Take your pick, science or religion: My review of Nerdstock – 9 lessons and carols for godless people

The word is out: if you’re religious you cannot possibly appreciate genetics in all its glory, a glory that is inseparable from the Darwinian theory of evolution. I was watching Nerdstock, a Christmas programme for non-religious people on BBC4 last night with at first some curiosity, later with quiet amazement at the burgeoning audacity of the atheist movement, and at last with a scratchy head. The latter reaction may be due to dandruff, but I feel it was more from the unresolved knotted thoughts on the irreconcilability of religion and science. Nerdstock was a love-in for self-proclaimed nerds of the scientific endeavour, who were falling over themselves praising some hazified concepts of evolutionary genetics.

It occurred to me that the atheist movement in Britain wants us to know that in lieu of religion, there is science; Darwinian science and physics to be exact. Science – for the enlightened – is now the antithesis of religion, or some may argue a neo-religion for intellectuals and those who fancy adopting the image. The device for last night’s programme was comedy, taking off the sting and heat of the controversy raised by the atheist bus campaign and the “Please don’t label me” campaign against faith cattle-branding on children. The device, I have to admit, was effective (I was at times amused) but purposefully deployed in smug contrast against humour-less religious folk. Comedienne Shappi Khorsandi gave the best stand-up, though her material was funniest when it was about the groundlessness of the term “mixed-race”. Yes, the beauty of genetics is that it can prove racists and political constructionists wrong.

But genetics is not something simply to be gushed at, something host Robin Ince felt he needed to demonstrate in his quasi-hallelujah moment about him and his son (“Whenever I look at my son, I see genetics. Genetics made him so special!, etc. etc.”). Being in ecstatic awe of the world in pseudo-scientific terms veers spookily into the realm of religious fanaticism, except with science in place of God as the figure to worship, I think. So okay, genetics is amazing, but so are social-conditioning and environmental impingement on the development of people. Biological determinism is not amazing and not 100% valid, and therefore genetics is not all that.

Where does this leave the religiously-disaffected with no interest in Darwinian theory let alone science, and those like me, who does not feel challenged by the idea of being connected to other lifeforms (genetics has made that an undeniable fact) and praises the Almighty for making the genius of nature possible? Well, not in this small exclusive club for both the scientific and scientistically-inclined it seems, which leaves much of the rest of the world to us. Yes, the rest of us live in an irrational mess with a disinterest in how we came to be; the corporeal beings at the mercy of the switchboard of genes. Nerdstock is an amusing interrogation of the non-existence of God, in which the godless install nature as the surrogate transcendental being greater than humankind, an entity we struggle to fathom completely. Sounds familiar?

Why is it important to rethink masculinities in the Middle East?

I cannot help but post my essay up on its due day. It’s my baby, warts and all:

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Compared to the wealth of studies on women in the Middle East, men and masculinities of the region have, surprisingly, received less attention. Greater focus and interest in the Muslim woman and not the Muslim man in the Middle East may be indicative of the unremitting fascination with the ongoing oppression and the “private” world of women in a society largely known for the seclusion of women and girls. The tropes of inquiry – the hijab, the subjugation of women, female genital mutilation – emerge from a blend of genuine academic interest, feminist activism, and perhaps the “need to save brown women from brown men” mindset through research with a political agenda (Cooke 2002:468). It is then remiss of the academic world for assuming that men can be sufficiently understood if women in their social contexts are studied in depth. While such research have revealed much of the realities beyond the undifferentiated stereotype of the submissive Middle Eastern woman, more is to be done to deconstruct the image of the domineering Islamist male and the Orientalist imaginings of the desert sheikh.

There is a glaring lacunae in an understanding of masculinity that has been affected by the major strides that women in the Middle East have been making throughout the last century in terms of education, employment, sexuality, political representation, and general public presence. Indeed, what is not studied more rigorously are the changing dynamics of gender relations resulting from the increasing independence of women from the home and male members of the family, studies in which men are placed as the central analytical subject. Recent literature that have charted these changes reflect what can be understood as men’s anxieties and fears emerging from “notions still deeply imprinted on their inherited memory which have not adjusted accordingly” to the explosive gendered transformations of the public arena (Ghoussoub 2006:230). Women’s increased emancipation is then perhaps one source of a threat to the grip of a dominant masculinity, but other threats can exist externally for the male collective. Ghoussoub (2006:233) also counts the devastating defeat in the 1967 war with Israel which incurred a lingering dent on the pride of the Arab and Muslim world¹, in addition to the unremitting European imperialist presence throughout the history of the Middle East – all of which represents a “symbolic castration in which men’s virility and hopes of progeny are threatened”.

There is then the assumption that the male sphere in the Middle East has been neatly divided into the ahistorical male who is at once authoritative and anti-women, and the “enlightened” male of modernist and moderate Islamic politics. While a culture of male dominance that emanates Middle Eastern societies at different levels and magnitude does incur the overstated notion of women’s oppression, it is pertinent to take into account how men participate in the practice of male dominance, and locate the different points of resistances men perform to diminish certain forms of dominance. In the case of men’s acceptance of women’s changing roles, Kandiyoti (1994:197) has pointed out some explanations which range from 1) exposure to Western and / or colonial ideals (Ahmed 1992:153) 2) new social classes arisen from these contexts and (Cole 1981:401) and 3) the rhetorically-inclusive nature of modernist-nationalist projects (Jayawardena 1988:8).

This essay attempts to reveal the complex nature of masculinity that cannot be taken for granted in relation to in-depth studies on Middle Eastern women. As Kandiyoti (1994:212) succinctly puts it: “behind the facade of male privilege lie ambiguities which may give rise to defensive masculinist discourse and genuine desire and contestation for change”. Therefore I will not dwell too much on the anachronistic yet popular representations of the hypermasculine Middle Eastern man, but aim to shed more light on the dynamic yet fragile characteristics of contesting masculinities that are contextualised against the backdrop of the reformation of women’s roles, the legacy of post-colonial struggle, and more importantly, the internal contradictions within the male collective in relation to the larger socio-political milieu.

I will explore these issues with reference to the influence of raï music on the construction of the politically-transgressive masculine identity in Algeria, and the musical genre’s ambivalent associations with Islam, politics, and women. This is will followed by looking at the formation of the ‘melancholite’ masculinity in the wake of Bourgiba’s dictatorship through Tunisian cinema. It is not an overstatement to say that popular culture represents to a certain symbolic or realist extent the hopes, aspirations, and the realities of society’s despair. I am confident that the medium of raï music and contemporary Tunisian film provides an alternative avenue for publicly articulating the “subtleties, nuances, and contradictions” of contemporary masculinities that sociological studies often cannot capture (Stollery 2001:50).

The masculinisation of raï music and the rise of the transgressive Algerian male identity

A number of theorists have suggested that within the Middle East and North African region (MENA), there exists, on a general level, a homology of patriarchal norms within both the private and public spheres (Stollery 2001:50). Arguably, the region shares a conceptualisation of a state that is, according to As’ad Abu Khalil, “a reflection of male supremacy within the family” in which “the leader is the father figure with the privileges of the use of force and social control” (1997:100). It can be argued further that the political situation in the Middle East is largely repressive at various levels. However, arguing from a Foucauldian standpoint, individuals are still able to find spaces for resistance in a variety of expressions, even in the most oppressive of circumstances (Foucault 1978:96). With that said, I will discuss the role of raï as an “explosive site for Magrebi identity” (DeAngelis 2003:276) and political resistance taken up by male raï singers and the largely male following of the musical genre.

Originated from Oran, Algeria, raï began as a folk musical genre that became popularised in cabarets and clubs frequented by the social elite during the colonial period where it had gained a reputation for being decadent and un-Islamic (ibid. 2003:276). Then in 1999, raï gained global attention with the release of the hit single Desert Rose featuring Cheb Mami and the British singer Sting. The musical genre is typically associated with youth and immigrant subcultures, and often described as risqué or vulgar (ibid. 2003:277). The question of whether raï is vulgar, however, is complicated by the nationalist and Islamist notion of the musical genre’s former associations with French colonial culture and resulting from such an opinion, the genre became labelled “inauthentic” by official Algerian cultural standards (ibid. 2003:281-82). But what was at the heart of the two political factions’ concern was really to do with raï as a form of social critique amongst young Algerians. Moreover, the cause of concern was implicated by the fact that raï became, as DeAngelis (2003:283) argues, “a subculture, [that] disrupts the hegemonic discourse of the nation, and allows for another way of imagining society and identity that does not necessarily fit with that proposed by the government or the Islamists”.

In spite of this, raï music continues to be performed at weddings and male circumcision ceremonies but outside these circumscribed spaces, raï retains a forbidden and a particularly masculine aspect which are evident in the lyrics of some songs on illicit love affairs and the dwindling numbers of female raï singer since the 1970’s (ibid 2003:286). By the mid-1980’s, raï became an implicit youth protest against the stifling morality and moribund economic policies of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) regime. While in France, it formed a mark of solidarity for Algerian migrants against the intensifying White racism (McMurray and Swedenburg 1991:42). The crackdown on raï by the successor Islamist party, Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), led to the assassination of the popular singer Cheb Hasni in 1994, and the subsequent exiles of fellow singers (Cheb) Khaled and Cheb Mami in the following years. In light of these events, raï singers developed a more overt political stance in their lyrics and a strong following among younger men who embraced the newly transgressive nature of the musical genre. Raï also became a marker in the hierarchicalisation among men that determined who could listen to it in whose presence. This is illustrated in the way only a few men would listen to raï in the presence of a male of superior status, whether a father, uncles, or older brothers (DeAngelis 2003:290).

