Abstract

 

A key challenge for women engaged in global struggles against violence and war is to nurture transnational feminisms while being cognisant of differences and local contexts. Is feminist solidarity in women’s antiwar movements possible? Solidarity can be described as the sentiment and action of connectivity, although definitions remain varied and highly personalised. Solidarity lends itself to political mobilisation beyond emotional rhetorical synthesis as it requires action by reason of moral obligation to another. Women in Black, a movement of women globally against war and gendered violence has been protesting on the streets against various loci of conflict since 1988. Dressed in black in silent vigils, their dissent is the simulacrum of mourning. WiB connects women globally by the calling for solidarity in women’s multiple struggles against political violence, adding to feminist critiques of war, nationalism and resistance. This thesis argues that feminist solidarity is possible, that WiB is creating discursive space for a progressive reconfiguration of solidarity that is attendant on differences by drawing strength from the diversity of the movement. This thesis explores contemporary feminist theories of solidarity to analyse how it is enacted by the women’s antiwar group Women in Black, demonstrating that it is crucial to feminist mobilisation but is not without its own difficult negotiations and unresolvable tensions.

 

Introduction

 

Globally, women are engaging in actions and conversations in resistance to war and cultures of militarism. In doing so they are simultaneously active at local and global sites of cooperation and community-building. Grassroots-level activism is one means by which antiwar discourses are engaged. Internationally through autonomous and organisational networks women may be seen to be creating an ‘imagined community’[i]. The central objective of the thesis is to answer the research question of whether feminist solidarity in the women’s antiwar movement is possible, by examining the ways in which women in anti-war movements conceive of solidarity in light of shared discourses and different experiences. It presents an analysis of how solidarity is being enacted in its response to militarism, war and nationalism in a feminist context. The thesis will discuss the limitations of solidarity and the problematic aspects of global ‘sisterhood’ and contemporary notions of women’s collective political mobilisation. There is a distinct movement globally by many women who have chosen to build alliances and work together under feminist principles across differences, and are thus creating solidarity in practice.

 

Arguments about the substance and very possibility of women’s solidarity have consumed feminist theorists for years. Given the myriad collaborative works of women internationally in response to labour rights, environmentalism, women’s rights, suffrage and war, questioning the possibility of women’s solidarity must explore how discursive conceptions are reconciled with feminist praxis.  Solidarity in women’s antiwar movement is not only possible but crucial for effective political resistance, despite the problematics presented by engagement across difference. The emergence of a feminist paradigm of transnational networks is assisting in the construction of discourse and dialogue to enable solidarity, though caution must be exercised in drawing universalist conclusions or assuming the necessity of this project for all women. I contend that the re-emergence of feminist solidarity in practice is a reconciliation of universalism and difference capable of redressing past criticisms and fashioning more reflexive feminist praxis.

 

Exploring the nexus between the theory and practice of women’s antiwar resistance I present a case study of Women in Black (WiB), a contemporary women’s antiwar movement, to demonstrate how active engagement with antiwar discourses is a form of solidarity in action. WiB is a global network of women opposing war and violence by a shared method of protest based on silent, black-clothed public vigils. Emerging from the Israel/Palestine conflict, WiB has itself become a method of protest and mobilisation by women in every continent to resist both local and international conflicts. Without naively assuming that practice is exonerated of problematic politics, this paper will critically analyse the possibility of women’s solidarity, given both the current state of theorising and practice.

 

This thesis will assess how feminism has revised past debates over difference and solidarity in the light of international collaborations. Contemporary feminist theory is increasingly attentive to intersectional politics and thus more able to engage with difference and particularity. This has enabled a shift from the preoccupation of a traditional western feminist agenda with ‘patriarchal’ oppression and suffrage to an analysis of the multiple loci of oppression and the interplay of these with gendered experience. Emerging paradigms of transnational feminist networks and transversal politics have put a new spin on women’s solidarity. The concurrent shift in feminist anti-war theorising has also come to challenge essentialism about the ‘innate’ peaceability of the category ‘women’, demanding more awareness of the multiplicity of experiences of women around conflict environments.

 

Appeals to solidarity by feminists in response to the Iraq war has witnessed both the expression of shared identity and an affirmation of difference by way of grounding protests in local subjectivities. Women protesting were doing so generally on a local level, appealing to local political processes and transnational networks. The effects of global feedback loops of interaction mean that standing in solidarity with women across borders also ideally requires those in privileged countries taking responsibility and nurturing awareness of their own positionality rather than claiming the safety of neutrality. It is impossible to speak out against the ‘war on terror’ without understanding how ‘our’ government and populace is implicated, it is similarly premature to decry free trade as a western consumer without an analysis of how we are all embedded in international economic processes often built on the labour of underprivileged women. Contemporary feminism and its search for neo-solidarities is concerned with women interrogating their own positions of privilege and power in reference to interaction with others across race/class/age/ability/sexuality. There is a pressing need to recognise, understand, and reconcile differences in grassroots activism, building this into academic discourses to nurture diversity and remember the necessity of engagement, rather than building walls around them.

