Bordering on in/difference
There’s a new book, edited by Sarah van Walsum and Thomas Spijkerboer, titled, Women and Immigration Law: New Variations on Classical Feminist Themes. I’m yet to see a copy, but it looks interesting. It seeks to
shows how immigration law situates gender conflicts outside the national order, projecting them onto non-western countries, exotic cultures, clandestine labour and criminal organizations. In doing so, immigration law sustains the illusion that gender conflicts have moved beyond the pale of European experience. In fact, the classical feminist themes of patriarchy, the gendered division of labour and sexual violence are still being played out at the heart of Europe’s societies, involving both citizens and migrants.
One does not have to think hard to find illustrations - ‘we’ are committed to the equal treatment of women, ‘they’ are not. Barbarians that they are.
At the same time, male migrants are perceived as a threat, women (and children) are not.
Which is to say: this is a particularly liberal form of racism and sexism. It establishes a boundary not so much as if it is a version of inclusion, but because it is a way of including with indifference. That is, it would be wrong I think to conceive of this inclusion as disingenuous or insincere.
The question, rather, is what is being included, under what conditions, and what is being excluded, and how. Briefly put: women, as a group - which means, as an abstract category - become the property of the chivalrous Western state, the protector of (individuated) freedoms. What is included is a difference which operates in an individuated sense, as competition, consumption, choice. Multiculturalism.
Wearing the burkha is a terrible infringement of individual rights, those poor women who get pressured into it. But, well, women wearing make-up, now that’s a matter of choice. It matters little that it might well be possible to find a higher level of make-up wearing among women in one Western city than the burkha might predominate in an ostensibly Muslim city. No, the former are choosing to wear make-up and that’’s that. There resides the end of politics - that which is beyond question.
Of course, related to these themes is the question of demographics vis a vis democracy, not only as it situates the topic of fertility and reproduction in a more or less overtly racialised, but for the most part an explicitly nationalist, register - the panics over the ‘declining reproduction rates of the white race,’ or, what is much the same thing, panics over the propensity of those ‘others’ to ‘breed too much’. It’s illustrative of just how deeply racist this entire construct is that many of the ostensibly anti-racist arguments against such panics seek to deliver assurances that, with time, the reproduction rates of migrants will decline due to ‘modernisation’. In other words, the categories of identity are not questioned.
Some more readings here.
This intersection is a really intriguing one, so I’ll look forward to this new book. Thanks for mentioning it.
One week of a course I’ve taught involves a comparison of the practices of male and female circumcision. Students often really struggle to get their heads around this one (unsurprisingly). There are two articles they read on female circumcision, one comparing British law on cosmetic surgery and ‘FGM,’ the other by an author Njambe (whose work seems to have disappeared into the aether - or is that *from* the aether - according to google). I’ll find the reference, though, because it’s a great piece which offers both a critique of the way western feminism has constructed female ‘circumcision’ as FGM, and a critically recounting of the author’s own experience of ‘circumcision’ (I can’t recall the Kenyan word she uses) drawing attention to the importance of engaging with the specificity of the context.
Laws around female circumcision in western countries are incredibly strict, and often prohibit practices like post-natal re-infibulation as well, with precisely the same kind of chivalrous protectionism you describe. Nikki Sullivan gave a paper at the BorderPolitics of Whiteness Conference in Sydney last year discussing the contrast between this prohibition and the ‘free choice’ of the ‘latest’ form of western aesthetic surgery - elective genital surgery which often involves similar techniques to infibulation. Keep an eye out - it’s sure to be published someplace soon.
I also recall Barbara Baird discussing the role that race plays in media representations of recent Australian rape cases. Public indignation always increases when it’s one of ‘our’ girls being attacked by one of ‘those’ men. Perfect case of establishing Western innocence (anti-sexism) by protesting the guilt of those misogynist ‘barbarians.’
Forgive the long-windedness. You tapped a thought I’d been tossing around for a while!
