Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1679021
Andrea Waling
ABSTRACT This article discusses the emergence of ‘toxic’ and ‘healthy masculinity’ in public discourse in addressing gender inequalities. ‘Toxic’ has emerged through greater awareness of men’s violence against women, and men’s high rates of health distress and lack of help-seeking. ‘Healthy’ is thus a response to ‘toxic masculinity’, attempting to encourage men to engage in expressions of masculinity that are not harmful to others, or themselves as a way to address gender inequalities. This article argues that in using a term such as ‘toxic masculinity’, we continue to position men as victims of a broader vague entity rather than highlighting their agency in the reproduction of masculinity. Equally, in using a term such as ‘healthy masculinity’, we continue to set masculinity up as the only expression of gender that men can legitimately engage in, thus reinforcing the notion that femininity (and by extension, androgyny) remains a less valued, and less legitimate, expression of gender. In doing so, ‘toxic’ and ‘healthy masculinity’ continue to reproduce, rather than address gender inequalities, and do not support the breaking down of gender binaries.
{"title":"Problematising ‘Toxic’ and ‘Healthy’ Masculinity for Addressing Gender Inequalities","authors":"Andrea Waling","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1679021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1679021","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the emergence of ‘toxic’ and ‘healthy masculinity’ in public discourse in addressing gender inequalities. ‘Toxic’ has emerged through greater awareness of men’s violence against women, and men’s high rates of health distress and lack of help-seeking. ‘Healthy’ is thus a response to ‘toxic masculinity’, attempting to encourage men to engage in expressions of masculinity that are not harmful to others, or themselves as a way to address gender inequalities. This article argues that in using a term such as ‘toxic masculinity’, we continue to position men as victims of a broader vague entity rather than highlighting their agency in the reproduction of masculinity. Equally, in using a term such as ‘healthy masculinity’, we continue to set masculinity up as the only expression of gender that men can legitimately engage in, thus reinforcing the notion that femininity (and by extension, androgyny) remains a less valued, and less legitimate, expression of gender. In doing so, ‘toxic’ and ‘healthy masculinity’ continue to reproduce, rather than address gender inequalities, and do not support the breaking down of gender binaries.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"362 - 375"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1679021","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43030104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1679018
C. Foo
ABSTRACT In Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, Nora Flood sees Robin Vote by way of deflection, looking away from the beloved to better see her. This article will discuss the conditions of perception in Nightwood: how the act of seeing, as a product of knowledge (rather than a means of knowing the world), is forsaken for an alternative modality of seeing that moves away from identification and brings the less visible into view. The narrative of the sexual deviant is rearranged to resist straight reading practices. By developing a lens of negative perception, this article argues that seeing the world in perpetual negativity, at a slant, and as bent bodies in Nightwood is a queer response to the experience of being excluded from the positive, heteronormative narrative and yet still enduring and existing within it.
{"title":"Bent on the Dark: Negative Perception in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood","authors":"C. Foo","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1679018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1679018","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, Nora Flood sees Robin Vote by way of deflection, looking away from the beloved to better see her. This article will discuss the conditions of perception in Nightwood: how the act of seeing, as a product of knowledge (rather than a means of knowing the world), is forsaken for an alternative modality of seeing that moves away from identification and brings the less visible into view. The narrative of the sexual deviant is rearranged to resist straight reading practices. By developing a lens of negative perception, this article argues that seeing the world in perpetual negativity, at a slant, and as bent bodies in Nightwood is a queer response to the experience of being excluded from the positive, heteronormative narrative and yet still enduring and existing within it.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"325 - 342"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1679018","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43599287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1679020
Tamlyn Avery
ABSTRACT The extensive ‘secretarial’ labour that Gretel Karplus Adorno performed for the Frankfurt School is often overlooked in critical accounts. This article examines the Adornos' division of textual labour, and Karplus' ‘vulture-like’ stenography, distinguishing it from the dominant modernist views of secretarial labour, such as T. S. Eliot's automaton typist, and Henry James's typist-as-medium. The Adornos' stenographical method hinges upon a dialectical division of labour, which can be read through Theodor Adorno's aphorism ‘Sacrificial Lamb’. Adorno's writer elides the ‘risk of formulation’ necessary to commit to unformed ideas, by engaging his ‘troublesome helper’ typist in a dialectical struggle over textual authority. Whilst the dictator dominates his aide, the text still bears the imprint of its invisible contributor. Indeed, as Karplus shoulders Adorno's own divested ‘risk of formulation’ after they wed in 1937, he develops his critique of the capitalist mode of production, which lures women to the workforce under the promise of emancipation, and instead exploits and devalorizes their mental and physical labour. Simultaneously, Adorno cultivates a philosophical style that supports his modernist aesthetics, characterised by fragmentation, parataxis, and verbal improvisation, abetted by Karplus and their mutual investment in the risks of writing.