 

The research question is significant in addressing a current crisis in feminist theorising, in the troublesome post-identity politics phase, where neither post-patriarchal nor ‘traditional’ (western) feminist analysis is considered entirely appropriate. As a feminist actively involved in multiple struggles, I am often confronted by both the frustration of feeling backed into the proverbial corner by postmodernism’s focus on the subject’s ever-problematic positioning[ii], yet also by the need to be constantly aware of how I am engaging with other women and the complexities of differences between us, and how we can open space for dialogue which is respectful and responsive to this. This is the problematical the heart of feminist political activism; how to engage across differences, and how these alliances are understood and developed as part of an emergent paradigm of transversal politics. The tensions across discourse and experience that I seek to explore in this text are considered critical issues in feminism and the creation of feminist political alliances, as they wrestle with notions of power, difference and unity (de Lauretis 1986 cited in Mohanty 2003:108).

 

Methodology

 

The research methodology is developed from a literature review of contemporary feminist approaches to solidarity. I then conduct a case study of the antiwar activist movement Women in Black as a means of contextualising conceptions of solidarity in arguing that these women are creating a framework of solidarity that draws its legitimacy and strength from the diversity of the movement. It makes possible and tangible the idea of feminist solidarity that is enabled, not precluded, by difference.

 

In the literature review I will analyse different notions of solidarity that have been proposed by feminist writers, although key aspects in recent literature are concerned with how to approach differences in a way that traditional ‘westocentric’ feminism failed (Yuval-Davis 2004). Transversal politics (Nira Yuval-Davis 1997), reflective solidarity (Jodi Dean 1996), empathetic cooperation (Christine Sylvester 1994, 2002) and ‘common differences’ (Chandra Mohanty 2003) are some of the proposed progressive methods of feminist organisation across diversity. A key concern here is regarding how to identify and codify solidarity; I am primarily concerned with an analytical account of the political alliances formed between women and women’s networks, and about shared analyses of war and militarism. I recognise there are a considerable number of psychologically-based studies of solidarity and group-identity building in more corporate organisational settings. I do not wish to dismiss these works, but reiterate my concern with the relationships of women primarily via a feminist frame in the context of antiwar activism. It is imperative to ground the case study by analysis of feminist theorising on women’s solidarity and its articulation via their transnational networks and anti-war discourses.

 

Accounts dealing with the themes of gender and war are too numerous and complex to analyse in-depth at this point. Key texts include those by Cynthia Cockburn, J. Ann Ticker, Nira Yuval-Davis, Chandra Mohanty, Hannah Arendt, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Cynthia Enloe. These texts analyse contemporary women’s involvement with narratives of gender and war, providing a genealogy of how women have both reinforced and resisted them. One problematic aspect of the issue of women’s antiwar activity is the consistently maternalistic and essentialist material that appears around the subject which often fails to address the complexities of such a political agenda. Whether this is by the assumed homogeneity of women’s experiences, or in the misrepresentation of women across cultures and societies (speaking for rather than with), exposition which does not explicitly analyse power dynamics within women’s movements simply cannot do justice to the deeper issues underlying women’s action. There is certainly a need to heed the words of those such as Chandra Mohanty or bell hooks who analyse the possibilities of alliances, and the impact of subjectivities and boundaries in creating and restricting relationships of principled solidarity within imagined communities (cited in Caygill and Sundar 2002).

 

The case study links theory and practice to relate women’s experiences and ideas about their involvement in the antiwar movement. My intention is not to develop a universal theory, but to examine how women’s solidarity operates in their engagement with antiwar discourses. I analyse the synthesis of feminist theory in the practices of women’s global resistance, contingent on the localised understandings and relationships of people involved.

 

The case study consists of both document analysis and interviews with key informants from WiB chapters globally. I recognise the limitations of only being able to communicate in English; I am only able to access a fraction of the women involved and the texts produced by this particular group, as their network extends globally including the Balkans, Colombia, India, and Japan. For that which can be represented, feminist standpoint theory has assisted in developing approaches which value the production of knowledge from experience, centering women’s perspectives and creating a space in which this voice is heard directly (Mauthner 2000:288-289).

 

An email questionnaire was sent to publicly listed WiB members and internal lists, asking women to respond to a number of questions. They were asked why and when they joined WiB actions, as well as whether they had been engaged in previous antiwar or feminist activism. They were asked to reflect on the key ideals of their WiB groups, and whether these connected feminist and antiwar discourses for them personally. Further questioning revolved around issues of internationalism; their contact with other WiB groups and what solidarity meant to them. Some issues of differences and conflict resolution were discussed on a number of levels including recognition and working with differences, conflict resolution within and between groups, responses of the general public, and their own experiences of nationalism. These replies gave insights into the issues of political mobilisation by common ideals and differences, and the particularity of local interpretations of an international movement. I received replies from women in Australia, the United Kingdom, USA and Denmark. The majority are from women living in the US, and their prevalence must be balanced with WiB voices from further afield. Words of the women themselves are used as directly as possible, and interviews based on a less formal structure using an open-ended response style and a participatory method. Through this interviewees demonstrated they were actively involved in a discursive process of understanding their relationships with each other, the movement and the broader social contexts they are part of creating and resisting. Email based interviews were chosen in consideration of physical distance and the already-established major means of online communication between the networks of women in WiB.

