"My 'W/ri[gh]t/E' and My Land": A Postcolonial Feminist Study on Grassroots' Archives and Autobiography (1937-2004)

<p>Inspired by the story of Pornpet Meuansri, a land rights activist, who was brutally killed on the way back home from her farm leaving behind her 400 petitions, diaries, letters, news clippings, court documents and other archival records, my thesis aims to answer the central questions of “Can the subaltern write? And how do we begin to read their writing?” These questions are then addressed within the combined frameworks of postcolonial geography and feminist research practice specifically focusing on auto/biography and the innovative approaches of revelatory reading and engaging women’s archives and women’s life narratives intersubjectively. In this regard, Trinh Thi Minh-ha's idea of “territorialised knowledge” as well as Luce Irigaray's notion of “approaching the other as other” and Spivak's question "Can the subaltern speak?" are applied to Pornpet’s work in an effort to create a more inclusive postcolonial geographical knowledge which reflects more in-depth race and class specificities. As a result, the thesis elaborates upon three significant areas of original contribution to the disciplines of postcolonial feminist geography and archives studies: theoretical, methodological and epistemological. Firstly and theoretically, this study advances postcolonial feminist scholarship by applying the concept of ‘colonialism within’, a missing piece not touched upon by postcolonial feminist thinkers. Moreover, the study shifts the current discursive debates on postcolonial archives studies to ‘subalternity into crisis’ in that, at least in Pornpet's case, she attempts to be heard and understood on her own terms in an effort to overcome her own subalternity. In this regard, the thesis asserts that overcoming subalternity is not possible without also having the dominants unlearn their privilege, and therefore overcome the internalised structured hearing of the dominant discourses that silence and marginalise the subaltern. Therefore, this thesis explores this possibility through Irigaray’s work on ‘listening’ and intersubjective dialogue. Secondly and methodologically, the thesis critically and creatively applies the feminist innovative approach of ‘revelatory reading' to assess the subaltern’s archives by developing Irigaray’s notion of “approaching the [sexuate and racial] other as the other” and applying it to the reading of texts of (deceased) others, specifically, the texts of a subaltern (-ity into crisis), in creative ways, eg reading ‘becoming’, reading ‘silence’ and reading ‘listening’, respectively. Thirdly and epistemologically, a radical interpretation of the concept of de-bureaucratisation or a grassroots woman’s critique of mainstream Thai feminist scholarship is applied through the framework of Buddhism and the utilisation of multiple forms of inscription. This results in not only interrupting the homogenising effects of “Women and Development” and mainstream feminist discourse in Thailand, but it also brings the often ignored issue of patriarchal state ‘violence’ (through writing) against (men and) women to the forefront. Above all, a study on writing from women’s personal experience in the context of oppressive public structures not only reveals the hidden space of the internal colonial bureaucratic system but also offers the tools to challenge the centralised state organisation’s patriarchal structure. In this regard, a feminist critique that establishes both a body of knowledge built up from missing perspectives and that is directed by the need for a more just and equitable society will enrich the lives of (both) women (and men) and other “subalterns”.</p>

"My 'W/ri[gh]t/E' and My Land": A Postcolonial Feminist Study on Grassroots' Archives and Autobiography (1937-2004)