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Pub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1644604
Nontsasa Nako
ABSTRACT While widely studied, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission produced an archive that still calls for deeper scholarly engagement. Its archive calls to mind Eric Ketelaar’s (2000, “Archivistics Research Saving the Profession.” American Archivist 63 (2): 322–340; 2001. “Tacit Narratives: The Meanings of Archives.” Archival Science 1 (2): 131–141) concept of archivalisation which is concerned with how things are considered archive worthy and subsequently how the archive is accessed and what is extracted. This article offers an in-depth analysis of one witness testimony, that of Mrs Bessie Mdoda, to make a case for taking seriously the ‘liveness’ of witness testimony to the commission's archival ideal. While the TRC archive is replete with errors in interpretation, transcription and translation and omits many of the commission’s processes, materials and bureaucracy from its record, it still contains enough for scholars to listen to what is there. Via the analysis of one oral narrative, I argue that when closely read in context and with awareness of difference, witness testimony may challenge many of the prevailing assumptions about how people interacted with the commission as witnesses, especially black women. Using one woman’s testimony, I point to the possibilities of going beyond archivalisation and suggest that the TRC archive requires an ethical and engaged user who pays attention to the liveness of the testimony and bears witness by closely reading the given narratives within their immediate and historical context.
在被广泛研究的同时，南非真相与和解委员会(South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission)制作了一份档案，仍需要更深入的学术参与。它的档案让人想起Eric Ketelaar(2000)的《档案研究拯救职业》。美国档案学家63 (2):322-340;2001. “隐性叙事:档案的意义”。档案科学1(2):131-141)存档的概念，它关注的是如何认为事物具有存档价值，以及随后如何访问档案以及提取什么。本文对贝西·姆多达夫人的证词进行了深入分析，以证明认真对待证人证词的“活力”对委员会档案理想的重要性。虽然TRC的档案在解释、抄写和翻译方面充满了错误，并且从记录中省略了许多委员会的流程、材料和官僚作风，但它仍然包含了足够的内容，让学者们听听那里有什么。通过对一个口头叙述的分析，我认为，如果在上下文中仔细阅读并意识到差异，证人证词可能会挑战许多关于人们如何作为证人与委员会互动的主流假设，尤其是黑人妇女。我以一位妇女的证词为例，指出了超越档案化的可能性，并建议TRC档案需要一个有道德和积极参与的用户，他关注证词的活力，并通过在其当前和历史背景下仔细阅读给定的叙述来作证。
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Pub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1644608
Sarah Smith
{"title":"In Women’s Words: Violence and Everyday Life During the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor, 1975–1999","authors":"Sarah Smith","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1644608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644608","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"263 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644608","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44253726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1644607
Anna Elomäki
ABSTRACT This article contributes to literature on gender and austerity by analysing recent neoliberal transformations of governance that have facilitated the adoption of highly gendered austerity measures and constrained the conditions for gender equality policy in Finland. It examines two austerity-enhancing governance reforms: the national implementation of the new European Union (EU) economic governance rules and the OECD-inspired reform of the government’s political steering process. Whereas the EU-reinforced development of a new steering model for public finance has made austerity a permanent state of affairs, the reform of the government’s political steering process has subsumed all other political goals to the fiscal frame and pushed gender equality off the political agenda. Both governance reforms have depoliticised and de-democratised political decision making, making it more difficult to contest the gendered consequences of austerity.
