): 19–30. 25 M. Al-Qadhi, “Protesting Yemeni Women Angered by Saleh's Criticism,” The National UAE (April 19, 2011). https://www.thenational.ae/uae/protesting-yemeniwomen-angered-by-saleh-s-criticism-1.427444?videoId=5766484581001. 26 Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy”; Carreon & Moghadam, “Resistance is Fertile.” 27 Mhajne and Whetstone, “The Use of Political Motherhood,” 55. 28 T. Thiel, “After the Arab Spring: Power Shift in the Middle East? Yemen’s Arab Spring: From Youth Revolution to Fragile Political Transition,” London School of Economics and Political Science (2012). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/43465/1/After %20the%20Arab%20Spring_Yemen’s%20Arab%20Spring(lsero).pdf.

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that, “Saleh’s regime tried to destroy my reputation as a woman in a conservative community by spreading false stories – he said I’m crazy, they called me names in their media outlets. I was attacked several times and detained, defamed in the regime’s newspapers and media. It was a dirty war to demoralize me.”29 When these tactics fell short, Saleh resorted to violent repression utilizing plainclothes officers to attack and arrest demonstrators. On January 22, in the middle of the night, government forces arrested Karman and questioned her for thirty-six hours, and only released her after intense domestic and international pressure.30 This was a costly move for the regime as the framing of Karman’s movement was not only Islamically gendered but also nonviolent, which allowed her arrest to be perceived by the Yemeni people as a symbolic arrest of all Yemeni women. This engagement extended the “political opportunity structures by expanding what counts as political,”31 and thus positioned Karman and her fellow activists as female victims of the state, an entity in Yemeni culture and society that is theoretically supposed to safeguard their “honor and dignity.” This symbolic violence not only empowered Yemeni women and men to come out onto the streets but engendered Karman’s Islamically veiled body as a means towards revolution and eventual political change. This early experience during the revolution only empowered Karman’s political will, and on February 3, 2011 she organized the Day of Rage in Sana’a. Protests moved between Tahrir Square and Taghyeer Square at the front gate of Sana’a University as Saleh’s security forces maneuvered for control with the protesters. Karman’s emphasis on nonviolence continued as she called on all protesters to come to the streets and remain steadfast in the face of vulgar violence. She was arrested on March 17 for inciting protests. Karman later claimed that the violent “combination of a dictatorship, corruption, poverty, and unemployment” was the reason for her persistence for nonviolent action.32 The failure of the Yemeni government to put an end to the protests allowed the regime to become increasingly desperate, which became apparent on March 18 when fifty-two people were killed and over two hundred injured when security forces opened fire on unarmed protesters. This was a major turning point in Karman’s revolution 29

Codinha, “Tawakkol Karman Has Not Given Up on Yemen.” T. Karman, “Our Revolution’s Doing What Saleh Can’t – Uniting Yemen,”The Guardian (April 8, 2011a). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr /08/revolution-saleh-yemen-peace-historic. 31 Mhajne and Whetstone, “The Use of Political Motherhood,” 57. 32 T. Finn, “After the Revolution: the Struggle for Women's Rights in Yemen,” Dissent 62, no. 1 (2015): 91. 30

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as the massacre became the catalyst for mass change when numerous political, religious, tribal, security, and military allies turned their backs on the Saleh regime and began to see Karman’s protests and other aligning movements as legitimate political players in the potential future of Yemen. Karman's movement did not formally remove Saleh from the government as he continued to cling to power over the next few months, despite the continued pressure and massive demonstrations. Eventually, Saleh agreed to hand the presidency over to Vice President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi through a transition plan and wavered between agreeing and then delaying his resignation until an assassination attempt on June 23, 2011. The bomb attack killed and injured numerous people in his presidential palace, and Saleh himself suffered shrapnel wounds and extensive burns. The next day, Saleh flew to a Saudi military hospital for medical treatment. During this period, Karman continued to gain international attention for organizing unrelenting nonviolent protests in Yemen, condemning the outburst of violence by some protesters, and actively engaging in the transition process to construct a government that was representative of all Yemeni citizens. She authored articles and provided interviews with numerous Arab and Western news outlets, emphasizing the importance of democracy, gender equality, and nonviolent social and political change. With international attention focused on Yemen, Karman used her platform and critiqued foreign nations that continued to support Saleh’s authoritarian regime by ensuring “that members of the old regime remain in power and the status quo is maintained.”33 She courageously condemned these countries for pursuing their national interests and ignoring human rights, Yemen’s democratic aspirations, and the civil rights of Yemeni citizens. This was a pronounced move as her declaration for political and social change was also a critique of the global order, in which metropolitan states continue to exploit and impose policies that perpetuate violence on underdeveloped nations like Yemen. She forewarned her followers, Yemeni political factions and governing elites, and the international community that what happens in Yemen is the responsibility of everyone, as everyone has had a direct hand in the misery and authoritarianism defining Yemen’s recent history. While constructing her counter-framing of the political realities in her tent in Taghyeer Square in October 2011, Karman learned about her nomination for the Noble Peace Prize.34 33 T.

Karman, “Yemen’s Unfinished Revolution,” New York Times (June 18, 2011b). https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/opinion/19karman.html. 34 Nobel Lecture, “Tawakkol Karman – Nobel Lecture” (December 10, 2011). https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2011/karman/26163-tawakkol-karmannobel-lecture-2011.

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On December 11, 2011, nearly a year after the first protests, Karman became the first Yemeni Arab woman and second Muslim woman to become a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She was a corecipient of the award with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leymah Gbowee “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”35 Karman reacted with shock as she dedicated the award: “to all the martyrs and wounded of the Arab Spring … in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria and to all the free people who are fighting for their rights and freedoms.”36 She also dedicated the award to “all Yemenis who preferred to make their revolution peaceful by facing the snipers with flowers. It is for the Yemeni women, for the peaceful protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, and all the Arab world.”37 In her acceptance speech, Karman mentioned that her resistance of authoritarianism includes both men and women, through peaceful means, free of any violence.38 She identified four targets that she believed would end the perpetuation of violence, inequality, and authoritarianism: the removal of dictators and their systems of nepotism; abolishing the security apparatus; launching, developing, and supporting democratic institutions; and establishing a civil and democratic state that is modern, governed by the rule of law, and is legitimate in the eyes of the people.39 In this struggle for freedom, she urged the world to support the democratic ambitions of young people across the Arab world by holding authoritarian figures and their military and security officials accountable for acts of repression and crimes against their citizens.40 Right after receiving the award, Karman returned to her activism. She used her platform as a Nobel Laureate to travel and mobilize the international community to assist protest movements throughout the Arab world. However, her ultimate goal was ousting Saleh, and she openly contended that he should be held accountable for his repression, violence, and other crimes by sending him to trial at the International Criminal Court. Karman was successful in some of her lobbying efforts at the United Nations as she was able to help pass resolution 2014 of the UN Security 35 The Nobel Peace Prize, “The Nobel Peace Prize 2011.” https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2011/summary. 36 BBC, “Profile: Nobel Peace Laureate Tawakul Karman” (October 7, 2011). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-15216473. 37 S. Al Batati, “A Nobel for All Yemenis,” Gulf News (October 8, 2011). https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/yemen/a-nobel-for-all-yemenis-1.887443. 38 Noble Lecture, “Tawakkol Karman – Nobel Lecture.” 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid.

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Council that condemned Saleh’s violent reaction to protesters and backed the initiative for his formal resignation. However, the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council formulated a plan that would provide Saleh immunity if he resigned as president. Saleh reluctantly signed the agreement in Riyadh and, finally, after multiple attempts, officially ceded power to former Vice President Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi. After a year of protests and close to two thousand Yemenis dead, Saleh was under house arrest. Despite the immunity, Saleh continued to interfere in Yemen’s internal politics by allying his tribal and loyal supporters with the Houthi forces. The partnership ultimately deteriorated, and in December 2017 Houthi forces killed Saleh at his home in Sana’a. The outbreak of violence between Yemeni religious and political factions created an aura of instability that was no longer sustainable for Karman, who had to leave Yemen, calling the situation: total war … waged by tyrannical regimes against their people. This is why I remain convinced of the need to oppose regimes that do not respect rights and freedoms and which are unable to guarantee them, whether for individuals or institutions. They have to be replaced.41

Karman recognized that she could no longer control the in-fighting, vulgar violence, or international actors meddling in Yemeni affairs. This made it impossible for Karman to pursue her nonviolent strategies on the ground and forced her to shift her focus towards “slow-nonviolence”42 to prepare for “long-term, incremental change, which not only responds to violence but is also productive of alternative visions and modalities of nonviolent social relationships and interdependencies.” This allowed her to pursue her message of nonviolence in a context that is currently considered one of the worse human-rights tragedies of the twenty-first century. Her attempt at slow-nonviolence is critical to laying out the framework for a possible reconciliation that includes a peaceful transition to democratic governance to allow the people who mobilized on the ground to actualize their dreams of a democratic, inclusive political system that reflects the will of the Yemeni people. She states: “what I try to explain, wherever I go, is that tyranny deprives societies of development and peace. Societies 41

UNESCO, “Tawakkol Karman: ‘Non-violence is the Common Denominator of all My Actions,’” (March 2018). https://en.unesco.org/courier/january-march2018/tawakkol-karman-non-violence-common-denominator-all-my-actions. 42 A. Piedalue, “Slow Nonviolence: Muslim Women Resisting the Everyday Violence of Dispossession and Marginalization,” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space (2019), 2.

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deprived of freedoms and human rights live in a state of precarious peace, which is doomed to collapse rapidly.”43 For Karman, the source of the tyranny exists both within and outside of Yemeni society, as represented in the actions of tribal and political factions, Islamic fundamentalists, terrorist organizations, regional actors, and global powers, including the United States and United Kingdom. Thus, her current nonviolent activism is focused on all of the domestic and international actors who continue to impose policies that generate violence and misery in Yemen. Karman states: I am convinced that non-violence is the most effective way to combat tyranny and find a way out of complex conflicts. It is always possible to resort to it. But that demands faith, courage, and the capacity for selfsacrifice. In the end, change is achieved at a lower cost, and its effects are more powerful and more effective. Those who choose violence to change things do not always get what they want. For me, non-violence is the common denominator of all my actions. I have adopted it in what I say, in what I do, and in my strategies. I never shy away from it and I don’t see any alternative.44

The Noble Laureate Today Since winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Karman has actively engaged the international community to promote her views on nonviolence, democracy, and human rights while still seeking to realize peace, stability, and democratic change in Yemen. Her website documents all her articles, speeches, press releases, news, contact information, activities, and accolades. Karman continuously attends conferences and has delivered lectures at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and numerous universities around the world. She enthusiastically backs protests for freedom of the press, human rights, and democracy with special attention to events in the Arab world, including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Algeria. In countries outside of the MENA region she has shown solidarity with the Uighurs in China and called for Aung San Suu Kyi to resign and be held accountable for Myanmar’s crimes against the Rohingya Muslims. Karman was front and centre in her support for her close friend Jamal Khashoggi and fervently condemned the Saudis for the whole debacle. In an article published by Time magazine, Karman called for an independent international investigation into Khashoggi’s

43 44

UNESCO, “Tawakkol Karman.” Ibid.

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death.45 In 2020, she was nominated as one of Time’s one hundred women of the year and appointed to the content oversight board for Facebook and Instagram, along with other human-rights activists, constitutional law experts, and a former prime minister. Although Karman is involved and engaged with activities from around the world, she has never lost sight of the current events in Yemen. In the Yemeni Civil War, she has openly blamed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Saleh’s supporters, and the Houthis for Yemen’s current state, but has nevertheless been vocally critical of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates’ intervention. Karman has insisted on an unbroken unity between the north and south, decried President Hadi’s relationship with the Saudis and Emiratis, and urged politicians to establish a government free from foreign influences, calling the expulsion of the Saudi coalition a sacred national duty. In numerous conferences, Karman has presented her vision for a legitimate, unified, and independent post-war Yemen free from the dictates of “the brutal Houthi coup and Saudi-Emirati occupiers.”46 One of Karman’s highest accomplishments comes from her dedication to the Tawakkol Karman Foundation. Based in Istanbul, Turkey, the foundation established an endowment fund for development and training programs committed to education, health and relief, peace, democracy, and good governance. Karman’s foundation offers numerous scholarships in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Peru, and Colombia to disenfranchised communities. The goal is to provide communities with the necessary tools to participate and engage in civil society while ensuring that nonviolence and peacebuilding are central to the organization’s educational and philosophical framework. The foundation offers training programs, health campaigns, renovations, and necessary equipment for health facilities across the world. It also provides training for journalists, organizes relief and aid programs, and has even commenced a peacebuilding reconciliation project in the Central African Republic. However, it is in Yemen that the foundation has contributed the most amount of work. The crisis in Yemen due to war, conflict, corruption, and poverty has received humanitarian aid and relief across Yemen. Karman’s foundation uniquely includes projects that provide training to Yemeni male and female youths with labour and 45 T. Karman, “What Happened to My Friend Jamal Khashoggi Shows How Saudi Arabia Spreads Fear and Buys the West’s Silence,” Time (October 19, 2018). https://time.com/5429329/tawakkol-karman-nobel-prize-saudi-arabia-khashoggi. 46 “Yemen Nobel Peace Laureate: Hadi Government Tool of Saudi Occupation,” Middle East Monitor, March 10, 2020. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200310-yemen-nobel-peace-laureate-hadigovernment-tool-of-saudi-occupation.

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entrepreneurship skills and work-for-food programs that employ the poor in small projects for wages and food.47 Karman’s intent to build this foundation to continue her work in and beyond Yemen reflects her deeply embedded belief in the philosophy of nonviolence, democracy, and gender equality to produce change, as she stated that “we did not lose hope. We still adhere to our dreams, to our struggles, and will form our freedom.”48

Conclusion Tawakkol Karman’s nonviolent political mobilization in the Arab world will forever be etched in history and is undoubtedly unfinished. The symbolism of her mobilization has represented the potential for a new wave of nonviolent action in the Arab world embodying both the religio-spiritual principles of the Islamic tradition and the critical frameworks of feminist critique. Her understanding of and negotiation with authoritarianism and the patriarchy from within her cultural and religious contexts is what allowed Karman to find success in her mobilizations. As the “mother of the revolution,” the national support she obtained has reflected her deep understanding of her society, allowing women in one of the world’s most culturally conservative nations to mobilize men and women on the streets to protest for greater equality, human rights, and democracy. This is important as Karman’s continued calls for localized, revolutionary nonviolent action are and will continue to be essential for the success of any future nonviolent mobilizations.

47 48

Tawakkol Karman Foundation. “Home.” (2020). www.tkif.org. Codinha, “Tawakkol Karman Has Not Given Up on Yemen.”

CHAPTER SIX PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES OF NONVIOLENCE AND GENDER: A DIALOGUE WITH PROFESSOR MARY ELIZABETH KING DAGMAR WERNITZNIG

Prologue: a Feminist Future? Some wonder if feminism will be eclipsed by gender studies and the mounting transnational awareness of gendered restrictions. Progress on equality for women in the twentieth century gained impetus because of popular social movements. One campaign led to another. From the heart of the interracial civil-rights movement, a contemporary US women’s movement emerged that linked justice issues across race, class, and sexual barriers. It has sometimes been viewed as the most successful of contemporary liberation movements because it has no established leadership. Virtually no part of what has subsequently developed into gender studies escaped being affected in some way by the questions raised by feminists like me, who learned basic lessons of political organizing from working with impoverished African Americans in Southern communities of the United States. We were transformed by working with materially poor people, who were possessed of incomparable magnanimity and generosity of spirit. I suspect that, for most of us, our immersion in that experience set the benchmark of meaning for the rest of our lives. Just as the nonviolent civil-rights movement in which I worked for four years joined cause with anti-colonial, anti-racism, and anti-war struggles, and workers’ rights and environmental preservation movements became universal, so, too, the planet has been changed by the global woman’s movement – one of the most far-ranging popular mobilizations of human history, its weight now felt in almost every area of cultural, social, and political life in the twenty-first century. Yet in some ways these advances have enabled us to see more clearly the intersecting injustices that remain. It has taken decades for nonviolent struggles to become acknowledged as more effective when compared to armed insurrections.

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Perhaps it will not take so long to grant that though gender studies encompass both male and female socialization, the need remains for the feminist project’s uniquely indispensable and creatively catalytic pressures. —Mary Elizabeth King, March 8, 2020

Women and Civil Disobedience For over five decades, Mary Elizabeth King has been a practitioner and scholar at the intersection of peace and gender. As the eldest child of a nurse educator and Methodist minister who was the eighth pastor in six generations of clergy from Virginia and North Carolina, she was instilled with a sense of responsibility for community and society from a very early age. She took with her an understanding of practiced Christianity when she left her family home to study at the Ohio Wesleyan University. Watching news about the first sit-in conducted by four students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro in 1960 on her dormitory television, she became fascinated with the concept of noncooperation and nonviolence, as displayed by the activists. Freshly out of college two years later, she was invited by two senior figures who were advising the movement, Ella J. Baker and Howard Zinn, to join them in the southern region of the National Student YWCA based in Atlanta on a project supported by the Field Foundation involving campus travel to promote academic freedom, and she came in contact with the student sit-in campaigns then in full force in a hundred cities across the South. “It sounds pious and dopey, but I took my father’s sermons seriously,” she later explained.1 She went on the modest payroll of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”) in 1963 as one of a handful of white staff to enlist in this exceptional civil-rights organization that grew from the Southern student sit-in campaigns. The SNCC concentrated on rural areas to mobilize nonviolent resistance in the South, including some of the most marginalized and remote areas, mainly conducting voter-registration campaigns and organizing direct action such as sit-ins and demonstrations, where possible. Predominantly a grassroots movement of young people, the SNCC complemented organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (no relation). By age twenty-three, King was locked up in Atlanta’s city jail, called Big Rock, within sight of the state capital’s gold dome, having been arrested 1

Mary E. King in Kandy Stroud, “Mary King: A Key Carter ‘Brain Truster’ from the Beginning,” The New York Times (July 8, 1976), 50.

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as part of an interracial staff group from the SNCC office who met with a Kenyan official, Odinga Oginga. She spent Christmas in prison. King later reminisced about what it was like to work for the SNCC: It was the most pure manifestation of democracy that I have ever encountered. A group of young people who were intense, who cared passionately but who came without ideology and without foreordained conclusions. We believed that determination and working together would produce change. There was a certain amount of naïveté in all this, but my naïveté gave me strength and power because I didn’t know how awesome the odds were.2

King’s work for SNCC occurred at a formative time in a sweep of anticolonial and civil-rights mobilizations that girdled the world, and her fight against segregation was also a personal and professional rite of passage. Within the SNCC ranks, she worked in the communications office with Julian Bond, who would years later chair the NAACP. Together, they wrote news releases and worked to get the news about atrocities or reprisals by vigilante groups meant to disrupt the local movements out. Getting a reporter from the national news corps to a county jail might be the only way to interrupt the often brutal, vicious responses by sheriffs and law authorities. The communications office was vital for the movement, because barbarities against black people, or their deaths, were generally not considered newsworthy by the white mainstream Southern press. Liaising with the media to help them obtain the information necessary to report on what was actually happening in the isolated rural hamlets where the civilrights movement was rooted, as well as coordinating with the Friends of SNCC to raise funds in Northern cities, were critically important functions for the movement. Operating from a tiny SNCC office in the west side of Atlanta’s black community, King and Bond sought to push into national awareness the eclipsed news of injustices and brutalities against black people. Utilizing a network that they created for telephone calls, news releases, sworn testimonies, affidavits, and feeding radio stations, in King’s long days she managed to keep the general public informed and alerted about the segregationist terror groups instigating fear in the black community. Her diligence and dedication earned her the nickname “meticulous Mary.”3

2

Mary E. King, in Barbara Gamarekian, “One Woman’s Chronicle of the Civil Rights Struggle,” The New York Times (August 31, 1987), 12. 3 Susan Brownmiller, “Grasping the Nation by the Scruff of Its Neck,” The New York Times Book Review of Freedom Song (August 30, 1987), 12.

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Publicly and openly working for a desegregated society in the American South required courage and passion. Associating oneself with the SNCC meant becoming a conspicuous target for violent attacks. Being Caucasian bestowed no advantages – on the contrary, white people might be singled out. For example, in his autobiography, Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Turé) wrote about his white fellow workers: Was I quite serious in saying that there were no “whites” in SNCC? … They were friends, allies, comrades, SNCC staffers, and brothers and sisters in the struggle … I never said no whites ever joined SNCC … So how could I say there were no “whites” in SNCC? Because upon joining us, those comrades stopped being “white” in most conventional American terms, except in the most superficial physical sense of the word … When they experienced the full force of racist hostility from Southern white politicians, police, and public opinion, compounded by the indifference or paralysis of the national political establishment, whatever class and color privileges they might have taken for granted were immediately suspended. At moments of confrontation they were at as great a risk as any of us, and as “race traitors” were sometimes in even greater jeopardy.4

Police brutality, arrests, shootings, and other organized segregationist hostilities were constant threats for anyone working in the SNCC, whether black or white. For instance, in 1963 in Danville, Virginia, King had to seek refuge at a Catholic convent across the river in North Carolina because she was about to be indicted by a grand jury for “acts of violence and war.” The juridical panel had dredged up an archaic Virginia statute which held that it was “illegal to incite the colored population to acts of violence and war against the white population.” This statute was passed after the Nat Turner slave uprising in 1831 in Southampton County in southside Virginia and was the basis upon which John Brown was hanged following the Harper’s Ferry raid. The potential indictment King faced would have involved a five thousand dollar bail with no possibility of an attorney being present. When based in Jackson for Mississippi’s Freedom Summer in 1964 she worked out ten different routes for driving from the main office to where she lived opposite Tougaloo College in order to avoid being ambushed by vigilantes.5 By the end of that same 1964 summer project, King had tallied the combined retaliations and reprisals aimed at local movement participants, 4 Stokely Carmichael, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: the Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Turé) (New York: Scribner, 2003), 307–8 (Kwame Turé was Carmichael’s African name). 5 Mary E. King, “Waging Peace, Achieving Justice: Understanding Nonviolent Struggle,” Manchester College Bulletin of the Peace Studies Institute 33 (2006): 13.

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volunteers, and staff to one thousand arrests, thirty beatings, thirty bombed homes, and thirty-five burned churches. These substantiated interruptions and retributions were intended to impede the elimination of Jim Crow in Mississippi. Civil-rights volunteers James Earl Chaney (twenty-one), Andrew Goodman (twenty), and Michael Schwerner (twenty-four) were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, on June 21. It was King’s sad task as communications coordinator of the SNCC in Jackson to notify the Chaney family and Goodman’s parents about their missing sons, who never returned from investigating the bombing of a church where voterregistration meetings had been taking place.6 In 1967, a deputy sheriff of Neshoba County was convicted of conveying the three young men into the hands of their murderers, aided by the sheriff who was locally reputed to have been involved, along with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Years later, in 2016, King would return to Mississippi and was moved to find that the Jackson headquarters of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had been named for her three fellow workers murdered at the hands of law officers. King documented her four-year engagement with the SNCC in Freedom Song: a Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (1987), and dedicated it to twelve civil-rights workers who lost their lives in the period from 1961 to 1968. The choice of title for her first book was emblematic. The singing of freedom songs – one category of songs from a black choral tradition of spirituals recognized across the world as a deeply touching and expressive body of music – served as a tool of mobilization. Forged from a fusion of the African and American experiences in the infernos of Southern slavery, freedom songs regularly initiated the mass meetings that took place nightly in churches throughout the South approximately every other week. The songs often pinpointed specific allusions signifying the individuality of each local movement’s priorities. Mass meetings served substantive purposes and were also hands-on sessions for training community people about the theories and methods of nonviolent civil resistance. Knowledge about nonviolent struggle was imparted and practiced in a preparatory sense in these concrete training sessions, in which the freedom songs might reinforce lessons. SNCC workers shared with people attending the meetings how to retain nonviolent discipline under physical and verbal attacks. They taught the underlying logic of non-cooperation – all systems require the obedience of those involved, and this cooperation can be

6

Mary E. King, “So That the Sacrifices of 1964 Will Not Have Been in Vain,” Los Angeles Times (July 12, 1984), 7.

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withdrawn.7 The mass meetings were also where decisions would be taken on attempting to register to vote, march, and use civil disobedience, or equally where strategies were discussed involving community concerns and priorities. King frequently recalls how she and her fellow SNCC workers were educated in nonviolent resistance by experts who had gained their knowledge in India and through the study of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s philosophies and tactics. Exactly as had happened with Martin Luther King Jr., SNCC members were trained in the theory and practice of nonviolence. Two prominent teachers for both the Reverend Dr. King and SNCC were the Reverend Dr. James M. Lawson Jr. and Bayard Rustin.8 Nonviolent methods were thus acquired and applied consciously, and were by no means arbitrary, capricious, or an extemporization. “Little was improvisation about our movement. A better way to look at it is as a story of the transmittal of knowledge,” King explains.9 As the movement expanded and attracted more attention, however, dissent emerged. In the period after Mississippi’s Freedom Summer 1964, the group’s cohesion started to disintegrate as debates over approaches and the structure of the SNCC erupted. While some, such as King, favoured the SNCC’s decentralized outlook and emphasis on local movements, which was more favourable to leadership by women and advantageous for the profoundly democratic decision-making processes that had evolved, others preferred a more hierarchical option. Increasingly, separatist tendencies among some black leaders tended to radicalize the situation, a development that coincided with a cessation of the ongoing training in collective nonviolent action. Eventually, the strong feeling of a bonded community could no longer encompass the differing backgrounds of the individual

7 Nonviolent struggle, civil resistance, and nonviolent resistance are terms that can be used interchangeably. The hyphenated spelling non-violence enforces a negative connotation, denoting a mere diametrical opposition to the term “violence.” The term “civil disobedience” is usually associated with Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Of the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” Mohandas K. Gandhi read eclectically, was familiar with Thoreau’s thought, and was in correspondence with the aging Leo Tolstoy. 8 In the 1950s, both Lawson and Rustin travelled to India to familiarize themselves with the nonviolent independence struggles led by Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr., having discovered nonviolent thinkers during his adolescent years at Morehouse College, was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s concept about civil disobedience and began studying books on Gandhi as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. 9 King, “Waging Peace,” 10.

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activists, whose ranks had swelled with a large number of mostly white volunteers who had been recruited for Freedom Summer: We saw ourselves, black and white together, as a “band of brothers and sisters” and “a circle of trust.” The spirit that united us – not even the most worldly and cynical of my colleagues would today qualify or disagree – was such that we would have died for one another. What this fierce, allembracing vital force of loyalty disguised was the real and ultimately unassimilable differences in class, race, gender, and experiential backgrounds in our circle.10

For a young woman in a movement whose visible spokespersons were predominantly male, concern for building a sustainable movement for civil rights spilled over into addressing whether the concerns of women could be included in its priorities. Despite an exceptionally liberal and egalitarian framework, which offered many opportunities for female citizens to participate and contribute, the general structure of the SNCC nevertheless mirrored some traditional gender hierarchies and disparities. Acquainted with Simone de Beauvoir’s classic Le Deuxième Sexe from her college days, King started re-reading this title during her time in the Deep South. Together with Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and works by Albert Camus, it became her literary diet in the evenings after working hours, discussing de Beauvoir and Lessing with her colleague, friend, and roommate Casey Hayden (Sandra Cason).11 The universality of de Beauvoir’s thoughts and observations about constraints on women and vulnerabilities worldwide struck a chord with both King and Hayden. Furthermore, SNCC protagonists such as Ella Baker, one of the great voices of twentieth-century US social history, and Fannie Lou Hamer, with her unparalleled and intense authenticity as a spokesperson for the local people with whom King was working, had become highly influential for them, deepening their yearning for forums in which such issues could be openly discussed amid democratic equity. Originating from a home which consciously sought to live and apply Christian morals and values on a daily basis, King’s decision to join the SNCC was not considered rebellious by her family members, but in the wider society it epitomized the conscious breaking of taboos. Unsurprisingly, 10 Mary E. King, Freedom Song: a Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (New York: Morrow, 1987), 231. 11 Like Mary King, Casey Hayden decided to work for the SNCC after graduation from university. Then called Sandra “Casey” Cason, she became known as Casey Hayden after her marriage to Tom Hayden in 1962, but is now known by her birth name Sandra Cason.

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she and Hayden represented a mere handful of white women engaged in SNCC organizing until 1964’s Freedom Summer, when larger numbers of Northern women were recruited along with men as volunteers. Ironically, the movement offered King and Hayden chances for deep engagement in fighting for political and social justice beyond the possible average expectations for young women at that time. Inspired by their reading, work, and conversations with other women on staff and local women, King and Hayden drafted a paper entitled “SNCC Position Paper, Nov. 1964.” The paper ignited prompt reactions. Although circulated anonymously, they were almost immediately disclosed as its authors. Ridicule and disbelief about women’s concerns prevailed in some quarters, but in other sections of the SNCC there was great support. King recalls Julian Bond and Charles Cobb as standing out among the SNCC male staff members who appreciated the paper. Rippling out from a SNCC meeting in Waveland, Mississippi, a comment by Stokely Carmichael about “the position of women in SNCC is prone” made its way to Robin Morgan in New York, who later reported it in her 1970 book Sisterhood is Powerful. No circumstantial background was offered, nor did Morgan seek to verify the quotation and its setting from fifteen or more readily available first-hand sources. In Freedom Song, Mary contextualizes and explains that Carmichael possessed the talents of a standup comedian, and that this one-liner came at the end of a very long monologue that had begun with his making jokes about Trinidadians (his own roots), about black people in general, moving on to black communities in Mississippi, and finally targeting himself with his self-deprecating humour. Carmichael often amused fellow staff members with his comic soliloquies, which are particularly recalled for his mirth at himself. Enthralled by those listening to him, with their long bouts of hysterical laughter, he made up one quip after another, including this wisecrack about women. Regrettably, Morgan got the date (1966, rather than 1964), circumstance, and contextual meaning of the quotation wrong. In 1973, Gloria Steinem contacted King to find out if the quotation was true – the first inquiry from any reporter, author, or scholar into its veracity, so far as King knows, and for which she gives her credit. In the years since, Morgan’s misrepresented quotation has unfortunately taken on a life of its own and lingered as a misperceived moment in the collective memory of the women’s movement, particularly for those who knew little or nothing else about the SNCC. King later described Carmichael to the Washington Post: If you look at the 20th century as a continuum, on the one hand you have Gandhi and nonviolent resistance and on the other hand Leninist

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Chapter Six revolutionary violence. He’s somewhere in the middle – more on the Lenin side than the Gandhi side. He still believes in using words and persuasion as his primary means of getting things changed. Even though the words are loaded, he still believes in words.12

In 1965, King and Hayden wrote “Sex and Caste: a Kind of Memo” for private circulation and sent it to forty women working in the peace and freedom movements across the United States: The reason we want to try to open up dialogue is mostly subjective. Working in the movement often intensifies personal problems, especially if we start trying to apply things we’re learning there to our personal lives. Perhaps we can start to talk with each other more openly than in the past and create a community of support for each other so we can deal with ourselves and others with integrity and can therefore keep working.13

A Washington Post article later reported that they had “dropped a bomb with the publication of a provocative memo … considered by some historians to be [a] founding document of the modern feminist movement.”14 In it, both women translated their experiences in the movement from abstract politics to the personal ramifications of a broadened concept of democracy. The piece addressed the invisible, yet somehow accepted and unquestioned power relations in the movement, and bade a larger understanding of freedom and power. The text was deliberately kept free from the jargon of a typically Beauvoirian style in order to appeal to all those to whom it was sent. A consciousness for specific women’s rights was non-existent among many freedom fighters for universal civil liberties and human rights at the time. Even today, “human rights” are assumed to be gender blind, but apart from the loosest metaphorical sense such entitlements do not have the same meaning for women and men. King later interpreted the meaning of their missive: We were asking whether we would be able to act out our beliefs and make decisions based on our convictions, beliefs grounded in our definition of freedom and self-determination as women, stemming from what we had 12

Mary E. King in Kevin Merida, “Hail to a Chief: Civil Rights Pioneers Gather to Pay Tribute to Kwame Ture,” The Washington Post (April 9, 1998), 1. 13 Mary E. King and Casey Hayden, “Sex and Caste: A Kind of Memo,” Liberation (April 1966): 36. 14 Anna Holmes, “Spotlighting the Work of Women in the Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Rides,” The Washington Post (June 3, 2011), n. p. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/spotlighting-the-work-of-womenin-the-civil-rights-movements-freedom-rides/2011/06/01/AGPH1aHH_story.html.