 

Melanie Mauthner (2000:293-299) iterated some of the difficulties in interview-based case study research within a feminist framework centered on analysing disagreements and agreements, degrees of disclosure and how to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. Other possible weaknesses in such a research project include the difficulties of ethical issues and potential for misrepresentation faced by interview and ethnographic research generally (DeVault 1999:37), especially given my own limited ‘outsider’ knowledge in regard to the particular cultural and historical backgrounds of many women in WiB. This is also compounded by the difficulties of ‘measuring’ solidarity and systematically identifying shared discourses across language and cultural barriers which may affect understanding. The length of this paper and the time for research is similarly limiting, as is the response-rate and generalisability of online surveys. Echoing Collins’ ideas for researching situated knowledges (1990 cited in DeVault 1999:41), this study is based on feminist epistemology to “measure knowledge against concrete experience, test it through dialogue, and judge it in relation to an ethic of personal accountability”. I thus approach my research from a qualitative and interpretive approach with a consciously feminist methodology, but have not excluded the use of supplementary quantitative data where it is appropriate and can be adequately analysed in light of its particular socio-historical context. Some literature presents qualitative approaches as more relevant for feminist research based on the direct expression of participants’ voices and the possibilities for examining contextual complexities where positivist methods tend towards generalisation (and universalism) and assume an unproblematic ‘objective’ research perspective (DeVault 1999:32-33).

 

Literature Review

 

The literature draws from contemporary feminist theorising and commentary and will situate current feminist actions within broader debates about cross-cultural feminist organisation, seeking to highlight the tensions embroiled in claims for solidarity. The literature review outlines the impact of identity debates on this discourse, identifies key feminist notions of solidarity and then presents the current political paradigm of transnational feminist antiwar movements as a context for the expression of solidarity in shared political critique and resistance.

 

Solidarity, as the notion that some sense of shared identity or aspiration can provide the platform for movement from empathy to political action, is a point of contestation in contemporary feminist debates. Emerging concepts of solidarity by key feminist thinkers attempt to reconcile the crisis of difference/distance and connection which emerge in the local/global nexus of feminist struggles. A key question for feminists engaged in these struggles is how we can nurture transnational feminisms while being cognisant of differences and local contexts.

 

Difference and Feminism: problematic precursors to solidarity 

 

Coinciding with the American civil rights and global independence movements against colonialism, women from various identity-based groups protested their appropriation by a mainstream feminism that failed to recognise their differences and distinct needs. These ‘identity debates’ in feminism were a difficult, but necessary point of problematising difference of identity and positionality between women, some choosing to politically mobilise on the basis of distinct ethno-cultural identities. An international women’s movement historically directed by ‘western’ organisations has been charged by many contemporary feminists as treating issues and identities as universal and homogenised, or as bipolar and distinguished by a ‘core/periphery’ divide differentiating ‘First’ and ‘Third’ World women (Alexander and Mohanty 1997 cited in Giles 2004:81)[iii]. Mainstream ‘First World’ feminism, experienced as alienating by those it positions as ‘other’, is consistently criticised for failing to interrogate its own orthodoxy in terms of whiteness, power, privilege and complicity in global economic processes exploiting women workers in developing states[iv].   

 

Differences can inhibit solidarity when left unrecognised and unexplored, or when they are considered an insurmountable barrier to responsible communicative relationships. White western feminism has been charged with myopia around issues of difference; an apparent failure to self-critique compounded by the displacement of ‘otherness’ as affecting only women elsewhere. Black women are expected to ‘own’ race against the neutral hegemony of whiteness, as eloquently exposed by feminists working to challenge the subtle historical prejudices of feminism in order to reformulate solidarities across diversity such as bell hooks (1989). She writes that “[t]he vision of sisterhood evoked by women liberationists was based on the idea of common oppression – a false and corrupt platform disguising and mystifying the true nature of women’s varied and complex social reality” (1991 in Yuval-Davis 1997:125), demanding that women take responsibility for their own complicity in the oppression of each other (1984 cited in Dean 1996:15).

 

Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2000:45-71) also offers a rigorous account of feminist politics of difference, drawing attention to the failure of white feminism to acknowledge race privilege. She analyses the racism of mainstream feminism from the perspective of an Australian Indigenous (Geonpul) woman marginalised by a struggle which routinely appropriated black women’s voices. This account makes clear the difficulty feminists encounter around the issues of difference and especially race, fragmented identities threatening a political program built on the category ‘woman’ that can be engaged only by a small group of women with a specific agenda. Reliance on a universal subject ‘woman’ suffering from a ‘common oppression’ is considered a problematic idea (Elam 1994:32). For Eliza Noh (2003:141), women’s localised and particular experiences of patriarchal control do not necessitate a reductive notion of women’s shared oppression. Refusing any common ground, subjectively and sociopolitically, between Asian American and white women she comes to the conclusion that any seeming solidarity is artificial, eschewing coalition politics as presupposing sameness (142-4). Whether differences can be reconciled by communication and engagement are issues that urgently need to be addressed by reconceptions of solidarity.

