There is still another reason why feminists must insist on the centrality of the change in the sexual division of labour. Our analysis of the socialist countries has shown that the maintenance, or the creation, of the bourgeois, patriarchal, sexual division of labour and of the nuclear family is the apparently insignificant gate through which reactionary forces can again find entry into a society which tried to free itself from the clutches of imperialism and capitalism. As long as the sexual division of labour is not changed within the context of an alternative economy, capitalism will not be abolished. For the time being, however, feminists in the underdeveloped and the overdeveloped societies do well to keep their scepticism and critical sense. They must insist, again and again, that there will be no liberation for women unless there is also an end to the exploitation of nature and other peoples. On the other hand, they must also insist that there will be no true national liberation unless there is women's liberation and an end to the destruction of nature, or that there cannot be a true ecological society without a change in the sexual and international division of labour.
It is precisely by putting one of these contradictions into the limelight and by pushing the others into the darkness that capitalist patriarchy has been able to build up and maintain its dominance.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 222-223
A change in the sexual division of labour would have the same effect on the level of the individuals which the change in the international division of labour would have on the level of whole regions or nations. A political decision in the overdeveloped countries, to de-link their economies from the exploitative world-market system and to establish self-sufficiency in the main areas, will pave the way for autarkic economic development in the underdeveloped countries. Similarly, a conscious decision on the part of the 'overdeveloped' men to forego building up their ego and identity on the exploitation and violent subordination of women, and to accept their share of the unpaid work for the creation and preservation of life will make it easier for women to establish autonomy over their lives and bodies and to come to a new definition of what woman's identity is.
These processes of liberation are interrelated. It is not possible for women in our societies to break out of the cages of patriarchal relations, unless the men begin a movement in the same direction. A men's movement against patriarchy should not be motivated by benevolent paternalism, but by the desire to restore to themselves a sense of human dignity and respect. How can men respect themselves if they have no respect for women? In the same way, the overdeveloped peoples have to start rejecting and transcending the economic paradigm of ever-increasing commodity production and consumption as a model of progress for the under-developed economies.
These processes of liberation are interrelated. It is not possible for women in our societies to break out of the cages of patriarchal relations, unless the men begin a movement in the same direction. A men's movement against patriarchy should not be motivated by benevolent paternalism, but by the desire to restore to themselves a sense of human dignity and respect. How can men respect themselves if they have no respect for women? In the same way, the overdeveloped peoples have to start rejecting and transcending the economic paradigm of ever-increasing commodity production and consumption as a model of progress for the under-developed economies.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 221-222
A feminist conception of an alternative economy will include all that has previously been said about autarky and decentralization. But it will place the transformation of the existing sexual division of labour (based on the breadwinner-housewife model) at the centre of the whole restructuring process. This is not mere narcissistic self-indulgence of women, but the result of our historical research as well as our analysis of the functioning of capitalist patriarchy. Feminists do not start with the external ecology, economy and politics, but with the social ecology, the centre of which is the relation between men and women. Autonomy over our bodies and lives is, therefore, the first and most fundamental demand of the international feminist movement. Any search for ecological, economic and political autarky must start with the respect for the autonomy of women's bodies, their productive capacity to create new life, their productive capacity to maintain life through work, their sexuality. A change in the existing sexual division of labour would imply first and foremost that the violence that characterizes capitalist-patriarchal man-woman relations worldwide will be abolished not by women, but by men. Men have to refuse to define themselves any longer as Man-the-Hunter. Men have to start movements against violence against women if they want to preserve the essence of their own humanity.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 216-219
Towards a feminist concept of labour
It is obvious...that the development of a feminist concept of labour has to begin with a rejection of the distinction between socially necessary labour and leisure, and the Marxist view that self-realization, human happiness, freedom, autonomy--the realm of freedom--can be achieved only outside the sphere of necessity and of necessary labour, and by a reduction (or abolition) of the latter.
1. If we take as our model of a 'worker' not the white male industrial wage-worker..., but a mother, we can immediately see that her work does not fit into the Marxian concept. For her, work is always both: a burden as well as a source of enjoyment, self-fulfilment, and happiness. Children may give her a lot of work and trouble, but this work is never totally alienated or dead. Even when children turn out to be a disappointment for the mother, when they eventually leave her or feel contempt for her--as in fact many do in our society--the pain she suffers at all this is still more human than the cold indifference of the industrial worker or engineer vis-à-vis his products, the commodities he produces and consumes.
The same unity of work as a burden and work as enjoyment can be found among peasants whose production is not yet totally subsumed under commodity production and the compulsions of the market. The peasants who have to work from dawn to dusk during the harvesting season, for instance, feel the burden of work more than anybody else in their bodies and in their muscles. But in spite of the hardship of this work, it is never only 'a curse'. I remember the times of haymaking or harvesting on our small subsistence farm in my childhood as times of extreme labour intensity for everyone--mother, children, father--and as times of the greatest excitement, enjoyment, social interaction... Anyone who has had an opportunity to observe the work-process of people involved in non-market oriented subsistence production will have found this interplay of work as necessity and burden, and work as a basic source of enjoyment and self-expression.
The same is true for the work of the artisan or in handicrafts production, as long as this work is not yet fully subsumed under the compulsions of the market.
The main characteristics of the work-processes described above is that they are all connected with the direct production of life or of use values. A feminist concept of labour has to be oriented towards the production of life as the goal of work and not the production of things and of wealth..., of which the production of life is then a secondary derivative. The production of immediate life in all its aspects must be the core concept for the development of a feminist concept of work.
2. ...[A] feminist concept of labour cannot be based on the Marxist (and capitalist) economics of time. The shortening of the daily labour time or of the labour time within a life span cannot be a method for the realization of a feminist utopia. Women have by now realized that the reduction of time spent in commodity production does not lead to more freedom for women, but rather to more housework, more non-wage work in household production, more relationship or emotional work, more consumption work. The vision of a society in which almost all time is leisure time and labour time is reduced to a minimum is for women in many respects a vision of horror, not only because housework and non-wage work have never been included in the labour that is supposed to be reduced by machines, but also because it will be women who have to restore to the then idle men a sense of reality, meaning and life.
A feminist concept of labour has, therefore, to be oriented towards a different concept of time, in which time is not segregated into portions of burdensome labour and portions of supposed pleasure and leisure, but in which times of work and times of rest and enjoyment are alternating and interspersed. If such a concept and such an organization of time prevail, the length of the working-day is no longer very relevant. Thus, a long working-day and even a lifetime full of work, will not then be felt as a curse but as a source of human fulfilment and happiness.
Such a new concept of time cannot, of course, be brought about unless the existing sexual division of labour is abolished. Such a change, however, will not come, as some women expect, by a reduction of the working-day or week through rationalization and automation. The men whose weekly or daily or life labour time has already been shortened through modern technology do not share more of the housework, but rather engage in more drinking, more TV-watching, or in other male leisure time activities... The whole reduction of the work-day since the times of Marx and Engels has nowhere resulted in a change in the sexual division of labour, has not resulted in men feeling more responsible for housework, children, or the production of life.
3. The third element which has to be stressed in a feminist concept of labour is the maintenance of work as a direct and sensual interaction with nature, with organic matter and living organisms. In the Marxist concept of labour, this sensual, bodily interaction with nature--human nature as well as external nature--is largely eliminated because more and more machines are inserted between the human body and nature. These machines are, of course, supposed to give man dominance and power over 'wild' 'blind' nature, but at the same time they reduce his own sensuality. With the elimination of labour as necessity and burden, the potential of the human body for enjoyment, for sensuality and for erotic and sexual satisfaction, is also eliminated. As our body will ever be the base for our enjoyment and happiness, the destruction of sensuality, resulting from the interaction with machines rather than with living organisms, will only result in a pathological search for an idealized 'nature'. In a desperate effort to restore this lost sensuality to the (male) body, the female body is mystified as both 'pure or base nature' and as the goal of fulfilment of all desires...
4. Direct and sensual interaction with nature in the work process is not yet sufficient, however. This could also be realized through some sport or hobby. And, indeed, the architects of modern society are visualizing an increase of such physical activities as a kind of therapy for people who have been made redundant as workers through automation. But how long will hobbies and sports provide a sense of purpose and meaning to people, even if their daily requirements are provided for by the welfare state?
A feminist concept of labour has to maintain that work retains its sense of purpose, its character of being useful and necessary for the people who do it and those around them. This also means that the products of this labour are useful and necessary, and not just some luxuries or superfluous trash as are most of the handicrafts made today by women in 'income-generating activities' in Third World countries.
5. This sense of usefulness, necessity and purpose with regard to work and its products, however, can only be restored as the division and the distance between production and consumption are gradually abolished. Today, the division and alienation are, as we have seen, global. Third World women produce what they do not know, and First World women consume what they do not know.
Within a feminist perspective, production of life is the main goal of human activity. This necessitates that the processes of production of necessary things and processes of consumption are again brought together. Because only by consuming the things which we produce can we judge whether they are useful, meaningful and wholesome, whether they are necessary or superfluous. And only by producing what we consume can we know how much time is really necessary for the things we want to consume, what skills are necessary, what knowledge is necessary and what technology is necessary.
The abolition of the wide division between production and consumption, does not mean, of course, that every individual, or even every small community, must produce all they need and have to find everything in their ecological surroundings. But it does imply that the production of life is based on a certain autarkic relation of a certain community of people to a specific region, the size of which has to be determined on the basis of the principles spelt out at the beginning of this section. Goods and services imported into such a region should be the result of non-exploitative relations to nature, women and other peoples. The tendential bringing together of production and consumption will drastically reduce the possibilities for this exploitation, and largely increase the potential for resistance to economic and political blackmail and coercion.
It is obvious...that the development of a feminist concept of labour has to begin with a rejection of the distinction between socially necessary labour and leisure, and the Marxist view that self-realization, human happiness, freedom, autonomy--the realm of freedom--can be achieved only outside the sphere of necessity and of necessary labour, and by a reduction (or abolition) of the latter.
1. If we take as our model of a 'worker' not the white male industrial wage-worker..., but a mother, we can immediately see that her work does not fit into the Marxian concept. For her, work is always both: a burden as well as a source of enjoyment, self-fulfilment, and happiness. Children may give her a lot of work and trouble, but this work is never totally alienated or dead. Even when children turn out to be a disappointment for the mother, when they eventually leave her or feel contempt for her--as in fact many do in our society--the pain she suffers at all this is still more human than the cold indifference of the industrial worker or engineer vis-à-vis his products, the commodities he produces and consumes.
The same unity of work as a burden and work as enjoyment can be found among peasants whose production is not yet totally subsumed under commodity production and the compulsions of the market. The peasants who have to work from dawn to dusk during the harvesting season, for instance, feel the burden of work more than anybody else in their bodies and in their muscles. But in spite of the hardship of this work, it is never only 'a curse'. I remember the times of haymaking or harvesting on our small subsistence farm in my childhood as times of extreme labour intensity for everyone--mother, children, father--and as times of the greatest excitement, enjoyment, social interaction... Anyone who has had an opportunity to observe the work-process of people involved in non-market oriented subsistence production will have found this interplay of work as necessity and burden, and work as a basic source of enjoyment and self-expression.
The same is true for the work of the artisan or in handicrafts production, as long as this work is not yet fully subsumed under the compulsions of the market.
The main characteristics of the work-processes described above is that they are all connected with the direct production of life or of use values. A feminist concept of labour has to be oriented towards the production of life as the goal of work and not the production of things and of wealth..., of which the production of life is then a secondary derivative. The production of immediate life in all its aspects must be the core concept for the development of a feminist concept of work.
2. ...[A] feminist concept of labour cannot be based on the Marxist (and capitalist) economics of time. The shortening of the daily labour time or of the labour time within a life span cannot be a method for the realization of a feminist utopia. Women have by now realized that the reduction of time spent in commodity production does not lead to more freedom for women, but rather to more housework, more non-wage work in household production, more relationship or emotional work, more consumption work. The vision of a society in which almost all time is leisure time and labour time is reduced to a minimum is for women in many respects a vision of horror, not only because housework and non-wage work have never been included in the labour that is supposed to be reduced by machines, but also because it will be women who have to restore to the then idle men a sense of reality, meaning and life.
A feminist concept of labour has, therefore, to be oriented towards a different concept of time, in which time is not segregated into portions of burdensome labour and portions of supposed pleasure and leisure, but in which times of work and times of rest and enjoyment are alternating and interspersed. If such a concept and such an organization of time prevail, the length of the working-day is no longer very relevant. Thus, a long working-day and even a lifetime full of work, will not then be felt as a curse but as a source of human fulfilment and happiness.