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learned in the movement. The questions Casey and I raised ran parallel to the larger debate about SNCC’s future course. The organizational structure for SNCC that we supported, one of democratization and decentralization, would have allowed this. Autonomous local movements as opposed to a centralized hierarchy would have supported diversity and variation … and [this view] was broadly compatible with a concept about which there was consensus: the increasing conviction that SNCC organizers should dig in and help local people develop institutions they controlled … [Our document] was in part a call for a return to the fundamental values of the sit-ins and the early vision of SNCC, according to which any community should be free to define its own political agenda, spark its own local movement, and raise up its own leaders. Ten years later, when I … [was quoted as saying] that I had felt “relatively powerless” as a member of the SNCC staff, I was referring to a general feeling that I was losing ground within the movement with regard to the principles and beliefs of the early SNCC years that I valued.15

This document did not simply stimulate discussion about gender roles in the SNCC and its wider community, but – when published as “Sex and Caste: a Kind of Memo” by the War Resisters League in its magazine Liberation in April 1966 – affected contemporary and future generations of women (and men). As King notes in Freedom Song, the forty women to whom the document was sent began meeting in small gatherings, later known as consciousness-raising groups. Conversations in these groups during the 1970s shared the realization that women – simply because they were female – were treated inequitably within societies organized around men’s interests and concerns. Women were therefore said to be what men were not. If men were strong, women were weak; if men were rational, women were irrational; if men were active, women were passive; if men were intelligent, women were emotional. The awakening that occurred in these circles derived from personal struggles and eventually developed into a trend in the United States among women, who found that in such small settings they could share their experiences without scorn or ridicule. Grappling with significant questions in protected surroundings, a critique began to emerge, a major tenet of which was that sexual roles were largely socially constructed, yet profoundly internalized. By articulating a politics of self-determination, King and Hayden in fact opened the forum for feminism in post-war America. The SNCC was profoundly committed to female participation in the freedom movement, and thus women in the SNCC gained knowledge, preparation, experience, and competency in organizing for social change. Whether black or white, the proficiencies 15

King, Freedom Song, 460.

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gained from working in Mississippi’s Freedom Summer and the broader civil-rights movement made them skilled at political organizing, and the depth of the experience impelled some to make claims for justice and rights for women. Today, “Sex and Caste” is generally considered as having facilitated the socalled second wave of feminism, a term that derives from the posthumous tribute given to those who fought for women’s enfranchisement and rights in the nineteenth century, on whom the category first-wave feminism was bestowed. In The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America, Ruth Rosen credits the two women and their memo with galvanizing a feminist awakening in the United States of the 1960s.16

Epilogue: a Peaceful Future? In her publications, teachings, and lectures, King is critical of a lopsided tendency in historiography and historical analysis, which results in an almost exclusive conceptualization of belligerent conflicts, whereas successful nonviolent struggles for independence, rights, or reform are generally eclipsed. The awareness and documentation of peaceful revolutions in the past, according to King, would increase the chances for the nonviolent resolution of intransigent global problems: A technique for sociopolitical change that offers a realistic alternative to violent struggle and armed conflict, nonviolent resistance as a chosen means of engagement can lead to outcomes in which all the parties profit, disconnect cycles of intergenerational violence, enhance negotiations, heighten prospects for reconciliation, and favour outcomes with a democratic ethos – without bloodshed or physical and economic destruction. Yet nonviolent struggles in pursuit of social equity, justice, reconciliation, and human rights remain largely undocumented and often misunderstood.17

So long as history is perceived or equated with militarism, the likelihood of nonviolent conflict and arbitration being chosen for areas in crisis remains below its potential, King argues. Knowledge about nonviolent methodologies should particularly be offered to professionals preparing for all of the fields and professional circles that are involved in confronting such 16 See Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin, 2000), 56–7 and 98–109, especially 99; see also Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: Dial Press, 1999), 13–15. 17 Mary E. King, “Nonviolent Struggle in Africa: Essentials of Knowledge and Teaching,” Africa Peace and Conflict Journal 1, no. 1 (2008): 43.

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predicaments. Journalists, politicians, parliamentarians, academicians, and diplomats alike need to be erudite about the historic contributions of nonviolent movements in order to help prevent the incursion of violent retaliation into disputes and to break the vicious cycle that results from introducing belligerent action. Equally important is the offering of competent training in how to prepare nonviolent strategies for justice struggles. Both need long-term perspectives. King describes how nonviolent civil resistance is not simply a means to overthrow dictatorships and armed oppression, but a method, process, and technique with a strong record of generating democratization processes. The individual choice to participate in nonviolent action, she points out, neutralizes coercive structures of resistance and prefigures democratic forms of leadership emerging from successful nonviolent campaigns. King sums up the theory and practice of nonviolent action as follows: Nonviolent struggle is an active response in which the taking of action is not violent. It is not the same as the absence of violence, which can be accounted for by numerous causes and explanations. It does not infer passivity – which alters nothing and may even constitute acceptance of hostile violence – nor does it refer to the values of tolerance and virtues of nonviolent interaction that in modern political thought constitute civil society. Rather, it stands as a technique for achieving social and political justice, in contrast to conventional warfare, armed struggle, and guerrilla warfare, which seek to achieve their goals through producing fear or capitulation (because injury to life and limb demoralizes an opponent) or through expressly violent subjugation. The technique employs strategies for applying nonviolent sanctions to bring about results; put simply, it does not seek to accomplish its goals through physical harm, injury, or killing.18

She emphasizes that the choice for nonviolent struggle over violent struggle is neither intuitive nor instinctive, and that the practice of nonviolent action is far from heroic romanticism or idealism. At the core of any successful nonviolent campaign in the contemporary era lies effective teaching and the lateral sharing of lessons by experienced organizers about the basic properties, capacities, and limits of nonviolent resistance: The concepts and methods of nonviolent struggle must be coherently explained as a system of principles and applications that otherwise appear to be inscrutable, cryptic, mysterious or weak. One must practice to accept the consequences of unarmed action methods that can lead to reprisals of pain, injury or even death – and here we come to the core specificity of militant nonviolence – without violent retaliation. It is at this moment that one has 18

Ibid., 23.

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Chapter Six the ability to pierce psychologically the defenses of the opponent and undermine the political pillars of its support.19

King stresses that – despite Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., for example, both deeply influenced by their religious faiths – nonviolent action is not necessarily linked with spirituality: “What makes a movement nonviolent are not the beliefs of the participants, but their behavior. Movements are composed of persons of all persuasions.”20 Such mobilizations apply social power, the full sum of the weights and forces that can be exerted by a people or meted out to affect and apply pressure on the targeted group or adversary. The technique of nonviolent action, she states, is based “not on turning the other cheek, but on realistic premises of power,” and she explains, “that the capacity to reveal the opponent’s brutal repression is one of the properties of nonviolent resistance and part of how it can be used to achieve success.”21 According to her research, paradigms of power can be significantly changed by nonviolent action. The complex undermining of unjust political systems by groups and societies, and the consequent withdrawal of their support and exercise of non-cooperation can, if applied with ascending forms of disruption, reconfigure standard patterns of power and subjugation.22 Properly prepared and strategized, and often interacting with other forces, this process may bring about social change and solidify political consensus behind the resulting alterations. Conversely, military regimes and authoritarian forms of power – when confronted with disciplined nonviolent resistance – face a quandary in which if they respond violently they may paradoxically heighten the power of the nonviolent challengers. An important dimension of nonviolent action as a technique lies in its ability to benefit from asymmetrical and unbalanced power. When the parties to a conflict are uneven and lopsided, in some instances, with study and planning, it may be possible for the putatively weaker side to undercut the power of the adversary presumed to have superior power. Writing of a 19

King, “Waging Peace,” 11. Ibid., 13. 21 Mary E. King, “Review of Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power by Timothy B. Tyson,” Journal of American History 87, no. 3 (2000): 1128. 22 Gene Sharp defined a taxonomy of nonviolent methods, or so-called action steps, which can be applied by adherents of nonviolent struggle in mounting exertion of disruption: protest or persuasion, for example, includes marches, petitions, or vigils; non-cooperation may entail strikes and boycotts; and nonviolent intervention is inclusive of hunger strikes, sit-ins, and alternative institutions. See Gene Sharp, Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1973). 20

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phenomenon that has been called “jiu-jitsu” – an idiom borrowed from the ancient Japanese martial art, a system of wrestling based on the knowledge of balance and how such an understanding may be used to overcome an adversary’s sense of equilibrium – she says: Briefly stated, by deliberately refusing to meet violence with violence, and by sustaining nonviolent behavior despite repression, a protagonist throws an opponent off balance by causing the adversary’s repressive measures to be seen in the harshest light. As the participants in a nonviolent campaign refuse to reciprocate their adversary’s violence, the attacker becomes affected by shifts in opinion and potentially by internal power relationships within the ranks. The adversary becomes unsure of how to respond. In a minority of cases, the sympathies of the police or troops may begin to flow toward the nonviolent protagonists.23

Hence, when physical force and reprisal by dictatorships are not retaliated with violence, it may be possible to undermine the apparently stronger power. Unique about nonviolent action, according to King, “is that it preserves the dignity of your opponent; it doesn’t seek to humiliate him [or her]. The use of violence does exactly the opposite … Violence is not a long-term solution to social problems.”24 King warns against a mixing or combining of nonviolent and violent techniques, which she reasons are neither interchangeable nor compatible because their underlying concepts of power are different. Even if employed sporadically, violent action punctuates, mitigates, and contaminates the discipline and efficiency of nonviolent resistance. The empowering momentum of social power gained by nonviolent action as an alternative to physical force is therefore diminished. Violence tends to induce more violence, or, as Hannah Arendt observes, “the practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.”25 The logic of nonviolent civil resistance relies on a persistent erosion of the bulwarks of power that uphold totalitarianism in conjunction with stirring public opinion to turn away from cooperating with the source of the grievance. Mary considers globalization as a vital component for the dynamics of nonviolent struggle:

23 Mary E. King, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.: the Power of Nonviolent Action (New Delhi: ICCR/Mehta Publishers, 2002), xvi. 24 Mary E. King in Seema Kamdar, “Mary’s Mahatma,” Times of India (November 17, 2003), https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Marys-Mahatma/articleshow/286584.cms. 25 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970), 80.

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Chapter Six The major nonviolent struggles during the last decade (or more) against military regimes, oppressive bureaucracies, military occupations, and dictatorships – which have changed world maps – were strengthened by globalizing technologies … As access to the Internet and electronic mail continues to widen, knowledge can more accurately spread on how to use nonviolent sanctions to press for rights, justice, reform, the lifting of military occupations, or citizenship … Globalizing information technologies transit the world swiftly without regard to borders, and can make lucid the principles of nonviolent strategic action, with its profound understanding of power.26

She is persuaded that stable and durable peace can only be achieved by integrating and accepting women in leadership in any socioeconomic, political matrix. In her view, it is essential to engage women as leaders, mediators, and negotiators in conflict zones. She cites examples around the globe where women are agents of nonviolent strategies. For instance, Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) in South Asia, Women in Black in Israel, and Women of Zimbabwe Arise demonstrate nonviolent alternatives to militarism.27 A stigmatized and monolithic dichotomy of men labelled as warriors and women marked out and ostracized as victims of war has to be overcome, she assures, to create platforms for political dialogue in which women are able to bring their breadth of experience as equal and respected negotiators of peace. She sees an international consensus forming around the increasing evidence that the building of peace is impossible without the cogent involvement of women and women’s groups. In King’s opinion, peace itself has already been reconceptualized and is no longer something hammered out between belligerents or warlords, nor is it merely a settlement scratched out on paper. Women and women’s groups are more and more viewed as being among the most potent and enduring forces available for the prevention and amelioration of acute conflicts, warfare, and violence: “One major obstacle to discussions of women and building peace is a reflexive argument that there are intrinsic natures of men and women. I propose instead that we look at the experiences of women, which may give them a view of peace and

26 Mary E. King, “Globalization: a Powerful Opportunity for Nonviolent Struggle,” Fellowship of Reconciliation, 65, no. 9–10 (1999): 4. 27 See Mary E. King, “Women and the Building of Peace: Muslim-Hindu Women’s Resistance to Militarization in Kashmir, and Israeli Women Seeking an End to Military Occupation of Palestinians,” The Women’s Policy Journal of Harvard, 2 (2002): 11–27.

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security that produces different tools.”28 At the same time, she explicitly discards gender stereotypes and simplifications as futile. The evidence is now indisputable that effective peacebuilding can only be sustained with the forceful involvement of women, yet the cliched notion of women as “natural” peacemakers should be avoided.29 Thus, King concludes: “Gendered socialisation processes are fundamental to war and peace, which is not to say that women exude maternal attributes or have a reflexive interest in peace making. Notions that women possess a ‘natural’ bent toward conciliation and peace delegitimise women’s voices in policy and international relations.”30 In sum, King calls for a trilateral recognition of three handles for building more peaceable societies. First is the recognition of the indispensability of women, who have from time immemorial borne the brunt of rebuilding wartorn societies. Women’s tangible experiences transculturally as agents of social change – especially at the local, community, and regional levels – commend them as bringing essential knowledge to the building of lasting peace. Although until recently excluded from the dominions in which societies administer political violence, because they were deemed inadequate for military service and generally untrained in the use of weaponry, it can be empirically observed that, as a consequence, women’s adoption of action choices has historically emphasized means other than armed confrontation. Women have thus learned by compulsion and choice 28

Mary E. King, “Peace, Human Rights, and Women’s Empowerment,” Gender, Peace, and Security Seminar Lecture, University for Peace, Costa Rica, October 29, 2001, 36. 29 Terminologically, “peacebuilding” defines post-war efforts to secure and maintain peace and stability as well as minimize the trauma of bloodshed, support democratization, and establish a system of justice. UN operations in Namibia in 1978 are often cited as the start of the current concept of peacebuilding, a conception that was expressed in the 1992 and 1995 editions of former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace, and which continues to expand. Then speaking in relation to post-conflict situations, Boutros-Ghali identified a range of peacebuilding programs, including “co-operative projects … that not only contribute to economic and social development but also enhance the confidence that is so fundamental to peace.” See Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1995), 15. He mentions activities of agriculture, transportation, resource management, cultural exchanges, educational projects, and simplifications of visa requirements. The connection between security and development has become an accepted tenet in peacebuilding. 30 Mary E. King, “What Difference Does It Make?: Gender as a Tool in Building Peace,” in Gender and Peace Building in Africa, edited by Dina Rodríguez and Edith Natukunda-Togboa (Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica: University for Peace, 2005), 30.

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to become proficient in exploring the enormity of the human experience with regards to utilizing nonviolent action, having done so for centuries before historical analysis had begun or the coinage of terminology had formalized its study. The second lever is the scale of the body of knowledge of theory and praxis of nonviolent civil resistance, which has been growing rapidly. Recent research suggests that this method dates back to ancient times, and has vastly more potential for successful outcomes than guerrilla warfare and armed struggle. As a quantum benefit, scholarship is now growing and discloses the influences of women throughout the ages to the development of nonviolent processes for waging conflicts. The results reveal an appreciation of history in which women’s involvement has encouraged the use and expansion of civil resistance and nonviolent struggle. The third and interlocking handle is peacebuilding, one of the genuinely new and fresh concepts of the past four decades, in which it is increasingly understood that post-conflict societies will return to civil war within a short period – often an estimated five years – if knowledge of how societies can correct deficiencies in their standard institutions of politics has not become widespread. In other words, the baskets of peacebuilding measures and initiatives must include the broad understanding of how to fight nonviolently for correctives, should the established institutions of political power become corrupted or ineffective. Through enlarging the roles for women, increasing knowledge of the potency of civil resistance, and widening appreciation that peacebuilding must forthrightly include both women and nonviolent action, it is possible to perceive realistic means for constructively facing the future.

CHAPTER SEVEN MOBILIZATION OF A COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: HOW NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA AND ALEKSANDRA KOLLONTAI SHAPED THE FIRST SOCIALIST STATE MICHAEL IASILLI

The Russian Revolution is often thought of as a violent moment where the peasants and working poor came under the command of the charismatic Vladimir Lenin and other men of extremist tendencies. From there, the Russian Civil War brought forth an era marked by extreme political violence. The centralization of power under the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee was mostly led by men, and the rest is history. At least, that is how the story used to go. We now know that the Russian Revolution has a much more complex history with nuances that prompt us to recast the Bolshevik movement through the lens of gender.1 In fact, “the woman question” became a crucial concern at the height of the revolution into the civil-war period. This paper analyses the various goals of two important women, Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Kollontai, who played a role in shaping the revolution in ways that bolstered the interests of the workingclass and peasant women of Russia. Their contributions impacted the organizational structure of the Bolshevik Party and subsequently informed the development of the socialist state apparatus. Many Russians feared that allowing the Bolsheviks to immediately dissolve the Provisional Government and establish one-party rule would endanger society. The Russian population had experienced a dramatic foodshortage crisis alongside the First World War, a regime change, and a 1

Rochelle G. Ruthchild, “Women and Gender in 1917,” Slavic Review 76, no. 3 (2017): 649–702.

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revolution, all of which played into widespread anxieties. The problems closely affected Russia’s most vulnerable segments. Prominent women such as Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Kollontai encouraged the Bolsheviks to appeal to oppressed women in order to provide services to rural peasants and the working poor. Their plans also included the development of widespread educational programs that would help strengthen reading and writing skills for the majority of nationalities in Russia. Of course, this broadly strengthened public support for the Bolsheviks, but it also energized disempowered segments of Russian society to participate in constructing the new socialist nation, most specifically among women. Both Krupskaya and Kollontai, whose writings and speeches focus on the “emancipation of women” through the overthrow of capitalism, were key in constructing invaluable programs that sought political transformation and collective empowerment. As a result of their often underestimated efforts, the early Soviet state yielded new opportunities and social mobility for women.2 Not only did such organizing efforts lead to the Bolsheviks’ success in seizing power, but both Krupskaya and Kollontai impacted national policy around education and transformed gender norms because of their work. Furthermore, the legacies of both women help explain how leftwing national ambition and communal solidarity combined to bolster unification between “autonomous” provincial segments in Russia during the Civil War to usher in unification and regional stability.3 In their initiatives to mobilize rural uneducated women from the Russian periphery once considered “backwards” towards urbanized city centres, the Bolsheviks inculcated large populations of people with technical and educational training. Krupskaya played an integral role in advancing vocational and educational agency while Kollontai focused on reconstituting the traditional family structure and establishing an array of state-led social services. The 2

Some of the opportunities for Soviet women included new managerial, engineering, and education positions. Additionally, many women began enjoying new legal privileges that granted them the right to divorce, abortion, and enhanced educational and professional opportunities. For more on this see Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); and Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union 1921–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 3 It is important to note, however, that such “unification” did come at a cost. Regional unification was often a top-down process that sometimes repressed selfdetermination in favor of Bolshevik rule. For more on Bolshevization see Jonathan Smele, The “Russian” Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 55.

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concerted effort was part of a longstanding campaign seeking the involvement of women in the development of a socialist consciousness and the creation of a new moral world.

“Merging” and the Russian Radical Movement The movements behind the “national” and “woman” questions were born out of the nineteenth-century revolutionary aims of drawing upon collective “consciousness” [soznaniye], a term constantly reiterated by those in the Russian radical movement. Other words, such as “merging” [slyaniye], suggested the social fusion between the individual and the state (or greater society). In seeking a new identity that would reject the past and form the “Soviet,” the new generation of radicals rejected the tsarist chauvinism of the previous centuries and entered the twentieth century with a sense of progressive iconoclasm. However, the anti-Enlightenment and populist movements in Russia birthed an era of tsarist scepticism and new ideologies that profoundly transformed social norms and altered society’s notion of “revolution” in general. Additionally, prerogatives concerning gender were enormously liberalizing, and men began to perceive women as comrades in arms. Some of the radical thinkers among the many who prompted debate on women’s liberation as an essential component of revolution were individuals like Nikolai Pirogov, Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Alexander Herzen, Nikolay Mikhailovsky, and Pyotr Lavrov. Lavrov was one of the principle thinkers who established the notion of “consciousness” in social terms. For instance, in his Historical Letters he claims: “And what is social solidarity if not the consciousness that personal interest coincides with the social interest, that personal dignity is maintained only by upholding the dignity of all who share in solidarity?”4 Merging the personal interest with the social interest later became a foundational aspiration for the Bolshevik women’s movement. Generally, the populist ideas that came before the Russian Revolution of 1917 saw social liberation as achievable by breaking away from parochial norms through the advancement of women’s rights. Moreover, many such thinkers criticized capitalism and conceptualized societal visions of utopia to bring forth an era of utilitarianism – the role of the state was thought to be utilized as a mechanism to deliver social and economic fairness. Many looked to Robert Owen, for instance, as the preeminent voice on recreating society through education. Owen, a Scottish intellectual who specialized in the construction and commissioning of utopian communities in Europe and the early United 4

Pyotr Lavrov, Historical Letters (University of California Press, 1967), 113.

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States, held progressive views regarding women’s equality and the importance of a national education system as a tool to engender massive social change.5 A populist group known as the narodniks [narodniki] believed in Owen’s vision and regarded education as a “ticket” to becoming a professional revolutionary. The Bolsheviks adopted this notion of the “professional revolutionary” and proclaimed the members of their movement as “liberators of all oppressed women.”6 What later became known as “the woman question” in the late 1800s prompted more women to join the Russian radical movement. Once populist thinkers had begun to draw up a theoretical framework that outlined women’s emancipation as an important revolutionary goal, women were to be welcomed into the movement as comrades. In turn, the men would demonstrate openness as a symbol of virtuous reconditioning. For the most part, men accepted women as peers in the struggle.7 While this wasn’t always the case, especially when it came to the topic of marriage and its legal implications for men, it did spark a unique camaraderie between women and men that didn’t exist during the Petrine era. Because of shifting perceptions on gender, women started to enrol in university as well as participate in the domestic industrial workforce in greater numbers. According to historical record, women made up twenty-two percent of the factory workforce in 1885, which grew to thirty-two percent in 1914.8 Because of women’s increased participation in terms of labour and politics, it is no surprise that, in the 1890s, reproductive rights became a popular talking point among revolutionaries.9 The work of the narodniki on bringing women into the revolutionary movement set the foundation for a Bolshevik women’s movement, and more so a revolution of the proletariat. Women’s place in society had been transforming radically and launched new legal and political campaigns that solidified them as bona fide radicals.10 5

Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings (London: Penguin, 1991), 1–62. 6 Clara Zetkin, “Clara Zetkin: Lenin on the Women's Question,” Marxists Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm. 7 Robert McNeal, “Women in the Russian Radical Movement,” Journal of Social History 5, no. 2 (1971): 150–4. 8 Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, 13–39. 9 Barbara E. Clements, Barbara A. Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Oakland: University of California Press, 1991), 186. 10 There also exists a body of literature regarding women as militants and terrorists – both men and women approached anti-tsarist violence in similar ways. Elizabeth Wood and Barbara Evans Clements (ibid.) discuss how these subgroups of revolutionary behavior also shaped gender.

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Krupskaya and Kollontai As the social fabric began to dramatically transform, art and literature roused young radical minds and had the power to draw them into the movement. As a teenager, Nadezhda Krupskaya was a frequent reader of Leo Tolstoy’s novels, which made her fond of the art of writing. Of course, most famously, Anna Karenina focuses on the royal affairs of the tsarist family by making Karenina a pivotal character, drawing readers’ awareness to the flaws in Imperial Russia. Additionally (despite later being banned by the Communists), Tolstoy’s lesser-known Wise Thoughts for Everyday provided a spiritual analysis on labour. In addition to a few thoughts on how wealthy men encounter difficulty in achieving a fulfilling life, he wrote, “Remember that your labor, when done in love for the goodness of others, is good for your spirit.”11 Before Marx’s and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, Tolstoy emphasized the importance of understanding the human condition materially, mirroring Marx’s argument on dialectical materialism. He wrote: “When you look at yourself as a material being, you become an unsolvable puzzle to yourself. As soon as you understand that your inner ‘me’ is the spirit enclosed in your body, the puzzle disappears, and the world becomes easy to comprehend.”12 Just as Marx later conceived the importance of becoming aware of one’s class as a necessary step to understanding the world, Tolstoy imagined the same process but in spiritual terms. The collection of quotes was meant to provide insightful suggestions on how to achieve a moral life. Tolstoy’s writings dramatically shaped Krupskaya’s initial view of society and economics before Marx entered into her repertoire. Much of his literary works carried progressive nuances which brought her to read Pushkin and Chernyshevsky. Due to this inspiration, Krupskaya found herself understanding politics in narodnik circles, where reading groups would share opinions on a variety of populist ideas and analyse them through the lens of classic Russian literature. The purpose of their comparative approach with literature was to demonstrate how participants can be didactic in their activism. Not only would readers be gaining an artful skill, but they’d also become socially cognizant. For instance, in challenging the institution of marriage, Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? centres on a fictional girl, Vera Pavlovna, who seeks independence from traditional life by becoming a professional revolutionary. Krupskaya and countless other Russian women were inspired by this story and pushed themselves to 11

Leo Tolstoy, Wise Thoughts for Every Day: On God, Love, the Human Spirit, and Living a Good Life (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011), 9. 12 Ibid., 2.

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change the world.13 Krupskaya adopted these unique ways of understanding society and applied them to many areas of Bolshevik politics. But in her discovery of Marx’s Das Kapital, thanks to Lenin, Krupskaya gained precise knowledge on the function of capitalism and the inevitable classbased movements that would arise in response to it. Collectively, these works informed Krupskaya’s vision of how revolutionaries could interact with the political norms of their time and mobilize people through education. With her first pamphlet published in 1899, The Woman Worker, Krupskaya’s goal was to help peasant women understand the hardships they had endured for decades and gain class consciousness. The purpose of the latter was to demonstrate the need to transition from capitalism to socialism. Most importantly, her work contends with the woman question by outlining wage inequality between men and women, and comments on the deplorable working conditions that rural women faced. Rural Russian women were expected to sacrifice more for their husbands and families simply because they were women. “A woman’s wage is lower than a man’s and she is forced to cut down on food.”14 The economic system of capitalism was seen to extend women’s labour to the point of starvation and prostitution, which most Bolshevik women considered to be a negative thing. In merging a critical analysis of gender and class inequality, Krupskaya became one of the first to employ a socialist-feminist critique of the social conditions in Russia (and capitalism, generally). Moreover, she comments on women’s role in organizing the overthrowing of the tsar. In order to do so successfully, she emphasizes the role of unions as the vehicle for achieving such change: “the tsar looks upon everything through the eyes of the capitalists and the nobility, showering favours on them and granting them all sorts of rights … Capitalists live by exploiting labour power and will never give up exploiting.”15 One of the more important considerations about The Woman Worker is about who it is addressed to – peasants. One of the opening lines in the beginning of her work provides a bleak observation about peasant life: “the life of the peasant woman in such poverty stricken families defies description.”16 In pushing her reader to dramatically confront the reality of their lives, Krupskaya directly engages with the peasant population. Krupskaya was well aware of the importance of involving women in 13 Robert McNeal, Bride of the Revolution: Krupskaya and Lenin (University of Michigan Press, 2016), 28. 14 Nadezhda Krupskaya, The Woman Worker (Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited, 2017), 3, https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/product/woman-worker. 15 Krupskaya, The Woman Worker, 6. 16 Ibid., 1.

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building socialism, especially amongst the peasant class. As Chernyshevsky compelled women to become professional revolutionaries, Krupskaya urged peasant women to recognize their mutual fate as socialists. Providing political agency to peasant women would illuminate the economic hardship and social injustice being felt by other women alike. Even more so, her goal was to force chauvinist men to reconcile their traditionalist views towards women. Most men held patriarchal beliefs about women, especially within the institution of marriage. It is also true that many peasant women shared similar proclivities. Broadly speaking, Russian revolutionaries considered the rural population as “backwards.” However, The Woman Worker was meant to make appeals to the peasant majority, as organizing women and men together as “comrades” in the socialist movement was tantamount to Bolshevik victory: “In the struggle for better conditions at work, for political freedom and a better future, the woman worker will go arm in arm with the man worker.”17 Krupskaya held the belief that a commonality (typically expressed as “sameness”) of interest exists between women’s interests and those of the general working class. In fact, this argument reflects Krupskaya’s ultimate position on the woman question that class interest intersects with gender, and therefore women and men must organize together. In a later comment, Krupskaya invoked Lavrov when addressing a group of factory workers, proclaiming: I once heard a woman addressing her work-mates say[ing] “Comrades working women, you should remember that once you join the Party you have to give up [your] husband and children. It is not a matter of neglecting husband and children, but of training the children to become fighters for Communism, to arrange things so that the husband becomes such a fighter, too. One has to know how to merge one's life with the life of society … The fact of this merging, the fact that the common cause of all working people becomes a personal matter, makes personal life richer.”18

Krupskaya was a writer and chief editor for a number of radical journals infamous throughout most of St. Petersburg and Moscow. Rabonitza [The Woman Worker] and Iskra [Spark] were two prominent journals of the Bolshevik Party that sought to inspire women and other local radicals to engage in the overthrow of the tsar and establish socialism. Her journey in these areas led her to Vladimir Lenin, which in turn sealed their relationship as compatriots and wife and husband. Being close to Lenin was a great risk, 17

Ibid., 20. Krupskaya, How Women Can Help, How Lenin Studied Marx, and Other Selected Writings and Speeches (Kindle edition), 479–606.

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as she was exiled and arrested for her connection with him and her radical underground activities. Yet she maintained her role as a revolutionary, serving as a cryptographer managing secret communiques between rebels in the revolutionary movement. Her role in decoding secret letters between revolutionaries placed her front and centre of the Russian Revolution before and during 1917. Holding such an important role allowed Krupskaya to reach top positions of leadership. Later on, Krupskaya directed and influenced education policy in the Soviet Union, and her concerted effort to eliminate illiteracy met with great success. Her Down With Illiteracy! campaign had a profound effect on the education and lives of millions of illiterate adults.19 She served as Deputy Minister of Education up until her death in 1939. Within a ten to twenty year span of her programs being implemented, women began advancing in the engineering and managerial sectors, which were previously dominated by men.20 Advancements in education and vocation during the Civil War would not have been possible without inspiring the youth towards professionalization as a civic duty. In fact, Krupskaya became one of the principal architects of Narkompros, which was a central organization that set standards on the curriculum and later went on to create the Communist Youth League, Komsomol. While Komsomol is typically passed off by most as a tool of youth indoctrination, it did inspire many to take part in shaping society and providing future generations with applicable skillsets for a viable workforce. The success of Krupskaya’s work was due, in part, to a culmination of her early life as a populist and conversion to Marxism. She set the early Soviet Union on a path towards gender equality by reimagining education as a tool for political and social consciousness. Her legacy also provides global resources in educational success for nations of the world battling illiteracy.21 Notwithstanding, Krupskaya wasn’t alone in the fight. Aleksandra Kollontai also played a pivotal role in the early development of women in revolution. Kollontai began preaching the “free love” ideal espoused by the narodniks. Free love (sometimes referred to as “free union”) had been in 19

Skatkin and Cov’janov, “Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869–1939),” 1–9. Kathryn M. Bartol and Robert A. Bartol, “Women in Managerial and Professional Positions: the United States and the Soviet Union,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 28, no. 4 (1975): 524–34. 21 For two decades, beginning in the 1970s, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recognized Nadezhda Krupskaya in an endowment regarding literacy. The UNESCO Nadezhda K. Krupskaya Literacy Prize provided funding to countries, organizations, and institutions for their efforts in eradicating illiteracy: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000030840. 20

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vogue among European revolutionaries of the Social Democratic movement in the early 1900s. In believing monogamy to be an iteration of the patriarchy, Kollontai felt free love was a transitory practice that would eventually dissolve marriage. However, she would come to see that free love alone would not address the more systemic problem of gender inequality. Her arguments on transforming the traditional family structure helped establish some of the foundational principles of the new family code of the early Soviet Union, abolishing the old legal framework on marriage and the family. A former liberal idealist turned Bolshevik-feminist, Kollontai was an internationalist who also engaged in writing and organizing alongside Krupskaya for the sake of establishing socialism. Before joining the Bolsheviks, Kollontai gave rousing speeches around Russia and other parts of Europe on issues touching on the injustice facing women and how feminists should understand their “revolutionary” role in society. In citing systemic prejudices within Russia, Kollontai came to the opinion that women must first achieve “class consciousness” in order to emancipate themselves from the bonds of capitalist oppression. Similar to Krupskaya, she argued that women’s discontents were linked to “class inequality.” Her articulate way with words launched her into leadership positions of the Bolshevik Party, which provided her with an outlet to develop her theories on Bolshevik feminism. What sets Kollontai apart from Krupskaya, however, is her view on separate spheres.22 While she later shifted her opinion towards gender sameness, in some sense her central argument on women organizing separately demonstrated her position on the woman question as honing gender difference.23 Additionally, her position presents the dynamic of the woman question amongst Bolshevik revolutionaries. The Russian Revolution prompted complex social questions that lasted into the Civil War. Kollontai recognized that women cannot be “handed” their rights and freedoms from men as such a process might leave the women’s movement open to co-optation by male interests. In fact, according to her experiences, Kollontai championed the idea that women must be ready to fight for their interests alone. In the popular radical magazine Pravda [Truth], Kollontai wrote an article stressing the need for women to establish separate

22

Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, 36. Although, in her later writings as a Bolshevik, this position becomes less clear. She apparently held that women’s organizations should function separately but also equally with men. For more on this see Barbara E. Clements, Bolshevik Feminist: the Life of Aleksandra Kollontai (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).