<p>Inspired by the story of Pornpet Meuansri, a land rights activist, who was brutally killed on the way back home from her farm leaving behind her 400 petitions, diaries, letters, news clippings, court documents and other archival records, my thesis aims to answer the central questions of “Can the subaltern write? And how do we begin to read their writing?” These questions are then addressed within the combined frameworks of postcolonial geography and feminist research practice specifically focusing on auto/biography and the innovative approaches of revelatory reading and engaging women’s archives and women’s life narratives intersubjectively. In this regard, Trinh Thi Minh-ha's idea of “territorialised knowledge” as well as Luce Irigaray's notion of “approaching the other as other” and Spivak's question "Can the subaltern speak?" are applied to Pornpet’s work in an effort to create a more inclusive postcolonial geographical knowledge which reflects more in-depth race and class specificities. As a result, the thesis elaborates upon three significant areas of original contribution to the disciplines of postcolonial feminist geography and archives studies: theoretical, methodological and epistemological. Firstly and theoretically, this study advances postcolonial feminist scholarship by applying the concept of ‘colonialism within’, a missing piece not touched upon by postcolonial feminist thinkers. Moreover, the study shifts the current discursive debates on postcolonial archives studies to ‘subalternity into crisis’ in that, at least in Pornpet's case, she attempts to be heard and understood on her own terms in an effort to overcome her own subalternity. In this regard, the thesis asserts that overcoming subalternity is not possible without also having the dominants unlearn their privilege, and therefore overcome the internalised structured hearing of the dominant discourses that silence and marginalise the subaltern. Therefore, this thesis explores this possibility through Irigaray’s work on ‘listening’ and intersubjective dialogue. Secondly and methodologically, the thesis critically and creatively applies the feminist innovative approach of ‘revelatory reading' to assess the subaltern’s archives by developing Irigaray’s notion of “approaching the [sexuate and racial] other as the other” and applying it to the reading of texts of (deceased) others, specifically, the texts of a subaltern (-ity into crisis), in creative ways, eg reading ‘becoming’, reading ‘silence’ and reading ‘listening’, respectively. Thirdly and epistemologically, a radical interpretation of the concept of de-bureaucratisation or a grassroots woman’s critique of mainstream Thai feminist scholarship is applied through the framework of Buddhism and the utilisation of multiple forms of inscription. This results in not only interrupting the homogenising effects of “Women and Development” and mainstream feminist discourse in Thailand, but it also brings the often ignored issue of patriarchal state ‘violence’ (through writing) against (men and) women to the forefront. Above all, a study on writing from women’s personal experience in the context of oppressive public structures not only reveals the hidden space of the internal colonial bureaucratic system but also offers the tools to challenge the centralised state organisation’s patriarchal structure. In this regard, a feminist critique that establishes both a body of knowledge built up from missing perspectives and that is directed by the need for a more just and equitable society will enrich the lives of (both) women (and men) and other “subalterns”.</p>

Glokalisierung und Feminisierung: Zur strukturellen Krise von Lohnarbeit im europäischen Raum

The article discusses the glocalized socio-spatial form of European production as socially crisis-ridden. Combining literature from transnational production network theory, critical political economy, labour process theory and feminist geography the article shows that a European production regime has developed which is based on the transnationalization of economic and competitive parameters on the one hand and multiscalar social fragmentation of labour processes on the other. Its very logic is, hence, functional economic integration based on labour's socio-spatial disintegration. The regime pushes for what we can call the feminization of work because it systematically cuts the former, patriarchal and uneven connection between waged work and socio-political integration. As feminist debates show, progressive perspectives have to be transnational and multiscalar and they have to include fundamental questions about the concept and status of work in society.

Towards a feminist politics of mobility: U.S. Travel and immigration memoirs

This paper challenges longstanding cultural associations that link men to mobility and women to stability by outlining what I term a feminist politics of mobility. Bringing together four contemporary memoirs that foreground journeys, I explore how U.S. women embody and represent their mobility, as well as how movement shapes their relationships to global power structures and to norms of gender and sexuality. I draw on feminist geography, feminist and queer theory, memoir studies and mobility scholarship to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love (2006), Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us (2012), Daisy Hernández’s A Cup of Water Under My Bed (2014), and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012). Highlighting the differences between these authors’ journeys as well as the patterns across them, I ultimately find that these memoirists model a feminist politics of mobility, wherein moving through space redistributes power to women and renegotiates social relations that have historically supported women’s subordination.

Towards a feminist politics of mobility: U.S. Travel and immigration memoirs

This paper challenges longstanding cultural associations that link men to mobility and women to stability by outlining what I term a feminist politics of mobility. Bringing together four contemporary memoirs that foreground journeys, I explore how U.S. women embody and represent their mobility, as well as how movement shapes their relationships to global power structures and to norms of gender and sexuality. I draw on feminist geography, feminist and queer theory, memoir studies and mobility scholarship to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love (2006), Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us (2012), Daisy Hernández’s A Cup of Water Under My Bed (2014), and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012). Highlighting the differences between these authors’ journeys as well as the patterns across them, I ultimately find that these memoirists model a feminist politics of mobility, wherein moving through space redistributes power to women and renegotiates social relations that have historically supported women’s subordination.

