آنیما

Queering Life

2010-12-30T14:20:00.000-08:00

M. Ali Abdi

Queering Life

In this paper, I will delineate how the course Queer Theory and Queer Politics has helped me to understand, analyze and critique the surrounding world better in the last couple of months. I would like to show how queer theory and queer politics have been integrated into, as David Halperin wished to happen for queer students, my “scholarly practices” as a researcher, my “professional life” as an activist, and my “identity” and lived experiences in everyday social relations (p343). To do so, I will draw on my ethnography in Turkey on Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, my human rights activism related to the Iranian pro-democracy Green Movement, and the experiences of my daily life, arguing that while the course has equipped me with new theoretical tools helpful for my scholarly practices and professional activism, it has exacerbated my personal life, making the surrounding world irresistible.

1- Scholarly Practice: the case of a bisexual asylum seeker

When I was in Turkey this summer to carry out a field study on Iranian LGBT asylum seekers, I met Peyman, a 27-year-old man, who had escaped from Iran after being unexpectedly captured during sex with his male partner by his father who then opened a case for his son in the court. Peyman was the only person, among the 44 LGBT asylum seekers that I deep-interviewed in Turkey, who self-identified as bisexual. In fact, he is the only person among 101 Iranian LGBT asylum seekers currently living in Turkey, who has opened a case in UN as a “bisexual”.

According to international laws, refugee is “the one who, owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his [sic] nationality …” (emphasis added). Thus, should LGBT asylum seekers wish to be granted the refugee status, they have to prove two facts during the interview session in United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; a) there is a well-founded fear of being persecuted in their home country because b) they are a member of a particular social group of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or transgenders.

Peyman had not had much difficulty in proving the potential persecution waiting for him back home. He had kept the document, issued by Iranian authorities, by which he had been summoned to appear in the court. When I asked him how he responded to the second question, that is how he proved to the UN lawyers that he is a member of the particular social group of bisexuals, he told me he had first introduced himself as a gay but not a bisexual. When I asked him why, he said,

“Prior to going to the interview session (in UN), I got consultation from the two organizations (IRQR and IRQO, which support Iranian LGBT asylum seekers in Turkey in different ways, including giving legal consultations) that it’s better not to say that I am bisexual, because it would make my case complicated. They (the two organizations) told me that all of the asylum seekers in Turkey are either ham-jens-gara (homosexual) or trans (transgender). UN lawyers may not expect a bisexual …”

Later, during his interview in UN, he had admitted that he is sexually attracted to both men and women, and that he is bisexual. When I asked what changed his mind, he said,

“I felt stolen. I knew who I was. I was born bisexual not gay. Gays think I am straight who sometimes fuck men. But I am not one of them.”

Considering Peyman’s case, I would like to raise four points:

1) The language chosen at international law to recognize the LGBT refugee, that is member of a particular social group, is very much in consistent, as it is expected, with the contemporary framework of liberal pluralism within which one has to be a member of a community (or rather an “imagined community”) to claim rights; a model which belongs to Anglo-American traditions which “almost always presupposes an ethnic organization of identity” (Warner, 1993: xvii).

2) Most of the gay men whom I talked to had proved the “authenticity” of their sexual identity during UN interview session by associating themselves to the “gay life” in Tehran, i.e. by explaining that they had been members of the gay community. Some, most of them rural dwellers, were not participating in Tehran gay life, but, by reading blogs and searching the internet, were aware that they were members of the imagined community of gay men and, like the case study of Wetson on rural gays, “they interpret[ed] themselves [and their subjectivity] through that attachment” (34). However, Peyman’s narrative delineates two of the problems with - in particular - phrasing the definition of refugee on international law as such which necessitates refugees being member of a community, and with - in general - identity politics. First, as it is illustrated from his account, he perceives himself as bisexual even before entering a community of bisexuals or gays, or as Warner puts it, “nearly every lesbian or gay [or bisexual] remembers being such before entering a collectively identified space” (xxv), and, second, he constructs his identity by anti-identification with both “gays” and “straights who sometimes fuck men”, but not by linking his lived experiences with those of other bisexuals.

3) What might explain the consultations of the two organizations to Peyman not to introduce himself as bisexual is that, since bisexual subject can neither be produced through “gender of sexual object choice” – since the gender of sexual object choice might fluctuate and any sexual behavior which is non-gender-specific is understood, for instance in psychoanalysis, as a deviation from the normal sexual aim – nor through “gendered subject position” – since the gendered subject position of a bisexual might vary for a lack of finite and gender-specific object choices – and nor through “chronology of sexual identity” – since one of the requirement for the recognition of a sexual subjectivity is, unlike what bisexuals might experience, the consistency of its sexual or gendered object choice – then, “the inability of bisexuals to argue that they were born that way … makes rights claims within the public sphere especially problematic” which is why most of the theorists of sexual citizenship also limit their arguments to gays and lesbians (Hemmings: 23-27).

4) Yet, this is not to suggest that identity politics or identity categories must be dismissed. Although queer theorists have diligently emphasized the instability and fluidity of individual and collective identities and group boundaries, criticized identity politics for grounding itself on the dichotomies of, among other things, gay/straight and man/woman and for adhering to fixed essentialist, semi-ethnic identities which would simplify the complicated internal dynamics of a community, obscure power relations between members of a same community, exclude those whose practices, interests, or beliefs do not fit within that community, and let communities express very specific political demands, they, that is queer theorists, have also repeatedly stressed that “[t]here is a political necessity to use some sign now and we do …” where “leverage can be gained through … minority-rights discourse” (Butler, 1993: 311; Warner, xxviii), as it is gained, to some extent, for Iranian LGBT asylum seekers in Turkey whose lives or freedom would be in danger should they be deported. Thus, queer politics has not replaced identity politics. It exists in parallel, always posing the question “how to use it [that is identities] in such a way that its futural significations are not foreclosed? How to use the sign and avow its temporal contingency at once?” (Butler, 312)

2- Professional Life: the case of “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign”

My life is dedicated to the Iranian pro-democracy Green Movement; a civil right movement which was formed during the last presidential election in 2009 but is rooted in more than a hundred year struggle of Iranians for democracy and human rights, and is constituted of, but could not be reduced to, a rainbow of Iranian women’s, students’ and workers’ movements, aimed at not necessarily toppling the whole regime down, but celebrating different lifestyles and promoting respect for human beings’ dignity and respectability.

Since I came to Budapest in Sep 2009, I have been involved in generating campaigns and organizing demonstrations in order to highlight the widespread and systematic violation of human rights in my country and raise the voices of my friends who are struggling against despotism in different ways back home.

The campaign which I would like to discuss is “We Are All Majid Tavakoli”. On December 7^th 2009, the Iranian National Student Day, Majid Tavakoli, the Iranian leading student activist – and a good friend of mine – made a speech in a student demonstration in Amirkabir University, in which he denounced the Supreme Leader (the most powerful man of the country) for transforming Islamic Republic of Iran into a militarized, authoritarian, and oppressive regime.

As expected, Majid was arrested by security forces on the same day. But, some hours later, and unlike other similar incidents, his images were published on the pro-regime security forces online websites. The images were shocking for the average audience: Majid had been taken photo while wearing not his own clothes but “women’s clothes” with a chador[1] and scarf on his head. In fact, when he had been escaping from the university, he had worn women’s clothes not to be identified by security forces waiting for him at the university exit gate. Unfortunately, and unlike other successful escapes in drag, he was identified and arrested. The caption of the image on security forces website was straightforward: “Degenerate Student Arrested in Women’s Clothes while Escaping” (The photo is attached).

Publishing the image of Majid Tavakoli in drag was a victory for the regime. In a country where strict gender segregation and particular gender codes of behavior for men and women are cultivated and regulated by the government, and where a direct link is perpetuated between masculinity and heroism, broadcasting Majid Tavakoli in women’s clothes was meant to feminize and thus humiliate a prominent student leader, and disparage and ridicule the whole student movement.

Besides, as I understand better now, such image and its caption - like the image of the terrorist discussed by Puar and Rai (2002), which was widely published on websites or in posters in major American cities, depicting the turbaned bin Laden as the emasculated pervert deviant who is anally penetrated by the Empire State Building - did not only mean to belittle Majid Tavakoli or the student movement, but also, by juxtaposing three notions of femininity (understood from women’s clothes), cowardice (understood from Majid’s escaping from university) and degeneration (Majid in drag), it intended to legitimize the regime’s ideological configuration of gender, and normalize and discipline the very Iranian population.

In order to respond to security forces, I and some of my friends came to this idea: we made a group on facebook, entitled “We Are All Majid Tavakoli”, asking men, living anywhere in the world, to take a picture from themselves while wearing “women’s clothes” – that is wearing scarves on their heads - and send it for us, so that we can publish the photos in mass, in order to express solidarity with Majid, subvert the Iranian government’s intentions, and mock the regime’s ideology on gender binaries. There were expressions of discontent in the beginning from some men who compared such idea to “childish games”, but later, even before Iranian scholars in top US universities joined the campaign by taking photos from themselves with scarves on their heads, we had already received thousands of photos, and Campaign had been widely broadcasted on international media and newspapers, including CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, Washington Post, NY Times, France 24, Radio Free Europe, and tens of others (the critical analysis of how these media approached the Campaign is beyond the scope of this paper).[2]

Based on the body of literature that I have covered in the course Queer Theory Queer Politics, I would like to raise three points:

1) “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” was – what I call - a queer one because, first, Campaign was structureless, horizontal, and without a leader; that is, there were just a facebook group and participants were meant to upload their photos there; (Yet, many did not upload their pictures on that group but published them on their blogs, other websites, etc.) second, participants who sent their photos were coming from all over the world, realizing the slogan “We Are Everywhere”; third, participants were from diverse groups, with different ages, belong to different races, different nationalities and even different genders, that is even women participated in the Campaign by putting beard and mustache while wearing scarf; fourth, although participants were not in the streets, they were making claims by their performance and body gestures in front of the camera, or in Abelove’s terms, by being “actorish”; and fifth, participants’ photos were – using Cripm’s words as he describes ACT-UP activism - “campy”, “funny” and “ironic” (p87) and were marked with – using Abelove’s words as he explains Queer Nation actions – “visibility”, “outrage” and “humor” (p33). That is, while the mass numbers of photos and their effective distribution on social networks bear the message of public frustration and rage against government’s practices and of a claim to the centrality rather than marginality of dissidents, and while the very act of publishing one’s non-normative photo online was a celebration of visibility with focus on – using Taylor’s words – “representation” and “recognition” (p202), then, males’ make-ups, women’s mustaches, and their body postures in front of the camera were also meant to make the campaign entertaining and comical and let both the audience and participants laugh.

2) As we know from Foucault’s analysis of power, since there is not a local center for power from which power emanates, that is “it comes from everywhere”, and since there are multiplicity of force relations always at play against which there is no ultimate resistance, then the effects or results of people’s resistances are not necessarily as same as what they were planned for (Foucault, 93-95). Unsurprisingly, “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” got a new and unexpected meaning – at least a meaning that it had not been previously thought of: Iranian women’s rights activists embraced the Campaign for its what-they-called objection against the compulsory Hijab (veil) imposed on women by Iranian government. As succinctly uttered in the message of the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the Campaign should be understood as part of the history of Iranian women’s movement struggles: “You! My sons! You not only supported your friend Majid Tavakoli, but you defended ‘being a woman’, you showed women are not inferior to men, you protested against discriminatory laws against women such as the compulsory veil … Let me celebrate your wise engagement, not just in the student movement, but this time, in the Iranian women’s movement.”[3] That is, since the Iranian security forces thought of women as inferior to men within the dominant ideological framework of the regime, they had posted the image of Majid Tavakoli with scarf and chador to compare him with women, or to put him in the category of women, in order to belittle his masculinity and heroism, and, in response, “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign” was understood by women’s rights activists as defending “being a woman”, as men do not feel ashamed of being a woman, as pro gender equality activism, and as a protest against discriminatory laws against women including, as the scarves on men’s heads were interpreted to symbolize, the compulsory Hijab.

3) Although we did not demonstrate in public space, the internet social networks as major social forces that link us all around the world and influence public opinion, allowed us to use our bodies as means of protest, as what Foster calls in Choreographies of Protest (2003), “reservoir of signs and symbols”, and as means for “collective connectivity” (p395). Like the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960s, where the prejudicially perceived as “irrational” and “intrinsically violent” black bodies opposed such stereotypes by their very act of non-violent protest, and like ACT-UP die-ins of the late 1980s, where sick and healthy bodies lay side by side “ushering the place of the body, dead or dying from neglect, into public space, and with it the repressed knowledge of an epidemic” (p411), we, in “We Are All Majid Tavakoli Campaign”, produced and published masses of images of the as-it-was-understood-by-Iranian-security-forces degenerate and effeminate bodies of men in drag, flooded the internet social networks with as-it-was-understood-by-women’s-rights-activists ‘bodies on behalf of women’s bodies’, which, like the bodies of the participants of civil right movement sit-ins and ACT-UP, and with the symbolic scarves on the heads, “register … the effects of practices they [the bodies] were protesting against” (p411).