Such a new concept of time cannot, of course, be brought about unless the existing sexual division of labour is abolished. Such a change, however, will not come, as some women expect, by a reduction of the working-day or week through rationalization and automation. The men whose weekly or daily or life labour time has already been shortened through modern technology do not share more of the housework, but rather engage in more drinking, more TV-watching, or in other male leisure time activities... The whole reduction of the work-day since the times of Marx and Engels has nowhere resulted in a change in the sexual division of labour, has not resulted in men feeling more responsible for housework, children, or the production of life.
3. The third element which has to be stressed in a feminist concept of labour is the maintenance of work as a direct and sensual interaction with nature, with organic matter and living organisms. In the Marxist concept of labour, this sensual, bodily interaction with nature--human nature as well as external nature--is largely eliminated because more and more machines are inserted between the human body and nature. These machines are, of course, supposed to give man dominance and power over 'wild' 'blind' nature, but at the same time they reduce his own sensuality. With the elimination of labour as necessity and burden, the potential of the human body for enjoyment, for sensuality and for erotic and sexual satisfaction, is also eliminated. As our body will ever be the base for our enjoyment and happiness, the destruction of sensuality, resulting from the interaction with machines rather than with living organisms, will only result in a pathological search for an idealized 'nature'. In a desperate effort to restore this lost sensuality to the (male) body, the female body is mystified as both 'pure or base nature' and as the goal of fulfilment of all desires...
4. Direct and sensual interaction with nature in the work process is not yet sufficient, however. This could also be realized through some sport or hobby. And, indeed, the architects of modern society are visualizing an increase of such physical activities as a kind of therapy for people who have been made redundant as workers through automation. But how long will hobbies and sports provide a sense of purpose and meaning to people, even if their daily requirements are provided for by the welfare state?
A feminist concept of labour has to maintain that work retains its sense of purpose, its character of being useful and necessary for the people who do it and those around them. This also means that the products of this labour are useful and necessary, and not just some luxuries or superfluous trash as are most of the handicrafts made today by women in 'income-generating activities' in Third World countries.
5. This sense of usefulness, necessity and purpose with regard to work and its products, however, can only be restored as the division and the distance between production and consumption are gradually abolished. Today, the division and alienation are, as we have seen, global. Third World women produce what they do not know, and First World women consume what they do not know.
Within a feminist perspective, production of life is the main goal of human activity. This necessitates that the processes of production of necessary things and processes of consumption are again brought together. Because only by consuming the things which we produce can we judge whether they are useful, meaningful and wholesome, whether they are necessary or superfluous. And only by producing what we consume can we know how much time is really necessary for the things we want to consume, what skills are necessary, what knowledge is necessary and what technology is necessary.
The abolition of the wide division between production and consumption, does not mean, of course, that every individual, or even every small community, must produce all they need and have to find everything in their ecological surroundings. But it does imply that the production of life is based on a certain autarkic relation of a certain community of people to a specific region, the size of which has to be determined on the basis of the principles spelt out at the beginning of this section. Goods and services imported into such a region should be the result of non-exploitative relations to nature, women and other peoples. The tendential bringing together of production and consumption will drastically reduce the possibilities for this exploitation, and largely increase the potential for resistance to economic and political blackmail and coercion.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 211-212
[A] feminist perspective has to start with some basic principles, which can guide political action at all levels. The following seem to me the most basic:
- Rejection and abolition of the principle of colonizing dualistic divisions (between men and women, different peoples and classes, man and nature, spirit and matter) based on exploitation for the sake of ever-expanding commodity production and capital accumulation.
- This implies the creation of non-exploitative, non-hierarchical, reciprocal relationships between parts of our body; people and nature; women and men; different sections and classes of one society; different peoples.
- A necessary consequence of non-exploitative relations with ourselves, nature, other human beings and other peoples or nations will be the regaining of autonomy over our bodies and our lives. This autonomy means, first and foremost, that we cannot be blackmailed, or forced to do things which are against human dignity in exchange for the means of our subsistence or our life. Autonomy in this sense should not be understood individualistically and idealistically--as it often is by feminists--because no single woman in our atomized society is able to preserve her autonomy. Indeed, it is the antithesis of autonomy if it is understood in this narrow egotistic sense. Because the enslavement of the consumers under capitalist conditions of generalized commodity production is brought about precisely by the illusion that each individual can buy her or his independence from other human beings and social relations by the purchase of commodities.
Autonomy understood as freedom from coercion and blackmail regarding our lives and bodies, can be brought about only by collective effort in a decentralized, non-hierarchical way. - A rejection of the idea of infinite progress and acceptance of the idea that our human universe is finite, our body is finite, the earth is finite.
- The aim of all work and human endeavour is not a never-ending expansion of wealth and commodities, but human happiness (as the early socialists had seen it), or the production of life itself.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 208
[C]onsumerism is the drug by which women and men are made to accept otherwise inhuman, and increasingly destructive, conditions of life. The new 'needs', created by industry in its desperate effort to keep the growth model going are all of the type of addictions. The satisfaction of these addictions is no longer contributing to more happiness and human fulfilment, but to more destruction of the human essence.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 180
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 170-171
Economically this violence is always necessary when people still have some access to means of production. For example, peasants do not voluntarily begin to produce things which they do not consume themselves. Or they are evicted by force from their fields, or tribes are driven by force from their territory and re-settled in strategic villages.
Women's first and last 'means of production' is their own body. The worldwide increase in violence against women is basically concentrated on this 'territory', over which the BIG MEN have not yet been able to establish their firm and lasting dominance. This dominance is not only based on narrowly-defined economic considerations, although these play an important role, but the economic motives are intrinsically interwoven with political ones, with questions of power and control. Without violence and coercion, neither the modern men nor the modern states would be able to follow their model of progress and development which is based on dominance over nature.
Within the capitalist market economies, violence against women can, therefore, be explained by the necessity for 'ongoing primitive accumulation' which, according to André Gunder Frank, constitutes the precondition for the so-called 'capitalist' accumulation process. In a Third World country like India, the people who have become 'free' subjects in the sense described above is rather small. The fact that civil rights are enshrined in the Indian Constitution does not affect the de facto production relations which are, to a large extent, based on violence and coercion. We have seen that violence against women as an intrinsic element of the 'ongoing primitive accumulation of capital' constitutes the fastest and most 'productive' method if a man wants to join the brotherhood of the 'free' subjects of owners of private property.
Violence against women and extracting women's labour through coercive labour relations are, therefore, part and parcel of capitalism. They are necessary for the capitalist accumulation process and not peripheral to it. In other words, capitalism has to use, to strengthen, or even to invent, patriarchal men-women relations if it wants to maintain its accumulation model. If all women in the world had become 'free' wage-earners, 'free' subjects, the extraction of surplus would, to say the least, be severely hampered. This is what women as housewives, workers, peasants, prostitutes, from Third World and First World countries, have in common.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 168
Friday, August 26, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 120-121
This strategy of mobilizing poor, cheap, docile, dexterous, submissive Third World women [the adjectives refer to previously described Third World government-sponsored advertisements aimed at capitalists -Ethan] for export-oriented production is only one side of the global division of labour. As we said before, it is not enough that these commodities are produced as cheaply as possible, they also have to be sold. In the marketing strategies of the Western and Japanese corporations which are thriving on the export-oriented production in Third World countries, Western women play a crucial role, too, but this time not as producers, but as consumers, as housewives, mothers, and sex objects.
As producers, women in Europe and the US were the first to be fired as a consequence of the new IDL [international division of labour -Ethan]. They lost their jobs in textile industries and electric industries. When Phillips in Eindhoven in Holland closed its factory there in order to re-open others in Third World countries, thousands of women lost their jobs. They were sent home to their kitches with the argument that they should show solidarity with Third World women who needed jobs, whereas in Holland the husband's income was so high that a woman could stay at home and use her time to look after her children better. At the same time, the same multinational corporations mobilize women constantly as buyers of their goods. The tremendous expansion of TV and the introduction of cable TV have as their main purpose the expansion of advertising. Most of the advertising is directed towards women as consumers, or the advertisements themselves contain images of women as sex symbols as their most important ingredient. Here we see the new IDL divides the world up into producers and consumers, but it also divides women internationally and class-wise into producers and consumers. This relationship is structured in such a way that Third World women are objectively--not subjectively--linked to First World women through the commodities which the latter buy. This is not only a contradictory relationship, but also one in which the two actors on each side of the globe do not know anything of each other. The women in South and South-East Asia hardly know what they produce or for whom they make the things they make. On the other hand, the Western housewife is totally oblivious of the female labour, the working conditions, the wages, etc., under which the things which she buys are produced. She is only interested in getting these things as cheaply as possible. She, as most others in Western countries, attributes the overabundance in our supermarkets to the 'productivity' of Western workers. We shall have to discuss the question of whether this contradictory strategy which divides women worldwide into workers and housewives contributes to women's liberation. It is often argued that this strategy gives jobs to Third World women and cheap consumer goods to Western women/housewives. So both should be happy. But if we look more closely at the consequences of this strategy, we may come to another conclusion, namely, that the enslavement and exploitation of one set of women is the foundation of a qualitatively different type of enslavement of another set of women. One is a condition as well as the consequence of the other.
As producers, women in Europe and the US were the first to be fired as a consequence of the new IDL [international division of labour -Ethan]. They lost their jobs in textile industries and electric industries. When Phillips in Eindhoven in Holland closed its factory there in order to re-open others in Third World countries, thousands of women lost their jobs. They were sent home to their kitches with the argument that they should show solidarity with Third World women who needed jobs, whereas in Holland the husband's income was so high that a woman could stay at home and use her time to look after her children better. At the same time, the same multinational corporations mobilize women constantly as buyers of their goods. The tremendous expansion of TV and the introduction of cable TV have as their main purpose the expansion of advertising. Most of the advertising is directed towards women as consumers, or the advertisements themselves contain images of women as sex symbols as their most important ingredient. Here we see the new IDL divides the world up into producers and consumers, but it also divides women internationally and class-wise into producers and consumers. This relationship is structured in such a way that Third World women are objectively--not subjectively--linked to First World women through the commodities which the latter buy. This is not only a contradictory relationship, but also one in which the two actors on each side of the globe do not know anything of each other. The women in South and South-East Asia hardly know what they produce or for whom they make the things they make. On the other hand, the Western housewife is totally oblivious of the female labour, the working conditions, the wages, etc., under which the things which she buys are produced. She is only interested in getting these things as cheaply as possible. She, as most others in Western countries, attributes the overabundance in our supermarkets to the 'productivity' of Western workers. We shall have to discuss the question of whether this contradictory strategy which divides women worldwide into workers and housewives contributes to women's liberation. It is often argued that this strategy gives jobs to Third World women and cheap consumer goods to Western women/housewives. So both should be happy. But if we look more closely at the consequences of this strategy, we may come to another conclusion, namely, that the enslavement and exploitation of one set of women is the foundation of a qualitatively different type of enslavement of another set of women. One is a condition as well as the consequence of the other.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 118-119
Almost at the same time as this new international division of labour was being worked out and put into practice, the world was made aware of the necessity of 'integrating women into development.' Already in 1970, Esther Boserup had found out that women had not benefited from whatever development had taken place in Third World countries. Here findings were corroborated by the many reports on the status of women prepared by governments for the UN World Conference on Women, held in Mexico in 1975. It was found out that women's status had deteriorated in most Third, and even First World countries in all spheres: in politics, employment, education, health, law. As a consequence, the World Plan of Action presented by this conference demanded that the governments make substantial efforts to remedy the situation and to integrate women into development. After this, the UN organizations, the World Bank, the NGOs, all began to talk of women, and to include a chapter on women and development in their programmes. Can we consider this as a genuine change of heart on the part of the male development planners? Were they now really interested in women's liberation after they had forgotten about them throughout all the previous years? And what did they, what do they, mean by 'integrating women into development'?
To begin with, let us not forget one thing: women were also integrated into the old strategy of development. Their unpaid or low paid labour as farm workers, as factory workers, as housewives had also been the base of what has been called modernization in developing countries. But this labour had remained invisible; it provided a lot of the subsistence basis on which male wage-labour could emerge. It subsidized the male wage. But now something else was meant. 'Integrating women into development' means, in most cases, getting women to work in some so-called income-generating activities, that is, to enter market-oriented production. It does not mean that women should expand their subsistence production, that they should try to get more control over land and produce more for their own consumption, more food, more clothes, etc., for themselves. Income in this strategy means money income. And money income can be generated only if women produce something which can be sold in the market. As purchasing power among poor Third World women is low, they have to produce something for people who have this purchasing power. And such people live in the cities in their own countries, or they live in the Western countries. This means that the strategy of integrating women's work into development also amounts to export- or market-oriented production. Poor Third World women produce not what they need, but what others can buy.
