Class Notes for March 2, 1998

Readings covered:

Fatima Mernissi : "The Muslim and Time" & "The Prophet and the Hadith"

Elizabeth Spelman: "Hairy Cobbler ..." & "Who's Who in the Polis" Cherifa Bouatta: "Feminine Militancy: Moudjahidates..."

Class notes taken by Shama Farooq

Housekeeping: The first draft of the second paper is now due on the 23rd of March rather than the 16th. The topic involves this: Find 2-4 pieces/articles made for popular readership (newspapers, periodicals, internet stuff) concerning technology and reproduction and compare and contrast them (with issues like abortion, fertility, etc.) in regards to how we envision gender and sex.

The midterm is still to be on the 18th of March.

Notes:

Mernissi:

• Critical Framework:- historical causality; things are bad now because they were bad in the past
• Presents an internal analysis, Mernissi is not using Western tools to say "Islam is good/bad" rather is working within Islam to perhaps show that it is in itself democratic
• Mernissi uses Eastern standards to examine the inclusion of Hadiths into Muslim traditions
• are not theoretical pieces, Mernissi does not cite a single Western feminist
• She develops a "new" framework for others after her to work in (namely working within tradition/system)
• believes that it is not Islam that makes Islam unfair (but its interpretation)
• Is she even being more traditional than tradition?
• Connection between Mernissi reading and Spelman reading: bringing up the concept of saying one thing but actually doing another (or the opposite). However, Mernissi might argue that Plato and Aristotle were basically not open to equality of the sexes and the results were the ambiguous text that they produced
• Mernissi's progression from the first reading the class had to this one--now taking part in a cultural exercise while before was using Western psychoanalyst for comparison any parallel exercises in the Christian religion? --the "biblical" stories that were discarded as being false
• Is it possible that these "false" biblical stories represented the Bible having a more feminist agenda? Could an exercise like what Mernissi does here into Christian traditions reveal one?
• Perhaps like the "Women Who Run With the Wolves" article that attempts to affirm or reaffirm the value of Woman in traditions
• Why is it important to do what Mernissi did? It's important for one to find something one can relate to -something positive in one's own culture that one does not hesitate in latching on to.
• Mernissi is rereading texts that have been read in a misogynist way and saying we've been reading them wrong
• Question: Is she giving a "call to action?" While Mernissi provides reason and proof, she does not provide means to utilize the proof to make the situation better, in other words, what now?

Spelman:

• Points to ponder: What are the implications of such a piece for Western feminism?
• How verifiable are Spelman's claims about Plato and Aristotle?
• Is Western Feminism condemned to the same blindness Aristotle and Plato seem to be? (Are Western feminist only looking at only gender when we know other factors like race and class matter as well?)
• Like Bell Hooks, Spelman also appears to be highly critical of what she analyzes but in the end is optimistic
• admitting that unless Plato's The Republic is read with "feminist/Spelman" point of views in mind, varying views on Plato's treatment of women might emerge
• admitting there is a difficulty in thinking the way Spelman seem to be suggesting: how can we ascribe our revolution to a discourse that is fundamentally against our revolution?

Bouatta:

• there is a type of mystique with the women Bouatta interviews and talks about
• Similarities between the Moudjahidates and women in American and Western history:

women nurses,

Rosie the Riveter and all the positive propaganda that surrounded women during W.W.II (and the regression during the late 40's and 50's after the war),

Rosa Parks (and the manner in which she was "selected" to spark the Civil Rights movement)

Molly Pitcher

Women in the Russian Revolution (how claims of "Mother Russia" did not better the state of women after the Revolution)

French Revolution (the claims of equality for all and yet the extreme deterioration of women's rights all the way up to the losing the right to be on a jury during Napoleon's time)

• There is a frequent idealization of the Female in order to perhaps win her support for "national" cause and later a going back on said words.
• Question: Why is the Freedom figure a woman? Statue of Liberty a woman? (See Marina Warner's work on this topic)