3- Identity and Lived Experiences: the world is becoming irresistible

I think living in this world has become much more difficult after the course. In fact, studying gender studies was enough helpful to decipher the social and delineates and deconstruct the patriarchal, misogynistic, and heteronormative presumptions embedded in social institutions, academia, cultural beliefs and practices, and etc. The course Queer Theory Queer Politics extended and enriched the previously learnt critical approaches. Yet, as I will briefly discuss, my life is just “fucked up”:

First; I simply cannot talk. While queer theorists insist on “the presence and importance of ‘words’ (discursive and linguistic processes) within the ‘material’ (Taylor, p206), and while they “undermine sexual categorization based upon a heterosexual-homosexual divide” (p199) it has become a continuous problem for me how and when to use the words such as, just to mention some, man, woman, gay, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, boy, girl, baby, youth, adult, elder, etc., without perpetuating the violent identical categories.

Second, if queer “is perpetuating the ‘aestheticisation of everyday life’ (Taylor, p213), I simply cannot resist hearing words with potential “negative” connotations, such as, again just to mention some, fat, old, short, bad, nasty, awful, unpleasant, lazy, ugly, etc., since they, I believe, are just social constructions whose uses are violent and engender discrimination. People, including gender studies students, do not get delighted when experiencing my reaction to the use of the negative words, or the words which are based on dichotomies. Most notably, I become totally frustrated when somebody uses the two words of strange and weird. Whenever in the class my lovely professor, Eszter, used the word “weird”, that is probably in every session, in terms such as “weird argument”, “weird activist”, “weird organization”, “weird paragraph” and etc, I always asked myself, isn’t the word “weird” opposite of the word “normal”? And isn’t use of such term loudly acknowledges that there are “normal arguments”, “normal activists”, “normal organizations”, “normal paragraphs”, and etc.? And, isn’t it very “non-queer” to use the word “weird” in the Queer Theory Queer Politics class? Or am I just becoming “too cynical”? (By the way, is it queer to use the term “too cynical”?! Doesn’t it imply that one can be “not cynical”, “less cynical” or “enough cynical”? Where is the “normal” and “standard” and “balanced” line of being cynical in relation to which “too cynical” is defined? Who defines and determines the location of that balanced line? Doesn’t queer theory mean to question and deconstruct such “balanced” locations?)

Third, doesn’t the “anti-mainstream” approach of queer theory lead to the differentiation between non-queers and queers? Doesn’t understanding Eszter’s use of the word weird in the queer class as “non-queer” foster the legacy of inclusions and exclusions, i.e. recognizing some as queers and some as non-queers? Isn’t the very basis of queer theory against such dichotomies?

Fourth, like queers who are accused of “reducing the question of social change to cultural representation alone” and “sidelining materialities” (Taylor, p200, 202), I am constantly questioned by my Iranian friends that, while there are hundreds of Iranians imprisoned for human rights activism, many of them my best friends, and while Iranians are pushing the project of modernity forward, that is struggling for democracy and freedom, then why I, as a human rights activist, devote this much time on the use of the words, on disidentification with identity categories, on arguing for fluidity of group boundaries, and on the other what-my-friends-believe-to-be non-real, abstract ideas? Is my “connection with … public [and I would add with reality] has eroded”, as Warner put it to criticize queer activists (p159)?

Fifth, whenever my lovely mother calls from Iran, she asks me if I have found an “appropriate girl to marry” since “it’s getting late and you are now 25”. Should I always respond to my mom that I do not want my sexuality to be regulated by the state, that I do not want the norms of straight culture discriminate against queers, that I do not want to be in complicity with fostering the existing hierarchies, that there are alternative life styles which people can choose so to recognize the “diversity of sexual and intimate relations as worthy of respect and protection” (p123)? Should I always respond that your understating of my age is very non-queer, since you identify it with “progressive, and thus future-oriented, teleologies as aligned with heteronormative reproduction?”(Freccero, p489)

Sixth, if three years ago my excitement was coming from, and I confess to that, issues such as family, love, marriage, girls, etc., the surrounding world has now become irresistible. Although the two courses of Anthropological Sexualities and Queer Theory Queer Politics have helped me experience new pleasures and new bodies, my life is now filled with more “ennui” than before. If queer “defines itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual” and if we might be able to say that “queer politics oppose society itself” (Warner, pxxvi, pxxvii), since “social realm … is interwoven with … normalizing methodologies of modern social knowledge”, then how is it possible to resist the pressure from society? With what methodological and epistemological tools are we equipped? And what are the alternative excitements and pleasures that queers can offer? Is there any way out of this what-I-call “fucked-up” life?

Conclusion

The course Queer Theory Queer Politics has enabled me to understand, analyze and critique the surrounding world better. It has equipped me with theoretical tools to use in my scholarly practices, guided me to understand and to be more self-critical of the kinds of human rights activism that I am doing, and has posed dilemmas in my daily life, in relation with friends, family members, and the very tiny elements of the social experience. The question is how to use both queer theory and queer politics in an efficient and productive way to increase pleasures and mitigate sufferings rather than exacerbating our physical and emotional conditions for always opposing the violent regimes of the normal.

References

Carla Freccero: “Queer Times,” South Atlantic Quarterly 106:3, Summer 2007, 485-494.

Clare Hemmings: “Bisexual Landscapes,” in Bisexual Spaces (New York and London: Routledge), 2002, 15-53.

David Halperin: “The Normalization of Queer Theory,” Journal of Homosexuality, v. 45, pp. 339–343.

Douglas Crimp: “The Melancholia of AIDS,” Art Journal, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 2003), pp. 81-90.

Henry Abelove: “From Thoreau to Queer Politics” in Deep Gossip (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London), 2003, pp. 29-42.

Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai, “Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots,” Social Text, no. 72 (2002), 117-49.

Kath Weston: “Get Thee To a Big City” in Long, Slow Burn: Sexuality and Social Science (New York and London: Routledge), 1998, 29-57.

Michel Foucault: excepts from History of Sexuality Vol. 1., trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books), 1988.

Michael Warner: “Introduction” in Michael Warner (ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London), 1993, pp. vii-xxxi.

Michael Warner: “Normal and Normaller: Beyond Gay Marriage.” GLQ, Vol 5. No. 2., pp. 119-173.

Susan Leigh Foster: “Choreographies of Protest,” Theatre Journal, Vol. 55, No. 3, Dance (Oct., 2003), pp. 395-412.

Yvette Taylor: “Queer, but Classless?,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, eds. Noreen Giffney and Michael O'Rourke (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.), 2009, 200-218.

[1] loose black robe which covers the whole body from head to foot including most of the face

[2] to watch one of the campaign’s videos, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNgN1rbXjLc&feature=related (last access: December 14^th 2010)

[3] Available in Persian here: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5018956,00.html (last access: December 15^th 2010)

Token Men Working for Gender Equality

2010-05-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

M. Ali Abdi

Introduction

I am interested in the concepts of tokenism, masculinity and feminism. Focusing on the Hungarian non-official organization of Stop Male Violence Project (Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt or The Project), I am going to examine the lived experiences of men who call themselves feminist and are engaged in gender equality activism, regarded as token men in gender-related NGO sector. The two questions to which I seek answer through this paper are: In the context of my analysis 1- what are the consequences, either advantages or disadvantages, of working as a token man for a gender-equality organization? And 2- how do token men give meaning to, construct, and negotiate their masculinity through their involvement in Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt and through interactions with their feminist women colleagues in and with people out of the gender-related NGO sector?

Drawing on the data derived from separate interviews with three members of Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt, I will primarily show that the token men of my analysis do not distance themselves from their work to maintain the hegemonic masculinity, but rather they have willingly chosen their job, devoting their time and energy to their work, challenging the hegemonic masculine norms of the society. Then, employing Kanterian analytical framework to understand the “dynamics of tokenism” (1977a, 1977b) and using her terms, I will argue that token men of Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt experience both advantages and disadvantages: on the one hand, they encounter heightened visibility, polarization, and assimilation, which cause them to experience disadvantages of performance pressure, status leveling and role-entrapment, but, on the other hand, they benefit from relatively large share of attention given to them by feminist women, enjoying the cultural preferences associated with men out of the gender-related NGO sector, while also gaining privileges from the embodiment of an alternative masculinity within the gender-related NGO sector, locating them in the “glass escalator” to move up (Williams, 1995).

I believe that this paper will help us to understand the complexities of the interactions between alternative and hegemonic masculinities, making us familiar with the popular assumptions about men who do “women’s work” in general and men who promote gender equality in particular. This research will also broaden our understanding of the differences of the experiences, advantages, and disadvantages, of token men compared to token women, while also underscoring the necessity of considering the type of the occupation to analyze the dynamics of tokenism.

I will divide my paper into four parts. In the first part I will invoke the influential literature on the concept of tokenism and token men, locating my argument within the current debates. In the second part, I will describe in great detail how data were collected, who was interviewed, what kind of qualitative interviewing I used, and how my position as the researcher and the selection of the interviewees might have affected the result of my analysis. In the third part, I will discuss and analyze the data, presenting the narratives of my respondents, employing them as evidences of my aforementioned arguments. And lastly, I will suggest the implications of the findings of my research, presenting some questions to be answered in further studies.

Literature Review

Rosabeth Moss Kanter was among the first sociologists who introduced the concept of “tokenism” and discussed the “dynamics of tokenism” in details. In Men and Women of the Corporation (1977a) Kanter prefaces that any group of workers whose members are in an extreme numerical minority (constituting less than 15 percent of the whole number of workers) is called the group of tokens, since they are typically rendered as the representatives or the symbols of the members of their category, while the majority is called the group of the dominants.

Basing her argument on women managers of Industrial Supply Corporation (INDSCO), Kanter argues that token workers and dominants defer in terms of their experiences, roles, performances, work difficulties and the way in which their work is perceived and judged by other people. She discusses that tokens perform at a disadvantage and are subject to more workplace discriminations compared to dominants. She proposed three reasons to support her argument:

a) tokens “stand-out” against a background of dominants and a large share of attention is given to them, which Kanter calls “heightened visibility”, resulting in situating tokens under more “performance pressure” which leads to their usually under- and sometimes over-achievement; b) dominants tend to exaggerate the differences between themselves and tokens (e.g. in terms of gender, color, sexual orientation, etc.), which Kanter calls “contrast” or “polarization”, resulting in the “isolation” of tokens from the social networks of the dominants, excluding the members of the minority group from sessions and programs in which, for instance, important job-related trainings take place and c) the dominants’ popular perception of the tokens’ behavior pushes the latter into performing stereotypical roles (e.g. normative sex-role behaviors), which Kanter calls “assimilation”, resulting in the “status leveling” and “role entrapment” of the tokens, inhibiting them from their full self-expression (Kanter 1977a; 1977b).

Employing the analytical framework of Kanter’s analysis, the first studies done after her work focused on token women, and directly supported her argument (Spangler, Gordon, and Pipkin, 1978; Martin, 1978; Izraeli, 1983). For instance Spangler and her colleagues found that performance pressure, social isolation and role entrapment all operate to “diminish the achievements of women law students where they constitute only a minority of the student body” (1978: 160), concluding, in accordance with Kanter, that there is a direct relation between the performance of minority individuals and their proportion in the whole group.

Although the tokens studied by Kanter were women, she had maintained that the dynamics of the tokenism process “generalize beyond male-female relations to persons-of-one-kind and persons-of-another-kind interaction in various contexts …” (Kanter, 1977b: 986; emphasis added). Reflecting upon such generalization, Kanter’s theory was criticized by several scholars (Gans, 1987; Zimmer, 1988; Williams, 1995) who highlighted basically two shortcomings of Kanter’s work:

a) Kanter had failed to recognize the structural, cultural, and socio-psychological factors that could contribute in affecting both the group interactions and the performances of the tokens and the dominants (South et al., 1982) and b) she had not taken into consideration that, although token men in predominantly female workplaces may also suffer from disadvantages, their experiences as tokens may differ from that of women (Gans, 1987; Williams 1995).

A number of studies supported the better status of token men in the so-called female jobs compared to that of token women in male-dominated occupations. For instance, Cognard-Black’s discussion on token men who teach in elementary schools shows that they enjoy privileges in their workplace and “are more likely than women to be promoted into administrative occupations” (Cognard-Black, 2004: 113). Other separate studies on token men, including male nurses (Floge & Merril, 1986), men working at amusement attractions (Yoder & Sinnet, 1985) and men who teach young children (James, 1998), underscored token men’s relative advantages compared to token women.