Another characteristic of this strategy is that it defines Third World women not as workers, but as housewives. What they do is not defined as work, but as an 'activity'. By universalizing the housewife ideology and the model of the nuclear family as signs of progress, it is also possible to define all the work women do--whether in the formal or informal sectors--as supplementary work, her income as supplementary income to that of the so-called main 'breadwinner', the husband. The economic logic of this housewifization is a tremendous reduction of labour costs. This is one of the reasons why international capital and its spokesmen are now interested in women.
To begin with, let us not forget one thing: women were also integrated into the old strategy of development. Their unpaid or low paid labour as farm workers, as factory workers, as housewives had also been the base of what has been called modernization in developing countries. But this labour had remained invisible; it provided a lot of the subsistence basis on which male wage-labour could emerge. It subsidized the male wage. But now something else was meant. 'Integrating women into development' means, in most cases, getting women to work in some so-called income-generating activities, that is, to enter market-oriented production. It does not mean that women should expand their subsistence production, that they should try to get more control over land and produce more for their own consumption, more food, more clothes, etc., for themselves. Income in this strategy means money income. And money income can be generated only if women produce something which can be sold in the market. As purchasing power among poor Third World women is low, they have to produce something for people who have this purchasing power. And such people live in the cities in their own countries, or they live in the Western countries. This means that the strategy of integrating women's work into development also amounts to export- or market-oriented production. Poor Third World women produce not what they need, but what others can buy.
Another characteristic of this strategy is that it defines Third World women not as workers, but as housewives. What they do is not defined as work, but as an 'activity'. By universalizing the housewife ideology and the model of the nuclear family as signs of progress, it is also possible to define all the work women do--whether in the formal or informal sectors--as supplementary work, her income as supplementary income to that of the so-called main 'breadwinner', the husband. The economic logic of this housewifization is a tremendous reduction of labour costs. This is one of the reasons why international capital and its spokesmen are now interested in women.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 88
[T]he church, the state, the new capitalist class and modern scientists collaborated in the violent subjugation of women and nature. The weak Victorian women of the nineteenth century were the products of the terror methods by which this class had moulded and shaped 'female nature' according to its interests.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 77
Methodologically, I shall try as far as possible to undo the division of those poles of the exploitative relations which are usually analysed as separate entities. Out understanding of scholarly work or research follows exactly the same logic as that of the colonizers and scientists: they cut apart and separate parts which constitute a whole, isolate these parts, analyse them under laboratory conditions and synthesize them again in a new, man-made, artificial model.
I shall not follow this logic. I shall rather try to trace the 'underground connections' that link the processes by which nature was exploited and put under man's domination to the processes by which women in Europe were subordinated, and examine the processes by which these two were linked to the conquest and colonization of other lands and people. Hence, the historical emergence of European science and technology, and its mastery over nature have to be linked to the persecution of the European witches. And both the persecution of the witches and the rise of modern science have to be linked to the slave trade and the destruction of subsistence economies in the colonies.
I shall not follow this logic. I shall rather try to trace the 'underground connections' that link the processes by which nature was exploited and put under man's domination to the processes by which women in Europe were subordinated, and examine the processes by which these two were linked to the conquest and colonization of other lands and people. Hence, the historical emergence of European science and technology, and its mastery over nature have to be linked to the persecution of the European witches. And both the persecution of the witches and the rise of modern science have to be linked to the slave trade and the destruction of subsistence economies in the colonies.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 76
The modern European patriarchs made themselves independent of their European Mother Earth, by conquering first the Americas, later Asia and Africa, and by extracting gold and silver from the mines of Bolivia, Mexico and Peru and other 'raw materials' and luxury items from the other lands. They 'emancipated' themselves, on the one hand, from their dependence on European women for the production of labourers by destroying the witches, as well as their knowledge of contraceptives and birth control. On the other hand, by subordinating grown African men and women into slavery, they thus acquired the necessary labour power for their plantations in America and the Caribbean.
Thus, the progress of European Big Men is based on the subordination and exploitation of their own women, on the exploitation and killing of Nature, on the exploitation and subordination of other peoples and their lands. Hence, the law of this 'progress' is always a contradictory and not an evolutionary one: progress for some means retrogression for the other side; 'evolution' for some means 'devolution' for others; 'humanization' for some means 'de-humanization' for others; development of productive forces for some means underdevelopment and retrogression for others. The rise of some means the fall of others. The reason why there cannot be unilinear progress is the fact that, as was said earlier, the predatory patriarchal mode of production constitutes a non-reciprocal, exploitative relationship. Within such a relationship no general progress for all, no 'trickling down', no development for all is possible.
Thus, the progress of European Big Men is based on the subordination and exploitation of their own women, on the exploitation and killing of Nature, on the exploitation and subordination of other peoples and their lands. Hence, the law of this 'progress' is always a contradictory and not an evolutionary one: progress for some means retrogression for the other side; 'evolution' for some means 'devolution' for others; 'humanization' for some means 'de-humanization' for others; development of productive forces for some means underdevelopment and retrogression for others. The rise of some means the fall of others. The reason why there cannot be unilinear progress is the fact that, as was said earlier, the predatory patriarchal mode of production constitutes a non-reciprocal, exploitative relationship. Within such a relationship no general progress for all, no 'trickling down', no development for all is possible.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 71
It would be an illusion, however, to think that with the full development of capitalism the barbarous features of its bloody beginnings would disappear, and that fully-developed capitalist production relations would mean the end of the social paradigm of man-the-hunter/warrior and the transformation of extra-economic coercion into economic coercion.
On the contrary, we can observe that for the maintenance of an asymmetric exploitative division of labour on a national and international plane--both are interlinked--fully-fledged capitalism needs an ever-expanding state machinery of repression, and a frightening concentration of means of destruction and coercion. None of the capitalist states has done away with the police or the military; they are still, as among the hunters, warriors and warrior-nomads, the most 'productive' sectors because, through the monopoly of now legalized violence, these states are able effectively to curb any rebellion among the workers within their orbit, and also to force subsistence producers and whole peripheral areas to produce for a globally interlinked accumulation process. Though world-scale exploitation of human labour for profits has mainly taken the 'rational' form of so-called unequal exchanged, the maintenance of the unequal relationship is guaranteed everywhere, in the last analysis, by means of direct coercion, by arms.
On the contrary, we can observe that for the maintenance of an asymmetric exploitative division of labour on a national and international plane--both are interlinked--fully-fledged capitalism needs an ever-expanding state machinery of repression, and a frightening concentration of means of destruction and coercion. None of the capitalist states has done away with the police or the military; they are still, as among the hunters, warriors and warrior-nomads, the most 'productive' sectors because, through the monopoly of now legalized violence, these states are able effectively to curb any rebellion among the workers within their orbit, and also to force subsistence producers and whole peripheral areas to produce for a globally interlinked accumulation process. Though world-scale exploitation of human labour for profits has mainly taken the 'rational' form of so-called unequal exchanged, the maintenance of the unequal relationship is guaranteed everywhere, in the last analysis, by means of direct coercion, by arms.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 69
The 'pacification' of the European workers, the establishment of a new form of labour control through the wage-nexus, the transformation of direct violence into structural violence, or of extra-economic coercion into economic coercion, needed, however, not only special economic concessions, but also political concessions.
These political concessions are not, as most people think, the male worker's participation in the democratic process, his rise to the status of a 'citizen', but his sharing the social paradigm of the ruling class, that is, the hunter/warrior model. His 'colony' or 'nature', however, is not Africa or Asia, but the women of his own class. And within that part of 'nature', the boundaries of which are defined by marriage and family laws, he has the monopoly on the means of coercion, of direct violence, which, at the level of the state, the ruling classes invested in their representatives, that is, the king and later the elected representatives.
These political concessions are not, as most people think, the male worker's participation in the democratic process, his rise to the status of a 'citizen', but his sharing the social paradigm of the ruling class, that is, the hunter/warrior model. His 'colony' or 'nature', however, is not Africa or Asia, but the women of his own class. And within that part of 'nature', the boundaries of which are defined by marriage and family laws, he has the monopoly on the means of coercion, of direct violence, which, at the level of the state, the ruling classes invested in their representatives, that is, the king and later the elected representatives.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 67-68
The same can be said of capitalism. When capital accumulation became the dominant motor of productive activity in contrast to subsistence production, wage labour tended to become the dominant form of labour control. Yet these apparently 'peaceful' production-relations, based on mechanisms of economic coercion (structural violence), could be built up only on the base of a tremendous expansion of the predatory mode of acquisition. Direct and violent acquisition of gold and silver and other products, mainly in Hispanic America, and of producers--first the Indians in Latin America and later African slaves--proved to be the most 'productive' activity in what has been described as the period of 'primitive accumulation'.
Thus capitalism did not do away with the former 'savage' forms of control over human productive capacity, it rather reinforced and generalized them...
Thus capitalism did not do away with the former 'savage' forms of control over human productive capacity, it rather reinforced and generalized them...
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 66
From this follows that the establishment of classes, based on one-sided appropriation of 'surplus' (as I have defined it), is intrinsically interwoven with the establishment of patriarchal control over women, as the man 'producers of life' in its two aspects.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 61-62
The earliest tools of mankind, the stone axes, scrapers and flakes, were of an ambivalent character. They could be used to grind, smash and pulverize grains and other vegetable food, and to dig out roots, but they could also be used to kill small animals, and we can assume that they were used by men and women for both purposes. However, the invention of arms proper, of projectiles, of the bow and arrow, is an indication that the killing of animals had become a major specialization of one part of the society, mainly of men. The adherents to the hunter hypothesis are of the opinion that the first tools were invented by men. They ignore women's inventions connected with with their subsistence production. But, as was previously discussed, the first inventions were most probably containers and baskets made of leaves, bark and fibres and later jars. The digging stick and the hoe were the main tools for gathering as well as for early agriculture. Women must have continued with their technology while some men developed specialized hunting tools.
What is important here is to note that women's technology remained productive in the true sense of the word: they produced something new. The hunting technology, on the other hand, is not productive, that is, hunting equipment proper cannot be used for any other productive activity--unlike the stone axe. The bow and arrow and spears are basically means of destruction. Their significance lies in the fact that they cannot only b used to kill animals, they can also be used to kill human beings. It is this characteristic of the hunting tools which became decisive in the further development of male productivity as well as of unequal, exploitative social relations, not the fact that hunters as providers of meat were able to raise the standard of nutrition of the community.
Hence, we conclude that the significance of hunting does not lie in its economic productivity as such, as is wrongly assumed by many theoreticians, but in the particular object-relation to nature it constitutes. The object-relation to nature of man-the-hunter is distinctly different from that of woman-the-gatherer or cultivator. The characteristics of this object-relation are the following:
a. The hunters' main tools are not instruments to produce life but to destroy life. Their tools are not basically means of production, but means of destruction, and they can be used as means of coercion also against fellow human beings.
b. This gives hunters a power over living beings, both animals and human beings, which does not arise out of their own productive work. They can appropriate not only fruits and plants (like the gatherers) and animals, but also other (female) producers by virtue of arms.
c. The object-relation mediated through arms, therefore, is basically a predatory or exploitative one: hunters appropriate life, but they cannot produce life. It is an antagonistic and non-reciprocal relationship. All later exploitative relations between production and appropriation are, in the last analysis, upheld by arms as means of coercion.
d. The object-relation to nature mediated through arms constitutes a relationship of dominance and not of cooperation. This relationship of dominance has become an integral element in all further production relations which men have established. It has become, in fact, the main paradigm of their productivity. Without dominance and control over nature, men cannot conceive of themselves as being productive.
e. 'Appropriation of natural substances' (Marx) now becomes a process of one-sided appropriation, in the sense of establishing property relations, not in the sense of humanization, but in the sense of exploitation of nature.
f. By means of arms, hunters could not only hunt animals, but they could also raid communities of other subsistence producers, kidnap their unarmed young and female workers, and appropriate them. It can be assumed that the first forms of private property were not cattle or other foods, but female slaves who had been kidnapped.
At this point it is important to point out that it is not the hunting technology as such which is responsible for the constitution of an exploitative dominance-relationship between man and nature, and between man and man, man and woman. Recent studies on existing hunting societies have shown that hunters do not have an aggressive relationship with the animals they hunt...