 

Christine Sylvester (2002:217 citing Reardon 1995) highlights the need by Euro-American feminists to self-analyse dynamics surrounding their participation in capitalism and concomitant global political structures effecting women in the Global South before meaningful dialogue is at all possible. Caren Kaplan (1994:139) suggests using Adrienne Rich’s ‘politics of location’ to pay homage to historical reasons for differences and inequities, recognising the asymmetry of relationships without constructing identity itself as authentic and primordial as a method to interrogate the ‘whiteness’ of North American feminism. Mohanty considers the effects of cultural imperialism in discourse, whereby Third World women are constructed or ignored by western feminism (2003:20-23). Her analysis that the presupposition of the category ‘women’ contains a notion of women’s homogenous oppression highlights the way it draws a misshapen image of the ‘average Third World woman’ designated by victimhood and dependency (22-23).

 

Representing the ‘unheard’ voices is not uncomplicated. Understanding may rest on knowledge, but its transmission is imbued with the same power imbalances when subject-researcher relations also cross global North/South divides. Daphne Patai (1994:21-37) judges academic representation of Third World women by US academics, even by consciously feminist research methods, as exploitative and unethical because the exchange can never be what she considers equal. Rather than foreclose on cross-cultural conversation, Assia Djebar (1992 in Giles 2004:76) reminds women that differences of freedom affect representation: “don’t claim to ‘speak for’ or worse to ‘speak on’ barely speaking next to, and if possible very close to [another]”. Dian Elam warns of developing hierarchies of difference and identities, and the assumption of sameness within collective identities that leads to the potentially treacherous territory of representation that speaks for a whole people (1994:74). Can myriad differences between women be recognised, articulated and scrutinised in feminist reclamations of solidarity beyond sisterhood?

 

Feminist Conceptions of Solidarity

 

Traditional notions of women’s solidarity relied on uncritical claims of universal ‘sisterhood’, based on ‘women’ as a clearly delineated category with some comparable experiences of oppression; the postmodern backlash to this is the rejection of shared gender identity[v]. Differential histories and socio-cultural positioning affect experience which may or may not be comparable, however, the strategic political necessity of women’s mobilisation, including cross-national collaboration, sidelines philosophical debate about whether ‘women’ still exist as a meaningful unit of analysis for purposes of this thesis. On a political level, ‘women’ still constitutes a group distinguished by various gendered discrimination. Mohanty (2003:234) notes that women and girls are globally worst affected by environmental degradation, war, famine and displacement exacerbated by globalisation. While inequalities of wealth, access to education, resources and socio-political capital affect women’s lived experiences differently, the reconfiguration of solidarity thus requires attention to the real disparities between women and the possibility of dialogical approaches to enable exchanges across these.

 

Despite the utility of deconstruction for countering the colonising potential of theory, a complete deconstruction of the subject is not politically viable for feminism given current need for mobilisation and action (Elam 1994:72). Feminism should not, however, fear deconstruction, as it “does not say anything against the usefulness of mobilizing unities. All it says is that because it is not useful it ought not to be monumentalized as the way things really are” (Gayatri Spivak 1991 quoted in Yuval-Davis 1998:180), suggesting that the essentialism of (western) feminism must be challenged, while opening the category ‘women’ to reinterpretation and contestation to allow for new identities and political mobilisation (Dean 1996:65). Elam (1994:82) has attempted to reconcile deconstruction and identity-based feminism via the ethical activism of ‘groundless solidarity’; the binding aspect of feminism is that we share collective concern for other women despite the uncertainty of knowing who they are (undecided multiple positions), and the indeterminate political possibilities held (84)[vi]. 

 

For Elam, groundless solidarity presents “the possibility of a community which is not grounded in the truth of a presocial identity” and the basis “for political action and ethical responsibility” (Elam 1994:109). This does not necessarily mean consensus, potentially crossing national, ethnic, and religious borders, facilitating a political coalition based on shared ethical commitments without exclusion and a commitment to difference which destabilises delineations of self/other (109); ‘groundless’ in the sense of not relating to an isolated autonomous subject, but one who is “caught up in a network of responsibilities to others” (110). Elam (1994:114) rejects solidarity based on similarity as assimilation and recommends solidarity explicitly based on difference beyond simply accommodating different beliefs, indicating the women’s pro-choice movement as respecting differences of choice over abortion.

 

Standpoint feminism and localising voices

 

Standpoint feminist theories reflect particularity of experience informed by gendered identity. Some feminist scholars are convinced that standpoint theories are able to respect diversity because of this (Hallstein in Eblen and Kelley 2002:6). Standpoint feminism is concerned with hearing as many women’s individual voices as possible, situating feminist claims in solid locational contexts. Individual knowledge-claims and daily experiences give expression to the feminist principle that “the personal is political” allowing more scope for political fodder as “no social practices or activities should be excluded as improper subjects for public discussion, expression, or collective choice.”  (Young 1990:120).