Moving beyond Kanter’s gender- and context-neutral analysis, scholars suggest that the master status of the token group in the society “best predicts whether the token’s mobility will be accelerated or impeded relative to the numerically dominant group” (Gans, 1983: 28, cited in Floge & Merril, 1986: 927; Gans, 1987); therefore, the cultural preferences associated with men and masculinity, as an indication of the higher status of men in the society, put token men in a better position than their female counterparts (Zimmer, 1988).

One of the significant works which emerged on token men in the mid nineties was that of Christine L. Williams, Still A Man’s World (1995), through which she discussed both the advantages and disadvantages of men who do “women’s work”, examining case studies of token men in four predominantly female occupations: nursing, elementary school teaching, librarianship, and social work.

Her main argument was that, although token men work in a female job, they do not abandon their gender identity but rather they “maintain their masculinity”, which would in turn preserve and reproduce their privileges in the workplace and contribute in what-Williams-called the “glass-escalator” effect: men face “invisible” pressure to move up due to the “gendered expectations” of the organization and the “gendered interests” of the workers of the workplace; in other words, advantages of token men outweigh their disadvantages (Williams, 1995: 4, 12, 17, 87).

My study on men working for Stop Male Violence Project, who are regarded as token men in the NGO subsector dealing with gender issues, is in dialogue with the aforementioned works especially that of Kanter, Gans, and Williams. On the one hand, I have found that the Kanterian framework is applicable to my study in terms of the heightened visibility, polarization and assimilation of token men which, modifying Kanter’s general theory and in accordance with William’s argument, has both advantages and disadvantages for the members of the minority group such as “glass escalator effect” and “performance pressure”, but, on the other hand, my findings do not support the claim that token men maintain their masculinity, while also rejecting this idea that the maintenance of hegemonic masculinity necessarily brings them privileges.

Williams has also encountered “very few men” in her research who, like the token men of my study, had willingly chosen the female occupations, withstanding the conformation to the hegemonic masculine norms, and resisting the expectations of the society of appropriate men’s roles. But the professions that she has chosen to analyze have led her to conclude that even these men face “inexorable pressure” to “move up” due to the inevitable conformation to “hegemonic masculinity” (p143), for which I have not found evidence in my research. Contrarily, I have found that the maintenance of the alternative masculinity is what is at stake for the token men of this special NGO sector, bringing them concrete privileges.

Thus, in accordance with those scholars who suggest that other factors, which are embedded in the context in which the “tokenism dynamics” take place, may affect the experiences of tokens (Heikes, 1991; South et al., 1982), my research on men working for Stop Male Violence Project underscores the significance of the type of profession in the final findings of the research on token men, contributing as a complementary work to William’s analysis, modifying that of Kanter.

Methodology

I interviewed three out of four members of the Stop Male Violence Project. I found my interviewees when I attended the International Women’s Day celebration in Godor Club. They were all Hungarian, white, unmarried, with the age of 27, 28 and 36. I did not interview the fourth member, Peter, aged 66, who is apparently the leader of the organization, due to the lack of time and our large age difference. I fixed the time of the interviews with my respondents on the same day of the celebration, and I did the interviews during the last two weeks of March in different cafeterias. I used voice recorder with the permission of the interviewees, while also taking field notes. Each interview took about eighty minutes. I transcribed the interviews during the first week of April, analyzing them thematically.

I employed a qualitative method, focusing on the relational and interactional thick descriptions of my interviewees, implementing semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions. I employed this specific form of interview because I wanted to understand how my informants make sense of, give meaning to and negotiate their token status and masculinities, providing me with the “rich content” of their stories (Ritchie, 1995).

My respondents were asked about the way in which they become involved in the Stop Male Violence Project, the reasons behind their contribution, their relationship with their family members, clients, and their female colleagues in gender-related NGO sector, their experiences as token men in gender equality projects, and their own perception of their work. I neither judge the narratives of my interviewees, nor argue for or against them. I gave enough time to my respondents to include all of the material they think relevant to the subject.

However, my position as a young Iranian self-identified feminist man who has been involved in gender equality activism back home brings some effects to both the process of the interview and the interpretation of the respondent’s narratives. First, as a feminist man, I have pre-assumptions of the lived experiences of men with feminist identity, which might have affected the way I interpreted the transcripts and the questions that I asked. Second, since I do not speak Hungarian, and English was the second or the third language of all my interviewees, it might have been difficult for my respondents to narrate the more complex parts of their stories. Third, there might have been power relations between me as an Iranian (third-world!) young interviewer, and the older Hungarian (second-world!) interviewees, which might have influenced the way my respondents answered my questions.

Nevertheless, I tried to mitigate the aforementioned potential negative effects by building trust with the members of the Stop Male Violence Project through emails and informal chats in March. Besides, in order to lessen the effects of my prejudices, I gave a rough draft of the transcript of the interviews to a friend and asked her to thematically analyze the narratives. I compared her results with that of mine, trying to distinguish my own biases and presumptions.

Analysis

Four men are working for Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt (from now on I will use The Project), three of which I interviewed for my research. I will divide the discussion into two parts: In the first part I will discuss why my respondents joined The Project, and I will analyze their answers with regard to my general argument. In the second part, which has three sub sections, I will examine the data derived from the interviews, putting them into three categories with regard to the Kanterian concepts of heightened visibility, polarization and assimilation. I will discuss how token men perceive and negotiate their masculinity through the analysis of each part. I will invoke other scholars’ findings here and there to put my research in dialogue with them.

1- Why they joined The Project?

When I asked my respondents of their intentions to join The Project all of them drew on quite similar explanations. Dimitry, aged 37, who identifies himself as a “gay with a fleeting interest in women” told me about identical discriminations that women and gays face in a “patriarchal society” which push him towards participating in the Project;

Most of my life I have been sexually involved with men and I think that is also an aspect which helped me understand women more because I believe that there is a big similarity between all kinds of discrimination and violence between disadvantaged groups … So I found this common ground with women. And later I found about the theory that yes! Indeed the whole thing is about patriarchy … I think at a personal level I found that gay and women are discriminated for the same reason that neither gay nor women are men … I mean real men … you know … (emphasis added)

As it’s clear from his narrative he identifies himself as one who challenges the dominant ideas on men and masculinity. The sexual orientation of Dimitry and also his familiarity with feminist theories, as a subcategory of his major field in English Literature at the university, convinced him to participate in the Project. Thus, unlike most of the token men in social work in William’s analysis who did not perceive themselves as “trailblazers” (p62), Dimitry sees his occupational choice as the disavowal of traditional and normative male roles.

In a similar narrative, Nicholay, aged 28, whose ex-girlfriend is now one the most active members of NANE, described the way in which he became familiar with feminism and how he joined The Project;

I was a university student in 2001 and I was attending a philosophy course and there was a compulsory text, Second Sex, written by Simon De Beauvoir. And before that to be honest I had never read about feminism. I was nineteen years old but it had never come into my mind … but the book was so effective on me. And the book had a greater impact on my girlfriend and she joined NANE and she started to complain about our relationship. Before that I was very sexist like other men. I was really angry with her when she didn’t do the washing up … But then I started to become a feminist … And in 2005 I joined Stop Male Violence Project to implement the theory into practice … And to learn how to give up my small privileges as a man (emphasis added).

As Nicholay has pointed out, his theoretical background and his contribution in The Project are mutually interrelated. In other words he has willingly chosen to be a member of The Project because it complies with his ideas about non-sexist masculinities. Besides, in contrast with most of the token men in William’s study, he neither tries to maintain masculinity nor conforms to the hegemonic masculinity, but challenges and gives up the cultural popular perceptions of an appropriate and normative male gender identity.

My third respondent, Tamas, aged 27, a computer engineer, who has recently joined The Project after being shown the “facts” by his girlfriend, realizing that he “should do something for gender equality”, emphasized his devotion to The Project;

I think I feel very committed to this cause. And that makes it easier for me to work a lot or to work at all … It took a very long time for me to decide what I want to be professionally. And I think the reason was because I was always looking for something that I could be one hundred percent committed. I couldn’t imagine a lot of people work like they work from 9 to 5 and then they have a completely different life after 5, from 5 to 9, and I could never imagine that you know I could never work eight hours a day on something I am not committed to only to make a living … I think that’s my basic feeling about this (emphasis added).

Although working in an organization to promote gender equality is popularly understood as a female profession, Tamas perceives himself as one hundred percent committed to it. Contrarily, most of the token men studied by Williams “feel little or no connection to their jobs” (p139), “disassociating” themselves from the so-called women’s work. .

I draw on Heikes (1991) to argue that the type of occupation has significant role in shaping the experiences of token men and the way in which they give meaning to and construct their masculinities. Williams herself has acknowledged that a few of token men “… do not support hegemonic masculinity” but rather they “… reject the dominant society’s expectations of what men should be” and perceive their professions as “a manifestation of their ‘alternative’ perspectives” (p141), which is what all of my respondents shared in their narratives.

In the next three parts I will employ Kanterian analytical framework for my further discussion.

2- Kanterian Framework

2-1- Heightened Visibility

I attended the celebration of March 8^th 2010 in Godor Club last month to find my interviewees. There were about two hundred people, most in their middle ages, sitting on the bunch of chairs inside the club, or standing in four to five-people groups, mostly talking in Hungarian, waiting for a seminar on domestic violence. Among the four lecturers, Dimitry was the only man.

Next to the counter bar at Godor, each of four NGOs of NANE, PATENT, Amnesty International and Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt, had a table packed with pamphlets and brochures on domestic violence and gender equality most in Hungarian and some in English. There was also a table with bread, cheese, butter, ham and water, behind which two women had sat, apparently waiting for somebody to come. They had attached a sticker to the table. It was in Hungarian language so I asked my friend for the translation. She said, while laughing, “it’s written: ‘This Food Is Only For Feminist Men! If You Are One, Eat!’”

In fact, as Nicholay told me, there are hundreds of people working periodically for different NGOs in Hungary for gender equality, only two of which have men members. Since 2005, the time when The Project inaugurated, about 15 men have joined the cause and left. Comparing to the number of women at NANE and other gender-related NGOs, this means that token men in the NGO sector dealing with gender issues constitute less than even five percent of the whole participants. Thus, as in the story mentioned above, they sometimes receive more attention.

When I asked Nicholay about feminist women’s reaction to the men’s involvement for gender equality, he did not hesitate to say,

They have always been very supportive with me, very kind, very nice and very helpful. So they don’t tease me at all. They are very nice people … I am interested in your results actually - that universal experiences that other men who work for gender equality experience - for example if I work for gender equality then among women I am a recognized guy, guy that they can trust. I think that feminist women over react these things. So sometimes it’s a bit uncomfortable that they talk to me or talk about me that wow! Nicholay is a feminist guy! Just look at his [sic], he is a feminist guy! … Like a mother-child thing. It’s very embarrassing [for me] (emphasis added).

Dimitry and Tamas, like Nicholay, expressed the warm accepting attitude of feminist women. William’s findings also indicate that “women in general seem to welcome men into their occupations” (p80). The three token men stand out against the background of the dominant group and sometimes received a larger share of attention, which was not all the time a pleasant feeling. In a quite similar experience, Dimitry told me that since most of the feminist women whom he knows are radical feminists, they do not give advantages to him for being a man, but out of the NGO sector the story is different,

It was a conference in Romania in 1996 about the domestic violence. I think maybe two other men were there and there were about hundred or something participants who were not necessarily feminists and so it was about two percent participants feminist men. And I talked and people were watching when I was staying … you know … these women felt very honored that men are interested in domestic violence … I think they felt very … yes … gratitude … And it’s bad. Men are generally considered as more experts than women because supposedly you do not have an interest in dismantling patriarchy so you are believed more …

As Dimitry has wisely pointed out, men who address the domestic violence or raise awareness on gender equality are more welcomed by the audience, not only because of their biological sex and the social power and legitimacy that men carry, but also because “supposedly” men do not have interest in dismantling patriarchy. Dimitry also told me that his female counterparts often call him to talk to a group of people about gender equality because he is believed more than his feminist female colleagues. Thus, both the gendered expectations of the society and the encouragement of the female workers of the gender-related NGO sector caused Dimitry to experience what-Williams-calls the “glass escalator effect”.

In another interesting story, Tamas remembers an incident in the Seget Festival in which he was more honored as a feminist man than his female counterparts;

- There is a festival, Seget Festival, you know, have you heard about Seget Festival?

- No

- It’s the biggest festival maybe in Eastern Europe. It’s held each year in Budapest. And the living library is there every year and if you buy a book you may have free tickets for the whole year which would be very expensive otherwise … So yeah! I got the ticket instead of my friends who were women and were feminists as well and who had applied for the ticket as well. So it was said that Tamas is a feminist man and that’s a good thing and that’s a more interesting thing.