Since the 1990’s onwards, raï has established an image of counter-hegemonic rebellion culture headed by the “fathers” of the folk genre, namely Cheb Mami and (Cheb) Khaled, and strong legion of male listeners who make up raï’s greatest fans, however, at the same time, raï retains some residual hegemonic elements as it is received by many critics as ambivalent towards women, reflecting the general conservatism of Algerian society (ibid 2003:289). Schade-Poulsen’s interviews with male listeners reveal their critical and negative attitude towards women portrayed in the songs, as well as towards women who frequent cabarets where raï is usually performed (Schade-Poulsen 1999:143). In contrast, the lyrics in a few of (Cheb) Khaled’s songs feature messages of women’ emancipation as exemplified in “Hada raykoum” (It’s your opinion 1985) (Rosen 1990:22) :

The young girl wants to be married
The divorced woman wants to break loose
The married woman wants a divorce
The married woman wants to break loose
The married woman wants to go wild

You’ve done what you wanted
You’ve done what you decided
My God, my God, the husband’s asleep

Gender egalitarianism is the central theme in Khaled’s 1996 international hit “Aïcha”. In the lyrics, a man laments that his love for a woman, Aïcha, is not returned as she wants only equal rights and genuine love:

She said, keep your treasures
I’m worth more than all that
Cages are still cages even though made of gold
I want the same rights as you
And respect for each day
I don’t want anything but love1

Analyses on the political nature of raï lyrics and in particular those more in favour of women’s emancipation are yet to be found in scholarly writings. Questions as to whether these be may be encouraging signs for female fans of raï, and if such lyrics cultivate a shift toward progressive attitudes towards women are waiting to be answered. These would be interesting sites for further investigation but in the meanwhile, raï is understood to be intertwined in a complex interaction between the political, personal, aesthetic, and religious, that simultaneously raises questions about its role as the voice of disaffected masculinity and Arab cultural authenticity (McMurray and Swedenburg 1991:42).

The melancholite cinematic masculinities of Bourgiba’s legacy

Modern Tunisian cinema is, alongside its literature (which will not be discussed herein), intensely expressive of the post-colonial state’s discontents (Gana 2010:111). What is particularly salient in the numerous critically-acclaimed films by both female and male directors is the representation of male angst against the backdrop of Habib Bourgiba’s autocratic legacy. The number of films made under the helm of male directors in the last three decades have been critical of the post-colonial Tunisian patriarchal order, calling for the advancement of gender-equal politics. The films that interrogated the conflicted post-colonial male identity range from Nouri Bouzid’s Rih al-sadd (or L’homme de cendres, or Man of Ashes 1986), Ferid Boughedir’s Halfaouine: l’enfant des terraces (Halfaouine: boy of the terraces 1990) and Un été à la Goulette (A Summer at La Goulette 1995), Jilani Saadi’s Khorma, la bêtise (Khorma, Stupidity 2002) and Ors el-dhīb (Tender is the wolf 2006), to Abdellatif Kechiche’s La faute à Voltaire (Blame it on Voltaire 2000) and La graine et le mulet (The secret of the grain 2007). In contrast to the Tunisian female film directors in whose films (not mentioned here) undertook a feminist cinematic endeavour to undo the normative construction of masculinity, male directors in the films mentioned above delved simply into the masculine experience by deploying a male protagonist as the film’s central subject whilst examining the transformations of the male homosocial space (ibid. 2010:112).

Herein, I shall devote my attention to Nouri Bouzid’s Rih al-sadd (Man of ashes 1986) as an exemplar of the father-son relationship symbolic of the conflictual inter-generational relationships between men in post-Bourgiba Tunisia. The popular and award-winning film is also a fine study of generational transitions involving the perpetuation, modification, and overt contestation of established masculinity (Stollery 2001:49). Rid al-sadd tells the story of the male protagonist Hechim whose memories of sexual assault as a boy torment him on the eve of his wedding. Told through these flashbacks, a jarring incongruency is depicted of Hechim between his younger and present self. On the one hand, he is the respectable man of the community, and on the other, the subordinated, humiliated masculinity at the hands of his abuser, Ameur, a carpenter with whom Hechim apprenticed. His subordinated masculine past also haunts him in his adult years cinematically as he is shown on the margins of the film frame during scenes showing the preparations for his marriage.

Hechim has three father figures in the film: his biological father, the carpenter Ameur, and Mr Levy, the father of his childhood friend whom Hechim regards with great respect and affection compared to the other two. The representation of the close relationship between the two was ground-breaking and controversial at the time Rih al-sadd was released as Mr Levy’s character belongs to a Jewish community in Sfax, where the film is set. Homosocial tenderness is depicted between Hechim and Farfat, a childhood friend who was also abused by Ameur. The idyll of intimacy from shared victimisation between the two, however, is later shattered by Farfat, who fatally stabs Ameur in the groin – an all too obvious attack on an older, more abusive order of masculinity.

Rih al-sadd interrogates the father-son relationship in which bad fathers are challenged while ideal ones are held in high esteem. This freedom to choose fathers is, according to Stollery (2001:62), harks back to a utopic past of cultural syncretism and inter-religious harmony rather than the divided ethnic and religious present. The shifts between fatherly nurturance and violence are perhaps suggestive of the psyche of the modern Tunisian men, torn between the demands of authority and self-actualisation, and thus representing what Nouri Gana (2010:112) calls melancholite masculinity. Gana reserves the term ‘melancholite’ to describe the neuroticism and anxieties embodied in the masculinity inherited from Bourgiba’s autocracy, that at the same time is preserved jealously against the challenges of feminist rhetoric and the rise of awareness of non-heteronormative sexualities. The greater presence of male homosexuality in the public discourse and the internationalisation of gay culture intensified homophobic disquietudes, and as a result eroded to an extent the forms of intimate male-to-male homosocial behaviour characterised by hand-holding, hugging, and kissing, casting a grim shadow on “traditional” Algerian masculinity (ibid. 2010:121).

The post-Bourgiba masculinity described by Gana as “suspended in a state of mutability that is simultaneously cultivated and frustrated” by the challenges faced in the gendered transformations of the public sphere can be captured in modern Tunisian film-making. The cinematic medium depicts the undoing of masculinity and manhood that is both arrested by the pull of nostalgia of an authoritarian and ahistorical patriarchy and the defiance to break out of the mould of rigid notions of post-colonial masculinity. As seen in the masculinisation of raï music in Algeria, there is again the tug of war between the calls for “authentic” cultural identity as glorified by contesting political discourses of the FIS and FLN, and the gravitational pull towards transgressive, “inauthentic” masculinity.

Fossiled masculinity, transforming masculinities: some concluding remarks

The prominent themes discussed above are the contradictions, contestations, and complexification within masculinities in relation to hegemonic masculinities. Hegemonic masculinities implied here are masculine-identified traits sanctioned institutionally as more powerful, more influential, often codified as controlling of women and subordinate men (Connell 1994:77). These are evident in the repressive institutions of the opposing Algerian political parties FLN and FIS, and those embodied by the older generation of men in Nouri Bouzid’s Rih al-sadd (Man of ashes) – of which both instances garner moral ascedancy over other men by virtue of an alignment with politicised Islam and age, respectively. These themes also track the historicisation of masculinity, capturing the “breaks” in the national gender narrative, just as the history of femininity in the Middle East witnessed a well-documented social evolution in the 20th century.

According to Connell, the very concept of masculinity and the norms of male embodiment is largely abstract and subject to change. More importantly, a set of expected norms is historically contingent, and therefore come into existence in specific circumstances both spatially and temporally. In light of this, Connell argues that there would be a struggle for hegemony in which older forms of hegemonic masculinity may be replaced by new ones (ibid. 1994:78). Connell suggests three other types of masculinities: complicit, subordinate, and protest masculinity – all of which contribute to the hierarchicalisation of masculine behaviour and attributes. However, as clear these distinguishing categories are, they are fluid and therefore ‘membership’ is sometimes difficult to identify (Connell 1994:73).

It is probably due to these conceptual ambiguities that I personally cannot confidently place a definition of the masculinities described in the examples discussed above. Hence, placing the raï-listening young men of Algeria in either the categories of subordinate masculinity or a kind of complicit masculinity may not be sufficient. The narrative in Rih al-sadd, on other hand, relies on the in-between position that Hechim assumes that can come to signify the unsettledness of masculine identities in modern day Tunisia. Yet such situational masculinities are for most times under the umbrella of hegemonic masculinity, attaining what Connell (1994:116) calls the ‘patriarchal dividend’ from which men may contribute to supporting hegemonic masculinity by exerting some power, however diluted, in certain circumstances such as through interactions with women and other more marginalised men.