 

Standpoint feminism elucidates the relationship between knowledge, experience and identity (Charles 1995:6). It is criticised as reductive when a ‘pure’ collective subsumes individual identity, or particular knowledges are held only by ‘authentic’ directly experience (Charles 1995:6). Converging with emerging postmodern theories, however, standpoint feminism can be receptive to multiple, fragmented identity claims allowing for contradiction and democratic constructions of shared knowledge (Sylvester 2002:216-7). Multiple standpoint feminism as the basis for further critical analysis can allow for some generalisation without proposing one vital ‘legitimate’ notion of women’s experience, creating space for spared expressions of experience and opinion between women vital for communicative notions of working solidarily across differences and connecting local activism to global community.

 

Local to global connection

Conceptual or material links between the local and global emphasise “relations of mutuality, co-responsibility, and common interests, anchoring the idea of feminist solidarity” (Mohanty 2003:242). Mohanty (2003:224-226) and Dean (1996:69,140-174) both emphasise this relationship in that the local ‘illuminates’ the global, arguing for solidarities based on the differences that constitute localised experience, when “specifying difference allows us to theorize universal concerns more fully” (Mohanty 2003:226). Rather than homogenising some notion of women’s shared oppression, difference forms the basis of recognising others’ struggles and building bridges between movements. Christine Sylvester (2002:216) also supports the notion that the bounds of feminism are flexible enough to provide for recognition of differences, and brings attention to the multiplicity of lived experience and fractured identities.

 

Chandra Mohanty’s “common differences” is the basis of her “feminist solidarity model” (2003:242-245); not relativism but a recognition of coexisting and interdependent relationships containing both commonalities and differences. Such links include the “multiple, fluid structures of domination that intersect to locate women differently at particular historical conjunctures” (Mohanty 2003:55). In this sense she is interested in similar locations of women via their colonial and post-colonial histories, addressing structural issues of power and resistance. Mohanty (2003:49) is concerned with political alliances built from “the common context of struggles against specific exploitative structures and systems”. This is primarily by reference to an alliance, or sense of community, between Third World women and Black women involved with anti-sexist, -racist and -imperialist struggles (49) and their common interests as workers with shared perspectives gleaned by their specific roles in global economic processes (145)[vii].

 

Communication is essential

Despite the separation of actors in traditional notions of solidarity (i.e. we feel with them), Jodi Dean (1996:8) reflects on the necessity of difference to enable solidarity and the communicative inflection of the ‘we’ who express solidarity. She is adamant that communicative internal establishment of group identity helps deal with difference by making it explicit and not necessarily exclusive (30-31). Dialogue is vital process of each speaker owning her own subject position and recognising others; it is the key in standpoint feminism where each consciously conveys “partial situated knowledge” (Patricia Hill Collins 1990 in Yuval-Davis 1998:184). From distant points, conversations effect alliances, and the explication of different needs. Yuval-Davis (1998:180 and 1997:126) considers feminism effective ‘coalition politics’ where delineation with others is by aspiration, an articulation of “what we want to achieve”, not identity, although differences amongst women are voiced.

 

Christine Sylvester introduced the idea of empathetic cooperation as a means to reinvigorate feminist engagement with International Relations by bridging the rigidity of standpoint feminism and the ambivalence of postmodern critique (Sylvester 2002:242-244). She describes it as “a process of positional slippage that occurs when one listens seriously to the concerns, fears, and agendas of those one is unaccustomed to heeding when building social theory, taking on board rather than dismissing, finding in the concerns of others borderlands of one’s own concerns and fears” (2002:247). Empathetic cooperation presents a broader perspective by denying one fixed theoretical stranglehold, adopted in her earlier work (1994:3) by reference to Kathy Ferguson’s (1993) ‘mobile subjectivities’ to disrupt ideas of singular stable identities and truths. Sylvester reveals empathy as a conversational tool that listens without demanding answers, so that multiple stories can be appreciated, combined with cooperation to enable engagement with “politically difficult negotiations at borderlands of knowledge, experience, differences, and subjectivities” (2002:256). Though specifically formulating empathetic cooperation in regard to theory and discussions in IR, she grounds her ideas as bases for action by reference to the women of Greenham Common peace camp and their commitment to dialogue and cooperation as well as diverse tactics and ideology (260-261).

 

For activist and academic Nira Yuval-Davis, the framework of dialogue as scaffolding for empowerment and solidarity is best expressed by ‘transversal politics’, a concept coined by feminist activists involved with Italian Women in Black, to describe engagement with women from various backgrounds with recognition and respect for difference. These conversations were based on notions of ‘rooting’ and ‘shifting’ (Yuval-Davis 1998:184). ‘Rooting’ is speaking consciously from one’s subject position while ‘shifting’ attempts to sympathise with ‘others’ by listening empathetically, enabling exchange while recognising different values and goals (Yuval-Davis 1997:130-132). Yuval-Davis (1997:125) sets transversal politics as an alternative to the immobilising dichotomy between universalism and relativism. She indicates a necessity for contestation of ‘the authoritative feminist agenda’ and a commitment to solidarity informed by cooperation across differences, honouring partiality as opposed to universality but forewarning the easy blur into relativistic immobility (Yuval-Davis 1998:84).