As Tamas’s story shows there are concrete privileges coming out of working as a token man for gender equality. Thus, in contrast to the Kanterian analysis of tokens, token men of my study are not necessarily isolated from the potential bonuses of their sector and the social network of the dominants, and, in contrast to the study of Williams and Gans, they do not have to embody hegemonic masculinity to experience the glass escalator effect. In other words, this is the embodiment of alternative masculinity which brings privileges for the token men of my analysis. Though, in addressing the individuals outside their sector, they still benefit from the dominant perception of men as holders of authority.

However, the heightened visibility has its side effect which is, as Kanter calls, the performance pressure. When I asked Nicholay of his relationship with women working at NANE, he pointed to his “paranoia”;

I have a constant fear that they don’t trust me because they would have reasons not to trust any man … so I became very paranoid with them … well everybody say [sic] sexist things but volunteers of NANE are very well-trained and very sensitive. I think they would catch me on the act … I am much more afraid of their leader Giorgi who is a very very clever person, very very well trained. She has been doing training for ten years; I think she knows everything about everyday sexism. When I see her I start to be cautious. Because I always want to be a less sexist person. Maybe I should accept that I am still sexist … (emphasis added)

Although Kanter’s understanding of performance pressure, leading to under- or overachievement of the tokens, differs from what I’ve called performance pressure regarding Nicholay’s narrative of “I always want to be a less sexist person”, I still employ the same term because, as all of my respondents pointed out, recognizing and giving up small privileges associated with men and masculinity, and being as self-critical as possible, do constitute parts of their profession. For instance Dimitry, who is also a psychologist, remarked, “How could I tell a woman to leave an abusive relationship if I am in relationships where I am sexist lots of the times?”

Therefore, the heightened visibility of the three members of the Stop Male Violence Project has both advantages and disadvantages. Although they embody an alternative masculinity they receive relatively large share of attention for that, bringing them some concrete benefits, locating them within the glass escalator, but sometimes putting them under more performance pressure which might lead to their embarrassment or nervousness.

2-2- Polarization

Primarily, I was interested to examine the token status of men who work for NANE. Then I realized that no man work there. Although male and female volunteers in the gender-related NGO sector sometimes carry out mutual projects or participate in the same programs, such as March 8^th celebration or public demonstrations, there is a heightened differentiation between men-only and women-only organizations. No man works for NANE, as no woman works for The Project.

I asked all of my respondents about the reason of this differentiation. All of them responded with the same sets of explanations, highlighting the “effectiveness” and “comfortableness” of this arrangement;

The target group of NANE is women, abused women … and ours is men. So that’s two sides of the coin. So in order to eliminate, or try to minimize domestic violence it’s essential to target men as well … so we thought that we have to have another group … Their clients are women who can talk only with women. That’s more effective if an abused woman can talk with a woman. That’s more effective. (Nicholay; emphasis added)

I quite understand why NANE does not want any male in the group because women can feel much more comfortable if there is no male in the group because they were raised in a way that automatically behave in a different way when male is present there … As a male group I would also say that since we are in this paternalistic [sic] society you have contacts with males … I think as a male you have to convince males and as a female it’s much harder to convince males maybe easier to convince females. (Tamas; emphasis added)

Williams has also found evidence of token men in social work who are expected to have better ability than women “to relate to men and men’s special needs” (p106). Although it’s “regrettable” that men are more likely to listen to other men than to women, because it can be an indication of the gender inequality and popular and cultural sexist assumptions in the society, men may be better placed to affect changes in adult men (May, 1998: 347).

However, in contrast to Kanter’s argument that dominant group members isolate the tokens, my case study shows that tokens and dominants of the NGO sector dealing with gender issues, i.e. token feminist men and dominant feminist women, have themselves decided to have their own specific target groups in order to raise the efficiency of their work. Isolation of the tokens from the social network of the dominants, which was a result of job segregation and differentiation in Kanter’s analysis, does not occur in my case study.

3-3- Assimilation

Regarding Kanter’s discussion, assimilation might bring about two consequences: status leveling and role entrapment. The former is “making adjustments in perceptions of the token’s professional role to fit the expected position of the token’s category” (1977b, p981), e.g. calling Dr. to token male nurses (Heikes, 1991), while the latter pushes tokens to conform to certain role traps, inhibiting them from their full self-expression.

However, the token men of my research did not experience status leveling from their feminist female colleagues, but from their clients, and not directly because of their token status, but because of their mere involvement in the NGO sector which deals with gender equality. Dimitry gave me an account of a consultation meeting with a man who was “on the edge of using violence against his wife”:

He became very angry with my words. He told me that you are gay! That’s why you consult men! That’s why you have this and that organization! He used my identity as a feminist or as a gay as a pretext not to change, not to listen to me … but if I was not working for this project or if I didn’t call myself a feminist, I am sure he would find other pretexts …

Since Dimitry’s professional role, as a man working to stop male violence against women, did not fit both the hegemonic masculine norms and dominant social expectations of a “real” man, his client invoked an alternative subordinate masculinity, i.e. that of gay, to stigmatize and belittle Dimitry’s occupational status. Dimitry, in response, in contrast with most of the token men of William’s research, did not distance himself from the alternative masculinity suggested by the client, and answered back:

And I said Yes! I am gay! And I give consultation to other gays, other bisexuals, other heterosexuals, to any other person who uses violence …

Nicholay and Tamas did not have such experiences, probably because they do not give consultations to violent men. But they have also experienced being excluded from the out-of- NGO-sector circle of friends because of embodying alternative masculinities. These stories support Williams’ argument that “most of the discrimination and prejudice facing men in ‘female’ professions comes from the clients” and not from their female colleagues (p108).

Regarding the second component of assimilation, role entrapment, Nicholay expressed that he sometimes feels “bounded” in terms of the roles expected from him;

When I am among feminist women of the NANE I feel that I am under careful surveillance. I think … you know if you are a radical feminist - and the only sensible way of being a feminist I think is to be a radical feminist - so if you are a radical feminist and you are a woman you have very good sense of detecting men’s sexism … so I feel that I should do certain things and I always think of my performances … I feel I am bounded with expectations from men who work to stop violence … When I am among men I am more relaxed … (emphasis added)

Nicholay’s narrative shows that role entrapment, not trapped by normative and hegemonic masculine roles but with a non-normative alternative one, brings him stressful moments, since his female colleagues are expert in “detecting men’s sexism”. Therefore, unlike token men in Williams and Gans’s studies in which the consequences of role entrapment eventually benefit men, my findings do not support that general claim. Instead, the intersection of hegemonic and alternative masculinities shapes the experiences of the token men of my study in a more complex and nuanced way, bringing both advantages and disadvantages in different circumstances.

Back to the story by which I started the second part of the analysis section, when I asked the two women at the food table if I could have bread and cheese, they warmly nodded their consent. I took the knife and started cutting the loaf. I was in the middle of the process of preparing a sandwich for myself that suddenly one of the two women pointed to me and said something in Hungarian. I asked my friend for translation. She said, while laughing again, “the woman is saying that you are not a feminist! Because Feminist Men Wash Their Hands Before Eating!”

Conclusion

Focusing on the narratives of three out of totally four men working for the non-official Hungarian organization of Stop Male Violence Project (Stop-Férfierőszak Projekt), and employing the Kanterian analytical framework to understand the dynamics of tokenism, I have argued through the paper that token men of my analysis, like most of the token men of other studies (Williams, 1995; Gans, 1987; Cognard-Black, 2004), experience heightened visibility, polarization, and assimilation which then brings them negative experiences of performance pressure, status leveling and role entrapment, and positive experiences of glass escalator effect and open, warm embracement of their female colleagues.

I have contributed in current debates on token men and masculinity by emphasizing the importance of the context of the analysis, showing the complexities that men with alternative masculinities face in both the workplace and in their interactions with clients and female colleagues, highlighting their maintenance of alternative masculinity which brings them potential privileges, situating them within the glass escalator.

The question for which I seek answer is that how do gay men in LGBT organizations, both when they constitute tokens and when they form the dominants, negotiate and construct their alternative masculinity in and out of the sector? How their experiences differ from or correspond to those of feminist men in gender equality organizations? What are the implications of such differences and similarities? These are just some of the many questions which are left for further researches.

References

Cognard-Black, Andrew J. 2004. "WILL THEY STAY, OR WILL THEY GO? Sex-Typical Work among Token Men Who Teach." Sociological Quarterly 45, no. 1: 113-139.

Floge, Liliane, and Deborah M. Merrill. 1986. "Tokenism Reconsidered: Male Nurses and Female Physicians in a Hospital Setting." Social Forces 64, no. 4: 925-947.

Gans, Janet. 1987. “Men’s Career Advantages in Nursing: The Principle of the Peter.” Pp. 181-198 in Current Research on Occupations and Professions, vol. 4, edited by H.Z. Lopata. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press

Heikes, E. Joel. 1991. “When Men Are the Minority: The Case of Men in Nursing” in The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 389-401

Izraeli, Dafna N. 1983. "Sex effects or structural effects? An empirical test of Kanter's theory of proportions." Social Forces 62, 153-165.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977a. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. 1977b. "Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women." American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 5: 965-990.

Martin, S.E. 1978. "Sexual Politics in the Workplace: The Interactional World of Policewomen." Symbolic Interaction 1, no. 2: 44-60.

May, Larry. 1998. “A Progressive Male Standpoint” in Men Doing Feminism. Tom Digby (ed.), New York: Routledge. Pp337-353

Ritchie, Donald A. 1995. Doing Oral History: Practical Advice and Reasonable Explanation for Anyone. New York: Twayne.

South, Scott J., Charles M. Bonjean, William T. Markham, and Judy Corder. 1982. "SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND INTERGROUP INTERACTION: MEN AND WOMEN OF THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY." American Sociological Review 47, no. 5: 587-599.

Spangler, Eve, Marsha A. Gordon, and Ronald M. Pipkin. 1978. "Token Women: An Empirical Test of Kanter's Hypothesis." American Journal of Sociology 84, no. 1: 160-170.

Williams, Christine L. 1995. Still a Man's World: Men Who Do 'Women's Work'. University of California Press: Berkeley (etc.)

Yoder, Janice D., and Laura M. Sinnett. 1985. "IS IT ALL IN THE NUMBERS?." Psychology of Women Quarterly 9, no. 3: 413.

Zimmer, Lynn. 1988. “Tokenism and Women in the Workplace” in Social Problems 35: 64-77.

Construction of Masculinity; a postcolonial approach

2010-04-16T04:36:00.000-07:00

M. Ali Abdi

I am interested in the concepts of masculinity and postcolonialism. In this paper I will briefly examine the ways in which the construction of masculinity in Hungary in the early nineties is explained by Kurti (1991) and Arpad & Marinovich (1995) and in the early twenty-first century by CROME[1] (2005); the former draws on “nationalism” and the rejection of the Soviet Union’s ideology of gender equality, while the latter employs “assimilation” and “return to Europe”, as the constructive elements of Hungarian masculinity.

Employing discussions on postcolonialism in the works of Loomba, Bhabha, Spivak, Fanon and Lowe, I will raise three criticisms on the aforementioned works, arguing that they have imagined a homogeneous entity for the Hungarian masculinity, have uncritically used the concepts of “nationalism” and “assimilation”, and have problematically rendered an oppositional binary between West/East and colonizer/colonized, leading to the underrepresentation of alternative (subaltern) masculinities and ignoring the potential collaboration between East/West and colonized/colonizer in constructing masculinity. I will then introduce Connell’s (2005) discussion on the construction of masculinities in global, regional and local level, which, as I will argue, has taken the aforementioned criticisms into consideration.

Two Grand Narratives

Laszlo Kurti in The Wingless Eros of Socialism: Nationalism and Sexuality in Hungary (1991) discusses the way in which masculinity was constructed both during the socialist state dominated by the Soviet Union and after the so-called liberation in 1989 and early nineties. His argument is that the symbolic version of masculinity, which was the “impotent dying” Janos Kadar during communism, was inverted to that of Imre Nagy, the “father, fighter and the martyr” of the nation whose wife was also depicted as “nation’s widow” to reinforce the heterosexual norms and behaviors of the appropriate masculine figure during the transitional period (1991: 58).

Providing evidence for his argument, Kurti highlights that the nationalistic agenda of the Hungarian ruling party of the early 90s (Democratic Forum) had strong connections with the defense of the family and traditional hierarchical gender roles (Kurti, 1991). The anti-abortion policies, depiction of women as the mothers of the future generations, pro-natal propagandas of the state, lack of the presence of gender-related NGOs in the region, and increase in women’s unemployment rate, were all indicators of the patriarchal, nationalistic approach of the Hungarian government after 1989 which, as Kurti argues, constructed the Hungarian Masculinity in a complex way.