The spaces of resistance that the masculinities assumed by fans of raï and the male protagonist Hechim in Rih al-sadd also depend on the porosity of the institutionalised hegemonic masculinity that is upheld by the state, itself an entity subject to fierce contestations. This view concurs with the suggestions of anthropologists Andrea Cornwall and Nancy Lindisfarne that the control of any type of masculinity is “never totally comprehensive” nor does it “ever completely control subordinates” (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994:5). One therefore cannot come to a definite conclusion if the participants of this gender matrix can benefit from their position in the hierarchy of masculinities, however porous each category may be, or whether all men pay the price for male dominance in some way. One must also be mindful not to de-emphasise the role of power relations in the relationships between masculinities. By focusing on the aspect of power invested within these relationships, there would be less of a need to undertake the more difficult task to labelling a man on the individual level as belonging to a particular masculinity type. Hence, the study of masculinity is not about head-counts, but rather a “question of relations of cultural domination” (Connell 1993:610).

My focus on contemporary Algerian and Tunisian masculinities – both North African yet on the margins of the Middle East – offers at best a few pieces to a jigsaw puzzle that will form a picture of Middle Eastern masculinity that is in many ways diverse, evolving, yet rooted to certain similar cultural and religious particularities. This is perhaps then a good opportunity to say that Islam as an analytical category is not monolithic but nonetheless affects the construction of masculinity in a significant way for better or for worse. It is then best to avoid the essentialisation of Islam that is perceived to be applied uniformly by all men in the Middle East and the way it often “obscures the dramatic changes that have occurred in the body of its values and even rituals throughout history when Islam was being constantly blended local customs and cultures” (Abu Khalil 1997:3). If Islam is indeed an important component in the formation of masculinity, then what is less understood are the multiple interpretational trajectories of Islam’s religious texts that lead to how idealised manhood or masculinity are constructed in a more nuanced, socially-specific way, how the different forms of power over women and other men are legitimated, and how these powers are perpetuated and maintained. And indeed, these processes of the ‘Islamisation’ of masculinity and power cannot exist in a vacuum, but subject to and affected by other sociological factors. Alongside the state, which has been identified above as constituting both abstract and material manifestation of hegemonic masculinity, the music (Whiteley 1999:219) and film industry (Mayne 1985:83) have been traditionally dominated by men and thus the products emerging from these cultural factories cannot be dismissed as entirely innocent of male bias, both at the level of production and reception .

Finally, I would like to raise questions for future reflections concerning the routes by which men of the Middle East make towards creating spaces for resistance, which can contribute to illuminating the ways masculinities transform and adapt to the changing landscape of power characterised by economic and social inequalities, the impact of globalisation, and the assent of women. Consequences of masculine resistance can thus be anticipated in various ways, and are not necessarily in favour of gender equality, but nonetheless may shed light on how they are transported or obstructed across different spaces (keeping in mind the context-specific nature of masculine identity). It is my hope that out of this patchwork of ambiguities emerge a better understanding of the means whereby the greater scheme of patriarchy is reproduced both between and within genders.

References

Feminist, Malaysian, and Proud of It!

I’ve started a Facebook group as a forum for Malaysians who (or do not entirely) identify as feminists, or at least support the cause against social injustice – I think some looseness in labels is fair. I also think that it’s important that the few people who are like-minded get connected in some way, because blogs can be a little isolated and if you have blog names like mine, chances are you’d hardly get noticed (unless you’re looked up by botanists). So please join!!

Feminist, Malaysian, and Proud of it!

Comments on comments

In the last year, I’ve been getting plenty of Islamophobic comments on my blog. Some of which are unpublished here for my own peace of mind, and some I went on to tackle personally with the commenters who wrote them. Granted, I do not have a policy on comments and perhaps that is a mistake on my part for flashing a green light to those who feel the need to vent their Islamophobic frustrations online, or anti-feminist or racist frustrations for that matter. But on the other hand, explicit guidelines on how to comment on pro-Islam, feminist, and anti-racist blogs are often ignored anyhow. I cannot put a stop to this but the most I can do is to remind readers who feel that they do not respect my faith and other faiths and my politics is to go elsewhere and reflect on humanity a little more. Readers who do not respect Islam or feminism or anti-racist politics on the discursive level but claim to hold nothing against some of its adherents also will not have anything useful to say here. Yeah, I’m tough on “enlightened” haters.

To make this clearer: in the future, what I don’t need is any of the following..

The allure of the foreign or “exotic” as outline in the chromosomes and you want to call it Racism?

when a man (or a women) is attracted to something different, seeks it out, this is looking for something to be created between two consenting adults. Consenting meaning it would be mutual.

So repelled by something different, it is racism.
Attracted to, it is racism.

yes its the same simple biology at work isn’t it? And your  solution is…?

In addiction medicine, addiction is defined by consequences. I’d like to know the harsh consequences of this racism….because i’m sure every lynched slave from American history is “rolling in their grave” at your posted disgust.

Sloppy pseudo-scientific analogies for examples of racism do not work. Difference is not just the issue here, but something that is more diffuse, invisible – power relations – is at work in various types of inter (and indeed intra) ethnic relationships. For better or for worse, we represent to the world more than our individualities or autonomous identities. There are cultural tags and history connected to our gender and race/ethnicity (other visible analytical categories add here) that we cannot wish away and work against us in different circumstances, and with that there is an imbalance of power differentials manifested in the way groups of people are treated or talked about. As for the anxiety of racism from being repelled or attracted to somebody different, cultural tags and history of an ethnic group (White people is an ethnic group too) need to be weighed up to understand why certain qualities of an ethnic group are considered desirable / repulsive, and most importantly why there are those set of qualities there in the first place. Biology has no part in this.

I also don’t want misogynist bile like this:

As long as you continue to regard the myth of Patriarchy as having substance then, “the source of female oppression” (which is females themselves), will never be addressed but  continue to act as an excuse for self oppression and the avoidance of real issues.

Like the unicorn and the gnome, a myth involves things that no one has seen in real life but is perpetuated in common everyday discourse. Patriarchy cannot be seen, too, but it endures in our collective systems of thought and discourse. It is also not just one thing, which is why many men handwave this as pure mythology. I don’t want to go further into the dry definition of patriarchy, but rather would like to say this: defeating the patriarchy is not about beating down individual men and expect men to hate themselves for simply being men. No. But let’s put it this way: people who think that few women get the best-paid jobs or elected to highest ranks in government is because they do not try hard enough or just don’t go for them, or believe that women are better at looking after babies are complicit in perpetuating the pervasive cultural norm called patriarchy. Men do it, and so do women. It exists. Deal with it.

And finally, none of this please:

Shariah law in Malaysia:
RM5000 fine and imprisonment of up to 3 years and 6 lashes for consuming alcohol
And RM4000 fine and imprisonment of up to 2 years and 6 lashes for forcing one’s wife to be a prostitute!
Is there any wonder why Islam is viewed with ridicule and contempt?

My view of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism is valid and not inane. I remain an unashamed islamophobe but I have nothing against you personally. I feel sorry for all victims of religious endoctrination and persecution, and I wish you well.

Incidentally, I have read the quran and the bible old and new testaments. If you are not afraid to challenge your faith, then I recommend that you read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkin wrote the sociobiological nonsense called The Selfish Gene. No further comments.

On Foucault’s nexus of power and knowledge, plus some criticisms

I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
W.B Yeats, A woman young and old

Genealogy and the “origins” of power-knowledge

In the beginning, there was no essential truth. What can be found in one’s quest for pureness and unity in origins is only the discovery of fragmented elements disguised as genuine truth, tainted by desire and conflict, or so said Foucault’s in his genealogical critique to supposed “truth”. Adopted from Nietzsche’s term to describe the debunking of the origins of morals and values, Foucault refines both his own archeology of knowledge and Nietzsche’s method to analyse the shifts of “events” in history. In Nietzschean genealogy, truth and its origin (Ursprung) are problematised as intimately intertwined with relations of power (Foucault 1991a:78). Like Nietzsche, Foucault attacks the humanist notion that one can trace ideas or institutions back to a beginning in which an essential meaning or “truth” was conceived. His approach is four-pronged; rejecting the traditional historiographical production of origins, the continuity of history as a narrative, the subject who serves as its author, and the “events” of history. The rejection of origins becomes a rejection of continuity – of what is believed to be [hu]man history held together by the long thread of reason and scientific progress. What Foucault finds in place of origins is an assemblage of power-knowledge and the way each displaces one another, creating ruptures in history. Discontinuity leads to the dismissal of the “subject” who stands over the unbroken historical narrative – the transcendental subject – whom also assumes the role of “creator” or author of history.

Genealogy, on the other hand, turns tables on the subject by showing how she is “created” by power-knowledge and with that Foucault dispenses with the idea of the author/historian. Finally, in place of Foucault’s dismissal of “events” narrated in conventional historiography by the problematic authors he installs the anonymous rules governing discursive practice and the network of power-knowledge of which the rules are part of. Foucault’s genealogy is seen as building upon his earlier work in The Order of Things (1966) which describes the human sciences not in terms of who said what or about the evolution of ideas and theories but more by way of the unspoken rules that works as a system of exclusion and the verifier of truth and falsity. In a way Foucault has replaced the traditional concept of “events” with his concept of “discourse”. Genealogy is understood to be an “effective” history because it eschews the metaphysical prejudices of conventional historians and strives to relocate everything considered eternal into a process of becoming (Mahon 1992:113). It is from this line of thought that Foucault locates the fundamental inseparability of power and knowledge. From this point of exposition, I shall outline Foucault’s views on power, its principal features, and its role in the constitution and production of knowledge. I will then discuss the implications of Foucault’s conceptualisation of power-knowledge from his genealogical reading of the history of French prison reforms. Finally, I will conclude this essay with remarks on the various critical responses of Foucault’s power-knowledge formula.