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organizations representing women’s interests alone.24 In a word, “women should not accept equality on a plate, they have to fight for it.” Providing any opportunity for men to co-opt women’s emancipation would degrade the movement entirely. There were existing features of life under capitalism that already gave men the conditions to rule over women, as in the relegation of women to property. In that, she considered marriage as a redefined form of slavery in the modern era where men could control women’s social lives and private thoughts. Kollontai also commented on the drudgery of childrearing – in capitalist Russia women had to give up their aspirations outside the home and conscript the rest of their lives to raising children and serving their husbands. In order to overcome this hegemonic dimension, she believed that the conventional family structure would have to be abolished. Household affairs and childrearing as “private” matters hindered individuality for women. Therefore, a broader “public” responsibility releasing women from the control of men could enhance their lives. In 1909 she developed this line of thinking when she wrote The Social Basis of the Woman Question. Kollontai found separate spheres an important feature to maintain in the women’s movement. Though, without seeming contradictory, Kollontai thought “teaching women to place energy into the construction of the Soviet state could link female liberation with the communist struggle” too,25 and this became a key principle for political organizing generally, as she astutely recognized unity within the proletarian movement as a necessary precondition for achieving a socialist revolution. In fact, The Social Basis provides a specific critique of other forms of feminism that failed to address the frailties of capitalism in the EuropeanRussian realm. In her work, she distinguished socialist feminism from liberal feminism as it had been dealt with by the Social Democrats. Kollontai directly arraigned liberal feminists for not realizing that the system of capitalism was oppressive. Inasmuch as liberals were keen on female liberation and free love, they were not intent on transforming the economic system. She went on to say: “The [liberal] feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society; in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives and privileges.” Kollontai categorized liberal feminists’ “prerogatives and privileges” as bourgeois. Of course, this was a direct attack on the political aims of liberal feminists and anti-Bolsheviks, broadly speaking. She added that, “proletarian women have a different attitude … The conditions and forms of production have subjugated women throughout human history, and have gradually relegated 24

Aleksandra Kollontai, Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, edited by Alix Holt (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), 114. 25 Wood, The Baba and the Comrade, 76.

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them to the position of oppression and dependence in which most of them exist until now.”26 For Kollontai, society’s ability to achieve women’s emancipation without breaking away from the economic system of capitalism was limited. Kollontai continued to develop her theoretical understanding of gender and family life by situating it in the context of state formation and national development. In Communism and the Family, Kollontai provided an overview of how a socialist society would function in Soviet Russia. she outlined her proposal for how to restructure society by removing the drudgery placed on women. She described how the state would take on new responsibilities in reshaping children and everyday life. The state would be tasked with carrying private responsibilities of household chores and childrearing. This followed from Krupskaya’s theory of merging, as it sought to bring private matters into public hands. She stated: “The workers’ state needs new relations between the sexes, just as the narrow and exclusive affection of the mother for her own children must expand until it extends to all the children of the great, proletarian family, and the indissoluble marriage based on the servitude of women is replaced by a free union of two equal members of the workers’ state who are united by love and mutual respect.”27 She called on the state to construct new centres allowing for housework to be done centrally. For instance, clothing could be taken to a public laundromat; kitchen work would transfer to public restaurants and communal kitchens known as canteens; and public farms would help with the growing of crops necessary for sustenance. Such transitions would allow women to take control of their individual lives and enter the workforce. Nevertheless, a robust workforce that included women could empower the individuals within the Russian family to readily build communal solidarity within the new socialist society. Like Krupskaya, Kollontai outlined how the state would become immediately responsible for educating and nurturing children. From birth, day-care centres would assist in the development of raising youth. Education was a key aspect to mobilization.

Zhenotdel and the Mobilization of Women Despite small differences, in practice, Krupskaya and Kollontai had similar viewpoints and recognized that women’s emancipation should be linked with the socialist struggle as well as the centralization of power of the proletariat. Such a nexus of imperatives would promote an intersectionality 26 27

Kollontai, Alexandra Kollontai: Selected Writings, 58–61. Ibid., 250–60.

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between gender, class, and labour. With Lenin declaring the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” women in the movement needed to figure out ways to propel women’s issues in a concurrent fashion. Controversially, Lenin had in mind that such an usurping process would, in ironic fashion, “democratize” the interests of regional soviets, thus giving workers (and women) political power. The need for a central authority representing the working class was a necessary action for achieving Communism in Russia. Questions arose on what a communist system would look like and just how much power would be delegated to autonomous oblasts. With the onset of the Russian Civil War in 1918, widespread violence and regional factionalism charged Bolshevik leadership to take stronger measures towards centralization. However, at the same time, they needed allies on the ground to secure their power, hence the civil strife demanded women’s involvement within the context of War Communism. As mentioned earlier, mobilizing women en masse became a civic duty. Krupskaya and Kollontai found that the Civil War was a prime moment to develop political programs that appealed to women, as it not only secured the demands of the women’s sections but also assisted the needs of Bolshevik leadership. Zhenotdel, an all-women led arm of the Bolshevik Party, was instituted in August 1919 to serve as a tool for women to become politically activated, and functioned to institute agencies of empowerment and provide services to those most in need. While realizing the expedience in providing self-determination to various regions formerly part of the Russian Empire, the Red Army paradoxically launched various attacks on anti-Bolshevik forces that they deemed “bourgeois” or “counter-revolutionary.” Regions that attempted to establish their own organizational programs separately from the Bolshevik Party faced a backlash from the Central Committee.28 For example, this was clearly carried out in Ukraine in December 1917. The Bolshevik leadership of the Russian centre wanted its own regiments to establish armies in Ukraine, despite Ukraine’s own domestic cadres pushing for sovereignty. This also prompted local insurrections and conflict between the Mensheviks and Cadet Party members seeking to establish their own territoriality.29 The conflict as described speaks to the general features of the Russian Civil War – a struggle between a unitary state versus devolution. Notwithstanding, this process was mainly a means of issuing political control over destabilized regions that possibly threatened the Bolsheviks’ claim to power. Or, as many other scholars might argue, the centralizing tendency of leadership was merely a “practical” tool for maintaining order and stability in times of 28

Jeremy Smith, Red Nations: the Nationalities Experience In and After the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 55–61. 29 Smele, The Russian Civil Wars, 54–5.

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great duress. Of course, both can be true, though Bolshevik leaders would frame these actions in ideological terms. Some of the main ideological goals of the Bolsheviks were the nationalization and collectivization of major industry, all of which was pronounced in Marxist terms. Additionally, grain production among peasants and urban factory organization was chartered through the Central Committee of the party. What appeared as a process of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” presented itself as an accomplishment of Communism. While the Bolsheviks were euphoric in their transitional attainments in 1918–19, the general society was anguished to varying degrees.30 In the midst of severe economic decline, issues such as famine, homelessness, and cynicism dramatically shot up. In mostly agrarian regions especially, the outlawing of private grain trading led to widespread food shortages and the forceful occupation of private farms by cadres of red revolutionaries.31 Yet, while the Civil War was a period of extreme conflict and disorder in Russia, it also stands as a moment where intellectual curiosity meshed with social experimentation. It was a burgeoning culture where flourishing iconoclasm promoted new ways of thinking about government systems and social life. Throughout the period, the Bolsheviks passed legislation that led to a variety of progressive reforms such as legalized abortion, equal pay for equal work, the removal of religious sanctions on marriage, and relaxed divorce laws. Of course, the goal of these provisions stemmed from the aspiration to appeal to women and liberate them through Bolshevization. After all, most in the Bolshevik Party considered women as the most oppressed class (as well as children). But that didn’t mean all women supported them. To contend with some of the initial disharmony between women and Bolshevik power, Krupskaya and Kollontai reached women through Zhenotdel, aimed at resolving the conflict between traditional life and socialist life. The woman question resurfaced as a major topic of concern in 1919–20. In general, the crux of the discourse centred on labour, organizing, and gender politics. Put simply, the central question revolved around whether women should organize separately from men, or in common with them. In response, Kollontai and Krupskaya called for specific women’s sections of the Bolshevik Party to make sure that revolutionaries in the women’s section could advance their interests independently and alongside male leaders. More importantly, a synchronous approach would ensure that the 30 Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 79–82. 31 It is important to note that other parties like the Mensheviks (or “Whites”) also partook in the forceful occupation of farms during the Russian Civil War. Both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks fought to control rural Russia.

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women’s sections were operating in tandem with the Bolshevik Party across the country. Unbeknownst to most in the intelligentsia, the women’s sections ended up securing some of the most important political goals for the party that led to nationwide rescaling and socialist institutionalization. Not only did Zhenotdel maximize the number of women involved in the Bolshevik Party, but the organization also enhanced women’s vocational agency. Delegates were sent to various provinces to take notes on women’s needs. From there, many worked collectively alongside the Central Committee members to enhance the quality of life for Soviet citizens in terms of welfare and professionalization.32 For instance, in 1921 unemployed women numbered sixty-two percent, and by 1925 were 32.6 percent.33 Additionally, a recorded 416,900 women worked in factories in 1923, while in 1929 over 800,000 were in factory production.34 In 1919, the Bolshevik Central Committee officially established Zhenotdel as a political line of defence for the Bolsheviks. However, it was a liberating force during the Civil War for a variety of reasons. Mainly, it drew peasant and urban women out of traditional life and towards the mobilization of state-wide development, much of which was framed as an achievement of human rights for women. Modernization of the countryside was a political aim for the Bolsheviks, and women helped in the process tenfold. The women’s sections also provided a platform for women to have a say in the party’s political direction. While some Bolshevik men viewed Zhenotdel as a “trivial” club at times, it proved quite successful in helping to garner support for the Bolsheviks in their battle against Mensheviks and other competing factions. One of the main things that Zhenotdel took the lead in was the implementation of Kollontai’s plan outlined in Communism and the Family. Many canteens, childcare facilities, and public centres were opened up by the organization to provide public offerings so that women could engage in work and other professionally-related tasks. The private aspects of household responsibility were meant to disappear. However, in order for that to happen, a function of the state was necessary to deliver such promises. Not only did the services of Zhenotdel employ women, but they also assisted more vulnerable segments of the Russian population.35 It was Krupskaya and Kollontai’s collective call for women to have their own set 32

Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 111. 33 Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, 112–14. 34 Ibid. 35 Anne McShane, “Women at the Heart of the Revolution,” Jacobin. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/alexandra-kollontai-soviet-womens-rightsrevolution-zhenotdel-uzbekistan.

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of demands but organize in solidarity with the broader working class that not only helped spare resolve during the Civil War crisis, but also provided new rights and agency to women. The central issue of family and gender within the organization fulfilled the Bolshevik aim of nation building.36

Conclusion Krupskaya and Kollontai were astute observers of their time. They prompted thinking on the intersectionality of class and gender, and spawned new programs that aimed at the professionalization and betterment of women. Moreover, they transformed the development of the Soviet state and influenced the political landscape in major ways. Yet, women like Krupskaya remain in obscurity within a great deal of Soviet history despite playing a central part in its development. Her work with Kollontai informed the direction of the Bolshevik Party and also imprinted so much of what became of the Soviet Union. The fact that they both drew a vision of a utopian future where women could impact the scheme of state construction is unique to Russian history. Their contributions to education and family policy were ground breaking and shaped a variety of disciplinary subjects within contemporary gender studies and modern socialist feminism. More importantly, scholars should consider Krupskaya and Kollontai for their activism and courage of envisioning a society built on the values of solidarity, accommodation, and equality, and the power they invested to impact the political consciousness of millions.

36 Throughout the mid-1920s, Zhenotdel faced numerous cuts in funding due to the implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which sought to allow private small-scale enterprises to operate. Despite this, the organization persisted as much as it could. Many women such as Kollontai and Krupskaya denounced the NEP’s intention to defund crucial women’s services, calling it a “drawback into capitalism.” Even worse, in 1930, after Stalin claimed power, Zhenotdel was completely disbanded.

PART THREE: WOMEN IN GLOBAL NONVIOLENT MOVEMENTS

CHAPTER EIGHT CIRCLES OF THREAT AND SPHERES OF POWER: REFLECTIONS ON WOMEN’S NONVIOLENT MOBILIZATION SELINA GALLO-CRUZ

Women, Visibility, and Empowerment Sociologically, a threat can be understood to consist of both perceived and real dimensions. Based on biased or otherwise skewed perceptions of reality, actors often fail to accurately identify exactly who poses a risk to their security and power. For women living under the patriarchy, their advancements may be considered a threat to male power, or they may be altogether dismissed as incapable of participating in mutually shared opportunities. In situations of domestic violence, women may be targeted because of insecurities in the minds of their abusers that are often unrelated to women’s real power to challenge them (as sexist entitlement over women perceived as the vulnerable “second sex”), or because of an enduring patriarchal culture that has normalized violence as a regular form of emotional expression for men against their female partners.1 Thus, women may experience real dangers to their security in contexts where they are perceived to pose a threat and where they are not – tremendously disproportionate rates of violence against women substantiate this reality. It is also sometimes the case, particularly in the political realm, that the sexist 1

Kristin L. Anderson, “Gender, Status, and Domestic Violence: an Integration of Feminist and Family Approaches,” Journal of Marriage and Family 59, no. 3 (1997): 655–69; Bonnie E. Carlson, “Causes and Maintenance of Domestic Violence: an Ecological Analysis,” Social Service Review 58, no. 4 (1984): 569–87; Amy Marin and Nancy Felipe Russo, “Feminist Perspectives on Male Violence Against Women,” in Points & Counterpoints: Controversial Relationship and Family Issues in the 21st Century (an Anthology), edited by M. Coleman and L. Ganong, 97–105 (Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Co., 2003).

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dismissal of women’s capabilities offers a measure of protection even when women do pose a threat to dominant power structures. My research on women and nonviolence aims at disentangling the relationship between women’s political visibility (or lack thereof) in a field of political conflict and the socially constructed perceptions of threat that women may be subject to or avoid, depending on their status in a given sociohistorical context. In prior research, I documented some of the ways that political invisibility, a historically enduring political disadvantage for women, has also been serendipitously and effectively used for women’s mobilization in periods of violent repression. In many historical examples of women in nonviolent organizing in the United States, women have used their presumed political weaknesses to organize in unseen ways, and therefore been undeterred by men in power.2 Interdisciplinary studies of women’s movements uncover myriad but gendered ways in which women engage with resources, take advantage of political opportunities, pursue and access power, occupy matrices of intersecting and sometimes contradictory social roles and expectations, and move across social fields with sometimes drastic shifts to their status and authority.3 My interest in women’s savvy use of political invisibility led me to comparatively assess three histories of resistance against state violence in Argentina, the former Yugoslavia, and Liberia.4 From this analysis, I conclude that political invisibility presents a powerful paradox for minoritized peoples. On one hand, citizenship can only be fully realized through political acknowledgement, recognition, and respect and formal inclusion in the polity. On the other, my study of these women’s movements and how they emerged during highly repressive periods of state terror also reveals how political invisibility provided an advantageous shield from repression. Being disregarded and deemed irrelevant to the “real” conflict, women’s movements mobilized; they extended their networks beyond state borders to gain powerful allies in international human-rights arenas; and, most importantly, they became authoritative facilitators of new knowledges,

2

Selina Gallo-Cruz, “American Mothers of Nonviolence: Action and the Politics of Erasure in Women’s Nonviolent Activism,” in 100 Years of the Nineteenth Amendment: an Appraisal of US Women’s Activism, edited by Holly J. McCammon and Lee Ann Banaszak (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 3 Selina Gallo-Cruz, “More Powerful Forces? Gender, Nonviolence, and Mobilization,” Sociology Compass (September 2016): 1–13. 4 Selina Gallo-Cruz, Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia (London: Routledge, 2021).

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skills, and resources for fighting for justice after war and rebuilding peaceful societies. The concept of “social threat” is operative in understanding women’s mobilizing power in these fields because those considered threatening to regime power have been systematically killed. The women were considered powerless and therefore assumed not to be threatening to regime power and military prowess. But all political conflicts unfold in historically, socially, and politically unique environments, and certainly many more possibilities abound for women’s mobilization pathways. I present here a diagram of intersecting continua of political visibility and threat location that provides one way of making sense of how context-specific roles create varied resistance opportunities for women. Fig. 8.1 below depicts this relationship. Women’s social roles are varied and overlap in unique ways in different fields. Gender may be mitigated by class, ethnicity, or political-ideological affiliation, but this confluence of women’s social roles also maps onto the intersection of political visibility and perceived or actual threats to power in a field-specific interrelation. Fig. 8.1. Women’s social roles and threat location

Below, I briefly explore and compare the differences that have emerged for women in three distinct conflictual fields: Chile, El Salvador, and Palestine. The degrees to which women occupying different roles enjoy political regard and visibility, or are targeted as threatening to regime power

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– or experience a combination of the two – help to explain the strategies women’s movements have embraced and their variable outcomes. While space does not permit me to discuss the developments of women’s movements in each of these countries in great depth, I draw on existing scholarship to illustrate meaningful comparable patterns and differences across the three cases. In comparison, these three examples illustrate the relationship between visibility and threat in a given conflictual field. For women’s groups presumed as threatening, visibility often increases the risk of violence. For women who are visible to states or other perpetrators of political violence but are presumed non-threatening to power, it may be possible to organize off the radar of repression in political “free spaces.”5 The same freedoms are accorded to women with less political visibility, but for those whose actions are either actually threatening to political power or even those that could be perceived as such, protection from visibility will be vital to the endurance of their mobilization. And those women whose actions are neither threatening nor visible to political power may still be foundational to the sustenance of social movement as their visions of a better world may also contribute to the “cognitive liberation” – the realization that change is possible through collective action – necessary for social change.

Visibility and Gendered Threat in Context Women’s Movements in Chile The 1970s was an era of clashing political ideologies in Chile, a country with a longstanding and strong democratic culture among a large labouring class, many of whom worked to provide highly valued minerals for the global industrial economy. Labour militancy dates to the 1800s in Chile, but in more recent times, since the 1930s, union activity had quadrupled and the number of labour strikes doubled.6 This activity had widespread popular support, including from many working-class women, who mobilized in increasing numbers over these decades for a revolutionary redistribution of wealth to benefit their families and communities. But elites benefiting from the wealth extracted through private industry, including upper-middle-class women who enjoyed the privileges and luxuries of this wealth, also mobilized against the country’s growing populism. 5 Francesca Polletta, “Free Spaces in Collective Action,” Theory Soc 28 (1999): 1– 38. 6 Simon Collier and William F. Slater, A History of Chile, 1808–2002 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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For many years, while a popular movement pushed for leadership that would engage in a “Chileanization” of industry and the economy and redistribute wealth, elites conceded incremental reforms as a means to stave off widespread revolutionary changes.7 Nevertheless, in 1970, Salvador Allende Gossens, a lifelong militant socialist, was elected president by a narrow margin and supported by congressional vote. And while the poor, militant labour and a broad base of the working class deepened their support for Allende and claimed to see immediate expansions of support following his election, a global panic at a communist leader being democratically elected in Chile8 and the immediate withdrawal of elite support from Chilean institutions also occurred. The country saw: a ninety million dollar drop in bank deposits and a sixty percent reduction of stock investments; incidents of terror in an attempt to provoke a coup, culminating in the assassination of a high-ranking military officer9; the hoarding of essential supplies, forcing Allende to establish rations; the embargo of raw materials from foreign investors to disrupt key industries; and the infiltration of labour and student movements with the purposes of creating discord and undermining popular support for Allende.10 When all of this failed to diminish widespread democratic socialism, a coup d’état was launched by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte with the backing of the United States.11 In the following years, Pinochet inflicted a reign of terror on his own people, with over forty thousand detained, tortured, or killed by the regime.12 Chilean women experienced all of these waves of mobilization, conflict, and repression in gendered ways and embraced challenged prescribed gender roles in both visible and invisible ways, perceived politically as both threatening and non-threatening – the latter sometimes thanks to the use of political “free spaces” where they could mobilize off the radar of regime repression. The deep class divide that characterized this conflict meant that women were pitted against each other in starkly opposed class positions – 7

Ian Roxborough, Phil O’Brien, and Jackie Roddick, Chile: the State and Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1977). 8 Francisco Javier Alvear and Jairo Lugo-Ocando, “When Geopolitics Became Moral Panic: El Mercurio and the Use of International News as Propaganda Against Salvador Allende’s Chile (1970–1973),” Media History 22, no. 1 (2016): 1–19. 9 Peter A. Goldberg, “The Politics of the Allende Overthrow in Chile,” Political Science Quarterly 91, no. 1 (1975): 93–116. 10 Patricio Guzmán, La batalla de Chile: la lucha de un pueblo sin armas (Brooklyn: Icarus Films Home Video, 1975). 11 Mark Ensalaco, Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). 12 Clifford Krauss, “Shadows of Torment: Pinochet Case Reviving Voices of the Tortured,” New York Times (January 3, 2000).

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before, during, and after the coup, throughout the dictatorship, and in the movement toward democratization in the late 1980s. The inner circle of “women’s social roles” depicted in Fig. 8.1 above can therefore be conceptualized as those roles defined by both the traditional and socially expected positions of gender and class positions. Visible gender roles perceived as non-threatening to powerholders fit neatly into the dual roles to which Chilean women were traditionally relegated: responsibility for the care of the family, the community, and the sons of the nation, and entitlement to protection within a patriarchal family, community, or state.13 Visible roles that heightened the threat power of women – depicted in the top left quadrant of Fig. 8.1 – were those that occupied overlapping class and political-ideological positions. In the electoral standoff between popular democracy and elite conservatism, socialist women mobilized to vote were visibly threatening to power. In the repression later unleashed by the coup d’état, young socialist women in particular were visible targets of the Pinochet regime, whose military arrested, detained, and tortured them alongside young male targets of the regime, but employed special forms of gendered torture against young women, systematically raping and brutalizing them sexually with objects of torture.14 In the quadrant of women who were threatening but with a lower political visibility, rural women sustained their communities through unrecognized and often uncompensated farm work. Working-class and rural women supported their families through unseen and unpaid domestic work,15 and their non-cooperation with elite political forces, organizing community mutual aid despite sabotage and imposed rationing, remained an unseen but looming political threat to wealthy elites.16 These women, mistakenly considered irrelevant to the conflict and non-threatening, took on leadership roles in community neighbourhood associations, distributing food, health care, and other goods and services that were essential to the 13 Amelia Guy-Meakin, “Augusto Pinochet and the Support of Chilean Right Wing Women,” E-International Relations (September 17, 2012). https://www.e-ir.info/ 2012/09/17/augusto-pinochet-and-the-support-of-chilean-right-wing-women. 14 Katia Chornik, “Music and Torture in Chilean Detention Centers: Conversations with an Ex-Agent of Pinochet’s Secret Police,” The World of Music 2, no. 1 (2013): 51–65; Danilo Freire, John Meadowcroft, David Skarbek, and Eugenia Guerrero, “Deaths and Disappearances in the Pinochet Regime: a New Dataset” (2019). https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/vqnwu. 15 Patricia Garrett, “Women and Agrarian Reform: Chile, 1964–1973,” Sociologia Ruralis 22, no. 1 (1982): 17–29. 16 Guzmán, La batalla de Chile.

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base of the movement.17 Towards the end of the Pinochet dictatorship, Chilean women strategically embraced “maternal” roles approved of by state ideology (within the women’s associations Pinochet approved of) to create free spaces for themselves to organize a democratic movement.18 During this time, women in exile gained international networks and resources, and a general transformation of feminist consciousness was underway among women of all classes in Chile. This combination of freespace organizing, expanded collective consciousness, and skills among women led to the cross-party and diverse Mujeres por la Vida [Women for Life], which would become the reference group uniting democratic efforts across Chile, in street protests, organization building, and formal diplomatic political pressure on the state.19

Women’s Resistance in El Salvador The civil war in El Salvador during the 1980s was in many ways characteristic of the shared historical origins of conflict in Latin America – an unstable economy set in place by: the legacy of colonial rule that established a system of dependence on the global market; elite control and an army inclined towards political rule; an unequal distribution of land and wealth; and widespread impoverishment.20 And yet, the civil war in El Salvador proved to be one of the deadliest in Latin America.21 Unlike Chile, El Salvador was ridden with military coups and violence throughout the early twentieth century. The country experienced seven coups between 1930 and 1979, and two major popular revolutionary movements in 1932 and 1944. The constitution changed five times over the course of this period,

17 Camilla Townsend, “Refusing to Travel La Via Chilena: Working Class Women in Allende’s Chile,” Journal of Women’s History 4, no. 3 (1993): 43–63. 18 Rita Noonan, “Women Against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in Chile’s Transition to Democracy,” Sociological Forum 10, no. 1 (1995): 81–111; Georgina Waylen, “Rethinking Women’s Political Participation and Protest: Chile 1970–1990,” Political Studies XL (1992): 299–314. 19 Lisa Baldez, “Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition in Chile, Brazil, East Germany, and Poland,” Comparative Politics 35, no. 3 (2003): 253–72. 20 William M. LeoGrande and Carla Anne Robbins, “Oligarchs and Officers: the Crisis in El Salvador,” Foreign Affairs 58 (1979): 1084–103. 21 Hugh Byrne, El Salvador’s Civil War: a Study of Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992); William Deane Stanley, The Protection Racket State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Mario Lungo Uclés, El Salvador in the Eighties: Counterinsurgency and Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

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and, during the era of violence in the 1980s, five different national elections were held.22 New tensions began to emerge in the 1970s when several parties came together for liberal reform, but lost to a former army colonel in a fraudulent election. Some supporters of the coalition moved towards revolutionary organizing, while popular civic organizations, student and teacher unions, and laborers continued to press for legal reforms. The military responded with repression.23 In late 1979, a new coup overthrew the already militaryestablished presidency and installed a junta led by several young military leaders. Resistance to the oligarchy and military rule preceding this takeover inspired the creation of a number of different revolutionary organizations, which were now considering guerrilla warfare to advance the cause of the rural poor, moving from nonviolent to violent action. These organizations joined forces against the new display of military prowess, uniting in the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).24 The FMLN was a formidable opponent. It had vast political networks that covered nearly onethird of the country, and its guerrilla approach drew on diverse military, diplomatic, and political strategies,25 while their sympathies reached deep into the hearts of the disenfranchised, who pledged moral allegiance with their cause and provided crucial resources and popular support.26 The conflict was complicated, in part, by the influential role played by the United States and the international business community. Believing a communist revolution was likely, the US poured millions of dollars in military aid into the country, despite growing reports of atrocities, such as: the public assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero, who had worked to defend the poor; the brutal killing of four US churchwomen; and many other documented death-squad assassinations.27 Perhaps the worst period unfolded 22

Uclés, El Salvador in the Eighties. Grace Livingstone, America’s Backyard: the United States and Latin American from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). 24 Alberto Martín Álvarez, From Revolutionary War to Democratic Revolution: The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (Berlin: Berghof Conflict Research Series, 2011). 25 Joaquín M. Chávez, “How Did the Civil War in El Salvador End?” The American Historical Review 120, no. 5 (2015): 1784–97. 26 Elizabeth Wood, “The Emotional Benefits of Insurgency in El Salvador,” in The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, edited by Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper (Malden: Blackwell Wiley, 2015), 143–52. 27 Cindy Arnson, “Appendices: Foreign Military Assistance to El Salvador,” NACLA Newsletter (2007). https://nacla.org/article/appendices-foreign-military-assistance-elsalvador. 23

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under the US-trained, brutal military leader Roberto D’Aubuisson, backed by plainclothes paramilitary assassins who regularly disappeared and killed anyone labelled or suspected as subversive.28 The junta presidency ended in 1982, and several subsequent presidents continued the fight against the revolutionary movement. By the civil war’s end, in a country of five million, about one in every fifty-six had lost their lives.29 Another one million were displaced, internally or across borders into Mexico and other Central American countries or the United States.30 The violence lasted into the 1990s, until finally, in 1992, under the watch of international mediators including the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church, the FMLN and President Alfredo Cristiani came together and signed the Chapultepec Peace Accords. This agreement was met with an enormous sense of relief, but failed to usher in much diminishment of the de facto political and economic repression. The military was purged after the accords, but no officers were brought to trial. The final report of the UN Truth Commission found that military and far-right paramilitary death squads were responsible for at least eighty-five percent of the killings.31 Land and wealth remained in the hands of the very few, who held on to political power primarily through the ARENA party established by D’Aubuisson in the years of violent repression.32 It is difficult to separate the visible from the invisible in such a violent period of militarized repression. So many people of diverse social identities were collapsed into the category of subversive enemies of the state, citizens of every age and of different class and profession: students, teachers, laborers, peasants, farmers, artists, lawyers, journalists, businessmen and businesswomen, street vendors, and members of religious orders considered

28 Mark Peceny and William D. Stanley, “Counterinsurgency in El Salvador,” Politics and Society 38, no. 1 (2010): 67–94. 29 Amelia Hoover Green and Patrick Ball, “Civilian Killings and Disappearances during Civil War in El Salvador (1980–1992),” Demographic Research 41. No. 27 (2019): 781–814; Elizabeth Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 30 James Dunkerley, The Pacification of Central America: Political Change in the Isthmus, 1987–1993 (London: Verso, 1994). 31 United Nations, “Truth Commission: El Salvador” (1993). https://www.usip.org/publications/1992/07/truth-commission-el-salvador. 32 Livingstone, America’s Backyard; Diana Villiers Negroponte, “Remembering El Salvador’s Peace Accord: Why Was That Peace Elusive?” Brookings (January 28, 2012). https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2012/01/19/remembering-elsalvadors-peace-accord-why-was-that-peace-elusive.