 

Cautious universality and reflective solidarity

Jodi Dean’s (1996:13-46) proposed theory of “reflective solidarity” is a means to overcome this divide between universality and the particular, moving beyond the rigidity of conventional solidarity to suggest that awareness and nurturing of dialogue can respond to the dilemma of difference. Critical of both the simple emotionality of “affective solidarity” and the strategic disconnection of “conventional (goal-based) solidarity” (17-22), reflective solidarity is the notion that we can engage cross-culturally, while being cognisant of differences and the historical contexts informing them. Thus engaging in dialogue and possibly disagreement, to reach a position of solidarity towards a “mutual expectation of a responsible orientation to relationship” (Dean 1996:29 italics in original).

 

Cautioning the silent reprisal contained in dialogue that neglects an exploration of differences by assuming concurrence, reflective solidarity demands openness to disagreement. Thus feminist agendas cannot be assumed, or continued by deference to traditional concerns or constituency. As a means to feminist solidarity, “we have to be allowed to get messy” via constructive, conflictive discussion (Uttal 1990 in Dean 1996:29), and the more questioning the better, given the potential for group dynamics that lend power to particular individuals and agendas (Dean 1996:31). This ‘reflective solidarity’ depends on engagement for open membership and self-reflectivity. A self-reflective stance enables both responsiveness to criticism and taking responsibility for the ‘other’ by ownership of concrete fragmented identities within a communicative universal membership[viii]. Opposing theorists, such as Judith Butler, who condemn discursive universality as totalising and exclusionary, Dean’s solidarity wrestles with feminist disagreement in order to nurture community via difference, challenging the mutual exclusion of the universal and particular in what she considers part of a vital feminist struggle against dualistic gendered hierarchies (148-151). Her embrace of difference becomes reason for inclusion: “we appeal to others to include and support us because our communicative engagement allows us to expect another to take responsibility for our relationship” (39).

 

Pragmatic solidarities and bridging movements

Manisha Desai (2002:29) supports reflective solidarity as the product of conversations between women from various women’s movements globally around “common goals of freedom, justice, and equality variously defined” bridging multiple identity-divides. She positions women’s emerging solidarities in the context of their different experiences of macro-social forces, such as religious fundamentalism and post-colonial nation-building, shared globally yet from within historically and culturally discrete circumstances. Chandra Mohanty (2003:7) defines solidarity by reference to pragmatic decisions to work together and by “mutuality, accountability, and the recognitions of common interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities.” She reaffirms that solidarity is oriented by practice, by political struggle, not the romantic notion of ‘sisterhood’ (24). Solidarity is the basis of the transborder participatory feminist democracy she calls for (cited in Giles 2004:81).

 

At grassroots level, there is a documented focus on politically strategic solidarities; “solidarities for survival”, for example, between women workers in the informal sectors forming credit cooperatives and networks to exchange ideas and influence policymaking (Desai 2002:20). The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), initiated by women in Gujarat, is described as an example of informal sector trade unionism, and one that moves beyond solely providing worker-support to enabling social transformation (Mohanty 2003:165-166). Unionisation is an example of women’s solidarity based on common (if contextually distinct) experiences or identity as workers. Chandra Mohanty is especially convinced of the possibility for Third World women’s connectivity as workers given their particular experiences within global economic systems (2003:144-145). Mary Fonow (2005) concurs that women workers develop solidarity through their trade unions in her analysis of cross national campaigns for human and labour rights as well as union conferences and networks afforded by union-based humanitarian aid organisations. In the interest of inclusivity, however, feminists should heed warnings about limiting solidarity to the domain of a class struggle (Mohanty 2003:142) and the need for women to form their unions given the popular perception of these organisations as controlled by a white male working-class (Mohanty 2003:163).

 

Transnational feminism networks as a mode of mobilising in solidarity

Solidarity, as discussed briefly above, lends itself to political mobilisation beyond emotional rhetorical synthesis. Solidarity requires action by reason of moral obligation to another. While debates continue over how to represent ‘women’ as a meaningful identity in feminist academia, the emergence of transnational feminist discourses, networks and actions utilising notions of feminist solidarity indicate reconciliation between theoretical consternation and collective political purpose. Feminist theory, North and South, is often consciously based on ground-work. The grounded networks of women and feminist organisations enable a sharing of resources, knowledges and discourses between women globally. While some activists working at a grassroots level criticise scholars for being removed from the arena of their study, many feminisms deliberately emerge from praxis, so the false dichotomy of theory versus action is not entirely constructive. It is my contention that feminist networks, such as WiB, are actively creating the discursive space for emerging feminist solidarity theories, becoming part of feminism’s paradigm shift.