Foucault’s analytics of power

Foucault offers an alternative way of looking at the mechanisms of power to what he felt a coterie of inadequate analyses available at the time (Shiner 1982:389). He was critical of the Right’s position on power that is characterised heavily by sovereignty, the Left’s (or Marxist) emphasis on class conflict that sees power as purely a economic apparatus of oppression, and the Freudian’s overall repression of the individual’s instinctual nature for the benefit of society – all of which he understood to be inherently prohibitive, unilateral in its distribution of force and control (ibid). Contrary to the liberal and Marxist understanding of the top-down enforcement of power, Foucault develops the notion of a power that “comes from below”, of power that behaves in the manner of “networks” and “capillaries”, enmeshed in the relationship between the subject and subjected.

Without fixing power in a play between the binary opposition of the dominant and the subjugated, or the “ruler and the ruled”, Foucault complexifies the attributes of power further as an element that “[serves] as a general matrix” (Foucault 1978:94). Power is also, according to Foucault, inherently emancipatory. Foucault introduces the capacity of resistance to spring from power, even from the position of the subjected that appears completely powerless. The points of resistance are numerous, of which Foucault goes on to describe the “plurality of resistances” (Foucault 1978:96) that can emerge in an exciting array of forms: “spontaneous”, “savage”, “solitary”, “sacrificial”. Thus, the effects of power are not simply repressive but ultimately productive. According to Foucault, power has the capacity to create “reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth” (Foucault 1979:194) and is effectively reinforced when hidden partially from view as a key force in “truth”-making.

Knowledge, the vehicle of power

As an effect or “product” of power, knowledge is key to its survival as both intimately constitute each other in discourse. In Discipline and Punish (1979), Foucault uses his genealogical eye to trace the relationship of power and knowledge in the change of methods used for the treatment of criminals in 18th and 19th century Europe. These changes in methods, instruments, and infrastructure reflected the new formations of strategies of power invested to individualise and internalise the control of the body, furthering the formalisation of power-knowledge. Foucault was interested in how bodies were “produced” (and the changes in discourses that seek to continually redefine them) (Shiner 1982:392). Bodies, according to Foucault, were moulded accordingly in different discourses, regimes of power and ‘truth’ via ‘technologies of power’: faceless modalities of force comprised within institutions, instruments, and procedures, and from such processes become “docile” (Foucault 1979:138). He also demonstrated how the change in penal practices from the public spectacle of torture of convicted criminals (“culture of spectacle”) to the individualisation of punishment (“carceral culture”) in the form of individualised prison cells and rehabilitation techniques was instrumental in “creating” new corporeal bodies of knowledge. These bodies of knowledge comprised of highly detailed characteristics and information were developed around those who are most controlled, most oppressed in society: the insane, the criminal, “hysterical” women, children (Shiner 1982:393).

As mentioned above, the treatment of the prisoner, either as punishment or rehabilitation, demonstrates a further intensification of the individualising control of the body while simultaneously obscuring further from view the source of control. The ultimate example of the invisible presence of domination is the panopticon, the structure of the ideal prison conceptualised by Jeremy Bentham in 1791 (Bentham 1995:29-95). The panopticon, structured in such a way that the cells would be open to a central tower, would have the desired result in which each prisoner is constantly confronted by the panoptic eye without being able to see the seer. Prisoners must believe that they could be watched at any moment and “must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so” (Foucault 1979:201). Bentham argued that this prison system is a model for how society should function as each body is persistently policed, and in time, one will internalise this policing and begin to police themselves (Shiner 1982:394).

The panopticon represents not only the increasingly invasive form of power but an equally intrusive acquisition of knowledge that generates information about individuals and a population. As Foucault so often asserts, power simply manifests itself in a diffuse, insidious manner, and so a creation of new forms of control such as surveillance cameras serve to further disindividualise power, making it both impersonal and elusive. One cannot help but feel from the resulting effect of the impersonalisation of power the paranoia of feeling subject to effective and all-pervasive form of control which has no face nor body.

When discussing Foucault’s nexus of power and knowledge, it is pertinent to have in mind his rather pessimistic assertions against the notion of the transcendental subject as the locus of meaning-making, truth-making. Rather, the subject is the effect of the relations between power and knowledge, both governing and constituting the discourses that compete to construct her. From the position of the subject in relation to power-knowledge, she does not personally own and wield power, and although she is able to transmit knowledge, it is from within the constraints of the discourse(s) in which she inhabits. And it is at this juncture that a Saussaurean ambience in Foucault’s conceptualisation of knowledge is felt: knowledge obtained and emanating from a subject is not so much a reflection of independent will or “single intentional agent”, but rather of a larger, all-encompassing framework of statements more enduring than that of individual statements. Therefore, the production of knowledge is seen as less of a “serendipitous” or “random” occasion but more as serving to the purpose of a particular discourse (Schneck 1987:18). Similarly, the subject, termed the “local centres” of power-knowledge is targeted not by chance but by tactical means as vessels for the maintenance, reinforcement, and formation of new kinds of power (Foucault 1978:98).

The power-knowledge complex has a tendency to appear as expressing a kind of theoretical scepticism about any particular knowledge ideal or an ideal of knowledge. However, what Foucault intends to do is to challenge our taken-for-granted perceptions of knowledge and to abandon “the whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge can exist where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can develop only outside its injunctions, its demands, and its interests” (Foucault 1979:27). And while there exists a heady cynicism in Foucault’s writings surrounding the edifice of his concept of power-knowledge, he wishes to liberate us from the baggage that trails behind the traditional knowledge ideal, especially an Enlightenment illusion of the separation of power and knowledge, and its project which sees a progression towards “perfected” knowledge. Thus, the relations of power-knowledge does not necessarily indicate the scepticism with regards to the possibility of genuine or authentic knowledge, or the dismissal of the contents that knowledge bears but more a critique of how knowledge is (thought by) Foucault to be abused in order to reinforce power relations. Foucault’s cynicism and pessimism would prove to be the least of his critics’ bone of contention as the next section of this essay will show, for his concept of power and knowledge – given its breadth and polymorphosity – reveals lacks and inconsistencies from a number of epistemological viewpoints.

Feminist critique of power-knowledge

Each of my works is part of my own biography
- Michel Foucault

Most of the available theories of reading, writing, sexuality,
or any other cultural production are built upon male narratives of gender …
narratives which persistently tend to reproduce themselves in feminist theories.
-Teresa de Lauretis

It is without doubt that by this point we have been become more than acquainted with Foucault’s analysis on the versatility of power and its kaleidoscopic effects, and that his approaches marks a departure from the analyses of power of his contemporaries by being both historio-empirical and pseudo-anthropocentric by virtue of its attention to the power/knowledge-based individualisation of history’s subject. However, his historical examination of power in The History of Sexuality (1978) and in Discipline and Punish (1979) appears to be heavily sided with the repressive and centralised form of power which eclipses the much-feted counter-power, or resistance, found in his rhetoric. The power relations in his writings on the penal reform and “scientia sexualis” of 18th and 19th century Europe are only analysed from the perspective of those installed in male-dominated institutions wielding authoritative power rather than those subjected to power in the lower rungs of force relations. In fact, Foucault remains silent on the systematic pattern of gender-based domination throughout his own genealogical sites of interest, which has become a major source of feminist critique.

Foucault’s jarring remiss to omit the gendered nature of subjectivities has meant the subsequent silence on the discourses that govern the female subject differently from male ones. His gender blindness in the individualisation of the subject as the locus of power and knowledge leaves a lacunae in the gendered differences in the treatment of prison inmates that related immediately to the construction of masculinity and femininity of the day. Patricia O’Brien’s critiques Foucault’s broad summarisation of the “creation” of bodies in Discipline and Punish that neglected the substantial differences perceived in female and male criminality that perceived female criminal behaviour as an aberration of an already inferior female characteristics; delicateness, nervousness, feeble-mindedness. She demonstrates how the diversity of crimes that were categorised as “menstrual psychoses”, and the way suicides and homicides amongst women were considered “organic maladies of the uterus” (O’Brien 1982:68) – all of which were ignored in Foucault’s work.

Granted, the distinctly female malady of hysteria was discussed in Foucault’s History of Sexuality, but he does not form its possible links to the distinct “production” of feminised bodies in his accounts in Discipline and Punish (ibid 1982:69). Establishing such a link would further strengthen an analysis into how the tools of power and knowledge, based on dominant representation of gender, are used to produce asymmetrical relations between subjects. Foregrounding the female inmate and her un-rehabilitateable biological predisposition in Foucault’s thesis in power and knowledge would have changed the face of his writings but above all show how women and men relate differently in prison regimes. One can readily assume whilst reading Foucault’s genealogical narrative that the body marked with the designs of power is male and it is not an assumption that is completely groundless (McNay 1992). Thus, it is the work of feminist theorists to critique, revise, and reorient the general androcentrism of Foucault’s (still) indispensable conceptualisation of power.