{"title":"Governing Austerity: Governance Reforms as Facilitators of Gendered Austerity in Finland","authors":"Anna Elomäki","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1644607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644607","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article contributes to literature on gender and austerity by analysing recent neoliberal transformations of governance that have facilitated the adoption of highly gendered austerity measures and constrained the conditions for gender equality policy in Finland. It examines two austerity-enhancing governance reforms: the national implementation of the new European Union (EU) economic governance rules and the OECD-inspired reform of the government’s political steering process. Whereas the EU-reinforced development of a new steering model for public finance has made austerity a permanent state of affairs, the reform of the government’s political steering process has subsumed all other political goals to the fiscal frame and pushed gender equality off the political agenda. Both governance reforms have depoliticised and de-democratised political decision making, making it more difficult to contest the gendered consequences of austerity.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"182 - 197"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644607","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43595482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-04-03DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1644605
Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, S. O’Sullivan, Yvette Watt
ABSTRACT The ‘pussy panic’ of our title is a phrase that belongs to Susan Fraiman. It is a diagnosis, a lament, and a warning about how Animal Studies (AS) is currently torn between rising academic respectability bestowed through the ‘installation of Derrida as founding father’, and the neglect that this entails for AS’s deep roots in feminist scholarship going back decades, and across a number of disciplines. Finding that a ‘proximity to this feminized realm’ of ‘siding with animals’ can bring about a ‘pussy panic’ in male scholars, Fraiman draws a parallel between academic mainstreaming and the suppression of the ‘emotionally and politically engaged’ work of earlier feminist writers (93). Inspired by Fraiman’s reading and her sense of a lingering pussy panic in the field of AS, we were interested to inquire whether or not the academic legitimacy the field deserves has also brought with it a privileging of men’s voices as it has developed over the years. We conducted a large, broad-ranging international survey of AS scholars. From that larger survey, the issue of gender stood out and enabled us to investigate Fraiman’s observations further. Our data lend support to the idea that ‘pussy panic’ has indeed shaped the direction of the field so far.
{"title":"‘Pussy Panic’ and Glass Elevators: How Gender is Shaping the Field of Animal Studies","authors":"Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, S. O’Sullivan, Yvette Watt","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1644605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644605","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ‘pussy panic’ of our title is a phrase that belongs to Susan Fraiman. It is a diagnosis, a lament, and a warning about how Animal Studies (AS) is currently torn between rising academic respectability bestowed through the ‘installation of Derrida as founding father’, and the neglect that this entails for AS’s deep roots in feminist scholarship going back decades, and across a number of disciplines. Finding that a ‘proximity to this feminized realm’ of ‘siding with animals’ can bring about a ‘pussy panic’ in male scholars, Fraiman draws a parallel between academic mainstreaming and the suppression of the ‘emotionally and politically engaged’ work of earlier feminist writers (93). Inspired by Fraiman’s reading and her sense of a lingering pussy panic in the field of AS, we were interested to inquire whether or not the academic legitimacy the field deserves has also brought with it a privileging of men’s voices as it has developed over the years. We conducted a large, broad-ranging international survey of AS scholars. From that larger survey, the issue of gender stood out and enabled us to investigate Fraiman’s observations further. Our data lend support to the idea that ‘pussy panic’ has indeed shaped the direction of the field so far.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"198 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1644605","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45404937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-03-11DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1576503
Alecia Simmonds
ABSTRACT This article analyses representations of deodorising products in Australian women's magazines from 1880 to 1940 to examine how women were encouraged to fear their own smells and mistrust their own bodies. I argue that the transition to modernity witnessed a reduction in olfactory tolerance that fell along class and gender lines. Smells were imbued with new cultural meanings that served to reinforce women's subordinate status and to pathologise women's bodies on the supposed eve of their emancipation. As public space was increasingly democratised, smell was invoked to police social divisions and to render them culturally intelligible. As such, this article brings feminist history and the history of sexuality into dialogue with the history of the senses to redirect scholarly attention to the politics of smell. It also challenges dominant interpretations of modernity that emphasise the primacy of the visual.