 

Women’s organising is often a complicated endeavour, with the clamour of voices necessary to put into effect feminist ideals for participatory, democratic, non-hierarchical and autonomous engagement (Ferguson 1984 cited in Marx Ferree and Hess 2000:211)[ix]. Less formal than structured organisations (although they may include women involved in different organisations), networks of women can nurture a sense of collective identity, empowerment and solidarity. These are critical in constructing feminist movements that can be inclusive and representative (Marx Ferree and Hess 2000:28,209). The network becomes a flexible resource to enact solidarity by sharing support, human resources and information between groups and individuals (Moghadam 2005:81). Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF), for example, is a network of women mostly active as individuals although each may be involved in multiple other groups (Yuval-Davis 1997:128). Yuval-Davis notes that these women are not obligated to subsume differences by representing a group identity and consider their own knowledge unfinished and dependent on dialogue (1997:128). Women’s mobilisation without structured organisation enables the direct democracy of autonomous activism, though this relies heavily on a communicative understanding between members rather than an institutionalised recourse for accountability (Marx Ferree and Hess 2000:xxi). A safeguard to accountability is accommodated in Dean’s theory of reflective solidarity by responsibility to multiple viewpoints, especially that of ‘the hypothetical third’ as the marginalised ‘other’ (Dean 1996:29).

 

It is imperative to locate women’s solidarity within the emergent transnational paradigm of feminist politics (Schild 1999:87); transnationalism goes beyond notions of simply ‘international’ by suggesting a “conscious crossing of national boundaries and a superseding of nationalist orientations” (Moghadam 2005:83). According to Valentine Moghadam (2005:9) Transnational Feminist Networks (TFNs) came to the fore of feminist organising in the 1990s, securing common ground between women activists across divisions previously demarcated by ideology and global North/South political divisions. She proposes that via an expanded agenda, global issues that particularly affect women in developing states, including Structural Adjustment Policies and reproductive rights for example, may be addressed. These networks enable solidarity between women who are working from diverse locations on such agendas as development, labour rights and anti-capitalist struggles by bringing global pressure to bear on local political contexts. Moghadam regards international attention to the issue of women’s rights in Afghanistan in the late 1990s as a successful campaign of women’s networking between Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) and other TFNs circulating and responding to appeals to solidarity by Afghani women such as the Revolutionary Afghani Women’s Association (RAWA) and expatriates in Pakistan (2005:12).

 

United Nations Women’s Conferences have been vital to the emergence of contemporary feminist solidarity and consolidation of TFNs as the contemporary paradigm of global feminism[x]. Though they by no means represent the entire spectrum of women’s networking, from Mexico City (1975) to Beijing (1995), women’s differences have been voiced and negotiated as part of building a common mode of organising across diverse notions of ‘women’s issues’ that Desai (1997 cited in Desai 2005:322) has called “solidarities of difference”[xi]. Articulated through the conferences is the language of women’s human rights, re-embraced by a number of feminist theorists in recent years following decades of criticism as a tool for exporting western enlightenment rationality. Women’s rights, interpreted as including labour rights, rights to reproduction and protection against gendered violence specific to women’s broad needs[xii] for example, presents a means to both pragmatic solidarities and gender mainstreaming in broader agendas of peace, development and democratisation, recovering rights discourses from the domain of public, institutional politics and the masculine universal subject on which they were established (Hutchings 2002 cited in Fonow 2005:235). By the same token though, international conferences draw attention to the limited agenda of some feminist political action, and have been an arena whereby some women have expressed resistance to cooption by western feminists in the name of supposed solidarity (Sylvester 2002:216).

 

Solidarity in Feminist Anti-War Discourses

 

Concurrent to feminist theorising which critiques the sentimentality of traditional sisterhood, critical analyses of women’s antiwar solidarity are suggesting that multiple roles of women in conflict must be recognised, and antiwar activism framed as part of multiple conversations that connect women differently in conflict. Women cannot be assumed to be peaceful, but feminisms can provide key analytical frameworks for positive peace and analyses linking war and domination. It is critical to analyse how feminist conceptions of war, militarism and nationalism underscore the ways in which women’s antiwar activism exemplifies solidarity in action. Such critiques and their prescriptive notions of peace are vital for conversations between women. This is especially so in response to the ‘war on terror’ as part of building solidarities to counter the hostile binary ‘us’ versus ‘them’ characteristic of the political spin on the war and to reclaim feminist voices from their appropriation as part of the justification of invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan (Pettman 2004:58).

 

Women’s multiple and diverse roles in conflict position them differently from men and from each other. The normative scripts for women in conflict zones are generally fairly passive and these gendered roles are bound up intimately in the languages of nationalism and militarism. Cynthia Cockburn (1998:13) has noted that there is always a ‘gender war’ embedded within war and its architecture of gendered domination and dualism. Militarisation of thought and cultures is a subtle and pervasive process, and though its invasion into the everyday lexicon is not always directly about war, it effectively normalises militaristic presumptions (Enloe 2000:2). In a more explicit push for the spotlight, global militarisation has stepped up on a global stage since September 11, reframing international politics around agendas of national security, border protection and hard masculinity (Pettman 2004:49,57-8).

 

There is a particular symbolic weight that women shoulder as keepers of national identity, purity and longevity that often becomes more pronounced, as do other gendered divisions of labour, during conflict. The idea of ‘womenandchildren’ (Enloe 1990) as victims in need of protection is defined in opposition to ‘male’ roles in the masculinist normative narratives of war. Nationalism can thus restrict women’s agency during conflict where social obligations delineating women’s behaviours are more pronounced and symbolically charged. When these boundaries are crossed, via public protest, domestic non-compliance, or cross-ethnic organisation, women face charges of being ‘traitors’ (Bunch 2004:48; Cockburn 1998:42). Reaffirming women’s multiple active roles in response to cultures of warfare is an inherently valuable feminist exercise, so centring some women’s experiences of resistance is also a bold response to such silences.