Foucault is also noted for his ideas on the productive nature of power which has been instrumental in resistance politics, and has suggested even the notion of reverse discourse as a means of subverting meaning and therefore knowledge of a particular discourse. Again, he falls short on the extent of how reverse discourse is monumental in actually reversing another discourse, particularly a dominant discourse, for example the enduring discourse of sexism. Feminism, as a reverse or counter discourse is no doubt gaining grounds in certain areas of the Western world, but not without the constant, overpowering and often violent resistance from sexist ideology. While Foucault often asserts the idea of power struggles that precede the formation of discourse – a new discursive formation so to speak – there is little clue or practical guidance in terms of achieving a viable counter discourse in practice – this remains my main bone of contention.

Conceptual critique of power-knowledge
The unbreakable link between power and knowledge is put into question not in rhetoric, as Foucault has sealed tightly in his various writings, but in its actual practice, its occurrence and temporality. According to Foucault:

It is in discourse that power and knowledge come to articulate themselves. And for this very reason, we must conceive discourse as a series of discontinuous segments, whose tactical function is neither uniform nor stable. We must allow for a complex and unstable play in which discourse is perhaps at once the instrument and effect of power, but also an obstacle, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance. (Foucault 1978:100-101)

However, it is within Foucault’s own elaboration on the workings of power-knowledge – i.e. in discourse – that Tom Keenan finds an ironic inconsistency. Discourse requires language, a mode of communication in order for knowledge (propelled by power) to be received, acquired, processed into systems of thought and experience. Therefore, as Keenan argues, “the relations of power and of knowledge can always be disengaged, as can the relation between power and knowledge”. Due to Foucault’s own assertion that the articulation between power and knowledge is discursive, the link can never be guaranteed (Keenan 1987:17). Keenan proceeds to describe the unpredictable nature of the convergence of power and knowledge by virtue of the unpredictability of the articulation of discourse itself and consigns the hyphen in power-knowledge to simply a “material marker of an unreadable gap” (ibid 1978:18). But going back to Foucault’s adaptation of a Saussurean thinking of discourse that does not have any exteriority outside of the network of power relations, one will see less randomness in the way discourse, hence knowledge and its attendant partner power, is governed to be articulated.

In other words, discourse is always held close to power-knowledge and always plays by its rules rather than having its own terms of existence. Indeed, this requires the continuity of power-knowledge harboured by the vehicle of discourse. Foucault rejects the continuity of history of events (discourse(s)?) and suggests an incongruency between discourses instead. But does this discontinuity experience the bumps and breakage of power-knowledge in its path for survival which are characterised by struggles and domination? The implications of the paradox of power and knowledge in discourse are monumental such as that it threatens the stability of Foucault’s own genealogical aspirations and politics.

Geographical limits and Foucault’s Eurocentrism of power-knowledge
Despite the accepted and widespread use of Foucault’s theory of power and knowledge in post-colonial studies, his work runs the risk of appearing Eurocentric as it remains largely silent on the racial element of power and the colonial construction of modern Europe. Foucault also limits his historical study of the penal and sexual discourse of Western Europe as a basis for a universalised conceptualisation of power and knowledge. The contrast between his more detailed periodising of the path of power-knowledge and his carelessness about its geographical specificity beyond Western Europe is surprising. Nevertheless, what can be seen in Foucault’s legacy is the “[globalisation of] the experiences of a few colonies into the universal experience of the colonised” (Legg 2007:266). When asked in an interview with Herodote of his assigning “a de facto privilege to the factor of time” and the “Western” world “at the cost of nebulous or spatial demarcations”, Foucault humbly replied:

“There is indeed a task to be done of making the space in question precise, saying where a certain process stops, what are the limits beyond which one could say “something different happens …”. (Foucault 1977:68)

Foucault’s ‘get-out’ clause with an identification of “limits beyond which one could say “something different happens”…” most certainly requires an elaboration theoretically as well as empirically but this is no means an unsurmountable obstacle for researchers of non-Western contexts1 as numerous studies employ the versatility of Foucault’s rhetorical power than his historically documented one. However, Foucault’s unfortunate open-endedness of his above statement has been cautioned by theorists who feel that many have adopted his theoretical framework uncritically (Stoler 1996:208).

The limitation of Foucault’s power to specific geographical and historical space right down to the limitation in terms of the implements of power leave the majority of scholars with a more nebulous imaginings of his work. The disciplining, “production” of bodies as the loci of power and knowledge that allows a modern adaptation of the panoptic gaze is also exaggerated according to Habermas’ (1990:290), especially with regard to the extent of the gaze and how it is only a concern for certain societies where modern implements of social control such as the internet, credit cards, censorship laws, and reality television programmes like Big Brother are the facts of daily life. The danger in committing to the universalisation of Foucault’s power and knowledge is to fall into an anti-Foucauldian line of thought of reproducing an imagined lateral continuity and parallels of discourses across geographical spaces rather than tracing rigorously (and vertically) the genealogical pedigrees of localised bodies of knowledge and discourses.

Habermas’ discontent
Perhaps one of the most influential opponents of Foucault’s work on power and knowledge is Jürgen Habermas. Habermas presents his criticisms in his Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1990) but for the sake of length and relatedness to the essay’s question at hand, I shall only extend my attention to some of Habermas’ criticisms of Foucault’s genealogical conceptualisation of power and its relationship with knowledge. To begin with, the Habermas / Foucault debate was borne out of a deeper rift between the two, in particular the conflicting theoretical frameworks concerning their respective concepts of power and discourse. Their principal concepts are at odds with one another: for Habermas, power represents a repressive element, a threat to communicative practices and social democracy. Intervention to the threats of power – critique, ethics, and political theory – exists exterior to the context of power, contrary to Foucault’s all-pervasive power in a closed socio-political system. In other words, power exists in some contexts but not in others (Finlayson 2005:55). Habermas is deeply critical of the “to-and-fro movement” of Foucault’s power between its empirical, localised nature and its more diasporic one that is viewed from a genealogical bird’s eye view (Habermas 1990:253). He sees a dual role that power plays in Foucault’s genealogy: one that is inseparable from its material manifestations – on bodies, modes of punishment – and the other that traverses in a transcendental fashion across his genealogical history in a “fusion of opposed meanings” as representing a paradoxical tension between materialism, nominalism, and the transcendentality of power as a constitutive element in discourse (ibid).

As if challenging Foucault in some outmoded duel, Habermas asks, “Why fight?” in an attempt to reveal the aporia in Foucault’s contextualisation of power (Habermas, 1986:7-8). Habermas feels that Foucault “cannot answer” this question, a “question of the normative basis of his critique” that will destabilise Foucault’s entire edifice of power-knowledge. It is worth remembering here that for Habermas, truth and critique situate themselves outside of the network of power and thus in his view, Foucault’s genealogical critique against power invested in truth (knowledge) is somehow contaminated by his own, or anyone’s, position in power and his inescapability from that position. (Habermas 1990:257). In other words, Foucault has himself assumed the self-referential, transcendental figure of his (genealogical) history, contradicting the genealogical perspective that he had established. However, this is only true if we were to remain within the horizon of Habermasean discourse. Reflecting on their conceptual differences, Habermas wages an unfair if not an incompatible battle with Foucault in which he not only aims to pick the loose ends of Foucault’s ideas but to prove the theoretical superiority of his own concepts.

Concluding remarks
Towards the years before his untimely death in 1984, Foucault contours a more humanised subject – the idea of the person – in relation to power and knowledge in his essay ‘The Subject and Power’ (1982). Prior to this, Foucault allows only a minimal outline of subjectivity – the objectification of the subject (Foucault 1982:777-778), a source of heated debate and critique from many sides. This decidedly more political shift in his concept of subjectivity can be seen in the following excerpt:

[A] power relationship can only be articulated on the basis of two elements which are indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship: that ‘the other’ (the one over whom power is exercised) be thoroughly recognized and maintained to the very end as a person who acts; and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up. (Foucault 1982:789) [emphasis mine]

In the above, the ‘other’, at the receiving end of power, must be recognised as a person if a power-knowledge relationship is to be possible, and that the person in question is at the centre of a plurality of acts. This can be seen as a “measure of freedom” (Schenck 1987:30) as far as the subjected is concerned. A critique, if one is to situate within a Foucauldian context of genealogy, power, and knowledge, is a form of defiant expression with a sense of freedom invested in the subject, and linked with the “space of concrete freedom, i.e., of possible transformation” (Foucault 1991b:10). The concreteness of this freedom of critique is significant and is suggestive of something political in practice rather than simply theoretical. This can be interpreted by readers of Foucault today as a posthumous response to Haberamas’ challenge mentioned above, but only to the extent that a critique is politically-motivated albeit its theoretical inconsistencies. It may not be entirely fanciful to suggest that Foucault’s late subtle transformation of the subject and the subjected as free persons full of critical capacity sets a somewhat encouraging epilogue to his twenty years work on genealogy, power, knowledge, and the self.

Podcast: Malay privilege and the ‘Allah’ debate

My first ever audio slideshow/podcast!! Enjoy!