Sauvage [February 11, 2007 @ 1:21 pm]
Thanks for the suggestions - I’ll look out for them.
Speaking of circumcision, and you’ve likely seen it already, but Povinelli’s The Cunning of Recognition, has lots of interesting things to say, including this:
Generally, Povinelli’s take on the ways in which liberalism construes its own limits, justifies what is no longer up for question (that which is somehow indisputably repugnant), is really very sharp.
ps. No need to apologise for lengthy comments - that’s why the comments box is bigger than usual.
s0metim3s [February 11, 2007 @ 2:08 pm]
Thanks for the reference - it looks great and wonder of all wonders, it’s actually in my uni library!
Also, I received an email from a friend about the ‘Blackfriars Talks’ and it seemed way too topical not to at least link to, but I couldn’t find much reference to it online. I hope I’m not stretching hospitality to breaking point by posting this here, but I don’t have a blog of my very own, and Sydney-siders might be interested:
The Institute for International Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney and the NSW Branch of Amnesty International Australia present, the inaugural ‘Blackfriars Talks’:
*’How they treat their women’: the politics of women’s rights*
*Featuring:*
Professor Louise Edwards, Dr Christina Ho and Ms Kiran Grewal Introduced and interviewed by Ms Alice Brennan
DATE: THURSDAY 22 FEBRUARY, 2007
TIME: WELCOME REFRESHMENTS AT 5.45PM. THE EVENT WILL FINISH BY 8PM VENUE: UTS UNION FUNCTION CENTRE, LVL 6, TOWER BUILDING
RSVP: ESSENTIAL BY 15 FEBRUARY. _damien.spry@uts.edu.au_.
**PLEASE NOTE: For those who have attended IIS events before, the venue is different from previous occasions.**
*The Panellists:*
*Louise Edwards* is Professor of China Studies at UTS. She has published extensively on women in China with a particular focus on women in politics and gender in the family. Her latest book Gender, Politics, Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China is forthcoming with Stanford University Press. Louise is discussing human rights and campaigns to combat violence against women in the People’s Republic of China.
*Christina Ho* is a Lecturer in Social Inquiry at UTS. She researches gender, migration and multicultural politics, and is currently working on a project on Muslim women’s networks, sanctuary and security, in partnership with the United Muslim Women Association.
*Kiran Grewal *is a PhD candidate at the Institute for International Studies at UTS; her thesis topic is “gang rape and the ‘Young Muslim man’ in French and Australian public discourse”. She has worked at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, preparing submissions to the International Criminal Court and researching reports on war crimes trials in Kosovo. She was a monitor at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone and drafted training manuals, used in Sierra Leone and Liberia, for dealing with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. She is a qualified solicitor.
*Alice Brennan *works for ABC radio’s Triple J as a reporter on the Hack current affairs program and on JTV. She previously worked for ABC regional radio and is the winner of the 2005 ABC Andrew Ollie Scholarship. Alice is an alumnus of the UTS International Studies program, where she majored in Latin American Studies.
Sauvage [February 11, 2007 @ 2:47 pm]
Something else that might be of interest is Linda Zerilli’s work, (a bit here) some of which involves parsing some Italian feminist critiques of rights.
s0metim3s [February 11, 2007 @ 5:05 pm]
The nominally opposed discourse to that noted on the hijab/make-up, but reproducing the notions of protection, freedom and control, is also operating in sections of the Left, for example here.
benjamin rosenzweig [February 12, 2007 @ 11:15 am]
That’s too good (by which I mean, it’s too unimaginably creepy) not to quote:
Liberalism and communitarianism don’t seem all that divergent, do they?
s0metim3s [February 12, 2007 @ 3:22 pm]
Liberalism and communitarianism don’t seem all that divergent, do they?
Clearly not - the whole was essentially a fight over the location of right within liberal thought - Locke vs. Rousseau, if you will.
Craig [February 12, 2007 @ 11:37 pm]
And then there’s that whole beach-bikini-nazi nexus …
s0metim3s [March 5, 2007 @ 4:05 pm]