Other scholars, arguing analogically to that of Kurti, have discussed that building a nation-state in Hungary, after repossessing independence from the Soviet Union, meant rehabilitation of a non-egalitarian, patriarchal masculinity, and hindrance of any strong women movement (Arpad & Marinovich, 1995), for it was widely believed among men that “the Soviet socialist regime had infantilized and feminized them [(men)] in the ideology of sexual equality” (CROME, 2005: 158). In other words, the collapse of the socialist economic and political system is seen as “men’s return from their ‘satellite’ emasculation” within the socialist hierarchy of political power to that of “traditional power positions in family and in society” (CROME: 149; emphasis added).

Ten years later, during the first decade of the twenty first century, the popular perception of the construction of masculinity in Central and Eastern European countries draws on a new explanation, that of a “return to Europe”. As Yuval Davis (1997; cited in the CROME, 2005) argues, in the last ten years issues of “being European” are at the center of hot debates about what, who and where is “Europe” and “European”, and who, what and where is the opposite, i.e. the “other” or the “stranger”, reminding us of the (notorious) classical tradition of thinking based on hierarchical dichotomies.

Therefore, while the Hungarian government was implementing reform policies and carrying out structural adjustments to adjust to the political and economical agenda of the European Union, it is claimed that Hungarian men underwent dramatic pressure to conform to roles which were “relevant to modern times” (CROME, 2005). That is to say, the question of “who is more European” was translated into “who has a more egalitarian masculinity”, encouraging Hungarian men to practice gender equality in their daily life, increase their role in child care, decrease domestic violence against their partners, while also convincing the Hungarian government to adopt policies on paternal leave, indicating a less-patriarchal more-Western-European approach to perceive men and masculinity (CROME, 2005).

Criticisms

At least three criticisms can be raised regarding the two what-I-call grand narratives of the construction of masculinity in Hungary. I will formulate my discussions rendering Hungary as a postcolonial country because on the one hand “Soviet Imperialism” (as Ania Loomba calls it) had conquest and control over Hungarian people’s land and goods, benefitting from its labor force and raw materials as a source of power against US Imperialism, interfering with Hungarian political and cultural structure, and, on the other hand, sovereignty of USSR over Hungary was claimed by the metropole (the mother city of Moscow) in a certain set of unequal relationships. Using Loomba’s words, “what happens in the colonies as a consequence of imperial domination is [indeed] colonialism or neo-colonialism” (Loomba, 1998: 1103).

Besides, there are contestations over the use of the word postcolonial, resulted in the emergence of the controversies on “when exactly does the ‘postcolonial’ begin?” and “where is postcoloniality to be found” (p1104, 1107). In accordance with Loomba, I will employ postcolonial neither as an era coming after colonialism nor as an indication of the failure or death of coloniality, but rather as a tool to analyze imbalanced power relations, as a “contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism” (p1106; emphasis added). In other words I will “de-link” the term postcoloniality from formal decolonization because, as Alva argues, “many people living in both once-colonized and once-colonizing countries” are still exposed to discrimination “put into place by colonialism” (p1106). My criticisms go this way;

First; the mere use of the term “Hungarian masculinity” and the discussion on the “construction of masculinity in Hungary” without problematizing the term and critically analyzing the discussion is problematic. Analogous to Lisa Lowe’s discussion on the Asian American culture and her insistence on the “heterogeneity” and “multiplicity” of Asian Americans based on their education, sexual orientation, nationality, race, class, gender, etc., the employment of the term “Hungarian masculinity” obfuscates the diverse forms of masculinities which are present simultaneously. The aforementioned works on the construction of masculinity in Hungary have fallen into the trap of regarding their case studies as “heterogeneous entities”, as if there is one form of masculinity, or as if Hungarian men construct their masculinities with identical characteristics.

Second; the aforementioned works are based on two apparently oppositional approaches, i.e. “nationalism” and “assimilation”. But, as Fanon discusses, nationalism and assimilation do not form a contrasting dichotomy, but rather belong to the same family. Fanon argues in The Wretched of the Earth (1961; discussed by Lowe) that since the most significant challenge facing any movement destabilizing the dominant power is to hinder the re-establishment of the older social and political structure, basically two explanations emerge for the way in which the new order is established: a) “assimilating” to the previously dominant culture; which would result in the formation of the “caricature of the old colonialism” and b) claiming for a pure “precolonial identity”; which reproduces the perception of culture with essentialist characteristics. Fanon then acknowledges that both explanations for the new order, assimilation and nationalism, “conform to the same logic” and ironically “reproduce the same structural and cultural domination [of the colonizer]” against which the movement was struggling (p1038).

Applying the same critical and analytical approach, and regarding the works by Kurti, Arpad and CROME, it must be taken into consideration that arguing for the nationalistic construction of masculinity in 1989, i.e. return to traditional and precolonial forms of masculinity, and the assimilative construction in the early twenty first century, i.e. return to European masculinity, fall in to same trap of the logic of domination, excluding (and also not studying) those forms of masculinities which do not fit into these grand narratives, contributing in marginalization of the alternatives, that is the ignorance of, using Spivak’s term, “subaltern” masculinities.

Third; in those grand narratives there is a tendency to represent the regional boundaries between Eastern and Western European countries, and the cultural differences between the colonizer and the colonized, as the only and the main factor which maintains and construct different forms of masculinity. In other words, there is an inclination for the recognition of the binary schema of the one and the other, the colonizer and the “colonized, and the European and non-European, as what contributes the most in the construction of masculinity in 1989 and early twenty-first century.

But as Bhabha argues in Signs Taken for Wonders (1985) the simplistic oppositional binary of colonizer/colonized and European/non-European is problematic because these categories and their “contour of difference” are shifting, splitting and “agonistic” rather than “antagonistic” or oppositional (p1173). Bhabha further discusses that if we put the dominant against the marginalized and the colonizer against the colonized as the binary opposite, it just perpetuates their existence as homogenous.

Thus, applying Bhabha’s discussion to Kurti and CROME’s analysis, one has to acknowledge that on the one hand there is multiplicity of masculinities within each of the categories of colonizer/colonized and Western/Eastern European countries (think of gays, black men, transsexual men, profeminist men, etc.) which are excluded and are not represented under the term “Hungarian Masculinity” or “Western European Masculinity”, and, on the other hand, the construction of masculinity does not occur in what-Bhabha-calls “bounded spaces” but rather there is a constant two-way shifting negotiation, entanglement and confusion between dominant and marginalized masculinities, or hegemonic and subaltern masculinities, which contribute in the process of their on-going construction (also think of the effects of the immigration of Hungarian men to Western European countries and vice versa, or the mutual effects of the culture of the colonized Hungary and that of the colonizer, indicating the importance of hybridity and instability of the agonistic binary of East/West and colonized/colonizer on the construction of masculinity in Hungary in the early 90s and early twenty first century).

Connell’s Discussion

I believe that by taking the aforementioned criticisms into consideration, Connell presents a new framework in order to provide a more convincing and nuanced explanation for the construction of masculinity. He primarily introduced the concept of masculinities in 1995, in accordance with the recognition of diversity among men and the rejection of rendering men as the homogenous entity of oppressors, discussing that there are hegemonic and alternative (subaltern) masculinities.

Connell’s discussion on alternative, non-hegemonic masculinities (1995) is very similar to Spivak’s concept of “strategic essentialism”. Connell argues that the employment of the term gay, whose sexual orientations put them in the category of marginalized men with non-hegemonic masculinity, should not render them as a “homogenous group” with the same characteristics, interests and goals. But “the strategic use of a positive essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest” (Spivak, 1987: 206; cited in Lowe) is crucial in order to make it easier for the alternative or the subaltern (in this case gay men) to be heard and understood and to claim for their rights.

Furthermore, in Hegemonic Masculinity Rethinking the Concept (2005) Connell distinguishes between three levels of hegemonic masculinity: local, regional and global. The local ones, which are different from each other but at the same time “overlap” and have a “family resemblance”, are constructed “in the arenas of face-to-face interaction of families, organizations, and immediate communities” (p849). The one symbolic model representing the various local hegemonies is the regional one which is constructed “at the level of culture or the nation-state” and is realized by national actors, professional athletes and politicians. And the global hegemonic masculinity is introduced as a result of transnational and multinational corporations, global market, and international media, and is in constant negotiation with the other two levels (Connell 1998; 2005: 849-851).

Thus, trying to be more responsive to the criticisms rising from postcolonialism (and post-structuralism) and going beyond the grand narratives of nationalism and assimilation in previous works, Connell has recognized the heterogeneity and multiplicity of masculinities, identifying the dominant and alternative forms of masculinity, while also arguing that there is not necessarily an opposition between global, regional and local hegemonic masculinities, but rather they contribute and collaborate in constructing and shaping each other within an ongoing interaction, which allows us to recognize the significance of the context without falling into a world of homogenous and independent cultures and places.

Conclusion

Drawing on postcolonialism and criticizing the way in which the construction of masculinity in Hungary is explained with the employment of nationalism and assimilation as two grand narratives, I have argued in this paper that those analyses lack the recognition of heterogeneity among men and multiplicity of masculinities, reinforcing the East/West or Colonized/Colonizer dichotomy as playing the main role in constructing masculinity, which in turn result in the isolation and marginalization of alternative (subaltern) masculinities. I have discussed that Connell’s discussion on the construction of masculinity on global, regional and local level is more responsive to the criticisms rising from postcolonialism and post-structuralism.

Reference

Arpad, Susan S., and Sarolta Marinovich. 1995. “Why Hasn't There Been a Strong Women's Movement in Hungary?" in Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 2: 77-96.

Bhabha, Homi. 1985. “Signs taken for Wonders” in in the reader of Foundations in Gender Studies II, Fall Term 2009/2010.

Connell, R. W., and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. "HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY: Rethinking the Concept." Gender & Society 19, no. 6: 829-859.

Connell, Robert William. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

CROME (Critical Research on Men in Europe), and Michal Kimmel, Jeff Hearn, R.W Connell. 2005. “Men, Masculinities, and ‘Europe’” in Handbook of studies on men & masculinities. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.

Fanon, Frantz. 1961. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove.

Kurti, Laszlo. 1991. “The Wingless Eros of Socialism: Nationalism and Sexuality in Hungary” in Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 2, pp 55-67.

Loomba, Ania. 1998. From Colonialism-Postcolonialism, in the reader of Foundations in Gender Studies II, Fall Term 2009/2010.

Lowe, Lisa. 1991. “Heterogenity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: marking Asian American differences” in Diaspora, in the reader of Foundations in Gender Studies II, Fall Term 2009/2010.

Spivak, Gayatri. 1987. In Other Worlds. London: Routledge

[1] Critical Research On Men and Masculinity in Europe

Beyond East/West Dichotomy

2010-03-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

M. Ali Abdi

Mira Marody in her article Why I Am Not a Feminist: Some Remarks on the Problem of Gender Identity in the United States and Poland (1993) tries to answer to the questions posed by her American colleagues, such as “why there is no feminist movement in Poland?” or “what should we do to help them [Polish women]?”, which were based on the assumption of her American partners that since Poland is liberated from an authoritarian regime, Polish women should now begin to fight for their rights.

Admitting her unfamiliarity with feminist theories, Marody employs a sociological perspective in order to answer to the raised questions. She discusses that the lack of “institutionalized” opposition and civil society in Poland during communism resulted in the formation of a clear distinction and confrontation between the Polish society as a whole and the authoritarian state, unlike Western societies in which individuals fight for their rights in the civil society. This had at least three consequences for Polish women:

a) the construction of identity “in collectivistic terms” which discourages women from identifying themselves as independent individuals with certain rights; b) the valorization of moralities with orientation towards “consensus and interpersonal harmony in an in-group” which translates any women’s attempt for their rights as immoral and a threat to the social harmony and c) perceiving society as composed of families and not of individuals which renders men and women as “partners” with similar interests pushing women to “subordinate their own individual development to family goals”. Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, Marody concludes, “feminist consciousness” does not have the chance of being developed in Poland, unlike the West (Marody, 1993: 854, 855, 861, 863-865).

I think Marody’s analysis is important in terms of challenging the universality and global applicability of certain discourses and theories. For instance the discriminatory effects of upholding the dichotomy of the private/public on the lives of (all) women are widely debated among western feminists (Beauvoir, 1949; Janeway, 1971; Mitchell, 1984). But as Marody shows, the private sphere in Poland during communism was a space for emancipation since it was “the only sphere … in which individuals were able to challenge the existing public order” (1993: 859). In fact, the generalization and decontextualization of western theories by American colleagues of Marody (whom I mentioned in the beginning of the paper), which reminds us of the project of modernity and the voyage of all human beings towards the truth, let them depict Polish women as “backward” (underdeveloped) who need “help” to progress (towards the truth) to reach the status of American women.