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in sympathy with the poor.33 Still, the deeply gendered nature of violence against women, and men’s expected and normalized perpetration of it, meant that resistance fell along the continua of visibility and both perceived and actual threats to power in notable ways, some comparable to those experienced by Chilean women, but also in ways unique to the nature of the inequality, conflict, and power in El Salvador. Women stepped into the sphere of visible, threatening targets of the military repression when they openly adopted new social roles as revolutionary combatants. Women who worked with the FMLN were directly targeted and arrested, detained, and tortured in gendered ways, almost inevitably being raped and often gangraped by bands of soldiers. In addition, many were killed or disappeared.34 Other groups of women worked within the sphere of threat to military power but with much less visibility. These included the tenedoras of the FMLN, the support women, who were wholly invested in feeding and caring for soldiers, using their invisibility as mail and message carriers and doing the behind-the-scenes work of logistical organizing.35 Part of their lesser visibility was kept in place by the deep sense of patriarchal division of labour espoused even within the FMLN. Although women made up about thirty percent of the active combatant force, this was a shift in normal gender roles because of the perceived necessity to arm themselves against the rightwing military and paramilitary state.36 While even the roles of organizing behind and alongside male revolutionary leadership represented some mobility for Salvadoran women,37 the prevention of women assuming the higher-level positions they felt themselves capable of was a common complaint among female participants in the FMLN as well as those who worked with international solidarity groups that also privileged male leadership.38 33

Lynne Stephan, Women and Social Movements in Latin America: Power from Below (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). 34 Dara Kay Cohen, Rape During Civil War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016); Krishna Kumar, Women and Civil War: Impact, Organizations, and Action (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Press, 2001). 35 Camille Pampell Conaway and Salome Martinez, Adding Value: Women’s Contributions to Reintegration and Reconstruction in El Salvador (Hunt Alternative Fund: Women Waging Peace, 2004). 36 Stephan, Women and Social Movements in Latin America. 37 N. Vasquez, “Motherhood, Sexuality in Times of War: the Case of Women Militants of the FMLN in El Salvador,” Reproductive Health Matters 5, no. 9 (1997): 139–46. 38 Julie Meyer, “Breaking Many Taboos: Women in Solidarity,” Crossroads 40 (1994): 11–14.

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It is important to underscore that, in El Salvador as well as Palestine, the sphere of who is seen as threatening to military power can shift in wildly irrational ways. Violence against subversives became so far-reaching among some military and paramilitary operations that the range of suspected subversives could expand tremendously at the whim of commanders and soldiers. The worst case recorded in El Salvador was the El Mozote Massacre, carried out by the army in 1981, when soldiers killed more than eight hundred peasants in a village, mostly elderly people, women, and children.39 In this horrific mass killing, the largest known in Latin America in modern times, the army moved in with a counterinsurgency-training mindset, mistaking a village that had been known for its neutrality as one sympathetic to the revolution. Women who were politically invisible and therefore considered nonthreatening and irrelevant to the conflict were able to mobilize in remarkable ways in many other instances, however. From a very early time in the conflict, a group of mothers and other female relatives of the disappeared came together under the guidance of Archbishop Romero to publicly denounce the disappearances and demand information on and the safe return of their loved ones. These women, known as Las COMADRES [The Godmothers], quickly grew in number to include rural and urban as well as poor, working-class, and middle-class participants.40 They immediately set about bold action, visiting all jails and barracks in the country. In their early status as nobodies vis-à-vis the real conflict, they were disregarded – soldiers denied the arrest of their loved ones and insisted they were not being held in any of their prisons. This was the general response they encountered even as they began marching with many priests and other religious votaries who supported them, and who subsequently began to be arrested, disappeared, tortured, and killed. In one town, five catechists who had supported the movement were skinned alive.41 Nevertheless, Las COMADRES navigated the boundaries of invisible and irrelevant and visible and threatening as their numbers and actions grew. In one statement,

39

Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mozote (New York: Vintage, 1994). Lynne Stephan, “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: the Merging of Feminine and Feminine Interests among El Salvador’s Mothers of the Disappeared (COMADRES),” American Ethnologist 22, no. 4 (1995): 807–27. 41 Jennifer Schirmer, “The Seeking of Truth and the Gendering of Consciousness: the CoMadres of El Salvador and the Conavigua Widows of Guatemala,” in “Viva”: Women in Popular Protest in Latin America, edited by Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, 30–64 (London: Routledge, 1993). 40

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the brutal military commander D’Aubuisson called them “phantom women,” but then threatened to eliminate them if they kept up their troublemaking.42 Women also played fundamental roles in movement building that went unseen as they fit neatly into the expected backstage-arena behaviour of women’s care work and domestic duty. Many of their community organizing and sustaining projects – providing food and clothing to refugees and victims of the war, for example – were done off the radar of perceived threat. Small income-generating projects, such as chicken farming, baking, craft production, establishing community kitchens and stores, providing day care, and resettlement support created vital resources for ongoing mobilization for the revolutionary movement.43 Furthermore, the war so devastated the lives of men targeted for military conscription (by the late 1980s about sixty percent of army soldiers had been conscripted) or by military operations44 that by its end over half the households in El Salvador were headed entirely by women.45 The war’s end also shifted the fields of visibility and threat for women, as the roles open to them expanded. Women who had spent time in Nicaragua during the war and had been in close proximity to the inner leadership of the FLMN gained in organizing skills and experience. Later, one of the prominent women’s organizations to emerge in El Salvador, DIGNAS, would model many of its efforts on women’s organizations in Nicaragua.46 Immediately following the peace process, women’s movements became focused on gaining political visibility – that is, gaining the respect, regard, and relevance to politics that would protect them from violence, among other benefits. Much of this work centred on: women’s mobility and representation in leadership; social and economic development; the consciousness-raising needed to combat the deep-seated ways the patriarchy held women back from social advancement; and combating, legally and socially, the rampant violence against women and girls that had become so deeply institutionalized in gendered relations.47 The period of the 1990s saw a plethora of women’s organizations develop as autonomous political 42

Ibid. Stephan, Women and Social Movements in Latin America. 44 War Resisters International, Country Report and Updates: El Salvador (April 30, 1998). https://wri-irg.org/en/programmes/world_survey/country_report/en/El %20Salvador. 45 Ana Isabel Garcia and Enrique Gomairiz, Mujeres Centroamericanas: Antes la Crisis, la Guerra, y el Proceso de Paz (San Jose, Costa Rica: FLACSO, 1989). 46 Stephan, Women and Social Movements in Latin America. 47 Charles T. Call, “Democratisation, War and State-Building: Constructing the Rule of Law in El Salvador,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35 (2003): 827–41. 43

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advocates that networked internationally and expanded nationally to carry on this work of shifting the field in favour of women’s political visibility and freedom from violence and repression.

Palestinian Women’s Movements Advocates the world over decry the expulsion of Palestinians from their land as a crime of war that should be punished under international law, a historical experience Palestinians refer to as al Nakba, or “the catastrophe.”48 The Palestinian movement continues to face seemingly insurmountable difficulties in heading off the expansion of Israeli settlements and ending the systematic violence against Palestinians. The UN endorsed the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, a move bound up with the complexities of providing safe haven for Jews following the Holocaust and the retreat of the UK from colonial control of Palestine, even as the UN pushed for decolonization in other parts of the world. This move gave international legitimation to a decades-long Zionist mobilization for the construction of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The doors had been opened to Jewish settlement of the region in 1917 with the UK “Balfour Declaration,” which promised colonial support for the transfer of Palestinian lands to Jewish rule, equipping newly arriving Jews with an army, and facilitating their purchase of lands formerly inhabited by Palestinians. Even before the formal establishment of Israel, this meant a displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinians, who immediately rose up in resistance, some calling for nonviolent diplomatic negotiations with the British, others for armed revolt against the landgrabs in their homeland. By 1936, a full Arab rebellion had erupted against the British-enforced settler-colonialism.49 In 1947, the UN proposed a partitioning of the land into two states, but this gave newly arrived Jews fifty-five percent of Palestine – a significant expansion from the five percent they held at that time. Despite Palestinians’ and other Arabs’ rejection of this proposal, not only was it carried out but the newly established state of Israel subsequently pushed for more land and expanded borders.50 The United States and the Soviet Union both recognized the state of Israel, and overnight Palestinians were left stateless and under a new system of settler-colonialism. Since that time, over a dozen major conflicts and wars have broken out related to this crisis, including with border nations. Notable among these are: the Six Day War in June 48

Rawan Damen, Al Nakba (Al Jazeera, 2008). Ibid. 50 Yonatan Mendel, The Creation of Israeli Arabic: Security and Politics in Arabic Studies in Israel (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). 49

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1967, in which Israel annexed still more territory, including taking over the West Bank from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and Sinai and Gaza from Egypt; a series of wars at the Lebanon border attacking Palestinian organizers, chief among them the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah; and the first and second intifadas – Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Throughout this period, a longstanding war akin to the “low-intensity conflicts” of Central America has been waged against the Palestinian people. International support for Israel has been strong, despite the passage of nearly eighty UN resolutions critical of Israel’s actions related to this conflict,51 over a dozen major international attempts at peace talks,52 and a growing diaspora and international solidarity movement to support the most peaceful resolution possible while restoring Palestinian human rights.53 Despite public condemnations of new settlements in Palestinian lands, the United States continues to provide Israel over three billion dollars in economic and military aid annually.54 Tensions persist in the region as Palestinians report continued repression. Israel continues to build settlements in areas considered illegal under the Geneva Convention.55 In addition to the ongoing displacements, bulldozing of homes, and attacks on Palestinian civilians, the Israeli military has: deprived Palestinians of their freedom of assembly for over half a century56; restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement with hundreds of checkpoints that interrupt daily travel to work and home, even as Palestinians form the base of essential workers in Israel57; continually disrupted children’s schooling in Palestine58; restricted access to crucial learning supplies for 51

Jeremy R. Hammond, “Rogue State: Israeli Violations of U. N. Security Council Resolutions,” Foreign Policy Journal (January 27, 2010). https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/01/27/rogue-state-israeli-violationsof-u-n-security-council-resolutions. 52 Omar M. Dajani, “Shadow or Shade? The Role of International Law in Palestinian-Israeli Peace Talks,” Yale Journal of International Law 32, no. 1 (2007): 61–124. 53 Helen Lindholm Schulz and Juliane Hammer, The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland (London: Routledge, 2003). 54 Stephan Zunes, “Why the US Supports Israel,” Foreign Policy in Focus (May 1, 2002). https://fpif.org/why_the_us_supports_israel. 55 United Nations, Human Rights Situation in Palestine and other Occupied Territories, Human Rights Council Report, 22nd Session (February 7, 2013). 56 Human Rights Watch, Israel and Palestine: 2018 (HRW World Reports, 2019). 57 William Booth and Sufian Taha, “A Palestinian’s Daily Commute through an Israeli Checkpoint,” Washington Post (May 25, 2017). 58 Azed Izhiman, “Palestinian Children’s Education Deeply Impacted by ‘Interference’ around West Bank Schools, UN Warns,” UN News (January 30, 2019).

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university students and continually harassed and threatened their arrest59; and provided a situation in which Palestinians generally live under the threat of losing their homes, a pressure exacerbated by the denial of their right to settle in their own lands – over ninety-eight percent of Palestinian applications for building permits are denied by Israel,60 and there remains a living lineage of displaced Palestinians that is over half a century old. In the face of this oppression, women’s movements have been a formidable force of resistance. Palestinian women share some of the same spheres of political visibility and invisibility with Palestinian men as members of a subjugated minority, but they also occupy gendered social roles and locations that position them to access unique mobilizing resources and strategies. Among those roles, both visible and threatening, there are a few mentions of Palestinian women taking up arms in the early histories of resistance to British and Jewish (and later Israeli) attacks and incursions. Some guerrilla organizations in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan opened up training to women in the 1970s, and women have sporadically joined in isolated violent attacks, like suicide bombings. However, the broader record shows women’s resistance in the Palestinian cause has historically been and continues to be non-militarized.61 Locating Palestinian women’s resistance along the continua of visibility and threat involves several interacting considerations. First, the sphere of who is considered threatening to the ongoing project of Israeli settlercolonialism includes all Palestinian women on the basis of their ethnicity. There is also a long history of Israeli women protesting new settlements and resisting state violence and the repression of Palestinians,62 although this history has also been criticized for its asymmetric power dynamics.63 Second, the circles of women’s roles overlap with other social roles, in this case that of being Palestinian as well as a variety of others, such as: being secular, Christian, Muslim, or other; being rural or urban; belonging to 59 Imran Khan, “Israel Arrests Palestinian University Students,” al Jazeera (December 7, 2019). https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/israel-arrests-palestinian-universitystudents-191207114857636.html. 60 Hagar Shezaf, “Israel Rejects over 98% of Palestinian Building Permit Requests in West Bank’s Area C,” Haaretz (January 21, 2020). 61 Orayb Aref Najjar, Portraits of Palestinian Women (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992). 62 Michelle Gawerc, Prefiguring Peace: Israeli-Palestinian Peacebuilding Partnerships (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012); Sophie Richter-Devroe, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2018). 63 Gawerc, Prefiguring Peace.

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particular geographic regions and/or refugee camps or the diaspora; and one’s educational status and class location. In ways comparable to women’s intersectional oppression in El Salvador, it is said that Palestinian women stand at the intersection of the matrices of “tradition” and “progress,” women’s and national rights, different ideals about feminism within the practice of Islam, and the insoluble battles between human and political needs that the occupation has imposed on the Palestinian people.64 Relatedly, visibility and threat can differ sharply by not only the location of movement claims makers, but also the perspective of different powerholders who interact with the movement in a political field. Within the Palestinian women’s movement, for example, some forms of activism and feminist consciousness-raising have been criticized by Islamists as going against tradition, while fractures in the Palestinian women’s movement have also proven to be at times instigated by Israeli forces,65 as the movement’s fragmentation has also generally benefited the suppression of Palestinian mobilization.66 Palestinian women resist visibly through a long history of street protests, vigils, marches, interventions on the destruction of their property and confiscation of their land, and other actions.67 As early as the 1930s, Palestinian women helped to organize and take part in sit-ins against the British occupation.68 They have taken on leadership roles in both student and popular protests, and led powerful organizations like the Palestinian Federation of Women’s Action Committees.69 Visible and threatening acts for Palestinian women also include such acts as defying the restrictions on Palestinians’ activities at al-Aqsa Mosque at al-Haram al-Sharif, an important holy site in Islam (and one sacred to all three Abrahamic religious traditions) – one group of women was outlawed by the Israeli state for doing so in 2015.70 Hundreds of women also regularly participate in female-only “great Marches of Return and Breaking of the Siege” to commemorate the 64

Maria Holt, “Palestinian Women and the Intifada: An Explanation of Images and Realities,” in Women in Politics in the Third World, edited by Haleh Ashfar, 171– 85 (London: Routledge, 1996). 65 Damen, Al Nakba. 66 IৢlƗত JƗd, Palestinian Women’s Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2018). 67 Richter-Devroe, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine. 68 Amal Kawar, Daughters of Palestine: Leading Women of the Palestinian National Movement (New York: State University Press, 1996). 69 Frances Susan Hasso, Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005). 70 Sarah Ihmoud, “Murabata: the Politics of Staying in Place,” Feminist Studies 45, no. 2–3 (2019): 512–40.

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1976 killings of Palestinians protesting land confiscations, and have experienced violence at the hands of soldiers patrolling the marches, with over 1,800 women injured.71 Women have also formally organized in ways considered less threatening but still visible to the opposition and their allies. In the first intifada, women organized four committees of the “new women’s movement” in Palestine, each addressing the needs for transformation in the areas of national struggle, social and cultural development, and economic opportunity and rights.72 Representatives of these committees later held a public press conference in 1992 to contest the threats made against them for their transgression of the boundaries delineating what were considered traditionally male roles in the public sphere.73 Palestinian women successfully mobilized for suffrage in the 1970s, gaining a stronger standing within the Palestine Liberation Organization.74 These seemingly formal and diplomatic acts can easily be targeted as threatening, however. Several of the organizers of formal Palestinian women’s peace organizations interviewed by sociologist Michelle Gawerc reported being targeted with violence, their offices being burned down or shot at, and a number of threats made to their work.75 Much of the work of women’s resistance in Palestine may go unseen while still threatening the asymmetrical military state powers they oppose. The understanding that “existence is resistance” in a state that wants you gone is widespread among Palestinian women. These women see any act of surviving and thriving as a move resisting their erasure. These acts include flying the Palestinian flag, farming their land, working and building a life for themselves, travelling, enjoying time with each other, celebrating and living in a community, and maintaining hope for their futures.76

Women’s Social Location and Nonviolent Strategies Scholars of women’s nonviolent movements have cautioned against making blanket assumptions about resistance works in any given field of

71

United Nations, “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Human Rights Council 40th Session (February 25, 2019). 72 Eileen S. Kuttab, “Palestinian Women in the Intifada: Fighting on Two Fronts,” Arab Studies Quarterly 15, no. 2 (1993): 69–98. 73 Holt, “Palestinian Women and the Intifada.” 74 JƗd, Palestinian Women’s Activism. 75 Gawerc, Prefiguring Peace. 76 Ibid.; Richter-Devroe, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine.

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conflict. Ray’s work77 on women’s movements in Bombay and Calcutta (now more broadly recognized as Mumbai and Kolkata) helps to distinguish between the political and protest fields, and disentangle the relational dynamics that govern their interaction. In Ray’s study, we come to understand that women’s movements and the strategies and tactics they devise must contend with the enduring historical and institutional legacies of each field as they also navigate the political and ideological economies of inequality and conflict that impinge on women’s lives. Feminist scholars have also pushed back against the male gaze of nonviolence studies which pursue general laws of strategic and tactical efficacy while failing to account for the very different social worlds that women inhabit and contend with. Women not only have different forms of access to different kinds of social, political, and economic resources, but also often embrace alternative value systems and envision and work towards goals that differ from those defined by aggressive and eliminative patriarchal politics.78 Gendered experiences and insights flow into a river of courage in nonviolent movements that are elided in the canon of big-action, storm-the-palace events.79 For these reasons, women’s nonviolent movements must be given fieldspecific attention. If we were to sketch a version of Fig. 8.1 for each of the movements surveyed above, the circle of women’s social roles would lie in varied locations and, within each movement, they would shift over time, as the field of conflict also shifts. There would be variation in both perceived and actual threat, and this variation could involve a number of contending groups in power and vying for power or empowerment and transformation. For working-class women in Chile, democratic socialism would position them in visible spheres of threats to power, and the ways in which they either embraced or challenged traditional roles expected of women could also shift their actions into the spheres of less visible and less threatening. To add positionality to the perception of threat, we could sketch the location for the conservative elite women’s movements, with different results. These women came out in the streets banging pots and pans against popular democracy, strategically engaging with tropes of domesticity to shame President Allende and his military supporters.80 The circle of how their roles situated their actions and the reception of those actions shifted into the 77 Raka Ray, Fields of Protest: Women’s Movements in India (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). 78 Kate McGuinness, “Gene Sharp’s Theory of Power: a Feminist Critique of Consent,” Journal of Peace Research 30, no. 1 (1993): 101–15. 79 Pam McAllister, This River of Courage: Generations of Women’s Resistance and Action (Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1991). 80 Baldez, “Women’s Movements and Democratic Transition.”

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visible and threatening, but instead of meeting with violence they gained respect. For women in El Salvador, much of their political work has been in the realm of the less visible and apparently less threatening, save for the notable exceptions to gendered military training that a select few gained in the FMLN and the late-stage advocacy work of the women of Las COMADRES. At the same time, indigeneity, or any action that earned them the label of “subversive,” shifted women into the sphere of visible and perceived as threatening. In the private sphere, in El Salvador as elsewhere, womanhood itself has been considered threatening to masculinity at any moment (or the subjugation of woman considered essential to asserting manhood), as women have so regularly experienced male violence and rape. For Palestinian women, it is hard to imagine what roles they could occupy to avoid the sphere of the perceived threat to power. Certainly, they move out of the visible and into the less visible roles in ways common to many women’s movements. When undertaking street actions their sphere would be both visible and threatening. Much of the other organizing work may be less visible, but again, the variability of perspectives can be shaped by the degree of police-state surveillance and offensives against targeted opponents. For this reason, the simplest and most everyday acts of Palestinian survival are celebrated as bold forms of resistance to settlercolonialism. And it is sociologically important to remember that political visibility is a matter of optics. Who has the power? What kind of power are they vying to maintain and extend? What is assumed to threaten that power? And who stands in those circles considered threatening? Power relations also position Israeli women organizing for peace differently than Palestinians, where the power asymmetries among and between them are stark, and the motivations, goals, and experiences of activism among each group of women also diverge, sometimes dynamically.81 These insights, while developed through a gendered lens, also help to broaden our understanding of how nonviolence works and can work, in different fields, for different actors, with varied outcomes. A first important insight for nonviolence studies builds on the long-understood mechanism of nonviolent power – that the “unexpected” can demobilize violent attack in a way that mimics jiu-jitsu.82 Here, I locate the unexpected in the blind spots of the oppressor that derive from long-held biases and assumptions about women’s capabilities and power in the polity. By mapping visibility, we can 81

Gawerc, Prefiguring Peace. Richard Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934); Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973).

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better locate the socio-cognitive sources of violence that show up in patterned ways targeting particular groups of labelled opponents. A second valuable insight is in better understanding the nature of the social construction of threat as related to these socio-cognitive barriers. Lakey83 outlines three ways that nonviolence can work to disarm violence and bring about a movement’s desired transformations: coercion, in which the ability to maintain the status quo is taken away from the oppressor; conversion, in which a movement compels a transformation of the oppressor’s stance; and persuasion, by which the movement effects a change of approach or policy in the oppressor, despite the oppressor’s actual stance or desired outcome. There are a number of social forces influencing each pathway to nonviolent success. Threat plays a role in persuasion if the balance of power is in favour of the target or oppressor not responding with violence to the nonviolent actor(s). However, my focus on women’s movements in contexts riven with extreme forms and high levels of violence reveals how threat works against nonviolent claims makers if their actions are too visible. While Lakey acknowledges that a third party may provide a balance of power tipping the outcome in a movement’s favour, the stealth of military regimes in working through “low-intensity” conflicts and paramilitary warfare means that perpetrators of violence may shift their repression into spheres with less visibility to manipulate the influence of third-party authority in the public field. For women, there is an added layer of the power politics of the field, as their worlds have historically been defined in the patriarchy as characterized by harsh segregation between public and private freedoms. The stories of women’s nonviolent movements, however, produce knowledge of how women may use creative forms of resistance in navigating this reality, while also working to dismantle it. Oftentimes, women’s movements are not vying for the same kinds of power that men assume of their political contenders.84 Rather, they work towards empowerment that can sustain communities, as opposed to a form of power that demands the domination of one political party, class, or ethnic group over another. For these reasons, the social construction of threat is central to understanding how different actors’ actions locate them in a field of violent conflict, and how this location can both positively and negatively impact the potential for transformation. Much more can be understood about the nature of the forces that shape variable visibility and both perceived and actual threat. Because women’s movements navigate multiple forms of marginality across political fields, 83

George Lakey, The Sociological Mechanisms of Nonviolent Action (Oakville: Canadian Peace Research Institute, 1968). 84 McGuinness, “Gene Sharp’s Theory of Power.”

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they offer an illuminating study of the relationship between visibility, threat, and mobilization.

CHAPTER NINE NONVIOLENCE FOR VIOLENCE? EXPLORING INNOVATIVE AND EMERGING MEASURES TO CURB WIFE BEATING IN AFRICA (FOCUS ON NIGERIA) DR OLAYINKA OLUWAKEMI ADENIYI AND OLUWASEYITAN AYOTUNDE SOLADEMI

Introduction Violence against women encompasses all forms of violence perpetrated against women because of their sex.1 This violence includes physical violence, sexual violence and abuse, psychological violence, economic violence, and all types of harassment. The list also includes rape and other forms of assault, child marriage, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, social norms that devalue women, and discriminatory laws that disenfranchise the sector.2 Intimate partner violence is arguably one of the most common types of violence experienced by the female gender everywhere.3 Violence against women is a human-rights violation, although it is culturally accepted as a norm in many societies. One form of violence against women is wife beating. Beating basically denotes a term which involves the unlawful beating of another person or any threatening touch to another person’s clothes or body, and when directed at the female in a 1

OECD, “Violence Against Women,” in Society at a Glance OECD Social Indicators (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2019). 2 Ibid. 3 Faith Owunari Benebo, Barbara Schumann, and Masoud Vaezghasemi, “Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Nigeria: a Multilevel Study Investigating the Effect of Women’s Status and Community Norms,” BMC women's health 18, no. 1 (2018): 136.

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marital relationship it is called wife beating.4 This is a situation whereby a woman receives deliberate, severe, and repeated demonstrable physical injury from her husband.5 Like all forms of violence against women, the effect of wife battery is huge, ranging from effects on the individual victim, the children,6 and the family, and how the trauma or damages affect the input of women in the society as a chain effect on the socio-economy or socio-dynamics of the society.7 This has necessitated attempts to eradicate the menace. For a long time, the concept of using violence for violence among several measures at curbing violence against women has been advocated by feminists, individuals, institutions, and organizations. Wife battery is a form of violence which has attracted a violent response and or retaliation from victims, and has ended in pain for families and guilt for the innocent as a result of the conception of taking the law into their hands. Even with this, wife battery continues. The situation has brought the need for a reconsideration of the response to curb the incident through other innovative means like nonviolence. With the recent recurring incidences of the death of perpetrators and the prosecution or punishment of victims turned attackers in Nigeria, the argument can be said to be ripe for advocacy for nonviolent measures to eradicate the violence. Establishing the meaning of nonviolence is relevant at this junction, particularly with the notion of using it in response to and as a measure for the eradication of wife battery as a form of violence against women in Nigeria. Nonviolence is not a new term in academia or the resolution of societal conflict, although this fact does not imply that it is easy to define. According to Mayton, nonviolence is a deceptively complex concept.8 The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as both abstention from violence as a matter of principle and the principle of such abstention. It is also the quality or state of being nonviolent as well as the avoidance of violence.9 4

Friday Onwe, Charity Elom, Odio Adaobi, and Chika Eze, “Socio-cultural Factors Associated with Wife Beating in Nigeria: a Review of Key Issues,” Journal of Social Service and Welfare 1, no. 3 (2019): 1–14. 5 Saif-ur-Rehman, Saif Abbasi, Muhammad Babar Akram, and Bushra Manzoor, “Impact of Wife Battering on the Family,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy 6, no. 4 (2015): 344–53. 6 Magezi E. Baloyi, “Wife Beating Amongst Africans as a Challenge to Pastoral Care,” In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi 47, no. 1 (2013): 713. 7 Ibid., 5. 8 D. M. Mayton, “Meaning of Nonviolence and Pacifism,” in Nonviolence and Peace Psychology, Peace Psychology book series (New York: Springer, 2009). 9 “Nonviolence,” Merriam Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary /nonviolence.

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In this paper, the discourse is set around the concept of wife beating and its nature, causes, prevalence, and impact in Nigeria. The paper embarks on an analysis of the legal provisions and impact of the existing measures applicable for curbing wife beating, then explores the multidisciplinary innovative strategies and emerging legal and socio-legal measures for curbing the menace in Nigeria. Specifically, the paper is structured into six sections. Section one is the introduction, and section two discusses the concept of wife beating in Nigeria. Section three is a discourse on the situation analysis of wife beating in Nigeria, inclusive of its nature, causes, prevalence, effect, and societal perception. Section four discusses the existing responses to or measures for the issue in Nigeria. Section five discusses innovative and emerging nonviolent measures to curb wife beating in Nigeria, and section six concludes the paper.

The Concept of Wife Beating Wife beating is a form of violence against women which exists around the world11 that violates women’s rights.12 It is a common phenomenon in developing countries.13 It comprises violent acts which could be psychological, sexual, and/or physical by a husband against his wife and/or partner.14 It is a social problem of epidemic proportions.15 Woman battering is the most common form of domestic violence, characterized by the use of physical or psychological force, or the threat of such force, by the domestic partner.16 Violence often includes kicking, punching, biting, slapping, burning, throwing acid, beating with fists or objects, strangling, stabbing, and shooting.17 The physical abuse of a woman by her present or former husband or male companion is wife beating. It consists of repeated blows inflicted on 11 Ronagh J. A. McQuigg, “Domestic Violence as a Human Rights Issue: Rumor V. Italy,” The European Journal of International Law 26, no. 4 (2016): 1009–25. 12 Jane Roberts Chapman, “Violence Against Women as a Violation of Human Rights,” Social Justice 17, no. 2 (1990): 54–70. 13 Saif Abbasi Saif-ur-Rehman, Muhammad Babar Akram, and Bushra Manzoor, “Impact of Wife Battering on the Family,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences MCSER Publishing, Rome-Italy 6, no. 4 (2015): 344–53. 14 Carol P. Herbert, “Wife Battering,” Canadian Family Physician 29 (1983): 2204–8. 15 Edward W. Gondolf and Ellen R. Fisher, “Wife Battering,” in Case Studies in Family Violence, edited by R. T. Ammerman and M. Hersen (Boston, MA: Springer, 1991), 273. 16 Maria Sousa Gant Alda, “Domestic Violence Against Women as a Human Rights Violation.” http://www.corteidh.or.cr/tablas/r26304.pdf. 17 Ibid., 10.

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the woman with the intention to cause her harm or injury. It is usually preceded by threats and verbal abuse, but goes beyond mere dispute. Wife beating is a long-time practice that transcends age, status, and educational qualification.18 It is suggested to mostly occur in societies that promote male dominance, and where gender norms and values put women in a subordinate position to men. Research also has it that women with enough education to challenge existing gender norms are at the greatest risk of wife beating.19 Many psychological problems such as psychological stress, fear, and humiliation in the entire family can be traced to wife beating. Also, children who experience the beating of their mother can develop aggressive attitudes and become delinquents.20 According to the World Health Organization (WHO), violence against women is an occurrence that is common in sub-Saharan Africa,21 and affects millions of women where it is most prevalent.22 Wife beating is the most common form of intimate partner violence in Ethiopia.23

Wife Battery in Nigeria: Situation Analysis, Nature, Causes, Prevalence, Society’s Perceptions, and Effect In the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, while there is insufficient data on domestic violence in general due to the stigma which permits silence around the issue, research reveals that 22.3 percent of women aged between fifteen and forty-nine report the experience of physical and/or sexual violence by

18

Sharon Lafraniere, “Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa,” The New York Times (August 11, 2005). https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/world/africa /entrenched-epidemic-wifebeatings-in-africa.html. 19 Michelle J. Hindin, “Understanding Women’s Attitudes Towards Wife Beating in Zimbabwe,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 81 (2003): 501–8. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/81/7/Hindin0703.pdf. 20 Saif-ur-Rehman, Akram, and Manzoor, “Impact of Wife Battering on the Family.” 21 Kolawole Azeez Oyediran and Marc Cunningham, “Spatial Patterns in Domestic Violence and HIV Prevalence in Nigeria,” Journal of Therapy and Management in HIV Infection 2 (2014): 16–23. 22 Mary Kimani, “Taking on Violence Against Women in Africa International Norms, Local Activism Start to Alter Laws, Attitudes,” African Renewal (July 2007). https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/july-2007/taking-violence-againstwomen-africa. 23 Eshetu Gurmu and Senait Endale, “Wife Beating Refusal Among Women of Reproductive Age in Urban and Rural Ethiopia,” BMC International Health and Human Rights 17, no. 1 (2017).

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an intimate partner within a twelve-month period.24 In Nigeria, a high prevalence of wife beating has been recorded.25

Nature of wife beating in Nigeria Wife beating is mostly perpetrated by husbands against their wives using the justification of controlling them. The act usually takes the form of hitting, slapping, pushing, holding down, flogging, an acid bath, and throwing objects.26 It is an extreme expression of power or authority over the woman. The married woman victim experiences serious physical force or repeated injuries from her husband within a society that condones, permits, or justifies it.27 There is the possibility of it being more prevalent in rural areas with dimensions of cultural or religious undertones.28

Causes of wife battery The husband’s desire to dominate, the instigation of in-laws, and addiction appear to be the major reasons behind wife beating in most places,29 along with societal perception and acceptance.30 The economic situation of the husband,31 frustration or feelings of low self-esteem, provocation by the wife, and the influence of alcohol or drugs are all cited as excuses for wife beating.32 Sometimes, the perpetrator is predisposed to violence by personal issues such as depression, posttraumatic stress disorder

24

Sede Alonge, “Why are African Women More at Risk of Violence? Nigeria Tells a Patriarchal Tale,” The Guardian (November 26, 2018). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/26/african-women-riskviolence-nigeria-abuse. 25 Kolawole Azeez Oyediran, “Explaining Trends and Patterns in Attitudes Towards Wife-beating Among Women in Nigeria: Analysis of 2003, 2008, and 2013 Demographic and Health Survey Data,” Oyediran Genus 72, no. 11 (2016). 26 Onwe, Elom, Adaobi, and Eze, “Socio-cultural Factors Associated with Wife Beating in Nigeria.” 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Kolawole A. Oyediran “Explaining Trends and Patterns.” 31 O. Odujinrin, “Wife Battering in Nigeria” International Journal of Gynecology & Obstretrics 41 no. 2 (1993): 159–64. 32 Olaitan O. Adeyemo and Bamidele Ifeoluwayimika, “The Menace of Domestic Violence: Improving the Lives of Women in Nigeria,” African Journal of Legal Studies 9 (2016): 177–98.