This means that the emergence of a specialized hunting technology only implies the possibility of establishing relationships of exploitation and dominance. It seems that, as long as the hunters remained confined to their limited hunting-gathering context, they could not realize the exploitative potential of their predatory mode of production. Their economic contribution was not sufficient; they remained dependent for their survival on their women's subsistence production.
What is important here is to note that women's technology remained productive in the true sense of the word: they produced something new. The hunting technology, on the other hand, is not productive, that is, hunting equipment proper cannot be used for any other productive activity--unlike the stone axe. The bow and arrow and spears are basically means of destruction. Their significance lies in the fact that they cannot only b used to kill animals, they can also be used to kill human beings. It is this characteristic of the hunting tools which became decisive in the further development of male productivity as well as of unequal, exploitative social relations, not the fact that hunters as providers of meat were able to raise the standard of nutrition of the community.
Hence, we conclude that the significance of hunting does not lie in its economic productivity as such, as is wrongly assumed by many theoreticians, but in the particular object-relation to nature it constitutes. The object-relation to nature of man-the-hunter is distinctly different from that of woman-the-gatherer or cultivator. The characteristics of this object-relation are the following:
a. The hunters' main tools are not instruments to produce life but to destroy life. Their tools are not basically means of production, but means of destruction, and they can be used as means of coercion also against fellow human beings.
b. This gives hunters a power over living beings, both animals and human beings, which does not arise out of their own productive work. They can appropriate not only fruits and plants (like the gatherers) and animals, but also other (female) producers by virtue of arms.
c. The object-relation mediated through arms, therefore, is basically a predatory or exploitative one: hunters appropriate life, but they cannot produce life. It is an antagonistic and non-reciprocal relationship. All later exploitative relations between production and appropriation are, in the last analysis, upheld by arms as means of coercion.
d. The object-relation to nature mediated through arms constitutes a relationship of dominance and not of cooperation. This relationship of dominance has become an integral element in all further production relations which men have established. It has become, in fact, the main paradigm of their productivity. Without dominance and control over nature, men cannot conceive of themselves as being productive.
e. 'Appropriation of natural substances' (Marx) now becomes a process of one-sided appropriation, in the sense of establishing property relations, not in the sense of humanization, but in the sense of exploitation of nature.
f. By means of arms, hunters could not only hunt animals, but they could also raid communities of other subsistence producers, kidnap their unarmed young and female workers, and appropriate them. It can be assumed that the first forms of private property were not cattle or other foods, but female slaves who had been kidnapped.
At this point it is important to point out that it is not the hunting technology as such which is responsible for the constitution of an exploitative dominance-relationship between man and nature, and between man and man, man and woman. Recent studies on existing hunting societies have shown that hunters do not have an aggressive relationship with the animals they hunt...
This means that the emergence of a specialized hunting technology only implies the possibility of establishing relationships of exploitation and dominance. It seems that, as long as the hunters remained confined to their limited hunting-gathering context, they could not realize the exploitative potential of their predatory mode of production. Their economic contribution was not sufficient; they remained dependent for their survival on their women's subsistence production.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 58-59
Women's productivity is the precondition of all other human productivity, not only in the sense that they are always the producers of new men and women, but also in the sense that the first social division of labour, that between female gatherers (later also cultivators) and predominantly male hunters, could take place only on the basis of a developed female productivity.
Female productivity consisted, above all, in the ability to provide the daily subsistence, the guarantee of survival, for the members of the clan or band. Women necessarily had to secure the 'daily bread', not only for themselves and their children, but also for the men if they had no luck on their hunting expeditions, because hunting is an 'economy of risk'.
It has been proved conclusively, particularly by the critical research of feminist scholars, that the survival of mankind has been due much more to 'women-the-gatherer' than to 'man-the-hunter', in contrast to what social-Darwinists of old or of new preach. Even among existing hunters and gatherers, women provide up to 80 per cent of the daily food, whereas men contribute only a small portion by hunting. By a secondary analysis of a sample of hunters and gatherers from Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas, Martin and Voorhies have proved that 58 per cent of the subsistence of these societies was provided by gathering, 25 per cent by hunting, and the rest by hunting and gathering together. Tiwi women, in Australia, who are both hunters and gatherers, got 50 per cent of their food by gathering, 30 per cent by hunting and 20 per cent by fishing...
It is obvious from these examples that, among existing hunters and gatherers, hunting does by no means have the economic importance which is usually ascribed to it and that the women are the providers of the bulk of the daily staple food. In fact, all hunters of big game depended on the supply by their women of food which is not produced by hunting, if they want to go on a hunting expedition... If they refused to give the men the necessary supply of food for their adventures, the men had to stay at home.
Elisabeth Fraser gives us further examples of still existing foraging peoples among whom women are the main providers of the daily food, particularly in the temperate and southern zones. But she also argues that the gathering of vegetable food was more important for our early ancestors than hunting. She refers to the study of coprolites, fossile excrement, which reveals that groups that lived 200,000 years ago on the southern French coast mainly survived on a diet of shellfish, mussels and grains, not meat. Twelve-thousand-year-old coprolites from Mexico suggest that millet was the main staple food in that area.
Though it is obvious from these examples, as well as from common sense, that humanity would not have survived if man-the-hunter's productivity had been the base for the daily subsistence of the early societies, the notion that man-the-hunter was the inventor of the first tools, the provider of food, inventor of human society and protector of women and children persists not only in popular literature and films, but also among serious social scientists, and even among Marxist scholars.
Female productivity consisted, above all, in the ability to provide the daily subsistence, the guarantee of survival, for the members of the clan or band. Women necessarily had to secure the 'daily bread', not only for themselves and their children, but also for the men if they had no luck on their hunting expeditions, because hunting is an 'economy of risk'.
It has been proved conclusively, particularly by the critical research of feminist scholars, that the survival of mankind has been due much more to 'women-the-gatherer' than to 'man-the-hunter', in contrast to what social-Darwinists of old or of new preach. Even among existing hunters and gatherers, women provide up to 80 per cent of the daily food, whereas men contribute only a small portion by hunting. By a secondary analysis of a sample of hunters and gatherers from Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas, Martin and Voorhies have proved that 58 per cent of the subsistence of these societies was provided by gathering, 25 per cent by hunting, and the rest by hunting and gathering together. Tiwi women, in Australia, who are both hunters and gatherers, got 50 per cent of their food by gathering, 30 per cent by hunting and 20 per cent by fishing...
It is obvious from these examples that, among existing hunters and gatherers, hunting does by no means have the economic importance which is usually ascribed to it and that the women are the providers of the bulk of the daily staple food. In fact, all hunters of big game depended on the supply by their women of food which is not produced by hunting, if they want to go on a hunting expedition... If they refused to give the men the necessary supply of food for their adventures, the men had to stay at home.
Elisabeth Fraser gives us further examples of still existing foraging peoples among whom women are the main providers of the daily food, particularly in the temperate and southern zones. But she also argues that the gathering of vegetable food was more important for our early ancestors than hunting. She refers to the study of coprolites, fossile excrement, which reveals that groups that lived 200,000 years ago on the southern French coast mainly survived on a diet of shellfish, mussels and grains, not meat. Twelve-thousand-year-old coprolites from Mexico suggest that millet was the main staple food in that area.
Though it is obvious from these examples, as well as from common sense, that humanity would not have survived if man-the-hunter's productivity had been the base for the daily subsistence of the early societies, the notion that man-the-hunter was the inventor of the first tools, the provider of food, inventor of human society and protector of women and children persists not only in popular literature and films, but also among serious social scientists, and even among Marxist scholars.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 55
Women's production of new life, of new women and men, is inseparably linked to the production of the means of subsistence for this new life. Mothers who give birth to children and suckle them necessarily have to provide food for themselves and for the children. Thus, the appropriation of their bodily nature, the fact that they produce children and milk, makes them also the first providers of the daily food, be it as gatherers, who simply collect what they find in nature, plants, small animals, fish, etc., or as agriculturists. The first division of labour by sex, namely that between the gathering activities of the women and the sporadic hunting of the men, has its origin most probably in the fact that women necessarily were responsible for the production of the daily subsistence. Gathering of plants, roots, fruits, mushrooms, nuts, small animals, etc., was right from the beginning a collective activity of women.
It is assumed that the necessity to provide for the daily food and the long experience with plants and plant life eventually led to the invention of regular cultivation of grain and tubers. According to Gordon Childe, this invention took place in the Neolithic Age, particularly in Eurasia, where wild grains were first cultivated. He and many other scholars attribute this invention to women, who were also the inventors of the first tools necessary for this new mode of production: the digging stick--which was already in use for digging out wild roots and tubers--and the hoe.
The regular cultivation of food plants, mainly tubers and grains, signifies a new stage and an enormous increase in the productivity of female labour which, according to most authors, made the production of a surplus possible for the first time in history. Childe, therefore, calls this transformation the neolithic revolution which he attributes to the regular cultivation of grain. On the basis of recent arhaeological findings in Iran and Turkey, Elisabeth Fraser, however, argues that people had been able to collect a surplus of wild grains and nuts already in the gathering stage. The technological precondition for the collection of a surplus was the invention of containers, baskets of leaves and plant fibres and jars. It seems plausible that the technology of preservation preceded the new agricultural technology, and was equally necessary for the production of a surplus.
It is assumed that the necessity to provide for the daily food and the long experience with plants and plant life eventually led to the invention of regular cultivation of grain and tubers. According to Gordon Childe, this invention took place in the Neolithic Age, particularly in Eurasia, where wild grains were first cultivated. He and many other scholars attribute this invention to women, who were also the inventors of the first tools necessary for this new mode of production: the digging stick--which was already in use for digging out wild roots and tubers--and the hoe.
The regular cultivation of food plants, mainly tubers and grains, signifies a new stage and an enormous increase in the productivity of female labour which, according to most authors, made the production of a surplus possible for the first time in history. Childe, therefore, calls this transformation the neolithic revolution which he attributes to the regular cultivation of grain. On the basis of recent arhaeological findings in Iran and Turkey, Elisabeth Fraser, however, argues that people had been able to collect a surplus of wild grains and nuts already in the gathering stage. The technological precondition for the collection of a surplus was the invention of containers, baskets of leaves and plant fibres and jars. It seems plausible that the technology of preservation preceded the new agricultural technology, and was equally necessary for the production of a surplus.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 54-55
In the course of their history, women observed the changes in their own bodies and acquired through observation and experiment a vast body of experiential knowledge about the function of their bodies, about the rhythms of menstruation, about pregnancy and childbirth. This appropriation of their own bodily nature was closely related to the acquisition of knowledge about the generative forces of external nature, about plants, animals, the earth, water and air.
Thus, they did not simply breed children like cows, but they appropriated their own generative and productive forces, they analysed and reflected upon their own and former experiences and passed them on to their daughters. This means they were not helpless victims of the generative forces of their bodies, but learned to influence them, including the number of children they wanted to have.
We are in possession of enough evidence today to conclude that women in pre-patriarchal societies knew better how to regulate the number of their children and the frequency of births than do modern women, who have lost this knowledge through their subjection to the patriarchal capitalist civilizing process.
Among gatherers and hunters and other primitive groups, various methods existed--and partly still exist today--to limit the number of births and children. Apart from infanticide, most probably the earliest method, women in many societies used various plants and herbs as contraceptives or to induce abortions. The Ute Indians used lithio-spermium, the Bororo women in Brazil used a plant which made them temporarily sterile. The missionaries persuaded the women not to use the plant any more. Elisabeth Fisher tells us about methods used by women among the Australian aborigines, certain tribes in Oceania, and even in ancient Egypt, which were predecessors to modern contraceptives. Women in Egypt used a vaginal sponge, dipped in honey, to reduce the mobility of sperm. There was also the use of acacia tips which contained a spermicidal acid.
Another method of birth control used widely among contemporary gatherers and hunters is a prolonged period of breastfeeding. Robert M. May reports on studies which prove that 'in almost all primitive gatherers' and hunters' societies fertility is lower than in modern civilized societies. Through prolonged lactation ovulation is reduced, which leads to longer intervals between births'. He also observed that these women reached puberty at a much later age than civilized women. He attributes the much more balanced population growth, which can be observed today among many tribes as long as they are not integrated into civilized society, to 'cultural practices which unconsciously contribute to a reduction of fertility'. Though he criticizes correctly those who think that the low rate of population growth in such societies is the result of a brutal struggle for survival, he still does not conceive of this situation as a result of women's conscious appropriation of their generative forces. Recent feminist research has revealed that before the witch hunt women in Europe had a much better knowledge of their bodies and of contraceptives than we have today.