Transcript after the jump

Contesting narratives of the divine: Film religi and Islamic discourses in post-Soeharto Indonesia

Uploading more of my junk here. The following is my research proposal:

Hanung Bramantyo's Perempuan Berkalung Sorban (2008)

The recent upsurge in Islamically-themed films, or film religi, in Indonesia can be viewed as a reflection of the increasing prominence of Islam discernible in the media and consumption patterns (Widodo, 2008). Following the commercial success of Ayat-ayat Cinta (Verses of Love) in 2008, a love story with polygamy at the heart of its narrative, as many as nine films with religious overtones have been produced with varied success. Ayat-ayat Cinta’s phenomenal success could be owed to its youthful and good-looking cast, stunning production value, and melodramatic rendering of sensitive issues such as polygamous relationships and Christian-Muslim relations. Subsequent films, however, have diverged from the romance to tackle a range of other issues from a strictly Islamic perspective. Moreover, what is significant in religious films since Ayat-ayat Cinta is the critical engagement with contesting Islamic discourses reflective of the climate in current Indonesian socio-politics. Thus, these films as an instrument of ideology and spiritual aspirations provide an important site of study in the case of Indonesia after 1998.

Despite cinema’s ambivalent relationship with the more conservative expressions of Islam, the Islamic film genre is by no means unique to predominantly Muslim Indonesia, and has enjoyed considerable popularity in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt in past decades (Dönmez-Colin, 2004; Siavoshi, 1997; Schohat, 1983). Films with overt religious themes earned attention in Turkey as ‘white cinema’ in the 1990’s when Islamist parties gained political dominance (Dönmez-Colin, 2004). A distinctively Islamist cinema that adhered to fiqh-based ideology (Islamic jurisprudence) was promoted in Iran during the First Republic following the 1979 revolution lasted until the mid 1980’s (Dönmez-Colin, 2004). It is worth noting here, however, that research on the role of Islam, and faith itself, in film has been at best limited to being part of nationalist cinematic discourse and in the emerging theological analysis on visual media. At present, film religi as a tenable genre in its own right remains a void in scholarly writings on the recent history of Indonesian film-making.

The emergence of Islamic films after 1998 – in the wake of Soeharto’s fallen New Order – is significantly momentous as far as Indonesian cinema is concerned. Many restrictive regulations formulated under Soeharto’s government relating to film production and screening were dissolved. A democratisation of the media was witnessed under the presidency of B.J. Habibi (1998-1999), while during during Abdurrahman Wahid’s presidency (1999-2001) saw the Ministry of Information abolished and the Lembaga Sensor Film’s (Film Censor Council) authority questioned. These events heralded a freer cinematic expression and posed a challenge to religious authorities and the more conservative public in general. The rise in Islamic films in recent years is seen as borne as a reaction to the liberated mediascape often assumed as a westernisation of popular culture, while at the same time reflective of the increasingly divergent discourse on Islam in Indonesia generally (Widido, 2008). Interestingly, the films are also part of a wider phenomenon of commercial Islam found in its appropriation in popular brand names, print media, and cultural products (Fealy, 2008).

Methodology and purpose of study

What I am interested in is performing a textual analysis to shed light on where the film religi fits in its social, cultural, and political environment. Due to the different nature of several Islamic films in style and representation of Muslim identities, a better understanding of the changing content, distribution, exhibition, and discourse of Indonesian cinema at large against the backdrop of evolving socio-politics in post-Soeharto Indonesia would represent an important aspect of my research. Furthermore, by building on Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagining and “re-presenting” elements of what constitutes a nation via textual means, a question as to whether the film religi identifies with and imagines certain Muslim communities/audiences and can harmoniously incorporate within Indonesian nationalist cinema is also a matter of analytical concern. In addition to a “top-down” relationship of film-makers/religious leaders construction of Muslim identities in films is the audience reception, which can be viewed as a “bottom-up” relationship that determines a film’s commercial (and possibly, ideological) success. For Muslims cinema-goers, watching films, particularly film religi, is part of their meaning-making. This can be perceived through how so-called “real” or “ordinary” film-watchers, rather than critics and academics, are reacting and responding to certain films.

Adding to the elements that constitute identities of an imagined nation are class and gender as demarcators of cultural and ideological boundaries. This is particularly important given that class-based and gender-sensitive representations of characters in recent Islamic films can be considered as an embodiment of changing attitudes and aspirations in Indonesian cinema today. As part of this research I intend to combine the analytical training in Gender Studies developed through my MA programme at SOAS, fluency in spoken and written Indonesian, experience in Muslim women’s activism, and as a film reviewer and critic to build on the study of Indonesian cinema, considering the scant scholarly writings on religious films in Indonesia at present. I believe that my proposed research project will be enhanced by the sensitivity and experience of not only as a Muslim scholar and cinema enthusiast but also by being a socially aware academic that I am. Based on my developing expertise as a film critic and academic, these are the justifications for my suitability for this particular research subject.

Bibliography:
1.Widodo, Amrih, 2008. Writing for god: piety and consumption in popular Islam. Inside Indonesia, 93, http://www.insideindonesia.org/content/view/1121/47/
2.Fealy, Greg (2008) Consuming Islam: Commodified religion and aspirational pietism in contemporary Indonesia, from Expressing Islam – religious life and politics in Indonesia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.
3.Dönmez-Colin, Gönül (2004) Women, Islam, and Cinema, Reaktion Books.
4.Schochat, Ella (1983) Critical Arts, Volume 2, No. 4.
5.Siavoshi, Sussan (1997) International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, No. 29.

The boy who cried “Witch!”: Saudis investigate domestic workers for witchcraft

First published at Muslimah Media Watch

Something decidedly medieval is in the air in Saudi Arabia. Fears of black magic and curses cast by Indonesian domestic helpers have spread across the country, and  Saudi employers increasingly feel the need to hire private investigators to check their domestic workers for suspicious behavior and evidence for witchcraft.

Investigators, mostly foreign women from neighboring countries, are paid to search for photographs, hair, or clothes belonging to the employers before the domestic helpers are repatriated, reports Arab News. The employers do not do this themselves because they feel it is immoral and something Islam prevents them to do.

This is a strange story, worthy of trashy tabloids and supernatural fiction. But clearly, superstition is a habit that dies hard, often with dire consequences. There is no mention in the report about the rampant abuse of migrant domestic workers by Saudi employers, but I assume that that is the long running back story that needs no introduction. Abuse of domestic workers ranges from emotional and physical abuse to rape, slavery, and even murder. There is very little sense or a trace of rationality to fear domestic workers for practicing black magic unless one’s judgment is clouded by xenophobia and the normalization of the dehumanization of working-class foreigners. Even the Saudi religious police, the mutawa, have become self-styled witch-hunters, lacking only a burning stake in the middle of a city square to complete the image in a country where witchcraft is illegal and punishable by death.

But stories of black magic do not just arise out of thin air. They are a byproduct of a larger economic and political structure that renders migrant workers vulnerable to xenophobic and racist attacks. The U.N. research institute for social development has identified three aspects attributable to the heightened xenophobia in the Middle East. First, a preference for a temporary contract labor. Second, discriminatory employment practices and the special “allocation” for menial jobs for migrant workers; and finally, a culture of disdain towards those who are visibly different.

Abuse of every despicable kind is by no means limited to Saudi households, but is also widespread in where I come from, Malaysia. High-profile cases involving horrific abuse of domestic helpers grabbing international attention in the last ten years have hardly left a dent on the conscience of many Malaysians. Having been brought up for a number of years with a domestic helper at home while both my parents went to work, it is an accepted way of life for a significant proportion of Malaysians. Domestic helpers provide huge relief for double income families, and many became part of the family, joining in on holidays and included in family portraits. Muslim Indonesian maids are preferred in most Muslim households for a variety of reasons, food preparation and religious sensitivity among them, but they are also some of the most badly treated.

Filipino workers, who majority are Christians on the other hand, suffer lower rates of abuse because arguably, they are better protected: thanks to government lobbying, Filipino migrant workers are paid better than their Indonesian counterparts, and in places like Jordan, bans have been imposed on potential employers to receive Filipino domestic helpers due to reports of abuse. They are also a smaller group compared to Indonesian female migrant workers. Most Filipino maids are older than Indonesian workers, better educated and skilled. But this is not about numbers–cases of abuse no matter how high or isolated deserves the attention and effective action.

It’s difficult to piece together the macro structures such as the economy, world poverty, and immigration policies with attitudes of ordinary families toward domestic helpers to fully understand what brings people to commit inhuman acts on other human beings. I often wonder if whether having a person contracted to live under one’s roof has anything to do with it. Bringing in someone to cook, clean your clothes, look after the children and/or elderly relatives must involve a tricky negotiation over privacy and other practical matters included in having another person under the same roof.

Perhaps there’s very little in terms of a middle way between welcoming a domestic helper as a new member of the family or simply as a stranger in the home. If the case is the latter, then life at home must be uncomfortable not just for the employers and their family, but particularly for the domestic workers who’ve travelled far from home to find a better life. Is this an effect of our changing values vis-a-vis a rapidly changing urban landscape where increased contact with “the outside world” through immigration and migration has become inevitable and unsettling for many?

