However, there was something in the article that stuck with me and was not really discussed in lecture. That is, the idea that "liberation" and "social change" are situated ideas. I had never thought about this before but it may be the case that not all women may want to be "freed" from their supposed "oppressors." As Lila Abu-Lughod, asks, "Are emancipation, equality, and rights part of a universal language we must use?" Any other day, I would have answered yes, because of my own situated knowledge. I grew up with the conception that liberty and freedom were optimal ways of life. However, that was based on how I defined liberty-one aspect being the right to wear whatever I please. This article, consequently, made me more critical of universal wants. Perhaps, not everyone wishes to live in a democratic society where life, liberty, and property are the social norm.
Did any body else find that aspect of the reading interesting?
6 comments:
This definitely stuck out for me too Mariela. It is a really tough issue that I can't say I have really figured through yet. I have had a lot of discussions with a friend of mine about this and I always find it difficult to find a way to respond to it. I tend to make the argument that humanitarian groups make the mistake of going in preaching these ideas of freedom and democracy, but that these organizations are important nonetheless and have great potential. He argues that it is a mistake to think that the "other" is simply someone we have not gotten to know yet. He thinks that while these ideas of freedom may be Western in origin, it is equally prejudice to assume that they are only used for purposes of expansion and domination.
I do not think these critiques are inherently contradictory but that they can be wedded in a way that combines these viewpoints. I think Abu-Lughod did a good job of finding some middle ground by not reducing the issue to cultural relativism and simply suggesting that ideas like emancipation and liberty are completely constructions of a European hegemonic discourse. But I think it is important to situate their birth within a certain time and for a certain reason. She seems to make the point that while there may be differences between cultures and peoples, we are not all so different that we don't share the same ideas about basic human desires and happiness. But ideas such as freedom and liberty were born at particular moments and for specific reasons.
Like Jake said on Friday, it can't just be a debate over words, as though the words themselves could be removed and it would solve all the problems. But that these words have very specific meanings that people attach to them, and thus these words have lives with lots of emotions that people have to them.
Is there, perhaps, an essence to these ideas that all people share in common but that when lived in reality they take on different lives?
I don't think this means that we cannot help other people but that the way in which we frame the argument, as Abu-Lughod says, is of utmost importance. I don't have any particular ideas about how we can do this, but I think there is a way to connect to other people that gets beyond these specific ideologies of freedom and liberty and democracy (I don't mean ideologies pejoratively).
I read this article a while ago and thought of it while I was reading this post so I thought to include it. I feel like this woman's journey is a great possible example of how we could go about connecting to people despite supposed cultural boundaries.
http://www.conversations.org/story.php?sid=168
I agree with Justine; it's all about the rhetoric. Even Abu-Lughod discusses the difference in language (not literally but the "different ideas of justice"). Therefore, it's difficult to come up with the idea of something universal if different countries attach different meanings to the same words. Mariela's definition of liberty could still apply to these Muslim women who find it liberating to wear a covering.
What I found most interesting in the article was how this idea of Muslim men oppressing Muslim women was used for easier mobilization and support of the American people. These new supporters, who were perhaps unaware/uninterested in what was going on in Afghanistan, suddenly start to take action. And the fact is that they're still not fully educated about what's going on and rather just blindly cling onto this idea of emancipation and liberty without knowing the entire story of Afghanistan (like the way Abu-Lughod explains the Taliban didn't even invent the burqa). So when I read this, I just thought about how this was a tactic to get some feminist support in the events going on in Afghanistan. Basically just another form of justification for US intrusion.
What I thought was interesting in her article was that she made a clear distinction between respect for differences and cultural relativism. She pointed out the difference being the responsibility of the privileged world to examine and own up to its responsibilities for situations in which other countries find themselves. The west needs not to look over other countries but consider themselves as a part of their world too, and recognizing and respecting different needs and desires. Then a huge perspective change needs to happen from the Western powers. They need to view themselves on equal footings, and look more toward improving peoples lives in solidarity rather than from a salvation stand point. I think we are a long way from those perspective changes. We do not see much in the responsibility of shaping the intensity of the relationship between Islam and Western tension. I think connecting could happen in theory if there is a recognition and respect of differences and a realization that the world can coexist. Getting there though is more than half the battle. It seems sad to me that so many people in America are so far removed from that perspective change.
I think Edward Said's idea that the way the West has viewed the East as Orientalist says more about the West than the East is fundamental here. The ideas of freedom and liberation certainly are situated in the hegemonic culture of the West.
But there are many ways that the women in the 'East' have more liberty than the women in the West. And some of these liberties even come from the wearing of the veil, which in a Western light seems to be viewed as a symbol of oppression. But for example, there are some women in France who do not feel comfortable going to school or who chose not to because they cannot wear a head scarf to school. However, there are women in Afghanistan who do attend school and are able to attend school while still being modest because they have the freedom to wear a headscarf.
I think that the idea of freedom can even go deeper and be related to the ideas of personal liberty vs a wide range of equality. This may be a stretch but I wonder how this article relates back to the basic ideas behind the cold war. Is the United States trying to situate its ideas of liberty and freedom on nations referred to as the "third world" that may have fallen victim to the opposition in the terms of equality over liberty. Just a thought
Yes, I wanted to second what I feel Justine Parkin was saying when she talked about the specific meaning of words, and the need to situate that meaning as well as the word itself.
And the meanings of the physical representation of of those words is important too. I am thinking of how terms like "freedom from repression" would take on much different meanings to us than it would to the muslim woman who, despite also sharing in a human desire for "happiness" (I use quotes to denote happiness as a sense rather than the word) and "pease", maybe even "liberation" or "freedom", though in a different sense than we might, would not see the veil as repression, or her husband, for that matter as repressive. In any case, there would be emotions involved that we could not fully understand because of our situated understanding of the terms.
...on people who believe that Muslim women who wear the burka must be "liberated":
“The person who has taught me most about this is Lila Abu-Lughod, an anthropologist at Columbia University. She has worked in Egypt as an ethnographer and has written extensively on women’s agency in Islam. Over against a certain feminist point of view that always thought that, well, women in Egypt are simply repressed, Abu-Lughod has shown that a lot of the poetry, for instance, that Bedouin women have sung turns out to be extremely politically subversive. More recently she has tried to make clear that the burka signifies lots of different things. It shows that a woman is modest, that she is still connected with her family, that she has not been exploited by popular culture, that she has pride in her family and community. It signifies modes of belonging to a wider network of people. To lose the burka is to undergo some loss of those kinship ties that is not to be underestimated. It can be a very powerful experience of estrangement or indeed of compulsory Westernization that leaves its scars. So we shouldn’t assume that Westernization is always a good thing. Very often it overrides important cultural practices that we don’t have the patience to learn about."
-Judith Butler
http://www.believermag.com/issues/200305/?read=interview_butler
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