Out of the Ivory Tower: Feminist Research for Social Change (original) (raw)

A politics of the female body Final version.doc

The South African society can be described as a society infested by rape and violence against female persons. Although nearly eighty percent of South African citizens see themselves as Christian, female rape and violence against women is a common occurrence. The question posed in the article is whether religious texts can be of value in healing the South African society. The paper argues that an uncritical reading of the story of Susanna (Additions to Daniel) in the Septuagint does not change negative attitudes and behaviour of males towards women. To articulate the argument, the article utilizes insights of Michel Foucault on the relation between power and knowledge, the submission of human bodies and the objectification of the subject. Furthermore, Peter L Berger’s understanding of the social construction of reality and the role of religion within societies is employed to examine the relationship between religion based gender biases and rape.

Prison Periods: Women's Bodily Resistance to Gendered Control

Prison Periods: Women's Bodily Resistance to Gendered Control, 2022

Prisons are places of power and resistance. This article is based on original research material derived from Arabic, English, and Hebrew sources, including interviews with menstruating prisoners from Palestine, Northern Ireland, England, and the United States. I document and translate stories, including those of minors who had their first periods behind bars. I then show how several global prison structures fail to provide minimum support, from offering adequate sanitary products to accessing toilets and showers. I also ask what the menstruating body-and its treatment by prison guards and by prisoners-enables us to understand about the gendered realities of detention, and about the possibilities of resistance to those realities. The article argues that masculinization by the prison authorities through mechanisms of shaming and embarrassing of prisoners on periods is a crucial component of gendered control over bodies and spirits in detention. I examine the prison journey from interrogation rooms, court spaces, and prison cells, to the use of prison vehicles to transport prisoners between prisons and to/from courts, and "health care" spaces. I have structured the article around this spatialization to emphasize how gendered control goes beyond one space, and how all spaces illuminate different aspects of gendered control and masculinization. A key contribution in this article can be put as follows: while prisons use menstruation to consolidate gendered control over prisoners' bodies, prisoners use those same bodies to resist such control not only of the prison authorities in question but also of detention more broadly. I conclude by making a case for prison abolition, paying particular attention to the nuances of prisons in settings of ongoing coloniality and authoritarianism.

Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism

This exciting new collection engages with and extends the growing feminist literature on lived and imagined embodiment. It argues for consideration of the skin as a site where bodies take form, suggesting that skin is already written upon, as well as being open to re-inscription. Divided into parts on skin encounters, skin surfaces and skin sites, the contributions in the book are informed by psychoanalytical, phenomenological and post-colonial approaches to embodiment, as well as by feminist theory. Individual contributors consider issues such as: the significance of piercing, tattooing and tanning; the assault of self-harm upon the skin; skin as the site of memory and forgetting; the relationship between human and robotic skins; skin colour; the relation between body painting and the land among the indigenous people of Australia; and the cultural economy of fur in Canada. Whether the skin is mortified or glorified, marked or scarred by ageing or disease, or stretched in enveloping the skin of another in pregnancy, it is lived as both a boundary and a point of connection. The skin is the place where one touches and is touched by others; it is both the most intimate of experiences and the most public marker of raced, sexed and national histories. This book will be essential reading for students and academics specialising in feminist and body theory. Contributors include

Editorial Note: At the Heart of Body Politics

Development, 2001

As I write this I have just received an Internet rallying call for support by Nawal el Saadaw, the Egyptian writer, feminist and novelist, asking for international support against her impending trial. She faces divorce and incarceration for stating in a newspaper interview that the veiling of women is against the true spirit of Islam and correct interpretation of the Koranic text.

Changing Bodies, Ambivalent Subjectivities, and Women’s Punishment

Feminist Criminology, 2017

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