Intersectionality – the essay (part 2)

Intersectionality in practice: ethnic-Pakistani women of Bradford and the homogenising effects of multiculturalism

Intersectional approaches can help locate Pakistani women’s position as survivors of gender-based violence in which overlapping social categories such as ethnicity, religion, generational differences, and multiculturalism render them invisible. Their’s is a situation compounded further by multiple material deprivation of inner city life in Bradford, North England. Here I shall illustrate how the lives of women in Bradford embody a problem in which cultural homogenisation and political apathy on the grounds on cultural sensitivity fail to address their needs of protection from domestic abuse and other gender-based violence. Cultural relativism, as the mantra of multi-culturalist politics reflects an anti-interventionist stance of political authorities who leave so-called “cultural and domestic affairs” to the hands of community leaders. This symbolic transfer of power only proves to be devastating for women:

In reality this means that community leaders have most control over the family, women and children. Together with the state, community leaders define the needs of the minority communities then limit and separate progressive voices on the grounds of these being inauthentic and westernised. More radical elements of our community are labelled as extremists. This is the result of multi-cultural policies. They have had an enormous and devastating impact on women’s autonomy and rights . . . [26]

Class, race, Islam, and “sensitive issues”

Located in the North of England, Bradford is the fourth largest urban area in the country with a significant ethnic minority population. One in five of the population is described to experience or is affected by multiple forms of deprivation characterised by poverty, poor education, crime, drug abuse, unemployment, and over-crowding in homes [27] – all of which contribute, whether partially or significantly, to violence against women in the home and in public. This is confirmed to a particular extent in Marie Macey’s study on ethnic Pakistani women, which was conducted in informants’ homes, schools, domestic violence units, psychiatric hospitals, and day centres revealing a startling consensus on gender-based violence amongst disparate informants [28].

Domestic violence occurs across class and ethnic lines, however, the plight of ethnic Pakistani women is not sufficiently addressed primarily due to the political reluctance to be involved in what is commonly understood as a racially-sensitive issue and therefore best left as a concern of the British-Pakistani community. In an effort to establish a peaceful image of the community devoid of negative racial stereotypes, community leaders tend to downplay the level of domestic violence in Pakistani households. But by doing so those with the capacity to help and support were perceived to be colluding to the women’s suffering, manifested in “mental breakdowns, depression, suicides, and even murders” [29]. Many survivors were shocked by the attitudes of both religious leaders and racial equality officers who, respectively, advised them to simply put up with the abuse and be dutiful wives, and refrained from interfering with ‘private’ cultural issues. This is compounded by the fact that the former group find research that indicates “diversity, fragmentation, division, and oppression threatening and unacceptable” [30]. Social pressure from the rest of White society on the other hand is a complex mix of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and ignorance, as well as a genuine need to not offend. Women coerced into marriage are caught between the protection of the police and the members of her family who claim a right to preserve the “honour” (izzat) of the family and community. In such situations Islam has been used as a resource to justify threats of violence against people such as the police or social workers who are offending the Islamic “code” for interfering with what is perceived as tradition and religious obligation that needs to be preserved [31].

The inclusion of religion as a social category for intersectional analysis is significant here for the British-Pakistani in Bradford as Islam is perceived as a source of community cohesion as well as hope and strength [32]. Both fundamentalism and moderate stances of Islam have emerged side by side in times of conflict and racial / religious conflicts in Bradford, which could explain both the defensive and aggressive behaviour of some men [33]. Furthermore, religion has been used as an excuse for male chauvinist behaviour and the unfair treatment of women. In more extreme cases, women have been subjected to domestic abuse for not fulfilling the role expected of a “dutiful” Pakistani-Muslim wife. The attachment of religious identity to a cultural one is close and often difficult to separate, thus the frequent conflation of the two is often seen in the attitudes towards women, romanticised as gatekeepers of culture and faith. Many men also place a great concern over the “appropriate” dress of younger women as a matter of family and community honour [34]. The importance of women’s “modesty” may also symbolise a concern about the threat of so-called un-Islamic or “Western” corruption to their tradition and values. Religion and cultural pressure are not the only factors contributing to male dominance and gender-based violence but the existing multiple material deprivation that is also viewed to predispose ethnic Pakistani men towards tension and violence [35].

Women caught in the crossroads

Macey [36] collates race (or ethnicity), gender, religion, the generation gap, socio-economic factors as the constituent elements that intersect with one another in the construction of aggressive Pakistani male identity and resultant attitudes towards their female counterparts. In addition, rational choice and manipulation of cultural and religious elements to attain desired ends also figure into the dialectical formation of these identities [37]. I would like to refine Macey’s analysis by complicating the social location of ethnic-Pakistani women further by suggesting that sexuality as an additional analytical category is worth including seeing that gender identity and reproduction are both significant in the control of women. One of the tendencies of feminist intersectional studies is the theorisation of the macro and micro levels as separate, almost independent entities. According to Brah [38], “analysis of women’s narratives must be framed against wider economic, political, and cultural processes in non-reductive ways”. With this view, immigration policies and the economic condition at large figure prominently in the disadvantage that Pakistani women in Bradford face. The wider issue of private versus public spaces with regard to gender-based violence against women is important here, although it is jealously guarded as a domestic affair of the community it cannot be avoided as an issue of general societal concern. Violence against women after all, as Crenshaw [39] puts it, is “largely recognised as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class”.

In her re-conceptualisation of intersectionality, Stanaeus proposes the “compensating, overshadowing, saturating, hiding, and drowning” effect of one social category over one or many others as a reason why some groups can be rendered invisible from one sociological point of view. Adopting Stanaeus’ reworking of the concept of intersectionality, the ethnic marker of these women have completely overshadowed, saturated, hidden, and “drowned” the gendered aspects of the their lives, aspects that deserved to be protected from male violence and dominance regardless of their cultural and ethnic context. Similarly, Macey [40] sees the “prioritization of racial and cultural differences over other features of the person, such as gender, age, class location and religious affiliation”. Asian women, from the viewpoint of social service providers, the police, doctors, and lawyers, are figures undifferentiated by their race and religion despite the multiple intersecting elements that figure into their lives. The situation of Asian women in Bradford echoes Sojourner Truth’s lament, “Ain’t I a woman?”, in which they have been neglected as a group and denied protection from male-dominated violence for reasons, among others, of fundamentally being female. Like Sojourner Truth, it is an identity claim that is constructed in relation to a multiplicity of dimensions and also constituted in and via power relations.

Conclusion

At this point of reflection, I wish to reiterate the way intersectionality can be distinguished from other theoretical approaches in its strive for the complexification of sociological categories and by its recognition that components of power, categories, and experiences do not exist in isolation but rather interact and constitute one another in significant ways. Intersectionality also taps into the interdisciplinary nature feminist politics that aims not only to theorise and understand women’s subordination in society, but also to remedy it in the most effective ways possible. And perhaps what makes intersectionality so enduring for future feminist politics is its ability to evoke differences and diversity that exist within a group as well as between groups. Despite the challenges in undertaking intersectional analysis with regards to the multiplicity of social categories and the diversity within them, new categories, subjects, and experiences are waiting to be discovered. Beyond the litany of ‘gender-class-race’, sexuality, disability, religion, and language are also waiting to be included in the standard repertoire of feminist analyses. Via intersectional analyses, the category ‘gender’ has been problematised to account for the neglected points where gender and other important experiential categories overlap, illuminating certain experiences of whole groups of women previously invisible to feminist analyses. Intersectionality tests the boundaries and transience of social categories, but it is also not immune to its own motivations as intersectionality, according to Crenshaw, is but a “transitional concept” that can be “replaced as our understanding of each category becomes more multidimensional” [41].

Intersectionality – the essay (part 1)

In the last three decades of the development of feminist thought, the term that started it all – “gender” – had been placed in the dock. Gender, as a single-axis social category consisting of “women / female” and “men / male” began to lose its currency and no longer adequate in an enterprise committed to theorising and battling complex forms of social injustices. The edifice of gender as a social category was first chipped away by feminists of colour who questioned both the inclusivity of the term ‘gender’ with regards to women of colour and feminism’s tendency to treat gender and race as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis. From this dual-edged criticism emerged intersectionality as a new means of approaching the multiple layers of subordination experienced by groups of women who remain outside the idea of the archetypal woman imagined by feminists of yore (White, able-bodied, heterosexual, and middle-class).

Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality began as a critical response to the silence of White feminists on African American women’s oppression and the anti-racist movement for ignoring the needs of women in the name of racial unity. Crenshaw argues that anti-sexist politics and anti-racist approaches very rarely correspond to each other negatively implicating the understanding of black women as subjects for feminist intervention [1]. Crenshaw’s most noted body of work concerns mainly around women of colour in the United States and was developed as an analytical method in feminist law, but many other feminist scholars found resonance in their own research that deals with different social contexts altogether, providing a panacea to the inadequacies of feminist thought and practice in a variety of ways. What is learned and adopted from Crenshaw’s insight is that oppression exists on multiple axes, each axis interacting and affecting another in significant ways.

In the following sections, I shall divide my attention to intersectionality into its different constituents: its features and its usefulness as an analytical framework, and the challenges of developing intersectional approaches with special regard to its function to “capture” real-life experiences. In the tail-end section of this essay I will discuss the effects of cultural homogenisation in the multiple subordination of Asian women in Bradford and how an intersectional insight can help in recovering of their gendered subjectivities. In this essay we will follow how intersectionality as a new paradigm in feminist thought reconstitutes the term and category ‘gender’ as anti-essentialist and dynamic, multi-dimensional and contextually specific.

