How Feminism Evolved in the Realm of Of Contemporary Art in South Asia and the Middle East

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Elsadda, Hoda. Review: Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, the Middle East Journal. Middle East Institute. 2001

First and foremost the book questions the prevalent belief that modernity brought more freedom and rights to women. It reassesses the effects of modernity for the third world in general and for women in particular by which the concept of modernity was subjected to crucial scrutiny and analysis by the feminist and post-colonial critics.

For a long time, both Western and autonomist approaches to the controversial woman question has been shaped by the assumptions and paradigms of modernization theory in dominant progressive dialogues, or those discourses which presume to observe and guide the road to progress and freedom in the developing world according to preset and presumed Western notions of advancement and modernity.

Lila Abu-Lughod endeavors to see beyond the rhetoric of the contemporary Islamist discourses on women, and argues that although they stigmatize women's public freedom as western, they "gingerly challenge women's rights to work, barely question women's education, and unthinkingly embrace the ideals of bourgeois marriage"[2]

Second, while acknowledging, for example, the cult of domesticity that placed women firmly in the private realm is a modernist Western construct that was popularized in the Middle East through the translation of Western books and magazines, contributors attempt to investigate the specificity of how and why this was integrated in a local context.

The author talks in detail about the Feminist and Modernist discourses on women in Middle East, how they devalued women’s concerns and issues and elevated the ideals and pre-set notions of masculinity, hence encouraging women to be like men if they wanted to be emancipated or independent. For most of the Middle Eastern and South Asian society, this is relevant in most areas. The society that we live in, dependence on a male figure gains respect for a woman, while being independent and liberated by choice is looked down upon. Preference is always given if the woman chooses to depend on a male figure rather than be self-governing and self-sufficient.

On the other hand, the writer points out that the last decade has observed a certain shift in the reassessment of the effects of modernism for the third world, particularly women. Afsaneh Najmabadi debates that “Iranian women embraced the cult of domesticity as and emancipatory act at a particular moment”[3]. They disregarded the traditional designated title of the “head of the house”, educated themselves and etched themselves a new place in the modern world.

C.H. Eelens, Frank and Antoon J.J.Schampers. Sri Lankan Housemaids in the Middle East, Universita degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”. 1990.

The article is a part of a study on the social, economic and demographic consequences of Sri Lankan labour migration to the Middle East. It takes a closer look at a particular nature of contract migration of Sri Lankan females to the Middle East.

In the past, women mainly participated as spouses and dependents in the international migration process, which heavily concentrated on the migration of men. In the present, the article takes a closer look on the nature of contract migration of Sri Lankan women to the Middle East. The rate of female Sri Lankan migration has increased steadily in the recent years. Recently the Philippines have restricted the migration of Sri Lankan housemaids below the age of 35 due of sexual malpractices. The article highlights the effects of female migration to the Middle East to assess its effects on the Sri Lankan society i.e. the state, the family, and the individual migrant. Not only do these studies often assume that the poles of attraction of female migration are identical to the centers of modernization, but equally that modernization leads to a Western lifestyle. Finally, the emancipation of return female migrants is hampered by the loss of status attached to the female migration.

My opinion on this is similar to this article. Even though the female migrants contribute to the welfare of their state and their families, and get satisfaction and pride out of the hard work that they put in doing so, the migration still hampers with the social emancipation of individual Sri Lankan female migrants. The migration may have been beneficial at the state level from an economic perspective, but the family problems they face today may become societal problems tomorrow, hindering in the long term progress on an individual as well as the state level. These women should be given work and jobs according to their education and level of understanding; the interdependence on a man or a family should not be a hindrance to their progression as working women.

Gairola, Rahul. Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from Gayatri Spivak. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” to Deepa Mehta’s “Fire”.

Women’s identities are themselves signs whose points of orientation are always male identity. The author’s point in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is that you can’t simply make the subaltern visible or lend her a voice. The subaltern is very often, but not quite always gendered female because women all over the world are still structurally subordinate to men.

The author focuses on identity itself and that it can be viewed as a reflexive gift stuck in a churning network of identities within the ideological constraints of society. People who have been deprived of their rights in a society may exchange one aspect of their identity for another. E.g. people of colour may pass as white if their skin tone permits, queers may pass as straight etc. Any trade at all happens inside the gendered subject, who scrambles to bargain her own character; the trading of sexual orientation shares that different features of personality is therefore an individual, inner, typical act never clueless by the encompassing society. In short, women’s identities are themselves whose point of introduction are constantly male identity. To inspect these new directions, the author breaks “the identity” of the Hindu women to demonstrate that identity is constantly in effect through a variety of aspects that one may compare with gift exchanges. Despite the fact that exchanges of identity bargains of the self within “Primitive” societies have remained continual, the media that encourages this trade has transformed beyond the appearance of global capitalism: the massive trade of goods and commodities has led to a hyperreal hastening of identity altercation, as labels have become analogies of sorts of people.