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Pub Date : 2019-01-29DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1570817
Maggie Tonkin
ABSTRACT RD Laing’s phenomenological approach to madness influenced early second wave feminism, since it buttressed the feminist critique of the nuclear family and exposed the abuses of institutional psychiatry in policing gender roles. However, feminist perceptions of Laing’s ‘gender blindness’, as exemplified by Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, and the feminist turn towards Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, soon moderated enthusiasm for Laing. In the 1970s, Laing became increasingly incensed about the medicalisation of childbirth, writing an unpublished manuscript, The Politics of Birth, and promoting the practice of therapeutic ‘re-birthing’. The latter practice is relentlessly satirised in Emma Tennant’s speculative novel The Crack (1978). Drawing on Laing’s unpublished papers, I show that even as feminists were disavowing, critiquing and satirising Laing, he was embracing feminist ideas. I argue that Laing’s emergent feminist sympathies underpin his critique of contemporaneous birthing practices and that there is a common thread linking his critique of psychiatric and obstetric abuses as being premised on a denial of the value of ‘unscripted’ human experience. This article thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of feminism’s own intellectual history and a reappraisal of Laing vis-a-vis feminism, which would contribute to the broader re-evaluation of Laing’s work currently underway.
{"title":"RD Laing, Feminism and the Politics of Birth and Re-birth","authors":"Maggie Tonkin","doi":"10.1080/08164649.2019.1570817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1570817","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT RD Laing’s phenomenological approach to madness influenced early second wave feminism, since it buttressed the feminist critique of the nuclear family and exposed the abuses of institutional psychiatry in policing gender roles. However, feminist perceptions of Laing’s ‘gender blindness’, as exemplified by Elaine Showalter’s The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, and the feminist turn towards Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis, soon moderated enthusiasm for Laing. In the 1970s, Laing became increasingly incensed about the medicalisation of childbirth, writing an unpublished manuscript, The Politics of Birth, and promoting the practice of therapeutic ‘re-birthing’. The latter practice is relentlessly satirised in Emma Tennant’s speculative novel The Crack (1978). Drawing on Laing’s unpublished papers, I show that even as feminists were disavowing, critiquing and satirising Laing, he was embracing feminist ideas. I argue that Laing’s emergent feminist sympathies underpin his critique of contemporaneous birthing practices and that there is a common thread linking his critique of psychiatric and obstetric abuses as being premised on a denial of the value of ‘unscripted’ human experience. This article thus argues for a more nuanced understanding of feminism’s own intellectual history and a reappraisal of Laing vis-a-vis feminism, which would contribute to the broader re-evaluation of Laing’s work currently underway.","PeriodicalId":46443,"journal":{"name":"Australian Feminist Studies","volume":"34 1","pages":"248 - 262"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2019-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08164649.2019.1570817","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44673814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-01-02DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605486
Tarsh Bates
ABSTRACT This article weaves together microsocial interactions, evolutionary theories of community and queer understandings of family, kinship and intimacy to grasp some of the complex microbiopolitics of the CandidaHomo ecology. I discuss contemporary scientific understandings of Candida albicans sociality as highly tactile and sensual, bodies constantly in touch with surfaces – chemicals, cells, tissues, prosthetics. I explore the highly contested field of evolutionary theories of social selection, including biogenetic kin selection and its biases about reproduction, intimacy and care. CandidaHomo ecologies are woven through queer kinship that is biological, but not genetic; embodied, but not essentialist. Queer communities, founded on choice and more-than-biological recognition, are considered as an alternative to dominant gene-centric kinship theories. These communities are intimate, performative and more-than-human, emerging from necessity and constantly co-created. However, homonormativity and biogenetic exclusion lurk in the closet of contemporary families of choice. I consider Luce Irigaray’s figuration of eros as a visceral and tactile reorientation of relatedness and care towards CandidaHomo kind, always already formed through impersonal intimacies and caresses. Finally, the artwork Surface Dynamics of Adhesion (2015) is discussed as a material-semiotic resolution and ‘technology’ for making kin, as Donna Haraway might say.
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