Intersectionality and its constituent parts

Definition

Intersectionality, as the noun suggests, is the point of contact made between lines, elements, categories. As an analytical tool, its main focus are the subjects that assume the positions at such intersections. It aims to further the feminist agenda to not only focus on gender as a source of female oppression, but extend their energies to studying other ‘power’ dimensions such as class, race, sexuality, and disability in particular the neglected social locations in which two (or more) of these dimensions intersect. Dorthe Staunaes describes intersectionality as a process of “doing” and an argument for examining this “doing” in situ, where “concrete intersections, hierarchies, and elaboration are not predetermined [2]. Intersectionality as a concept, according to McCall [3], addresses “the relationships among multiple dimensions and modalities of social relations and subject formations”. Intersectionality has also been described as crossroads [4], ‘axes’ of difference [5] and as a dynamic process [6]. The multiple notions of intersectionality reflect its amorphous and expansive character but underscoring all definitions is the recovery of woman as subjects from the multiple entanglements of her social contextualisation.

Subjectivity: The question of “Who” intersectionality seeks to address

Where is ‘woman’ in intersectional analysis? This is a question that, ironically, had become a riddle for feminist scholars who critique the very foundation of categories that have privileged men and their experiences in particular modes of thought and sciences that have a claim on objectivity and truth. These critiques dovetailed into two camps: post-structuralist feminism and post-modern feminism. For post-structuralist feminists, the subject of analytical interest, woman, is a product of a sense of self and social conditions. The post-structuralist feminist concept of subjectivity is informed by Foucault’s notion of the individual: as both an active subject that engages with her social conditions and one that is subjected to conditions surrounding her contextualisation [7]. The subject, however, is confined to think, say, and feel only within the boundaries of discourse(s) but has, however, multiple points of resistance to subvert meaning and actions of subjugation. In post-structuralist feminism, the subject is an entity predisposed to fluidity and engaged in constant processes of becoming as opposed to the concept of identity that presupposes a core of sameness within an individual that remains constant.

With the view that difference exists intra-categorically, post-modern feminists, on the other hand, in certain respects go hand in hand with intersectional idea of the permeability of classical categories of gender, race, and class. Arguably, both strands align with the anti-categorical approaches that assume the difficulty, if not impossibility, of experiences, the multiplicity of identities, and social locations fitting in neatly into a “master” category [8]. Conversely, this deconstructive method of analytical categories involves the deconstruction of social inequalities into their constituent parts which often include symbolic violence and material inequality are products of the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender [9]. This further suggests that identities are by nature fragmented and constituted in multiplicities. What is at stake in intersectionality is how each category “articulate” with one another [10]: how race is gendered, how class is racialised, and how gender is classed. The identification of the subject that is situated within a network of articulating categories can help with framing subjectivities whilst simultaneously provide a solution to minimising the complexity and the size of terrain of the different categories.

McCall [11] suggests beginning an analysis with delineating the intersections of certaindimensions within a particular category that a group of women share. However, this comes with the presupposition that particular dimensions of an analytical category at one given time is more important than others. To illustrate: a British African, middle-class, heterosexual woman is a subject at an intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender but experiences one facet of each category. These “personal narratives”, as McCall names them, are powerful in that a snapshot or the “partial crystallisation of social relations in the identities of particular social groups” can mark a beginning of a more true-to-life analysis that “represents only one side of a set of intersecting social relations, not social relations in their entirety” [12].

The struggle between social categories and human complexity

Given the complexity of human experience, it is hardly surprising that often social categories do not have the capacity to account for or “capture” it. Intersectionality is then invoked to fill in the gaps within categories, establishing links between them, and “satisfy the demands of complexity” [13]. Social categories are not seen as simply an imposing force on subjects, but also play an important part in forming subjectivities equally as much as subjects help define the social categories they inhabit. Social categories are the implements of order, of inclusion and exclusion. To a certain extent, the process of social categorising creates hierarchies. Often, social categories are understood as static variables, “woman” (determined biologically and/or socially) or “Muslim” (assumed via socialisation processes). This, according to Stanaues [14], can be deconstructed if social categories are viewed beyond as simply about having or being, but rather something that one does. Social categories are then displaced from an “essential being to constructed becoming” (ibid). They are done, undone, and redone in a variety of ways in relation to other categories. Therefore, they can understood to be performed, quoted, reproduced, and trangressed [15].

For Crenshaw, the problems rest not on social categories in themselves, but more the “particular values attached to them, and the way those values foster and create hierarchies” [16]. To this line of thought Crenshaw suggests looking at how power has clustered around certain categories and not on others. The “power clusters” here brings to mind a Foucauldian sense of power; not entirely as a source of repression but of its role in the drive of knowledge in discourses, the way it leads to hegemonic discourses while it subjugates others, and also the notion of power that resides in the subject in the form of resistance and new discourses.

Given Foucault’s formulation of power as all-pervasive while at the same time elusive [17], locating power clusters and the conditions that give rise to them may be a more challenging task than identifying their manifestation in hegemonic discourses of gender, race, and class. This leads to another point of McCall contention: the very size of inequality. In her view, intersectionality has the potential to locate more precisely the coordinates of subordination in its multiple manifestations. Social inequality must also be theorised as dynamic and subject to changes in location and magnitude. Once an inequality was viewed to be big, and perhaps it is now small. In one place they are large, in other places they might be small [18].

Challenges to a new paradigm of thought

As discussed above, the complexity of intersectionality has the potential to reveal an uncharted terrain of women’s experiences. But due to its own breadth and complexity, pitfalls are never far. One of the major difficulties in feminist research that extends beyond the geographical contexts of the United States and Western Europe is the question of the nomenclature of gender, sexuality, class, and race in the local vernacular. To begin with, the concept of ‘gender’ does not have an equivalent in every language. As a result, theorising the experiences of women in a system with different cultural understanding of womanhood using Western frameworks of intersectionality will be complicated and risks charges of Eurocentrism.

Indeed, the difficulty of establishing certain categories in the English language, namely race, due to its own nebulous sociological and biological underpinnings, cannot be dismissed. The same goes for class. Social class is a contested category of various cultural values and meanings underscored with different theoretical and political perspectives [19]. Hence, feminist scholars must be in a position to recognise that the act of ‘naming’ category is itself arises from a point of privilege and power, and thus a possible contributor to creating and maintaining division and certain inequalities. As far as feminist analysis and the social sciences in general are concerned, analytical categories are continually being critiqued and revised to reflect the changes in an increasingly globalised society which indicates how categories do not in themselves have any underlying essence.

Studies that unmask the intersections of social categories are also dependent on the very categories that make such a study possible. In other words, intersectional approaches may be hindered by the rigidity of the categories that are offered. Archer, Hutchings, and Leithwood [20] concur that terms such as “intersecting” or “cross-cutting” continue to imply fixed, observable realities and critique the way homogenised social categories are often simply added together only to be elaborately separated later into their constituent parts. Questions are also raised in terms of establishing limits to capturing such a complexity where size and significance of each analytical category are a matter of important concern.

Often the problem of the size and significance of every element in every respective category are the main reasons why studies are divided into separate specialised categories – gender, race, class, etc. – with little to no overlap between them [21]. A study that aims to be exhaustive and far-reaching in terms of capturing reality may also be too extensive in word and page length to be accepted in a peer-reviewed journal. The richness of an intersectional study can, however, be compressed in monographs of which recently has been published by a growing number of mainstream presses, including university presses [22]. This offers an indicator of the receptiveness to more expansive intersectional feminist research writings.

As a mode of analysis, intersectionality may be hindered by the unflexibility of methods rather than constrained by theoretical framework or the subjects. Methodology, McCall [23] notes, is an element of feminist research that is confined to discipline, thereby restricting the possibility of making interdisciplinary analyses fully effective. Thus, to overcome the disciplinary boundaries, different methods should be considered to attain the complexity that is desired in intersectional analysis. A number of feminist scholars have critiqued intersectional analyses as only relevant to those who endure multiple forms of subordination [24], though from my point of view this criticism is demonstrative of both social privileges of sorts reflected on the researcher and short-sightedness in their view of the versatility of intersectional analyses as other feminist scholars have adopted intersectionality in studies that have little do with the multi-layered oppression¹.

Conversely, Hutchinson argues that intersectionality, based on its basic premise, is not at all a unique experiences but rather a “universal phenomenon” seeing that in reality, every individual is at a crossroad of a multiplicity of elements. Hutchinson calls for multidimensionality as it treats complex subordination as a phenomenon not limited to groups of people currently excluded from a discourse of equality [25]. This debate as to whether women’s oppression is best illuminated with an intersectional analysis or multidimensional analysis, whether it should be understood as experience consistently aligned with particular forms of established identities or simply a product of institutional structures, is taken up here in the next section on gender-based violence against Pakistani women in North England.

Footnote:

1In Patricia Hill Collin’s analysis of the American family as a site of intersectionality traces the multiple social elements that contribute to the construction of family values (Hill Collins, 1998).