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(PTSD), borderline personality disorder, aggressiveness, anger, hostility, or their background.33

The prevalence of wife beating in Nigeria The prevalence of physical intimate partner violence is quite high in Nigeria at thirty-one percent, as opposed to twenty-two percent in the United States, twenty-one percent in Switzerland, twenty-eight percent in Nicaragua, ten percent in the Philippines, and thirteen percent in South Africa.34 This prevalence of intimate partner violence ranges from 42 percent in the north,35 29 percent in the southwest,36 78.8 percent in the southeast,37 and 41 percent in the south.38 Wife beating is prevalent and generally accepted in Nigeria.39 Different types of IPV were prevalent among male civil servants in Ibadan, Oyo State, within twelve months where intimate partner violence perpetration was sixty-six percent, of which wife beating was eleven percent.40 There is a generally high level of understanding of the cultural and religious acceptance of wife beating, and it is argued that societal acceptance and its perception as normal aid its continuance in the society.41 33

Ibid. A. A. Adejimi, O. I. Fawole, O. O. Sekoni, and D. N. Kyriacou, “Prevalence and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence among Male Civil Servants in Ibadan, Nigeria,” African Journal of Medicine and Medial Science 43 (Supplement 1) (2014): 51–60. 35 Tanko S. Tanimu, Stephen Yohanna, and Suleiman Y. Omeiza, “The Pattern and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence Among Women in Kano, Nigeria,” African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine 8, no. 1 (2016): 6. 36 Leah Okenwa Emegwa, Stephen Lawoko, and Bjarne Jansson, “Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence Amongst Women of Reproductive Age in Lagos, Nigeria: Prevalence and Predictors,” Journal of Family Violence 24, no. 7 (2009): 517–30. 37 Christain Ndugasa Okemgbo, Adekunbi Kehinde Omideyi, and Clifford Obby Odimegwu, “Prevalence, Patterns and Correlates of Domestic Violence in Selected Igbo Communities of Imo State, Nigeria,” African Journal of Reproductive Health 6, no. 2 (2002): 101–14. 38 Kalamawei Itimi, Paul O. Dienye, and Precious K. Gbeneol, “Intimate Partner Violence and Associated Coping Strategies Among Women in a Primary Care Clinic in Port Harcourt, Nigeria,” Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care 3, no. 3 (2014): 193–8. 39 Oyediran, “Explaining Trends and Patterns.” 40 Adejimi, Fawole, Sekoni, and Kyriacou, “Prevalence and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence.” 41 Adeyemo, “The Menace of Domestic Violence.” 34

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The effect of wife beating in Nigeria Wife beating results in countless severe health, socioeconomic, and psychological problems.42 The effects of wife beating range from personal effects on the woman, children, family, and society at large.43 A woman’s self-worth and autonomy are affected. It accounts for many deaths, and affects women’s education and economic performance. Effects on the wife Wife beating affects the woman’s health and is a major cause of mortality and morbidity in women.44 Physical injuries, acute morbidity, gynaecological problems, and depression are other effects.45 These also have an impact on the woman’s economic performance and relational attitude.46 Effects on children Wife beating produces emotional disturbance and socialization issues for children.47 This affects them psychologically, which in turn affects their relationship in the broader society.48 Mostly, boys see themselves as powerful and needing to subjugate the female, while girls become shy, timid, afraid, and sometimes resentful of men. Many times, children take these ideas into their marriages. Their physical growth and self-confidence are affected, and children can also become delinquent.

42

Gurmu and Endale, “Wife Beating Refusal.” Onwe, Elom, Adaobi, and Eze, “Socio-cultural Factors Associated with Wife Beating in Nigeria.” 44 Adejimi, Fawole, Sekoni, and Kyriacou, “Prevalence and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence.” 45 Oyediran, “Explaining Trends and Patterns.” 46 Adejimi, Fawole, Sekoni, and Kyriacou, “Prevalence and Correlates of Intimate Partner Violence.” 47 Jayne O'Donnell and Mabinty Quarshie, “The Startling Toll on Children Who Witness Domestic Violence is Just Now Being Understood,” USA TODAY (January 31, 2019). https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/01/29/domesticviolence-research-children-abuse-mental-health-learning-aces/2227218002. 48 Odujinrin, “Wife Battering in Nigeria.” 43

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The effect on the society When health, education, and economic performance is affected, this has an impact on the society. Domestic violence has incurred immense economic costs on developing nations for prices and expenditures to prevent, detect, and offer health, social, and legal services to countless survivors of this menace. It has an effect on productivity, earned income, and the effective utilization of accumulated human and social capital.

Analysis of the existing responses/measures to the issue of wife beating in Nigeria (normative and institutionalized frameworks, and others) Although it is believed that the lack of a legal framework being universally enforced as well as a lack of trained law-enforcement officers promote violence against women in Nigeria, legal frameworks and institutions do exist.49

Legal framework for wife beating in Nigeria A legal framework exists for the protection of individuals against violence. Some of these provisions are general and may not be specifically for women or the prevention of battery. These provisions include international and regional treaties of which Nigeria is signatory, as well as national legislations. International and regional human-rights instruments that prohibit wife beating Provisions exist within human-rights instruments that prohibit wife beating. It is important to note that these may not be expressed provisions but gathered from interpretation and necessary inference. The UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) requires state parties to take measures seeking to eliminate prejudices and customs based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of one sex.50 The mention of custom is relevant here because many times battery is argued as a norm in some communities. In the General 49 O. O. Adeyemo and B. Ifeoluwayimika, “The Menace of Domestic Violence: Improving the Lives of Women in Nigeria,” African Journal of Legal Studies 9 (2016): 177–98. 50 UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Art. 2, 5.

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Recommendations, gender-based violence is any act that includes the physical harm of women, and is prohibited within the provisions of the CEDAW, and battery is also mentioned. The African Charter on Human and People’s Rights provides that “the State shall ensure elimination of every discrimination against women and also to ensure the protection of the rights of women.”52 The Protocol on the Rights of Women requires state parties to enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms of violence against women, and take all necessary legislative and other measures to eliminate harmful practices.53

National/domestic legal framework This includes the constitution, federal acts or state laws, and policies that amount to prohibiting wife beating. The constitution, under the fundamental human-rights provisions, provides for the right to life and the dignity of the person.54 The right to health can be found under the objective principles of state policies and is categorized as socioeconomic rights.55 The Criminal Code prohibits battery, including the assault of persons generally, whether man or woman, in S353 and 360. Neither the Criminal Code nor the Penal Code provide for violence against women.56 The penal code is argued to permit wife beating,57 and only recently was the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act 2015 promulgated, which prohibits “any act or attempted act, which causes or may cause any person physical, sexual, psychological, verbal, emotional or economic harm whether this occurs in private or public life, in peace time and in conflict situations.”58 Its provisions cover most of the prevalent forms of violence in Nigeria such as sexual assault, rape, physical violence, spousal battery (wife beating),59 forceful ejection from the home, economic abuse, harmful substance attacks, harmful widowhood practices, and abandonment of a spouse.60 52

S18(3) African charter on Human and Peoples Rights. Ibid., Art 4(2) and Art. 5. 54 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1989, chapter iv. 55 Ibid., chapter ii. 56 Cheluchi Onyemelukwe, “Legislating on Violence Against Women: a Critical Analysis of Nigeria's Recent Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, 2015,” De Paul Journal of Women Gender and the Law 5, no. 2 (2016): 10. 57 Penal Code S55(1)(d). 58 Violence Against Persons (Prohibitions) Act (2015), Art. 46 (Nigeria). 59 S19(1) VAPPA (2015). 60 S2 VAPPA (2015). 53

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However, the document needs to be given proper and effective enforcement.61

Institutions The police as well as the courts in different hierarchies exist as institutions, alongside legal aids and nongovernmental organizations as a recourse where violations occur. Legal and paralegal counselling or help centres for women and family, attitudinal change in society through media enlightenment, etc. also offer basic development for women. The police as an institution is not effective, and the failure of this office extends to making the court ineffective on the issue of wife battery in Nigeria.

Exploring innovative and emerging measures to curb wife beating in Nigeria Using the law to curb wife beating Nations of the world are now treating domestic violence as a problem which needs a legal solution.62 Because it is treated as a private family affair, some countries have been reluctant to bring it within the ambit of existing laws and the criminal justice system. Nigeria is not an exceptional case. The Nigeria legal system is a pluralist one, and is a forced marriage between different legal traditions that include the English common law, statutory law, customary law, and Islamic (Sharia) law. Criminal justice in Nigeria is applied differently through two jurisdictions in northern and southern Nigeria. While the Penal Code applies in the nineteen states that make up the north of Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), the Criminal Code operates in seventeen states in southern Nigeria.63 Section 55(1)(d) of the Penal Code allows a husband to “correct” his wife through beating, provided their native law and custom permits it, and 61

Grace. O. Akolokwu and Linus Onyekeozurule Nwauzi, “An Inquiry into the Effectiveness of the Legal Framework for the Protection of Women in Nigeria: a Focus on Domestic Violence in the Era of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015,” Sacha Journal of Human Rights 7, no. 1 (2017): 37–46. 62 United Nations “Strategies for Confronting Domestic Violence: a Resource Manual” (Vienna: Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs, 1993), 12. 63 Nnamdi Aduba and Emily Alemika, “Bail and Criminal Justice Administration in Nigeria,” in The Theory and Practice of Criminal Justice in Africa, edited by Annie Chikwanha (Addis Ababa: Institute for Security Studies, Monograph 161, 2009), 38.

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it does not cause grievous hurt. Grievous hurt in this case is defined in section 241 of the Penal Code to include, but not be limited to, the loss of one eye, facial disfiguration, and loss of a limb. The punishment for causing grievous hurt ranges from a fine or four to fourteen years imprisonment, depending on whether the assailant was provoked or a dangerous weapon was used. The Criminal Code, on the other hand, does not refer to domestic violence at all. However, its provisions are discriminatory in the punishment given for criminal assault, as it depends on the sex of the victim. In section 353 of the Criminal Code, an assault is punishable by three years imprisonment, while in section 360 of the Criminal Code the indecent assault of a woman or girl is a misdemeanour (a lesser offence) which carries a two-year term of imprisonment. These provisions do not adequately address the issue of domestic violence, which is inclusive of wife battery. In the same vein, the problem with the Penal Code is that it reinforces the notion of men being superior to women since they can violate their wives in order to “correct” them. It is important to note that the provisions in the above laws exist, despite the fact that Nigeria is a signatory to international human-rights treaties which promote and protect women’s rights and condemn every kind of violence against women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The CEDAW committee expressly recommends that state parties should take all legal and other measures necessary to provide effective protection of women against gender-based violence, including effective legal measures, penal sanctions, civil remedies, and compensatory provisions to protect women against all kinds of violence.64 In addition, Nigeria is a state party to the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (the Maputo Protocol), and under this instrument it is obligated to enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms violence against women,65 and take all necessary legislative and other measures to eliminate harmful practices.66 The permissibility of a wife’s beating and the near silence on the issue in the main extant criminal laws of Nigeria are a far cry from the expectations of the international instruments discussed above as pertaining to Nigeria’s obligations under them.

64 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Report on its 11th Session (1992), UN doc, paragraph 24. 65 Maputo Protocol (2003), Art. 4(2). 66 Ibid., Art. 5.

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The above notwithstanding, women’s groups in Nigeria over the years have advocated for the repeal of discriminatory laws and the creation of new ones which holistically prohibit violence against women and ultimately advance women’s rights. As a result, legislative advocacy efforts have resulted in the creation of new laws at both the federal and state levels. At the state level, twenty-four states have adopted the Federal Child Rights Act, which criminalizes child marriage. Widowhood practice is criminalized in other states such as Cross Rivers, Oyo, and Anambra, while Lagos, Ekiti, Ebonyi, and Jigawa states have passed laws criminalizing domestic violence. While these laws may be commendable, they have been criticized for being fragmentary and selective in dealing with the problem of violence against women, thus leaving more gaps in the protection.67 Following the above, there clearly remains a need for the creation of comprehensive legislation which covers all aspects of violence against women based on gender, including wife beating. It can therefore be argued that this problem was to a large extent solved by the Violence against Persons (Prohibition) Act (VAPP), which provides substantial protection against all manner of violence against women. The VAPP Act came in the wake of intense advocacy efforts from women’s and civil-rights groups in the country. The act was developed by the Legislative Advocacy Coalition on Violence Against Women (LACVAW), an umbrella body of various women’s and civil-rights groups, and was presented to the National Assembly in 2002 as the Violence against Women Bill. The male-dominated National Assembly, in a pragmatic though, as many have argued, regressive step, felt that a gender-neutral approach is more inclusive and so changed the name to the Violence (Prohibition) Bill 2003. After many years of advocacy, the bill was finally signed into law in 2015.68 The VAPP Act is said to be comprehensive as it provides a broad description of offences that may be regarded as violence against women, including physical injury, spousal battery, harmful traditional practices, and spousal abandonment. Each of these attracts penalties ranging from life imprisonment in certain cases of rape, to two years imprisonment or the option of a fine for giving false information to the judiciary. While the VAPP Act is seen as innovative and a step in the right direction in the protection of women and other victims of violence, the 67 For instance, Jigawa State excludes physical abuse committed in accordance with the personal law of the husband in its definition of domestic violence, whereas Lagos and Ekiti state laws criminalize all physical abuse. 68 Cheluchi Onyemelukwe, “Legislating on Violence Against Women: a Critical Analysis of Nigeria’s Recent Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015,” DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law 5, no. 2 (2016): 10.

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question that remains is how well it works. Is it in line with international standards on the creation of legislation against violence, or are there gaps in the law that defeat the purpose of its creation? The United Nations and other international organizations have developed model frameworks which guide the design, scope, application, use, and evaluation of legislations prohibiting violence against women. Many of these frameworks in their recommendations reflect the causes and consequences of violence against women, as well as identify key ingredients that must ideally be contained in legislations and policies on violence against women. It is noted that such normative instruments must: (1) Specifically recognize women as beneficiaries and acknowledge that violence against women is a form of discrimination. (2) Be comprehensive – they must provide for all forms of violence against women including economic, psychological, physical, and sexual. They must provide for not only the criminalization of violence against women and the effective prosecution and punishment of perpetrators, but also the prevention of violence and the empowerment, support, and protection of its victims. (3) Integrate all interventions – provide for the prevention of violence as well as the protection, support, empowerment, care, and treatment of both victims and perpetrators. (4) Provide sufficient punishment for perpetrators and adequate compensation for victims. (5) Encourage a consistent and consolidated legal framework on violence against women. (6) Contain provisions and mechanisms for its effective implementation, evaluation, and monitoring.69 In considering whether the VAPP Act meets the above requirements which, according to international best practices, should guide the design of legislations on prohibiting violence against women, it has been argued that some gaps still need to be filled.70 First, the act in its title does not recognize women specifically as beneficiaries but rather engages the use of a broader appellation, i.e. “persons.” It has been noted by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that the use of such an imprecise term has the effect of weakening the force of the extent of judicial protection available to victims of violence against women. The term “spousal battery” instead of 69 70

Ibid., 12–13. Ibid., 52.

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“wife battery” or “beating” is one of the many examples where the legislators generalize issues which particularly affect women and shy away from making women the focus of the act. While it may be true that men also get beaten by their wives or partners, it has been indicated in several research projects that this form of violence disproportionately affects women. Secondly, while it is agreed that the act is substantially in conformity with best practices in criminalizing a broad range of violence against women – as it introduced some forms of violence novel to the Nigerian laws including spousal rape and economic abuse – it has been noted that there are some gaps which are in need of amendments. These include the areas of violence related to sexual violence and harmful traditional practices and the violation of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, such as forced abortions and the prevention of contraception and virginity tests, all of which are prevalent in Nigerian society and violate the bodily integrity and fundamental rights of women. Further, although the act clearly states different forms of violence against women which are criminalized with the penalty attached to each, it is silent on the interventions needed to prevent or deal with the aftermath of the menace. For example, in cases of wife beating, interventions such as the protection, support, empowerment, care, and treatment of both victims and perpetrators are essentials. However, the VAPP Act in this regard has failed to fulfil the third requirement of the UN Handbook. Also, adherence to the fourth requirement of the UN Handbook, which states that adequate punishment be given to perpetrators of violence against women, seems limited in the VAPP Act. The conflicting provisions on the penalty accrued for rape, for example, are concerning. While, on the surface, the act provides a sentence of life imprisonment for rape, it has a different sentence for minors (offenders less than fourteen years old), giving them a lesser sentence of fourteen years. One wonders how this would fare in consonance with the Children’s Act, which defines a minor as a person under the age of eighteen and provides sentencing guidelines. It also appears from the same provision that a judge or magistrate would be able to give an imprisonment term of twelve years to a rape offender. The act also bizarrely provides that perpetrators of gang rape would be jointly sentenced to a minimum twentyyear jail term – less than the minimum of twelve years for a single offender. The ridiculous blanket maximum jail term of three years for the offence of spousal battery, not taking into account the grievous nature or peculiarity of each case, and offering an option of a fine in lieu of jail terms for an offence such an spousal battery and spousal isolation, does not show that the legislators see this offence as a serious one, which is rampant in Nigerian society.

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On the requirement by the UN Handbook that a legislation prohibiting violence against women must encourage consistency and consolidation of legal frameworks on violence against women, the VAPP Act is again found wanting. Presently, the VAPP Act applies only in the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. The reason for this limitation may be because the offences the act deals with are criminal in nature, and the making of laws on what constitute a crime in Nigeria is left exclusively to states. This modus operandi is owed to the system of the government of Nigeria practices – federalism. The implication of this on the effectiveness of the VAPP Act as it concerns its provisions on wife beating and other forms of violence against women is that these provisions exist alongside provisions contained in other legal instruments, such as states’ criminal laws and penal codes, which may contain conflicting provisions, hence the purpose of a single unifying law which comprehensively deals with the issue of violence against women and the lack of any geographical inhibitions is defeated. Lastly, according to the UN Handbook, a legislation prohibiting violence against women should contain provisions and mechanisms for its effective implementation, evaluation, and monitoring. Presently, under the act, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) has been assigned the work of implementing the VAPP Act. Indeed, there is no legal impediment to the institution carrying out this task, but one wonders whether, in putting into consideration the already burdensome mandate of the NAPTIP under the Trafficking in Persons Act, the creation of a different body for the enforcement of the VAPP Act would not be better. Also, while the act establishes an institutional framework, it does not address certain aspects that would make for effective implementation. For instance, it does not make mention of the establishment of safe houses or shelters for victims of wife beating or domestic violence in general. Following this, therefore, as international and national awareness on the seriousness of the short-term and long-term effects of violence against women including wife beating grows, there is also increased attention on using the law to curb the problem. There is strong pressure on finding a legal solution, and in countries where violence against women is prevalent the existing criminal laws are sometimes adapted to deal with the issue, and a brand-new law such as the VAPP Act in Nigeria is created. Whichever option is chosen, the main purpose is that the problem be brought under control, hence the need for an effective remedy which adapts to the peculiarities of the particular country. The above analysis shows that, although the NAPP Act may have the potential to curb wife beating in Nigeria, there exists a need for urgent amendments to provisions or gaps which may hamper its effective implementation in this regard. The solution

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is for the VAPP Act and other laws made under it to be brought in consonance with international best practices on legislations prohibiting violence against women for their comprehensive and effective implementation, as the power of the law to act as a capable tool in dealing with societal ills cannot be over-emphasized.

Improving the criminal justice system: the role of the police The police are critical actors in the effective response to domestic violence in general, and wife beating in particular. Many factors determine the important role that the police can play in protecting the victims of wife beating. The police are empowered by the law to stop or curb unacceptable social behaviours, and in many countries they and the hospitals are the only services which are available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They are usually frontline workers where domestic violence is concerned, and a study in the United States found that the police had been called to homes where a family member was killed several times before the murder actually took place.71 Research has also shown how the police’s power of arrest and charging of perpetrators has a strong impact on the perpetrators of domestic violence, reducing recidivism.72 Despite the critical difference that the police can make in the fight against wife beating, its traditional approach to cases has been noted to be significantly different from that observed in other cases of violence. The police may be reluctant to intervene in issues of wife beating because they value family cohesion and togetherness more than the individuals’ right to freedom from assault, or fear of such assault. A study conducted by Osisiogu in the Abuja and Keffi town in Nasarawa State, in the northern part of Nigeria, found that the first reaction of the police to domestic violence-related complaints was to attempt to settle the case “amicably” in order not to disrupt the “peace” of the family. Although designated officers are available to work in the gender or welfare units of police stations, complaints are not usually recorded with the exception of life-threatening cases or fatalities.73 It has also been observed that police often view the victim as the one who provoked the assault, hence their reluctance to 71 United Nations, “Strategies for Confronting Domestic Violence: a Resource Manual,” 26. 72 Ibid. 73 Udo Osisiogu, “Physical Abuse of Women in the Home: A Nigerian Perspective,” Humanities and Social Sciences Review 5, no. 3 (2016): 387.

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entertain such complaints. This arguably speaks to and normalizes the entrenched cultural system of patriarchy in the Nigeria society which celebrates men as superior beings and demands women to be subservient, and seen but not heard. It has also been noted that police show little interest in cases of wife beating or domestic violence generally because they are not sure of successful prosecutions. Oftentimes, the victims of wife beating refuse to cooperate with police investigations because they are scared of reprisals both from the perpetrators and the society, which often view them as poorly trained women who would rather air their dirty laundry in public instead of exercising endurance and perseverance for the sake of family unity and togetherness. Additionally, police may often be unaware of sources of help they could refer a victim to, and situations of domestic violence may be volatile and risky, putting the police in danger. Premised on the above, it is important that police training attunes them to the dynamics of wife beating, the feelings of dependency and fear that victims face, the sense of responsibility for children of the marriage or partnership, the isolation and abandonment that victims often experience from the society even when they try to reach out for help, and the resultant discrimination and condemnation that is the hallmark of an attempt at or a successful escape from such toxic relationships.

Strategies to improve the police’s handling of wife-beating cases The ambitious role of the police as the peacemaker or law enforcer is also a reflection of a society’s approach to domestic violence. Private family matters or a crime make the task of responding to domestic violence an almost herculean one. While a society crafts a framework on how best to combat wife beating and domestic violence more generally, there are several strategies that can be put in place to curb the menace in the meantime. These include: x Providing the police with appropriate powers. For example, the power of entry, the power to arrest, and the power to release on bail. x Developing policy guidelines for using those powers. x Setting up specialized units to respond to cases of wife beating and domestic violence generally. x Ensuring adequate training of the police on the dynamics of wife beating and the effective response to it.

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Promoting an interdisciplinary approach to solving the problem of wife beating in Nigeria: considerations involving community-based groups, interagency groups, government actions, and victims in the fight Wife beating is a complex problem which requires the combined and coordinated efforts of people from different professional backgrounds and the community. In all communities, the issue of wife beating is intricately woven into the fabric of social lives and affects one individual or another. While the availability of resources to combat this menace is important, it is not the sole solution. In developed countries, the existence of large social services and law-enforcement apparatuses does not guarantee an effective response to domestic violence. In the same vein, the scarcity of the necessary resources hampers the efforts geared at curbing or ending wife beating in developing countries An interdisciplinary approach to solving the problem of wife beating essentially entails the coming together, formally or informally, of practitioners from different walks of life for problem solving and solution building to improve responses to cases of wife beating. The practitioners coordinate and work together to: x x x x x

Understand the complexities of the problem and it consequences. Learn more about other available services and resources. Increase the cost effectiveness of the strategy or service delivery. Meet the wide varieties of victims’ needs. Ensure a community-owned approach/solution.

Working together is not a walk in the park for different people from diverse backgrounds and with different philosophies. The reluctance to accept a common approach to problem solving may stand as a significant drawback, however, and the advantages of engaging people of different thoughts and knowledge include an improved understanding of the dynamics of the problem and a better response to cases reported and more offenders being held accountable, which may outweigh the challenges encountered.74

74 United Nations, “Strategies for Confronting Domestic Violence: a Resource Manual,” 48–9.

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Community-based groups Community-based groups, especially organizations providing support and safe havens to battered women, have played a critical role in pointing out problems with the existing approaches to the problem of wife beating, and developing practical and better solutions. In some countries which do not yet recognize the problem or have an effective responsive to it, the importance of collaboration at community level is crucial. Oftentimes, community members use mutual support and cooperation to combat domestic violence. In Nigeria, the Legal Defence Assistance Project of Nigeria (LEDAP), Project Alert, Baobab for Women’s Rights, the Civil Liberties Organization, and the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) are some nongovernmental organizations whose works in the promotion and protection of women’s rights and in providing support to victims of GBVs is worthy of note.

Interagency groups Interagency groups organize and coordinate efforts in the fight against domestic violence through information sharing. They may also carry out jointly organized programmes and projects, and sometimes depend on factors such as financial capability, being responsible for providing services to both victims and offenders.

Government actions Governments can also take relevant steps to ensure a more coordinated response to the problem of wife beating. In an increasing number of countries there is pressure to develop integrated and effective solutions to the problem of gender-based violence generally, and this has motivated governments’ agencies to become involved in providing services geared at curbing it. In this regard, Nigeria, through its legislative arm, has crafted and passed into law the VAPP Act, which, although defective in certain aspects as noted above, criminalized wife beating and made it a punishable offence at least in the Federal Capital Territory and in other states of the federation that may domesticate it. Also, as part of efforts to equip the justice sector for the better handling of cases of gender-based violence, the Nigeria Police Force announced in October 2014 the “reconstitution” of the Force Gender Unit (FGU). The FGU will develop the capacity of officers on gender issues and establish gender desk officers nationwide. The police also launched the

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“gender policy” in 2012 in order to curb discrimination in the force and enhance the capacity of officers to better handle cases on gender-based violence.75 The holistic implementation of these initiatives and impact on the reduction or eradication of gender-based violence and wife beating in particular are yet to be seen. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of Nigeria, although a creation of the government, holds the Nigerian government and its agencies and representatives accountable for any human-rights violations alleged to be committed by them, and generally monitors the human-rights situation in the country. It receives complaints of domestic violence and refers them to the police, but has complained about how its efforts are being frustrated in such cases with the police’s refusal to provide information on actions they have taken in response to such complaints. Additionally, the Public Complaints Commission, an agency of the government, acts as Nigeria’s government ombudsman for receiving complaints from the public against the government and its agencies, corporate organizations, and officials. It also receives cases of domestic violence and intervenes in “mild” ones by providing counselling services, but refers serious cases to law-enforcement services like the police.76

Victim’s involvement One of the keys to an effective response to wife beating has been the meaningful involvement and participation of victims in developing coordinated response to the problem. The victim’s input is especially critical in meeting the need for particular groups of women, especially those who are isolated, aged, disabled, or disadvantaged. Practitioners working with such women need special training and qualifications to provide appropriate services. The victim’s input can provide perspectives enabling practitioners to make existing facilities accessible to all women. Conclusively, applying an interdisciplinary approach in the fight against wife beating in Nigeria may make for a more effective fight as it allows for experience and expertise sharing among practitioners from different walks of life to develop a coordinated and more community-oriented response to the problem.

75 UNHCR, “Nigeria: Domestic Violence, Including Lagos State; Legislation, Recourse, State Protection and Services Available to Victims.” https://www.refworld.org/docid/548168e14.html. 76 Ibid.

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Conclusion Violence against women, particularly in the form of wife beating in Nigeria, has persisted long enough. It has defeated efforts to curb it through violent means, making the need for nonviolent measures paramount. This paper has discussed the issue of violence against women and its connection to nonviolence, linking it with the concept of wife beating in Nigeria. It includes an analysis of existing responses or measures to the issue of wife beating in Nigeria, consisting of a framework and institutions, and goes further to discuss innovative and emerging measures to curb the violence. In its analysis, it expresses the view that nonviolent measures are lawful measures, which could include legal prosecution, but entail much more than legal measures. Nonviolent approaches include multidisciplinary measures which entail education, enlightenment, and special training for police, paralegals, and the community at large. It involves government action, victims’ involvement, inter-agency group liaisons, and a network of community-based groups.

CHAPTER TEN WOMEN AND ANTI-TAX PROTESTS IN COLONIAL NIGERIA: EXAMINING THE NONVIOLENT APPROACH OF THE WOMEN OF THE OKIGWE DIVISION FROM 1929 TO 1960 LIVINUS IKWUAKO OKEKE

Introduction The advent of colonial rule in Africa ushered in a wave of violent resentments from Africans and reciprocal suppression from the colonial invaders. There were cases of violent acts against the Africans, from East to West and Central to Southern Africa, which came in varying degrees and have consequently received scholarly attention. Violence was used to force the new order (colonialism) on the people along with its numerous policies of obnoxious character, from tax policies to labour exploitation laws, land expropriation, cash crop production, and road and railway construction to market regulations. These policies resulted in antipathies and violent reactions as well as nonviolent responses from Africans. While the violent reactions like the Maji-Maji rebellion1 and Mau-Mau uprising2 in East Africa, and the Udi Massacre3 and Aba Women War4 in West Africa, have 1

John Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule, 1905–1912, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9–29; see also Robert M. Maxon, East Africa: an Introduction (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2009), 173–7. 2 Amy McKenna (ed.), The History of Central and East Africa (New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2011), 146–7; see also Maxon, East Africa, 248–55. 3 Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 133–6. 4 Marc Matera, Misty L. Bastian, and Susan Kingsley Kent, The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

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recorded volumes of scholarly works, little has been written on the nonviolent approach by Africans to push for policy changes in colonial Africa. It is therefore our task to examine the various colonialist policies in Okigwe Division, Southeast Nigeria, and how women led the nonviolent protest that resulted in policy changes. It is on record that women waged a war against colonial authority and their protégée Warrant Chiefs in colonial Nigeria in 1929, historically known as the Aba Women War. While the war came as a result of the colonial tax policy and corrupt practices of the Warrant Chiefs, it requires explanation as to why women decided to lead the protest, even as they were exempted from taxation. In precolonial Igboland, women were known for their political and economic independence and interdependence from men. Culturally, women were very visible in the affairs of the people. In the political sphere, women had their various organizations – the Aladima Women Organization, the Association of Umuada (first daughters), market women organizations, and age grade, among others – allowing them to contribute towards the overall wellbeing of the society. On the economic fronts, women were known for their pragmatism and assisted their husbands in various ways. They were born traders in the traditional Igbo society, and virtually every woman engaged in one form of agricultural activity or another. Through agriculture, trade, and craft, their basic needs were met without being burdensome on their husbands. Culturally, they contributed their quota towards the sustainability of the diverse cultural practices for which the people were known. From the celebration of new yam festivals to baby naming ceremonies, path clearing to masquerades and cultural dances, women were dominant. In all these activities, neither the men nor women experienced any form of domination, extortion, or unnecessary control from any quarter. However, all this changed with colonial rule. First, women lost their right to control the market as the new rulers appointed men to oversee this economic sector of the society. Then, the introduction of taxation affected family life as men had to engage in wage labour to meet this obligation. Trade was entirely in the control of the colonial government as the commodity prices were fixed. The appointment of Warrant Chiefs by the colonial government was received with mixed feelings because many of the men so appointed had questionable characters, and as events unfolded, their actions precipitated the various violent and nonviolent protests that engulfed the area. It was the corrupt nature of the Warrant Chiefs, the insensitive nature of the colonial government to the organizational structure of the 2012), 132–72. See also Ikenga R. A. Ozigbo, A History of Igboland in the 20th Century (Enugu: Snaap Press Ltd, 1999), 54–6.