Thus, they did not simply breed children like cows, but they appropriated their own generative and productive forces, they analysed and reflected upon their own and former experiences and passed them on to their daughters. This means they were not helpless victims of the generative forces of their bodies, but learned to influence them, including the number of children they wanted to have.
We are in possession of enough evidence today to conclude that women in pre-patriarchal societies knew better how to regulate the number of their children and the frequency of births than do modern women, who have lost this knowledge through their subjection to the patriarchal capitalist civilizing process.
Among gatherers and hunters and other primitive groups, various methods existed--and partly still exist today--to limit the number of births and children. Apart from infanticide, most probably the earliest method, women in many societies used various plants and herbs as contraceptives or to induce abortions. The Ute Indians used lithio-spermium, the Bororo women in Brazil used a plant which made them temporarily sterile. The missionaries persuaded the women not to use the plant any more. Elisabeth Fisher tells us about methods used by women among the Australian aborigines, certain tribes in Oceania, and even in ancient Egypt, which were predecessors to modern contraceptives. Women in Egypt used a vaginal sponge, dipped in honey, to reduce the mobility of sperm. There was also the use of acacia tips which contained a spermicidal acid.
Another method of birth control used widely among contemporary gatherers and hunters is a prolonged period of breastfeeding. Robert M. May reports on studies which prove that 'in almost all primitive gatherers' and hunters' societies fertility is lower than in modern civilized societies. Through prolonged lactation ovulation is reduced, which leads to longer intervals between births'. He also observed that these women reached puberty at a much later age than civilized women. He attributes the much more balanced population growth, which can be observed today among many tribes as long as they are not integrated into civilized society, to 'cultural practices which unconsciously contribute to a reduction of fertility'. Though he criticizes correctly those who think that the low rate of population growth in such societies is the result of a brutal struggle for survival, he still does not conceive of this situation as a result of women's conscious appropriation of their generative forces. Recent feminist research has revealed that before the witch hunt women in Europe had a much better knowledge of their bodies and of contraceptives than we have today.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 53
Maleness and femaleness are not biological givens, but rather the results of a long historical process. In each historic epoch maleness and femaleness are differently defined. This definition depends on the principal mode of production in these epochs. This means the organic differences between women and men are differently interpreted and valued, according to the dominant form of appropriation of natural matter for the satisfaction of human needs. Therefore, throughout history, men and women have developed a qualitatively different relationship to their own bodies. In matristic societies femaleness was interpreted as the social paradigm of all productivity, as the main active principle in the production of life. All women were defined as 'mothers'. But 'mothers' meant something other than it does today. Under capitalist conditions all women are socially defined as housewives (all men as breadwinners), and motherhood has become part and parcel of this housewife syndrome. The distinction between the earlier, matristic definition of femaleness and the modern one is that the modern definition has been emptied of all active, creative (subjective), productive (that is, human) qualities.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 39-40
If we say feminism has to struggle against all capitalist-patriarchal relations, we have to extend our analysis to the system of accumulation on a world scale, the world market or the international division of labour. The cleavages created by this division pose particular conceptual problems. What terminology should we use when we refer to the two divided, yet hierarchically related, sides of the world market? Should we continue to talk of 'developed' and 'underdeveloped' countries? Or, should we, in order to avoid the notion of a linear process of development, talk of 'First' and 'Third' world countries? Or should we use the concepts 'metropoles' or 'centres' and 'peripheries', stemming from the theoreticians of the dependency school? Behind each pair of concepts stands a whole theory which tries to come to grips with the historical phenomenon that, since the rise of Europe and later the USA as the dominant centres of the capitalist world economy, a process of polarization and division has been taking place by which one pole--the Western industrialized world--is getting richer and ever more powerful, and the other pole--the colonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America--are getting poorer and less powerful.
If we follow the feminist principle of transcending the divisions create by capitalist patriarchy in order to be able to establish that these divisions constitute only parts of the whole, we cannot treat the 'First' and 'Third' world as separate entities, but have to identify the relations that exist between the two.
These relations are based on exploitation and oppression, as is the case with the man-woman relation. And similar to the latter, these relations are also dynamic ones in which a process of polarization takes place: one pole is getting 'developed' at the expense of the other pole, which in this process is getting 'underdeveloped'. 'Underdevelopment', according to this theory, which was first developed by André Gunder Frank, is the direct result of an exploitative unequal or dependent relationship between the core-countries in the capitalist world economy, and their colonies. It is not due to some inexplicable 'backwardness'. In this dynamic process of polarization between countries which are 'developing' themselves and countries which they in this process 'underdevelop', the rich and powerful Western industrial countries are getting more and more 'overdeveloped'. This means their development does not stop at a certain point where people would say: 'This is enough. We have enough development for our human happiness.' The very motor driving on this polarization of the world economy, namely, the capitalist accumulation process, is based on a world view which never says 'This is enough'. It is by its very nature based on limitless growth, on limitless expansion of productive forces, of commodities and capital. The result of this never-ending growth model are the phenomena of 'overdevelopment', that is, of a growth that has assumed the character of cancer, which is progressively destructive, not only for those who are exploited in this process but also for those who are apparently the beneficiaries of this exploitation. 'Overdevelopment and underdevelopment' are, therefore, the two extreme poles of an inherently exploitative world order, divided up and yet linked by the global accumulation process or the world market.
To use the concepts 'overdevelopment-underdevelopment' in this sense may, therefore, help to avoid the illusion that in a world system, structured along these principles, the problems of the underdeveloped peoples could be solved by development 'aid', or that the overdeveloped peoples could achieve human happiness by further exploiting the underdeveloped world. In a finite world an exploitative and oppressive relation between the two sides of the whole will necessarily be destructive for both sides. At the present stage of history this truth begins gradually to dawn also on people in the overdeveloped world.
If we follow the feminist principle of transcending the divisions create by capitalist patriarchy in order to be able to establish that these divisions constitute only parts of the whole, we cannot treat the 'First' and 'Third' world as separate entities, but have to identify the relations that exist between the two.
These relations are based on exploitation and oppression, as is the case with the man-woman relation. And similar to the latter, these relations are also dynamic ones in which a process of polarization takes place: one pole is getting 'developed' at the expense of the other pole, which in this process is getting 'underdeveloped'. 'Underdevelopment', according to this theory, which was first developed by André Gunder Frank, is the direct result of an exploitative unequal or dependent relationship between the core-countries in the capitalist world economy, and their colonies. It is not due to some inexplicable 'backwardness'. In this dynamic process of polarization between countries which are 'developing' themselves and countries which they in this process 'underdevelop', the rich and powerful Western industrial countries are getting more and more 'overdeveloped'. This means their development does not stop at a certain point where people would say: 'This is enough. We have enough development for our human happiness.' The very motor driving on this polarization of the world economy, namely, the capitalist accumulation process, is based on a world view which never says 'This is enough'. It is by its very nature based on limitless growth, on limitless expansion of productive forces, of commodities and capital. The result of this never-ending growth model are the phenomena of 'overdevelopment', that is, of a growth that has assumed the character of cancer, which is progressively destructive, not only for those who are exploited in this process but also for those who are apparently the beneficiaries of this exploitation. 'Overdevelopment and underdevelopment' are, therefore, the two extreme poles of an inherently exploitative world order, divided up and yet linked by the global accumulation process or the world market.
To use the concepts 'overdevelopment-underdevelopment' in this sense may, therefore, help to avoid the illusion that in a world system, structured along these principles, the problems of the underdeveloped peoples could be solved by development 'aid', or that the overdeveloped peoples could achieve human happiness by further exploiting the underdeveloped world. In a finite world an exploitative and oppressive relation between the two sides of the whole will necessarily be destructive for both sides. At the present stage of history this truth begins gradually to dawn also on people in the overdeveloped world.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 35
Many feminists in the United States and Europe have, together with critical scientists and ecologists, begun to criticize the dualistic and destructive paradigm of Western science and technology. Drawing their inspiration from C.G. Jung's psychology, humanistic psychology, non-dualistic 'Eastern' spirituality, particularly Taoism and other oriental philosophies, they propose a new holistic paradigm, the New Age paradigm. This emphasis on the fact that in our world everything is connected with everything and influences everything is definitely an approach which goes along with much of the feminist rebellion and vision of a future society. However, if this desire to 'become whole' again, and to build bridges across all the cleavages and segmentations White Man has created is not to be frustrated again, it is necessary that the New Age feminists, the ec-feminists and others open their eyes and minds to the real colonies whose exploitation also guarantees them the luxury of indulging in 'Eastern spirituality' and 'therapy'. In other words, if the holistic paradigm is nothing but an affair of a new spiritualism or consciousness, if it does not identify and fight against the global system of capitalist accumulation and exploitation, it will end up by becoming a pioneering movement for the legitimization of the next round of the destructive production of capitalism. This round will not focus on the production and marketing of such crude material commodities as cars and refrigerators, but on non-material commodities like religion, therapies, friendship, spirituality, and also on violence and warfare, of course with the full use of the 'New Age' technologies.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 27-28
If now, in spite of all the highly praised achievements of 'civilization', women under this system are still raped, beaten, molested, humiliated, tortured by men, a few serious questions arise which beg an answer:
- If violence against women is not accidental but part of modern capitalist patriarchy, then we have to explain why this is so. If we reject a biologistic explanation--as I do--we have to look for reasons which are central to the functioning of the system as such.
- If we include the so-called private sphere into the sphere of the economy and politics--as feminists do--then the claim that capitalism has transformed all extra-economic violence or coercion into economic coercion--a position held by Marxists--cannot be upheld.
- In the political sphere, the state monopoly over direct violence obviously stops at the door of the private family.
- If this is so, then the line dividing the 'private' from the 'public' is necessarily the same line that divides 'private' male violence (rule of might) from regulated state violence (rule of right).
- Hence, as far as women are concerned, the hope that in civilized or 'modern' society the 'rule of right' would replace the 'rule of might'--as the old women's movement had hoped--has not been borne out. Both co-exist side by side.
- Again, if this co-existence is not just accidental or the result of survivals of 'barbaric' times, as some interpret it, then obviously we have to come to a different understanding of what civilization or capitalist patriarchy is.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 17
The strategy of dividing the economy up into 'visible' and 'invisible' sectors is not at all new. It has been the method of the capitalist accumulation process right from its beginning. The invisible parts were per definition excluded from the 'real' economy. But they constituted in fact the very foundations for the visible economy. These excluded parts were/are the internal and external colonies of capital: the housewives in the industrialized countries and the colonies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Due to the welfare provisions and the social security systems in Europe and the USA, the creation of an informal sector does not yet by itself make this sector a lucrative hunting ground for exploitation and accumulation. Only by simultaneously cutting down state expenditure on social welfare can the governments force the people who are thrown out of the formal sector to accept any work at any wage and any condition in order to produce their own survival. This means, in the last analysis, that the conditions which are prevailing for the vast majority of people in the underdeveloped world are returning to the centres of capitalism. Although for the time being the standard of living of the masses of people in the overdeveloped countries is still much higher than that in Third World countries, structurally the situation of people in the informal sector is approaching that of most people in the underdeveloped countries.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 15-16
As long as the Western economies were experiencing an ever-expanding growth of their GNPs they could afford to neutralize social dissent and social unrest like that of the women by throwing some crumbs to such disenchanted groups. Under the pressure of the women's movement, certain reforms were introduced like a certain liberalization of the abortion laws, reforms of divorce laws, etc. And in some countries, as in Holland, the state even created commissions for the emancipation of women, and women's action and consciousness-raising groups could demand state support for their activities. Also, in the USA departments of women's studies were established in most universities without great opposition. Although this all needed a lot of struggle from the women's movement, there was a certain paternalistic benevolence in granting 'the girls' a certain niche in the system. Already at this stage the various patriarchal establishments used their power to co-opt women and to integrate their rebellion into the system. But the deepening of the economic crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, and the rise of conservative governments and tendencies in most Western countries with their new policies of restructuring the economy also marked the end of fair-weather or welfare-state feminism. In several countries, particularly in the USA and West Germany, conservative governments launched a virtual attack on some of the half-hearted reforms achieved under the pressure of the new women's movement, above all on the liberalized abortion laws. This roll-back strategy with its renewed emphasis on the patriarchal family, on heterosexuality, on the ideology of motherhood, on women's 'biological' destiny, their responsibility for housework and childcare, and the overall attack on feminism had the effect that women who had hoped that women's liberation could come as a result of some legal reforms or consciousness-raising withdrew from the movement or or even became hostile to it....
