From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Jul 22 2002 - 11:24:08 MDT
On 22 Jul 2002 at 13:18, Walpurgis wrote:
> Another interesting essay Joe, you are quite a writer! Some coments follow:
>
I didn't write it; go to:
http://www.secularislam.org/women/postmodern.htm
> > In the Middle Eastern countries,
> > opposition to 'imperialist culture' has been considered as an
> > element of the fight against imperialism. Women have been the
> > victims of the struggle against 'imperialist culture' and
> > "Westernism". This is because women's liberation and women's
> > rights were seen as imperialist and western concepts.
> > Traditionalist, religious and reactionary forces opposed women's
> > liberation in the name of fighting Imperialism and the West.
>
> I recall reading Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology from 1979. She wrote that cultural
> relativism would not stop women defending other women from the misogynistic
> values of cultures that burn, mutiliate, rape and kill women. She supported an
> universal rights based on her ideas of female essence.
>
> > Under the guise of avoiding orientalism, racism and
> > Euro-centerism, these theories have justified and continue to
> > justify the attacks on women's rights,
>
> Guise? Is this a conspiracy? Or just a mistake?
>
> > Post-modern
> > theories emerged in the 1980s; at the time of the rise of
> > conservatism, the attacks of capitalist market economy, the
> > international ideological shifts and imbalances, the
> > anti-secularist backlash and the rise of political Islam. These
> > theories were the by-products of a time of uncertainty, darkness,
> > setbacks and backlash.
>
> I'm dubious about the simply cause and effect you posit here. Post-modernity is
> likely the result of other factors, part of a complicated picture, not necessarily the
> bastard child of this desperate struggle.
>
> > Post-modern theories have increasingly
> > questioned the project of Enlightenment.
>
> Good. Universalism and essentialism is just as dangerous and irresponsible as
> relativism.
>
> > These theories criticize
> > the ideals of truth, rationality, system, foundation, certainty
> > and coherence. They refute a universal view on history, the world,
> > and society as a whole and believe in fragmentation and
> > differences, since according to these views, the history of
> > humanity does not evolve in a universal direction toward modern
> > and secularist norms and values. These theories doubt system and a
> > universal truth, and base their essence on differences and
> > fragmentation.
>
> Good. These ideas need critiquing. Science also provides counter-point to these
> lofty ideals.
>
> > From this standpoint the history has reached to its
> > end, modernism failed to achieve its commitments, and secularism
> > and universalism, all became empty words and terms. According to
> > post-modern views, the dichotomy of oppressed and oppressor,
> > oppressive regimes and people under their rule, backward cultural
> > and religious values and women's liberation, are invalid and do
> > not exist anymore.
>
> At this point I sense a profound problem with the essay - how do you make such
> generalisations about post-modern theory, with defintion of it, or even references to
> any of its proponents? Who made these claims of invalidty? When? Where? Who
> supported it? Which po-mos didn't?
>
> > These theories tell us that the universality of
> > women's rights, modernity and secularism are all products of the
> > evolution of western societies and therefore inapplicable and
> > incompatible to non-western societies where indigenous cultural
> > and religious values and norms are different than the West.
>
> They seem to be. rights are useful, but certianly not absolute. To conceive of them,
> and implement them as universal measures is just and laudable, to make any
> ontological claims about their objective reality is false.
>
> > Therefore, dominant secularist ideologies must be questioned and
> > resisted where the viable traditions of social organization such
> > as Islam can lay the framework for a more humane and egalitarian
> > society.
>
> What po-mos suported Islam? Who would swop secularism for another patriarchal
> religion?
>
> > "Secularism is not a separation between religion and the state, as
> > propagated in both western and Arab writing. Rather, it is the
> > removal of absolute values- epistemological and ethical- from the
> > world such that the entire world-humanity and nature alike-
> > becomes merely a utilitarian object to be utilised and subjugated.
>
> Removal of absolute values does not necessarily result in oppression.
>
> > According to identity politics and cultural relativism,
> > women's quest for legal, political and economic equality is
> > considered as culturally specific. It permits the justification of
> > practices that oppress and dehumanise women in non- western
> > cultures, when similar practices would be condemned as outrageous,
> > unacceptable and barbaric in western culture.
>
> Who's identity politics?
> Cultral specification does not necessarily rsult in oppression.
>
> > The pressure
> > on women living in the Middle Eastern countries to denounce
> > concepts of women's rights as western, as ethnic specific and
> > irrelevant to non- western contexts is one of the destructive and
> > damaging consequences of these views.
>
> Perhaps the pressure is so great because WE have sold-out on women's rights. We
> still do not live in an equal society, we are still dogged and poisoned by sexism.
> What must our feminisms mean to the rest of the world when there are still these
> problems? This is a mistaken perspective, but one which women elsewhere might
> have of us.
>
> > Juliette Minces has argued that they are not ready "to
> > undergo an emancipation which throws into question a non - secular
> > equilibrium which has the full backing of religion"
>
> It seems to me that emancipation is a necessary condition for the full modernisation
> Islamic countries so desire. One cannot have a technological revolution without a
> cultural one.
>
> > One dramatic
> > example is the silence of feminists in the West in face of
> > systematic suppression of women's basic human rights in Iran and
> > countries under the rule of Islamic regimes and under the pressure
> > of Islamic movements.
>
> Perhaps being called "islamophobic" makes them scared? But it shouldn't.
>
> >Another example is the denial of asylum
> > rights to people especially women fleeing oppression and
> > gender-based persecution such as honour killing, forced marriage,
> > stoning to death, veil and other Islamic practices and oppressive
> > customs, under the name of respecting indigenous culture and
> > religion.
>
> I believe it is the MEN who rule our governments that deny these rights.
>
> >The third example is the way Western governments and
> > their judicial systems treat the basic human rights of women and
> > girls in the Islamic families and Islamic communities in the West,
> > in face of forced marriage, honour killing, imposing the veil on
> > girls under 16 which deprives them from social activities and
> > enjoying their basic rights. Presumably what is happening to women
> > in those countries and communities is what they deserve and is
> > more than enough for them.
>
> Here you seem to conflate postmodernity with racism.
>
> >The conceptual frameworks laid by
> > identity politics and cultural relativism prevent many western
> > intellectuals including women's rights activists from seeing and
> > appreciating the diversified women's movements in the Middle East.
>
> No. ID politics allowed feminists to underastand that women of different
> classes/races/ethnicities/ages/etc had different needs than the white middle -class
> women who were the main feminist writers. This does not condone abuse, slavery,
> harm etc etc etc. The differences that were recognised we're in what women wanted
> from freedom and how they were to get it - but the main concern for all was the
> same.
> Freedom.
>
> Despite these observations, I salute you for being concerned with gender equality.
> Thanks for the read,
> Walpurgis
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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