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society before their arrival, and the economic challenges posed by the Great Depression that compelled the women to organize a nonviolent protest against the government in 1938. The 1930s was the period of the Great Depression in global history as well as the interwar years. A lot of economic challenges resulted in policies that affected people negatively. The economic woes of the period compelled the people to question the policies and programs of the colonial government, which forces the women to march in protest, albeit nonviolently, to the colonial office and in various clans of the division. To appreciate their nonviolent strategy, the influence of the ideas of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others are of great importance. During the period, Gandhi was soaring in his nonviolent stance in British colonial India, where “under his creative leadership the nonviolent armies challenged and defeated the World’s most powerful, wily and diehard British imperialism.”5 In later years, King, influenced by Christian teachings and the nonviolent ideals of Gandhi, adopted a nonviolent approach in advancing the course of African Americans in the United States, where racism was greatly in practice. To wage a violent war against the colonial authority would not achieve any result for the people of Nigeria who could match the superior military strength of the colonialist. Again, the harsh effect of the Great Depression resulted in the high production of cash crops by the people with little economic value, while tax rates imposed by the colonialist remained unchanged with the prices of imported products soaring. Due to the fatalities recorded in the 1929 Aba Women’s War, the women of Okigwe Division decided to adopt nonviolent tactics to press for a reduction in tax rates as well as other policies of the colonial authority they considered inimical to their interests. The colonial authority deployed armed police to the division for the purpose of nipping any uprising in the bud. The women were not ready to record a loss of lives, and hence did not allow their husbands’ involvement to avoid punitive measures by the colonial authority. Nwabughuogu sums up the women’s reason when he avers that, “the women carried out the revolt because they were the ones who anticipated less punishment than the men from their actions.”6 While the Great Depression impacted significantly on Nigeria’s economy, the tax rates were not reviewed to reflect the economic reality. On the other hand, prices of European manufactured products imported into 5

M. V. Maidu, “Gandhian Practical-Idealism: Nonviolence,” Journal of Peace Research, 38, no. 2 (2006): 35–69. 6 Anthony Nwabughuogu, The Dynamics of Change in Eastern Nigeria, 1990–1960, Indigenous Factors in Colonial Development (Owerri: Esther Thompson, 1993). 96.

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the country nosedived while the prices of palm produce dropped considerably. Again, the Warrant Chiefs used the influence of their office to corruptly inflict more hardship on their people through many means. Their activities and those of the colonial government were deemed insensitive and unacceptable by the people and required strategic action to address them. To this end, this paper examines the place of women in precolonial and colonial Okigwe Division; colonial political and economic policies; taxation and the corrupt activities of the Warrant Chiefs; the Great Depression and its effects on colonial economy; and women’s nonviolent responses during 1938 and their effects on the colonial society.

Women in Precolonial and Colonial Igboland Women, like men, enjoyed pride of place in the precolonial Igbo society, which was structured in such a manner that both men and women played different political, economic, social, and cultural roles for its overall progress. However, with the advent of colonial rule, the place of women was adversely affected by the policies of the colonial authority which affected their husbands’ freedom. Prior to colonial rule, women enjoyed a dominant place in the political and economic life of Igbo society, wielding political and economic powers as well as having control over their husbands. Culturally, the place of women was so revered that they were idolized as a complementary part of the political, economic, cultural, and social life. As is aptly captured by U. D. Anyanwu, Igbo subcultures had institutional and theoretical or ideological positions which made the involvement of women in the political processes possible. The Igbo worldview generally saw women as helpmates and positive agents in the evolution of their civilization, and various Igbo traditions indicate that women (as mothers), were welcome agents of the “genesis” or “origin” in each subculture or part of it. Igbo religious belief projects the importance of gods and goddesses. In fact, one of the most celebrated or fundamental was Ala, the Earth goddess.7 Anyanwu elucidates on the life of women in Igbo culture where they exist as an integral and productive part of the society. Women were the first teachers of their children, responsible for the overall domestic wellbeing of their family, and above all supported their husbands with wise counsel on issues affecting the family, village, or clan. They played a prominent role in the securitization of the society, which they 7

U. D. Anyanwu, “Gender Question in Igbo politics,” in The Igbo and the Tradition of Politics, edited by U. D. Anyanwu and J. C. U. Aguwa (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishing, 1993), 113–20.

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did in conjunction with the adult male population and the youth. Disarticulated and incoherent8 economic policies to side line the women from the responsibilities that culture bestowed on them were resisted, and that was what colonial rule did to women in Igboland. The economy of Okigwe Division during the precolonial and colonial eras was predominantly based on agriculture, craft, industries, and trade, and women were greatly involved in all the economic activities, assisting their husbands and, in most instances, dominating them in certain areas of such ventures. Pottery making was an exclusively women enterprise and their wares were of export quality. As observed by B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, “many farmers engage in trade, as do most women, who tend to specialize in agricultural produce.”9 Laying credence to the above assertion, Ester Boserup observes that, “Africa is the region of female farming per excellence. In many African tribes, nearly all tasks connected with food production continue to be left to women.”10 It is therefore not surprising why women frowned on the colonial authority’s policies that forced men from their homes for longer periods of time in search of paid labour to meet up with their tax payment and other obligations it introduced. This was an unhealthy obstruction to their age-long tradition of family and communal life. Another important place of complementarities occupied by women in their affairs with men in precolonial Igboland that was adversely affected by colonial rule was trade and the markets. The markets in Okigwe Division were symbolically divided into four-day or eight-day cycles, thus Eke, Orie, Afor, and Nkwo market days. While the four-day cycle is referred to as izunta [small week], the eight-day cycle is referred to as izuukwu [big week]. Men and women bore names symbolizing the market days, such as Nwaeke (son of Eke), Nwokorie (male Orie), Nwafor (son of Afor), and Nwankwo (son of Nkwo) for men, and Nwanyiorie (female Orie), Nwanyieke, (female Eke), nwanyiafor (female Afor), and Nwanyinkwo (female Nkwo) for women. The symbolic nature of these names suggests that women owned the men. Thus, the women had pride in their precolonial sociocultural, political, and economic status, which was greatly altered by the policies and programmes of the colonial government.

8

Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (New York: Longman, 1981), 43–54. B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, Market in West Africa: Studies of Markets and Trade Among the Yoruba and Ibo (Ibadan: University Press, 1969), 119. 10 Ester Boserup, “Women’s Role in Economic Development,” in The Women, Gender & Development: Reader, edited by Nalini Visvanathan, Lynn Duggan, Nan Wiegersma, and Laurie Nisonoff (New York: Zed Books, 2011), 38–40. 9

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It therefore follows that much of their resentments came as a result of the colonial policies on markets, trade, taxation, and the corrupt nature of the Warrant Chiefs, among others. In tune with the above, Gloria Chukwu asserts: In a dual-sex political system, women’s organizations acted as parallel authority structures to those of men. Political power was shared between men and women in a complementary manner to promote harmony and the well-being of the society. Women exercised direct political power within arenas viewed as the female province through all female organizations. Such female organizations included women’s courts, market authorities, secret societies, and age grade institutions. Women wielded collective and individual power as members of and heads of these organizations respectively.11

The oral testimony of the women during the Aba Women War of 1929 supports the assertion that colonial rule altered their traditional belief system, and political, economic, social, and cultural life. Still, on the complementary status of women in precolonial Igbo society, Lambert Ejiofor posits: “women groups run parallel to those of the men and with deference to men’s political superiority; they enforce the law in similar ways. They are known to be strict disciplinarians who can compel their members to comply in very difficult circumstances.”12 In the area of agriculture, Onwuka Njoku observes that: Gender-based division of agricultural labors, by no means wholly rigid, was observed in many parts of Nigeria. For instance, in most communities in the eastern parts, certain farm jobs were regarded as appropriate for women only and were performed by them … women did not climb the oil palm tree to harvest the fruits; this was a man’s job. The making of yam mounds was regarded as a man’s job, while the weeding of the farm was left to the women. On the other hand, men were forbidden to cultivate crops such as beans and three-leaved yam, ona/una. These were seen as women’s crops.13

Giving credence to the above assertion, G. T. Basden observes: “the women take their full share in farm-work, assisting in turning the soil and moulding [sic] up the yam beds. After the yam seed has been set they hoe 11 Gloria Chukwu, “Igbo Women and Political Participation in Nigeria, 1800s– 2005,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2009): 81– 103. 12 Lambert U. Ejiofor, Dynamics of Igbo Democracy: a Behavioural Analysis of Igbo in Aguinyi Clan (Ibadan: University Press Limited, 1981), 159. 13 Onwuka N. Njoku, Economic History of Nigeria, 19th–21st Centuries (Nsukka: Great AP Express Publisher Ltd, 2014), 58.

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up the weeds and keep the farm in order. They tend their children, trade in the markets, prepare palm oil and manage all domestic affairs.”14 Corroborating these observations, Ngozi Ojiakor adds that the functions of women cut across judicial, economic, political, and cultural as well as religious aspects: In their judicial function, Otu Umuada Assembly was the last court of Appeal in any given community. In the main it legislated on matters that defied solutions by men … Religion is another aspect of politics where the pre-colonial Igbo women played prominent roles. It is important to recognize that religion was the nexus of Igbo life and culture … the priests of these deities could be men or women.15

The help-mate status of women traversed every aspect of people’s life. But colonial rule came with its sweeping changes, altering and in most cases eroding the various positions occupied by women in Igbo society in general, and Okigwe Division in particular. Among the areas affected were their judicial, economic, religious, cultural, political, and social standings. These changes did not go down well with the women, and they expressed their grievances through petitions and nonviolent protests. In Nigeria, the colonial authorities came up with various policies to engender economic activities. As an agriculture-based economy, the need for an unhindered supply of cash crops was foremost in the interest of the colonialists so as to maintain the production capacity of the industries in the UK. However, those policies had negative effects on the psychology of the Igbo people of southern Nigeria. The most tormented by the various economic policies were the women, as captured by Chukwu: Colonialism unleashed forces and innovations that had far-reaching effects on Igbo women in particular and the entire society in general. The period was characterized by the introduction of taxation, western education … while some of these factors created opportunities that women exploited to enhance their status in society, others undermined their economic, political and religious powers …16

14

G. T. Basden, Among the Ibos of Nigeria (Ibadan: University Publishing, 1982), 93 15 Ngozi Ojiakor, “Woman in Igbo Society: a Historical Analysis,” in Themes on Igbo Culture, History and Development, edited by Ukachukwu D. Anyanwu (Lagos: Ubaond & Associates, 2010), 66–89. 16 Chukwu, “Igbo Women,” 81–103.

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Taxation during the colonial days compelled men to take up paid jobs either in their locality or elsewhere to meet their tax obligations. This view was supported by Ester Boserup, who asserts that, “European extension agents in many parts of Africa tried to induce the underemployed male villagers to cultivate commercial cash crops for export to Europe, and the system of colonial taxation by poll tax on the households was used as a means to force the Africans to produce cash crops.”17 Furthermore, Western sociopolitical and economic ideologies were introduced in Igboland, leading to the end of traditionalism in the people’s religious, cultural, economic, and political structure. According to Chukwu: the colonial administrators and other Europeans in Igboland region imposed their western conceptions of state, family, and gender roles on the Igbonotions that were prejudiced against women. The British indirect rule system, which was imposed on the Igbo, governed through male authorities and also formalized male institutions. At the time, the colonial administrative system ignored female equivalents.18

This was the unfortunate, discriminatory, and unbalanced situation in which women found themselves in during colonial Igboland. However, they remained calm and, using nonviolent channels provided by the Europeans like petitions, appealed for the review of colonial policies and programs, especially as they affected the women. Such pleas did not receive positive responses from the authorities because they would impugn the realization of the economic objectives of colonialism, a known violent stage of imperialism.

Colonial Tax Policy and the Great Depression To ensure the steady supply of cash crops from the hinterlands, the colonial authorities felt the need to introduce direct taxation in Igboland. Thus, in Nigeria, the British introduced direct taxes first in the north in 1906, then the west in 1918, and the east in 1927.19 The introduction of taxation in eastern Nigeria sparked rebellions reminiscent of the Stamp Act Rebellion in the American colonies, which prompted the colonial government to set up a

17

Boserup, “Women’s Role in Economic Development,” 38–40. Chukwu, “Igbo Women,” 81–103. 19 The Native Revenue (Amendment) Ordinance 1927, which extended taxation of incomes to Eastern Nigeria, actually came into force in 1928. 18

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number of commissions to look into them.20 In the end, little changed because, less than a decade after the anti-tax war, the people – this time the women – revolted as a result of tax-related disagreements. One significant thing about this protest was that, unlike the 1929 narrative, it was carried out in a nonviolent manner. Several factors were responsible for the introduction of direct taxation in Nigeria: “Lugard saw taxation as a triple-edged weapon; as a stimulus to production, as a source of revenue for the support of the colonial administration … and finally as the basis for the development of his system of indirect rule …”21 To achieve these goals through taxation, the colonial authority decided to make use of natives whom they issued with certificates and christened “Warrant Chiefs.” With this, they conferred authority on the Warrant Chiefs to act for and on behalf of the colonial government. The process of selection was not in tandem with the people’s tradition of choosing representatives, and hence most of the Warrant Chiefs were not men of honour. The concept of indirect rule has been greatly discussed, defined, and explained. According to its architect, Frederick Lord Lugard, “It is rule through the native chiefs, who are regarded as an integral part of the machinery of government, with well-defined powers and functions recognized by government and by laws and not dependent on the caprice of an executive officer.”22 While his decision to try out this style of rule in Nigeria was informed by successes recorded by the indirect rule system of administration in India and Uganda, Lugard was ignorant of the people’s history, especially in Igboland, where authority was diffused and taxation was an alien concept. Nwabughuogu adds that, “the Warrant Chief and the Native Courts took over traditional authority while colonial laws were made to enforce discipline.”23 This however negates the claim by the colonial government that “indirect rule respects traditional political institutions and promotes continuity between indigenous and colonial regimes …24 Through the use of Warrant Chiefs, colonial government institutionalized corruption, which was contrary to Igbo traditional economic and political norms. The people 20

O. Akanle, Nigerian Income Tax and Practice (Lagos: Centre for Business and Investment Studies, 1991), 21–2. 21 Micheal Crowder, West African under Colonial Rule (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1976), 206. 22 F. Lugard, Political Memoranda: Revision of Instructions to Political Officers on Subjects Chiefly Political and Administrative (1913–1918) (London: Frank Cass & Co, 1970), 296. 23 Nwabughuogu, The Dynamics of Change, 72. 24 Toyin Falola and Mathew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 110.

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questioned all instructions and orders from the Warrant Chiefs because many of them lacked character, hence a warrant issued by the colonial authority didn’t command any change of character. The reason for the corrupt practices associated with the Warrant Chiefs is not far-fetched. As captured by Afigbo when the British arrived, they demanded Igbo chiefs, who did not exist. Thus: on the part of the Igbo they misunderstood the British demand for their chiefs partly because they had no such personages and partly because they were suspicious of the new rulers. The result was that on many occasion Igbo communities pushed forward nonentities, common rogues, or slaves as their chiefs in the belief that these were going to be killed or enslaved. One can thus imagine the consternation in the villages when these scum of society came back to their people with certificates or warrants appointing them chiefs over their betters.25

It is therefore understandable why they became a thorn in the side of their people with the authority conferred on them by certificates or warrants. It was their direct actions and inactions rather than the colonialists that enraged the women in Igboland and encouraged them to revolt in 1929. The immediate cause of the tax revolt was the rumour that women were to be taxed. The remote causes included an, “increase in import duties which led to a rise in the prices paid for imported materials … the other was the fall in the prices of palm produce which had become the peoples’ main means of earning money.”26 Walter Rodney captures the circumstances of the African women during colonial rule which played a prominent role in their disillusionment: What happened to African women under colonialism is that the social, religious, constitutional and political privileges and rights disappeared, while the economic exploitation continued and was often intensified. It intensified because division of labour according to sex was frequently disrupted … when they (men) are required to leave their farms to seek employment, women remained behind burdened with every task necessary for survival of themselves, the children and even the men …27

25 Adiele Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Ibadan: University Press Limited, 1981), 315–16. 26 A. E. Afigbo, “The Eastern Provinces Under Colonial Rule,” in Groundwork of Nigerian History, edited by Obaro Ikime (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 2004), 421. 27 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington: Howard University Press, 1972), 275.

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In the same vein, women lost their authority over the marketplace to the newly appointed all-male market administrators.28 While all this was ongoing, the world grappled with the effects of the Great Depression, a period when, “the prices of export produce were low and the prices of imports high, creating an economic downturn that could only be further aggravated by the introduction of direct taxes …”29 The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939, is largely understood as a period of stagnancy in African history.30 Although the economic realities of these years in Nigeria have been covered in the literature, many have failed to elucidate the extent to which the British colonial government exploited the people through the control of import and export trade as well as taxation. R. O. Ekundare highlights some of the tax policies in Nigeria that cushioned the effect of the depression and the resultant anti-tax revolt in the eastern part of the country.31 The depression orchestrated “the drastic fall in the prices of … palm produce, and other agricultural exports undermined the personal economies of peasant producers, diminishing their ability to pay taxes.”32 Korieh adds that, “with their dwindling income, the region’s farmers severely felt the impact of the depression years. The situation was probably worse for women because of their roles in providing the bulk of household food needs.”33 It was therefore just a matter of time before they reached saturation point and reacted accordingly. The above observation is supported by the findings of Richard Bourne: Prices for primary products gradually recovered, hitting a peak in 1926–27, before the onset of the depression. They were then held back throughout the 1930s, a period of severe deflation in Nigeria. Between 1929 and 1940, for example, the export of cocoa grew only from 55,000 tons to 90,000 tons but

28

Chukwu, “Igbo Women,” 81–103. Ifueko Omoigiu Okauru (ed.), A Comprehensive Tax History of Nigeria (Ibadan: Safari Books, 2012), 88. 30 Moses Ochonu, “Conjoined to Empire: the Great Depression and Nigeria,” Africa Economic History 34 (2006), 103–45; see also Robert J. Samuelson, “Revisiting the Great Depression,” The Wilson Quarterly 1 (2012): 36–43. 31 R. Olufemi Ekuundare, An Economic History of Nigeria 1860–1960 (London: Methuen, 1973), 110–13. 32 Ochonu, Conjoined to Empire, 103–45. 33 Chima J. Korieh, The Land Has Changed: History, Society and Gender in Colonial Eastern Nigeria (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2010), 131. 29

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the prices per ton dropped from £72 to £28; the quantity of palm was the same, but the price fell by 75% from £48 a ton to £12 …34

The Great Depression resulted in policies by the colonial authorities aimed at extracting whatever they could from the colonized to cushion its effects. The result was to increase duties on imported goods, which gave rise to the high prices of such products. On the other hand, the commodities produced by the colonized people of Nigeria had their prices fixed at a very low rate compared to European manufactured goods. At the same time, the people were expected to pay their taxes from the meagre income accrued from the sale of their palm produce. The mental trauma associated with the high level of exploitation was high. Women watched their husbands groan in pain and complain of the harshness of the economy coupled with the reality of the colonial tax adventure. The women therefore decided to act to save their husbands. A look at the price of palm produce in the depression years is necessary to understand the extent to which the depression impacted on the people’s major source of income. This will also help in understanding the frustrations of the women who decided to revolt against the government. Table 10.1. The price of Grade II palm oil and palm kernel per ton (1930–9)35 Year 1930–1 1931–2 1932–3 1933–4 1934–5 1935–6 1936–7 1937–8 1938–9

Palm oil £ s d 13. 15. 1. 9. 12. 6. 8. 9. 6. 6. 11. 11. 6. 7. 10. 10. 13. 0. 13. 13. 10. 10. 17. 10. 5. 18. 9.

Palm kernel £ s d 8. 3. 6. 6. 10. 4. 6. 5. 9. 4. 9. 9. 4. 3. 2. 6. 19. 3. 9. 12. 0. 7. 14. 10. 5. 3. 7.

The prices shown in Table 10.1 above depict the economic stagnation in the land and why 1938 was the year of revolt. In 1930–1 the economy was 34

Richard Bourne, Nigeria: a New History of a Turbulent Century (New York: Zed Books, 2015), 306. 35 Nwabughuogu, The Dynamics of Change, 132.

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a little better, albeit unstable compared to 1938–9. While a ton of palm oil sold for £9.12/6 (nine pounds, twelve shillings, and six pence) in 1930–1, the drastic fall in 1938–9 to £5.18/9 (five pounds, eighteen shillings, and nine pence) called for a review of the subsisting tax rates without revolt. In 1931 there was a tax reduction in Okigwe Division to the effect that, in Isuochi, the old rate was reduced from four shillings (4/-) to three shillings (3/-), and in Obowo from five shillings (5/-) to three shillings (3/), while the rest of the division had their tax rates reduced from six shillings (6/-) to four shillings (4/-).36 A look at the prices of palm produce in 1930– 1 shows a somewhat healthy economy and reduced tax rate, while in 1938– 9, when the economy plunged, the government failed to adjust the tax rates because they used the colonized economy to caution the effect of the Great Depression without considering the wellbeing of the people so concerned.

The Women’s Nonviolent Response As the effects of the Great Depression took their toll on the global economy from 1929 to 1939, so did its harsh reality stare into the faces of the people of Okigwe Division, Eastern Nigeria. Their major source of income, palm produce, could not yield the expected return, while at the same time prices of European manufactured goods imported into Nigeria soared. The people were forced to grudgingly fulfil their tax obligations irrespective of the economic situation of the period. Their meagre income was burdened with enormous expenditure. The colonial authority deployed police and court officials to force the people to pay taxes without consideration of their circumstances and the challenges posed by the Great Depression. In December 1938 the women decided to organize a nonviolent protest, in contrast to the violent Aba Women War of 1929. To achieve their mission, they began to spread rumours across the various clans in the Okigwe and Bende Divisions of Owerri Province that they were not meant to pay taxes in 1938, and that the UK was going to hand Nigeria over to the Germans,37 hence they would be made to pay another tax to the new colonial authority. This was propaganda deployed by the women to ensure they got the attention of all the women in Igbo society to allow for a coordinated

36

NAE, CSE 12/1/332, Annual Report, Owerri Province, 1931, vol. viii A, 48. National Archives Enugu (NAE), OKIDISR 9/1/156, vol. II, Anti-Tax Agitation in Okigwe & Bende Divisions, Owerri Province, C.T.C. Ennals, Okigwe Escorts, report for December 15, 1938, 160.

37

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mass protest throughout the region. By this time, the people, tired of the burden of taxation, stopped paying it. The colonial authority made efforts to ascertain the reason for this change in attitude of the people towards the payment of tax. Mr. C. T. C. Ennals, Assistant District Officer (ADO), Okigwe Division, while reporting to the resident of Owerri Province, observed among other things that, “It is difficult at this stage to account for the extraordinary attitude taken by the people of this clan. Although the low price of produce is a contributory cause … Tax payment throughout the Division is much slower and the people more reluctant to pay this year due to the general economic depression …”38 The women began to mobilize vigorously against taxation in the area. To prevent the protest from escalating and spilling into the other divisions in Igboland, the authorities made efforts to bring in policemen from around the country. The women used the market squares for their meetings and alerted others to the need to protect their husbands from the harsh reality of the Great Depression and colonial taxation. On December 5, 1938 the women began their protest as “two thousand women from Isuochi, Uturu, Otanchara came to the station at Okigwe asking for a reduction in tax.”39 The number surged while the authorities ignored their demands. On December 5–13, 1938, over fifteen thousand women converged at Okigwe station, singing, dancing, waving their palm fronds, and demanding the reduction of tax rates to one shilling (1/-) and an extension of the payment time by four months. This movement startled the authorities who, in 1929, had had to deal with a violent protest by women. The colonial authorities acknowledged the nonviolent conduct of the protesters when at one point they stated that, “the women are far more reasonable and more attentive,”40 but at another time observed that dealing with such a nonviolent group was difficult. According to the authority, keeping order was “difficult … with a crowd like this in front, getting worse and worse as it sees armed police taking no action against it. [The w]omen [are] getting very restive and hard to control.”41 The inability of the authorities to use force to disperse the women stems from the fact that the women were nonviolent and conducted themselves in manners that perplexed the

38 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, Anti-Tax Agitation in Okigwe and Bende Divisions, Owerri, Province vol. 1, no. 4. 39 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 12. 40 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 132. 41 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 113–14.

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government forces. They observed further that the “women were in good form and friendly but unwilling to move.”42 It is important to note that the women, after the 1929 war, had resolved to approach their exploiters in a nonviolent manner reminiscent of Gandhi’s nonviolence in India. “Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak, but of the strong and fearless. It does not consist merely of abstention from physical injury; it demands a discipline of not even thinking of hurting others.”43 The women’s resolve was informed by their belief that only the living would celebrate victory against obnoxious polices and tyrannical regimes. Again, the colonial authority was well armed and ready to use force against the women, as in 1929. But their firm, nonviolent attitude weakened the colonial government, who resorted to dialoguing with the leadership of the women. The women sat out at the Okigwe station, singing, and remained there over December 5–6. By this time, most had grown weak and left to eat to regain their strength while others remained. By the evening of December 6 the colonial authority had envisaged the escalation of the protest, and decided to curb it using police action. By this point, they did not have enough police personnel to do so, which resulted in the call for the deployment of officers and men from other divisions in the Eastern Region and across the country. This was carried out through the exchange of telegrams between the district officers of Okigwe and Bende divisions, the Resident of Owerri Province, the leadership of the NigPol, and the secretary of Southern Nigeria, among others. It is noteworthy that, before their protest, they had explored other nonviolent means to highlight their challenges and request a policy change by petitioning the governor general of Nigeria. According to the women, police and court officers raided their homes incessantly. Furthermore, they highlighted among other things that they had been paying their taxes for ten years before 1938 without difficulty. They further observed that, “This year brings us into eleven years, paying our taxation, as it were, we split into the hardness of money, owing to the disarrangement [sic] with the produce buyers, Kernels and oils, it prices fail [sic] away from the hands of the farmer.”44 The petition states further that, “your Excellency, we submissively 42 NAE, OKIDIST 9/11/155, 110–16, F. S. Morgan, Amibo, Daily Diary for Isuikwuato Escort, 43 Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, “Declaration: Global Convention on Peace and Nonviolence,” Peace Research 36, no. 2 (2004): 61–6. 44 NAE, OKIDIST 9/11/156, Petition by the People of Eluimenyi in Isuikwuato clan to the Governor of Nigeria on the need to reduce taxes to be paid for 1938 as a result of the Great Depression, 250–1.

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beg that you should help us, either for a reduction of our taxies [sic] into 1/for this year specially, without doing so, the raiding of the compounds and damages of our properties by the policemen, will surely cause great misunderstanding, fear, and depression on the people of this area.”45 Martin Luther King Jr. received a threatening call in 1956 and realized that his wife and newly born baby daughter could be taken from him, or he from them, at any moment.46 Similarly, the women felt that, with the rate at which police and court officials raided their homes, their husbands could be taken from them, hence their decision to adopt an official complaints approach against the government’s tax policies. Following the failure of the colonial government to address their requests, the women decided to meet violence with nonviolence. It was quite unfortunate that their petitions fell on deaf ears, and hence they resorted to a nonviolent approach. The conduct of the women baffled the colonial authority, making it very difficult for them to respond violently. They were quite aware that the palm frond signified “peace” in Igbo culture. In this society, whenever a palm frond is displayed or used in protest, it implies that the protest is a nonviolent one. Commenting on this state of affairs, the Resident of Owerri Province exclaimed in bewilderment, “on 12th December 1938, at 9:30 am I proceeded to Isuochi and found about 5,000 women present … they had no weapons and were orderly. I spent a long time arguing with the leaders who finally went to consult with the main body …”47 While the women highlighted their grievances, it was difficult for the colonial authority to agree and address them. They instead promised the women a reduction in the tax rates for the 1939 financial year, a tentative promise considering their circumstances at the time of the protest. Thus, to put an end to the protest and prevent it from escalating to other clans in southern Nigeria, the authority decided to mobilize armed policemen from around the country to Okigwe Division. The assistant district officer (ADO), in a telegram to the Nigerian Police (NigPol), requested an “escort of about 40 police to be headquartered at Amigbo or Umunnekwu from where escort should operate in the area.”48 “Escort” here meant a team of armed policemen camped in any designated community to coerce the people into performing any task that was the subject of the escort. The police escort was to remain in the community, being fed and maintained by it, until its mission was complete. This approach increased the burden on the people who were 45

NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/156, petition 251. James H. Cone, “Martin and Malcolm on Nonviolence and Violence,” Phylon 49. no. 3–4 (2001): 173–83. 47 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/157, Anti-Tax-Agitation, vol. III. 48 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, Anti-Tax Agitation, vol. I, 4–71. 46

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already impoverished by the economic distortions of the Great Depression and the demands for tax. On December 8, 1939 a combined escort of sixty policemen arrived in Okigwe to deal with the situation – twenty-three from Onitsha, twentyseven from Enugu, and ten from Port Harcourt.49 The Assistant District Officer used the sixty-man escort to disperse the large gathering of protesting women at Isuikwuato and Uturu. According to him, “the dispersal was with no resistance and discussion held with women who demanded reduction of tax to one shilling and four months extension to pay … declined both requests but said next year’s rate would be considered in due course …”50 This response did no go down well with the dispersed women, who sent emissaries across the clans urging their fellow women to be resolute in their demand while at the same time staying nonviolent. Because of the overwhelming number of women at Isuochi, Uturu, and Okigwe, the district officer (DO) of Okigwe Division, the resident of Owerri Province, in consultation with the superintendent of police (SP), senior assistant superintendent of police (SASP), assistant superintendent of police (ASP), and district officer of Bende Division and the various assistant district officers (ADOs) in the Bende and Okigwe divisions agreed the request for more policemen. This resulted in telegrams sent to NigPol Lagos, NigPol Kaduna, NigPol Kano, NigPol Ibadan, NigPol Jos, NigPol Zaria, NigPol Asaba, NigPol Enugu, NigPol Onitsha, NigPol Aba, and NigPol Port-Harcourt51 requesting reinforcements. Between December 5 and December 10, 1938, arrangements for a total of 585 policemen were made. They arrived at Ovim railway station between December 7 and December 12, 1938. In one of the telegrams, F. B. Carr, resident of Owerri Province, wrote on December 7, 1938 to executives Aba, Ahoada, Owerri, and Bende, said: “T.145 x there is considerable anti-tax agitation in Okigwe District and Women are demonstrating x inform me at Okigwe earliest of any spread your Division x Have asked for escort Sixty police Okigwe x.”52 Lots of telegram correspondences between the Owerri resident and other residents in Nigeria reveal that the deployment of police in the division was to avoid the spread of the anti-tax revolt by women to other divisions. They also acknowledged that the women were nonviolent, and hence restraints were employed by the police against violent dispersal.

49

NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 18. NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 24 51 NAE, OKIDIST, 9/1/155, 12-101. 52 NAE, OKIDIST 9/1/155, 20a. 50

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Table 10.2. Distribution of requests for police deployment to the Okigwe Division53 Date of telegram 7/12/1938 8/12/1938 9/12/1938

Number of Policemen 25 30 30

9/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938 10/12/1938

75 20 20 20 100 100 20 30 3 lorries

Police unit Enugu Onitsha Aba & PortHarcourt Lagos Ibadan Kaduna Kano Lagos Kaduna Jos Zaria Asaba

Mode of transportation Train Motor (Lorry) Motor (lorry)

Departure date 7/12/1938 8/12/1938 9/12/1938

Arrival date 7/12/1938 8/12/1938 9/12/1938

Train Motor (Lorry) Train Train Train Train Train Train Motor(Lorry)

9/12/1938 10/12/1938 11/12/1938 10/12/1938 11/12/1938 11/12/1938 11/12/1938 11/12/1938 11/12/1938

10/12/1938 10/12/1938 11/12/1938 11/12/1938 12/12/1938 12/12/1938 12/12/1938 12/12/1938 11/12/1938

There were several accounts of the factors responsible for the anti-tax agitation, as made manifest in the various reports on the incident. From the district officer of the Okigwe and Bende Divisions, the assistant district officers, the superintendent of police, senior assistant superintendent of police, to the residents of Owerri Province, all reports acknowledged the fact that the Great Depression, corrupt tax collectors, and low prices of palm produce were responsible, hence the women’s demand for a tax reduction and an extension of the period of payment by four months. In his detailed report on the causes of the protest, the resident of Owerri Province articulated the following reasons: (a) The poor prices of produce (b) Dissatisfaction with tax collectors and the system of collection (c) The large number of current rumours. For example: (1) that Nigeria was to be handed over to Germany; (2) that his honour had stated that no tax would be paid this year … (d) In the Isuikwuato clan areas dissatisfaction with the existing clan council (e) The removal of the troops in Okigwe (f) The lack of administrative staff and consequent lack of close contact with the people.54 53 National Archives Enugu, (NAE), OKIDIST 9/1/155, Anti-Tax Agitation in Okigwe and Bende Divisions, Owerri Province, December, 1938, vol. 1. 54 NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/397, Disturbances Among Northern Clans of Okigwe Division, Owerri Province, 120–2.