But there are controversial implications suggested in Marody’s work upon which I will reflect in the following paragraphs. I will employ the excellent discussion of Allaine Cerwonka (together with Appadurai, 1991 and Tsing, 2005) in Travelling Feminist Thought; Difference and Transculturation in Central and Eastern European Feminism (2008) to establish my criticisms of Marody’s work. Cerwonka’s main arguments will be cited as I criticize Marody’s essay. I will also raise my own concern of the potential misunderstanding that I feel might occur if we employ transculturation to analyze power relations and knowledge production in the last part of the paper.

Let me bring two sentences from Marody’s article on which I want to base my four criticisms. Marody writes, “what is ‘normal’ for the East is not usually taken for granted by the West, and vice versa … [K]nowledge about feminist movements in the Western countries should have influenced and accelerated the development of similar movements in Poland. Nothing to this effect can be observed” (1993: 854, 858; emphasis added). My four criticisms go this way:

a) There is a tendency in Marody’s work to represent the regional boundaries between Eastern and Western countries as the only and the main factor which produces and maintains different understandings and interpretations of women of gender equality, feminism, activism and so on. Using national or regional categories (the East and the West) as Cerwonka argues would “reproduce the Cold War paradigms that continue to haunt academic knowledge production and institutionalization” (Cerwonka, 2008: 821).

b) Use of the terms the East and the West and the Western feminism also implies that Marody is presuming a homogenous, stable, and coherent identities for Eastern and Western societies as well as for Western feminism which are then perceived by her as analytical categories to examine women’s issues. But I think that the depiction of neither the stable identities of the societies, nor the coherent feminist knowledge of the West, is legitimate. On the one hand, people in each society differ from each other in terms of their race, class, sexuality, gender, etc. and they have different understandings of what is “normal” or not, and, on the other hand, there are different schools of thoughts in Western feminist studies which contradict each other: “the feminists used in support of the critique of Western feminist Hegemony in CEE literature [Central and Eastern European] (e.g., hooks, Mohanty, Hartsock, and Butler) are either American or located professionally in American academic institutions” (Cerwonka, 2008: 822). So neither the Western feminism, nor the Eastern one, has a monolithic voice.

c) Although Marody challenges the universality and the hegemony of the so-called western feminism, she reproduces the same discourse by discussing the effects of western feminist movements on Polish women’s movement and not vice versa. That is to say, she ignores that ideas (either feminist or patriarchal) “travel from multiple directions and not simply from so-called core to periphery” (Cerwonka, 2008: 826). The mere presence of Marody in an American university and her interaction as a self-identified feminist with American scholars, which Appadurai calls ethnoscape, is per se an example of the potential influence of Polish feminists on the American academia.

d) And lastly, Marody’s belief that the so-called western feminism has had no effect on the Polish women is oversimplified. The life story of Zarana Papic, a Hungarian feminist who was influenced by the Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and organized international conferences in CEE, including Poland, shows “the complex ways in which influence and sympathies were organized between East and West” (Cerwonka, 2008: 821). Besides, it’s interesting to note that even Marody herself admits that “[her American experiences] made [her] … aware of some forms of gender discrimination present in … [her] own society”, which is in contrast to the main claim of her analysis. Furthermore, in contrast to what Marody expects, Polish women movement should not necessarily be similar to that of the American one, because global/local interactions has “unexpected and unstable” results (Tsing, 2005: 4).

Thus, bringing the all four criticisms together, if one intends to understand the complexities of power relations of practices and theories in general, and of the discipline of women’s and gender studies in particular, within the global context, it’s more productive to examine it in terms of “copresence, interaction, interlocking”, “relations, [and] borrowings” of ideas which travel from multiple directions (not in a one way West to East) and are absorbed, inflected, shaped and changed in different contexts through constant negotiations and contacts. (Cerwonka, 2008: 825). The friction and collaboration of unequal and heterogeneous encounters (Tsing, 2005), the deterritorialization process (Appadurai, 1991), and the transculturation and the travelling ideas (Cerwonka, 2008), all contribute in producing the “common cultural space” or “the contact zone” in which knowledge is produced and the “cross-fertilization” of ideas occurs (Cerwonka, 2008: 820, 824, 826).

This would also blur the clear distinction between local and global. Was the book feminine mystique written by Betty Friedan the result of the specificities (whatever it means) of the American culture and history in which the author was located, or was it the result of the complex interactions and interconnections of the sets of transnational and transcultural ideas which were then adapted and (trans)formed in the American context? In fact, As Cerwonka discusses, “it is difficult to ever neatly demarcate what is ‘local feminism’ and what is ‘global’ or imported (Stanford, 2001: 26; cited in Cerwonka, 2008: 825) because what is considered global or local today is itself “congeries of local/global interaction” (Tsing, 2005: 4).

Although I find Cerwonka’s discussion convincing and influential, there is just one concern which I want to raise. I worry that the recognition of the co-presence and intermixtures of ideas and cultures, which as I pointed out leads to the obfuscation of the distinction between the local and the global or the East and the West, would blur the asymmetrical power relations as well. For instance, to bring a personal experience, most of the texts taught at the gender studies department at CEU are produced within the Western academia by Western scholars. If I object the underrepresentation of non-Western texts (by which I do not want to reproduce the dichotomy of West and East), one may argue in response, based on transculturation, that these apparently Western texts are in fact the production of the interaction of different transnational factors. I agree with the general argument. But we should never forget, as Cerwonka also points out wisely, that the “contact is always structured by uneven power relations” (2008: 829); that is to say, although those texts are the results of transcultural frictions, it should not justify the shortage of theories of scholars and experiences of women in non-Western academia and societies respectively; the interactions happens within “radically asymmetrical relations of power” (Pratt, 1992: 7 cited in Cerwonka, 2008: 825).

The Politics of Underground Music

2010-03-16T17:08:00.001-07:00

M. Ali Abdi

Anna Szemere in her article Subcultural Politics and Social Change: Alternative Music in Postcommunist Hungary (1996) briefly examines the significance, meanings and political and cultural implications of subcultural rock music during communist and post-communist Hungary, arguing that the structural transformations caused by the emergence of capitalism and the promising wave of democracy, after many years of domination of socialist state, changed the popular understandings and social and political significance of rock music, forcing musicians and rockers to rethink and re-define the social and political role of their performances.

Szemere argues that during communism, especially in the 70s and 80s, the supremacy of a “centralized state-run music industry” left a relatively small “sociomusical space” for independent musicians who were standing outside of the mainstream rock and pop music of the time. The state dominance made a clear distinction between “legitimate” and “underground” worlds of art, which, ironically, resulted in the anti-state alliances between the separated-from-mainstream rock music bands and other marginal groups including political ones such as the so-called “democratic opposition”. Such coalitions formed, what Szemere calls, the “marginal intelligentsia”, which was held together because of the oppressive outer power, and worked as an “audacious anti-state stance”, producing “countercultural voices” during the predomination of the state socialism (Szemere, 1996: 19, 21, 22, 23, 25).

Szemere’s main argument is that from mid-1980s onward and particularly after 1989 and the collapse of the socialist state and prevalence of market economy, on the one hand the marginal intelligentsia started being fragmented (e.g. former marginal political figures became political elites), its members became isolated (e.g. the rock band Europa Kiado), the previously-vivid distinction between legitimate and illegitimate rock music began disappearing by the integration of “second public”[1] into the “undivided pubic” of the capitalist society - which caused rock and the arts to lose their political significance, that is, not to be “privileged sites of dissent” anymore - but, on the other hand, some new forms of resistance with new goals are now sought by former countercultural musicians; or, in Szemere’s own words, “[m]embers of the former counterculture are not left without anything to resist in the new social system [i.e. capitalism]” (1996: 22, 26, 34).

In fact, the musicians of the former “underground” (and not alternative) rock with its political rebellious characteristics and hierarchical position in relation to the official music industry, have (after 1989) become the members of the “alternatives” (and not anymore underground), located adjacently but unequally to the mainstream, trying to “sustain … control over the meaning of the countercultural past”, “find[ing] for themselves a niche” in the new cultural landscape, struggling to retain the “band’s image, self-respect and political and artistic integrity”, redefining their “public identity”, while also becoming an important part of “alternative politics” which appreciate the values of “racial and ethnic solidarity”, “multiculturalism” and “environmentalism” (1996: 20, 26, 27, 28, 31). Nevertheless, since different musicians have different interpretations of how the new system of power operates under capitalism, which Szemere calls the “interpretive crisis”, and since musicians have chosen divergent paths in response to the new power exertion, resistance has become intellectually and psychologically more difficult than during socialist state (1996: 26, 34).

Like many other essays on different forms of resistance during communism in Central and Eastern Europe, Szemere’s article reminds me of my country and, related to the subject of the article, the underground (and not yet alternative!) rock and pop music in today Iran. Islamic Republic crackdown on pop music in general, and on western pop and rock music in particular, since 1979, has resulted in the formation of more than 2000 illegal music bands[2] practicing in underground recording studios[3], producing heavy metal, grunge, funk, hip-hop, jazz, etc.[4] The subjects of the lyrics of the underground music were, before June 12^th presidential election, mostly about taboos of the public space (or taboos of the first public, using Hankiss terms) including criticizing the nuclear ambitions of the government, sexual mores and the way in which Iranian people are treated by the state.[5] Similar to Szemere’s analysis of rock music during communism, Iranian underground music is producing countercultural discourses.

After the uprising of the green movement[6], many of the lyrics of the new works of underground musicians imply or clearly address the tragic events and heroism of people in the streets. Just yesterday, on March 14^th 2010, Hich-Kas (which means “nobody” in Persian, indicating its underground existence), one of the prominent Persian rap figures, has published an audio performance on the internet, called Ye Rooze Khoob Miad (a good day will come)[7] about the green movement, political prisoners, and its symbolic martyr Neda Agha Soltan.[8] This performance is a clear example of the alliance of subcultural groups, i.e. the underground repressed music bands and political dissidents, against the repressive state, and the formation of what Szemere called the marginal intelligentsia.[9] (I should say here, and not in the footnote, that despite similarities, there are many differences between today Iranian underground music and the ones within Hungarian socialist state (e.g. in terms of the scale and genres of the works, different meanings and significance of performances within each context, the kinds of repressive measures taken by the state against them and etc.) but I do not intend to open the discussion in this paper.)

Let me start expressing my critical thoughts on her work. I want to re-read Szemere’s analysis of subcultural rock music in Hungary from two anthropological perspectives: the school of political economy (Hart, 1982) and the practice-oriented approach (Ortner, 1984; Sahlins, 1981). Locating her discussion into these two theoretical frameworks, I will then draw on this re-examination to establish my criticism of her work, which will lead me to ask some further still-unanswered questions about what-is-today-called the “alternative” rock music and arts in Hungary.

The political economy, which constitutes one of the two Marxist schools of anthropology (the other is structural Marxism with emphasis on asymmetrical relations of production and reproduction which are claimed by structural Marxists to be blurred by certain “structures of social relations”) (Ortner, 1994: 382), locates the society of its study into the larger regional and global contexts, rather than treating it as an isolated island. It resembles cultural ecology in terms of analyzing the adaptation of human practices and social structures to the effects of the “external forces”; but differs in identifying those external forces to be that of the state and the capitalist system rather than natural environment.

Since Szemere examines the social and political significance and meanings of underground and alternative music performances in communist and postcommunist Hungary along with the collapse of state socialism and rise of capitalism and nation-state, it can be rendered as an indication of a political economy approach. The first question that I want to raise is that, since “[a]t the core of the model [of political economy] is the assumption that virtually everything we study has already been touched (‘penetrated’) by the capitalist world system” (Ortner, 1994: 387), to what extent the meanings and social and political significance of the rockers’ performances are shaped in response to the emerging capitalist system and to its direct and indirect consequences? In other words, is capitalism the only/main factor which shapes new realities of culture and politics within which musicians try to increase, maintain or redefine the value of their life-styles, performances, and cultural representations, as Szemere argues?

The second framework through which I want to look at Szemere’s discussion to raise my second question is the practice-oriented approach in anthropology. Primarily built on Geertzian school of symbolic anthropology, which was interested in studying the culture “from the actor’s point of view” by putting the actor at the center of analysis (cited from Geertz in Ortner, 1994: 375), the practice-directed perspective is interested in studying all forms of human every-day practices from a political angle, analyzing not only how systems and practices are produced, reproduced and function, but also how practices and systems mutually affect each other. This approach is against both the Parsonian/Durkheimian view of action as the “en-actment of the rules and roles of the system” and “symbolic interactionism” view which underestimates the constraints imposed by systems on practice. In sum, the practice perspective renders society as a powerful constraining system but, at the same time, acknowledges that society transforms and is transformed by human practices (1994: 390, 393, 398, 403).