 

Feminist theorising has long illuminated connections between patriarchy, domination and war, citing feminist concerns for peace with a shared concern for a reduction of violence across public and private spheres (Carrol 1987 cited in Eblen and Kelley 2002:4). In this way, the spectrum of violence against women is recognised as spanning domestic, structural, state and military violations, linking these to advocate for broader recognition of women’s rights. This has included demands for the prosecution of the use of rape and violence against women as war crimes in conflict, and the drafting of Resolution 1325 in the UN Security Council to recognise and enshrine the need for women’s involvement in peace processes (Bunch 2004:49; Fernandes 2005:68). Zorica Mrsevic (2000:41-42) is concerned that the increase in domestic violence in the former Yugoslavia is the result of militarised nationalism in the region, relating aggressive masculinity to a rise in ethnically defined nationalism and structural violence. Some feminist critiques that analyse the relationship between militaristic nationalism and gendered oppression and violence can thus provide a basis for dialogue and solidarity despite differences in particular experiences.

 

Although nationalistic masculinity is often experienced as a violent, alienating force, some women in militaries or national liberation movements, report their involvement as empowering (Sylvester 2002:217-222). Integrationists equate full citizenship and equality with military service, and belie the assumption that women are naturally peaceful. In response, some feminists question the potential for women’s empowerment through involvement in systems built on domination and misogyny (Yuval-Davis 1997:89-93,100-105). Women’s rights are recognised as an essential aspect of some Third World nationalist resistance movements, although realisation of these rights post-independence is often limited (McHugh Griffin 1998:257-258). Even within peace movements, some women activists support the use of violence, especially against property. In one widely publicised antiwar action of October 2002, three Dominican nuns in Colorado vandalised a US Air Force missile silo by painting it with a cross in their blood, cutting cables and fencing and hammering at the missile guiding tracks (Kohler 2003).

 

Thus it is problematic to base women’s activism for peace on their characterisation as the ‘Beautiful Souls’ who weep for the Warriors’ return (Elshtain 1987 in Pettman 1995:25). Although women’s antiwar organising is increasingly political and strategic, there are still perceptions that peace is a ‘women’s issue’. Given the socialised gender roles of motherhood, care and nurturing, these sentiments do underscore some antiwar discourse and many women’s motivations to activism. Separating ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ cannot entirely overcome the connection of women to an ‘ethics of care’; women’s gendered socialisation is popularly considered the basis of better empathy, support and mediation skills and broader attention to interpersonal dynamics (Young 1990:50-51). Traditional feminist appeals to women’s peaceful inclinations generally invoked tropes of mothering and nurturing[xiii].

 

Appeals to motherhood as a universal experience that crosses boundaries and can connect them with ‘enemy’ women, can be both constructive and problematic. Accessing the ‘other’ by crossing borders and identity boundaries can be politically valuable and subversive. Caring for the ‘other’ and invoking motherhood to care for the ‘other’s’ children can ameliorate the divisive isolation between conflicting populations. Where women’s traditional roles restrict resistance activities, utilising motherhood can enable dissent, such as in the activism of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, and the mothers of Russian soldiers in Chechnya (Bunch 2004:42). However, the sentimentalisation of motherhood can be appropriated by nationalistic discourses, and risks alienating women who are not mothers from political activities based on this positionality. What women appeal to in solidarity with others can be pragmatically, and emotionally based. Although contemporary movements are moving away from essentialist conceptions of women’s solidarity, evoking a shared discourse of women’s peaceful character or motherly love can be powerful but problematic in universalising one approach without regard for local and experiential differences.

 

Postmodern theorist Sandra Harding (cited in Sylvester 2002:208) warns of the discursive dangers of political projects built on metanarratives or presumed truths of shared values. From this perspective it is facile to assume that all women are peaceful, or even speak a common language about peace considering the breadth of their different experiences. Of course, this is not what I am suggesting, and scholars such as Charlotte Bunch (2004:29) have discussed the site-specificity of women’s peace activism, recognising that it is no longer focused on catching the unicorn of ‘world peace’. Sylvester (2002:215) criticises the potential for emotionality and maternalism in standpoint feminist’s project of connecting women and peace, but suggests that this can be ameliorated by allowing the contradictions of multiple standpoints where knowledge is democratically, not derivatively, constructed (217). Yuval-Davis (1997:111) argues that feminist analyses of war and militarism have thoroughly interrogated the manipulation of traditional notions of femininity and motherhood as part of nationalist militarisation, so that the majority of women’s antiwar mobilisation has attempted to move beyond the essentialism of claiming women as the ‘peaceful’ sex.

 

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Nina Ulasowski did her undergraduate degree in political science, with subjects that tended towards international relations and peace & conflict studies.  She writes, "I was really inspired by the classes I took on nonviolence, peacebuilding and human/labour rights. I have been involved in women’s and student activism over the last few years, and generally use art and performance as a medium for protest."