This roll-back strategy, however, is only the political manifestation of more fundamental structural changes in the Western economies which are usually referred to as 'flexibilization of labour'. Women are the immediate targets of this strategy. The new strategy of rationalization, computerization and automation of production processes and jobs in the service sector has the effect that women are the first to be pushed out of well-paid, qualified and secure jobs in the 'formal sector'. But they are not just being sent back to home and hearth. They are in fact pushed into a whole range of unqualified, low-paid, insecure jobs which they have to do on top of their housework, which, more than ever, is considered their true vocation. And, contrary to the official conservative ideology on women and the family, the family is no longer a place where women can be sure to find their material existence secured. Man-the-breadwinner, though still the main ideological figure behind the new policies, is empirically disappearing from the stage. Not only does the rising unemployment of men make their role of breadwinner a precarious one, but marriage for women is also no longer an economic guarantee of their lifelong livelihood.
This roll-back strategy, however, is only the political manifestation of more fundamental structural changes in the Western economies which are usually referred to as 'flexibilization of labour'. Women are the immediate targets of this strategy. The new strategy of rationalization, computerization and automation of production processes and jobs in the service sector has the effect that women are the first to be pushed out of well-paid, qualified and secure jobs in the 'formal sector'. But they are not just being sent back to home and hearth. They are in fact pushed into a whole range of unqualified, low-paid, insecure jobs which they have to do on top of their housework, which, more than ever, is considered their true vocation. And, contrary to the official conservative ideology on women and the family, the family is no longer a place where women can be sure to find their material existence secured. Man-the-breadwinner, though still the main ideological figure behind the new policies, is empirically disappearing from the stage. Not only does the rising unemployment of men make their role of breadwinner a precarious one, but marriage for women is also no longer an economic guarantee of their lifelong livelihood.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour page 14
It is a peculiar experience of many women that they are engaged in various struggles and actions, the deeper historical significance of which they themselves are often not able to grasp. Thus, they do in fact bring about certain changes, but they do not 'understand' that the changes they are aiming at are much more far-reaching and radical than they dare to dream. Take the example of the worldwide anti-rape campaign. By focussing on the male violence against women, coming to the surface in rape, and by trying to make this a public issue, feminists have unwittingly touched one of the taboos of civilized society, namely that this is a 'peaceful society'. Although most women were mainly concerned with helping the victims or with bringing about legal reforms, the very fact that rape has now become a public issue has helped to tear the veil from the facade of so-called civilized society and has laid bare its hidden, brutal, violent foundations.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Divison of Labour pages 13-14
All these efforts to 'add' the 'woman question' to existing social theories or paradigms fail to grasp the true historical thrust of the new feminist rebellion, namely its radical attack on patriarchy or patriarchal civilization as a system, of which capitalism constitutes the most recent and most universal manifestation. Since practically all the above-mentioned theories remain within the paradigm of 'civilized society', feminism, which in its political aim necessarily wants to transcend this model of society, cannot be simply added onto, or fitted into some forgotten niche of these theories. Many of us who have tried to fill those 'blind spots' have finally found out that our questions, our analyses put this whole model of society into question. We may not yet have developed adequate alternative theories, but our critique, which first started with those lacunae, went deeper and deeper till we realized that 'our problem', namely the exploitative oppressive men-women relationship, was systematically connected with other such 'hidden continents', above all 'nature' and the 'colonies'. Gradually a new image of society emerged in which women were not just 'forgotten', 'neglected', 'discriminated' against by accident, where they had 'not yet' had a chance to come up to the level of the men, where they were one of the several 'minorities', 'specificities' which could not 'yet' be accommodated into the otherwise generalized theories and policies, but where the whole notion of what was 'general', or what was 'specific' had to be revolutionized. How can those who are the actual foundation of the production of life of each society, the women, be defined as a 'specific' category? Therefore, the claim to universal validity, inherent in all these theories, had to be challenged.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Joanna Russ, Introduction to "Letter to Susan Koppelman", in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction page 171
Anyone who seriously tries to make received ideas do feminist work will find that the received ideas end up making her feminism do their work, and anyone who really thinks that respectability will do us good in any field--well, I don't know what to say. I am not against people lying their heads off when they have to, to make a living, but believing the junk you may be forced to practice is another matter.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Joanna Russ, "A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution" in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, pages 71-72
It is nonsense to insist that the real danger in a tyrannical, self-hating, hypocritical, piously horrible society is pretty, scheming, little girls. The Nice Girl looks like the most sacred and the most privileged citizen of this ghastly community, but in reality her rights (as opposed to the rights of her owners) are nonexistent. In D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, for example, to lay a finger on Lillian Gish looks like a desecration, but she is far from being society or even a citizen of it; she has been invented, constructed, meant, put there in the film either to be raped or saved-from-rape--what other purpose can there possibly be for her unhuman helplessness and childishness? The Victorian gentlemen who so assiduously protected their daughters' maiden purity were not hypocrites when they visited whorehouses stocked with twelve-year-old girls; they were simply acting on the identical assumption about the high value of maiden purity. In such a setup, pretty girls are about as much privileged citizens as a diamond ring is a privileged citizen. Like money or jewels, women are counters for use in business or warfare between men. Punk loners (who are much more part of "society"...) can go on terrifying or killing waitresses or cheerleaders forever under the impression that they're heroically attacking society...
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Confusing Nelson Rockefeller with his car is a useful delusion to inculcate in punks; this way they attack the car instead of the man. After all, if the punks ever found out the car was only a possession, there might be real trouble. But as long as movies assume that the use of women to bind men to respectability is an instinct or a scheme by women (who must act through men in order to attain any power or safety), and not a circumstance set up by powerful men, rebels can expend their emotion on reincarnations of the Bitch Goddess forever.
The war between fathers and sons is as chronic a conflict in patriarchy as the war between classes (that is, between upper-class and lower-class men), though not nearly as revolutionary in its potential. In both conflicts women are useful scapegoats, blamable and punishable for everything. After all, Son will eventually make it to the state of Father and will have his own Daughter/Wife he can own ("protect") from other Fathers, a Daughter he can give to another Son as payment for continuing the status quo. Son can even be counted on to punish Daughter if Daughter gets out of hand. Thus a real alliance between Daughter and Son is made eternally impossible, and luckily so, for such an alliance would be almost as dangerous for patriarchy as one between Daughter and Mother. Between classes, scapegoats are even more useful: Lower-class Man is not going to make it at all, i.e., he will never replace Upper-class Man; so using Lower/Upper-class Woman as scapegoat both distracts him from the real situation and bribes him to endure it.
The evils of female sexuality and the obligatory punishment of its carriers is the grand, eternally useful scapegoat of Western patriarchy. It is the one topic on which Fathers and Sons, Upper-class Men and Lower-class Men can heartily agree. And they can agree (and collude) while enjoying the comforting illusion that they are engaged in dangerous, revolutionary activities.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 35-36 (note page 40)
What is technology?
My own definition is on the modest side. I mean by "technology" a rational, systematic, taught, learned, and replicable way of materially controlling the material world, or parts of it...
In this modest definition, every known human society has a technology; there's the digging-stick technology, the animal-domestication technology, basket-weaving, pottery, and so on.
Most people who talk about technology don't talk this way.
First of all, they mean something modern; the Xerox copier or the railroad is technology; the hand loom or the potter's wheel is not. Modernity appears to be located during or after the Industrial Revolution.
Second, they mean something ubiquitous. Technology is all around us. One statement I can find about "technology" says "technology is in our time almost indistinguishable from the urban environment of Western countries."8 In my definition of the word, such a statement would be absurd, since it would imply that the urban or village environment of non-Western countries is non-technological, i.e., something that arose spontaneously from nature. The use of "technology" here is clearly not mine.
Third, technology is not only everywhere; it's autonomous. It acts... It influences. It transforms.
Fourth, technology is often spoken of as uncontrollable. "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." It controls us and is dangerous; it can threaten change or destruction.
What is this entity that began during the Industrial Revolution and continued thereafter, that is uncontrollable, autonomous, all around us, both threatening and promising?
Hiding greyly behind that sexy rock star, technology, is a much more sinister and powerful figure. It is the entire social system that surrounds us; hence the sense of being at the mercy of an all-encompassing autonomous process that we cannot control. If you add the monster's location in time (during and after the Industrial Revolution), I think you can see what is being discussed when most people say "technology." They are politically mystifying a much bigger monster: capitalism in its advanced, industrial phase.
8. Prospectus for the MLA forum on "Technology and the Literary Mind," April 25, 1977. The forum was held in December 1977. This paper, in altered form, was presented there.
My own definition is on the modest side. I mean by "technology" a rational, systematic, taught, learned, and replicable way of materially controlling the material world, or parts of it...
In this modest definition, every known human society has a technology; there's the digging-stick technology, the animal-domestication technology, basket-weaving, pottery, and so on.
Most people who talk about technology don't talk this way.
First of all, they mean something modern; the Xerox copier or the railroad is technology; the hand loom or the potter's wheel is not. Modernity appears to be located during or after the Industrial Revolution.
Second, they mean something ubiquitous. Technology is all around us. One statement I can find about "technology" says "technology is in our time almost indistinguishable from the urban environment of Western countries."8 In my definition of the word, such a statement would be absurd, since it would imply that the urban or village environment of non-Western countries is non-technological, i.e., something that arose spontaneously from nature. The use of "technology" here is clearly not mine.
Third, technology is not only everywhere; it's autonomous. It acts... It influences. It transforms.
Fourth, technology is often spoken of as uncontrollable. "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." It controls us and is dangerous; it can threaten change or destruction.
What is this entity that began during the Industrial Revolution and continued thereafter, that is uncontrollable, autonomous, all around us, both threatening and promising?
Hiding greyly behind that sexy rock star, technology, is a much more sinister and powerful figure. It is the entire social system that surrounds us; hence the sense of being at the mercy of an all-encompassing autonomous process that we cannot control. If you add the monster's location in time (during and after the Industrial Revolution), I think you can see what is being discussed when most people say "technology." They are politically mystifying a much bigger monster: capitalism in its advanced, industrial phase.
8. Prospectus for the MLA forum on "Technology and the Literary Mind," April 25, 1977. The forum was held in December 1977. This paper, in altered form, was presented there.
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 33-34
Talk about technology is a cognitive addiction. That is, such talk (like much in academia) purports to satisfy certain cognitive cravings that spring from issues central to all of us in our own lives, but it does not do so. Instead, it follows the pattern of brief palliation followed by increasing dissatisfaction and--usually--the academic equivalent of spin-offs: books proliferate, papers are given, journals are edited, other symposia are planned, but somehow nothing gets settled and eventually people drift on to other concerns--not because the subject has been exhausted, but because it has somehow disappeared.
...certainly, when I recall my three experiences with formal symposia on "Technology And" (usually the humanities or literature), nobody involved in those was stupid. Yet what is striking about the formal and informal occasions alike is the exclusion of both subject-matter and people: there was no economics, there was little sociology, there was little real history, there was no political analysis of any kind. There were almost no women and there were few references to works by women, literary or scientific, and no references at all to women's work. And, as in Star Wars, there were practically no non-white faces.
I believe these exclusions have a good deal to do with the choice of "technology" as a subject and the way in which non-discourse about this non-subject keeps occurring. That is, in all these discussions the conversation occurs as if we were in a heaven of abstract discourse in which ideas develop autonomously and influence other ideas without the slightest connection to the real conditions of the lives of the people who are having the ideas. It is what I think Marx would call ahistorical talk. It is certainly talk that pretends to be apolitical. And, of course, the one thing left out of all these discussions is real technology.
...certainly, when I recall my three experiences with formal symposia on "Technology And" (usually the humanities or literature), nobody involved in those was stupid. Yet what is striking about the formal and informal occasions alike is the exclusion of both subject-matter and people: there was no economics, there was little sociology, there was little real history, there was no political analysis of any kind. There were almost no women and there were few references to works by women, literary or scientific, and no references at all to women's work. And, as in Star Wars, there were practically no non-white faces.
I believe these exclusions have a good deal to do with the choice of "technology" as a subject and the way in which non-discourse about this non-subject keeps occurring. That is, in all these discussions the conversation occurs as if we were in a heaven of abstract discourse in which ideas develop autonomously and influence other ideas without the slightest connection to the real conditions of the lives of the people who are having the ideas. It is what I think Marx would call ahistorical talk. It is certainly talk that pretends to be apolitical. And, of course, the one thing left out of all these discussions is real technology.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 32-33
In the physiological model of addiction there is an increasing spiral of physical need; in the cultural model, an increasing spiral of what I shall call (for want of a better term) emotional need... In Star Wars the need is for self-worth and pleasure (I believe this is what the "fun" represents). The means uses to achieve these are, roughly, sexism, racism, heterosexism, competition, and macho privilege. But this kind of privilege is exactly what is producing a world in which most of the viewers of Star Wars do not have the self-worth and the access to excitement and pleasure that they need.