Locating Sickness: Disability, Queerness, and Race in a Memoir

This paper re-reads Sick: A Memoir (2018) by Porochista Khakpour, as a transnational feminist and queer text, to investigate how the author locates her disability and queerness with the diaspora, homelessness, and rise of governmental violence. Through the lens of feminist and disability studies, Sick can be read as an outstanding narrative of the queerness, disability, in-between-ness, and of course, resistance of a queer and disabled woman of color. The paper argues that Khakpour’s story should be regarded as an attempt to write complexities of intersectional and multi-layered identities that challenge the discourses of detection and diagnosis; criticize the politics of race among the community of Iranian-diaspora and in America; and highlight the role of home, belonging, and the feeling of homelessness caused by state policies of nation-building and exclusion. Further, Khakpour proposes a new guideline for feminist geography that accommodates female, queer, disabled, and diasporic Iranian-American bodies on the expanding map of excluded and erased subjects.

Gendering the care/control nexus of the humanitarian border: Women’s bodies and gendered control of mobility in a EUropean borderland

Building upon and contributing to a feminist geography of borders, the chosen methodological approach examines women’s bodily experiences at a Southern EUropean border, the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Drawing on three months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article scrutinises the care interactions unfolding in a Centre for Immigrants between medical humanitarians and women residing there in their position as both migrants and patients. The analysis foregrounds the gendered forms of domination that the care function of the humanitarian border entails. I argue that medical humanitarians are vested with the power to decide over women’s mobility in the name of care on the basis of an entanglement of administrative and medical procedures in this border context. While women are subject to greater humanitarian intervention due to the association of their embodied states with vulnerability, the biopolitical migration management of the border grants medical humanitarians a decision-making authority. The article uncovers how medical humanitarianism, enmeshed in the border regime, yields gendered constraints from practices of immobilisation to imposed practices of mothering. It traces the rationale for these practices to racialised and gendered processes of othering that usher in perceptions of undeservingness and sustain a humanitarian claim for biopolitical responsibility over these women’s mobility.

The gendered impact of the financial crisis: Struggles over social reproduction in Greece

The global financial crisis has triggered a dramatic transformation of employment in the weakest Eurozone economies. This is evidenced in deteriorating work conditions, limited employee negotiating power, low pay, zero-hours contracts and, most importantly, periods of prolonged unemployment for most of the working population, especially women. We offer a critical analysis of the boundaries of formal and informal, paid and unpaid, productive and reproductive work, and explore how austerity policies implemented in Greece in the aftermath of the global financial crisis have transformed women’s everyday lives. In contributing to critical discussions of neoliberal capitalism and recent feminist geography studies, our empirical study focuses on how women’s struggles over social reproduction unfold in the public and private spheres. It proposes that women’s temporary retreat to unpaid work at home constitutes a form of resistance to intensifying precarisation, and, at times, contributes to the emergence of new collective forms of reproduction.

Beyond the Binary

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of binary opposition considers oppositional categories as a fundamental effect of human cognition. Humans, Lévi-Strauss argues, structure the world and their existence in it by way of symbolic oppositions that are represented and negotiated analogically. Nineteenth-century writing about nonhuman nature has been commonly regarded as a male-dominated field focusing on encounters with nature as a feminized other that resides in contraposition to man and manmade settings. This essay seeks to theorize the inconsistencies represented in feminized nature, to lay bare the ways in which scholarly interpretations of nature writing are traditionally structured around binary boundaries, and to reassess the conceptual framework of feminist geography, which has historically employed a dichotomous structure to expose traditional representations of gender. Susan Fenimore Cooper’s Rural Hours and Celia Thaxter’s Among the Isles of Shoals each illustrate an awareness of the transcorporeality of human bodies and ecological spaces as enmeshed in a complex, shifting ontology. Both writers attempt to reconstruct an inclusive “non-gendered” ecology that transforms the binary landscapes of “village-woods” and “island-garden” into non-hierarchical vistas that de-enforce the subservience of nature, making these spaces compatible, harmonious, and synergistic.