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Following the convergence of the women in their various clans after they were dispersed by the police at Okigwe station, the colonial government decided to split the police into formations and send them to the various clans to prevent further action by the women. The deployment of the police escort to the various clans from where they would march to the communities had the effect of increasing the economic burdens of the people, as they were responsible for the upkeep of the police escorts in their communities. Again, on December 14, 1938, the resident drafted a detachment of police to Uturu, Nneato, and Isuochi, with the instruction that, “every gathering must be dispersed gently and at each gathering three women should be arrested.”55 This strategy would instil fear into the people and ensure they did the bidding of the colonial government. As pointed out earlier, the people were disenchanted with the perennial police and court official raids. Further, the authorities decided to “raid Eziama and Nneato at 2 am on 15th December, 1938 to bring in all leading men and elders … that tax collection must start at once and that if the women interfered the police would effect arrests.”56 The raid was eventually carried out with only seventeen arrests made as the people had deserted their homes for towns in the neighbouring Agwu Division. The raid unsettled the women, and with the presence of armed policemen at every clan it became difficult for them to continue with their nonviolent approach. The authority acknowledged how helpful the police action had been when they observed that, against the women, the mere advance of police was sufficient, being patient, talking and listening coupled with good humour, all of which permitted the dispersal of the majority of the gatherings, and after the one big gathering on December 12, 1938, the rapid splitting of the police added to the subsequent rapid movement from place to place, greatly assisting the breaking up of the agitation.57

Effect of the Nonviolent Agitation The nonviolent movement by the women of Okigwe Division had various effects on both the colonial authority and the people. The division, prior to the agitation, had less than thirty resident policemen, but during the protest it witnessed a large deployment of police personnel from various provinces across the country. The number was overwhelming, and this made the protesting women afraid. The mode of their distribution which began on December 7, 1938 is noteworthy. 55

NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/397, 115–16. NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/397, 117. 57 NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/397, 119. 56

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In January 1939 the colonial authorities in Owerri Province began to visit the various clans in the affected divisions. The people, apart from their calls for a reduction in tax, requested the removal of all members of the court and to allow them to choose their representatives at the Native Administration and Native Courts because of the corruption that prevailed in the court. This was the position of the people in all the villages visited by F. B. Carr, resident, Owerri Province and his team, comprising Mr. A. V. D. Ince, D. O. Bende, V. C. M. Kelsey, D. O. Okigwe, Mr. C. T. C. Ennals, A. D. O., Mr. S. P. L. Beaumont, A. D. O, Mr. R. C. Wilkinson, A. D. O., T. V. W. Finlay, superintendent of police (SP), Captain Ballantine, commissioner of police (CP), T. H. Wilson Esq, SP, and E. S. Morgan, senior assistant superintendent of police, among others. This they did under what they termed an “Intelligent Report,” which afforded them the opportunity to interact with the people to understand why the women had staged the protest. It was due to the nonviolent agitation of the women that the colonial authorities began a further reorganization of the Native Authority in the Bende and Okigwe divisions of Owerri Province. This affected the Native Administration with its judicial arm, the Native Court. The essence was to address the allegations of corruption by the women against the tax collectors and court officials. More judicial reforms took place between 1940 and 1945. This time, they were aimed at the substitution of a restricted panel of members trusted by the people and the administration for the former mass benches of illiterate family heads.58 More reforms were embarked upon in 1947. Political officers were advised not to lump antagonistic groups together and were advised to have regard for the people’s historical backgrounds and differences.59 With this, the government introduced the “best man” policy which demanded the selection by the people of the most suitable candidates for office in the councils and on the Native Court benches, irrespective of their position in native law and custom. The procedure for selection was for the local people to assemble on an appointed day, and through a process of rough election, a fixed number of persons be selected. These were then appointed by the resident as court members, and the system thus gave the mass of the people a chance to choose their leaders.60 However, the action of the colonial authorities in charging five women to court was an utter negation of the nonviolent approach adopted to express their grievances. Two of the women were charged with unlawful assembly 58

NAE, OKIDIST 9/11/244, Annual Report Okigwe Division 1947–1952, 6. Uzor Ezekiel Okafor, The Road to Uboma: Origin and Colonial Experience (Lagos: Sibon Books Limited, 2018), 65. 60 Nwabughuogu, The Dynamics of Change, 257–8. 59

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and riot and consequently sentenced to one year’s imprisonment with hard labour. The other three were charged with conduct likely to cause breach of peace and sentenced to one month imprisonment with hard labour.61 This did not go down well with the women who, after a series of consultations, decided to use petitions to persuade the authorities to rescind its decision. The authorities maintained that it was the only way to prevent further protests in the area.

Conclusion Nonviolence, although rarely deployed by people faced with direct, structural, or cultural violence, has, over the years, aided in forcing a change in policy. Johan Galtung highlights some of the instances where nonviolence has been used to achieve positive results to include the liberation of arrested Jews in Berlin in February 1943, Gandhi’s Swaraj campaign in India’s independence from 1947, Martin Luther King Jr’s civil disobedience in the US South from 1956, the anti-Vietnam War movement, inside and outside Vietnam, and the 1986 “people’s power” movement in the Philippines, among others.62 In colonial Nigeria, dominating the history are the violent responses of the people to obnoxious policies. However, efforts have been made here to discuss the nonviolent movement of the women in Igboland, specifically the Okigwe and Bende divisions of the Owerri Province in southern Nigeria. Due to the effect of the 1929 Aba Women War, both the authorities and the women decided to trade with caution, hence their nonviolent approach. Every conflict either ends in a win-win or win-lose situation. An analysis of the effect of the nonviolent agitation shows that it was a win-win situation for the parties involved here. While the demands of the women were not met in their entirety, the colonial authority was able to reorganize the native administration and courts in conformity with the requests of the women. Again, the authorities learnt to pay attention to the yearnings of the people rather than foist orders that pitched the people against them.

61

NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/397, 152. Johan Galtung, “Nonviolence and Deep Culture: Some Hidden Obstacles,” Peace Research 27, no. 3 (1995): 21–37. 62

CHAPTER ELEVEN GENDERED NONVIOLENCE IN NORTH SUMATRA: DISROBING AS A SYMBOLIC METHOD OF NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE MARIA KARDASHEVSKAYA

Introduction Indonesia is an archipelago consisting of nineteen thousand islands that extend from the Pacific (east) to the Indian Ocean (west) with five main islands of Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, and West Papua with high ethnic diversity.1 The Toba Bataks in the province of North Sumatra are one of several Batak groups in the region, who reside in a mountainous area with extensive forest coverage around Toba Lake. Residents in the villages are mostly farmers who live off rice farming, Arabica and Robusta coffee trees, vegetable and fruit farming, and benzoin farming (known locally as kemenyan or haminjon). A pulp and paper company called PT. Inti Indorayon Utama (IIU) built its pulp mill in 1984 and gained a concession permit covering 269,069 hectares of land in 1992 on the territory where the Toba Bataks have resided for generations.2 The company built a pulp mill near the small town of Porsea in the Toba Samosir (Tobasa) sub-district. Since then, the Toba Bataks have resisted the appropriation of their lands to the concession, and 1 Adrian Vickers, A History of Modern Indonesia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1. 2 Suryati Simanjuntak, Konflik Pertanahan di Tanah Batak: Kumpulan Laporan Perampasan Tanah Adat akibat Kehadiran Industri HTI (Parapat, Indonesia: KSPPM, 2015), 12; Indira J. Simbolon, Peasant Women and Access to Land: Customary Law, State Law and Gender-based Ideology. The Case of the Toba-Batak (North Sumatra) (Wageningen: Ponsen & Looijen b.v. Wageningen, 1998), 21.

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demanded the closure of the pulp mill. Within the context of the changing political environment and the transmission from dictatorship to democracy, the pulp mill was closed in 1999, then reopened in 2003 with the new name of PT. Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL).3 Today, TPL’s concession equals 185,016 hectares.4 Numerous villages whose land lies within the concession struggle for state recognition of their customary rights over their ancestral land. This resistance is led by farmers who either defend or reclaim their ancestral land. Women have historically played a crucial role in this resistance. The women of Sugapa are more widely known in Indonesia and beyond. These women were the leaders of the protest movement to defend over fifty hectares of the communal land in the 1980s and 1990s. They successfully reclaimed their territory de facto with the support of the then Interior Minister of Indonesia, Rudini.5 I visited the area of Toba Lake in 2011 when I was working with a filmmaking organization. I became interested in the gendered dynamics of the resistance, and I conducted my field research from December 2017 to June 2018. I explored the gendered dynamics of nonviolent resistance using ethnographic methods. As part of my research, I stayed in several villages that were “accompanied” by the local nongovernmental organization KSPPM (Community Initiative Study and Development Group, Kelompok Studi dan Pengembangan Prakarsa Masyarakat). This paper is based on the analysis of the data collected during that time. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the use of disrobing as a method of nonviolent resistance within the context of land conflicts in Southeast Asia. To proceed, I first discuss the role of women within nonviolent resistance. Then, I elaborate on the roles of women within the Toba Bataks’ struggle for land in North Sumatra based on my ethnographic research, and describe several episodes of the use of disrobing by Toba Batak women. Finally, I discuss which strategic goals women pursue by resorting to disrobing as a method of their struggle. I argue that disrobing serves the following objectives: (1) shaming; (2) self-protection/deterrence of violence; (3) demonstration of conviction and commitment. In my analysis and interpretation, I pay particular attention to “mother politics” and shaming.

3 Dimpos Manalu, Gerakan Sosial dan Perubahan Kebijakan Publik (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 2009), 239–69. 4 Eyes on the Forest. “Database.” 2019. https://maps.eyesontheforest.or.id. 5 Manalu, Gerakan Sosial dan Perubahan Kebijakan Publik, 156.

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Women’s roles within resistance I understand resistance as necessary in a power-laden relationship. Resistance is opposition to power.6 Power can be expressed through violence – direct (physical), structural (racism, sexism, poverty, etc.), or cultural (internalizing and legitimizing violence).7 Resistance can be open or hidden. James C. Scott8 employs the term “weapons of the weak” to describe hidden resistances, suggesting an indirect confrontation between the powerful and the powerless. Open resistance can be either violent or nonviolent.9 Violent resistance can refer to killings, looting, or the destruction of property, while nonviolent resistance is an active form that aims to transform an oppressive system through protest, persuasion, noncooperation, and intervention.10 Nonviolent resistance can be strategic, principled, or rightful.11 Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance promoted a philosophy of nonviolence – satyagraha. Sharp’s nonviolence is strategic because it sees it as more advantageous than violence. Nonviolent struggle can also be rights-based, giving citizens a moral ground to challenge structures of power (e.g. a state power).12 Women in conflict have traditionally been portrayed as victims. Recently, there has been criticism of this imagery, and researchers call for the acknowledgement of women’s violent and nonviolent agency.13 Within 6 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: an Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 95. 7 Johan Galtung, Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization (London: SAGE, 1996). 8 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 9 Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st century Potential (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 2005), 14. 10 Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy: a Conceptual Framework for Liberation (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution, 2010), 4–5; Gene Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution, 2013), 21–47. 11 Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works, 70–5; Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957); Kevin J. O’Brien, and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kurt Schock, “Rightful Radical Resistance: Mass Mobilization and Land Struggles in India and Brazil,” Mobilization: an International Quarterly 20, no. 4 (2015): 493–515. 12 O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China; Schock, “Rightful Radical Resistance.” 13 Annika Bjorkdahl and Johanna M. Selimovic, “Gender: the Missing Piece in the Peace Puzzle,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches

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nonviolent resistance, women have played roles as “strategists, organizers, and active participants.”14 Nonviolent resistance in the context of agrarian struggles in the Global South has not been widely studied, including the gendered aspects of these struggles, except for several works by O’Brien and Li, Schock, and Morgan.15 Also, Sharp’s theorization of nonviolent resistance, Scott’s “hidden” resistance, and the more recent theorization of “rightful” and “radical rightful” resistance do not take gender seriously, even though structures, opportunities, ways of organizing, methods, and frames are often gendered.16 Following Codur and King, McAllister, and Principe,17 I suggest that women’s agency within nonviolent resistance needs to be studied more widely. Women’s participation and tactical innovation are crucial for the success of nonviolent resistance. Women constitute fifty percent of the population, and not involving them can be seen as a major failure of resistance. When women participate, they usually bring in their gendered contributions to nonviolent resistance due to the inequalities that exist in most societies. to Peace, edited by Oliver P. Richmond, Sandra Pagoda, and Jasmin Ramovic, 181– 92 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Patricia Justino, Rebecca Mitchell, and Catherine Muller, “Women and Peace-building: Local Perspectives on Opportunities and Barriers,” Development and Change 49, no. 9 (2018): 911–29; Katrina Lee-Koo, “Gender at the Crossroad of Conflict: Tsunami and Peace in Post-2005 Aceh,” Feminist Review 101 (2012): 59–77. 14 Marie A. Principe, Women in Nonviolent Movements (Special Report 399), United States Institute of Peace, 2017, 2. https://www.usip.org/publications/2016/12 /women-nonviolent-movements. 15 O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China; Schock, “Rightful Radical Resistance”; Miranda Morgan, “Women, Gender and Protest: Contesting Oil Palm Plantation Expansion in Indonesia,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 44, no. 6 (2017): 1177–96. 16 Marjorie Agosin, Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love: the Arpillera Movement in Chile, 1974–1994 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 1996); Myra M. Ferree and Carol M. Mueller, “Feminism and the Women's Movement: a Global Perspective,” in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspieter Kriesi, 576–607 (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); Sophie Richter-Devroe, “Defending Their Land, Protecting Their Men,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 14, no. 2 (2012): 181–201. 17 Anne-Marie Codur and Mary E. King, “Women in Civil Resistance,” in Women, War and Violence: Typograhy, Resistance and Hope, edited by Mariam Kurtz and Lester Kurtz, 401–46 (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2015); Pam McAllister, “You Can’t Kill the Spirit: Women and Nonviolent Action,” in Nonviolent Social Movements: a Geographical Perspective, edited by Stephen Zunes, Sarah Besh Asher, and Lester Kurtz, 18–35 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); Principe, Women in Nonviolent Movements.

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Some examples of gendered tactics are the use of gendered language to encourage participation and taking advantage of gendered opportunities present in a situation due to the minimal scrutiny of women from security forces. Women can also prevent violence by making themselves a “moral shield,” using their bodies as a tool within some cultural contexts where “nudity is a taboo.”18 Sharp19 identifies 198 methods of nonviolent resistance. One of the symbolic methods of nonviolent protest and persuasion mentioned by Sharp is “disrobing.” Our bodies are constructed by nature, society, culture, history, and politics.20 Butler21 argues that “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body” and that gender is “performative.”22 At the same time, political action is impossible without the presence of these physically, culturally, socially, and politically constructed gendered bodies because “for politics to take place, the body must appear,” the body in relation to other bodies, and the “performative exercise” takes place “between” bodies.”23 Our bodily experience of emotions is culturally constructed. The symbols and emotions they evoke can be crucial for social movements; however, these have often been disregarded within the study of contentious politics.24 There has traditionally been a juxtaposition of emotions and rationality and, within the study of social movements, the possibility of considering the role of emotions was only present within the context of “cognitive liberation” of the POS model and the analysis of framing, where researchers can look at such frames as “injustice frames,” which are usually

18

Principe, Women in Nonviolent Movements, 7. Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works, 27. 20 Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret M. Lock, “The Mindful Body: a Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1, no. 1 (1987): 6–41. 21 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: an Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40, no. 4 (1988): 519. 22 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 25. 23 Judith Butler, “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street,” 2011, 3. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2.-Bodies-in-Alliance-and-the-Politics-ofthe-Butler/9cf53d72261800bc7ac2f7353270a8f59287a9be. 24 Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, “Why Emotions Matter,” in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, 1–24 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Florence Ebila and Aili M. Tripp, “Naked Transgressions: Gendered Symbolism in Ugandan Land Protests,” Politics, Groups, and Identities 5, no. 1 (2017): 25–45. 19

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based on emotions.25 In theorizing nonviolent resistance, emotions have also been side lined. We can explain this by the fact that such emotions as anger may carry the potential for violence. Gandhian nonviolence may be immune to negative emotions because of its commitment to satyagraha and ahimsa, while Sharp’s nonviolence is more rational and seems to see emotions as rational, and therefore controllable and strategic. Despite this, however, “one of the advantages to taking emotions seriously is to see better how moral norms and injunctions come to have force.”26 There have been numerous cases of the use of feminine bodies in the context of nonviolent resistance. Some of these are within the context of the Global South, and others are in the West. In the Global South, there have been cases of the use of nudity and disrobing in Uganda, Nigeria, India, and others. Women here have used their bodies to protest land appropriation and rape culture.27 In the West, nudity has been most prominently employed to protest sexual exploitation and sexual violence (Slutwalks or FEMEN, for example).28 There is more research discussing the African and Western context and minimal research considering the Asian context, and therefore Veneracion-Rallonza29 calls for more research about the Asian cases of disrobing. This paper aims to contribute to the development of that knowledge.

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Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta, “Why Emotions Matter.” Craig Calhoun, “Putting Emotions in Their Place,” in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, 45–57 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 50. 27 Paromita Chakravarti, “Reading Women’s Protest in Manipur: a Different Voice?” Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 5, no. 3 (2010): 47–60; Ebila and Tripp, “Naked Transgressions”; Karina Eileraas, “Sex(t)ing Revolution, Femenizing the Public Square: Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Nude Protest, and Transnational Feminist Body Politics,” Signs 40, no. 1 (2014): 40–52; Kathleen M. Fallon and Julie Moreau, “Revisiting Repertoire Transition: Women’s Nakedness as Potent Protests in Nigeria and Kenya,” Mobilization: an International Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2016): 323–40. Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza, “Women's Naked Body Protests and the Performance of Resistance: Femen and Meira Paibi Protests Against Rape,” Philippine Political Science Journal 35, no. 2 (2014): 251–68. 28 Theresa Ann Hunt, “A Movement Divided: SlutWalks, Protest Repertoires and the Privilege of Nudity,” Social Movement Studies 17, no. 5 (2018): 541–57; Veneracion-Rallonza, “Women's Naked Body Protests.” 29 Veneracion-Rallonza, “Women's Naked Body Protests.” 26

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Women’s role within the Toba Batak resistance and the method of disrobing Women within the Toba Batak communities live within adat. Adat, often translated as “customs,” is a lived reality which regulates the relationships and daily lives of the people who claim to live it. This is the case for Toba Batak people. The villages I visited live adat daily, and adat presents itself as a parallel legal system. Within adat there are certain expectations towards the Toba Batak women. One example is that women are supposed to bear male children in order to ensure the continued existence of a clan (marga). If they do not they can be divorced. The husband can marry a second time, while the wife is forbidden to remarry. If she does, she loses the right to custody over her children. Women face other such restrictions based on their gender. Within the context of nonviolent resistance, women were not formal leaders but were active participants, and in some cases informal leaders. The formal leaders were often men. As part of the gender-mainstreaming program of the local nongovernmental organization KSPPM, however, women were also encouraged to become part of the leading committee and attend village meetings as well as advocacy meetings with the officials. However, when it came to direct action, women were often more organized and easily mobilized than men. For example, in the community of Ama Raja Medang Simamora it was women who organized themselves to reclaim the land from the company concession and farm it. In the communities of Pandumaan and Sipituhuta it was women who put their bodies on the frontline of the resistance when facing the government and the security forces during demonstrations. In the community of Lumban Sitorus it was women who gathered every weekend for a mobilizing meeting, with only a few men present as conveners. There are numerous other examples from my field research where women were on the frontline and took leadership within direct action. Women often became mobilized when the resistance turned more radical and field-based rather than advocacy-based. Formal leaders, mostly male, often dominated advocacy methods, such as meetings with the officials.

Disrobing as a method of Toba Batak nonviolent resistance Villagers locally developed diverse methods of struggle. In this article, I focus on the act of disrobing that was performed in several villages independently – that is, without women knowing that women in other

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villages resorted to this method. Women were often shy about discussing this act. For example, one woman who bared her breasts in front of government officials in a meeting did not respond to my request for an interview and avoided me. As an outsider, I did not insist on this interview, despite my deep curiosity. In addition, the women who told me about this act seemed to judge her for it. The NGO activists also expressed that they discouraged disrobing. This indicates that the act of disrobing is out of the norm in the context of the Toba Bataks. Indeed, in daily life, women usually cover their bodies fully and wear a sarong (a long cloth wrapped around the waist that covers the legs). There have been several cases of disrobing at several locations. In this paper I am interested in the question of why women use this method. I argue that women in the context of North Sumatra disrobed to pursue the strategic goals of their nonviolent resistance. They aimed at: first, shaming public officials; second, protecting themselves and deterring violence; and third, showing their commitment and advocating for themselves. However, there are cases of women being criminalized for these acts of disrobing.

Disrobing as shaming The local NGO, KSPPM, encourages women to be part of advocacy teams, which are usually groups of ten people. KSPPM suggests recruiting and including women as representatives of the community seeking a 50:50 ratio. One of the elderly women who joined these meetings could not speak Indonesian as well as many older Toba Batak women. She did not know what to say and felt limited by her language abilities, but was so full of emotion that she took her breasts out and said to the official, “How dare you take away our land from us and defend the company when it is these breasts that have fed you?” The official felt embarrassed and responded with, “Please, do not do that, ibu [literally, mother].”

Disrobing as protection and deterrence of violence The women in Pandumaan and Sipituhuta told me that one way they could protect their village was the method of disrobing. There were several cases when the Mobile Brigade forces (Brimob – special police forces) came into their village, looted their stores and houses, and destroyed their property. They said this felt like a real war to them. The Mobile Brigade came into the village in hundreds on special trucks carrying weaponry when the villagers were not ready. The next time the conflict was about to escalate, women decided to disrobe to prevent the Mobile Brigade from entering.

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In the village of Sugapa, Nai Sinta performed one of the older cases of disrobing that dates back to the first wave of protests against the company in the 1980s. Unlike the more contemporary protests, women were the leaders of this resistance. Amid widespread protests against the company appropriating their communal land, the police intimidated Nai Sinta as the leader of this women-led resistance. Once, when she was hiding in her house, the policemen came looking for her carrying weaponry. They wanted to arrest her and asked her why she resisted the land appropriation. In response, she disrobed and said, “Shoot me, I can stand for my rights.” They ran. Through this act, Nai Sinta protected herself and demonstrated her commitment to the struggle.

Disrobing as a demonstration of one’s commitment During my research, KSPPM organized numerous advocacy meetings with the government officials both in Parapat (where its headquarters are based) and Jakarta, the capital city. One of these meetings was held in early 2018 when a high-level government official came to hear the stories of the communities on whose behalf KSPPM advocated. One of the women from the village of Naga Hulambu came to the front and talked with tears in her eyes about how she disrobed to protect her land. She told the story to express to the government official that this was a matter to which they were so committed that the women were ready to disrobe. Then, she asked the government to speed up the process of conflict resolution. She concluded, “Poor us, Mister. Please, ensure that our land will be returned to us.” She told this story to strengthen her advocacy.

Disrobing and its criticisms Within the context of the international literature on disrobing, there is criticism of its use, especially within Western contexts. For example, Theresa Ann Hunt30 criticizes the SlutWalk initiative as a “protest repertoire” that can only be employed without negative judgement by the predominantly white feminists who carry racial and class privileges. Similarly, in the context of the Toba Batak resistance, disrobing is a contested repertoire of contention. Not everyone I talked with approves of this method. Many women expressed that they disapprove of it because one is not supposed to show one’s body, suggesting that nudity is generally a taboo in the Toba Batak context. Some even considered that disrobing could be seen as a violent 30

Hunt, “A Movement Divided.”

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method of resistance and justifiably criminalized – for example, the wives of the Simamora clan told me that the wives of the Purba clan from a nearby village were arrested for a disrobing act.

Planned and spontaneous disrobing Disrobing can be both planned and spontaneous. When planned, it is likely to be used for protection, prevention of violence, and demonstration of one’s commitment. When spontaneous, even if for protection (Nai Sinta’s case), it is most often aimed at shaming the perpetrator for violence. From the stories of women, this type of spontaneous disrobing takes place due to the overwhelming emotions that women find difficult to express in words. The interaction with the government officials requires, according to the women, the knowledge of “proper” Indonesian, the bravery to speak in public, and an ability to formulate one’s ideas in a formal context.

Contextualizing disrobing within the context of the Toba Batak struggle for land Sutton31 suggests that disrobing can result in objectification and even sexual violence, especially if the woman performs the act alone. Florence Ebila and Aili Mari Tripp32 point out that, for disrobing to be effective, it needs to resonate in the local culture. In the context of the Toba Bataks, women vehemently pointed out that young women did not disrobe because that would have given “too much pleasure” for the security forces. This suggests that women are aware of the objectification and voyeurism that an act of disrobing can encourage. They saw their aged bodies as discouraging objectification, and argued that they bring up feelings of shame among the security forces. They connected the power of disrobing with motherhood. In my field research, most of the younger women were uninvolved and unaware of the village politics because normally they had only recently moved into the village. Toba Bataks are patrilocal and patrilineal. This means that the Toba Batak women are also in a position of ambivalence before they give birth to a boy.33 The women who disrobed were married,

31 Barbara Sutton, “Naked Protest: Memories of Bodies and Resistance at the World Social Forum,” Journal of International Women's Studies 8, no. 3 (2007): 139–48. 32 Ebila and Tripp, “Naked Transgressions.” 33 Komnas Perempuan, Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan Berbasis Budaya (special report). Jakarta, Indonesia: Komnas Perempuan, 2017.

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older, and had a male child. As I pursued the connection between motherhood and disrobing, one of the men told me a story about a woman and her son in the colonial Dutch East Indies. A boy from a village became successful and started working for the Dutch resident. His mother came from the village to visit him. The boy saw his mother from afar and asked the guards to take the woman away because she was in shabby and dirty clothes. The woman, however, insisted on seeing the man, claiming that he was her son who worked for the resident, and forced her way through. However, her son insisted they move her. His mother heard his voice when he ordered this and said this was her son. Finally, the guards asked her for the name of her son, and when she told them they took her to him. The boy was very well dressed, all in white, so the mother did not recognize him at first, but she remembered his voice. She said, “You are my son,” then took her breasts out and continued, “you drank from these breasts,” and the breasts expressed milk which meant that what she was saying was true. I understand that this is one of the versions of the popular Toba Batak story about Simardan (similar to the West Sumatran story about Malin Kundang, a boy child who betrayed his mother). The above story reveals the importance and centrality of motherhood for the Toba Batak people. Children hear these stories from young and learn to respect not only their mothers but also their roots. The story also brought me back to the woman who took her breasts out in protest in a meeting with the government officials in Dolok Sanggul, the capital city of Humbang Hasundutan district. The woman probably aimed to shame the men (public officials) for behaving like Simardan and disrespecting their mothers by not recognizing and supporting their struggle. This appeal to motherhood within resistance can be referred to as “mother politics.”34 Some feminist researchers see this usage of “mother politics” as limiting women to their gendered motherly roles.35 However, as Ebila and Tripp36 argue, not all cultures view motherhood as a weakness, and in some contexts women may not have other culturally embedded ways of protesting. In these contexts, motherhood is a powerful tool for asserting one’s gendered political relevance. Despite the key role women played in the anti-colonial struggle, women’s issues have remained side lined in postcolonial Indonesia. Indonesian women did not historically deny the role that motherhood played in their lives. Even https://www.komnasperempuan.go.id/reads-kekerasan-terhadap-perempuanberbasis-budaya. 34 Cynthia Cockburn, From Where We Stand: War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis (New York: Zed Books, 2007). 35 Ebila and Tripp, “Naked Transgressions.” 36 Ibid.

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radical women’s organizations, such as Gerwani (Gerakan Wanita Indonesia, an Indonesian Women’s Organization) centred on motherhood as part of their politics.37 However, due to the embeddedness of motherhood, it was also employed during the Suharto regime to ensure the docility of women and families in what Suryakusuma38 termed “ibuism” or “motherism.” At the same time, within the history of the Indonesian women’s movement, there are cases when “mother politics” was employed by women supporting each other during the times of the 1998 financial crisis, for example, when they organized to share half-price milk powder.39 This demonstrates the appreciation of motherhood by Indonesian women, which can nevertheless be weaponized against them by the state for the purposes of social and political control. Women in the Toba Batak villages also expressed that disrobing was the last option when their homes were threatened. This affirms that feelings of being threatened and angry should encourage women to undress. This is similar to how Apaa women in Uganda understood their nude protests.40 The next concept that needs to be discussed about the employment of disrobing is the feeling of shame and its role. Opung Greta explained that disrobing “was a noble act for Batak people because they ‘knew shame’ (‘tahu malu’).” He further argues that the person who disrobed overcame shame: if the other party does not feel ashamed to treat us the way they do, we also choose not to know shame … Can he dare to look at our women disrobing? Yes, sure, do it if you dare because our Batak adat says that is the most difficult thing. It is taboo. But if the conflict is big, yes, we will do it … We are daring them, “if you don’t know shame, we also don’t know shame and let us see where it takes us.” Then the most ashamed one loses. Usually, security forces leave the spot because it is embarrassing for them to see mothers undressed.

The security forces leaving the spot because of feeling ashamed means that the villagers have the righteous cause because the ones doing the misdeed are expected to feel more ashamed than the ones who trespass the 37

Saskia Wieringa, “Two Indonesian Women’s Organizations: Gerwani and the PKK,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 25, no. 2 (1993): 17–30. 38 Julia I. Suryakusuma, “The State and Sexuality in New Order Indonesia,” in Fantasizing the Feminine in Indonesia, edited by Laurie J. Sears (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 92–119. 39 Susan Blackburn, Women and the State in Modern Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 40 Ebila and Tripp, “Naked Transgressions.”

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cultural boundary of “nudity as taboo.” Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink41 discuss shaming as part of “leverage politics” that social movements employ. “Moral leverage” often “mobiliz[es] shame” to attract policymakers’ support for a cause. As discussed by the contributors of an edited volume by Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta, shame is an emotion that can be employed within social movements, variously: the feeling of shame can encourage mobilization, greater participation within social movements, and the conversion of others, such as security forces, thus supporting the processes of Sharp’s “political jiujitsu.”42 Martin Luther King Jr., for example, was shamed into participating in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the protesters in East Germany shamed the police and security forces for their support of the regime.43 As Craig Calhoun points out in the same volume, emotions are also culturally constructed, and malu is one of those emotions that is seen by anthropologists as cultural.44 In the context of Indonesia, there have been numerous studies of malu as a cultural concept. Thus, for example, some discussed lek among the Balinese, isin among the Javanese, and others discussed the concept of malu within Malay or Indonesian culture in general.45 The Toba Bataks use several words to express this concept of malu, such as maila or dang maradat. I am interested in the concept of malu 41

Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, “Transnational Advocacy Networks in International and Regional Politics,” International Social Science Journal 159 (1999): 89–101. 42 Gene Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution, 2013), 111–21. 43 Jeff Goodwin and Steven Pfaff, “Emotion Work in High-risk Social Movements: Managing Fear in the U. S. and East German Civil Rights Movements,” in Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements, edited by Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, 282–302 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 295–8. 44 Elizabeth Fuller Collins and Ernaldi Bahar, “To Know Shame: Malu and Its Uses in Malay Societies,” Crossroads: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (2000): 35–69; Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Daniel M. T. Fessler, “Shame in Two Cultures: Implications for Evolutionary Approaches,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 4, no. 2 (2004): 207–62; Ward Keeler, “Shame and Stage Fright in Java,” Ethos 11, no. 3 (1983): 152–65; Johan Lindquist, “Veils and Ecstasy: Negotiating Shame in the Indonesian Borderlands,” Ethnos 69, no. 4 (2004): 487–508. Ayu L. Saraswati, “‘Malu’: Coloring Shame and Shaming the Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesia,” Feminist Studies 38, no. 1 (2012): 113–40. 45 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures; Collins and Bahar, “To Know Shame”; Fessler, “Shame in Two Cultures”; Keeler, “Shame and Stage Fright in Java”; Lindquist, “Veils and Ecstasy”; Saraswati, “Malu.”