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction page 31
[A]ddictive culture deals with issues people feel to be crucial in their lives, but instead of confronting these issues, addictive art merely reconfirms the values and internalized pressures that produced the issues in the first place. Addictive art is briefly palliating; the relief lasts only as long as the art does and one is left more needy than before, i.e., the cravings that were promised relief are now worse.
Star Wars, I think, addresses itself to a dim but powerful desire for "fun," i.e., excitement and self-importance. These are human desires and not bad ones, but the film satisfies them by simplifying morality, politics, and human personality to the point where they can all safely be ignored in the interests of the "fun." However, morality, politics, and human personality are most of the world and the film cannot actually do without them without renouncing drama altogether. Thus we have a work in which the result of the simplification isn't to banish morality, politics, and human personality (which is impossible) but to present them in their most reactionary--and dullest--form. Thus monarchies are better than republics, slavery is noble (the machines are conscious personalities endowed with emotions and free will but it is still unquestionably right to own them), everyone human in the film is white (with the possible exception of one extra in one scene), and after the hero's mother (disguised as his aunt to avoid the real parenticidal wishes no doubt present in the teenagers in the audience) dies, there is only one woman left in the entire universe. This universe then goes into terrific plot convulsions to aid, nurture, and glorify one very ordinary white, heterosexual, male, bucktoothed virgin.
Star Wars, I think, addresses itself to a dim but powerful desire for "fun," i.e., excitement and self-importance. These are human desires and not bad ones, but the film satisfies them by simplifying morality, politics, and human personality to the point where they can all safely be ignored in the interests of the "fun." However, morality, politics, and human personality are most of the world and the film cannot actually do without them without renouncing drama altogether. Thus we have a work in which the result of the simplification isn't to banish morality, politics, and human personality (which is impossible) but to present them in their most reactionary--and dullest--form. Thus monarchies are better than republics, slavery is noble (the machines are conscious personalities endowed with emotions and free will but it is still unquestionably right to own them), everyone human in the film is white (with the possible exception of one extra in one scene), and after the hero's mother (disguised as his aunt to avoid the real parenticidal wishes no doubt present in the teenagers in the audience) dies, there is only one woman left in the entire universe. This universe then goes into terrific plot convulsions to aid, nurture, and glorify one very ordinary white, heterosexual, male, bucktoothed virgin.
Joanna Russ, "SF and Technology as Mystification," in To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction pages 28-30
An addiction is a situation in of constantly escalating need--in short, of insatiability. Not only that, but the cause of the escalation is the satisfier of the need. Addiction is what people call a vicious circle--really an increasing spiral. The more you need, the more you get; the more you get, the more you have; the more you have, the more you need, and so on.
This model of addiction may be over-simple...but applied (by analogy) to certain economic and social phenomena, two things become strikingly apparent.
First, the addict is the ideal customer.
Second, addiction is a beautiful and effective method of social control. It is especially good at obfuscating and confusing--in political terms, mystifying--what it is that the addict really needs.
From the point of view of profits, the perfect stimulus is one which satisfies a human need only briefly or partially, and at the same time exacerbates the need. If the stimulus didn't satisfy the need at all, the customer would quit buying it out of frustration and disgust. If the stimulus fully satisfied the need, the customer would buy no more. (Certainly not beyond the recurrent biological demands of hunger, for example.)
That such stimuli abound in modern industrial society is an open secret. So is the fact that large numbers of people are paid large sums of money for inventing them and spreading them about...
Consider, for example, Star Wars. I was dragged to see this film past a bookstore displaying the sword-and-sorcery novel a friend of mine has rather unkindly nicknamed The Sword of Sha Na Na. What is important about coupling these two in one sentence (and one event) is not that the film is as bad as the book, but that both are bad in exactly the same way. This is not to say that either is without some interesting or seductive elements. For no addictive stimulus is simply bad or dull; if it were, nobody would want it at all. What such artifacts do is follow the formula for physiological addiction in the psychic, cultural realm: they satisfy a need partially, and at the same time they exacerbate it. Publishers' and movie-makers' formulas for a "real hit" are obviously those of an addiction: not just enjoyment or desire but intense craving (lines stretching around the block), not just intense craving but sudden intense craving that must be satisfied at once (opening in sixteen million theatres tomorrow, at a theatre near you!), not just sudden intense craving but insatiable craving; thus people see the film many times and--this is a dead giveaway--a minor industry grows up about the film: Buttons, sweatshirts, TV programs about how the film was made, TV programs about how the first TV programs about the film were made, and so on. These are what the trade calls "spin-offs."
Please note that addictive culture is not identical with what we like to call "escapist culture." Perhaps there is no way of escaping in art from one's society, as any social product will of necessity embody the society's values and pressures, and the less these values or pressures are confronted and examined in the work, the more in force they will be. Thus Star Wars--which is being sold to the public as "fun"--is, in fact, racist, grossly sexist, not apolitical in the least but authoritarian and morally imbecile, all of this both denied and enforced by the opportunism of camp (which the youngsters in the audience cannot spot, by the way) and spiced up by technical wonders and marvels, some of which are interesting, many of which are old hat to those used to science fiction. Addictive culture, to succeed, can't be all bad.
This model of addiction may be over-simple...but applied (by analogy) to certain economic and social phenomena, two things become strikingly apparent.
First, the addict is the ideal customer.
Second, addiction is a beautiful and effective method of social control. It is especially good at obfuscating and confusing--in political terms, mystifying--what it is that the addict really needs.
From the point of view of profits, the perfect stimulus is one which satisfies a human need only briefly or partially, and at the same time exacerbates the need. If the stimulus didn't satisfy the need at all, the customer would quit buying it out of frustration and disgust. If the stimulus fully satisfied the need, the customer would buy no more. (Certainly not beyond the recurrent biological demands of hunger, for example.)
That such stimuli abound in modern industrial society is an open secret. So is the fact that large numbers of people are paid large sums of money for inventing them and spreading them about...
Consider, for example, Star Wars. I was dragged to see this film past a bookstore displaying the sword-and-sorcery novel a friend of mine has rather unkindly nicknamed The Sword of Sha Na Na. What is important about coupling these two in one sentence (and one event) is not that the film is as bad as the book, but that both are bad in exactly the same way. This is not to say that either is without some interesting or seductive elements. For no addictive stimulus is simply bad or dull; if it were, nobody would want it at all. What such artifacts do is follow the formula for physiological addiction in the psychic, cultural realm: they satisfy a need partially, and at the same time they exacerbate it. Publishers' and movie-makers' formulas for a "real hit" are obviously those of an addiction: not just enjoyment or desire but intense craving (lines stretching around the block), not just intense craving but sudden intense craving that must be satisfied at once (opening in sixteen million theatres tomorrow, at a theatre near you!), not just sudden intense craving but insatiable craving; thus people see the film many times and--this is a dead giveaway--a minor industry grows up about the film: Buttons, sweatshirts, TV programs about how the film was made, TV programs about how the first TV programs about the film were made, and so on. These are what the trade calls "spin-offs."
Please note that addictive culture is not identical with what we like to call "escapist culture." Perhaps there is no way of escaping in art from one's society, as any social product will of necessity embody the society's values and pressures, and the less these values or pressures are confronted and examined in the work, the more in force they will be. Thus Star Wars--which is being sold to the public as "fun"--is, in fact, racist, grossly sexist, not apolitical in the least but authoritarian and morally imbecile, all of this both denied and enforced by the opportunism of camp (which the youngsters in the audience cannot spot, by the way) and spiced up by technical wonders and marvels, some of which are interesting, many of which are old hat to those used to science fiction. Addictive culture, to succeed, can't be all bad.
Joanna Russ, "Author's Introduction" to To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction, page xv
If any theme runs through all my work, it is what Adrienne Rich once called "re-vision," i.e. the re-perceiving of experience, not because our experience is complex or subtle or hard to understand (though it is sometimes all three) but because so much of what's presented to us as "the real world" or "the way it is" is so obviously untrue that a great deal of social energy must be mobilized to hide that gross and ghastly fact.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial pages 185-187
"I'm only seventeen years old," Gloria said, "and I know this much--that world out there, Fancy, that world which is all around on the other side of the wall, it isn't real. It's real inside here, we're real, but what is outside is like it's made of cardboard, or plastic, or something. Nothing out there is real. Everything is made out of something else, and it all comes apart in your hands. The people aren't real, they're nothing but endless copies of each other, all looking just alike, like paper dolls, and they live in houses full of artificial things and eat imitation food--"
"My doll house," Fancy said, amused.
"Your dolls have little cakes and roasts made of wood and painted. Well, the people out there have cakes and bread and cookies made out of pretend flour, with all kinds of things taken out of it to make it prettier for them to eat, and all kinds of things put in to make it easier for them to eat, and they eat meat which has been cooked for them already so they won't have to bother doing anything except heat it up and they read newspapers full of nonsense and lies and one day they hear that some truth is being kept from them for their own good and the next day they hear that the truth is being kept from them because it was really a lie and the next day they hear--"
Fancy laughed. "You sound like you hate everything."
"I wouldn't like being a doll in a doll house, I can tell you. I'm only seventeen years old, but I've learned a lot. All those people out there know about things like love and tenderness is what they hear in songs or read in books--that's one reason I'm glad we burned all the books here. People shouldn't be able to read them and remember nothing but lies. And you talk about dances and parties--I can tell you there's no heart to anything any more; when you dance with a boy he's only looking over your shoulder at some other boy, and the only real people left any more are the shadows on the television screens."
"If I believed you," Fancy said, "I would still mind never trying things for myself. But I won't ever believe you until I've gone out there and seen it."
"There's nothing there," Gloria said with finality. "It's a make-believe world, with nothing in it but cardboard and trouble." She thought for a minute, and then said, "If you were a liar, or a pervert, or a thief, or even just sick, there wouldn't be anything out there you couldn't have.
Fancy bent over the doll house. "Anyway," she said, "I don't care how shabby it is. I'm not afraid of bad people, and of not being safe."
"But there aren't any good people," Gloria said helplessly. "No one is anything but tired and ugly and mean. I know."
"My doll house," Fancy said, amused.
"Your dolls have little cakes and roasts made of wood and painted. Well, the people out there have cakes and bread and cookies made out of pretend flour, with all kinds of things taken out of it to make it prettier for them to eat, and all kinds of things put in to make it easier for them to eat, and they eat meat which has been cooked for them already so they won't have to bother doing anything except heat it up and they read newspapers full of nonsense and lies and one day they hear that some truth is being kept from them for their own good and the next day they hear that the truth is being kept from them because it was really a lie and the next day they hear--"
Fancy laughed. "You sound like you hate everything."
"I wouldn't like being a doll in a doll house, I can tell you. I'm only seventeen years old, but I've learned a lot. All those people out there know about things like love and tenderness is what they hear in songs or read in books--that's one reason I'm glad we burned all the books here. People shouldn't be able to read them and remember nothing but lies. And you talk about dances and parties--I can tell you there's no heart to anything any more; when you dance with a boy he's only looking over your shoulder at some other boy, and the only real people left any more are the shadows on the television screens."
"If I believed you," Fancy said, "I would still mind never trying things for myself. But I won't ever believe you until I've gone out there and seen it."
"There's nothing there," Gloria said with finality. "It's a make-believe world, with nothing in it but cardboard and trouble." She thought for a minute, and then said, "If you were a liar, or a pervert, or a thief, or even just sick, there wouldn't be anything out there you couldn't have.
Fancy bent over the doll house. "Anyway," she said, "I don't care how shabby it is. I'm not afraid of bad people, and of not being safe."
"But there aren't any good people," Gloria said helplessly. "No one is anything but tired and ugly and mean. I know."
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial pages 165-166
"Well, I just don't get it myself." Fancy thought, and gestured at the garden which lay before them. "Look," she said, "don't any of you just plain like things? Always worrying about the world? Look. Aunt Fanny keeps saying that there is going to be a lovely world, all green and still and perfect and we are all going to live there and be peaceful and happy. That would be perfectly fine for me, except right here I live in a lovely world, all green and still and perfect, even though no one around here seems to be very peaceful or happy, but when I think about it this new world is going to have Aunt Fanny and my grandmother and you and Essex and the rest of these crazy people and my mother and what makes anyone think you're going to be more happy or peaceful just because you're the only ones left?"
"That's because you're not very grown up yet," Gloria said, sedately. "When you get older you'll understand."