Szemere’s discussion of the rock music in Hungary fits into this framework; because she clearly argues how actors (e.g. Jeno Menhyart, the leader of the band EPH) in new social system (from mid 1980s onward) interpret and experience the complexities of their situation and try to solve the problems (e.g. decline of the EPH’s popularity in the capitalist system), caused by those new situations, through “pragmatic choice and decision making” and active “calculating” and “strategizing” (e.g. whether to sell the EPH’s records to a former censor of the socialist state or not, how it affects the band’s self-respect, what are the consequences of rejection of such offer on the band’s future relationship with music industry and so forth) (Ortner 1994: 394; Szemere, 1996: 30, 31).

Nevertheless, I think Szemere doesn’t take into account (or if she does, it is not obvious for me) that the system and practice affect each other mutually. Beside answering the question of “how much control can musicians exercise over the meaning of their music as the conditions and context of music activities change” (p 23), she could have broadened her argument by answering to this question, which is my second question, that to what extent and how does the alternative rock affect and can transform the conditions caused by the emerging capitalist system and the capitalist system itself, which would have shed light on how musicians’ new forms of resistance and performances can shape their surrounding context.

I want to bring my two critical comments back to suggest that on the one hand, the analysis of the system is not satisfactory since it is based on a capitalism-centered analysis which ignores the potential effects of other systemic factors which may have affected the non-mainstream Hungarian rock music such as ideas on nationalism and western and Hungarian local music, and, on the other hand, the political and social impacts of this newly-called alternative rock music on the surrounding capitalist system are not adequately examined. Yet, Szemere’s discussion, as I implied in advance, clearly shows how systemic transformations have comprehensive effects on the meanings, forms, significance, and popular interpretations of certain practices, provoking new and sometimes more complex forms of resistance.

Appendix

Ye Rooze Khoob Miad (a good day will come) performed by Hichkas (nobody) published on March 14th 2010[10]:

A good day will come

That we do not kill each other

We do not look at each others’ faces aggressively

We are all friends, putting hands on each other’s shoulders

Like childhood time in schools

None of us is unemployed

All are building Iran

If you do not want to get tired this time

I will put the bricks, you make the cement

After these vast rains of blood

The rainbow will show up eventually

The sky will not be clouded full of stones

The stream will not be as red as the tearing eyes

You! The prayer! Invite people for praying!

God is Great!

Mother! Please pray for us tonight!

As far as I remember

This soil has always been producing Neda[11]

That a good day will come when there is no chaos

And we give pastry to the crowd

Everybody is happy and everything is perfect

Just we will miss our lost comrades

The blood remains in our vein

It doesn’t become familiar with sky and the asphalt of the street

It neither fountains, nor becomes clod

No mother goes to see the grave of his son

Home is not shelter, out is not war

What to tell?! I am like Bam after the quake! Or like Hiroshima after the bomb!

I am on fire singing this song

You may think with yourself that I am crazy

But I am sure that a good day will eventually come!

…

Do not say: “huh! There is a long way till that day!”

If I was not present at that time, I would like you to promise me one thing

That you would give flower to any of the security guards that you saw then

No bird is in the cage!

No free woman is a widow!

Hey girl! Your dad is coming home again!

Go and serve the dinner for the show!

Notes

[1] Second public, theorized by sociologist Elemer Hankiss, is the “binary opposition” to the first public (or the first society) which is the “embodiment of certain socialist ideas”. The second society constitutes “a second economy, a more or less organized second political public, a second cultural sphere …, a second consciousness, and a second, mostly hidden domain of political and social interactions” (Szemere, 1996: footnotes, page 39).

[2] Q&A: Notes From Iran’s Underground Music Scene; Omid Memarian interviews Arash Sobhani, lead singer of the rock band Kiosk. Available in English here: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47099

[3] Some of the many collections can be found here: http://www.bar-ax.com/

[4] Omid Memarian interviews Arash Sobhani, lead singer of the rock band Kiosk. Available in English here:

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47099

[5] Iran’s Underground Music Scene written by an anonymous writer on Iran Online Website:

http://www.zimbio.com/Iran+Online/articles/22/Iran+s+Underground+Music+Scene

[6] After June 12^th Iranian presidential election, by which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fraudulently grabbed the power, many Iranians who didn’t believe in the results started a democratic social movement, primarily in order to call for a recount of the votes, and nowadays for more structural changes within the constitution. Green is the symbolic color of the movement.

[7] In order to listen to this 4:25 minute performance on you-tube go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQj_B9TkEBc

[8] Neda Agha Soltan and Sohrab A’rabi are the two symbols of the martyrs of the Iranian green movement. They were both shot dead on the bloody day of June 20^th 2009, 8 days after the election. The moments of Neda’s death were recorded by a cell phone of an anonymous protestor, published on you-tube, and was broadcasted globally by international media. The video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=b5KBrsz1oxs&feature=related

[9] For a better picture on Iranian underground music I suggest the documentary called No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009) directed by Bahman Ghobadi, which won the Special Jury Prize of the Cannes Film Festival 2009. Given the permission of Mr. Ghobadi, everybody can download the film from here: http://www.021-music.com/

The film is an indication of “cultural repression in Iran’s exciting underground music scene … and a celebration of an entire generation of Iranians striving towards personal and creative freedom”. (Based on the iTunes Movie Trailer of the Film; http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/nooneknowsaboutpersiancats/)

[10] The lyric is translated by the author

[11] Neda (which here refers to Neda Agha Soltan) in Persian language means voice/aspiration

Althusserian Reading of Connell

2010-03-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

M. Ali Abdi

In this 5-page paper, I will re-frame Connell’s discussion on hegemonic masculinity in Masculinities (1995) and Hegemonic Masculinity (2005), using Althusser’s theoretical debate on ideology in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1971). I will argue that reading Connell through the eyes of Althusser will not only help us to put the concept of hegemonic masculinity into a powerful theoretical framework, but also provide us with a useful theoretical tool to reflect upon two of the most common criticisms which have been raised against this concept in the last twenty years. Before applying Althusser to respond to those criticisms, I will also show that employing Althusser to re-read Connell’s argument has at least two discrepancies, for which I will suggest ways for reconciliation.

Introduction

Let me start by pointing to a simple definition of hegemonic masculinity derived from Connell (1995) and its implications and consequences, which I need for my further discussion: hegemonic masculinity “at any given time, [is] one form of masculinity, rather than others, [which] is culturally exalted … [and] guarantees (or taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and subordination of women” (1995: 77; emphasis added). That is to say, masculinity is not believed to be a monolithic concept anymore, but rather there are multiple masculinities, some of which are subordinated and marginalized (such as gay men, men of color, poor men, feminist men, etc.), but one form is the most honored, dominant and hegemonic. This latter form is the base on which the stabilization of patriarchal power is maintained (Connell, 2005: 853; emphasis added).

Hegemonic masculinity requires all other men to “position themselves in relation to it” (Connell, 2005: 832; emphasis added). It is not necessarily supported by the use of violence, but its superiority is maintained by the visible representation of men in media, art, literature, etc. Nevertheless, marginalized masculinities are sometimes violently forced to take the shape of the hegemonic one: criminalization of homosexual relationships, in a context in which heterosexuality is one of the characteristics of the hegemonic masculinity, is a convincing example.

Now, in order to give an initial picture of Althusser’s discussion on ideology, let me represent two points of his argument that I need. First; Althusser argues that the “reproduction of the relations of production” (1971: 148), which is essential for the perpetuation of the capitalist system, and, for that matter, the domination of the ruling class, is secured by the exercise of the power of the State through two forms of State Apparatuses: Repressive State Apparatus (RSA - singular), which functions mostly (and not only) by violence, e.g. the courts and the prisons, and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs - plural), which function mostly (and not only) by ideology, e.g. the religious, educational, family, or cultural ISAs. If the ruling class intends to hold power for a long period of time, then “exercising its hegemony over and in the State Ideological Apparatuses [sic]” (1971: 146) is essential.

Second; “ideology interpellates individuals as subjects” (1971: 170); that is to say, individuals become subjects by their subjection to the Subject which is at the center of any ideological structure; for instance God is the Subject par-excellence (1971: 179) of a religious ideology, which interpellates those individuals who subject themselves to Him as subjects. Besides, there is a “double mirror connexion” (1971: 180) between the Subject and subjects, that is to say while individuals are subjected to the Subject to become subjects, the Subject also needs subjects in order to remain the Other, Unique, Absolute Subject. This “duplicate mirror-structure” (1971: 180) guarantees the meaningful functioning of the ideology.

Application

I am approaching to the first employment of Althusser’s theoretical argument to re-frame Connell’s discussion on hegemonic masculinity. Although Althusser, as a Marxist (and not a feminist nor a theoretician of hegemonic masculinity), primarily discusses how the reproduction of the means of production and the reproduction of the labor force guarantee the domination of the ruling class (by which he didn’t mean men nor men with hegemonic masculine figures) over working class (by which he didn’t mean women nor men with marginalized masculinities) and secure, and is secured in, an exploitative capitalist system (by which he didn’t mean patriarchy), one can employ his discussion to re-frame the concept of hegemonic masculinity in this way (using Althusserian terms to read hegemonic masculinity):

Hegemonic Masculinity is the Absolute Subject, located at the center of the ideology of patriarchy. Men, as individuals, become subjects by their subjection to the Hegemonic Masculinity. This Unique Subject guarantees the dominant position of those men who have recognized Hegemonic Masculinity, and have recognized themselves in It, over women and over those men who do not subject to the Hegemonic Masculinity. The maintenance of the meaningfulness of patriarchy, the reproduction of the ideology of patriarchy, the subjection of men (subjects) to the Hegemonic Masculinity (The Subject), and the “duplication of the Subject into subjects” (1971: 180) are all secured by the two Patriarchal Apparatuses: Repressive Apparatus and Ideological Apparatuses; the former, predominantly with the use of violence (criminalization of homosexuals), and the latter, predominantly with the use of ideology (in schools, churches, families, literature, etc.) secure the functionality of the ideology of patriarchy and its Absolute Subject, the Hegemonic Masculinity.

Though, I think employment of Althusser (his discussion in Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses) to read Connell has at least two inconsistencies: First; while hegemonic masculinity, for Connell, is not a fixed, nor a trans-historical concept, but rather is open to change, the Subject for Althusser, as I understand, is an Absolute Unique one. The way by which I can reconcile the two readings, is to suggest that there are hegemonic masculinities, as if there are Subjects, each is Unique and Absolute, but at a certain historical moment in a specific context, one form of hegemonic masculinity dominates over the other forms. The recognition of the multiplicity of Hegemonic Masculinities, i.e. the Subjects, has some significant implications, which I will discuss in a moment.

Second; Althusser doesn’t discuss in detail how it becomes possible for the subjects to explode (or to use weaker words: to affect, to change) the ideology and the Subject. How men and women, who have subjected themselves to the Hegemonic Masculinity to become subjects, can explode the ideology of patriarchy and its Subject? If there is no free individual, if “the individual is always-already a subject” how does change become possible? Althusser, himself, has used the ironical word of “bad-subjects” (it’s ironical for me because if one is a subject, she/he has subjected to the Subject, then how it’s possible that she/he is a bad subject?) who “provoke the intervention of … repressive … apparatuses” (181), but it doesn’t help me to understand how change is perceived through Althusser eyes. Connell, on the other hand, focuses mainly on the resistances by women’s movements, men with marginalized masculinities, and the tensions and contradictions within the ideology of patriarchy, by which hegemonic masculinity is challenged and change is plausible.

But I think that Althusser also has opened a way for change by using the term “bad-subject”. I assume that bad-subject, for Althusser, is a subject who has become subject by his/her subjection to a Subject, but not necessarily to the Subject of the ideology of the rulers. That is to say, different ideologies work at certain time, each with its own Subject (the simultaneous existence of Subjects) and every individual is always a subject by his/her subjection to one of those Subjects. While I might be considered as a bad subject to one ideology, I am identified as a good one to the other. While the ideology of patriarchy renders women’s movements, gay men, and feminists, as bad subjects, they may be considered as good subjects by another ideology (you can call it, for the sake of the argument, the ideology of egalitarianism). Change is possible through the struggle between these ideologies, and their Subjects, within their material ideological apparatuses.

Althusserian Response to Criticisms

So far, I have used Althusser’s discussion to re-frame Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, while trying to reconcile the two discussions. Let me go one step further: I will now employ Althusser to reflect upon two criticisms on the concept of hegemonic masculinity, since I believe that Althusser’s discussion on ideology is a powerful tool for this matter:

a) Some scholars (Martin, 1998; Wetherell and Edley, 1999; Whitehead, 2002; all cited in Connell, 2005) have raised doubts about the ambiguity of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, since “there is confusion over who actually is a hegemonic masculine man” and, more important than the first question, asked whether anybody is able to practice the hegemonic version of masculinity at all. In sum, isn’t the concept of hegemonic masculinity abstract?