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since it was the word used in an interview with me. Also, the concept itself is independently strong enough due to the history of its use within Indonesian politics.46 Malu is the concept I came across as I started my ethnographic field research. As I was waiting for my research permit, I lived in the area of Pakuncen in Yogyakarta. A street sign I saw there stated the following: Enculturating the feeling of malu: one should be malu if one does not join others; one should feel malu if one does not join the community work (kerja bakti); one should be malu not to join community policing (ronda); one should be malu not to contribute in jimpitan/donate; one should feel malu if one does not socialize with others; one should be malu to throw garbage on the street.

Here, malu is represented as the concept employed by the villagers (or most likely the village government, because it was nicely printed) to ensure social harmony, in line with the discussions on the Javanese isin or the Balinese lek. It suggests that people are supposed to follow the norms to “assure smooth and predictable relations.”47 Within other contexts, such as South Sumatra, Bengkulu, Batam, or Indonesia in general, the concept of malu seems to carry a similar connotation that can be both negative and positive.48 Not knowing malu in these contexts is seen as something highly negative that goes against the ethical norms while knowing that malu carries a positive connotation. Within the Toba Batak context, I have often heard people use “having adat” (dang maradat), indicating the concept of tahu malu. Malu is employed nationwide by the government. For example, the New Order era employed the concept to ensure “deference to one’s superiors.”49 However, malu was also used to challenge the dictatorial rule of Suharto when the Reformasi activists who challenged Suharto used it “to discredit” him based on his style of leadership, which did not seem to know malu.50 Thus, malu can be employed in social action to both control and resist. Malu is also a gendered concept as women and men experience it differently. Malu is employed to control women in gender-specific ways. For example, women may be malu if they speak up in public, may be expected to dress “properly” to avoid malu, or be malu if their husbands 46

Collins and Bahar, “To Know Shame.” Keeler, “Shame and Stage Fright in Java,” 153. 48 Collins and Bahar, “To Know Shame”; Fessler, “Shame in Two Cultures”; Lindquist, “Veils and Ecstasy”; Saraswati, “Malu.” 49 Collins and Bahar, “To Know Shame.” 50 Ibid. 47

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perform house chores. From my observations, children are taught malu from young to not show their body parts to others, thus learning the taboo of nudity.51 For example, Lindquist’s52 research demonstrates how in Batam the migrant women used a jilbab (headscarf) as a way to avoid the malu of being approached by unknown men on the assumption that they are a prostitute. Saraswati53 argues that Indonesian women tend to use whitening products to avoid attracting attention to themselves, because being of a darker complexion attracts comments on their skin tone, making them feel malu. In the context of the Toba Batak resistance, then, we can see that this malu becomes operationalized as a tool of resistance. Female nudity especially is a taboo, but with the disrobing the villagers indicate that the situation they face is so extraordinary that it forces them to do it. In this sense, disrobing represents an emotional pressure on the government officials and security forces. It is also symbolic that women are the ones who disrobe because it is female nudity especially that is taboo in Indonesian society at large. It is also quite a surprising combination – motherhood is considered sacred and is highly respected, and nudity is seen as something that makes women especially malu. Thus, the same mechanisms may be at play here as in Nigeria, Kenya, and India. Nudity becomes especially powerful because motherhood is seen as sacred, and mothers “must never be seen in a sexual way.”54 Thus, one may argue that women were cursing with their nudity in the same way Nigerian and Kenyan women cursed land appropriation. The act of mothers disrobing collectively puts pressure on the male opponents, making them malu, because their motherhood gives them the right to shame men. However, the women I talked to seemed to suggest that this act can be highly effective when the government officials and security forces are Toba Bataks. The cultural proximity makes it easier for women to appeal to the mother-son metaphor. It is less likely to be successful when there is a cultural divide between the resisters and security forces or government officials.

51

See also ibid. Lindquist, “Veils and Ecstasy.” 53 Saraswati, “Malu.” 54 Veneracion-Rallonza, “Women's Naked Body Protests,” 261. 52

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Conclusions In this paper I have explored the use and meaning of disrobing within the Toba Batak struggle for land. Disrobing is a nonviolent resistance method that resisters employ within various contexts in both the Global North and Global South. However, in both cases the cultural underpinnings for its use vary. When disrobing is used as a strategy in the Global North due to the exploitation of nudity in the mass media it seems to support the objectification of women’s bodies, and largely excludes those who are racialized, disabled, and poor. In contrast, disrobing within the context where nudity is culturally perceived as taboo seems to have the emotional effect of shock and embarrassment, which then pressures the opponents to feel ashamed and withdraw. Women themselves also have to experience a certain level of affect to decide to disrobe. Thus, it often takes place when women perceive the situation as being life or death for them.

CHAPTER TWELVE BEARING THE NONVIOLENT LEGACIES IN THE WOMB: AN INDIAN CASE STUDY SRIJA SANYAL

Introduction Women’s involvement in nonviolent movements has been an enduring one. With history standing as a testament, women’s meaningful association in the act of resistance has always catalysed change for the better, and often acted as an instrumental step towards building a just society. This chapter attempts to outline and advocate two women-led nonviolent movements from India which compelled the governing entities to reconsider their decision making: the Chipko movement of the 1970s in the Uttarakhand region of northern India, which was a head-on confrontation with the forest authorities of the Government of India; and #NoConditionsApply of 2018, an initiative by the leading newspaper Calcutta Times against the age-old tradition of Sindoorkhela prevalent in Bengal. Marked by married women and vermilion, the event ostracizes not only the unmarried but mainly widows and transgender people from participation. Women’s momentous participation in civil-resistance movements has often proved to have widespread impact. Movements in countries like Argentina and the United States testify to the statement that wider female inclusion has ultimately resulted in sustainable peace. However, the journey that women within the whirlwind of such a movement undertake is nothing less than humongous. In India, for instance, the ongoing protest in Shaheen Bagh in the nation’s capital Delhi against the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has been a nonviolent one, though not without acts of provocative violence. This is an act that, if it comes to full implementation, will result in the displacement of millions in India, which bears the scars of a colonial past and partitioned lands. The worst to suffer

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at the time were women, and the advent of the CAA is often paralleled with reviving the horrors of the “stroke of the midnight hour.” While the intelligentsia is quite vocal with the youth wings of premier education institutions conducting protest marches and bearing the police beatings with the cultural revolution of protest songs and poetry, the “horrors” still lurk within the domestic walls and out on the road, thus breeding a new form of detestation every moment. To many, the contemporary fascist regime in India stinks of the increasing establishment of a nation state based on the fundamentalism of toxic masculinity, in which there is no “feminine” space, which further acquires a magnanimous structure if one is from a particular religion, caste, or community. Political protests and social change spearheaded by women have a longstanding history in India. In the words of veteran activist Medha Patkar, who led one of the most famous peaceful defiance movements against the government in the form of the Save Narmada Movement or Narmada Bachao Andolan (1985), “you need women. The specialty of a women-led movement is that they can be sustained longer. Women don’t give up.”1 She adds that, while India sees these women as shields, they are in fact swords. Diversified by ethnicities and language, the women in the country have time and again proven themselves to be instrumental in mobilizing the masses to usher in social change in an inclusive manner. One such example was the 1980s anti-nuclear protests in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, wherein the fisherwomen of the Idinthakarai village carried the struggle of protesting the construction of an Away From Reactor (AFR) facility for the Kudankulam nuclear powerplant in Tirunelveli district, which would certainly have detrimental industrial effects on human health. According to SP Uday Kumar, the prime coordinator of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy: the women protesters belonged to different faiths – Christians, Hindus and Muslims, who all believed in non-violent resistance. They couldn’t be bought with alcohol or money or intimidated through coercion. In difficult times, a woman’s first response is to stay and fight … The women owned the struggle. They carried it on their shoulder. And it’s not dead yet. Its embers are still burning under the ashes and it will erupt again some day soon. That’s the beauty of women-led movements. They never die.2

1

Nilanjana Bhowmick, “‘Women Don’t Give Up’: Why Female Protesters are at the Forefront of India’s Resistance Movement,” TIME (January 15, 2020). https://time.com/5765702/india-protests-women. 2 Ibid.

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While these became the mass movements led by Indian women, there are also the movements which became somebody’s life mission wherein the individual eventually became a long-term warrior. Manipur’s Irom Chanu Sharmila’s sixteen-year hunger strike against the existence of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in India is one such tale of undeterred determination with a mind of steel. Manipur, a former princely state marred by ethnic and anti-Indian insurgencies, is located in the northeastern part of India and is part of the “seven-sisters” group of Indian states. It is one of the few states which is still subject to colonial-era law such as AFSPA, which grants virtual immunity from prosecution to the Indian military stationed there.3 Irom, an ordinary young girl, was dragged into the world of activism at the height of rampant killings in Manipur due to the clashes between the Indian security forces and the banned militant groups in the state. The Malom Massacre of November 2000, when ten civilians were allegedly gunned down by the 8th Assam Rifles at Malom Makha Leikai near Imphal’s Tulihal airport, altered the ordinary life of Irom and encouraged her activism to blossom. While the cause of her becoming an activist was a violent one, Irom chose the path of nonviolence and a peaceful way of protesting the atrocities committed against the civilians by the military. She began a hunger strike in police custody which lasted sixteen long years, during which she was force fed through a Ryles tube.

Gaura Devi: a Tale of Immortalizing Movement by Hugging Trees As a land of overwhelming female deity devotion coexisting with extreme female detriment, it is little surprise that India offers diversified shades of both exploitation and resilience. The Chipko movement, or the Chipko Andolan, can be referred to as a mass movement marking the commencement of eco-feminism in India. While the noted environmental activist Sunderlal Bahuguna is the one who initiated the movement, the very first picture that comes to mind while thinking of this particular movement is the black-and-white snapshot of a group of women standing while hugging trees. The origin of Chipko lies in the resilient act of Amrita Devi, 3

Michael Safi, “How Love and a Taste of Honey Brought One Indian Woman’s 16year Hunger Strike to an End,” The Guardian (November 11, 2018). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/11/irom-sharmila-love-storyworlds-longest-hunger-strike#:~:text=to%20an%20end,How%20love%20and%20a%20taste%20of%20honey%20brought%20one%20Ind ian,old%20fast%20in%20Imphal%2C%20India.&text=Force%2Dfed%20through %20a%20nasal,Sharmila%20was%20revered%20by%20supporters.

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a local woman of Khejarli village of the Jodhpur district of Rajasthan, who led the movement to stop soldiers cutting down trees on the orders of the Maharaja of Jodhpur. This was in 1730, and the movement eventually found its extension in the 1930s when Gaura Devi led the womenfolk of the Reni village in 1974 to stand up to the loggers, thus immortalizing not only a photograph but also a mass-mobilized nonviolent movement, with many prominent village folks from every gender. Embracing death at the age of sixty-six, Gaura Devi’s name is now unsung and obscure. However, without her efforts, the Chipko movement would not have been what it is today. A fearless woman with a determined mind, Gaura’s experiences made her cognizant of the struggles that the womenfolk of the village endure in their daily lives. An active member of the village Panchayat and other community initiatives, including being the head of Mahila Mangal Dal, Gaura was known as the strongest voice advocating forest protection. By the time the Chipko movement gained momentum, Gaura had begun to create widespread awareness by organizing numerous campaigns in the nearby villages. When the state government authorized the felling of 2,500 trees in Gaura’s village in the Himalaya foothills, there were peaceful demonstrations by the villagers led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, a prominent name in the movement. However, the peaceful acts of defiance, such as rallies and public meetings, proved to be unfruitful in bringing forth a change in the judiciary’s attitudes towards the villagers. While there was a display of state-sponsored violence in the form of guns and barrels and verbal abuse hurled at the village folk, mainly targeted at the women, the rural mass continued with their act of nonviolent resistance. However, with the men of the village away on their usual peaceful demonstrations, a group of forest officials and loggers marched in to perform their “duty,” as ordered by the higher authorities. With firm agility, Gaura was quick to assemble women and mobilize them to take charge after her attempts to reason with the officials failed. It was this moment that would go down in the pages of history and immortalize the movement when the women bravely stood there hugging the trees, simply refusing to let go. They decided to put their own lives at stake but challenged the officials and loggers to go ahead, which eventually shook the officials, as the women vigilantly burnt the midnight oil to guard the trees. This act of resistance encouraged people from near and far, and the state government eventually complied with the villagers’ demands a few days later. In the times that followed, the movement emerged as a forerunner to many other movements against deforestation in the country. The movement clearly displayed a political ideology – the Gandhian ideology of resistance, which is quintessentially nonviolent, involving the

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active participation of the masses. This is further testified in the Terrains of Resistance: Nonviolent Social Movements and the Contestation of Place in India (1993),4 wherein Paul Routledge examines those “terrains of resistance where struggle is actively articulated by the oppressed,” and which therefore become sites of place-specific contestation. It is also noteworthy that the involvement of women en masse was a result of a continually deteriorating and exhausting struggle with the authorities, which cost them not only their livelihoods but also the peace of their daily lives. The struggle increasingly became a labyrinthine process without end. As revenue from deforestation increasingly accrued at timber processing centres in the states, male villagers were sometimes forced to leave Uttarakhand to find employment. Many village households gradually became reliant on remittances from these emigrated workers.5 The absence of so many working-age males left women with the sole responsibility of “running the home, looking after the children, bearing the drudgery of agricultural work, cattle care and bringing fuel, fodder and water from long distances.”6 As the rate of deforestation worsened, women spent over seven hours a day collecting food and fuel. In addition to their other responsibilities, this made the average woman’s workday last between fourteen and sixteen hours.7 As it became increasingly difficult for women to secure their means of survival by collecting food, fuel, and fodder, they became desperate. According to Chipko movement literature, a few were driven to suicide, some lost family members, and many joined the Chipko movement to work for meaningful change.8 As one Chipko activist described it, “When we could not obtain the wood to cook even the little grain we get, we had to resort to a movement.”9 As the Chipko movement grew in both size and significance, it began to affect the sociopolitical and ecological processes of the region, thus contributing to a reshaping of the state of Uttarakhand. While leading to the 1980 Forest Act, owing to which local people in the areas were able to obtain employment, 4

Paul Routledge, Terrains of Resistance: Nonviolent Social Movements and the Contestation of Place in India (Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 1993), 35. 5 C. Epsy, “Chipko Indian Movement.” TED Case Studies #236, 1997. http://www.american.edu/TED/chipko.htm. 6 K. Sharma, K. Nautiyal, and B. Pandey, Women in Struggle: the Role and Participation of Women in the Chipko Movement (New Delhi: Centre for Women's Development Studies, 1987), 25. 7 P. Karan, “Environmental Movements in India.” Geographical Review 84, no. 1 (1994): 32–41; Sharma, Nautiyal, and Pandey, Women in Struggle. 8 Chipko Information Centre, The Chipko Message (Calcutta: Kayan Charitable Trust, 1987). 9 R. Guha, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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the movement most importantly served to lessen women’s workload in some areas, as forest health and abundance returned and women were able to spend a smaller portion of their workday collecting fuel and fodder.10 The Chipko movement also continued the tradition of local political activism, helping to pave the way for the success of later social movements. Ultimately, Chipko’s most long-lasting impacts may be evidenced supra-regionally, as the movement today is best known for its critique of Western economic development and national impact as the “first organized environmental movement in India” that served to raise public awareness of environmental issues.11

#NoConditionsApply: a Digital Age Movement Now, several years later and at many stages of evolution in the world, women-led movements have found a new voice in the digital age. One such movement is #NoConditions Apply, which was initiated as a campaign by the newspaper Calcutta Times, a branch of the Times of India, in the Bengal premises with Calcutta as its epicentre. The campaign poster depicts two red dots emblematic of the inclusion of women from all walks of life despite their marital status. Spearheaded by FCB Ulka, the #NoConditionsApply campaign for Times of India aims at changing the four-hundred-year-old Bengali Hindu ritual of Sindoorkhela. The aim is to mark a transition from “one of division to one of inclusion.”12 Sindoorkhela is a ritual performed on the last day of Durga Puja, a festival of colossal nature across the globe and more so in Bengal where it originated. A celebration of womanhood by worshipping the demon-slayer Mahishasuramardini, symbolizing the victory of good over evil, the festival glaringly portrays the coexistence of extreme female deity devotion with sheer discrimination on the grounds carved by dogmatism. During Sindoorkhela, married women come together to celebrate their marital status, while others – namely single women, divorcees, and widows, as well as the gay and transgender community – are forced to look on, uninvited.13 While the campaign went pandal-to-pandal 10

Routledge, Terrains of Resistance. S. Chakraborty, A Critique of Social Movements in India: Experiences of Chipko, Uttarakhand and Fishworkers Movement (New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 1999). 12 “Sindoor Khela: #NoConditionsApply,” Times of India (2019). https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/shindoor-khela-noconditionsapply /campaignlanding/60791868.cms?from=mdr. 13 #NoConditionsApply: a Global Campaign to Promote Inclusion of Women in the Bengali Ritual of Sindoor Khela. Campaigns of the World, 2017. https://campaignsoftheworld.com/digital/noconditionsapply-inclusion-of-womenin-the-bengali-ritual-of-sindoor-khela. 11

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in an effort to convince the concerned committee people for inviting the “uninvited,” it released a short clip on digital platforms to spread the word. #NoConditionsApply creates a newly inclusive Sindoorkhela narrated by various unmarried women from the community, the film presents the pointof-view of these onlookers, and gives them a voice for change. This new celebration embraces all women, regardless of background or social identity, to transform the long-held tradition of division into a tradition of sisterhood.14

A festival marking the triumph of good over evil, Durga Puja is the celebration of the Devi – the goddesses – epitomizing all that is good in this world, and defeating the demon Mahishasura after a cosmic battle. But, for the Bengali community, the festival is also a jovial homecoming, since Durga, the daughter of Himalaya and bride of Shiva, according to the mythological tales, returned to her parental home with her four children – Kartik, Ganesh, Lakshmi, and Saraswati – on the earthly domicile. She was warmly welcomed with all the love and attention that is a married woman’s due when she visits her parents. The aforementioned serves as the backdrop of Sindoorkhela, for when the daughter leaves on Vijaya Dashami, the last day of the festival, for her long journey back to Mount Kailash, the community celebrates her departure by smearing her with sindoor and wishing her a safe journey to her “real home” where her husband resides. The sindoor is the quintessential mark of her conjugal bond to Shiva. For hundreds of years, Durga Puja has ended with women of the community smearing each other with sindoor, which ties them together by the common thread of marriage. Over time, with a few changes, children and young girls have also been included in the festival. However, this ritual has divided the women as much as united them, as there lies a clear demarcation of who is to be included and who shunned: There are those on the fringes of social acceptance – widows, transgenders, separated, divorcees and single mothers – who are never invited to be a part of Sindoorkhela. The whole community of revellers is joined together by this ritual. But these other women are united by gender but divided by tradition – looking on, but never being a part of Shindoorkhela.15

Sindoor, or vermilion, is an important part of any Hindu marriage or ritual, which finds a quintessential place in festivals. The bright red colour 14 15

Ibid. “Sindoor Khela,” Times of India.

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of the sindoor symbolizes fertility, prosperity, and auspiciousness, which a bride is expected to bring to her husband’s house after marriage. The unmarried and widows are therefore exempted from applying sindoor at the parting of their hair, emblematic of their peripheral status from the mainstream. While it stands as more of a decorative symbol in the present times with Hindu women diligently practising its application after marriage in their daily lives, according to Dr. Uma Devi, sindoor also stands for shakti or power, one of many common myths associated with it as a sacred thread holding the conjugal bond together. However, a festival that boasts of celebrating women’s power or the spirit of womanhood clearly excludes her “sistren” on many grounds, which have strong bearings of patriarchal didacticism. Durga Puja as a festival presents a feminine symbol of Durga, who becomes a wonderful dichotomy that the society approves and ascribes to – she fiercely protects us from evil but also looks after her family with love and care. Maa Durga successfully becomes a metaphor for the woman16 who is expected to be modern but not exactly free of domestic shackles. On the same grounds, the festival also marks the conscious demarcation between women, which the plight has always embraced. A contradictory festival in itself, Durga Puja is supposed to be that time of the year where the society embraces a daughter with open arms while also subtly creating the “other.” Bright and shiny on the outside, the festival of Durga Puja promises to truly worship female power or Nari Shakti, but ends up being a dichotomy, expressing joy but also oppression, which somehow gets exacerbated.17 The #NoConditionsApply initiative thus emerged as a breath of fresh air amidst the diligent practice of dogmatism. Aiming to break through the glass ceiling, the campaign urges each and every one to celebrate sindoor as a symbol that unites womanhood in the truest sense without any “conditions” or labels.

Conclusion Before the era of the Chipko movement or the advent of the digital age, women in India were involved extensively in various social movements, which were majorly reform-oriented or had religious angles associated with them. According to the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi, these movements brought Indian women into public life and increased 16 Sukanya Bhattacharya, “Durga Puja and the Myth of Worshipping ‘Nari Shakti.’” Feminism in India (October 4, 2019). https://feminisminindia.com/2019/10/04 /durga-puja-myth-worshipping-nari-shakti. 17 Ibid.

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their political participation.18 Many of these movements focused on establishing basic women’s rights. For instance, a significant plight of women was involved in the Indian Independence Movement that primarily utilized the Gandhian-Satyagraha techniques to nonviolently protest the colonial rule.19 Unfortunately, the rapid growth of women’s participation in social movements and other forms of “informal” political organization in India eventually failed to translate to the sphere of “formal” politics, where women’s degree of representation in official political institutions is still relatively limited.20 Narrative accounts of women’s early activism in the Chipko movement give the impression that their participation was “sporadic,” radical, and militant, “in response to the immediate crisis … to save their forest from which they drew their sustenance.”21 These situations often arose when men were absent or unaware of contractors’ actions, and women were forced to rush to the forest from the fields, often carrying their children, to stop the felling. With the exception of a few organized protests, most Chipko agitations took this spontaneous form, where women were crucial to the translation of words into action, acting entirely on their own to rise fiercely to the occasion. This pattern was true, by most accounts, for the protests that took place at Reni village in March 1974, which marked a dramatic change in women’s participation in the Chipko movement. The women’s actions at Reni were successful in saving the marked trees in local forests from being felled, and also in drawing media attention to the event, which popularized the image of village women “hugging” trees and helped to spread the message of the movement. The Reni protests led to an increased recognition of women’s role in the Chipko movement which, in turn, contributed significantly to a greater emphasis on female participation and representation in leadership. It is unclear, however, whether the dominant presence of women at future demonstrations was a truly “organic” occurrence, or whether the Chipko activists, like those in the Amazonian Rubber Tapper’s Union, had realized the value of women’s visibility in ensuring a peaceful protest and gaining media attention by appealing to popular notions of women as caretakers.22

18

Sharma, Nautiyal, and Pandey, Women in Struggle. Chipko Information Centre, The Chipko Message. 20 N. Desai and U. Thakkar, Women in Indian Society (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2001). 21 Sharma, Nautiyal, and Pandey, Women in Struggle. 22 C. Mendes, Fight for the Forest: Chico Mendes in his Own Words (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989). 19

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On the other hand, today’s digital age enables women to have a slightly stronger voice with several platforms wherein these voices can reach the masses. Digital movements such as #NoConditionsApply and #MeToo have witnessed a greater participation of the masses, especially women, as compared to the movements such as Chipko, which took place in a world yet to be penetrated by high-speed internet and social media. The movement might have had a different and more positive outcome, and more quickly, had there been a digitized version to spread the word beyond the restricted geographies. However, the digital era also has its own pitfalls as, while it aids significantly in encompassing a colossal body of ideologies, which catalyse any movement, it also exposes the differences which often become responsible for the slow down and eventual fading of a movement’s goal. #MeToo is a case in point which, in India, started out as a loud shout-out but stands today as a movement in oblivion, which happened quickly. However, #NoConditionsApply seems to be here to stay for a while as it celebrated its third anniversary in October 2019. Conventionally revered names such as Tridhara Sammilani, one of the oldest puja pandals in Kolkata and also the first of the many committees to organize an inclusive Sindoorkhela, have been associated with the campaign thus far, along with prominent names from the showbiz world, including actress Rituparna Sengupta, theatre artist Sohini Sengupta, and Manobi Bandopadhyay, the first transgender person in India to complete her doctoral studies, who is currently working as a professor in West Bengal. However, according to Calman, the Chipko movement added a new dimension to the perception of what constitutes “women’s issues” by introducing economic development and environmental conservation into the debate on gender equity and equality.23 Unfortunately, the women’s support gained by the Chipko movement failed to disseminate to other feminist movements in India, leaving issues of women’s exploitation in many other aspects relatively unaddressed.24 While a more digitized India struggles to cope with the increasing prevalence of cybercrimes, on a brighter note it is also expected to strengthen the voices of the oppressed and exploited through not only grassroot mass mobilization but also a cultural awakening associated with age-old rituals, which remain constitutive of Indian culture.

23

L J. Calman, “Women and Movement Politics in India.” Asian Survey 29, no. 10 (1989): 940–58. 24 Sharma, Nautiyal, and Pandey, Women in Struggle.

CONTRIBUTORS

Olayinka Adeniyi is a Nigerian legal practitioner and researcher, and presently an OpenAIR/Advanced QEScholar fellow. She has a doctoral degree (LLD) from the University of Pretoria, South Africa and a masters from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun State, Nigeria. She is a 2018– 19 research fellow of the International Centre for Women’s Research of Coady International Institute, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her academic publications include “Strategic Legal Mechanisms on Women’s Socio-economic Rights in Nigeria: Making a Case for Girl Child Education” and “A Comparative Appraisal of Women’s Rights to Cultural Development in Selected African Countries.” She is the author of many secular books for women, girls, and young people. Olayinka is the CEO and founder of the Women on the Watch (WOW) initiative in South Africa. Nilgün Anadolu-Okur is the presidential professor of Africology and African American Studies and the director of the DAAAS undergraduate program at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in African American studies, Africology, American studies, American literature, and narrative and discourse analysis. As Pennsylvania Humanities Council (PHC) Commonwealth speaker she has toured Pennsylvania and lectured on the Underground Railroad and black abolitionists. Her articles have been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Black Studies, Gender Issues, Human and Society on Afrocentricity and many others. Her books include Dismantling Slavery: Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and the Formation of the Abolitionist Discourse, 1841–1851, Women, Islam, and Globalization in the 21st Century, and Contemporary African American Theater: Afrocentricity in the Works of Larry Neal, Amiri Baraka and Charles Fuller. Mayy ElHayawi is an Associate Professor of English literature at Ain Shams University, Egypt. She was a post-doctoral Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University and the Leader of the Fulbright Humanities Circle in Egypt. She is the author of Paradoxes of Diaspora in the Poetry of Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney. Her latest work on enacting embodied memories of the Darfur genocide in the poetry of Emtithal Mahmoud has recently appeared in Displaced: Literature of Indigeneity, Migration, and

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Trauma published by Routledge in 2020. Her areas of research include diaspora literature, gender studies, medical humanities, and educational technologies. Selina Gallo-Cruz is a cultural and political sociologist and associate professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is the author of Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia and numerous other essays and articles on the dynamics of nonviolent social movements, including “Marginalization and Mobilizing Power in Nonviolent Social Movements,” “American Mothers of Nonviolence: Action and the Politics of Erasure in Women’s Nonviolent Activism,” and “More Powerful Forces? Women, Nonviolence, and Mobilization.” She was a visiting scholar at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, a gender, conflict, and peacebuilding fellow at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies, and an American Sociological Association Minority Dissertation fellow. Michael Iasilli is a political scientist and doctoral candidate in the History Department at St. John’s University, as well as a visiting scholar at New York University. His research centres on exploring the philosophy of Nadezhda Krupskaya, her contributions to Soviet education, and underestimated political impact during the Russian Revolution. Within that, he demonstrates an intersectional approach towards understanding the “national question” and “woman question” during the early Soviet period. Maria (Masha) Kardashevskaya is a PhD Candidate in peace and conflict studies at the University of Manitoba. She studies women’s roles within rural nonviolent resistance in Southeast Asia. Her research has been supported by the University of Manitoba, Province of Manitoba, Arthur V. Mauro Center for Peace and Justice, and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) (https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org). ICNC develops and shares knowledge and educational resources related to civil resistance with activists, educators, scholars, journalists, and members of the policy community. Maria Rosa Lehmann finished her dissertation on surrealist performance art at the Université Sorbonne-Panthéon in 2018. She was a research fellow of Labex CAP in Paris, an international visiting scholar at Brown University, and a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. She helped organize numerous exhibitions, such as Une brève histoire de l’avenir at the Louvre Museum (2015). She has taught at the Lautech Institute in Germany and the

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Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée. Lehmann publishes articles on surrealism, performance art and happenings, eroticism, and revolutionary practices. She has co-authored a book on the complicated relationship between the surrealists and the Situationist International (2020), and is currently writing a manuscript on Quebecois artist Alfred Pellan for the Art Canada Institute (2020). Alla Myzelev is an assistant professor of art history and museum studies at the State University of New York at Geneseo, where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary visual culture. She is also a coordinator of museum studies minor. Myzelev has published extensively on feminism, activism, and material culture. She is currently writing a manuscript on masculinity and fashion in the Soviet Union. Myzelev is the author of Architecture, Design and Craft in Toronto 1900–1940: Creating Modern Living (2016). Her edited collection of essays Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm was published by Routledge in 2017. Her research interests revolve around gender and contemporary culture. She published extensively on DIY culture and fibre art. Myzelev also curated several shows, including a yearly exhibition of the Feminist Art Conference International exhibition in Toronto (2014–17). Livinus Ikwuako Okeke is a lawyer and a lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies, Imo State University, Owerri, Nigeria. He is currently at the final stage of the writing his PhD thesis titled “Okigwe Division Under Colonial Rule, 1906–1960” at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. His research areas include diaspora studies, reparations and repatriations, gender studies, international relations, and colonial studies. Okeke is presently working on migrant labour in colonial Igboland where he is interrogating the treaty between the Nigerian colonial government and the government of the Spanish Territories of the Gulf of Guinea. Anwar Ouassini is currently an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at Delaware State University. His research interests include the sociology of religion, culture, and crime in North and West Africa. He has recently co-authored a book chapter on Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Islamic Pacifism in pre and post-Independence Pakistan, and is currently working on a book project on policing and violence in North Africa. Nabil Ouassini is currently an assistant professor in the justice studies department at Prairie View A&M University in Houston, Texas. His research interests include criminology, media and crime, legitimation and

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legitimacy, and reform in the Arab world. He recently co-authored a book chapter on Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Islamic Pacifism in pre and postIndependence Pakistan, and is currently working on a book project developing the subdiscipline of Arab criminology. Currently working as research scholar at the Ronin Institute, Montclair, USA, Srija Sanyal is undertaking research in the field of gender and queer theory in the Indian context. She holds a masters in English literature from the University of Delhi, along with a certificate course on feminist dissent from the University of Warwick. She is also associated with the Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education (IGDORE) as an affiliated researcher and received accolades from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and St Andrews University for presenting research insights on topics of gender and society. She is currently working on publications on queer representation in Bengali popular culture and feminism in Bengal, in terms of both politics and aesthetics. Oluwaseyitan Ayotunde Solademi is a barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. She is currently studying towards her doctoral degree at the University of Pretoria. Her thesis focuses on the inclusion and participation of women in counter-terrorism strategies in Africa. She has experience and expertise on the African human-rights system having had the opportunity to serve as a legal professional assistant at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court). She currently works as a project officer at the Women’s Rights Unit of the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. Dagmar Wernitznig is an associate professor at the University of Ljubljana and a senior research fellow for an ERC Advanced Grant known as EIRENE (https://project-eirene.eu). She earned her doctorate in history at the University of Oxford with a dissertation about the international pacifist and suffragist Rosika Schwimmer (1877–1948). Holding an additional PhD in American studies, Dagmar previously worked as a postdoctoral and associate fellow at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford. Some of her recent publications include an article about Schwimmer’s post-1918 transnational activism for a special issue of Women’s History Review, and a contrastive analysis of European and North American archival projects by feminists, dealing with gender and peace during the interwar years.