"Will I?" asked Fanny innocently. "Right now I'm not allowed to play with the children in the village because my grandmother says we are too good a family for me to play with the children in the village and so later on I won't be allowed to play with the children in the village because there won't be any village, and we'll certainly be too good a family because we'll be the only family. And what will there be left for me to understand when I grow up?"
"You make it all sound foolish. Fancy, tell me. What is going to happen? Do you know?"
"Well," Fancy said slowly, "you all want the whole world to be changed so you will be different. But I don't suppose people get changed any by just a new world. And anyway that world isn't any more real than this one."
"It is, though. You forget that I saw it in the mirror."
"Maybe you'll get onto the other side of that mirror in the new clean world. Maybe you'll look through from the other side and see this world again and go around crying that you wish some big thing would happen and wipe out that one and send you back here. Like I keep trying to tell you, it doesn't matter which world you're in."
"Essex--"
"I'm sick and tired of Essex." Fancy tumbled off the bench and rolled like a puppy in the grass. "You want to come and play with my dollhouse?"
"That's because you're not very grown up yet," Gloria said, sedately. "When you get older you'll understand."
"Will I?" asked Fanny innocently. "Right now I'm not allowed to play with the children in the village because my grandmother says we are too good a family for me to play with the children in the village and so later on I won't be allowed to play with the children in the village because there won't be any village, and we'll certainly be too good a family because we'll be the only family. And what will there be left for me to understand when I grow up?"
"You make it all sound foolish. Fancy, tell me. What is going to happen? Do you know?"
"Well," Fancy said slowly, "you all want the whole world to be changed so you will be different. But I don't suppose people get changed any by just a new world. And anyway that world isn't any more real than this one."
"It is, though. You forget that I saw it in the mirror."
"Maybe you'll get onto the other side of that mirror in the new clean world. Maybe you'll look through from the other side and see this world again and go around crying that you wish some big thing would happen and wipe out that one and send you back here. Like I keep trying to tell you, it doesn't matter which world you're in."
"Essex--"
"I'm sick and tired of Essex." Fancy tumbled off the bench and rolled like a puppy in the grass. "You want to come and play with my dollhouse?"
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial page 38
The question of belief is a curious one, partaking of the wonders of childhood and the blind hopefulness of the very old; in all the world there is not someone who does not believe something. It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred.
Not one of the people in Mrs. Halloran's house could have answered honestly and without embarrassment the question: "In what is it you believe?" Faith they had in plenty; just as they had food and beds and shelter, they had faith, but it was faith in agreeably concrete things like good food and the best beds and the most weathertight shelter and in themselves as suitable recipients of the world's best. Old Mr. Halloran, for one, would have been considerably more lighthearted in a faith which promised him everlasting life, but in the concept of everlasting life Mr. Halloran could not believe, since he was dying. His own life showed no signs of continuing beyond a hideously limited interval, and the only evidence he ever saw of everlasting life was in those luckier ones around him who continued young and would stay so after he was dead. Not-dying from day to day was as much as Mr. Halloran could be fairly expected to believe in; the rest of them believed in what they could--power, perhaps, or the comforting effects of gin, or money.
Not one of the people in Mrs. Halloran's house could have answered honestly and without embarrassment the question: "In what is it you believe?" Faith they had in plenty; just as they had food and beds and shelter, they had faith, but it was faith in agreeably concrete things like good food and the best beds and the most weathertight shelter and in themselves as suitable recipients of the world's best. Old Mr. Halloran, for one, would have been considerably more lighthearted in a faith which promised him everlasting life, but in the concept of everlasting life Mr. Halloran could not believe, since he was dying. His own life showed no signs of continuing beyond a hideously limited interval, and the only evidence he ever saw of everlasting life was in those luckier ones around him who continued young and would stay so after he was dead. Not-dying from day to day was as much as Mr. Halloran could be fairly expected to believe in; the rest of them believed in what they could--power, perhaps, or the comforting effects of gin, or money.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, pages 120-121
In everybody's present historical situation, there can be, I believe, no single center of value and hence no absolute standards. That does not mean that assignment of values must be arbitrary or self-serving (like my students, whose defense of their poetry is "I felt it"). It does mean that for the linear hierarchy of good and bad it becomes necessary to substitute a multitude of centers of value, each with its own periphery, some closer to each other, some farther apart. The centers have been constructed by the historical facts of what it is to be female or black or working class or what-have-you; when we all live in the same culture, then it will be time for one literature. But that is not the case now. Nor is there one proper "style." There are many kinds of English...and before determining whether (for example) Virginia Woolf "writes better than" Zora Neale Hurston, it might be a good idea to decide who is addressing the mind's ear and who the mind's eye, in short, what English we're talking about. One is a kind of Latin, sculptured, solid, and distinct, into which comes the vernacular from time to time; the other is literary-as-vernacular: fluid, tone-shifting, visually fleeting, with the (impossible) cadences of the mind's ear constantly overriding the memory of the physical ear... If the one kind of English is too slow and too eternally set, is not the other kind too facile, too quick, always a little too thin?
There used to be an odd, popular, and erroneous idea that the sun revolved around the earth.
This has been replaced by an even odder, equally popular, and equally erroneous idea that the earth goes around the sun.
In fact, the moon and the earth revolve around a common center, and this commonly-centered pair revolves with the sun around another common center, except that you must figure in all the solar planets here, so things get complicated. Then there is the motion of the solar system with regard to a great many other objects, e.g., the galaxy, and if at this point you ask what does the motion of the earth really look like from the center of the entire universe, say..., the only answer is:
that it doesn't.
Because there isn't.
There used to be an odd, popular, and erroneous idea that the sun revolved around the earth.
This has been replaced by an even odder, equally popular, and equally erroneous idea that the earth goes around the sun.
In fact, the moon and the earth revolve around a common center, and this commonly-centered pair revolves with the sun around another common center, except that you must figure in all the solar planets here, so things get complicated. Then there is the motion of the solar system with regard to a great many other objects, e.g., the galaxy, and if at this point you ask what does the motion of the earth really look like from the center of the entire universe, say..., the only answer is:
that it doesn't.
Because there isn't.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, page 119
There are other questions: why is "greatness" in art so often aggressive? Why does "great" literature have to be long? Is "regionalism" only another instance of down-grading the vernacular? Why is "great" architecture supposed to knock your eye out at first view, unlike "indigenous" architecture, which must be appreciated slowly and with knowledge of the climate in which it exists? Why is the design of clothing---those grotesque and sometimes perilously fantastic anatomical--social-role--characterological ideas of the person---a "minor" art? Because it has a use? In admiring "pure" (i.e., useless) art, are we not merely admiring Veblenian conspicuous consumption, like the Mandarin fingernail?
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, pages 118-119
The techniques for mystifying women's lives and belittling women's writing that I have described work by suppressing context: writing is separated from experience, women writers are separated from their tradition and each other, public is separated from private, political from personal--all to enforce a supposed set of absolute standards. What is frightening about black art or women's art or Chicano art--and so on--is that it calls into question the very idea of objectivity and absolute standards:
This is a good novel.
Good for what?
Good for whom?
One side of the nightmare is that the privileged group will not recognize that "other" art, will not be able to judge it, that the superiority of taste and training possessed by the privileged critic and the privileged artist will suddenly vanish.
The other side of the nightmare is not that what is found in the "other" art will be incomprehensible, but that it will be all too familiar. That is:
Women's lives are the buried truth about men's lives.
The lives of people of color are the buried truth about white lives.
The buried truth about the rich is who they take their money from and how.
The buried truth about "normal" sexuality is how one kind of sexual expression has been made privileged, and what kinds of unearned virtue and terrors about identity this distinction serves.
This is a good novel.
Good for what?
Good for whom?
One side of the nightmare is that the privileged group will not recognize that "other" art, will not be able to judge it, that the superiority of taste and training possessed by the privileged critic and the privileged artist will suddenly vanish.
The other side of the nightmare is not that what is found in the "other" art will be incomprehensible, but that it will be all too familiar. That is:
Women's lives are the buried truth about men's lives.
The lives of people of color are the buried truth about white lives.
The buried truth about the rich is who they take their money from and how.
The buried truth about "normal" sexuality is how one kind of sexual expression has been made privileged, and what kinds of unearned virtue and terrors about identity this distinction serves.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, pages 47-48
If women's experience is defined as inferior to, less important than, or "narrower" than men's experience, women's writing is automatically denigrated.
If women's experience is simply not seen, the effect will be the same.
She wrote it but look what she wrote about becomes She wrote it, but it's unintelligible/badly constructed/thin/spasmodic/uninteresting, etc., a statement by no means identical with She wrote it, but I can't understand it (in which case the failure might be with the reader). Behind She wrote it, but it's unintelligible lies the premise: What I don't understand doesn't exist, like Sylvia Plath's "hysteria" which came "completely out of herself," or the woman trying to get into our M.A. program who could not possibly want to beat "her" husband over the head with a frying pan unless there was a "failure of communication" in that particular marriage.
The social invisibility of women's experience is not a "failure of human communication." It is a socially arranged bias persisted in long after the information about women's experience is available (sometimes even publicly insisted upon).
It is (although the degree thereof varies from circumstance to circumstance) bad faith.
If women's experience is simply not seen, the effect will be the same.
She wrote it but look what she wrote about becomes She wrote it, but it's unintelligible/badly constructed/thin/spasmodic/uninteresting, etc., a statement by no means identical with She wrote it, but I can't understand it (in which case the failure might be with the reader). Behind She wrote it, but it's unintelligible lies the premise: What I don't understand doesn't exist, like Sylvia Plath's "hysteria" which came "completely out of herself," or the woman trying to get into our M.A. program who could not possibly want to beat "her" husband over the head with a frying pan unless there was a "failure of communication" in that particular marriage.
The social invisibility of women's experience is not a "failure of human communication." It is a socially arranged bias persisted in long after the information about women's experience is available (sometimes even publicly insisted upon).
It is (although the degree thereof varies from circumstance to circumstance) bad faith.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, pages 41-42
[O]ne of the victims of the double standard of content is Virgina Woolf herself, who writes earlier in A Room of One's Own: "all these good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a respectable clergyman."
But she does not go on to say, although it's true, that the sort of heroine George Eliot drew is precisely the sort Tolstoy (whom she later mentions for the breadth of his experience) could not even see, let alone delineate, that the schoolgirls of Villette are a truth no male novelist had even guessed at, that in short the women confined to the houses of respectable clergymen knew not less than their brothers and fathers but other and that if the women did not know what the men knew, it is just as true to say that the men did not know what the women knew--and what the men did not know included what the women were.
But she does not go on to say, although it's true, that the sort of heroine George Eliot drew is precisely the sort Tolstoy (whom she later mentions for the breadth of his experience) could not even see, let alone delineate, that the schoolgirls of Villette are a truth no male novelist had even guessed at, that in short the women confined to the houses of respectable clergymen knew not less than their brothers and fathers but other and that if the women did not know what the men knew, it is just as true to say that the men did not know what the women knew--and what the men did not know included what the women were.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing, pages 17-18
In the case of women writers and other "wrong" groups practicing art, the techniques of containment, belittlement, and sheer denial are sometimes so very illogical (and so very prevalent) that it's hard not to believe there's a conscious conspiracy going on--how could anyone argue so idiotically and not be aware of it? Yet it's equally easy to insist that silliness like that must be a matter of ignorance--how could anyone aware of such idiocy not stop, if for no other reason than sheer embarrassment? And if the theory of conscious conspiracy won't do (with some exceptions, chiefly where money is concerned), while the theory of total ignorance won't do either, what's going on? (There is a third theory, in which each supposed case of sexism, racism, or class disadvantage becomes a matter of personal enmity here or chance there or some other motive somewhere else. Such a theory is part of the problem, not its explanation. It amounts simply to the denial that there is a problem.)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Samuel Beckett, Watt pages 74-75
Watt's stay in Mr Knott's house was less agreeable, on this account, than it would have been, if such incidents had been unknown, or his attitude towards them less anxious, that is to say, if Mr Knott's house had been another house, or Watt another man. For outside Mr Knott's house, and of course grounds, such incidents were unknown, or so Watt supposed. And Watt could not accept them for what they perhaps were, the simple games that time plays with space, now with these toys, and now with those, but was obliged, because of his peculiar character, to enquire into what they meant, oh not into what they really meant, his character was not so peculiar as all that, but into what they might be intended to mean, with the help of a little patience, a little ingenuity.
Samuel Beckett, Watt page 44
But in what did the change consist? What was changed, and how? What was changed, if my information is correct, was the sentiment that a change, other than a change of degree, had taken place.
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