To react upon this first criticism, Althusser would have two promising responses (in other words if we employ Althusser, we can provide Connell with two promising responses): First; the “representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” is, in fact, what ideology is. Ideology does not “correspond to reality”, but rather is an “allusions” to reality (Althusser, 1971: 162). The Hegemonic Masculinity, as the guarantor of the meaning of the ideology of patriarchy, is constructed in a way which does not correspond to the real conditions of the lives of the subjects, the men and women. Thus, the ambiguity and abstractness of the Hegemonic Masculinity as the Subject, and its inapplicability to the subjects’ lives, is, in fact, the inherent characteristic of the ideology of patriarchy which is an imaginary “world outlook” represented to innumerable subjects, i.e. men and women (p 162).

Second; Althusser would say that the Subject is itself an illusion (like God, Justice, Duty, etc.), but, in order to become empirical, visible and touchable for the subjects, in order to correspond to the material existence of the subjects, the Subject needs to become a subject. The necessity of the transformation of the Subject into a subject, or, better to say, the necessity of the existence of the representatives of the Subject among subjects (think of “God who sends his Son to the Earth”) (p 179), implies that ideology, whose center is occupied by the Subject, is not just an illusion, but has a material existence. The ideas of a man, who has subjected himself to the Hegemonic Masculinity, are illustrated in his material actions “inserted into material practices governed by material rituals defined by the material ideological apparatuses” (p 169). The homophobic speech of this subject, his breadwinner role, his engagement in body-contact confrontational sports, his teachings to his children in the family of what constitutes a real man, etc., are examples of practices which are governed by rituals of ideological apparatuses: sports, school, media, family, etc., and are all indications of the material existence of the ideology of patriarchy and the material representation of its Subject by subjects. The Subject is represented through embodied sunbjects.

b) The second criticism upon which I react, using Althusser’s discussion is: How is it possible that men choose to pursue a hegemonic version of masculinity whose characteristics are violence, aggression and self-centeredness? Why men choose to acquire negative characteristics? (Collier, 1998) (Although Connell himself elaborates that hegemonic masculinity, at certain periods of history and in certain local, regional or global contexts, does include “positive” actions as well, I employ Althusser to respond to this criticism, but from a different perspective than that of Connell.)

Althusser would probably bring two delicate points here: First; representing a man as one who freely chooses to have Hegemonic Masculine patterns of life, does not help us to identify how he acquires this freedom. Althusser would say “the individual is interpellated as a free subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject” (p 182); that is to say, a man misrecognizes himself as a free and autonomous being, who thinks, decides and acts freely, just after subjection to the Hegemonic Masculinity; “there are no [free] subjects except by and for their subjection” (p 182), and this subjection happens even before the moment of the man’s birth (think of the toys that the boy’s parents buy before the child is born) so “the individual is always-already a subject” (p 176). Thus, subjection of the subject to the Subject is the price a subject pays in order to (mis)identify himself as a free individual.

Second; the subject doesn’t recognize that he pays a price, because it’s the function of ideology, primarily with the use of ideological apparatuses, to obscure the real conditions of existence; men do not necessarily realize that pursuing the Hegemonic Masculine figure is exploitative for themselves (e.g. men’s average life expectancy is smaller than women because of the more risky professions they take), leading to a “cultural consent” among men to pursue the hegemonic form (Connell, 2005: 846).

Conclusion

What I have shown in my essay is that Althusser helps us to broaden our understanding of the concept of hegemonic masculinity, and provides us with powerful theoretical tools to reflect upon some of the prevalent criticisms of the concept. Yet, there is a question which is provoking enthusiasm for me, and I will leave it for further discussion: How can one, who calls herself/himself a challenger to the ruling ideological structure, be certain that her/his practices are not governed by the same ruling ideological structure that she/he claims to challenge, securing the same ideology and the ruling Subject? Is it possible for a subject to situate herself/himself outside the ruling ideology? And is it necessary at all to situate oneself outside the ruling ideology in order to challenge it?

Reference:

Althusser, Louis. 1971. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in LENIN AND PHILOSOPHY
AND OTHER ESSAYS. Monthly Review Press: New York and London.

Collier, R. 1998. Masculinities, crime and criminology: Men, heterosexuality and the criminal(ised) other. London: Sage.

Connell, Robert William. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Connell, R. W., and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. "HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY: Rethinking the Concept." Gender & Society 19, no. 6: 829-859

Martin, P. Y. 1998. Why can't a man be more like a woman? Reflections on Connell's masculinities. Gender & Society 12 (4): 472-74.

Wetherell, M., and N. Edley. 1999. Negotiating hegemonic masculinity: Imaginary positions and psycho-discursive practices. Feminism and Psychology 9 (3): 335-56.

Whitehead, S.M. 2002. Men and masculinities: Key themes and new directions. Cambridge, UK: Polity.

Debate on Hidden/Public Transcript

2010-02-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

M. Ali Abdi

James C. Scott in the three chapters (1, 7 and 8) of his book entitled Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) eloquently argues how the sometimes-believed-to-be-mythical direct public aggressions of the dominated against dominant groups in different societies, from today’s liberal democracies of the west to the authoritarian regimes of eastern Europe during Soviet Union to the slave-master communities in US during 18^th and 19^th centuries, were – and are - largely rooted in the hidden aspects of the lives of dominators and dominated ones; a point which is usually ignored by social scientists.

In order to elaborate his argument, he introduces two concepts: public transcript and hidden transcript. As he identifies, public transcript is “the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate”, calls for humbleness from the former and arrogance from the latter, is usually shaped in a way to satisfy the expectations of the dominants, and “provides evidence for the hegemony of dominant discourse” (1990: 2, 4, 11).

The hidden transcript, on the other hand, describes discourses and practices that occur “offstage” and “beyond direct observation”, is filled - among subordinates - with emancipatory and metaphorical “folktales”, “rituals”, “rhetoric”, “jokes and rumors” and – at the same time – with forms of “disguised, low-profile, undeclared resistances”, or “infra-politics”, which are not “substitutes” for the direct public confrontation of the oppressed ones against oppressors, even are not for “relieving the tensions” of subordinates, but rather are “silent partners of … loud form of public resistance[s]” and are necessary in order to break the border between the hidden and public transcript or, in other words, to have a “public declaration of the hidden transcript” one day (1990: 4, 184, 185, 198, 199, 202).

I would like to invoke the Iranian green movement[1] to give a better picture of Scott’s argument in terms of understanding how the introduction of the concepts of hidden transcript and infra-politics are useful tools to analyze a social movement. Iranians have been under the pressure of an oppressive regime through the last 31 years[2]. As Foucault says, “Where there is power, there is resistance” (1978: 95). So Iranians have always been producing, as Gramsci calls, “alternative discourses” against the hegemonic discourse of the regime, especially within the hidden transcript. These “counter-discourses” (Alonso 1988: 14) have been extensively produced through daily conversations in work offices, taxies, metros, buses, cinemas, galleries, universities, parks, parties, homes, (etc.) and through stories, novels, movies, poems, songs, drawings, sculptures, by which Iranians have been sharing their common experiences and pains of oppression, while also making strong intimate bonds with each other.

It was during the ex-president’s time, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, that the hidden transcript found the opportunity of becoming public, because, from a “hydraulic structuralism”[3] perspective, the dam (power of dominant groups) was less strength (less hostile) against the water (counter-discourses) behind it (within the hidden transcript) (Scott 1990: 219). Although many of the uprisings of that time were decisively defeated[4], the bravery and heroism of students themselves became part of the hidden transcript. So I believe that, these days, street demonstrations and sensibly articulated slogans of Iranians against the so-called president and the supreme leader[5] have strong roots in the hidden transcript; that is to say, “there is a dialectic … between the hidden transcript and practical resistance” (1990: 191).

Correspondingly, there is a large scale use of infra-politics within the green movement, because infra-politics for those people who are living under the authoritarian regimes is, as Scott says, the “real”, “political life” (1990: 200, 201). For instance, green Iranians, through the last 8 months after the election, have been writing anti-government slogans on paper moneys, on walls in the streets, and even on the windows of telephone-boxes, making video clips and collecting pictures of the demonstrations to publish in internet social networks, copying CDs about the green movement and distributing it in the neighborhood, publishing internet magazines and newspapers (and etc.) which are all different forms of infra-politics because there are no “leaders” and “membership lists”, they are based on “informal networks of friends and kin”, and are forms of disguised, “surreptitious resistance”, and, in appropriate conditions, “the accumulation of such petty acts can, rather like snowflakes on a steep mountainside, set off an avalanche” (1990: 192, 200).

Yet, I think that there is one question which is not answered by Scott (at least in the three chapters that I read from his book): How do the public transcript of subordinates and that of dominants affect the hidden transcript of subordinates? (Also how does the hidden transcript of dominants (bribery, clandestine luxury, tampering with land titles) affect their public transcript, and vice versa? How do public and hidden transcripts affect each other?) I want to build my criticism of his theory on the question that I raised.

I think Scott is somehow giving little attention to the possible mutual effects of public transcript and hidden transcript on each other. Although he draws on Foucauldian explanation of dominant discourse and multiplicity of excluded discourses, and hence the plurality of resistances (because discourse “transmits and produces power”, while also is an “effect” of power, and “where there is power, there is resistance”), he does not take into account that “we must not imagine a world of discourse divided between … the dominant discourse and the dominated one” (Foucault 1978: 95, 100, 101). The mere phrase of “the first public declaration of the hidden transcript” has the implication of a relatively clear distinction between dominant and dominated discourse. (Although Scott himself states that “the frontier between the public and the hidden transcripts is a zone of constant struggle” (1990: 14) in the very beginning, he does not incorporate it through his work, as I mentioned)

The second criticism which I build on the question that I asked is the overemphasis of the “agency” in Scott’s work. Let me render my criticism in this way: where Durkheim wants to explain “social fact”, he uses this metaphor that “the air is no less heavy because we do not detect its weight” (Durkheim 1966: 5); that is to say, one cannot escape from the material force of ideology. There is no single example, in Scott’s work, of any individual who cannot “discern” and “read” the “real intentions and moods of the potentially threatening power holders” (everybody can escape the air!); that is to say everybody “plays fool to catch wise” (emphasis added) (Scott 1990: 3). So, from my understanding of his work (the three chapters that I read), hegemonic discourse cannot “alienate” anybody.

It was also interesting for me to note that what for Hannah Arendt is one of the origins of totalitarianism, is, for Scott, one of the origins of “unstructured acts of vengeance” against the repressive regimes (1990: 217). While, from Arendt’s perspective, “highly atomized society” and “high isolation and lack of normal social relationships” force people to have a sense of having a place in the world only by belonging to a “totalitarian movement” and “membership in the party”, from Scott’s point of view, “heavy surveillance, geographical separation [and] linguistic differences” which atomize the society, would lead to – what Levi Strauss calls - “raw” and not “cooked” declaration of hidden transcript, which is just a less nuanced and elaborate declaration. Here, again, the absolute consciousness of the individual conquests his/her possible alienation.

So Although I do not argue for “total incapsulation” [sic], I think that Scott is lying on the relatively pure “autonomy” of individuals from social constraints (the two terms are derived from Stuart Hall 1981: 222) and of hidden transcript from public one. I want to bring my two critical points back to argue that there is not an individual out of the social constraints, so I believe that “air is everywhere”. But at the same time I assume that there are some social constraints which are potentially transformable by the effects of individuals, or agents, such as the discriminatory, oppressive laws enacted by a totalitarian regime. Besides, there is a constant negotiation between the two transcripts, which have effects on the form of potential social movement.

Yet, despite the mentioned shortcomings, Scott’s argument has a notable implication for me - as somebody who lives many of his life moments with the green movement - and that was giving me hope for the future of the Iranian green movement. Although the repressive Iranian regime is putting us into jail, although it does not allow us to have public demonstrations in the street, although it does not let us gather in public places in large numbers, although it executes us for political reasons, these incidents are all becoming the source for “backstage discourse of customs, heroism, revenge, and justice” (1990: 191), which will be the sources of empowerment for the green movement ironically.

[1] After June 12^th Iranian presidential election, by which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fraudulently grabbed the power, many Iranians who didn’t believe in the results started a democratic social movement, primarily in order to call for a recount of the votes, and nowadays for more structural changes within the constitution. Green is the symbolic color of this movement.

[2] Detailed documents of the extensive and systematic violations of human rights in Iran are available on most international human rights organization such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, or Human Rights Council of United Nations.

[3] Scott uses this metaphor, water behind a dam, in order to explain when and how public declaration of hidden transcript is possible. Water behind a dam is an indication of the multiplicity of counter-discourses, while the strength of the dam is analogous to the power of dominant groups.

[4] Such as student uprising on July 9^th 2000

[5] Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader in Iran, has control over state TV, judiciary system, army forces, revolutionary guards, and major national resources, making him the most powerful man in Iran.