Carrie Hamilton

the gender politics of political violence: women armed activists in ETA

This article aims to contribute to the developing area of feminist scholarship on women and political violence, through a study of women in one of Europes oldest illegal armed movements, the radical Basque nationalist organization ETA. By tracing the changing patterns of womens participation in ETA over the past four decades, the article highlights the historical factors that help explain the choice of a small number of Basque women to participate directly in political violence, and shows how these factors have differed from those for men. While the gender politics of radical nationalism are intricately linked to cross-cultural associations of militarism with certain forms of masculinity, the article also stresses the importance of understanding womens activism in ETA in the context of the organizations characteristic as an ethnic nationalist movement, as well as the wider historical circumstances of the movements development, including the modernization of Spanish and Basque society over the past four decades. Although comparisons with women in other armed movements are possible, such historical specificities undermine any attempt to construct a universal theory of women and ‘terrorism’, such as Robin Morgans ‘couple terrorism’ thesis. Finally, the article examines the changing representations of female ETA activists in the Spanish and Basque media. Although women ETA activists are now regarded as ‘normal’, popular representations continue to link womens armed activism with deviant sexuality and the transgression of their natural destiny as mothers. The different treatment of women is evident as well in claims of sexual torture made by some detainees. The article concludes that although the participation of women in political violence poses disquieting questions for the largely anti-militarist womens movement, case studies of women in armed organizations, as well as their place in the wider practices of conflict, are an important contribution both to feminist debates about violence and to wider studies of political violence.

re-imagining revolutions

In our original call for papers for this issue on ‘Revolutions’, we foregrounded our interest in reading work that documented revolutionary moments, movements or impulses, and that theorised the difference that gender makes both to revolutions themselves and to how we conceive of them. We were keen to highlight the ways that revolutions are gendered and also how our accounting of and for them makes and extends gendered meanings. As editors of this themed issue of Feminist Review, our concern was to think through what might constitute a ‘feminist revolution’, and what a feminist perspective on revolutions might inaugurate in analytical and political terms. The articles in the following pages make a key contribution to how revolution is conceptualised in relation to gender and the political, asking us to consider ways in which gender is always already part of the revolutionary process and struggle. Hence, these pieces urge us to consider the gendered politics of revolution as concept and practice, and to delve deeper into the figurations of masculinity and femininity that shape the idea of a revolutionary subjectivity.

the wherewithal of feminist methods

Concepts, devices and practices have proliferated considerably since the signifier ‘feminist’ was first attached to ‘method’ and ‘methodology’, most prominently in the 1980s. Early discussions suggested that feminist research and knowledge-making demanded a distinct approach to empirical inquiry: one that recognised and overturned systemic gender disparities, validated women’s ‘experience’, rejected hierarchies between the researcher and research participant, and had emancipation and social change as its purpose. Some of these early defining aspirations have been used to experiment with method and continue to incite lively debate about the politics of knowledge production and even what might be the best feminist method (Wilkinson, 1999). Others have been recast by new technologies and the greater attention given to non-human modes of relating in areas such as science and technology studies, epigenomics and climatology. Yet, a commitment to make feminism mean something in the doing of research, cultural analysis, teaching, artistic practice and in activism, has continued to complicate and supplement the idea of a distinct feminist methodological imperative. It was from this point of enduring attachment, ‘returns’ as ‘products of repetition, of coming back to persistent troublings’ (Hughes and Lury, 2013, p.787), and curiosity that our call for papers for this themed issue asked: ‘Where are we with feminist methods?’

Intervention: Public women and public history: revolution, prostitution and testimony in Cuba

This study explores some of the tensions between personal narratives and the representation of public history in revolutionary Cuba, through an examination of the testimonio of two prostitutes in the pre-revolutionary period, Tomás Fernández Robainas Recuerdos secretos de dos mujeres públicas [The secret recollections of two public women] (Havana: Letras Cubanas, 1984). Contrasting the prominent position of the pre-revolutionary prostitute as symbolic of the imperial and capitalist exploitation of Cuban women in public representations of revolutionary history with the lack of historical research on the lives of prostitutes before 1959, the author argues that the voices of the two women presented in Recuerdos secretos challenge the construction of the revolutionary subject typical of testimonio in Cuba, as it offers evidence of everyday life in the past which challenges the public history of public women in the prerevolutionary period.

sex, work, meat: the feminist politics of veganism

abstractSince the publication of The Sexual Politics of Meat in 1990, activist and writer Carol J. Adams (2000 [1990]) has put forth a feminist defence of veganism based on the argument that meat consumption and violence against animals are structurally related to violence against women, and especially to pornography and prostitution. Adams’ work has been influential in the growing fields of animal studies and posthumanism, where her research is frequently cited as the prime example of vegan feminism. However, her particular radical feminist framework, including her anti-pornography and anti-prostitution arguments, are rarely acknowledged or critiqued. This article challenges the premises of Adams’ argument, demonstrating that her version of vegan feminism is based upon an unsubstantiated comparison between violence against women and violence against other-than-human animals, and on the silencing and exclusion of sex workers as subjects. The article contests the limited reading of Adams, and of feminism, offered in some key works in animal studies and posthumanism, at the same time that it recognises the need to challenge the anthropocentrism evident in much feminist theory. By way of alternative approaches to the sexual politics of veganism, the article highlights the interventions of artist and activist Mirha-Soleil Ross, proposing that her situated and embodied commitment to animal rights brings sex worker agency into the story, while resisting simple comparisons among different forms of violence. The concerns raised by Ross overlap in compelling ways with recent research in performance studies and labour history, bringing the question of work and workers, animal and human, to the fore. These studies point towards a potentially more useful framework than that of Adams for understanding the human violence suffered by different species, including those destined to be eaten by people.

A review of Feminist Review’s 100th issue: Celebrating 100 issues of collective practice

We are delighted that the editors of the European Journal of Women’s Studies have agreed to let the Feminist Review Collective review its own 100th issue, and will return the favour at the relevant moment! In itself, feminist publishing is an immense achievement in these times of increasing bureaucratization and rolling back of funds, and with a collective endeavour such as Feminist Review sustaining feminist practice is both increasingly important and increasingly hard. We are proud of what Feminist Review has achieved since its emergence in 1979 and keen to use this opportunity to share our celebrations with the wider feminist community. The review below is made up of three different voices from within the current collective, each one identifying slightly different but overlapping themes emerging from ‘Recalling the Scent of Memory’ (Issue 100) and using these as a springboard for exploring their resonances across Feminist Review’s history (of publishing and collective practice). We certainly speak on behalf of the rest of the collective when we ask you to celebrate 100 issues with us...